“You got notions, eh?” he heard Harlan say, jeeringly. “Well, don’t spoil ’em. I’d admire to make you feel like you’d ought to have got started a week ago.”
Deveny smiled with hideous mirthlessness. But he again caught the flame in Harlan’s eyes. He wheeled, saying nothing more, and walked across the street without looking back.
Smiles followed him; several men commented humorously, and almost immediately, knowing that this last crisis had passed, Lamo’s citizens resumed their interrupted pleasures.
Harlan stood motionless until Deveny vanished into the First Chance, then he turned quickly and entered the sheriff’s office.
CHAPTER VIII
BARBARA IS PUZZLED
Half an hour later, with Barbara Morgan, on “Billy”—a piebald pinto—riding beside him, Harlan loped Purgatory out of Lamo. They took a trail—faint and narrow—that led southward, for Barbara had said that the Rancho Seco lay in that direction.
Harlan had not seen Deveny or Rogers or Lawson after the scene in front of the sheriff’s office. He had talked for some time with Gage, waiting until Barbara Morgan recovered slightly from the shock she had suffered. Then when he had told her that he intended to accompany her to the Rancho Seco—and she had offered no objection—he had gone on a quest for her pony, finding him in the stable in the rear of the Eating-House.