But he had resisted those impulses; and the glow in his eyes when in the presence of men who feared him was not the passion to kill, but a humorous contempt of all men who abased themselves before him.
On the night he had been with Dave Hallowell, the marshal of Pardo, he had listened with steady interest to a story told him by the latter. It concerned the Lamo region and the great basin at which he and Barbara Morgan had been looking when the girl had accused him of a lack of poetic feeling.
“I’ve heard reports about Sunset Valley,” Hallowell had said, squinting his eyes at Harlan. “I’ve met Sheriff Gage two or three times, an’ he’s had somethin’ to say about it. Accordin’ to Gage, everything ain’t on the surface over there; there’s somethin’ behind all that robbin’ an’ stealin’ that’s goin’ on. There’s somethin’ big, but it’s hid—an’ no man ain’t ever been able to find out what it is. But it’s somethin’.
“In the first place, Deveny’s gang ain’t never been heard of as pullin’ off anything anywheres else but in Sunset Valley. As for that, there’s plenty of room in the valley for them without gettin’ out of it. But it seems they’d get out once in a while. They don’t—they stay right in the valley, or close around it. Seems to me they’ve got a grudge ag’in’ them Sunset Valley ranchers, an’ are workin’ it off.
“Why? That question has got Gage guessin’. It’s got everybody guessin’. Stock is bein’ run off in big bunches; men is bein’ murdered without no cause; no man is able to get any money in or out of the valley—an’ they’re doin’ other things that is makin’ the cattlemen feel nervous an’ flighty.
“They’ve scared one man out—a Pole named Launski—from the far end. He pulled stakes an’ hit the breeze runnin’ sellin’ out for a song to a guy named Haydon. I seen Launski when he clumb on the Lamo stage, headin’ this way, an’ he sure was a heap relieved to get out with a whole skin.”
Hallowell talked long, and the mystery that seemed to surround Sunset Valley appealed to Harlan’s imagination. Yet he did not reveal his interest to Hallowell until the latter mentioned Barbara Morgan. Then his eyes glowed, and he leaned closer to the marshal.
And when Hallowell remarked that Lane Morgan, of the Rancho Seco had declared he would give half his ranch to a trustworthy man who could be depended upon to “work his guns” in the interest of the Morgan family, the slow tensing of Harlan’s muscles might have betrayed the man’s emotions—for Hallowell grinned faintly.
Hallowell had said more. But he did not say that word had come to him from Sheriff Gage—an appeal, rather—to the effect that Morgan had sent to him for such a man, and that Gage had transmitted the appeal to Hallowell. Hallowell thought he knew Harlan, and he was convinced that if he told Harlan flatly that Morgan wanted to employ him for that definite purpose, Harlan would refuse.
And so Hallowell had gone about his work obliquely. He knew Harlan more intimately than he knew any other man in the country; and he was aware that the chivalric impulse was stronger in Harlan than in any man he knew.