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He was facing Lamo's population at least that proportion of it which was at home with the comforting assurance that no part of it could get behind him. The gun he had drawn upon the approach of Barbara's pursuer was still in his right hand. It menaced no one, and yet it seemed to menace everyone within range of it.
She sighed when at last she could no longer penetrate the wall of darkness; got up and moved her chair to one of the front windows, from where she could look down into Lamo's one street. Lamo's lights began to flicker; from the town's buildings sounds began to issue multisonous, carrying the message of ribaldry unrestrained.
Lamo's buildings made some pretense of aping the architecture of buildings in other towns. The eating-house was a two-story structure, with an outside stairway leading to its upper floor. It had a flat roof and an adobe chimney. Its second floor had been subdivided into lodging-rooms. Its windows were small, grimy. Not one of Lamo's buildings knew paint.
As time fled to the monotonous clink of coins over the bar he set up in the frame shack that faced the desert trail, Ladron's importance in Lamo was divided by six. The other dispensers had not come together; they had appeared as the needs of the population seemed to demand and all had flourished. Lamo's other buildings had appeared without ostentation. There were twenty of them.
All the others, Sheriff Gage included, likewise halted most of them at a considerable distance, as their conceptions of prudence suggested. Harlan's grin grew ironic as he noted the pause the concerted rigidity of Lamo's population. "Seems there's a heap of folks wantin' to palaver," he said lowly. "An' no one is crowdin' me. That's polite an' proper.
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.
Get them up!" It seemed ludicrous to Barbara, despite the shadow of tragedy that lurked over it all the embarrassed manner in which Lamo's citizens complied with the command, and the spectacle they presented afterward. Deveny's hands were the last to go up.
For her father had told her about Lamo's men how they were slaves to the will of the man whose deeds of outlawry had made him feared wherever men congregated; and she knew Lamo itself was a sink-hole of iniquity where women were swallowed by the evil passions of men. She might have appealed to Gage, the sheriff, and she thought of Gage while she sat at the window.
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