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Updated: June 20, 2025
Rogers sent his horse scampering to the crest of one of the hills where, concealed behind some brush, he watched the progress of Deveny's men eastward. When they passed the point on the plain where they would have to veer northward if they intended to visit the Star, he breathed with relief. For he had almost yielded to a conviction that Deveny was headed for the Star.
Harlan laughed lowly. "Things don't always shape up the way a man thinks they will, Red. I started for Lamo, figurin' to salivate Dolver an' the other guy who killed Davey Langan. I got Dolver at Sentinel Rock, an' I figured I'd be likely to run into the other guy somewheres mebbe findin' him in Deveny's gang. But runnin' into Lane Morgan sort of changed the deal.
So it was not long after the herd had left the Star until it straggled up a defile in the hills and out upon the level where Deveny's men had to ride to take the south trail to the Rancho Seco.
Once, after they had ridden some distance up the valley, Barbara heard a man behind them call Deveny's attention to some horsemen who were riding the shelving trail that Deveny and his men had taken on their way to the level; and she heard Deveny laugh. "Some of the Star gang, I reckon. Mebbe Haydon, goin' to the Rancho Seco, to see his girl."
Wondering, intensely curious for that word "trouble" meant shooting in the vocabulary of men of the Deveny type Barbara drew back until she was certain the men in the street could not see her. When Deveny and Laskar disappeared, Strom Rogers laughed sneeringly: "Deveny's scared of 'Drag' Harlan, I reckon. It's a cheap frame-up." "Aw, hell," jibed the other; "you're jealous, that's all.
But as she leaned upon the sill a sound floated to her through the open window a man's voice, so close to her that it made her start and stiffen. It was Deveny's voice, and it seemed to come from a point in the street directly beneath the window. "Did you find Gage?" it said. Barbara leaned forward a little and looked downward.
Those friends were few, for Deveny's attitude toward his men had always been that of the ruthless tyrant; he had treated them with an aloofness that had in it a contempt which they could not ignore. More he was merciless, and had a furious temper which found its outlet in physical violence.
Yet resistance had merely served to increase the exhaustion that had come upon her. She had not known until she lay passive in Deveny's arms how taut her nerves had been, nor how the physical ordeal had drained her strength. She felt the strain, now, but consideration for her body was overwhelmed by what she saw in Deveny's eyes as she lay watching him.
But Gage, her father had told her, with disgust in his eyes, was a man of colorless personality and of little courage a negligible character upon whom the good people of the section, who were pitifully few, could not depend. Her father had told her that it was his opinion that Gage, too, was a slave to Deveny's will.
She twisted around and sat up, bewildered, almost succumbing to the hideous terror which instantly gripped her when she remembered what had happened. Deveny's horse stood near her, nipping the tips of the grass that grew at her feet. Beyond the animal a little to her right, and perhaps fifty feet from her were other horses, with riders.
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