Of course it was a three-day trip to Pardo, and she had no reason to expect Morgan to return until the end of the sixth day, at the very earliest. And yet some force sent her to the window at frequent intervals, where she would sit, as now, her chin resting in her hands, her eyes searching the vast waste land with an anxious light.
An attaché of the Eating-House had put her horse away—where, she did not know; and her meals had been brought to her by a middle-aged slattern, whose probing, suspicion-laden glances had been full of mocking significance. She had heard the woman speak of her to other female employees of the place—and once she had overheard the woman refer to her as “that stuck-up Morgan heifer.”
Their coarse laughter and coarser language had disgusted the girl, and she had avoided them all as much as possible.
It was the first time she had remained overnight in the Eating-House lodging-rooms, though she had seen the building many times during her visits to Lamo. It wasn’t what she was accustomed to at the Rancho Seco, nor was it all that a lodging-house might be—but it provided shelter for her while she waited.
The girl felt—as she looked—decidedly out of place in the shabby room. Many times during her vigil she had shuddered when looking at the dirty, threadbare ingrain carpet on the floor of the room; oftener, when her gaze went to the one picture that adorned the unpapered walls, she shrank back, her soul filled with repugnance.
Art, as here represented, was a cheap lithograph in vivid colors, of an Indian—an Apache, judging from his trappings—scalping a white man. In the foreground, beside the man, was a woman, her hair disheveled, wild appeal in her eyes, gazing at the Indian, who was grinning at her.
A cheap bureau, unadorned, with a broken mirror swinging in a rickety frame; one chair, and the bed in which she had tried to sleep, were the only articles of furniture in the room.
The girl, arrayed in a neat riding habit; her hair arranged in graceful coils; her slender, lissom figure denoting youth and vigor; the clear, smooth skin of her face—slightly tanned—indicating health—was as foreign to her present surroundings as life is foreign to the desert. In her direct eyes was the glow of sturdy honesty that had instantly antagonized the slattern who had attended her.
That glow was not so pronounced now—it was dulled by anxiety as she looked out of the window, watching the desert light fade as twilight came, blotting the hot sand from her sight, erasing the straight, unfeatured horizon, and creating a black void which pulsed with mystery.
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.
From a point not very far away came the hideous screeching of a fiddle, accompanied by a discordant, monotonous wail, as of someone singing a song unfamiliar to him; from across the street floated a medley of other noises, above which could be heard the jangling music of a heavily drummed piano. There came to her ears coarse oaths and the maudlin laughter of women.
She had heard it all the night before; but tonight it seemed that something had been added to the volume of it. And as on the night before, she sat at the window, watching—for it was all new and strange to her—even if unattractive. But at last the horror of it again seized her, and she closed the window, determined to endure the increased heat.
Half an hour later, lying, fully dressed, on the bed, she heard a voice in the hallway beyond the closed door of her room—a man’s voice.
“It isn’t what one might call elegant,” said the voice; “but if it’s the best you’ve got—why, of course, it will have to do.”
The girl sat straight up in bed, breathless, her face paling.
“It’s Luke Deveny!” she gasped in a suffocating whisper.
The man’s voice was answered by a woman’s—low, mirthful. The girl in the room could not distinguish the words. But the man spoke again—in a whisper which carried through the thin board partition to the girl:
“Barbara Morgan is in there—eh?” he said and the girl could almost see him nodding toward her room.
This time the girl heard the woman’s voice—and her words:
“Yes she’s there, the stuck-up hussy!”
The voice was that of the slattern.
The man laughed jeeringly.
“Jealous, eh?” he said. “Well, she is a mighty good-looking girl, for a fact!”
That was all. The girl heard Deveny step into a room—the room adjoining hers; she could hear his heavy boots striking the floor as he removed them.
For a long time the girl rested on her elbow, listening; but no further sounds came from the room into which Deveny had gone. At last, trembling, her face white with fear, the girl got up and stole noiselessly to the door.
A light bolt was the door’s only fastening; and the girl stood long, with a hand upon it, considering its frailty. How easy it would be for a big man like Deveny to force the door. One shove of his giant shoulder and the bolt would give.
Stealthily, noiselessly, straining with every ounce of her strength, she managed to lift the cheap bureau and carry it to the door, placing it against the latter, barricading it. Not satisfied, she dragged the bed over against the bureau.
Even when that had been accomplished, she was not satisfied and during the greater part of the night she sat on the edge of the bed, listening and watching the door. For in the days that had fled Deveny had said certain things to her that she had not repeated to her father; he had looked at her with a significance that no man could have understood; and there had been a gleam in his eyes at these times which had convinced her that behind the bland smoothness of him—back of the suave politeness of his manner—was a primitive animalism. His suave politeness was a velvet veil of character behind which he masked the slavering fangs of the beast he really was.
CHAPTER IV
HIS SHADOW BEFORE
At ten o’clock the following morning, in a rear room of “Balleau’s First Chance” saloon—which was directly across the street from the Lamo Eating-House—Luke Deveny and two other men were sitting at a card-table with bottle and glasses between them. A window in the eastern side of the room gave the men an unobstructed view of the desert, and for half an hour, as they talked and drank, they looked out through the window.
A tall, muscular man with a slightly hooked nose, keen blue eyes with a cold glint in them, black hair, and an equally black mustache which revealed a firm-lipped mouth with curves at the corners that hinted of cynicism, and, perhaps cruelty, was sitting at the table so that he faced the window. His smile, as he again glanced out of the window, roved to Deveny—who sat at his right.
“One man—an’ a led horse,” he said shortly. “Looks like Laskar.”
Deveny—big, smooth-shaven—with black, glowing, attractive eyes that held a glint quite as hard as that which shone in the eyes of the speaker, looked long out of the window at a moving dot on the desert, which seemed to be traveling toward them. Deveny had looked before; but now he saw two dots where at other times he had seen only one. His lips held a slight pout as he glanced at the speaker.
“You’re right, Rogers,” he said; “there’s only one. The old