t 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.

So far as Harlan knew, no one in Lamo besides Sheriff Gage had watched
the departure of himself and Barbara. And there had been no word spoken
between the two as they rode away--Lamo becoming at last an almost
invisible dot in the great yawning space they left behind them.

Barbara felt a curious unconcern for what was happening; her brain was in
a state of dull apathy, resulting from shock and the period of dread
under which she had lived for more than a day and a night.

She did not seem to care what happened to her. She knew, to be sure, that
she was riding toward the Rancho Seco with a man whom she had heard
called an outlaw by other men; she was aware that she must be risking
something by accepting his escort--and yet she could not bring herself to
feel that dread fear that she knew any young woman in her position should
feel.

It seemed to her that nothing mattered now--very much. Her father was
dead--murdered by some men--two of whom had been punished by death, and
another--a mysterious person called the "Chief"--who would be killed as
soon as she could find him. That resolution was deeply fixed in her mind.

Her gaze though, after a while, went to Harlan, and for many miles she
studied him without his suspecting. And gradually she began to think
about him, to wonder why he had protected her from the man, Higgins, and
why he was going with her to the Rancho Seco.

She provided--after a while--an answer to her first question: He had
protected her because she had run into his arms in her effort to escape
the clutches of the man who had pursued her--Higgins. She remembered that
while she had been at the window, watching Harlan when he had dismounted
in front of the sheriff's office, he had seemed to make a favorable
impression upon her.

That was the reason, when she had seen him before her in the street, after
he had shot Laskar, she had selected him as a protector. That had seemed
to be t