to
Harlan had not affected him greatly. In the beginning--when he had killed
the Taos bully--he had been reluctant to take life; and he had avoided,
as much as possible, company in which he would be forced to kill to
protect himself.

And through it all he had been able to maintain his poise, his
self-control. The reputation he had achieved would have ruined some
men--would have filled them with an ambition to fulfil the specifications
of the mythical terror men thought him. There was a danger there; Harlan
had felt it. There was a certain satisfaction in being pointed out as a
man with whom other men dared not trifle; respect of a fearsome equality
was granted him--he had seen it in the eyes of men, as he had seen an
awed adulation in the eyes of women.

He had felt them all--all the emotions that a real desperado could feel.
He had experienced the impulse to swagger, to pose--really to live the
part that his ill-fame had given him.

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