in, so's he'd have a chance to take her.
Now that Morgan's dead his chance has come."

Silently, her face dead white, her eyes closed, Barbara slipped backward
and crumpled into a heap on the dirty carpet of the room.

When she again opened her eyes it was to look wildly at the open window
through which the terrible news had come. Then she dragged herself to it,
and making no sound leaned her arms on the sill and listened again, her
heart seeming to be in the clutch of icy fingers, her brain atrophied,
reeling in a chaos of incoherent, agonized impulses.

She did not know how long she had been unconscious. She saw that Rogers
and Lawson were still below, and still talking. So keen was her sense of
hearing--every nerve straining in the effort to learn more--that the
voices of the men came in through the window with a resonance that, she
felt, must be audible to every person in Lamo.

"It ain't my style, that's all. I'd meet Harlan on the level, man to man,
if he was lookin' for me. It's likely he ain't at that. I've heard, bad
as he is, that he plays square. An' if I was runnin' things I'd take a
look at him before chargin' him with killin' Lane Morgan, when the
killin' had been done by the Chief, an' Dolver, an' Laskar."

It was Strom Rogers' voice. It bore conviction with it, even though there
was passionate feeling behind it, mingled strangely with personal hatred
and jealousy.

Dumbly, Barbara clutched the window-sill. One dry, agonized sob racked
her; and then she sat on the floor, to stare vacantly at the dingy walls
of the room.

Once more she heard Rogers' voice; this time there was a note of savage
glee in it:

"There's Harlan now, just slippin' off his cayuse in front of Gage's
place. 'Drag,' eh? Well, there don't seem to be nothin' impedin' his
actions anywhere."

Prompted by the urge of a curiosity that she could not resist, Barbara
reeled to her feet, and with her hands resting on the window-sill leaned
out and looked up the street.

In front of the sheriff's office, not more than thirty or forty feet
distant, she saw a tall, well-built man standing beside the hitching rail
that fringed the board sidewalk. He had evidently just dismounted, and he
was standing at the head of a big, coal-black horse. He was in the act of
hitching the animal, and his back was toward her.

She watched breathlessly until he turned. And then she stared hard at
him, noting the steady, cold, alert eyes; the firm lips; t