Deveny turned to Lawson and Rogers. "You two wait here, Laskar and myself will do the talking to Gage." He started away with the man who had answered him; then called back over his shoulder: "Hang around; if there's trouble, you'll want to get in on it." Deveny and Laskar walked down the street; the girl saw them enter the building occupied by the sheriff. 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. You'd like to see Harlan plug Deveny, eh; so's you'd have a chance with Barbara Morgan. I'd be a heap careful, if I was you, Rogers. Deveny knows you took a shine to Barbara Morgan. I seen him lookin' hostile at you when you was quizzin' him in Balleau's. He's next." "This is a free country," returned Rogers. The girl caught the malignant note in his voice, and she leaned outward a little, trying to see his face, while she shivered with dread. "Yes," laughed Lawson; "a man can cash in without any excuse, usual; all he's got to do is to cross Deveny. You're a damned fool, Strom, to go to takin' a shine to Barbara Morgan, when Deveny wants her. He's been waitin' for her, an' meanin' to have her, all along. He's only been waitin' until ol' Morgan cashed 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.