Deveny's hands were the last to go up. There was a coldly malignant glare in his eyes as under Harlan's unwavering gaze he finally raised his hands and held them, palms outward, as for inspection. Rogers had complied instantly. There was a smile on his face, faint and suggestive of grim amusement, for he had been mentally tortured over the contemplation of Barbara's predicament, and had been unable to think of any plan by which he might assist her. Meeder Lawson's face was sullen and full of impotent rage, and he watched Deveny with a gaze of bitter accusation when he saw that the big man intended to obey Harlan's order. Barbara's pursuer, having felt Deveny's angry gaze upon him, and being uncomfortably conscious that Harlan had not forgotten him, was red of face and self-conscious. He started, and the red in his face deepened, when Harlan, in the silence which followed the concerted raising of hands, spoke sharply to him: "What was you tryin' to corral that girl for? Talk fast or I'll bust you wide open!" The man grinned foolishly, shooting a furtive glance at Deveny. "Why," he said, noting Deveny's scowl, "I reckon it was because I'd took a shine to her. I was tryin' to cotton up to her on the landin' about the Eatin'-House, an' she----" "You lie!" This was Barbara. Pale, her eyes flashing with indignation, she stepped down into the street, standing near Harlan. "That man," Barbara went on, pointing to the red-faced pursuer, "told me early this morning that Luke Deveny had told him to watch me, that I was not to leave my room until Deveny came for me. I was a prisoner. He didn't try to make love to me. I should have killed him." Speech had broken the tension under which Barbara had been laboring; the flow of words through her lips stimulated her thoughts and sent them skittering back to the salient incidents of her enforced confinement; they brought into her consciousness a recollection of the conversation she had heard between Meeder Lawson and Strom Rogers, regarding her father. She forgot Harlan, Deveny, and the others, and ran to Sheriff Gage. Gage, a tall, slender man of forty, was pale and uncomfortable as he looked down at the girl's white, upturned face. He shrank from the frenzied appeal of her eyes, and he endured the pain of her tightly gripping fingers on the flesh of his arms without flinching. "Did--is father _dead_!" She waited, frantically shaking Gage. And Gage did not answer until his gaze had roamed the crowd. Then he said slowly and reluctantly: "I reckon he's dead. Deveny was tellin' me--he was chargin' this man, Harlan, with killin' your father."