And because the theory had been accepted, Harlan's name became associated with certain crimes which are inseparable from the type of character which the popular imagination had given him. Strangers--criminals--in certain towns in the Territory and out of it must have heard with considerable satisfaction that their depredations had been charged to Harlan. Only once had Harlan been able to refute the charge of rumor. That was when, having passed a night in the company of Dave Hallowell, the marshal of Pardo, word was brought by a stage-driver that "Drag" Harlan had killed a man in Dry Bottom--a town two hundred miles north--and that Harlan had escaped, though a posse had been on his trail. Even when the driver was confronted by Harlan in the flesh he was doubtful, surrendering grudgingly, as though half convinced that Harlan had been able to transport himself over the distance from Dry Bottom to Pardo by some magic not mentioned. So it had gone. But the terrible record of evil deeds attributed 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'.