There was something in his manner that comforted her--a calm confidence, a slow ease of movement as he fingered his cigarette that indicated perfect tranquility--an atmosphere of peace that could not have surrounded him had he meditated any evil whatever. She knew, now, that she had misjudged him. For he had made no attempt to take advantage of her loneliness and helplessness. And whatever his reputation--whatever the crimes he had committed against the laws--he had been a gentleman in his attitude toward her. That feature of his conduct dominated her thoughts as she stretched out on the bed; it was her last coherent thought as she went to sleep. CHAPTER XIII HARLAN TAKES CHARGE Barbara could not have told why she had not acted upon her determination to ride westward to the Star ranch to acquaint John Haydon with the predicament into which the events of the past few hours had plunged her. She could not have explained why she permitted the first day--after Harlan's coming--to pass without going to see Haydon, any more than she could have explained why she permitted many other days to pass in the same manner. She was almost convinced, though, that it was because of the manner in which Harlan took charge of the ranch--the capable and business-like way he had of treating the men. For the outfit came in late in the afternoon following the night which had marked the death of Lawson--the straw-boss explaining that he had received explicit orders from Lawson to "work" a grass level several miles down the river. One other reason for Barbara's failure to ride to the Star--a reason that she did not permit to dwell prominently in her thoughts--was resentment. She had permitted the first day to pass without going to see Haydon. But when it had gone and another day dawned without Haydon coming to see _her_, she felt that he was deliberately absenting himself. For certainly he must have heard what had happened, and if he thought as much of her as he had led her to believe he would have come to her instantly. Had Haydon seen the defiant gleam of her eyes when she gazed westward--in the direction of the Star--he might have realized that each day he stayed away from the Rancho Seco would make it that much more difficult for him to explain. Barbara stayed indoors much of the time during the first days of Harlan's control of the ranch, but from the windows she saw him--noted that the men obeyed him promptly and without question. A sense of loss, of emptiness, still afflicted the girl, and yet through it all there ran a thrill of satisfaction, of assurance that the steady-eyed man who had saved her from Deveny, and who had treated her like a courtier of old on the night she had killed Lawson, seemed to have her welfare in mind, seemed--despite the reputation the people of the country had given him--to have constituted himself her guardian, without expectation of reward of the kind she had feared he sought.