tion
for evil that had made him feared wherever men congregated; and as she
watched him it seemed to her that his face betrayed signs of his
ruthlessness, his recklessness, and his readiness for violence of every
kind.

He might not have killed her father--Rogers and Lawson had acquitted him
of that. But he might be lying about the promise to her father merely for
the purpose of providing an excuse to come to the Rancho Seco. It seemed
to her that if her father had really exacted a promise from him he would
have written to her, or sent her some token to prove the genuineness of
it. There was no visible evidence of Harlan's truthfulness.

"Do you mean to say you are going to stay here--indefinitely?" she
demanded, her voice a little hoarse from the fright that was stealing
over her.

He smiled at her. "You've hit it about right, ma'am."

"I don't want you to stay here!" she declared, angrily.

"I'm stayin', ma'am." His smile faded, and his eyes became
serious--earnest.

"Later on--when things shape themselves up--I'll tell you why I'm
stayin'. But just now----"

She shrank from him, incredulous, a growing fear plain in her eyes. And
before he could finish what he intended to say she had wheeled, and was
running toward the ranchhouse.

He watched until she vanished through an open doorway; he heard the door
slam, and caught the sound of bars being hurriedly dropped into place.
And after that he stood for a time watching the house. No light came from
within, and no other sound.

He frowned slightly, drawing a mental picture of the girl inside,
yielding to the terror that had seized her. Then after a while he walked
down along the corral fence until he came to another building--a
bunkhouse. And for a long time he stood in the doorway of the building,
watching the ranchhouse, afflicted with grim sympathy.

"It ain't so damn' cheerful, at that," he mused. "I reckon she thinks
she's landed into trouble with both feet--with her dad cashin' in like he
did, an' Deveny after her. It sure must be pretty hard to consider all
them things. An' on top of that I mosey along, with a reputation as a
no-good son-of-a-gun, an' scare the wits out of her with my homely mug.
An' I can't tell her why she hadn't ought to be scared. I call that
mighty mean."

CHAPTER X

ON GUARD

The man whose soul held no love of the poetic sat for two or three hours
on the threshold of the bunkhouse door, his gaze on the ranchhouse. He