'Drag' Harlan Read online

  CHAPTER III

  A GIRL WAITS

  Lamo, sprawling on a sun-baked plain perhaps a mile from the edge of thedesert, was one of those towns which owed its existence to the instinctof men to foregather. It also was indebted for its existence to the greedof a certain swarthy-faced saloon-keeper named Joel Ladron, who,anticipating the edict of a certain town marshal of another town thatshall not be mentioned, had piled his effects into a prairieschooner--building and goods--and had taken the south trail--which wouldlead him wherever he wanted to stop.

  It had chanced that he had stopped at the present site of Lamo. Ladronsaw a trail winding over the desert, vanishing into the eastern distance;and he knew that where trails led there were sure to be thirsty men whowould be eager to look upon his wares.

  Ladron's history is not interesting. As time fled to the monotonous clinkof coins over the bar he set up in the frame shack that faced the deserttrail, Ladron's importance in Lamo was divided by six.

  The other dispensers had not come together; they had appeared as theneeds of the population seemed to demand--and all had flourished.

  Lamo's other buildings had appeared without ostentation. There weretwenty of them. A dozen of the twenty, for one reason or another, needreceive no further mention. Of the remaining few, one was occupied bySheriff Gage; two others by stores; one answered as an office andstorage-room for the stage company; and still another was distinguishedby a crude sign which ran across its weather-beaten front, bearing thelegend: "Lamo Eating-House." The others were private residences.

  Lamo's buildings made some pretense of aping the architecture ofbuildings in other towns. The eating-house was a two-story structure,with an outside stairway leading to its upper floor. It had a flat roofand an adobe chimney. Its second floor had been subdivided intolodging-rooms. Its windows were small, grimy.

  Not one of Lamo's buildings knew paint. The structures, garish husks ofsqualor, befouled the calm, pure atmosphere, and mocked the serenemajesty of nature.

  For, beginning at the edge of "town," a contrast to the desert waspresented by nature. It was a mere step, figuratively, from that landfrom which came the whisper of death, to a wild, virgin section where thehills, the green-brown ridges, the wide sweeps of plain, and the coolshadows of timber clumps breathed of the promise, the existence, of life.

  To Barbara Morgan, seated at one of the east windows of the LamoEating-House--in the second story, where she could look far out into thedesert--the contrast between the vivid color westward and the dun anddead flatness eastward, was startling. For she knew her father hadentered the desert on his way to Pardo, on some business he had notmentioned; and the whispered threat that the desert carried was borne toher ears as she watched.

  On a morning, two days before, Morgan had left the Rancho Seco for Pardo.The girl had watched him go with a feeling--almost a conviction--that sheshould have kept him at home. She had not mentioned to him that she had apresentiment of evil, for she assured herself that she should haveoutgrown those puerile impulses of the senses. And yet, having watchedhim depart, she passed a sleepless night, and early the next morning hadsaddled her horse to ride to Lamo, there to await her father's return.

  It was late in the afternoon when she reached Lamo; and she had gonedirectly to the Eating-House, where she had passed another restlessnight--spending most of her time sitting at the window, where she was atthis minute.

  Of course it was a three-day trip to Pardo, and she had no reason toexpect Morgan to return until the end of the sixth day, at the veryearliest. And yet some force sent her to the window at frequentintervals, where she would sit, as now, her chin resting in her hands,her eyes searching the vast waste land with an anxious light.

  An attache of the Eating-House had put her horse away--where, she didnot know; and her meals had been brought to her by a middle-agedslattern, whose probing, suspicion-laden glances had been full of mockingsignificance. She had heard the woman speak of her to other femaleemployees of the place--and once she had overheard the woman refer to heras "that stuck-up Morgan heifer."

  Their coarse laughter and coarser language had disgusted the girl, andshe had avoided them all as much as possible.

  It was the first time she had remained overnight in the Eating-Houselodging-rooms, though she had seen the building many times during hervisits to Lamo. It wasn't what she was accustomed to at the Rancho Seco,nor was it all that a lodging-house might be--but it provided shelter forher while she waited.

  The girl felt--as she looked--decidedly out of place in the shabby room.Many times during her vigil she had shuddered when looking at the dirty,threadbare ingrain carpet on the floor of the room; oftener, when hergaze went to the one picture that adorned the unpapered walls, she shrankback, her soul filled with repugnance.

  Art, as here represented, was a cheap lithograph in vivid colors, of anIndian--an Apache, judging from his trappings--scalping a white man. Inthe foreground, beside the man, was a woman, her hair disheveled, wildappeal in her eyes, gazing at the Indian, who was grinning at her.

  A cheap bureau, unadorned, with a broken mirror swinging in a ricketyframe; one chair, and the bed in which she had tried to sleep, were theonly articles of furniture in the room.

  The girl, arrayed in a neat riding habit; her hair arranged in gracefulcoils; her slender, lissom figure denoting youth and vigor; the clear,smooth skin of her face--slightly tanned--indicating health--was asforeign to her present surroundings as life is foreign to the desert. Inher direct eyes was the glow of sturdy honesty that had instantlyantagonized the slattern who had attended her.

  That glow was not so pronounced now--it was dulled by anxiety as shelooked out of the window, watching the desert light fade as twilightcame, blotting the hot sand from her sight, erasing the straight,unfeatured horizon, and creating a black void which pulsed with mystery.

  She sighed when at last she could no longer penetrate the wall ofdarkness; got up and moved her chair to one of the front windows, fromwhere she could look down into Lamo's one street.

  Lamo's lights began to flicker; from the town's buildings sounds began toissue--multisonous, carrying the message of ribaldry unrestrained.

  From a point not very far away came the hideous screeching of a fiddle,accompanied by a discordant, monotonous wail, as of someone singing asong unfamiliar to him; from across the street floated a medley of othernoises, above which could be heard the jangling music of a heavilydrummed piano. There came to her ears coarse oaths and the maudlinlaughter of women.

  She had heard it all the night before; but tonight it seemed thatsomething had been added to the volume of it. And as on the night before,she sat at the window, watching--for it was all new and strange toher--even if unattractive. But at last the horror of it again seized her,and she closed the window, determined to endure the increased heat.

  Half an hour later, lying, fully dressed, on the bed, she heard a voicein the hallway beyond the closed door of her room--a man's voice.

  "It isn't what one might call elegant," said the voice; "but if it's thebest you've got--why, of course, it will have to do."

  The girl sat straight up in bed, breathless, her face paling.

  "It's Luke Deveny!" she gasped in a suffocating whisper.

  The man's voice was answered by a woman's--low, mirthful. The girl in theroom could not distinguish the words. But the man spoke again--in awhisper which carried through the thin board partition to the girl:

  "Barbara Morgan is in there--eh?" he said and the girl could almost seehim nodding toward her room.

  This time the girl heard the woman's voice--and her words:

  "Yes she's there, the stuck-up hussy!"

  The voice was that of the slattern.

  The man laughed jeeringly.

  "Jealous, eh?" he said. "Well, she _is_ a mighty good-looking girl, for afact!"

  That was all. The girl heard Deveny step into a room--the room adjoininghers; she could hear his heavy boots striking the floor as he removedthem.
r />   For a long time the girl rested on her elbow, listening; but no furthersounds came from the room into which Deveny had gone. At last, trembling,her face white with fear, the girl got up and stole noiselessly to thedoor.

  A light bolt was the door's only fastening; and the girl stood long, witha hand upon it, considering its frailty. How easy it would be for a bigman like Deveny to force the door. One shove of his giant shoulder andthe bolt would give.

  Stealthily, noiselessly, straining with every ounce of her strength, shemanaged to lift the cheap bureau and carry it to the door, placing itagainst the latter, barricading it. Not satisfied, she dragged the bedover against the bureau.

  Even when that had been accomplished, she was not satisfied and duringthe greater part of the night she sat on the edge of the bed, listeningand watching the door. For in the days that had fled Deveny had saidcertain things to her that she had not repeated to her father; he hadlooked at her with a significance that no man could have understood; andthere had been a gleam in his eyes at these times which had convinced herthat behind the bland smoothness of him--back of the suave politeness ofhis manner--was a primitive animalism. His suave politeness was a velvetveil of character behind which he masked the slavering fangs of the beasthe really was.