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"I wish you success. But, Mr. Steele, aren't you exaggerating Linrock's wickedness?" "No," he answered forcibly. "Indeed! And papa refused to see you presumably refused to cooperate with you?" she asked thoughtfully. "I take it that way." "Mr. Steele, pray tell me what is the matter with Linrock and just what the work is you're called upon to do?" she asked seriously.
I had taken six weeks to strike fire from a Texan whom I instinctively felt had been prey to the power that shadowed Linrock. There was no one in the room except us, no one passing, nor near. Reaching into the inside pocket of my buckskin vest, I turned the lining out. A star-shaped, bright, silver object flashed as I shoved it, pocket and all, under Jim's hard eyes.
On the night of the fifth day after Steele's departure, I went, as was my habit, to the rendezvous we maintained at the pile of rocks out in the open. The night was clear, bright starlight, without any moon, and for this latter fact safer to be abroad. Often from my covert I had seen dark figures skulking in and out of Linrock.
And his somber face, with the big gray eyes, like open furnaces, expressed a passion equal to his strength. Perhaps only then did wild and lawless Linrock grasp the real significance of this Ranger. Steele threw the ax at Martin's feet. "Martin, don't reopen here," he said curtly. "Don't start another place in Linrock. If you do jail at Austin for years."
There was some card playing going on at this moment. I stayed in there for a while, and knew that strangers were too common in Linrock to be conspicuous. But I saw no man whom I could have taken for Steele. Then I went out. It had often been a boast of mine that I could not spend an hour in a strange town, or walk a block along a dark street, without having something happen out of the ordinary.
Steele did not show himself in town again that day. Here his cunning was manifest. By four o'clock that afternoon Blome was drunk and he and his rustlers went roaring up and down the street. There was some shooting, but I did not see or hear that any one got hurt. The lawless element, both native to Linrock and the visitors, followed in Blome's tracks from saloon to saloon.
Accordingly, I told her in unforgettable words, with my own regard for her and love for Sally filling my voice with emotion, how I could see that Steele loved her, how madly he was destined to love her, how terribly hard that was going to make his work in Linrock. There was a stillness about her then, a light on her face, which brought to my mind thought of Sally when I had asked her to marry me.
Moreover, it was an open secret that he had been a rustler, and the men with whom he associated had not yet, to most of Linrock, become known as such. One night Vey had been badly beaten in some back room of a saloon and carried out into a vacant lot and left there. He lay there all that night and all the next day. Probably he would have died there had not Steele happened along.
It was then that the thing for which Steele stood, the Ranger Service to help, to save, to defend, to punish, with such somber menace of death as seemed embodied in his cold attitude toward resistance took hold of Linrock and sunk deep into both black and honest hearts. It was what was behind Steele that seemed to make him more than an officer a man.
"The court has to say this: West of the Pecos we'll not aid or abet or accept any Ranger Service. Steele, we don't want you out here. Linrock doesn't need you." "That's a lie, Sampson," retorted Steele. "I've a pocket full of letters from Linrock citizens, all begging for Ranger Service." Sampson turned white. The veins corded at his temples. He appeared about to burst into rage.
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