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Updated: May 16, 2025
I lingered downtown as much to enjoy the sensation as to gain the different points of view. No doubt about the sensation! In one hour every male resident of Linrock and almost every female had viewed the wreck of Martin's place. A fire could not have created half the excitement. And in that excitement both men and women gave vent to speech they might not have voiced at a calmer moment.
"Colonel Sampson has a big outfit, eh?" "Reckon he has," replied Dick. "Don' know how many cowboys. They're always comin' an' goin'. I ain't acquainted with half of them." "Much movement of stock these days?" "Stock's always movin'," he replied with a queer look. "Rustlers?" But he did not follow up that look with the affirmative I expected. "Lively place, I hear Linrock is?"
"Steele, old man, you'll ruin Diane Sampson, because, as arrest looks improbable to me, you'll have to kill her father." "My God! Why, why? Say it!" "Because Sampson is the leader of the Linrock gang of rustlers." That night before we parted we had gone rather deeply into the plan of action for the immediate future.
The next block, on both sides of the street, was a solid row of saloons, resorts, hotels. Saddled horses stood hitched all along the sidewalk in two long lines, with a buckboard and team here and there breaking the continuity. This block was busy and noisy. From all outside appearances, Linrock was no different from other frontier towns, and my expectations were scarcely realized.
Part of Linrock awakened and another part, much smaller, became quieter, more secluded. Strangers upon whom we could get no line mysteriously came and went. The drinking, gambling, fighting in the resorts seemed to gather renewed life. Abundance of money floated in circulation.
"Russ, here's my own talk to you," he said, hard and dark, leaning toward me. "Don't go to Linrock." "Say, Mr. Wright," I blustered for all the world like a young and frightened cowboy, "If you threaten me I'll have you put in jail!" Both men seemed to have received a slight shock. Wright hardly knew what to make of my boyish speech. "Are you going to Linrock?" he asked thickly.
But over here at the little village Sampson they call it I was held up. Couldn't help it, because there wasn't any road around." "Held up?" I queried. "That's it, the buckboard was held up. I got into the brush in time to save my bacon. They began to shoot too soon." "Did you get any of them?" "Didn't stay to see," he chuckled. "Had to hoof it to Linrock, and it's a good long walk."
And here in Pecos they're not any different from those in other places. I say if you show anything like a lack of sand it's all bluff. "By nature you've got nerve. There are a lot of men round Linrock who're afraid of their shadows, afraid to be out after dark, afraid to open their mouths. But you're not one.
It was not only imperative that we learn through them clues by which we might eventually fix guilt on the rustler gang, but also just as imperative that we develop a band of deputies to help us when the fight began. Steele, now that he was back in Linrock, would have the center of the stage, with all eyes upon him.
In the morning, after breakfasting early, I took a turn up and down the main street of Sanderson, made observations and got information likely to serve me at some future day, and then I returned to the hotel ready for what might happen. The stage-coach was there and already full of passengers. This stage did not go to Linrock, but I had found that another one left for that point three days a week.
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