“It's only natural you should fight for your father,” I went on. “Perhaps you don't understand. He has ruled here for long. He's been—well, let's say, easy with the evil-doers. But times are changing. He opposed the Ranger idea, which is also natural, I suppose. Still, he's wrong about Steele, terribly wrong, and it means trouble.”
“Oh, I don't know what to believe!”
“It might be well for you to think things out for yourself.”
“Russ, I feel as though I couldn't. I can't make head or tail of life out here. My father seems so strange. Though, of course, I've only seen him twice a year since I was a little girl. He has two sides to him. When I come upon that strange side, the one I never knew, he's like a man I never saw.
“I want to be a good and loving daughter. I want to help him fight his battles. But he doesn't—he doesn't
“True, you're right,” I replied, my heart aching for her. “It's all mystery—and trouble for you, too. Perhaps you'd do well to go home.”
“Russ, you suggest I leave here—leave my father?” she asked.
“I advise it. You struck a—a rather troublesome time. Later you might return if—”
“Never. I came to stay, and I'll stay,” she declared, and there her temper spoke.
“Miss Sampson,” I began again, after taking a long, deep breath, “I ought to tell you one thing more about Steele.”
“Well, go on.”
“Doesn't he strike you now as being the farthest removed from a ranting, brutal Ranger?”
“I confess he was at least a gentleman.”
“Rangers don't allow anything to interfere with the discharge of their duty. He was courteous after you defamed him. He respected your wish. He did not break up the dance.
“This may not strike you particularly. But let me explain that Steele was chasing an outlaw who had shot him. Under ordinary circumstances he would have searched your house. He would have been like a lion. He would have torn the place down around our ears to get that rustler.
“But his action was so different from what I had expected, it amazed me. Just now, when I was with him, I learned, I guessed, what stayed his hand. I believe you ought to know.”
“Know what?” she asked. How starry and magnetic her eyes! A woman's divining intuition made them wonderful with swift-varying emotion.
They drew me on to the fatal plunge. What was I doing to her—to Vaughn? Something bound my throat, making speech difficult.
“He's fallen in love with you,” I hurried on in a husky voice. “Love at first sight! Terrible! Hopeless! I saw it— felt it. I can't explain how I know, but I do know.
“That's what stayed his hand here. And that's why I'm on his side. He's alone. He has a terrible task here without any handicaps. Every man is against him. If he fails, you might be the force that weakened him. So you ought to be kinder in your thought of him. Wait before you judge him further.
“If he isn't killed, time will prove him noble instead of vile. If he is killed, which is more than likely, you'll feel the happier for a generous doubt in favor of the man who loved you.”
Like one stricken blind, she stood an instant; then, with her hands at her breast, she walked straight across the patio into the dark, open door of her room.
Chapter 5. CLEANING OUT LINROCK
Not much sleep visited me that night. In the morning, the young ladies not stirring and no prospects of duty for me, I rode down to town.
Sight of the wide street, lined by its hitching posts and saddled horses, the square buildings with their ugly signs, unfinished yet old, the lounging, dust-gray men at every corner—these awoke in me a significance that had gone into oblivion overnight.
That last talk with Miss Sampson had unnerved me, wrought strangely upon me. And afterward, waking and dozing, I had dreamed, lived in a warm, golden place where there were music and flowers and Sally's spritelike form leading me on after two tall, beautiful lovers, Diane and Vaughn, walking hand in hand.
Fine employment of mind for a Ranger whose single glance down a quiet street pictured it with darkgarbed men in grim action, guns spouting red, horses plunging!
In front of Hoden's restaurant I dismounted and threw my bridle. Jim was unmistakably glad to see me.
“Where've you been? Morton was in an' powerful set on seein' you. I steered him from goin' up to Sampson's. What kind of a game was you givin' Frank?”
“Jim, I just wanted to see if he was a safe rancher to make a stock deal for me.”
“He says you told him he didn't have no yellow streak an' that he was a rustler. Frank can't git over them two hunches. When he sees you he's goin' to swear he's no rustler, but he
This little, broken-down Texan had eyes like flint striking fire.
“Unless?” I queried sharply.
Jim breathed a deep breath and looked around the room before his gaze fixed again on mine.
“Wal,” he replied, speaking low, “Me and Frank allows you've picked the right men. It was me that sent them
