Steele required only one blow for each article he struck, and he demolished it. He stove in the head of each keg.
When the dark liquor gurgled out, Martin cursed, and the crowd followed suit. That was a loss!
The little cattleman, holding the men covered, backed them out of the room, Martin needing a plain, stern word to put him out entirely. I went out, too, for I did not want to miss any moves on the part of that gang.
Close behind me came the cattleman, the kind of cool, nervy Texan I liked. He had Martin well judged, too, for there was no evidence of any bold resistance.
But there were shouts and loud acclamations; and these, with the crashing blows of Steele's ax, brought a curious and growing addition to the crowd.
Soon sodden thuds from inside the saloon and red dust pouring out the door told that Steele was attacking the walls of Martin's place. Those adobe bricks when old and crumbly were easily demolished.
Steele made short work of the back wall, and then he smashed out half of the front of the building. That seemed to satisfy him.
When he stepped out of the dust he was wet with sweat, dirty, and disheveled, hot with his exertion—a man whose great stature and muscular development expressed a wonderful physical strength and energy. 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.”
Martin, livid and scowling, yet seemingly dazed with what had occurred, slunk away, accompanied by his cronies. Steele took the money I had appropriated, returned to me what I had lost, did likewise with the cattleman, and then, taking out the sum named by Mrs. Price, he divided the balance with the other players who had been in the game.
Then he stalked off through the crowd as if he knew that men who slunk from facing him would not have nerve enough to attack him even from behind.
“Wal, damn me!” ejaculated the little cattleman in mingled admiration and satisfaction. “So thet's that Texas Ranger, Steele, hey? Never seen him before. All Texas, thet Ranger!”
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. The women, at least, were not afraid to talk, and I made mental note of the things they said.
“Did he do it all alone?”
“Thank God a
“Good for Molly Price!”
“Oh, it'll make bad times for Linrock.”
It almost seemed that all the women were glad, and this was in itself a vindication of the Ranger's idea of law.
The men, however—Blandy, proprietor of the Hope So, and others of his ilk, together with the whole brood of idle gaming loungers, and in fact even storekeepers, ranchers, cowboys—all shook their heads sullenly or doubtfully.
Striking indeed now was the absence of any joking. Steele had showed his hand, and, as one gambler said: “It's a hard hand to call.”
The truth was, this Ranger Service was hateful to the free-and-easy Texan who lived by anything except hard and honest work, and it was damnably hateful to the lawless class. Steele's authority, now obvious to all, was unlimited; it could go as far as he had power to carry it.
From present indications that power might be considerable. The work of native sheriffs and constables in western Texas had been a farce, an utter failure. If an honest native of a community undertook to be a sheriff he became immediately a target for rowdy cowboys and other vicious elements.
Many a town south and west of San Antonio owed its peace and prosperity to Rangers, and only to them. They had killed or driven out the criminals. They interpreted the law for themselves, and it was only such an attitude toward law—the stern, uncompromising, implacable extermination of the lawless—that was going to do for all Texas what it had done for part.
Steele was the driving wedge that had begun to split Linrock—split the honest from dominance by the dishonest. To be sure, Steele might be killed at any moment, and that contingency was voiced in the growl of one sullen man who said: “Wot the hell are we up against? Ain't somebody goin' to plug this Ranger?”
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.
I could feel how he began to loom up, the embodiment of a powerful force—the Ranger Service—the fame of which, long known to this lawless Pecos gang, but scouted as a vague and distant thing, now became an actuality, a Ranger in the flesh, whose surprising attributes included both the law and the enforcement of it.
When I reached the ranch the excitement had preceded me. Miss Sampson and Sally, both talking at once, acquainted me with the fact that they had been in a store on the main street a block or more from Martin's place.
