“I didn’t ask him if I had a free hand with my gun.  I intended to have that.  We left camp and hurried toward town.  It was near noon when we separated.

“I came down the road, apparently from Sampson’s ranch.  There was a crowd around the ruins of Steele’s house.  It was one heap of crumbled ’dobe bricks and burned logs, still hot and smoking.  No attempt had been made to dig into the ruins.  The curious crowd was certain that Steele lay buried under all that stuff.  One feature of that night assault made me ponder.  Daylight discovered the bodies of three dead men, rustlers, who had been killed, the report went out, by random shots.  Other participants in the affair had been wounded.  I believed Morton and his men, under cover of the darkness and in the melee, had sent in some shots not calculated upon the program.

“From there I hurried to town.  Just as I had expected, Morton and Zimmer were lounging in front of the Hope So.  They had company, disreputable and otherwise.  As yet Morton’s crowd had not come under suspicion.  He was wild for news of Steele, and when I gave it, and outlined the plan, he became as cool and dark and grim as any man of my kind could have wished.  He sent Zimmer to get the others of their clique.  Then he acquainted me with a few facts, although he was noncommittal in regard to my suspicion as to the strange killing of the three rustlers.

“Blome, Bo Snecker, Hilliard, and Pickens, the ringleaders, had painted the town in celebration of Steele’s death.  They all got gloriously drunk except old man Snecker.  He had cold feet, they said.  They were too happy to do any more shooting or mind what the old rustler cautioned.  It was two o’clock before they went to bed.

“This morning, after eleven, one by one they appeared with their followers.  The excitement had died down.  Ranger Steele was out of the way and Linrock was once more wide open, free and easy.  Blome alone seemed sullen and spiritless, unresponsive to his comrades and their admirers.  And now, at the time of my arrival, the whole gang, with the exception of old Snecker, were assembled in the Hope So.

“’Zimmer will be clever enough to drift his outfit along one or two at a time?’ I asked Morton, and he reassured me.  Then we went into the saloon.

“There were perhaps sixty or seventy men in the place, more than half of whom were in open accord with Blome’s gang.  Of the rest there were many of doubtful repute, and a few that might have been neutral, yet all the time were secretly burning to help any cause against these rustlers.  At all events, I gathered that impression from the shadowed faces, the tense bodies, the too-evident indication of anything but careless presence there.  The windows were open.  The light was clear.  Few men smoked, but all had a drink before them.  There was the ordinary subdued hum of conversation.  I surveyed the scene, picked out my position so as to be close to Steele when he entered, and sauntered round to it.  Morton aimlessly leaned against a post.