Steele’s eyes, deep and gleaming in the moonlight, searched my face.

“Son, sure you’re not in love with her—­you’ll not fall in love with her?”

“No.  I am positive.  Why?”

“Because in either case I’d likely have need of a new man in your place,” he said.

“Steele, you know something about Sampson—­something more!” I exclaimed swiftly.

“No more than you.  When I meet him face to face I may know more.  Russ, when a fellow has been years at this game he has a sixth sense.  Mine seldom fails me.  I never yet faced the criminal who didn’t somehow betray fear—­not so much fear of me, but fear of himself—­his life, his deeds.  That’s conscience, or if not, just realization of fate.”

Had that been the thing I imagined I had seen in Sampson’s face?

“I’m sorry Diane Sampson came out here,” I said impulsively.

Steele did not say he shared that feeling.  He was looking out upon the moon-blanched level.

Some subtle thing in his face made me divine that he was thinking of the beautiful girl to whom he might bring disgrace and unhappiness.

Chapter 2

A KISS AND AN ARREST

A month had passed, a swift-flying time full of new life.  Wonderful it was for me to think I was still in Diane Sampson’s employ.

It was the early morning hour of a day in May.  The sun had not yet grown hot.  Dew like diamond drops sparkled on the leaves and grass.  The gentle breeze was clear, sweet, with the song of larks upon it.

And the range, a sea of gray-green growing greener, swept away westward in rolling ridges and hollows, like waves to meet the dark, low hills that notched the horizon line of blue.

I was sitting on the top bar of the corral fence and before me stood three saddled horses that would have gladdened any eye.  I was waiting to take the young ladies on their usual morning ride.

Once upon a time, in what seemed the distant past to this eventful month, I had flattered myself there had been occasions for thought, but scornfully I soliloquized that in those days I had no cue for thought such as I had now.

This was one of the moments when my real self seemed to stand off and skeptically regard the fictitious cowboy.

This gentleman of the range wore a huge sombrero with an ornamented silver band, a silken scarf of red, a black velvet shirt, much affected by the Indians, an embroidered buckskin vest, corduroys, and fringed chaps with silver buttons, a big blue gun swinging low, high heeled boots, and long spurs with silver rowels.

A flash cowboy!  Steele vowed I was a born actor.

But I never divulged the fact that had it not been for my infatuation for Sally, I never could have carried on that part, not to save the Ranger service, or the whole State of Texas.

The hardest part had not been the establishing of a reputation.  The scorn of cowboys, the ridicule of gamblers, the badinage of the young bucks of the settlement—­these I had soon made dangerous procedures for any one.  I was quick with tongue and fist and gun.