“Wait, please,” Miss Sampson replied, looking directly at him.  “Cousin George, I think there’s a mistake—­perhaps a misunderstanding.  Here’s the cowboy I’ve engaged—­Mr. Russ.  He declares you gave him money—­told him I discharged him.”

“Yes, cousin, I did,” he replied, his voice rising a little.  There was a tinge of red in his cheek.  “We—­you don’t need him out at the ranch.  We’ve any numbers of boys.  I just told him that—­let him down easy—­didn’t want to bother you.”

Certain it was that George Wright had made a poor reckoning.  First she showed utter amaze, then distinct disappointment, and then she lifted her head with a kind of haughty grace.  She would have addressed him then, had not Colonel Sampson come up.

“Papa, did you instruct Cousin George to discharge Russ?” she asked.

“I sure didn’t,” declared the colonel, with a laugh.  “George took that upon his own hands.”

“Indeed!  I’d like my cousin to understand that I’m my own mistress.  I’ve been accustomed to attending to my own affairs and shall continue doing so.  Russ, I’m sorry you’ve been treated this way.  Please, in future, take your orders from me.”

“Then I’m to go to Linrock with you?” I asked.

“Assuredly.  Ride with Sally and me to-day, please.”

She turned away with Sally, and they walked toward the first buckboard.

Colonel Sampson found a grim enjoyment in Wright’s discomfiture.

“Diane’s like her mother was, George,” he said.  “You’ve made a bad start with her.”

Here Wright showed manifestation of the Sampson temper, and I took him to be a dangerous man, with unbridled passions.

“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.

I eyed him with an entirely different glance from my other fearful one.

“I should smile,” was my reply, as caustic as the most reckless cowboy’s, and I saw him shake.

Colonel Sampson laid a restraining hand upon Wright.  Then they both regarded me with undisguised interest.  I sauntered away.

“George, your temper’ll do for you some day,” I heard the colonel say.  “You’ll get in bad with the wrong man some time.  Hello, here are Joe and Brick!”

Mention of these fellows engaged my attention once more.

I saw two cowboys, one evidently getting his name from his brick-red hair.  They were the roistering type, hard drinkers, devil-may-care fellows, packing guns and wearing bold fronts—­a kind that the Rangers always called four-flushes.

However, as the Rangers’ standard of nerve was high, there was room left for cowboys like these to be dangerous to ordinary men.