“There have been law-suits in your court—­suits over water rights, cattle deals, property lines.  Strange how in these law-suits, you or Wright or other men close to you were always involved!  Stranger how it seems the law was stretched to favor your interests!”

Steele paused in his cold, ringing speech.  In the silence, both outside and inside the hall, could be heard the deep breathing of agitated men.

I would have liked to search for possible satisfaction on the faces of any present, but I was concerned only with Sampson.  I did not need to fear that any man might draw on Steele.

Never had I seen a crowd so sold, so stiff, so held!  Sampson was indeed a study.  Yet did he betray anything but rage at this interloper?

“Sampson, here’s plain talk for you and Linrock to digest,” went on Steele.  “I don’t accuse you and your court of dishonesty.  I say—­strange!  Law here has been a farce.  The motive behind all this laxity isn’t plain to me—­yet.  But I call your hand!”

Chapter 3

SOUNDING THE TIMBER

When Steele left the hall, pushing Snell before him, making a lane through the crowd, it was not any longer possible to watch everybody.

Yet now he seemed to ignore the men behind him.  Any friend of Snell’s among the vicious element might have pulled a gun.  I wondered if Steele knew how I watched those men at his back—­how fatal it would have been for any of them to make a significant move.

No—­I decided that Steele trusted to the effect his boldness had created.  It was this power to cow ordinary men that explained so many of his feats; just the same it was his keenness to read desperate men, his nerve to confront them, that made him great.

The crowd followed Steele and his captive down the middle of the main street and watched him secure a team and buckboard and drive off on the road to Sanderson.

Only then did that crowd appear to realize what had happened.  Then my long-looked-for opportunity arrived.  In the expression of silent men I found something which I had sought; from the hurried departure of others homeward I gathered import; on the husky, whispering lips of yet others I read words I needed to hear.

The other part of that crowd—­to my surprise, the smaller part—­was the roaring, threatening, complaining one.

Thus I segregated Linrock that was lawless from Linrock that wanted law, but for some reason not yet clear the latter did not dare to voice their choice.

How could Steele and I win them openly to our cause?  If that could be done long before the year was up Linrock would be free of violence and Captain Neal’s Ranger Service saved to the State.

I went from place to place, corner to corner, bar to bar, watching, listening, recording; and not until long after sunset did I go out to the ranch.