It was sheer enjoyment for me to make my remarks to these men, pregnant with meaning.  Morton showed his pleasure, his interest, but his faith held aloof.

“I’ve got some money.  I had some.  Then the cards have run lucky.  Will you let me in on some kind of deal?  Will you start me up as a stockman, with a little herd all my own?”

“Russ, this’s durn strange, comin’ from Sampson’s cowboy,” he said.

“I’m not in his outfit.  My job’s with Miss Sampson.  She’s fine, but the old man?  Nit!  He’s been after me for weeks.  I won’t last long.  That’s one reason why I want to start up for myself.”

“Hoden sent you to me, did he?  Poor ol’ Jim.  Wal, Russ, to come out flat-footed, you’d be foolish to buy cattle now.  I don’t want to take your money an’ see you lose out.  Better go back across the Pecos where the rustlers ain’t so strong.  I haven’t had more’n twenty-five-hundred head of stock for ten years.  The rustlers let me hang on to a breedin’ herd.  Kind of them, ain’t it?”

“Sort of kind.  All I hear is rustlers.”  I replied with impatience.  “You see, I haven’t ever lived long in a rustler-run county.  Who heads the gang anyway?”

Frank Morton looked at me with a curiously-amused smile.

“I hear lots about Jack Blome and Snecker.  Everybody calls them out and out bad.  Do they head this mysterious gang?”

“Russ, I opine Blome an’ Snecker parade themselves off boss rustlers same as gun throwers.  But thet’s the love such men have for bein’ thought hell.  That’s brains headin’ the rustler gang hereabouts.”

“Maybe Blome and Snecker are blinds.  Savvy what I mean, Morton?  Maybe there’s more in the parade than just the fame of it.”

Morton snapped his big jaw as if to shut in impulsive words.

“Look here, Morton.  I’m not so young in years even if I am young west of the Pecos.  I can figure ahead.  It stands to reason, no matter how damn strong these rustlers are, how hidden their work, however involved with supposedly honest men—­they can’t last.”

“They come with the pioneers an’ they’ll last as long as thar’s a single steer left,” he declared.

“Well, if you take that view of circumstances I just figure you as one of the rustlers!”

Morton looked as if he were about to brain me with the butt of his whip.  His anger flashed by then as unworthy of him, and, something striking him as funny, he boomed out a laugh.

“It’s not so funny,” I went on.  “If you’re going to pretend a yellow streak, what else will I think?”

“Pretend?” he repeated.

“Sure.  You can’t fool me, Morton.  I know men of nerve.  And here in Pecos they’re not any different from those in other places.  I say if you show anything like a lack of sand it’s all bluff.

“By nature you’ve got nerve.  There are a lot of men round Linrock who’re afraid of their shadows, afraid to be out after dark, afraid to open their mouths.  But you’re not one.