“Russ, you suggest I leave here—­leave my father?” she asked.

“I advise it.  You struck a—­a rather troublesome time.  Later you might return if—­”

“Never.  I came to stay, and I’ll stay,” she declared, and there her temper spoke.

“Miss Sampson,” I began again, after taking a long, deep breath, “I ought to tell you one thing more about Steele.”

“Well, go on.”

“Doesn’t he strike you now as being the farthest removed from a ranting, brutal Ranger?”

“I confess he was at least a gentleman.”

“Rangers don’t allow anything to interfere with the discharge of their duty.  He was courteous after you defamed him.  He respected your wish.  He did not break up the dance.

“This may not strike you particularly.  But let me explain that Steele was chasing an outlaw who had shot him.  Under ordinary circumstances he would have searched your house.  He would have been like a lion.  He would have torn the place down around our ears to get that rustler.

“But his action was so different from what I had expected, it amazed me.  Just now, when I was with him, I learned, I guessed, what stayed his hand.  I believe you ought to know.”

“Know what?” she asked.  How starry and magnetic her eyes!  A woman’s divining intuition made them wonderful with swift-varying emotion.

They drew me on to the fatal plunge.  What was I doing to her—­to Vaughn?  Something bound my throat, making speech difficult.

“He’s fallen in love with you,” I hurried on in a husky voice.  “Love at first sight!  Terrible!  Hopeless!  I saw it—­felt it.  I can’t explain how I know, but I do know.

“That’s what stayed his hand here.  And that’s why I’m on his side.  He’s alone.  He has a terrible task here without any handicaps.  Every man is against him.  If he fails, you might be the force that weakened him.  So you ought to be kinder in your thought of him.  Wait before you judge him further.

“If he isn’t killed, time will prove him noble instead of vile.  If he is killed, which is more than likely, you’ll feel the happier for a generous doubt in favor of the man who loved you.”

Like one stricken blind, she stood an instant; then, with her hands at her breast, she walked straight across the patio into the dark, open door of her room.

Chapter 5

CLEANING OUT LINROCK

Not much sleep visited me that night.  In the morning, the young ladies not stirring and no prospects of duty for me, I rode down to town.

Sight of the wide street, lined by its hitching posts and saddled horses, the square buildings with their ugly signs, unfinished yet old, the lounging, dust-gray men at every corner—­these awoke in me a significance that had gone into oblivion overnight.

That last talk with Miss Sampson had unnerved me, wrought strangely upon me.  And afterward, waking and dozing, I had dreamed, lived in a warm, golden place where there were music and flowers and Sally’s spritelike form leading me on after two tall, beautiful lovers, Diane and Vaughn, walking hand in hand.