“But you have your suspicions?”

“We have.”

“You can keep your suspicions to yourself.  But you can give me your idea about this crowd that hangs round the saloons, the regulars.”

“Jest a bad lot,” replied Hoden, with the quick assurance of knowledge.  “Most of them have been here years.  Others have drifted in.  Some of them work odd times.  They rustle a few steer, steal, rob, anythin’ for a little money to drink an’ gamble.  Jest a bad lot!

“But the strangers as are always comin’ an’ goin’—­strangers that never git acquainted—­some of them are likely to be the rustlers.  Bill an’ Bo Snecker are in town now.  Bill’s a known cattle-thief.  Bo’s no good, the makin’ of a gun-fighter.  He heads thet way.

“They might be rustlers.  But the boy, he’s hardly careful enough for this gang.  Then there’s Jack Blome.  He comes to town often.  He lives up in the hills.  He always has three or four strangers with him.  Blome’s the fancy gun fighter.  He shot a gambler here last fall.  Then he was in a fight in Sanderson lately.  Got two cowboys then.

“Blome’s killed a dozen Pecos men.  He’s a rustler, too, but I reckon he’s not the brains of thet secret outfit, if he’s in it at all.”

Steele appeared pleased with Hoden’s idea.  Probably it coincided with the one he had arrived at himself.

“Now, I’m puzzled over this,” said Steele.  “Why do men, apparently honest men, seem to be so close-mouthed here?  Is that a fact or only my impression?”

“It’s sure a fact,” replied Hoden darkly.  “Men have lost cattle an’ property in Linrock—­lost them honestly or otherwise, as hasn’t been proved.  An’ in some cases when they talked—­hinted a little—­they was found dead.  Apparently held up an’ robbed.  But dead.  Dead men don’t talk.  Thet’s why we’re close-mouthed.”

Steele’s face wore a dark, somber sternness.

Rustling cattle was not intolerable.  Western Texas had gone on prospering, growing in spite of the horde of rustlers ranging its vast stretches; but this cold, secret, murderous hold on a little struggling community was something too strange, too terrible for men to stand long.

It had waited for a leader like Steele, and now it could not last.  Hoden’s revived spirit showed that.

The ranger was about to speak again when the clatter of hoofs interrupted him.  Horses halted out in front.

A motion of Steele’s hand caused me to dive through a curtained door back of Hoden’s counter.  I turned to peep out and was in time to see George Wright enter with the red-headed cowboy called Brick.

That was the first time I had ever seen Wright come into Hoden’s.  He called for tobacco.

If his visit surprised Jim he did not show any evidence.  But Wright showed astonishment as he saw the Ranger, and then a dark glint flitted from the eyes that shifted from Steele to Hoden and back again.