Steele leaned easily against the counter, and he said good morning pleasantly.  Wright deigned no reply, although he bent a curious and hard scrutiny upon Steele.  In fact, Wright evinced nothing that would lead one to think he had any respect for Steele as a man or as a Ranger.

“Steele, that was the second break of yours last night,” he said finally.  “If you come fooling round the ranch again there’ll be hell!”

It seemed strange that a man who had lived west of the Pecos for ten years could not see in Steele something which forbade that kind of talk.

It certainly was not nerve Wright showed; men of courage were seldom intolerant; and with the matchless nerve that characterized Steele or the great gunmen of the day there went a cool, unobtrusive manner, a speech brief, almost gentle, certainly courteous.  Wright was a hot-headed Louisianian of French extraction; a man evidently who had never been crossed in anything, and who was strong, brutal, passionate, which qualities, in the face of a situation like this, made him simply a fool!

The way Steele looked at Wright was joy to me.  I hated this smooth, dark-skinned Southerner.  But, of course, an ordinary affront like Wright’s only earned silence from Steele.

“I’m thinking you used your Ranger bluff just to get near Diane Sampson,” Wright sneered.  “Mind you, if you come up there again there’ll be hell!”

“You’re damn right there’ll be hell!” retorted Steele, a kind of high ring in his voice.  I saw thick, dark red creep into his face.

Had Wright’s incomprehensible mention of Diane Sampson been an instinct of love—­of jealousy?  Verily, it had pierced into the depths of the Ranger, probably as no other thrust could have.

“Diane Sampson wouldn’t stoop to know a dirty blood-tracker like you,” said Wright hotly.  His was not a deliberate intention to rouse Steele; the man was simply rancorous.  “I’ll call you right, you cheap bluffer!  You four-flush!  You damned interfering conceited Ranger!”

Long before Wright ended his tirade Steele’s face had lost the tinge of color, so foreign to it in moments like this; and the cool shade, the steady eyes like ice on fire, the ruthless lips had warned me, if they had not Wright.

“Wright, I’ll not take offense, because you seem to be championing your beautiful cousin,” replied Steele in slow speech, biting.  “But let me return your compliment.  You’re a fine Southerner!  Why, you’re only a cheap four-flush—­damned bull-headed—­rustler”

Steele hissed the last word.  Then for him—­for me—­for Hoden—­there was the truth in Wright’s working passion-blackened face.

Wright jerked, moved, meant to draw.  But how slow!  Steele lunged forward.  His long arm swept up.

And Wright staggered backward, knocking table and chairs, to fall hard, in a half-sitting posture, against the wall.

“Don’t draw!” warned Steele.