“I’ve stood a good deal from Wright, and guess I can stand more.”

“All right, Russ,” he continued, as if relieved.  “Chuck the drink and cards for a while and keep an eye on the girls.  When my affairs straighten out maybe I’ll make you a proposition.”

Sampson left me material for thought.  Perhaps it was not only the presence of a Ranger in town that gave him concern, nor the wilfulness of his daughter.  There must be internal strife in the rustler gang with which we had associated him.

Perhaps a menace of publicity, rather than risk, was the cause of the wearing strain on him.  I began to get a closer insight into Sampson, and in the absence of any conclusive evidence of his personal baseness I felt pity for him.

In the beginning he had opposed me just because I did not happen to be a cowboy he had selected.  This latest interview with me, amounting in some instances to confidence, proved absolutely that he had not the slightest suspicion that I was otherwise than the cowboy I pretended to be.

Another interesting deduction was that he appeared to be out of patience with Wright.  In fact, I imagined I sensed something of fear and distrust in this spoken attitude toward his relative.  Not improbably here was the internal strife between Sampson and Wright, and there flashed into my mind, absolutely without reason, an idea that the clash was over Diane Sampson.

I scouted this intuitive idea as absurd; but, just the same, it refused to be dismissed.

As I turned my back on the coarse and exciting life in the saloons and gambling hells, and spent all my time except when sleeping, out in the windy open under blue sky and starry heaven, my spirit had an uplift.

I was glad to be free of that job.  It was bad enough to have to go into these dens to arrest men, let alone living with them, almost being one.

Diane Sampson noted a change in me, attributed it to the absence of the influence of drink, and she was glad.  Sally made no attempt to conceal her happiness; and to my dismay, she utterly failed to keep her promise not to tease or tempt me further.

She was adorable, distracting.

We rode every day and almost all day.  We took our dinner and went clear to the foothills to return as the sun set.  We visited outlying ranches, water-holes, old adobe houses famous in one way or another as scenes of past fights of rustlers and ranchers.

We rode to the little village of Sampson, and half-way to Sanderson, and all over the country.

There was no satisfying Miss Sampson with rides, new places, new faces, new adventures.  And every time we rode out she insisted on first riding through Linrock; and every time we rode home she insisted on going back that way.

We visited all the stores, the blacksmith, the wagon shop, the feed and grain houses—­everywhere that she could find excuse for visiting.  I had to point out to her all the infamous dens in town, and all the lawless and lounging men we met.