“Well, after all, that’s neither here nor there,” went on Wright, unconsciously cowed by the other.  “The thing is, do I get the girl?”

“Not by any means, except her consent.”

“You’ll not make her marry me?”

“No.  No,” replied Sampson, his voice still cold, low-pitched.

“All right.  Then I’ll make her.”

Evidently Sampson understood the man before him so well that he wasted no more words.  I knew what Wright never dreamed of, and that was that Sampson had a gun somewhere within reach and meant to use it.

Then heavy footsteps sounded outside, tramping upon the porch.  I might have been mistaken, but I believed those footsteps saved Wright’s life.

“There they are,” said Wright, and he opened the door.  Five masked men entered.  About two of them I could not recognize anything familiar.  I thought one had old Snecker’s burly shoulders and another Bo Snecker’s stripling shape.  I did recognize Blome in spite of his mask, because his fair skin and hair, his garb and air of distinction made plain his identity.  They all wore coats, hiding any weapons.  The big man with burly shoulders shook hands with Sampson and the others stood back.

The atmosphere of that room had changed.  Wright might have been a nonentity for all he counted.  Sampson was another man—­a stranger to me.  If he had entertained a hope of freeing himself from his band, of getting away to a safer country, he abandoned it at the very sight of these men.  There was power here and he was bound.

The big man spoke in low, hoarse whispers, and at this all the others gathered round him, close to the table.  There were evidently some signs of membership not plain to me.  Then all the heads were bent over the table.  Low voices spoke, queried, answered, argued.  By straining my ears I caught a word here and there.  They were planning.  I did not attempt to get at the meaning of the few words and phrases I distinguished, but held them in mind so to piece all together afterward.  Before the plotters finished conferring I had an involuntary flashed knowledge of much and my whirling, excited mind made reception difficult.

When these rustlers finished whispering I was in a cold sweat.  Steele was to be killed as soon as possible by Blome, or by the gang going to Steele’s house at night.  Morton had been seen with the Ranger.  He was to meet the same fate as Hoden, dealt by Bo Snecker, who evidently worked in the dark like a ferret.  Any other person known to be communing with Steele, or interested in him, or suspected of either, was to be silenced.  Then the town was to suffer a short deadly spell of violence, directed anywhere, for the purpose of intimidating those people who had begun to be restless under the influence of the Ranger.  After that, big herds of stock were to be rustled off the ranches to the north and driven to El Paso.