“Maybe.  I’m for the elimination method myself.  But Steele doesn’t follow out the gun method.  He will use one only when he’s driven.  It’s hard to make him draw.  You know, after all, these desperate men aren’t afraid of guns or fights.  Yet they are afraid of Steele.  Perhaps it’s his nerve, the way he faces them, the things he says, the fact that he has mysterious allies.”

“Russ, we’re all with him, an’ I’ll gamble that the honest citizens of Linrock will flock to him in another day.  I can see signs of that.  There were twenty or more men on Hoden’s list, but Steele didn’t want so many.”

“We don’t need any more.  Morton, can you give me any idea where Steele is?”

“Not the slightest.”

“All right.  I’ll hunt for him.  If you see him tell him to hole up, and then you come after me.  Tell him I’ve got our men spotted.”

“Russ, if you Ranger fellows ain’t wonders!” exclaimed Morton, with shining eyes.

Steele did not show himself in town again that day.  Here his cunning was manifest.  By four o’clock that afternoon Blome was drunk and he and his rustlers went roaring up and down the street.  There was some shooting, but I did not see or hear that any one got hurt.  The lawless element, both native to Linrock and the visitors, followed in Blome’s tracks from saloon to saloon.  How often had I seen this sort of procession, though not on so large a scale, in many towns of wild Texas!

The two great and dangerous things in Linrock at the hour were whisky and guns.  Under such conditions the rustlers were capable of any mad act of folly.

Morton and his men sent word flying around town that a fight was imminent and all citizens should be prepared to defend their homes against possible violence.  But despite his warning I saw many respectable citizens abroad whose quiet, unobtrusive manner and watchful eyes and hard faces told me that when trouble began they wanted to be there.  Verily Ranger Steele had built his house of service upon a rock.  It did not seem too much to say that the next few days, perhaps hours, would see a great change in the character and a proportionate decrease in number of the inhabitants of this corner of Pecos County.

Morton and I were in the crowd that watched Blome, Snecker, and a dozen other rustlers march down to Steele’s jail.  They had crowbars and they had cans of giant powder, which they had appropriated from a hardware store.  If Steele had a jailer he was not in evidence.  The door was wrenched off and Bo Snecker, evidently not wholly recovered, brought forth to his cheering comrades.  Then some of the rustlers began to urge back the pressing circle, and the word given out acted as a spur to haste.  The jail was to be blown up.

The crowd split and some men ran one way, some another.  Morton and I were among those who hurried over the vacant ground to a little ridge that marked the edge of the open country.  From this vantage point we heard several rustlers yell in warning, then they fled for their lives.