particularly. But let me explain that Steele
was chasing an outlaw who had shot him. Under ordinary circumstances he
would have searched your house. He would have been like a lion. He would
have torn the place down around our ears to get that rustler.

"But his action was so different from what I had expected, it amazed me.
Just now, when I was with him, I learned, I guessed, what stayed his
hand. I believe you ought to know."

"Know what?" she asked. How starry and magnetic her eyes! A woman's
divining intuition made them wonderful with swift-varying emotion.

They drew me on to the fatal plunge. What was I doing to her--to Vaughn?
Something bound my throat, making speech difficult.

"He's fallen in love with you," I hurried on in a husky voice. "Love at
first sight! Terrible! Hopeless! I saw it--felt it. I can't explain how
I know, but I do know.

"That's what stayed his hand here. And that's why I'm on his side. He's
alone. He has a terrible task here without any handicaps. Every man is
against him. If he fails, you might be the force that weakened him. So
you ought to be kinder in your thought of him. Wait before you judge him
further.

"If he isn't killed, time will prove him noble instead of vile. If he is
killed, which is more than likely, you'll feel the happier for a
generous doubt in favor of the man who loved you."

Like one stricken blind, she stood an instant; then, with her hands at
her breast, she walked straight across the patio into the dark, open
door of her room.

Chapter 5

CLEANING OUT LINROCK

Not much sleep visited me that night. In the morning, the young ladies
not stirring and no prospects of duty for me, I rode down to town.

Sight of the wide street, lined by its hitching posts and saddled
horses, the square buildings with their ugly signs, unfinished yet old,
the lounging, dust-gray men at every corner--these awoke in me a
significance that had gone into oblivion overnight.

That last talk with Miss Sampson had unnerved me, wrought strangely upon
me. And afterward, waking and dozing, I had dreamed, lived in a warm,
golden place where there were music and flowers and Sally's spritelike
form leading me on after two tall, beautiful lovers, Diane and Vaughn,
walking hand in hand.

Fine employment of mind for a Ranger whose single glance down a quiet
street pictured it with darkgarbed men in grim action, guns spouting
red, horses plunging!

In front of Hoden's restaurant