r had! I saw it all, felt it
keenly, lived its sweetness in an hour of temptation that made me weak
physically and my spirit faint and low.

For what had I turned my back on this beautiful, all-satisfying
prospect? Was it to arrest and jail a few rustlers? Was it to meet that
mocking Sampson face to face and show him my shield and reach for my
gun? Was it to kill that hated Wright? Was it to save the people of
Linrock from further greed, raids, murder? Was it to please and aid my
old captain, Neal of the Rangers? Was it to save the Service to the
State?

No--a thousand times no. It was for the sake of Steele. Because he was a
wonderful man! Because I had been his undoing! Because I had thrown
Diane Sampson into his arms! That had been my great error. This Ranger
had always been the wonder and despair of his fellow officers, so
magnificent a machine, so sober, temperate, chaste, so unremittingly
loyal to the Service, so strangely stern and faithful to his conception
of the law, so perfect in his fidelity to duty. He was the model, the
inspiration, the pride of all of us. To me, indeed, he represented the
Ranger Service. He was the incarnation of that spirit which fighting
Texas had developed to oppose wildness and disorder and crime. He would
carry through this Linrock case; but even so, if he were not killed, his
career would be ruined. He might save the Service, yet at the cost of
his happiness. He was not a machine; he was a man. He might be a perfect
Ranger; still he was a human being.

The loveliness, the passion, the tragedy of a woman, great as they were,
had not power to shake him from his duty. Futile, hopeless, vain her
love had been to influence him. But there had flashed over me with
subtle, overwhelming suggestion that not futile, not vain was _my_ love
to save him! Therefore, beyond and above all other claims, and by reason
of my wrong to him, his claim came first.

It was then there was something cold and deathlike in my soul; it was
then I bade farewell to Sally Langdon. For I knew, whatever happened, of
one thing I was sure--I would have to kill either Sampson or Wright.
Snecker could be managed; Sampson might be trapped into arrest; but
Wright had no sense, no control, no fear. He would snarl like a panther
and go for his gun, and he would have to be killed. This, of all
consummations, was the one to be calculated upon. And, of course, by
Sally's own words, that contingency would put me forever outs