by Zane Grey
Miss Sampson’s astonishment was succeeded by anger difficult to control.
“In the absence of my father I am mistress here. I will not permit you to search my house.”
“Then I regret to say I must do so without your permission,” he said sternly.
“Do not dare!” she flashed. She stood erect, her bosom swelling, her eyes magnificently black with passion. “How dare you intrude here? Have you not insulted us enough? To search my house tonight—to break up my party—oh, it’s worse than outrage! Why on earth do you want to search here? Ah, for the same reason you dragged a poor innocent man into my father’s court! Sir, I forbid you to take another step into this house.”
Steele’s face was bloodless now, and I wondered if it had to do with her scathing scorn or something that he hid with his hand closing his coat that way.
“Miss Sampson, I don’t need warrants to search houses,” he said. “But this time I’ll respect your command. It would be too bad to spoil your party. Let me add, perhaps you do me a little wrong. God knows I hope so. I was shot by a rustler. He fled. I chased him here. He has taken refuge here—in your father’s house. He’s hidden somewhere.”
Steele spread wide his coat lapels. He wore a light shirt, the color of which in places was white. The rest was all a bloody mass from which dark red drops fell to the floor.
“Oh!” cried Miss Sampson.
Scorn and passion vanished in the horror, the pity, of a woman who imagined she saw a man mortally wounded. It was a hard sight for a woman’s eyes, that crimson, heaving breast.
“Surely I didn’t see that,” went on Steele, closing his coat. “You used unforgettable words, Miss Sampson. From you they hurt. For I stand alone. My fight is to make Linrock safer, cleaner, a better home for women and children. Some day you will remember what you said.”
How splendid he looked, how strong against odds. How simple a dignity fitted his words. Why, a woman far blinder than Diane Sampson could have seen that here stood a man.
Steele bowed, turned on his heel, and strode out to vanish in the dark.
Then while she stood bewildered, still shocked, I elected to do some rapid thinking.
How seriously was Steele injured? An instant’s thought was enough to tell me that if he had sustained any more than a flesh wound he would not have chased his assailant, not with so much at stake in the future.
Then I concerned myself with a cold grip of desire to get near the rustler who had wounded Steele. As I started forward, however, Miss Sampson defeated me. Sally once more clung to my hands, and directly we were surrounded by an excited circle.
It took a moment or two to calm them.
“Then there’s a rustler—here—hiding?” repeated Miss Sampson.
“Miss Sampson, I’ll find him. I’ll rout him out,” I said.
“Yes, yes, find him, Russ, but don’t use violence,” she replied. “Send him away—no, give him over to—”
“Nothing of the kind,” interrupted George Wright, loud-voiced. “Cousin, go on with your dance. I’ll take a couple of cowboys. I’ll find this—this rustler, if there’s one here. But I think it’s only another bluff of Steele’s.”
This from Wright angered me deeply, and I strode right for the door.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“I’ve Miss Sampson’s orders. She wants me to find this hidden man. She trusts me not to allow any violence.”
“Didn’t I say I’d see to that?” he snarled.
“Wright, I don’t care what you say,” I retorted. “But I’m thinking you might not want me to find this rustler.”
Wright turned black in the face. Verily, if he had worn a gun he would have pulled it on me. As it was, Miss Sampson’s interference probably prevented more words, if no worse.
“Don’t quarrel,” she said. “George, you go with Russ. Please hurry. I’ll be nervous till the rustler’s found or you’re sure there’s not one.”
We started with several cowboys to ransack the house. We went through the rooms, searching, calling out, flashing our lanterns in dark places.
It struck me forcibly that Wright did all the calling. He hurried, too, tried to keep in the lead. I wondered if he knew his voice would be recognized by the hiding man.
Be that as it might, it was I who peered into a dark corner, and then with a cocked gun leveled I said: “Come out!”
He came forth into the flare of lanterns, a tall, slim, dark-faced youth, wearing dark sombrero, blouse and trousers. I collared him before any of the others could move, and I held the gun close enough to make him shrink.
But he did not impress me as being frightened just then; nevertheless, he had a clammy face, the pallid look of a man who had just gotten over a shock. He peered into my face, then into that of the cowboy next to me, then into Wright’s and if ever in my life I beheld relief I saw it then.
That was all I needed to know, but I meant to find out more if I could.
“Who’re you?” I asked quietly.
He gazed rather arrogantly down at me. It always irritated me to be looked down at that way.
“Say, don’t be gay with me or you’ll get it good,” I yelled, prodding him in the side with the cocked gun. “Who are you? Quick!”
“Bo Snecker,” he said.
“Any relation to Bill Snecker?”
“His son.”
“What’d you hide here for?”
He appeared to grow sullen.
“Reckoned I’d be as safe in Sampson’s as anywheres.”
“Ahuh! You’re taking a long chance,” I replied, and he never knew, or any of the others, just how long a chance that was.
Sight of Steele’s bloody breast remained with me, and I had something sinister to combat. This was no time for me to reveal myself or to show unusual feeling or interest for Steele.
As Steele had abandoned his search, I had nothing to do now but let the others decide what disposition was to be made of Snecker.
“Wright, what’ll you do with him?” I queried, as if uncertain, now the capture was made. I let Snecker go and sheathed my weapon.
That seemed a signal for him to come to life. I guessed he had not much fancied the wide and somewhat variable sweep of that cocked gun.
“I’ll see to that,” replied Wright gruffly, and he pushed Snecker in front of him into the hall. I followed them out into the court at the back of the house.
As I had very little further curiosity I did not wait to see where they went, but hurried back to relieve Miss Sampson and Sally.
I found them as I had left them—Sally quiet, pale, Miss Sampson nervous and distressed. I soon calmed their fears of any further trouble or possible disturbance. Miss Sampson then became curious and wanted to know who the rustler was.
“How strange he should come here,” she said several times.
“Probably he’d run this way or thought he had a better chance to hide where there was dancing and confusion,” I replied glibly.
I wondered how much longer I would find myself keen to shunt her mind from any channel leading to suspicion.
“Would papa have arrested him?” she asked.
“Colonel Sampson might have made it hot for him,” I replied frankly, feeling that if what I said had a double meaning it still was no lie.
“Oh, I forgot—the Ranger!” she exclaimed suddenly. “That awful sight—the whole front of him bloody! Russ, how could he stand up under such a wound? Do you think it’ll kill him?”
“That’s hard to say. A man like Steele can stand a lot.”
“Russ, please go find him! See how it is with him!” she said, almost pleadingly.
I started, glad of the chance and hurried down toward the town.
There was a light in the little adobe house where he lived, and proceeding cautiously, so as to be sure no one saw me, I went close and whistled low in a way he would recognize. Then he opened the door and I went in.
“Hello, son!” he said. “You needn’t have
worried. Sling a blanket over that window so no one can see in.”
He had his shirt off and had been in the act of bandaging a wound that the bullet had cut in his shoulder.
“Let me tie that up,” I said, taking the strips of linen. “Ahuh! Shot you from behind, didn’t he?”
“How else, you locoed lady-charmer? It’s a wonder I didn’t have to tell you that.”
“Tell me about it.”
Steele related a circumstance differing little from other attempts at his life, and concluded by saying that Snecker was a good runner if he was not a good shot.
I finished the bandaging and stood off, admiring Steele’s magnificent shoulders. I noted, too, on the fine white skin more than one scar made by bullets. I got an impression that his strength and vitality were like his spirit—unconquerable!
“So you knew it was Bill Snecker’s son?” I asked when I had told him about finding the rustler.
“Sure. Jim Hoden pointed him out to me yesterday. Both the Sneckers are in town. From now on we’re going to be busy, Russ.”
“It can’t come too soon for me,” I replied. “Shall I chuck my job? Come out from behind these cowboy togs?”
“Not yet. We need proof, Russ. We’ve got to be able to prove things. Hang on at the ranch yet awhile.”
“This Bo Snecker was scared stiff till he recognized Wright. Isn’t that proof?”
“No, that’s nothing. We’ve got to catch Sampson and Wright red-handed.”
“I don’t like the idea of you trailing along alone,” I protested. “Remember what Neal told me. I’m to kick. It’s time for me to hang round with a couple of guns. You’ll never use one.”
“The hell I won’t,” he retorted, with a dark glance of passion. I was surprised that my remark had angered him. “You fellows are all wrong. I know when to throw a gun. You ought to remember that Rangers have a bad name for wanting to shoot. And I’m afraid it’s deserved.”
“Did you shoot at Snecker?” I queried.
“I could have got him in the back. But that wouldn’t do. I shot three times at his legs—tried to let him down. I’d have made him tell everything he knew, but he ran. He was too fast for me.”
“Shooting at his legs! No wonder he ran. He savvied your game all right. It’s funny, Vaughn, how these rustlers and gunmen don’t mind being killed. But to cripple them, rope them, jail them—that’s hell to them! Well, I’m to go on, up at the ranch, falling further in love with that sweet kid instead of coming out straight to face things with you?”
Steele had to laugh, yet he was more thoughtful of my insistence.
“Russ, you think you have patience, but you don’t know what patience is. I won’t be hurried on this job. But I’ll tell you what: I’ll hang under cover most of the time when you’re not close to me. See? That can be managed. I’ll watch for you when you come in town. We’ll go in the same places. And in case I get busy you can stand by and trail along after me. That satisfy you?”
“Fine!” I said, both delighted and relieved. “Well, I’ll have to rustle back now to tell Miss Sampson you’re all right.”
Steele had about finished pulling on a clean shirt, exercising care not to disarrange the bandages; and he stopped short to turn squarely and look at me with hungry eyes.
“Russ, did she—show sympathy?”
“She was all broken up about it. Thought you were going to die.”
“Did she send you?”
“Sure. And she said hurry,” I replied.
I was not a little gleeful over the apparent possibility of Steele being in the same boat with me.
“Do you think she would have cared if—if I had been shot up bad?”
The great giant of a Ranger asked this like a boy, hesitatingly, with color in his face.
“Care! Vaughn, you’re as thickheaded as you say I’m locoed. Diane Sampson has fallen in love with you! That’s all. Love at first sight! She doesn’t realize it. But I know.”
There he stood as if another bullet had struck him, this time straight through the heart. Perhaps one had—and I repented a little of my overconfident declaration.
Still, I would not go back on it. I believed it.
“Russ, for God’s sake! What a terrible thing to say!” he ejaculated hoarsely.
“No. It’s not terrible to say it—only the fact is terrible,” I went on. I may be wrong. But I swear I’m right. When you opened your coat, showed that bloody breast—well, I’ll never forget her eyes.
“She had been furious. She showed passion—hate. Then all in a second something wonderful, beautiful broke through. Pity, fear, agonized thought of your death! If that’s not love, if—if she did not betray love, then I never saw it. She thinks she hates you. But she loves you.”
“Get out of here,” he ordered thickly.
I went, not forgetting to peep out at the door and to listen a moment, then I hurried into the open, up toward the ranch.
The stars were very big and bright, so calm, so cold, that it somehow hurt me to look at them. Not like men’s lives, surely!
What had fate done to Vaughn Steele and to me? I had a moment of bitterness, an emotion rare with me.
Most Rangers put love behind them when they entered the Service and seldom found it after that. But love had certainly met me on the way, and I now had confirmation of my fear that Vaughn was hard hit.
Then the wildness, the adventurer in me stirred to the wonder of it all. It was in me to exult even in the face of fate. Steele and I, while balancing our lives on the hair-trigger of a gun, had certainly fallen into a tangled web of circumstances not calculated in the role of Rangers.
I went back to the ranch with regret, remorse, sorrow knocking at my heart, but notwithstanding that, tingling alive to the devilish excitement of the game.
I knew not what it was that prompted me to sow the same seed in Diane Sampson’s breast that I had sown in Steele’s; probably it was just a propensity for sheer mischief, probably a certainty of the truth and a strange foreshadowing of a coming event.
If Diane Sampson loved, through her this event might be less tragic. Somehow love might save us all.
That was the shadowy portent flitting in the dark maze of my mind.
At the ranch dancing had been resumed. There might never have been any interruption of the gaiety. I found Miss Sampson on the lookout for me and she searched my face with eyes that silenced my one last qualm of conscience.
“Let’s go out in the patio,” I suggested. “I don’t want any one to hear what I say.”
Outside in the starlight she looked white and very beautiful. I felt her tremble. Perhaps my gravity presaged the worst. So it did in one way—poor Vaughn!
“I went down to Steele’s ’dobe, the little place where he lives.” I began, weighing my words. “He let me in—was surprised. He had been shot high in the shoulder, not a dangerous wound. I bandaged it for him. He was grateful—said he had no friends.”
“Poor fellow! Oh, I’m glad it—it isn’t bad,” said Miss Sampson. Something glistened in her eyes.
“He looked strange, sort of forlorn. I think your words—what you said hurt him more than the bullet. I’m sure of that, Miss Sampson.”
“Oh, I saw that myself! I was furious. But I—I meant what I said.”
“You wronged Steele. I happen to know. I know his record along the Rio Grande. It’s scarcely my place, Miss Sampson, to tell you what you’ll find out for yourself, sooner or later.”
“What shall I find out?” she demanded.
“I’ve said enough.”
“No. You mean my father and cousin George are misinformed or wrong about Steele? I’ve feared it this last hour. It was his look. That pierced me. Oh, I’d hate to be unjust. You say I wronged him, Russ? Then you take sides with him against my father?”
“Yes,” I replied very low.
She was keenly hurt and seemed, despite an effort, to shrink from me.
“It’s only natural you should fight for
your father,” I went on. “Perhaps you don’t understand. He has ruled here for long. He’s been—well, let’s say, easy with the evil-doers. But times are changing. He opposed the Ranger idea, which is also natural, I suppose. Still, he’s wrong about Steele, terribly wrong, and it means trouble.”
“Oh, I don’t know what to believe!”
“It might be well for you to think things out for yourself.”
“Russ, I feel as though I couldn’t. I can’t make head or tail of life out here. My father seems so strange. Though, of course, I’ve only seen him twice a year since I was a little girl. He has two sides to him. When I come upon that strange side, the one I never knew, he’s like a man I never saw.
“I want to be a good and loving daughter. I want to help him fight his battles. But he doesn’t—he doesn’t satisfy me. He’s grown impatient and wants me to go back to Louisiana. That gives me a feeling of mystery. Oh, it’s all mystery!”
“True, you’re right,” I replied, my heart aching for her. “It’s all mystery—and trouble for you, too. Perhaps you’d do well to go home.”
“Russ, you suggest I leave here—leave my father?” she asked.
“I advise it. You struck a—a rather troublesome time. Later you might return if—”
“Never. I came to stay, and I’ll stay,” she declared, and there her temper spoke.
“Miss Sampson,” I began again, after taking a long, deep breath, “I ought to tell you one thing more about Steele.”
“Well, go on.”
“Doesn’t he strike you now as being the farthest removed from a ranting, brutal Ranger?”
“I confess he was at least a gentleman.”
“Rangers don’t allow anything to interfere with the discharge of their duty. He was courteous after you defamed him. He respected your wish. He did not break up the dance.
“This may not strike you 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.