The Zane Grey Megapack

by Zane Grey

  “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 I dismounted and threw my bridle. Jim was unmistakably glad to see me.

  “Where’ve you been? Morton was in an’ powerful set on seein’ you. I steered him from goin’ up to Sampson’s. What kind of a game was you givin’ Frank?”

  “Jim, I just wanted to see if he was a safe rancher to make a stock deal for me.”

  “He says you told him he didn’t have no yellow streak an’ that he was a rustler. Frank can’t git over them two hunches. When he sees you he’s goin’ to swear he’s no rustler, but he has got a yellow streak, unless…”

  This little, broken-down Texan had eyes like flint striking fire.

  “Unless?” I queried sharply.

  Jim breathed a deep breath and looked around the room before his gaze fixed again on mine.

  “Wal,” he replied, speaking low, “Me and Frank allows you’ve picked the right men. It was me that sent them letters to the Ranger captain at Austin. Now who in hell are you?”

  It was my turn to draw a deep breath.

  I had taken six weeks to strike fire from a Texan whom I instinctively felt had been prey to the power that shadowed Linrock. There was no one in the room except us, no one passing, nor near.

  Reaching into the inside pocket of my buckskin vest, I turned the lining out. A star-shaped, bright, silver object flashed as I shoved it, pocket and all, under Jim’s hard eyes.

  He could not help but read; United States Deputy Marshall.

  “By golly,” he whispered, cracking the table with his fist. “Russ, you sure rung true to me. But never as a cowboy!”

  “Jim, the woods is full of us!”

  Heavy footsteps sounded on the walk. Presently Steele’s bulk darkened the door.

  “Hello,” I greeted. “Steele, shake hands with Jim Hoden.”

  “Hello,” replied Steele slowly. “Say, I reckon I know Hoden.”

  “Nit. Not this one. He’s the old Hoden. He used to own the Hope So saloon. It was on the square when he ran it. Maybe he’ll get it back pretty soon. Hope so!”

  I laughed at my execrable pun. Steele leaned against the counter, his gray glance studying the man I had so oddly introduced.

  Hoden in one flash associated the Ranger with me—a relation he had not dreamed of. Then, whether from shock or hope or fear I know not, he appeared about to faint.

  “Hoden, do you know who’s boss of this secret gang of rustlers hereabouts?” asked Steele bluntly.

  It was characteristic of him to come sharp to the point. His voice, something deep, easy, cool about him, seemed to steady Hoden.

  “No,” replied Hoden.

  “Does anybody know?” went on Steele.

  “Wal, I reckon there’s not one honest native of Pecos who knows.”

  “But you have your suspicions?”

  “We have.”

  “You can keep your suspicions to yourself. But you can give me your idea about this crowd that hangs round the saloons, the regulars.”

  “Jest a bad lot,” replied Hoden, with the quick assurance of knowledge. “Most of them have been here years. Others have drifted in. Some of them work odd times. They rustle a few steer, steal, rob, anythin’ for a little money to drink an’ gamble. Jest a bad lot!

  “But the strangers as are always comin’ an’ goin’—strangers that never git acquainted—some of them are likely to be the rustlers. Bill an’ Bo Snecker are in town now. Bill’s a known cattle-thief. Bo’s no good, the makin’ of a gun-fighter. He heads thet way.

  “They might be rustlers. But the boy, he’s hardly careful enough for this gang. Then there’s Jack Blome. He comes to town often. He lives up in the hills. He always has three or four strangers with him. Blome’s the fancy gun fighter. He shot a gambler here last fall. Then he was in a fight in Sanderson lately. Got two cowboys then.

  “Blome’s killed a dozen Pecos men. He’s a rustler, too, but I reckon he’s not the brains of thet secret outfit, if he’s in it at all.”

  Steele appeared pleased with Hoden’s idea. Probably it coincided with the one he had arrived at himself.

  “Now, I’m puzzled over this,” said Steele. “Why do men, apparently honest men, seem to be so close-mouthed here? Is that a fact or only my impression?”

  “It’s sure a fact,” replied Hoden darkly. “Men have lost cattle an’ property in Linrock—lost them honestly or otherwise, as hasn’t been proved. An’ in some cases when they talked—hinted a little—they was found dead. Apparently held up an’ robbed. But dead. Dead men don’t talk. Thet’s why we’re close-mouthed.”

  Steele’s face wore a dark, somber sternness.

  Rustling cattle was not intolerable. Western Texas had gone on prospering, growing in spite of the horde of rustlers ranging its vast stretches; but this cold, secret, murderous hold on a little struggling community was something too strange, too terrible for men to stand long.

  It had waited for a leader like Steele, and now it could not last. Hoden’s revived spirit showed that.

  The ranger was about to speak again when the clatter of hoofs interrupted him. Horses halted out in front.

  A motion of Steele’s hand caused me to dive through a curtained door back of Hoden’s counter. I turned to peep out and was in time to see George Wright enter with the red-headed cowboy called Brick.

  That was the first time I had ever seen Wright come into Hoden’s. He called for tobacco.

  If his visit surprised Jim he did not show any evidence. But Wright showed astonishment as he saw the Ranger, and then a dark glint flitted from the eyes that shifted from Steele to Hoden and back again.

  Steele leaned easily against the counter, and he said good morning pleasantly. Wright deigned no reply, although he bent a curious and hard scrutiny upon Steele. In fact, Wright evinced nothing that would lead one to think he had an
y respect for Steele as a man or as a Ranger.

  “Steele, that was the second break of yours last night,” he said finally. “If you come fooling round the ranch again there’ll be hell!”

  It seemed strange that a man who had lived west of the Pecos for ten years could not see in Steele something which forbade that kind of talk.

  It certainly was not nerve Wright showed; men of courage were seldom intolerant; and with the matchless nerve that characterized Steele or the great gunmen of the day there went a cool, unobtrusive manner, a speech brief, almost gentle, certainly courteous. Wright was a hot-headed Louisianian of French extraction; a man evidently who had never been crossed in anything, and who was strong, brutal, passionate, which qualities, in the face of a situation like this, made him simply a fool!

  The way Steele looked at Wright was joy to me. I hated this smooth, dark-skinned Southerner. But, of course, an ordinary affront like Wright’s only earned silence from Steele.

  “I’m thinking you used your Ranger bluff just to get near Diane Sampson,” Wright sneered. “Mind you, if you come up there again there’ll be hell!”

  “You’re damn right there’ll be hell!” retorted Steele, a kind of high ring in his voice. I saw thick, dark red creep into his face.

  Had Wright’s incomprehensible mention of Diane Sampson been an instinct of love—of jealousy? Verily, it had pierced into the depths of the Ranger, probably as no other thrust could have.

  “Diane Sampson wouldn’t stoop to know a dirty blood-tracker like you,” said Wright hotly. His was not a deliberate intention to rouse Steele; the man was simply rancorous. “I’ll call you right, you cheap bluffer! You four-flush! You damned interfering conceited Ranger!”

  Long before Wright ended his tirade Steele’s face had lost the tinge of color, so foreign to it in moments like this; and the cool shade, the steady eyes like ice on fire, the ruthless lips had warned me, if they had not Wright.

  “Wright, I’ll not take offense, because you seem to be championing your beautiful cousin,” replied Steele in slow speech, biting. “But let me return your compliment. You’re a fine Southerner! Why, you’re only a cheap four-flush—damned bull-headed—rustler”

  Steele hissed the last word. Then for him—for me—for Hoden—there was the truth in Wright’s working passion-blackened face.

  Wright jerked, moved, meant to draw. But how slow! Steele lunged forward. His long arm swept up.

  And Wright staggered backward, knocking table and chairs, to fall hard, in a half-sitting posture, against the wall.

  “Don’t draw!” warned Steele.

  “Wright, get away from your gun!” yelled the cowboy Brick.

  But Wright was crazed by fury. He tugged at his hip, his face corded with purple welts, malignant, murderous, while he got to his feet.

  I was about to leap through the door when Steele shot. Wright’s gun went ringing to the floor.

  Like a beast in pain Wright screamed. Frantically he waved a limp arm, flinging blood over the white table-cloths. Steele had crippled him.

  “Here, you cowboy,” ordered Steele; “take him out, quick!”

  Brick saw the need of expediency, if Wright did not realize it, and he pulled the raving man out of the place. He hurried Wright down the street, leaving the horses behind.

  Steele calmly sheathed his gun.

  “Well, I guess that opens the ball,” he said as I came out.

  Hoden seemed fascinated by the spots of blood on the table-cloths. It was horrible to see him rubbing his hands there like a ghoul!

  “I tell you what, fellows,” said Steele, “we’ve just had a few pleasant moments with the man who has made it healthy to keep close-mouthed in Linrock.”

  Hoden lifted his shaking hands.

  “What’d you wing him for?” he wailed. “He was drawin’ on you. Shootin’ arms off men like him won’t do out here.”

  I was inclined to agree with Hoden.

  “That bull-headed fool will roar and butt himself with all his gang right into our hands. He’s just the man I’ve needed to meet. Besides, shooting him would have been murder for me!”

  “Murder!” exclaimed Hoden.

  “He was a fool, and slow at that. Under such circumstances could I kill him when I didn’t have to?”

  “Sure it’d been the trick.” declared Jim positively. “I’m not allowin’ for whether he’s really a rustler or not. It just won’t do, because these fellers out here ain’t goin’ to be afraid of you.”

  “See here, Hoden. If a man’s going to be afraid of me at all, that trick will make him more afraid of me. I know it. It works out. When Wright cools down he’ll remember, he’ll begin to think, he’ll realize that I could more easily have killed him than risk a snapshot at his arm. I’ll bet you he goes pale to the gills next time he even sees me.”

  “That may be true, Steele. But if Wright’s the man you think he is he’ll begin that secret underground bizness. It’s been tolerable healthy these last six months. You can gamble on this. If thet secret work does commence you’ll have more reason to suspect Wright. I won’t feel very safe from now on.

  “I heard you call him rustler. He knows thet. Why, Wright won’t sleep at night now. He an’ Sampson have always been after me.”

  “Hoden, what are your eyes for?” demanded Steele. “Watch out. And now here. See your friend Morton. Tell him this game grows hot. Together you approach four or five men you know well and can absolutely trust.

  “Hello, there’s somebody coming. You meet Russ and me tonight, out in the open a quarter of a mile, straight from the end of this street. You’ll find a pile of stones. Meet us there tonight at ten o’clock.”

  The next few days, for the several hours each day that I was in town, I had Steele in sight all the time or knew that he was safe under cover.

  Nothing happened. His presence in the saloons or any place where men congregated was marked by a certain uneasy watchfulness on the part of almost everybody, and some amusement on the part of a few.

  It was natural to suppose that the lawless element would rise up in a mass and slay Steele on sight. But this sort of thing never happened. It was not so much that these enemies of the law awaited his next move, but just a slowness peculiar to the frontier.

  The ranger was in their midst. He was interesting, if formidable. He would have been welcomed at card tables, at the bars, to play and drink with the men who knew they were under suspicion.

  There was a rude kind of good humor even in their open hostility.

  Besides, one Ranger, or a company of Rangers could not have held the undivided attention of these men from their games and drinks and quarrels except by some decided move. Excitement, greed, appetite were rife in them.

  I marked, however, a striking exception to the usual run of strangers I had been in the habit of seeing. The Sneckers had gone or were under cover. Again I caught a vague rumor of the coming of Jack Blome, yet he never seemed to arrive.

  Moreover, the goings-on among the habitues of the resorts and the cowboys who came in to drink and gamble were unusually mild in comparison with former conduct.

  This lull, however, did not deceive Steele and me. It could not last. The wonder was that it had lasted so long.

  There was, of course, no post office in Linrock. A stage arrived twice a week from Sanderson, if it did not get held up on the way, and the driver usually had letters, which he turned over to the elderly keeper of a little store.

  This man’s name was Jones, and everybody liked him. On the evenings the stage arrived there was always a crowd at his store, which fact was a source of no little revenue to him.

  One night, so we ascertained, after the crowd had dispersed, two thugs entered his store, beat the old man and robbed him. He made no complaint; however, when Steele called him he rather reluctantly gave not only descriptions of his assailants, but their names.

  Steele straightaway went in search of the men and came across them in Lerett’s place. I was around
when it happened.

  Steele strode up to a table which was surrounded by seven or eight men and he tapped Sim Bass on the shoulder.

  “Get up, I want you,” he said.

  Bass looked up only to see who had accosted him.

  “The hell you say!” he replied impudently.

  Steele’s big hand shifted to the fellow’s collar. One jerk, seemingly no effort at all, sent Bass sliding, chair and all, to crash into the bar and fall in a heap. He lay there, wondering what had struck him.

  “Miller, I want you. Get up,” said Steele.

  Miller complied with alacrity. A sharp kick put more life and understanding into Bass.

  Then Steele searched these men right before the eyes of their comrades, took what money and weapons they had, and marched them out, followed by a crowd that gathered more and more to it as they went down the street. Steele took his prisoners into Jones’ store, had them identified; returned the money they had stolen, and then, pushing the two through the gaping crowd, he marched them down to his stone jail and locked them up.

  Obviously the serious side of this incident was entirely lost upon the highly entertained audience. Many and loud were the coarse jokes cracked at the expense of Bass and Miller and after the rude door had closed upon them similar remarks were addressed to Steele’s jailer and guard, who in truth, were just as disreputable looking as their prisoners.

  Then the crowd returned to their pastimes, leaving their erstwhile comrades to taste the sweets of prison life.

  When I got a chance I asked Steele if he could rely on his hired hands, and with a twinkle in his eye which surprised me as much as his reply, he said Miller and Bass would have flown the coop before morning.

  He was right. When I reached the lower end of town next morning, the same old crowd, enlarged by other curious men and youths, had come to pay their respects to the new institution.

  Jailer and guard were on hand, loud in their proclamations and explanations. Naturally they had fallen asleep, as all other hard working citizens had, and while they slept the prisoners made a hole somewhere and escaped.

  Steele examined the hole, and then engaged a stripling of a youth to see if he could crawl through. The youngster essayed the job, stuck in the middle, and was with difficulty extricated.