Zane Grey - The Rustlers of Pecos County

“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.

“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.