“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 whoknows .”
“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 bethe 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 any 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”