The Zane Grey Megapack

by Zane Grey

  The last, however, she never evinced in sight or hearing of Diane.

  It seemed that we were indeed fated to cross the path of Vaughn Steele. We saw him working round his adobe house; then we saw him on horseback. Once we met him face to face in a store.

  He gazed steadily into Diane Sampson’s eyes and went his way without any sign of recognition. There was red in her face when he passed and white when he had gone.

  That day she rode as I had never seen her, risking her life, unmindful of her horse.

  Another day we met Steele down in the valley, where, inquiry discovered to us, he had gone to the home of an old cattleman who lived alone and was ill.

  Last and perhaps most significant of all these meetings was the one when we were walking tired horses home through the main street of Linrock and came upon Steele just in time to see him in action.

  It happened at a corner where the usual slouchy, shirt-sleeved loungers were congregated. They were in high glee over the predicament of one ruffian who had purchased or been given a poor, emaciated little burro that was on his last legs. The burro evidently did not want to go with its new owner, who pulled on a halter and then viciously swung the end of the rope to make welts on the worn and scarred back.

  If there was one thing that Diane Sampson could not bear it was to see an animal in pain. She passionately loved horses, and hated the sight of a spur or whip.

  When we saw the man beating the little burro she cried out to me:

  “Make the brute stop!”

  I might have made a move had I not on the instant seen Steele heaving into sight round the corner.

  Just then the fellow, whom I now recognized to be a despicable character named Andrews, began to bestow heavy and brutal kicks upon the body of the little burro. These kicks sounded deep, hollow, almost like the boom of a drum.

  The burro uttered the strangest sound I ever heard issue from any beast and it dropped in its tracks with jerking legs that told any horseman what had happened. Steele saw the last swings of Andrews’ heavy boot. He yelled. It was a sharp yell that would have made anyone start. But it came too late, for the burro had dropped.

  Steele knocked over several of the jeering men to get to Andrews. He kicked the fellow’s feet from under him, sending him hard to the ground.

  Then Steele picked up the end of the halter and began to swing it powerfully. Resounding smacks mingled with hoarse bellows of fury and pain. Andrews flopped here and there, trying to arise, but every time the heavy knotted halter beat him down.

  Presently Steele stopped. Andrews rose right in front of the Ranger, and there, like the madman he was, he went for his gun.

  But it scarcely leaped from its holster when Steele’s swift hand intercepted it. Steele clutched Andrews’ arm.

  Then came a wrench, a cracking of bones, a scream of agony.

  The gun dropped into the dust; and in a moment of wrestling fury Andrews, broken, beaten down, just able to moan, lay beside it.

  Steele, so cool and dark for a man who had acted with such passionate swiftness, faced the others as if to dare them to move. They neither moved nor spoke, and then he strode away.

  Miss Sampson did not speak a word while we were riding the rest of the way home, but she was strangely white of face and dark of eye. Sally could not speak fast enough to say all she felt.

  And I, of course, had my measure of feelings. One of them was that as sure as the sun rose and set it was written that Diane Sampson was to love Vaughn Steele.

  I could not read her mind, but I had a mind of my own.

  How could any woman, seeing this maligned and menaced Ranger, whose life was in danger every moment he spent on the streets, in the light of his action on behalf of a poor little beast, help but wonder and brood over the magnificent height he might reach if he had love—passion—a woman for his inspiration?

  It was the day after this incident that, as Sally, Diane, and I were riding homeward on the road from Sampson, I caught sight of a group of dark horses and riders swiftly catching up with us.

  We were on the main road, in plain sight of town and passing by ranches; nevertheless, I did not like the looks of the horsemen and grew uneasy. Still, I scarcely thought it needful to race our horses just to reach town a little ahead of these strangers.

  Accordingly, they soon caught up with us.

  They were five in number, all dark-faced except one, dark-clad and superbly mounted on dark bays and blacks. They had no pack animals and, for that matter, carried no packs at all.

  Four of them, at a swinging canter, passed us, and the fifth pulled his horse to suit our pace and fell in between Sally and me.

  “Good day,” he said pleasantly to me. “Don’t mind my ridin’ in with you-all, I hope?”

  Considering his pleasant approach, I could not but be civil.

  He was a singularly handsome fellow, at a quick glance, under forty years, with curly, blond hair, almost gold, a skin very fair for that country, and the keenest, clearest, boldest blue eyes I had ever seen in a man.

  “You’re Russ, I reckon,” he said. “Some of my men have seen you ridin’ round with Sampson’s girls. I’m Jack Blome.”

  He did not speak that name with any flaunt or flourish. He merely stated it.

  Blome, the rustler! I grew tight all over.

  Still, manifestly there was nothing for me to do but return his pleasantry. I really felt less uneasiness after he had made himself known to me. And without any awkwardness, I introduced him to the girls.

  He took off his sombrero and made gallant bows to both.

  Miss Sampson had heard of him and his record, and she could not help a paleness, a shrinking, which, however, he did not appear to notice. Sally had been dying to meet a real rustler, and here he was, a very prince of rascals.

  But I gathered that she would require a little time before she could be natural. Blome seemed to have more of an eye for Sally than for Diane. “Do you like Pecos?” he asked Sally.

  “Out here? Oh, yes, indeed!” she replied.

  “Like ridin’?”

  “I love horses.”

  Like almost every man who made Sally’s acquaintance, he hit upon the subject best calculated to make her interesting to free-riding, outdoor Western men.

  That he loved a thoroughbred horse himself was plain. He spoke naturally to Sally with interest, just as I had upon first meeting her, and he might not have been Jack Blome, for all the indication he gave of the fact in his talk.

  But the look of the man was different. He was a desperado, one of the dashing, reckless kind—more famous along the Pecos and Rio Grande than more really desperate men. His attire proclaimed a vanity seldom seen in any Westerner except of that unusual brand, yet it was neither gaudy or showy.

  One had to be close to Blome to see the silk, the velvet, the gold, the fine leather. When I envied a man’s spurs then they were indeed worth coveting.

  Blome had a short rifle and a gun in saddle-sheaths. My sharp eye, running over him, caught a row of notches on the bone handle of the big Colt he packed.

  It was then that the marshal, the Ranger in me, went hot under the collar. The custom that desperadoes and gun-fighters had of cutting a notch on their guns for every man killed was one of which the mere mention made my gorge rise.

  At the edge of town Blome doffed his sombrero again, said “Adios,” and rode on ahead of us. And it was then I was hard put to it to keep track of the queries, exclamations, and other wild talk of two very much excited young ladies. I wanted to think; I needed to think.

  “Wasn’t he lovely? Oh, I could adore him!” rapturously uttered Miss Sally Langdon several times, to my ultimate disgust.

  Also, after Blome had ridden out of sight, Miss Sampson lost the evident effect of his sinister presence, and she joined Miss Langdon in paying the rustler compliments, too. Perhaps my irritation was an indication of the quick and subtle shifting of my mind to harsher thought.

  “Jack Blome!” I broke in upon th
eir adulations. “Rustler and gunman. Did you see the notches on his gun? Every notch for a man he’s killed! For weeks reports have come to Linrock that soon as he could get round to it he’d ride down and rid the community of that bothersome fellow, that Texas Ranger! He’s come to kill Vaughn Steele!”

  THE RUSTLERS OF PECOS COUNTY [Part 2]

  CHAPTER 7

  DIANE AND VAUGHN

  Then as gloom descended on me with my uttered thought, my heart smote me at Sally’s broken: “Oh, Russ! No! No!” Diane Sampson bent dark, shocked eyes upon the hill and ranch in front of her; but they were sightless, they looked into space and eternity, and in them I read the truth suddenly and cruelly revealed to her—she loved Steele!

  I found it impossible to leave Miss Sampson with the impression I had given. My own mood fitted a kind of ruthless pleasure in seeing her suffer through love as I had intimation I was to suffer.

  But now, when my strange desire that she should love Steele had its fulfilment, and my fiendish subtleties to that end had been crowned with success, I was confounded in pity and the enormity of my crime. For it had been a crime to make, or help to make, this noble and beautiful woman love a Ranger, the enemy of her father, and surely the author of her coming misery. I felt shocked at my work. I tried to hang an excuse on my old motive that through her love we might all be saved. When it was too late, however, I found that this motive was wrong and perhaps without warrant.

  We rode home in silence. Miss Sampson, contrary to her usual custom of riding to the corrals or the porch, dismounted at a path leading in among the trees and flowers. “I want to rest, to think before I go in,” she said.

  Sally accompanied me to the corrals. As our horses stopped at the gate I turned to find confirmation of my fears in Sally’s wet eyes.

  “Russ,” she said, “it’s worse than we thought.”

  “Worse? I should say so,” I replied.

  “It’ll about kill her. She never cared that way for any man. When the Sampson women love, they love.”

  “Well, you’re lucky to be a Langdon,” I retorted bitterly.

  “I’m Sampson enough to be unhappy,” she flashed back at me, “and I’m Langdon enough to have some sense. You haven’t any sense or kindness, either. Why’d you want to blurt out that Jack Blome was here to kill Steele?”

  “I’m ashamed, Sally,” I returned, with hanging head. “I’ve been a brute. I’ve wanted her to love Steele. I thought I had a reason, but now it seems silly. Just now I wanted to see how much she did care.

  “Sally, the other day you said misery loved company. That’s the trouble. I’m sore—bitter. I’m like a sick coyote that snaps at everything. I’ve wanted you to go into the very depths of despair. But I couldn’t send you. So I took out my spite on poor Miss Sampson. It was a damn unmanly thing for me to do.”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad as all that. But you might have been less abrupt. Russ, you seem to take an—an awful tragic view of your—your own case.”

  “Tragic? Hah!” I cried like the villain in the play. “What other way could I look at it? I tell you I love you so I can’t sleep or do anything.”

  “That’s not tragic. When you’ve no chance, then that’s tragic.”

  Sally, as swiftly as she had blushed, could change into that deadly sweet mood. She did both now. She seemed warm, softened, agitated. How could this be anything but sincere? I felt myself slipping; so I laughed harshly.

  “Chance! I’ve no chance on earth.”

  “Try!” she whispered.

  But I caught myself in time. Then the shock of bitter renunciation made it easy for me to simulate anger.

  “You promised not to—not to—” I began, choking. My voice was hoarse and it broke, matters surely far removed from pretense.

  I had seen Sally Langdon in varying degrees of emotion, but never as she appeared now. She was pale and she trembled a little. If it was not fright, then I could not tell what it was. But there were contrition and earnestness about her, too.

  “Russ, I know. I promised not to—to tease—to tempt you anymore,” she faltered. “I’ve broken it. I’m ashamed. I haven’t played the game square. But I couldn’t—I can’t help myself. I’ve got sense enough not to engage myself to you, but I can’t keep from loving you. I can’t let you alone. There—if you want it on the square! What’s more, I’ll go on as I have done unless you keep away from me. I don’t care what I deserve—what you do—I will—I will!”

  She had begun falteringly and she ended passionately.

  Somehow I kept my head, even though my heart pounded like a hammer and the blood drummed in my ears. It was the thought of Steele that saved me. But I felt cold at the narrow margin. I had reached a point, I feared, where a kiss, one touch from this bewildering creature of fire and change and sweetness would make me put her before Steele and my duty.

  “Sally, if you dare break your promise again, you’ll wish you never had been born,” I said with all the fierceness at my command.

  “I wish that now. And you can’t bluff me, Mr. Gambler. I may have no hand to play, but you can’t make me lay it down,” she replied.

  Something told me Sally Langdon was finding herself; that presently I could not frighten her, and then—then I would be doomed.

  “Why, if I got drunk, I might do anything,” I said cool and hard now. “Cut off your beautiful chestnut hair for bracelets for my arms.”

  Sally laughed, but she was still white. She was indeed finding herself. “If you ever get drunk again you can’t kiss me any more. And if you don’t—you can.”

  I felt myself shake and, with all of the iron will I could assert, I hid from her the sweetness of this thing that was my weakness and her strength.

  “I might lasso you from my horse, drag you through the cactus,” I added with the implacability of an Apache.

  “Russ!” she cried. Something in this last ridiculous threat had found a vital mark. “After all, maybe those awful stories Joe Harper told about you were true.”

  “They sure were,” I declared with great relief. “And now to forget ourselves. I’m more than sorry I distressed Miss Sampson; more than sorry because what I said wasn’t on the square. Blome, no doubt, has come to Linrock after Steele. His intention is to kill him. I said that—let Miss Sampson think it all meant fatality to the Ranger. But, Sally, I don’t believe that Blome can kill Steele any more than—than you can.”

  “Why?” she asked; and she seemed eager, glad.

  “Because he’s not man enough. That’s all, without details. You need not worry; and I wish you’d go tell Miss Sampson—”

  “Go yourself,” interrupted Sally. “I think she’s afraid of my eyes. But she won’t fear you’d guess her secret.

  “Go to her, Russ. Find some excuse to tell her. Say you thought it over, believed she’d be distressed about what might never happen. Go—and afterward pray for your sins, you queer, good-natured, love-meddling cowboy-devil, you!”

  For once I had no retort ready for Sally. I hurried off as quickly as I could walk in chaps and spurs.

  I found Miss Sampson sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree. Her pallor and quiet composure told of the conquering and passing of the storm. Always she had a smile for me, and now it smote me, for I in a sense, had betrayed her.

  “Miss Sampson,” I began, awkwardly yet swiftly, “I—I got to thinking it over, and the idea struck me, maybe you felt bad about this gun-fighter Blome coming down here to kill Steele. At first I imagined you felt sick just because there might be blood spilled. Then I thought you’ve showed interest in Steele—naturally his kind of Ranger work is bound to appeal to women—you might be sorry it couldn’t go on, you might care.”

  “Russ, don’t beat about the bush,” she said interrupting my floundering. “You know I care.”

  How wonderful her eyes were then—great dark, sad gulfs with the soul of a woman at the bottom! Almost I loved her myself; I did love her truth, the woman in her that scorned any subterfuge.<
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  Instantly she inspired me to command over myself. “Listen,” I said. “Jack Blome has come here to meet Steele. There will be a fight. But Blome can’t kill Steele.”

  “How is that? Why can’t he? You said this Blome was a killer of men. You spoke of notches on his gun. I’ve heard my father and my cousin, too, speak of Blome’s record. He must be a terrible ruffian. If his intent is evil, why will he fail in it?”

  “Because, Miss Sampson, when it comes to the last word, Steele will be on the lookout and Blome won’t be quick enough on the draw to kill him. That’s all.”

  “Quick enough on the draw? I understand, but I want to know more.”

  “I doubt if there’s a man on the frontier today quick enough to kill Steele in an even break. That means a fair fight. This Blome is conceited. He’ll make the meeting fair enough. It’ll come off about like this, Miss Sampson.

  “Blome will send out his bluff—he’ll begin to blow—to look for Steele. But Steele will avoid him as long as possible—perhaps altogether, though that’s improbable. If they do meet, then Blome must force the issue. It’s interesting to figure on that. Steele affects men strangely. It’s all very well for this Blome to rant about himself and to hunt Steele up. But the test’ll come when he faces the Ranger. He never saw Steele. He doesn’t know what he’s up against. He knows Steele’s reputation, but I don’t mean that. I mean Steele in the flesh, his nerve, the something that’s in his eyes.

  “Now, when it comes to handling a gun the man doesn’t breathe who has anything on Steele. There was an outlaw, Duane, who might have killed Steele, had they ever met. I’ll tell you Duane’s story some day. A girl saved him, made a Ranger of him, then got him to go far away from Texas.”

  “That was wise. Indeed, I’d like to hear the story,” she replied. “Then, after all, Russ, in this dreadful part of Texas life, when man faces man, it’s all in the quickness of hand?”

  “Absolutely. It’s the draw. And Steele’s a wonder. See here. Look at this.”

  I stepped back and drew my gun.

  “I didn’t see how you did that,” she said curiously. “Try it again.”