de 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 their 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!"

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 confo