ed, to start in a few days. We were to ride out of Pecos County
together, back along the stage trail to civilization. The look in
Sally's eyes decided my measure of improvement. I could have started
that very day and have borne up under any pain or distress. Strange to
see, too, how Steele and Diane responded to the stimulus of my idea, to
the promise of what lay beyond the wild and barren hills!

He told me that day about the headlong flight of every lawless character
out of Linrock, the very hour that Snecker and Wright and Sampson were
known to have fallen. Steele expressed deep feeling, almost
mortification, that the credit of that final coup had gone to him,
instead of me. His denial and explanation had been only a few soundless
words in the face of a grateful and clamorous populace that tried to
reward him, to make him mayor of Linrock. Sampson had made restitution
in every case where he had personally gained at the loss of farmer or
rancher; and the accumulation of years went far toward returning to
Linrock what it had lost in a material way. He had been a poor man when
he boarded the stage for Sanderson, on his way out of Texas forever.

Not long afterward I heard Steele talking to Miss Sampson, in a deep and
agitated voice. "You must rise above this. When I come upon you alone I
see the shadow, the pain in your face. How wonderfully this thing has
turned out when it might have ruined you! I expected it to ruin you.
Who, but that wild boy in there could have saved us all? Diane, you have
had cause for sorrow. But your father is alive and will live it down.
Perhaps, back there in Louisiana, the dishonor will never be known.
Pecos County is far from your old home. And even in San Antonio and
Austin, a man's evil repute means little.

"Then the line between a rustler and a rancher is hard to draw in these
wild border days. Rustling is stealing cattle, and I once heard a
well-known rancher say that all rich cattlemen had done a little
stealing. Your father drifted out here, and like a good many others, he
succeeded. It's perhaps just as well not to split hairs, to judge him by
the law and morality of a civilized country. Some way or other he
drifted in with bad men. Maybe a deal that was honest somehow tied his
hands and started him in wrong.

"This matter of land, water, a few stray head of stock had to be decided
out of court. I'm sure in his case he never realized where he was
drifting. Then one thing led to a