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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Rustlers of Pecos County," Zane Grey masterfully weaves an engaging tale set against the rugged backdrop of the American West. The novel captures the spirit of frontier life, with vivid descriptions and dynamic characters that embody themes of honor, justice, and the harsh realities of ranching. Grey's narrative style is characterized by rich imagery and a flowing, yet terse, prose that evokes the vast landscapes and tumultuous emotions of its heroes and villains alike. As a quintessential Western classic, it not only entertains but also reflects the values and conflicts inherent in a rapidly changing America during the early 20th century. Zane Grey, an icon of American literature, drew upon his deep love for the outdoors and his experiences as a pioneering writer in the Western genre. Raised in Ohio and deeply influenced by his family's connection to the American West, Grey devoted his life to capturing the essence of the frontier. His passion for adventure and storytelling is evident in his extensive body of work, which has colored the popular perception of the West for generations. This novel is a must-read for admirers of Western literature, as it encapsulates the charm and grit of the genre that Grey helped define. Readers will find themselves enthralled by the protagonist's quest for justice amidst rustlers and outlaws, making this a timeless addition to any literary collection. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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The Rustlers of Pecos County (Western Classic)
Table of Contents
Introduction
In a country where open ranges breed opportunity and peril in equal measure, The Rustlers of Pecos County turns on the stark contest between law and lawlessness, asking what forms of courage, loyalty, and restraint can survive when survival itself demands hard choices and the land offers neither easy mercy nor reliable refuge.
Zane Grey’s The Rustlers of Pecos County is a Western novel set in and around Pecos County, Texas, evoking the frontier’s rugged landscapes and contested communities; written by one of the early twentieth century’s most widely read authors of Western fiction, it sits within the period when the genre coalesced for a mass audience through magazines and popular editions. Readers can expect the hallmarks associated with Grey’s work: dramatic vistas, moral pressure points, and the steady build of pursuit and confrontation, rendered in prose that balances panoramic description with terse, scene-driven momentum.
The premise is lean and immediately legible: rustlers have turned theft into a system, preying on ranches and supply lines while intimidation keeps townspeople wary and silent, and a determined lawman steps into this closed circuit to test its weak points. From that setup, the narrative draws readers through shadowed alliances, fractured trust, and the rhythms of watchfulness that define life on the edge of order. The mood is taut but patient, fueled by reconnaissance, sudden violence, and the uneasy negotiations of public and private honor that unfold under the vast, revealing sky.
At its heart, the book explores how communities respond to chronic lawbreaking: whether they close ranks around quiet complicity or rediscover a common stake in justice when fear has had its run. Grey examines the boundary between vengeance and responsibility, the difference between personal bravery and civic duty, and the complex ways power operates in small towns—through money, reputation, and the threat of force. The result is a portrait of frontier ethics under strain, where principles are measured not in abstractions but in decisions about risk, allegiance, and the cost of telling the truth.
Grey’s style marries movement and atmosphere, using the land not merely as backdrop but as a shaping force: wind-scoured flats, broken ridges, and dim arroyos that favor the cunning and punish the careless. Action sequences arrive with crisp urgency, yet the novel makes room for silence, tracking, and the psychological calculations preceding every decisive act. Human connections matter, too, as companionship, duty, and guarded hope are set against suspicion and fatigue. This blend of pace and patience offers a reading experience that is both cinematic and reflective, attentive to stakes that are moral as well as physical.
Though rooted in its era, The Rustlers of Pecos County retains bite and relevance by posing questions that persist: What sustains trust when institutions falter? How do ordinary people share the burden of protecting their homes without becoming what they oppose? Contemporary readers may also notice period conventions and attitudes characteristic of early twentieth-century Westerns; approaching the novel with historical awareness enhances its value as both story and artifact, illuminating how the genre helped organize national ideas about risk, responsibility, and the fragile promise of order at the fringes of settlement.
For newcomers to Zane Grey, this novel offers an accessible entry point: a clear conflict, a stark setting, and a voice that renders suspense through terrain, silence, and resolve rather than ornament. For seasoned readers of Westerns, it provides a concentrated dose of the genre’s enduring appeal—moral testing in a hazardous environment where choices echo beyond a single encounter. Read it for the steady tightening of pressure, the austere beauty of the country it traces, and the sober question it keeps pressing: what does it take to make justice hold in a place built on risk?
Synopsis
A wave of cattle theft and intimidation has left Pecos County on edge. Ranchers see herds vanish, witnesses stay silent, and the courthouse delivers few convictions. Into this climate rides a Texas Ranger assigned quietly to restore order. He enters the county without fanfare, studying trails, saloons, and corrals for signs of a coordinated ring. Rumors point to rustlers using the river bottoms and arroyos as cover. The Ranger keeps his badge out of sight, preferring patience over spectacle. His task, as he defines it, is to separate frightened men from lawbreakers and to understand who profits from the chaos.
In the main town, influence clusters around a handful of prosperous cattlemen and merchants whose word carries farther than the sheriff’s. The Ranger watches how decisions are made, noting which foremen move freely after midnight and which judges delay warrants. A young local lawman, earnest but outmatched, senses an ally and cautiously shares what he knows. Names are whispered, never spoken aloud in crowds. Ranch hands vanish after payday. Drovers bring talk of masked riders along the Pecos trail. The Ranger’s first moves are simple: listen, ride the fencelines, and map the web of friendships that binds the town together.
A prominent ranching family becomes central to the investigation, not by choice but because rustling hits their brand repeatedly. The family’s household, run with frontier efficiency, shelters a young woman whose independence and clarity give the Ranger a candid window on local sentiment. She distrusts bravado yet despises the thefts bleeding her range. Around her orbit suitors, partners, and hired guns, any of whom could be complicit or simply afraid. The Ranger works from the perimeter, cultivating trustworthy cowboys, tracking hoofprints to hidden water, and measuring how the rustlers seem to anticipate every posse, as if warned in advance.
Public moments reveal private alignments. A community dance, a stock auction, and a church gathering expose which men keep to shadows and which make a show of generosity. The Ranger’s quiet presence unsettles the usual order, and questions begin to circulate. After a brazen raid that scatters a remuda and leaves a trail of spent shells, tempers flare. Some ranchers clamor for vigilante justice, while others argue that hasty violence would strengthen the rustlers’ cause. The Ranger counsels restraint, insisting that evidence is needed to break the ring rather than simply strike at its outermost riders.
Ambushes test that resolve. Shots crack from mesquite thickets along lonely trails. A posse rides into a dry wash and finds itself flanked by rifle fire. The Ranger survives more through discipline than luck, learning how the rustlers use terrain and timing to escape. He begins to see a pattern in the raids, each one landing when legal proceedings falter or contracts change hands. A ranch fire erupts the same night witnesses recant. With the young lawman’s help, the Ranger sets small traps of his own, seeding misinformation to track how quickly it returns as action on the range.
A contact inside the outlaw network agrees to talk, trading hints for leniency. The Ranger follows that thread to camps hidden among cottonwoods, to corrals with altered brands, and to meetings that convene after lamps dim along the main street. A larger design emerges: the rustling is not random, and the profits funnel toward men who can steer juries and appoint deputies. The young woman finds herself drawn into the uncertainty by proximity and family ties. She weighs loyalty against principle, measuring risks that are as social as they are physical. The town’s facade of normal commerce grows thin.
When intimidation fails, the rustlers escalate to outright terror. A stage is held up, a ranch mailbox burned, and a respected foreman disappears on the river road. The Ranger recognizes the moment when secrecy must give way to open assertion of law. He shows his badge, calls for volunteers, and divides the county into sectors to deny the outlaws free movement. The young lawman proves steady in crises, while some bystanders choose sides at last. Court sessions turn contentious. Bonds are granted and revoked. The sense of siege tightens as both the rustlers and their backers feel pressure.
The conflict converges on a set of decisive rides and confrontations along canyons and crossings the rustlers once owned by habit. Night trails gleam with dust and moonlit iron. The Ranger aims to separate hired hands from organizers, to capture documents and testimony rather than trade bullets alone. The young woman’s safety becomes precarious as her knowledge grows more relevant. Revelations begin to surface in the town square and at remote line camps, implicating figures whose respectability has shielded them from suspicion. As the standoff nears its height, choices made in haste threaten to harden into fate.
The Rustlers of Pecos County frames a transition from personal retaliation to durable law, showing how order depends on patience, witness, and the courage to resist convenient alliances. Without dwelling on spectacle, it emphasizes tracking, listening, and the slow isolation of culpable men from honest labor. The narrative closes on the costs of that effort, measured in strained friendships and the prospect of change for a county long tolerant of compromise. In the aftermath, relationships formed under pressure suggest new beginnings, while the restored balance of ranching life points toward a future in which fear no longer sets the rules.
Historical Context
The Rustlers of Pecos County is set in the trans-Pecos borderland of far West Texas, chiefly after the Civil War and Reconstruction, roughly the late 1870s to mid-1880s. Pecos County was carved from Presidio County in 1871, with Fort Stockton as county seat, an army post established in 1859 and reoccupied in 1867 to protect travelers and stock. The landscape is arid basin-and-range country cut by the Pecos and Rio Grande, dotted with sheep and cattle outfits, windmills, and scattered towns. Sparse populations, long distances to courts and railheads, and a porous Mexican border fostered endemic stock theft and factional politics. Zane Grey’s narrative locates its conflicts in this precise geography of hard trails and thin law.
After 1866, Texas experienced the open-range cattle boom that sent millions of longhorns north to railheads. The Goodnight-Loving Trail, blazed by Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving in 1866, followed the Pecos River northward through West Texas into New Mexico and Colorado. Loving’s fatal wounding by Comanches on the Pecos in July 1867, and his death at Fort Sumner, became frontier lore illustrating the hazards of that corridor. Great outfits consolidated ranges, while trail herds attracted professional rustlers skilled at altering brands and moving stock across remote canyons. The novel mirrors this economic expansion and predation by centering on herds, ranch alliances, and the constant vulnerability of stock on the Pecos mesas.
The most decisive historical framework for the book is the resurgence of the Texas Rangers as statewide anti-rustler forces during and after 1874. Following the failure of the Reconstruction-era State Police (1870–1873), the legislature created the Frontier Battalion in 1874, six companies under Major John B. Jones to fight raiders and outlaws, alongside Captain Leander H. McNelly’s short-lived Special Force on the Nueces Strip (1874–1875). McNelly pursued cattle thieves who drove herds across the Rio Grande, notably in the Las Cuevas episode of November 1875, when Rangers crossed into Mexico to recover stolen stock—an operation skirting international law but celebrated in Texas memory. By the late 1870s the Frontier Battalion extended patrols westward, while captains such as George W. Baylor and N. O. Reynolds coordinated with county sheriffs to suppress organized theft rings that exploited weak courts and intimidated juries. The Rangers combined mobility, undercover work, and sudden arrests with a reputation for lethal force; their contemporaneous pursuit of bandits like Sam Bass (killed 1878 at Round Rock) signaled a wider shift toward professionalized, state-sanctioned violence against itinerant outlaw networks. Grey, writing with copious research and interviews in Texas, adapts this history by portraying Rangers who infiltrate courthouse rings, break up rustling combines, and test the line between legal warrants and expedient gun work. The novel’s emphasis on a small detachment entering a captured town, gathering testimony from terrorized ranchers and storekeepers, and engineering a dawn sweep of arrests mirrors Ranger methods described in late-1870s reports to the adjutant general. It also reflects the political reality that West Texas counties, including Pecos, often relied on Rangers to tip the balance where sheriffs were compromised. The ambivalence that surrounds Ranger authority in the story reproduces the period’s debate over state power versus local autonomy on the Texas frontier.
The introduction of barbed wire after Joseph Glidden’s 1874 patent transformed Texas ranges during 1880–1885 and sparked the Fence-Cutting Wars of 1883–1888. Large syndicates and established ranches fenced vast tracts, sometimes enclosing public land or water, blocking trails used by small stockmen. In 1883–1884, organized night riders cut miles of wire in dozens of counties, from Tom Green to Coleman and into the trans-Pecos. Governor John Ireland, inaugurated in 1883, prodded the legislature to make fence cutting and pasture burning felonies in 1884 and dispatched Rangers to protect targeted ranches and arrest ringleaders. The novel’s atmosphere of range enclosure, water control, and violent reprisal echoes these struggles over property and passage.
Local political machines—often called courthouse rings—dominated many Texas counties in the 1870s–1880s, controlling juries, tax contracts, and the sheriff’s office. In the trans-Pecos, the San Elizario Salt War of 1877–1878 in neighboring El Paso County exposed how private speculators could leverage law and arms to seize communal resources at the expense of Tejano communities. Violence culminated in a siege at San Elizario in December 1877; a contingent of Texas Rangers was forced to withdraw, and federal troops eventually restored order in early 1878. While Pecos County had its own quieter courthouse rivalries, Grey’s depiction of bosses shielding rustlers, packed juries, and intimidated witnesses clearly channels this borderland pattern of captured institutions.
The pacification campaigns against Plains raiders, particularly the Red River War of 1874–1875, ended large-scale Comanche and Kiowa incursions into West Texas and secured overland corridors. Fort Stockton, garrisoned primarily by Black troops of the 9th Cavalry and 24th Infantry in the 1870s, patrolled the Pecos routes and guarded mail and stage traffic. With Native resistance suppressed by 1875 and the Apache threat pushed west into the Guadalupe and Davis Mountains, civilian conflicts over stock, water, and votes moved to the fore. The novel’s concentration on human predators—rustlers, hired guns, and corrupt officeholders—presupposes this military backdrop in which the federal Army made the land traversable, leaving social order to civil and Ranger hands.
Railroad expansion reached the trans-Pecos in 1881, when the Texas and Pacific and the Southern Pacific met at Sierra Blanca, joining El Paso to the national network. New shipping options reduced the need for long trail drives, raised land values, and concentrated capital in rail towns and depots from El Paso to Pecos City. Construction camps and swift town growth multiplied saloons, gambling rooms, and labor disputes, providing cover for fencing sprees and stock theft that exploited rapid movement of goods. Grey’s plot, with its sudden cattle sales, forged papers, and quick getaways along stage and rail corridors, reflects how steel rails altered the tempo and geography of frontier crime.
As a social and political critique, the book exposes the fragility of frontier democracy where wealth from cattle and land could capture sheriffs, judges, and juries. It scrutinizes the privatization of the commons—waterholes, trails, open range—under barbed-wire capitalism, and the violence used to enforce that transition. By staging Rangers against courthouse rings, it interrogates the legitimacy of state force, noting both its necessity and its temptations toward extralegal action. The narrative also registers border inequities, including the ease with which accusations fell on Mexican laborers while larger Anglo combines profited. In dramatizing these tensions, the story indicts impunity and demands accountable institutions worthy of the new West.
The Rustlers of Pecos County (Western Classic)
Chapter 1 VAUGHN STEELE AND RUSS SITTELL
In the morning, after breakfasting early, I took a turn up and down the main street of Sanderson, made observations and got information likely to serve me at some future day, and then I returned to the hotel ready for what might happen.
The stage-coach was there and already full of passengers. This stage did not go to Linrock, but I had found that another one left for that point three days a week.
Several cowboy broncos stood hitched to a railing and a little farther down were two buckboard[2]s, with horses that took my eye. These probably were the teams Colonel Sampson had spoken of to George Wright.
As I strolled up, both men came out of the hotel. Wright saw me, and making an almost imperceptible sign to Sampson, he walked toward me.
"You're the cowboy Russ?" he asked.
I nodded and looked him over. By day he made as striking a figure as I had noted by night, but the light was not generous to his dark face.
"Here's your pay," he said, handing me some bills. "Miss Sampson won't need you out at the ranch any more."
"What do you mean? This is the first I've heard about that."
"Sorry, kid. That's it," he said abruptly. "She just gave me the money—told me to pay you off. You needn't bother to speak with her about it."
He might as well have said, just as politely, that my seeing her, even to say good-by, was undesirable.
As my luck would have it, the girls appeared at the moment, and I went directly up to them, to be greeted in a manner I was glad George Wright could not help but see.
In Miss Sampson's smile and "Good morning, Russ," there was not the slightest discoverable sign that I was not to serve her indefinitely.
It was as I had expected—she knew nothing of Wright's discharging me in her name.
"Miss Sampson," I said, in dismay, "what have I done? Why did you let me go?"
She looked astonished.
"Russ, I don't understand you."
"Why did you discharge me?" I went on, trying to look heart-broken. "I haven't had a chance yet. I wanted so much to work for you—Miss Sally, what have I done? Why did she discharge me?"
"I did not," declared Miss Sampson, her dark eyes lighting.
"But look here—here's my pay," I went on, exhibiting the money. "Mr. Wright just came to me—said you sent this money—that you wouldn't need me out at the ranch."
It was Miss Sally then who uttered a little exclamation. Miss Sampson seemed scarcely to have believed what she had heard.
"My cousin Mr. Wright said that?"
I nodded vehemently.
At this juncture Wright strode before me, practically thrusting me aside.
"Come girls, let's walk a little before we start," he said gaily. "I'll show you Sanderson."
"Wait, please," Miss Sampson replied, looking directly at him. "Cousin George, I think there's a mistake—perhaps a misunderstanding. Here's the cowboy I've engaged—Mr. Russ. He declares you gave him money—told him I discharged him."
"Yes, cousin, I did," he replied, his voice rising a little. There was a tinge of red in his cheek. "We—you don't need him out at the ranch. We've any numbers of boys. I just told him that—let him down easy—didn't want to bother you."
Certain it was that George Wright had made a poor reckoning. First she showed utter amaze, then distinct disappointment, and then she lifted her head with a kind of haughty grace. She would have addressed him then, had not Colonel Sampson come up.
"Papa, did you instruct Cousin George to discharge Russ?" she asked.
"I sure didn't," declared the colonel, with a laugh. "George took that upon his own hands."
"Indeed! I'd like my cousin to understand that I'm my own mistress. I've been accustomed to attending to my own affairs and shall continue doing so. Russ, I'm sorry you've been treated this way.[1q] Please, in future, take your orders from me."
"Then I'm to go to Linrock with you?" I asked.
"Assuredly. Ride with Sally and me to-day, please."
She turned away with Sally, and they walked toward the first buckboard.
Colonel Sampson found a grim enjoyment in Wright's discomfiture.
"Diane's like her mother was, George," he said. "You've made a bad start with her."
Here Wright showed manifestation of the Sampson temper, and I took him to be a dangerous man, with unbridled passions.
"Russ, here's my own talk to you," he said, hard and dark, leaning toward me. "Don't go to Linrock.[2q]"
"Say, Mr. Wright," I blustered for all the world like a young and frightened cowboy, "If you threaten me I'll have you put in jail!"
Both men seemed to have received a slight shock. Wright hardly knew what to make of my boyish speech. "Are you going to Linrock?" he asked thickly.
I eyed him with an entirely different glance from my other fearful one.
"I should smile," was my reply, as caustic as the most reckless cowboy's, and I saw him shake.
Colonel Sampson laid a restraining hand upon Wright. Then they both regarded me with undisguised interest. I sauntered away.
"George, your temper'll do for you some day," I heard the colonel say. "You'll get in bad with the wrong man some time. Hello, here are Joe and Brick!"
Mention of these fellows engaged my attention once more.
I saw two cowboys, one evidently getting his name from his brick-red hair. They were the roistering type, hard drinkers, devil-may-care fellows, packing guns and wearing bold fronts—a kind that the Ranger[1]s always called four-flushes[3].
However, as the Rangers' standard of nerve was high, there was room left for cowboys like these to be dangerous to ordinary men.
The little one was Joe, and directly Wright spoke to him he turned to look at me, and his thin mouth slanted down as he looked. Brick eyed me, too, and I saw that he was heavy, not a hard-riding cowboy.
Here right at the start were three enemies for me—Wright and his cowboys. But it did not matter; under any circumstances there would have been friction between such men and me.
I believed there might have been friction right then had not Miss Sampson called for me.
"Get our baggage, Russ," she said.
I hurried to comply, and when I had fetched it out Wright and the cowboys had mounted their horses, Colonel Sampson was in the one buckboard with two men I had not before observed, and the girls were in the other.
The driver of this one was a tall, lanky, tow-headed youth, growing like a Texas weed. We had not any too much room in the buckboard, but that fact was not going to spoil the ride for me.
We followed the leaders through the main street, out into the open, on to a wide, hard-packed road, showing years of travel. It headed northwest.
To our left rose the range of low, bleak mountains I had noted yesterday, and to our right sloped the mesquite-patched sweep of ridge and flat.
The driver pushed his team to a fast trot, which gait surely covered ground rapidly. We were close behind Colonel Sampson, who, from his vehement gestures, must have been engaged in very earnest colloquy with his companions.
The girls behind me, now that they were nearing the end of the journey, manifested less interest in the ride, and were speculating upon Linrock, and what it would be like. Occasionally I asked the driver a question, and sometimes the girls did likewise; but, to my disappointment, the ride seemed not to be the same as that of yesterday.
Every half mile or so we passed a ranch house, and as we traveled on these ranches grew further apart, until, twelve or fifteen miles out of Sanderson, they were so widely separated that each appeared alone on the wild range.
We came to a stream that ran north and I was surprised to see a goodly volume of water. It evidently flowed down from the mountain far to the west.
Tufts of grass were well scattered over the sandy ground, but it was high and thick, and considering the immense area in sight, there was grazing for a million head of stock.
We made three stops in the forenoon, one at a likely place to water the horses, the second at a chuckwagon belonging to cowboys who were riding after stock, and the third at a small cluster of adobe and stone houses, constituting a hamlet the driver called Sampson, named after the Colonel. From that point on to Linrock there were only a few ranches, each one controlling great acreage.
Early in the afternoon from a ridgetop we sighted Linrock, a green path in the mass of gray. For the barrens of Texas it was indeed a fair sight.
But I was more concerned with its remoteness from civilization than its beauty. At that time in the early 'seventies, when the vast western third of Texas was a wilderness, the pioneer had done wonders to settle there and establish places like Linrock.
As we rolled swiftly along, the whole sweeping range was dotted with cattle, and farther on, within a few miles of town, there were droves of horses that brought enthusiastic praise from Miss Sampson and her cousin.
"Plenty of room here for the long rides," I said, waving a hand at the gray-green expanse. "Your horses won't suffer on this range."
She was delighted, and her cousin for once seemed speechless.
"That's the ranch," said the driver, pointing with his whip.
It needed only a glance for me to see that Colonel Sampson's ranch was on a scale fitting the country.
The house was situated on the only elevation around Linrock, and it was not high, nor more than a few minutes' walk from the edge of town.
It was a low, flat-roofed structure, made of red adobe bricks and covered what appeared to be fully an acre of ground. All was green about it except where the fenced corrals and numerous barns or sheds showed gray and red.
Wright and the cowboys disappeared ahead of us in the cottonwood trees. Colonel Sampson got out of the buckboard and waited for us. His face wore the best expression I had seen upon it yet. There was warmth and love, and something that approached sorrow or regret.
His daughter was agitated, too. I got out and offered my seat, which Colonel Sampson took.
It was scarcely a time for me to be required, or even noticed at all, and I took advantage of it and turned toward the town.
Ten minutes of leisurely walking brought me to the shady outskirts of Linrock and I entered the town with mingled feelings of curiosity, eagerness, and expectation.
The street I walked down was not a main one. There were small, red houses among oaks and cottonwoods.
I went clear through to the other side, probably more than half a mile. I crossed a number of intersecting streets, met children, nice-looking women, and more than one dusty-booted man.
Half-way back this street I turned at right angles and walked up several blocks till I came to a tree-bordered plaza. On the far side opened a broad street which for all its horses and people had a sleepy look.
I walked on, alert, trying to take in everything, wondering if I would meet Steele, wondering how I would know him if we did meet. But I believed I could have picked that Ranger out of a thousand strangers, though I had never seen him.
Presently the residences gave place to buildings fronting right upon the stone sidewalk. I passed a grain store, a hardware store, a grocery store, then several unoccupied buildings and a vacant corner.
The next block, aside from the rough fronts of the crude structures, would have done credit to a small town even in eastern Texas. Here was evidence of business consistent with any prosperous community of two thousand inhabitants.
The next block, on both sides of the street, was a solid row of saloons, resorts, hotels. Saddled horses stood hitched all along the sidewalk in two long lines, with a buckboard and team here and there breaking the continuity. This block was busy and noisy.
From all outside appearances, Linrock was no different from other frontier towns, and my expectations were scarcely realized.
As the afternoon was waning I retraced my steps and returned to the ranch. The driver boy, whom I had heard called Dick, was looking for me, evidently at Miss Sampson's order, and he led me up to the house.
It was even bigger than I had conceived from a distance, and so old that the adobe bricks were worn smooth by rain and wind. I had a glimpse in at several doors as we passed by.
There was comfort here that spoke eloquently of many a freighter's trip from Del Rio. For the sake of the young ladies, I was glad to see things little short of luxurious for that part of the country.
At the far end of the house Dick conducted me to a little room, very satisfactory indeed to me. I asked about bunk-houses for the cowboys, and he said they were full to overflowing.
"Colonel Sampson has a big outfit, eh?"
"Reckon he has," replied Dick. "Don' know how many cowboys. They're always comin' an' goin'. I ain't acquainted with half of them."
"Much movement of stock these days?"
"Stock's always movin'," he replied with a queer look.
"Rustlers?"
But he did not follow up that look with the affirmative I expected.
"Lively place, I hear—Linrock is?"
"Ain't so lively as Sanderson, but it's bigger."
"Yes, I heard it was. Fellow down there was talking about two cowboys who were arrested."
"Sure. I heerd all about thet. Joe Bean an' Brick Higgins—they belong heah, but they ain't heah much."
I did not want Dick to think me overinquisitive, so I turned the talk into other channels. It appeared that Miss Sampson had not left any instructions for me, so I was glad to go with Dick to supper, which we had in the kitchen.
Dick informed me that the cowboys prepared their own meals down at the bunks; and as I had been given a room at the ranch-house he supposed I would get my meals there, too.
After supper I walked all over the grounds, had a look at the horses in the corrals, and came to the conclusion that it would be strange if Miss Sampson did not love her new home, and if her cousin did not enjoy her sojourn there. From a distance I saw the girls approaching with Wright, and not wishing to meet them I sheered off.
When the sun had set I went down to the town with the intention of finding Steele.
This task, considering I dared not make inquiries and must approach him secretly, might turn out to be anything but easy.
While it was still light, I strolled up and down the main street. When darkness set in I went into a hotel, bought cigars, sat around and watched, without any clue.
Then I went into the next place. This was of a rough crude exterior, but the inside was comparatively pretentious, and ablaze with lights.
It was full of men, coming and going—a dusty-booted crowd that smelled of horses and smoke.
I sat down for a while, with wide eyes and open ears. Then I hunted up a saloon, where most of the guests had been or were going. I found a great square room lighted by six huge lamps, a bar at one side, and all the floor space taken up by tables and chairs.
This must have been the gambling resort mentioned in the Ranger's letter to Captain Neal and the one rumored to be owned by the mayor of Linrock. This was the only gambling place of any size in southern Texas in which I had noted the absence of Mexicans. There was some card playing going on at this moment.
