The Rustlers of Pecos County | Page 2

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."
"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 Rangers
always called four-flushes.
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