Steele leaned easily against the counter, and he said good morning
pleasantly. Wright deigned no reply, although he bent a curious and hard
scrutiny upon Steele. In fact, Wright evinced nothing that would lead
one to think he had any respect for Steele as a man or as a Ranger.

"Steele, that was the second break of yours last night," he said
finally. "If you come fooling round the ranch again there'll be hell!"

It seemed strange that a man who had lived west of the Pecos for ten
years could not see in Steele something which forbade that kind of talk.

It certainly was not nerve Wright showed; men of courage were seldom
intolerant; and with the matchless nerve that characterized Steele or
the great gunmen of the day there went a cool, unobtrusive manner, a
speech brief, almost gentle, certainly courteous. Wright was a
hot-headed Louisianian of French extraction; a man evidently who had
never been crossed in anything, and who was strong, brutal, passionate,
which qualities, in the face of a situation like this, made him simply a
fool!

The way Steele looked at Wright was joy to me. I hated this smooth,
dark-skinned Southerner. But, of course, an ordinary affront like
Wright's only earned silence from Steele.

"I'm thinking you used your Ranger bluff just to get near Diane
Sampson," Wright sneered. "Mind you, if you come up there again there'll
be hell!"

"You're damn right there'll be hell!" retorted Steele, a kind of high
ring in his voice. I saw thick, dark red creep into his face.