goin' to plug this Ranger?"

It was then that the thing for which Steele stood, the Ranger
Service--to help, to save, to defend, to punish, with such somber menace
of death as seemed embodied in his cold attitude toward resistance--took
hold of Linrock and sunk deep into both black and honest hearts.

It was what was behind Steele that seemed to make him more than an
officer--a man.

I could feel how he began to loom up, the embodiment of a powerful
force--the Ranger Service--the fame of which, long known to this lawless
Pecos gang, but scouted as a vague and distant thing, now became an
actuality, a Ranger in the flesh, whose surprising attributes included
both the law and the enforcement of it.

When I reached the ranch the excitement had preceded me. Miss Sampson
and Sally, both talking at once, acquainted me with the fact that they
had been in a store on the main street a block or more from Martin's
place.

They had seen the crowd, heard the uproar; and, as they had been
hurriedly started toward home by their attendant Dick, they had
encountered Steele stalking by.

"He looked grand!" exclaimed Sally.

Then I told the girls the whole story in detail.

"Russ, is it true, just as you tell it?" inquired Diane earnestly.