As for Sally, I had fallen hopelessly in love with her. By turns Sally
was indifferent to me, cold, friendly like a comrade, and dangerously
sweet.

Somehow she saw through me, knew I was not just what I pretended to be.
But she never breathed her conviction. She championed me. I wanted to
tell her the truth about myself because I believed the doubt of me alone
stood in the way of my winning her.

Still that might have been my vanity. She had never said she cared for
me although she had looked it.

This tangle of my personal life, however, had not in the least affected
my loyalty and duty to Vaughn Steele. Day by day I had grown more
attached to him, keener in the interest of our work.

It had been a busy month--a month of foundation building. My vigilance
and my stealthy efforts had not been rewarded by anything calculated to
strengthen our suspicions of Sampson. But then he had been absent from
the home very often, and was difficult to watch when he was there.

George Wright came and went, too, presumably upon stock business. I
could not yet see that he was anything but an honest rancher, deeply
involved with Sampson and other men in stock deals; nevertheless, as a
man he had earned my contempt.

He was a hard drinker, cruel to horses, a gambler not above stacking the
cards, a quick-tempered, passionate Southerner.

He had fallen in love with Diane Sampson, was like her shadow when at