"You said you knew what I've got to do to Diane Sampson," he repeated
hoarsely.

"Yes, you've got to ruin her happiness, if not her life."

"Why? Speak out, Russ. All this comes like a blow. There for a little I
hoped you had worked out things differently from me. No hope. Ruin her
life! Why?"

I could explain this strange agitation in Steele in no other way except
that realization had brought keen suffering as incomprehensible as it
was painful. I could not tell if it came from suddenly divined love for
Diane Sampson equally with a poignant conviction that his fate was to
wreck her. But I did see that he needed to speak out the brutal truth.

"Steele, old man, you'll ruin Diane Sampson, because, as arrest looks
improbable to me, you'll have to kill her father."

"My God! Why, why? Say it!"

"Because Sampson is the leader of the Linrock gang of rustlers."

That night before we parted we had gone rather deeply into the plan of
action for the immediate future.

First I gave Steele my earnest counsel and then as stiff an argument as
I knew how to put up, all anent the absolute necessity of his eternal
vigilance. If he got shot in a fair encounter with his enemies--well,
that was a Ranger's risk and no disgrace. But to be massacred in bed,