There was a note in his voice that called for obedience. Ramona turned, a flurry of fear in her heart. She did not know what there was to be afraid of, but she was quite sure her companion had his reason. The words of the old plantation song trembled from her lips into the night.

A dozen yards behind her Jack followed, backing toward the house. His six-shooter was in his hand, close to his side.

He flashed one look backward. The parlor was lit up and Clint Wadley was lying on a lounge reading a paper. He was a tempting mark for anybody with a grudge against him.

Jack took the last twenty yards on the run. He plunged into the parlor on the heels of Ramona.

Simultaneously came the sound of a shot and of breaking gla.s.s. Wadley jumped up, in time to see the Ranger blow out the lamp. Jack caught Ramona by the shoulders and thrust her down to her knees in a corner of the room.

"What in blue blazes--?" Clint began to demand angrily.

"Keep still," interrupted Jack. "Some one's bushwhackin' either you or me."

He crept to the window and drew down the blind. A small hole showed where the bullet had gone through the window and left behind it a star of shattered gla.s.s.

Ramona began to whimper. Her father's arm found and encircled her. "It's all right, honey. He can't git us now."

"I'm goin' out by the back door. Mebbe I can put salt on this bird's tail," said Jack. "You stay right where you are, Mr. Wadley. They can't hit either of you in that corner."

"Oh, don't! Please don't go!" wailed the girl.

Her words were a fillip to the Ranger. They sent a glow through his blood. He knew that at that moment she was not thinking of the danger to herself.

"Don't you worry. I'll swing round on him wide. Ten to one he's already hittin' the dust fast to make his get-away."

He slipped out of the room and out of the house. So slowly did he move that it was more than an hour before he returned to them.

"I guessed right," he told the cattleman. "The fellow hit it up at a gallop through the brush. He's ten miles from here now."

"Was he after me or you?"

"Probably me. The Rangers ain't popular with some citizens. Looks to me like Steve Gurley's work."

"I wouldn't be a Ranger if I was you. I'd resign," said Ramona impulsively.

"Would you?" Jack glanced humorously at Wadley. "I don't expect yore father would indorse them sentiments, Miss Ramona. He'd tell me to go through."

Clint nodded. "'Mona said you wanted to see me about somethin'."

The young man showed a little embarra.s.sment. The cattleman guessed the reason. He turned to his daughter.

"Private business, honey."

Ramona kissed her father good-night and shook hands with Jack. When they were alone the Ranger mentioned the reason for his call.

"It's goin' around that Pete Dinsmore claims to have somethin' on Rutherford. The story is that he says you'd better lay off him or he'll tell what he knows."

The eyes of the cattleman winced. Otherwise he gave no sign of distress.

"I've got to stand the gaff, Jack. He can't blackmail me, even if the hound cooks up some infernal story about Ford. I hate it most on 'Mona's account. It'll hurt the little girl like sixty."

Jack was of that opinion too, but he knew that Wadley's decision not to throw his influence to shield the Dinsmores was the right one.

"She thought a heap o' Ford, 'Mona did," the cattleman went on. "He was all she had except me. The boy was wild. Most young colts are. My fault.

I made things too easy for him--gave him too much money to spend. But outside of bein' wild he was all right. I'd hate to have her hear anything against him." He sighed. "Well, I reckon what must be must."

"Stories the Dinsmores tell won't count with honest folks. Pete is one bad _hombre_. Everybody will know why he talks--if he does. That's a big _if_ too. He knows we've got evidence to tie his gang up with the killin' of Ford. He doesn't know how much. Consequence is he'll not want to raise any question about the boy. We might come back at him too strong."

"Mebbeso." Wadley looked at the Ranger and his gaze appraised Roberts a man among men. He wished that he had been given a son like this. "Boy, you kept yore wits fine to-night. That idea of makin' 'Mona walk alone to the house an' keepin' her singin' so's a bushwhacker couldn't make any mistake an' think she was a man was a jim-dandy."

The Ranger rose. He had not the same difficulty in parting from Wadley or any other man that he found in making his adieux to a woman. He simply reached for his hat, nodded almost imperceptibly, and walked out of the house.

CHAPTER XIX

TRAPPED

The territory which Captain Ellison had to cover to find the Dinsmore gang was as large as Maine. Over this country the buffalo-hunter had come and gone; the cattleman was coming and intended to stay. Large stretches of it were entirely uninhabited; here and there sod or adobe houses marked where hardy ranchers had located on the creeks; and in a few places small settlements dotted the vast prairies.

There were in those days three towns in the Panhandle. If you draw a line due east from Tascosa, it will pa.s.s very close to Mobeetie, a hundred miles away. Clarendon is farther to the south. In the seventies Amarillo was only what Jumbo Wilkins would have called "a whistlin'-post in the desert," a place where team outfits camped because water was handy. The official capital of the Panhandle was Mobeetie, the seat of government of Wheeler County, to which were attached for judicial purposes more than a score of other counties not yet organized or even peopled.

To the towns of the Panhandle were drifting in cowboys, freighters, merchants, gamblers, cattle outfits, and a few rustlers from Colorado, New Mexico, and the more settled parts of Texas. They were the hardier sons of an adventurous race, for each man had to make good his footing by his own strength. At first there had been no law except that which lay in the good-will of men, and the holster by their side. The sheriff of Wheeler County had neither the deputies nor the financial backing to carry justice into the mesquite. Game gunmen served as marshals in the towns, but these had no authority on the plains. Until Captain Ellison and his little company of Rangers moved into the district there had been no way of taking law into the chaparral. The coming of these quiet men in buckskin was notice to the bad-man that murder and robbery were not merely pleasant pastimes.

Yet it would be easy to overstate the lawlessness of the Panhandle.

There were bad men. Every frontier of civilization has them. But of all the great cattle country which stretched from Mexico to the Canadian line none had a finer or more orderly citizenry than this. The country was notably free of the bloodshed which drenched such places as Dodge City to the east or Lincoln County, New Mexico, to the west of the Panhandle.

Ellison wanted the Dinsmores, not because he believed he could yet hang any serious crime on them but for the moral effect upon them and the community. Clint Wadley had gone looking for trouble and had been wounded in consequence. No Texas jury would convict on that count. But it was not a conviction the fire-eating little Captain wanted just now.

He intended to show that his boys could go out and arrest the Dinsmores or any other lawbreakers, whenever the occasion called for it. It might take them a week or a month or six months, but they would bag their game in the end. The rule of the Texas Rangers was to sleep on a man's trail until they found him.

The Captain stationed a man at each of the three towns. He sent two on a scouting-trip through No Man's Land, and two more to search Palo Duro Canon. He watched the stages as they went and came, questioned mule-skinners with freight outfits, kept an eye on _tendejons_ and feed-corrals. And at the end of three weeks he had no results whatever to show, except a sarcastic note from Pete Dinsmore complimenting him on his force of Rangers.

The Captain was furious, but not a whit discouraged.

"Dog it, we'll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," he told Lieutenant Hawley, his second in command.

To them came Jack Roberts with a proposition. "I've found out that Homer Dinsmore has a girl in Tascosa. She's a Mexican. I know about her through Tony Alviro. It seems she's a cousin of Bonita, the girl Tony is going to marry. About once a week Dinsmore rides into town at night, ties his horse in the brush back of her house, and goes in to see her.

If you say so, Chief, I'll make it my business to be there when he comes."

"Need any help, do you reckon?"

"No. I'll have to hide out in the mesquite. One man will be better on that job than two."

"All right, son. You know yore job. Get him."

That was all the warrant Jack wanted or needed. He returned to Tascosa and made his preparations.