I pictured that home. I wondered that long
before I had not associated wealth and luxury with her family. Always I
had owned a weakness for plantations, for the agricultural life with its
open air and freedom from towns.
I saw myself riding through the cotton and rice and cane, home to the
stately old mansion, where long-eared hounds bayed me welcome and a
woman looked for me and met me with happy and beautiful smiles. There
might--there _would_ be children. And something new, strange,
confounding with its emotion, came to life deep in my heart. There would
be children! Sally their mother; I their father! The kind of life a
lonely Ranger always yearned for and never had! I saw it all, felt it
keenly, lived its sweetness in an hour of temptation that made me weak
physically and my spirit faint and low.
For what had I turned my back on this beautiful, all-satisfying
prospect? Was it to arrest and jail a few rustlers? Was it to meet that
mocking Sampson face to face and show him my shield and reach for my
gun? Was it to kill that hated Wright? Was it to save the people of
Linrock from further greed, raids, murder? Was it to please and aid my
old captain, Neal of the Rangers? Was it to save the Service to the
State?
No--a thousand times no.
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