It was for the sake of Steele. Because he was a
wonderful man! Because I had been his undoing! Because I had thrown
Diane Sampson into his arms! That had been my great error. This Ranger
had always been the wonder and despair of his fellow officers, so
magnificent a machine, so sober, temperate, chaste, so unremittingly
loyal to the Service, so strangely stern and faithful to his conception
of the law, so perfect in his fidelity to duty. He was the model, the
inspiration, the pride of all of us. To me, indeed, he represented the
Ranger Service. He was the incarnation of that spirit which fighting
Texas had developed to oppose wildness and disorder and crime. He would
carry through this Linrock case; but even so, if he were not killed, his
career would be ruined. He might save the Service, yet at the cost of
his happiness. He was not a machine; he was a man. He might be a perfect
Ranger; still he was a human being.
The loveliness, the passion, the tragedy of a woman, great as they were,
had not power to shake him from his duty. Futile, hopeless, vain her
love had been to influence him. But there had flashed over me with
subtle, overwhelming suggestion that not futile, not vain was _my_ love
to save him! Therefore, beyond and above all other claims, and by reason
of my wrong to him, his claim came first.
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