Arthur Ridley, seated on the porch between Clint Wadley and Ramona, was annoying one and making himself popular with the other. For he was maintaining, very quietly but very steadily, that Jack Roberts had been wholly right in refusing to release Dinsmore.
"Just as soon as you lads get to be Rangers you go crazy with the heat," said the cattleman irritably. "Me, I don't go down on my ham bones for the letter of the law. Justice! That's what I aim for to do. I don't say you boys haven't got a right to sleep on Dinsmore's trail till you get him. That's yore duty. But out here in Texas we'd ought to do things high, wide, an' handsome. Roberts, by my way of it, should have shook Homer's hand. 'Fine! You saved 'Mona's life. Light a shuck into a chaparral pronto. In twelve hours I'm goin' to hit the trail after you again.' That's what he had ought to have said."
"You're asking him to be generous at the expense of the State, Mr. Wadley. Jack couldn't do that. Dinsmore's liberty wasn't a gift of his to give. He was hired by the State--sent out to bring in that particular man. He hadn't any choice but to do it," insisted Arthur.
Ramona sat in the shadow of the honeysuckle vines. She did not say anything and Ridley could not see her face well. He did not know how grateful she was for his championship of his friend. She knew he was right and her heart throbbed gladly because of it. She wanted to feel that she and her father were wrong and had done an injustice to the man she loved.
Captain Ellison came down the walk, his spurs jingling. In spite of his years the little officer carried himself jauntily, his wide hat tilted at a rakish angle. Just now he was worried.
As soon as he knew the subject of conversation, he plunged in, a hot partisan, eager for battle. Inside of two minutes he and Wadley were engaged in one of their periodical semi-quarrels.
"You're wrong, Clint," the Captain announced dogmatically. "You're wrong, like you 'most always are. You're that bullheaded you cayn't see it. But I'm surprised at you, 'Mona. If Jack had been a private citizen, you wouldn't needed to ask him to turn loose Dinsmore. But he wasn't. That's the stuff my Rangers are made of. They play the hand out. The boy did just right."
"That's what you say, Jim. You drill these boys of yours till they ain't hardly human. I'm for law an' order. You know that. But I don't go out of my head about them the way you do. 'Mona an' I have got some sense. We're reasonable human bein's." To demonstrate his possession of this last quality Clint brought his fist down on the arm of the chair so hard that it cracked.