Steele

“ The house grew quiet presently; there was a faint light or two in the hall and corridors. For the best part of an hour Steele sat in his room smoking. A few minutes before midnight he put down his cigarette and crept out into the corridor. It looked very dim and lonely, despite the specks of light here and there. The black walls, with their strong portraits, the ghostly figures in armour, all appealed to a strong imagination. Well in hand, as he usually held himself, Steele was conscious of an extra heartbeat or so as he crept downstairs. ”

“ Steele’s further duplicity, coming so immediately upon the first, roused fresh surmises and awakened thoughts which soon set my wits working in a direction as new as it was unexpected. I had believed my work over in this house, but as I recalled all the occurrences of the evening and turned the situation, as it now confronted me, over and over in my mind, I felt that it had just begun. There must be something in this latest development to help us in the struggle which lay before us. ”

“ I felt Sally's small fingers clutching my arm like sharp pincers. I bit my lips to keep them shut. What if Steele had heard her say that? Poor, noble, justice-loving, blind girl! She knew even less than I hoped. I forced my thought to the question immediately at hand. She gloried in the Ranger's work. She wanted with all her heart to see him succeed in it. She had a woman's pride in his manliness. Perhaps, with a woman's complex, incomprehensible motive, she wanted Steele to be shown to her in all the power that made him hated and feared by lawless men. ”

“ Steele,” said the general manager, rising with a deep sigh of satisfaction, as if everything had gone exactly as he planned it, “anything I can do to help on the good work will not be stinted. Call upon me when in any difficulty, Mr. Steele, and be assured of my most whole-hearted support,” and with that the great man held out his hand, which Steele, springing to his feet, clasped cordially. Without a glance at the crest-fallen Johnson, T. Acton Blair strode majestically from the room.
John Steele turned to his desk. ”

“ Steele went to a chair across the table from his host and sat down. Reagan stood where he was, his hands on his hips, looking down at him. In spite of himself, Steele felt rising within him his old admiration of the man; the poise of the powerful and yet graceful body, the frank look of the wide-spaced eyes, the very carriage of the shaggy head inspired approval of the physical man. And when Reagan put himself out to be affable, as he was plainly bent on doing to-day, he was not without a strange charm of personality. ”

“ Was it any wonder that when Dick Steele, aetat twenty-six, an officer of Fusiliers, and a merry vagabond, wanted to redeem his reputation by writing a rollicking comedy, his thoughts turned to the satirising of the British undertaker? For the young man must prove to the town that he was not the hypocrite several of his kind friends had dubbed him. ”

“ Steele leans out of her window, full of delight at the curious panorama moving past.
"Mrs. Steele!" I bend over and take her hand. "I hope all this will never grow dim. I want to remember it all my life."
"You will, dear." She turns away absorbed, eager to lose nothing of this new phase of Nature. [166]
"Haf no fear—you vill not forget—Blanca."
The low voice over my shoulder is an interruption; to enjoy the gift of sight is all-sufficient for a time. With happy disregard of the man at my back, I take in the changeful, fantastic vision. ”

“ Steele could distinctly hear the slide of metal on metal. A curious sensation shot up his spine, there was a queer tingling at the roots of his hair. Just for a moment he had a wild impulse to rush back to his room and lock himself in there.
"I'm not surprised at Hare," he muttered. "Seen unexpectedly, it would try the nerves of the strongest man."
The phantom game continued. Steele crushed down the fear that held him. He was watching with a vivid curiosity that almost amounted to pain. Not only was a ghostly contest in progress, but it was a masterly one. ”

“ When he reached the cabin, Saxon found Steele still awake. The gray advance-light of dawn beyond the eastern ridges had grown rosy, and the rosiness had brightened into the blue of living day when an early teamster, passing along the turnpike, saw two men garbed in what he would have called “full-dress suits,” still sitting over their cigars on the verandah of the hill shack. A losing love either expels a man into the outer sourness of resentment, or graduates him into a friendship that needs no further testing. Steele was not the type that goes into an embittered exile. ”

“ It seemed strange that a man who had lived west of the Pecos for ten years could not see in Steele something which forbade that kind of talk.
It certainly was not nerve Wright showed; men of courage were seldom intolerant; and with the matchless nerve that characterized Steele or the great gunmen of the day there went a cool, unobtrusive manner, a speech brief, almost gentle, certainly courteous. ”

“ To the unembarrassing matter, the unembarrassed style! Steele is, perhaps, the most impulsive writer of the school [12] to which he belongs; he abounds in felicities of impulse. Yet who can help feeling that his style is regular because the matter he deals with is the somewhat uncontentious, even, limited soul, of an age not imaginative, and unambitious in its speculative flight? Even in Steele himself we may observe with what sureness of instinct the men of that age turned aside at the contact of anything likely to make them, in any sense, forget themselves. ”

“ Or had Waldron, aware of the pursuit, ambushed the man trailing him? Steele broke into a run and dashed on toward them through the trees.
For the third time now he saw Reagan and Marvella. They stood tense and motionless, staring toward the black shadows under the grove where the short struggle had occurred. Already that struggle was over. Steele whipped out his revolver and hastened on.
Now at last he could make out, though dimly, what was going on. A man was down; two other men had thrown themselves upon him, had silenced him with a knife for all time or with the threat of a knife. ”

“ He laughed. “Tell me, Marvella, whoever heard of a guest at a private home in the mountains having his bags rifled? And who would ever suspect that a man would have such things along with him?”
“The lamb telling his secrets to the lioness!” muttered Steele, somewhat in disgust. He had his doubts concerning the old adage that love blinds; but certainly infatuation does scatter much dust in a man's eyes.
There were steps on the porch, hinting at the return of Alice and Reagan. ”

“ Steele was the driving wedge that had begun to split Linrock—split the honest from dominance by the dishonest. To be sure, Steele might be killed at any moment, and that contingency was voiced in the growl of one sullen man who said: "Wot the hell are we up against? Ain't somebody goin' to plug this Ranger?"
It was then that the thing for which Steele stood, the Ranger Service—to help, to save, to defend, to punish, with such somber menace of death as seemed embodied in his cold attitude toward resistance—took hold of Linrock and sunk deep into both black and honest hearts. ”

“ As the swing-door closed behind him, Barton suddenly realized that they might never meet again. Steele had been one of his few friends—a pleasant good-natured fellow, who had always treated him with a faint touch of deference; an unconscious tribute that some young men are always ready to pay to a stronger or keener intelligence than their own. Steele would be sorry if things went wrong. ”

“ Thus Steele always received his discouragement from his own chief, and with most people this would ultimately have dampened enthusiasm; but John was ever optimistic and a believer in his work. One day he rushed into the club, his hat on the back of his head, and his eyes ablaze with excitement.
“Mr. Rogers, I’ve solved the problem at last!” he cried. “I tell you, well make the Burdock the greatest line in this country.” ”

“ Steele, I think two things may be taken for granted—first: no names need be mentioned; second: you are opposed to a power infinitely greater than that of Mr. Rockervelt or any other financial force which the world contains.”
“You are right in both surmises, Mr. Nicholson, and I experience that keen joy which warriors feel with foemen worthy of their steel—if you will excuse the apparent pun on my own name. I am really quoting from Scott, not the railway man of that name, but the poet. And now for your message, Mr. Nicholson.” ”

“ His fingers fumbled over his waistcoat, but did not find it. The weapon of defence and attack, the symbol of interrogation and incomprehensibility, was gone. Beauty Steele was under the eyes of another self, and neither disdain, nor contempt, nor the passive stare, were available. ”

“ And crazy Congreve scarce could spare A shilling to discharge his chair: Till prudence taught him to appeal From Pæan's fire to party zeal; Not owing to his happy vein The fortunes of his later scene, Took proper principles to thrive: And so might every dunce alive. [2] Thus Steele, who own'd what others writ, And flourish'd by imputed wit, From perils of a hundred jails, Withdrew to starve, and die in Wales. ”

“ No—I decided that Steele trusted to the effect his boldness had created. It was this power to cow ordinary men that explained so many of his feats; just the same it was his keenness to read desperate men, his nerve to confront them, that made him great.
The crowd followed Steele and his captive down the middle of the main street and watched him secure a team and buckboard and drive off on the road to Sanderson. ”

“ Steele, I’ll talk to you as if you were your own sister. Have you ever done a stroke of useful toil since you were born?”
“Oh, yes; I worked on a railway.”
“Very well. Go to the Black Hills and take a miner’s outfit with you. Become for the time one of my father’s workmen—or, rather, boss of the gang, if you like. Go into that mine, and direct them where they are to run the next level, and follow that level for a month, working with the men and keeping clear of the blasts. After you have penetrated a month in any direction you please, take the ore from the last blast and have it assayed. ”

“ Had Bill Steele wanted to carry me away tonight he would have done it alone, Bill Steele's way, a man's way! No, Mr. Embry, I am not mistaken. You have played your game, played it to the desperate end and have lost. ”

“ He never moved a muscle, and his wit shone by contrast with his moody exterior as a lightning-flash illuminates a gloomy sky. It has that element of unexpectedness which goes far to define the nature of wit.
Real drollery in Anglo-Irish literature seems to have begun with Steele. In the case of Steele there is rarely anything to offend modern taste. His tenderness is akin to Goldsmith’s, and the natural man is clearly visible in his writings. ”

“ Of this memorable friendship the greater praise must be given to Steele. It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be feared; and Addison never considered Steele as a rival; but Steele lived, as he confesses, under an habitual subjection to the predominating genius of Addison, whom he always mentioned with reverence, and treated with obsequiousness. ”

“ No change came into Turk Wilson's red, immobile face. Bill Rice, however, showed his surprise frankly at the information.
"How's that come about, Steele?" he demanded.
"Very naturally, Bill," answered Steele. "But we're not here for the discussion of unnecessary details, are we? All we need to go into at present is that the ground you're squatting on, with eighty acres including the Goblet yonder and a nice little stretch of timber land, belongs to me."
"If you was most any other man I know," said Bill Rice after his own blunt fashion, "I'd say liar to you, Steele." ”

“ At three o’clock the ex-station-master of Slocum Junction was shown into John Steele’s private office. His face was so gaunt and haggard that for a moment Steele felt sorry for him; but business is business, and sympathy has no place in the wheat-pit. ”

“ Is there a heart that can't affection feel
For lands so rich as once to boast a Steele?
Who warm for freedom, and with virtue fraught,
His country dearly lov'd, and greatly taught;
Whose morals pure, the purest style conveys,
T' instruct his Britain to the last of days.'"
Steele resided at White House (Ty Gwyn, as it is called in Welsh) , a clean farm-house half way between Caermarthen and Llangunnor church, which is situate on a hill commanding extensive views of one of the prettiest values in Wales. ”

“ Steele sat down with his face in his hands, thoroughly discouraged for the first time in his life. He felt a boyish desire to cry, and a mannish desire to curse, but did neither. The old gentleman rambled on amiably: “You are a ten-thousand dollar man, John, but your line of progress is on some road with a future. Follow my advice and take your charter to that old thief Rocker-velt himself. ”

“ I mean Steele in the flesh, his nerve, the something that's in his eyes.
"Now, when it comes to handling a gun the man doesn't breathe who has anything on Steele. There was an outlaw, Duane, who might have killed Steele, had they ever met. I'll tell you Duane's story some day. A girl saved him, made a Ranger of him, then got him to go far away from Texas."
"That was wise. Indeed, I'd like to hear the story," she replied. "Then, after all, Russ, in this dreadful part of Texas life, when man faces man, it's all in the quickness of hand?"
"Absolutely. It's the draw. And Steele's a wonder. ”

“ John Steele lifted up his voice and gave utterance to a piercing scream that rent the silence like the soul-scattering screech of a locomotive.
“Bless us and keep us!” cried Constance Berrington, covering her small ears with her small hands, “is that an Indian war-whoop, that once used to resound in this wilderness?’
“No, it’s the acme of civilisation; merely a college yell. If any of your people are graduates of Chicago University they’ll recognise it.”
The people who were not graduates of anything, except the college of hard labour, hurried to meet them with anxious faces. ”