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.

She had finally accepted the wild life of this border as something terrible and inevitable, but passing.

Steele was one of the strange and great and misunderstood men who were making that wild life pass.
For the first time I realized that Miss Sampson, through sharpened eyes of love, saw Steele as he really was--a wonderful and necessary violence.

Her intelligence and sympathy had enabled her to see through defamation and the false records following a Ranger; she had had no choice but to love him; and then a woman's glory in a work that freed men, saved women, and made children happy effaced forever the horror of a few dark deeds of blood.
"Miss Sampson, I must tell you first," I began, and hesitated--"that I'm not a cowboy.