When it leaked out somewhere that Steele was openly cultivating the honest stay-at-home citizens, to array them in time against the other element, then Linrock showed its wolf teeth hinted of in the letters to Captain Neal.
Several times Steele was shot at in the dark and once slightly injured.
Rumor had it that Jack Blome, the gunman of those parts, was coming in to meet Steele.

Part of Linrock awakened and another part, much smaller, became quieter, more secluded.
Strangers upon whom we could get no line mysteriously came and went.

The drinking, gambling, fighting in the resorts seemed to gather renewed life.

Abundance of money floated in circulation.
And rumors, vague and unfounded, crept in from Sanderson and other points, rumors of a gang of rustlers off here, a hold-up of the stage off here, robbery of a rancher at this distant point, and murder done at another.
This was Texas and New Mexico life in these frontier days but, strangely neither Steele nor I had yet been able to associate any rumor or act with a possible gang of rustlers in Linrock.
Nevertheless we had not been discouraged.

After three weeks of waiting we had become alive to activity around us, and though it was unseen, we believed we would soon be on its track.
My task was the busier and the easier.