The work of native sheriffs and constables in western Texas had been a farce, an utter failure.

If an honest native of a community undertook to be a sheriff he became immediately a target for rowdy cowboys and other vicious elements.
Many a town south and west of San Antonio owed its peace and prosperity to Rangers, and only to them.

They had killed or driven out the criminals.

They interpreted the law for themselves, and it was only such an attitude toward law--the stern, uncompromising, implacable extermination of the lawless--that was going to do for all Texas what it had done for part.
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.
It was what was behind Steele that seemed to make him more than an officer--a man.
I could feel how he began to loom up, the embodiment of a powerful force--the Ranger Service--the fame of which, long known to this lawless Pecos gang, but scouted as a vague and distant thing, now became an actuality, a Ranger in the flesh, whose surprising attributes included both the law and the enforcement of it.
When I reached the ranch the excitement had preceded me.