Jack Roberts was the only Ranger in town. He glanced at the clock. There was just time to catch the stage to Tascosa. He reached for his guns and his hat.
CHAPTER XII
TEX REARRANGES THE SEATING
The Tascosa stage was full. Its passengers were "packed like Yanks at Libby Prison," according to one of them, an ex-Confederate who had drifted West after the war. They were of the varied types common to the old Southwest—a drover, a cattle-buyer, a cowpuncher looking for a job, a smart salesman from St. Louis, and one young woman. Beside the driver on the box sat a long-bodied man in buckskin with a clean brown jaw and an alert, sardonic eye.
The salesman, a smooth, good-looking fellow whose eye instinctively rested on attractive women, made inquiries of Joe Johnson's old trooper.
"Who's the damsel?"
"Which?"
"The girl. She's a pippin." His possessive eye gloated on the young woman in front. "She didn't learn how to dress in this neck of the woods, either. Betcha she's from New Orleans or St. Louis."