ple. And on the moment I can
conceive of little I wouldn't do to gain that end."

How much better and freer Jane felt after that confession! She meant to
show him that there was one Mormon who could play a game or wage a fight
in the open.

"I reckon," said Lassiter, and he laughed.

It was the best in her, if the most irritating, that Lassiter always
aroused.

"Will you come?" She looked into his eyes, and for the life of her could
not quite subdue an imperiousness that rose with her spirit. "I never
asked so much of any man--except Bern Venters."

"'Pears to me that you'd run no risk, or Venters, either. But mebbe that
doesn't hold good for me."

"You mean it wouldn't be safe for you to be often here? You look for
ambush in the cottonwoods?"

"Not that so much."

At this juncture little Fay sidled over to Lassiter.

"Has oo a little dirl?" she inquired.

"No, lassie," replied the rider.

Whatever Fay seemed to be searching for in Lassiter's sun-reddened face
and quiet eyes she evidently found. "Oo tan tom to see me," she added,
and with that, shyness gave place to friendly curiosity. First his
sombrero with its leather band and silver ornaments commanded her
attention; next his quirt, and then the clinking, silver spurs. These
held her for some time, but presently, true to childish fickleness, she
left off playing with them to look for something else. She laughed in
glee as she ran her little hands down the slippery, shiny surface
of Lassiter's leather chaps. Soon she discovered one of the hanging
gun--sheaths, and she dragged it up and began tugging at the huge black
handle of the gun. Jane Withersteen repressed an exclamation. What
significance there was to her in the little girl's efforts to dislodge
that heavy weapon! Jane Withersteen saw Fay's play and her beauty and
her love as most powerful allies to her own woman's part in a game that
suddenly had acquired a strange zest and a hint of danger. And as for
the rider, he appeared to have forgotten Jane in the wonder of this
lovely child playing about him. At first he was much the shyer of the
two. Gradually her confidence overcame his backwardness, and he had the
temerity to stroke her golden curls with a great hand. Fay rewarded his
boldness with a smile, and when he had gone to the extreme of closing
that great hand over her little brown one, she said, simply, "I like
oo!"

Sight of his face then made Jane oblivious for the time to his character