h."

"You wrong Bishop Dyer. Tull is hard, I know. But then he has been in
love with me for years."

"Oh, your faith and your excuses! You can't see what I know--and if you
did see it you'd not admit it to save your life. That's the Mormon
of you. These elders and bishops will do absolutely any deed to go on
building up the power and wealth of their church, their empire. Think
of what they've done to the Gentiles here, to me--think of Milly Erne's
fate!"

"What do you know of her story?"

"I know enough--all, perhaps, except the name of the Mormon who brought
her here. But I must stop this kind of talk."

She pressed his hand in response. He helped her to a seat beside him
on the bench. And he respected a silence that he divined was full of
woman's deep emotion beyond his understanding.

It was the moment when the last ruddy rays of the sunset brightened
momentarily before yielding to twilight. And for Venters the outlook
before him was in some sense similar to a feeling of his future, and
with searching eyes he studied the beautiful purple, barren waste of
sage. Here was the unknown and the perilous. The whole scene impressed
Venters as a wild, austere, and mighty manifestation of nature. And
as it somehow reminded him of his prospect in life, so it suddenly
resembled the woman near him, only in her there were greater beauty and
peril, a mystery more unsolvable, and something nameless that numbed his
heart and dimmed his eye.

"Look! A rider!" exclaimed Jane, breaking the silence. "Can that be
Lassiter?"

Venters moved his glance once more to the west. A horseman showed dark
on the sky-line, then merged into the color of the sage.

"It might be. But I think not--that fellow was coming in. One of your
riders, more likely. Yes, I see him clearly now. And there's another."

"I see them, too."

"Jane, your riders seem as many as the bunches of sage. I ran into five
yesterday 'way down near the trail to Deception Pass. They were with the
white herd."

"You still go to that canyon? Bern, I wish you wouldn't. Oldring and his
rustlers live somewhere down there."

"Well, what of that?"

"Tull has already hinted to your frequent trips into Deception Pass."

"I know." Venters uttered a short laugh. "He'll make a rustler of me
next. But, Jane, there's no water for fifty miles after I leave here,
and the nearest is in the canyon. I must drink and water my horse.
There! I see more riders. They are going out."