rd me whisper the same question, an' neither
would they speak a word when they lay dyin'. Long before I'd learned
no man of this breed or class--or God knows what--would give up any
secrets! I had to see in a man's fear of death the connections with
Milly Erne's fate. An' as the years passed at long intervals I would
find such a man.

"So as I drifted on the long trail down into southern Utah my name
preceded me, an' I had to meet a people prepared for me, an' ready with
guns. They made me a gun-man. An' that suited me. In all this time signs
of the proselyter an' the giant with the blue-ice eyes an' the gold
beard seemed to fade dimmer out of the trail. Only twice in ten years
did I find a trace of that mysterious man who had visited the proselyter
at my home village. What he had to do with Milly's fate was beyond all
hope for me to learn, unless my guidin' spirit led me to him! As for
the other man, I knew, as sure as I breathed en' the stars shone en' the
wind blew, that I'd meet him some day.

"Eighteen years I've been on the trail. An' it led me to the last lonely
villages of the Utah border. Eighteen years!... I feel pretty old now. I
was only twenty when I hit that trail. Well, as I told you, back here a
ways a Gentile said Jane Withersteen could tell me about Milly Erne an'
show me her grave!"

The low voice ceased, and Lassiter slowly turned his sombrero round and
round, and appeared to be counting the silver ornaments on the band.
Jane, leaning toward him, sat as if petrified, listening intently,
waiting to hear more. She could have shrieked, but power of tongue and
lips were denied her. She saw only this sad, gray, passion-worn man, and
she heard only the faint rustling of the leaves.

"Well, I came to Cottonwoods," went on Lassiter, "an' you showed me
Milly's grave. An' though your teeth have been shut tighter 'n them of
all the dead men lyin' back along that trail, jest the same you told me
the secret I've lived these eighteen years to hear! Jane, I said you'd
tell me without ever me askin'. I didn't need to ask my question here.
The day, you remember, when that fat party throwed a gun on me in your
court, an'--"

"Oh! Hush!" whispered Jane, blindly holding up her hands.

"I seen in your face that Dyer, now a bishop, was the proselyter who
ruined Milly Erne."

For an instant Jane Withersteen's brain was a whirling chaos and she
recovered to find herself grasping at Lassiter like one drowning. And as