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Updated: June 13, 2025
Presently, as the head of the white line reached a point opposite to where Jane stood, Lassiter spurred his black into a run. Jane saw him take a position on the off side of the leaders of the stampede, and there he rode. It was like a race. They swept on down the valley, and when the end of the white line neared Lassiter's first stand the head had begun to swing round to the west.
Jane found herself weeping passionately. She had not been conscious of it till Lassiter ended his story, and she experienced exquisite pain and relief in shedding tears. Long had her eyes been dry, her grief deep; long had her emotions been dumb. Lassiter's story put her on the rack; the appalling nature of Venters's act and speech had no parallel as an outrage; it was worse than bloodshed.
No!... Lassiter, I won't let you go!" But a flush of fire flamed in her cheeks, and her trembling hands shook Black Star's bridle, and her eyes fell before Lassiter's. "Lassiter, will you be my rider?" Jane had asked him. "I reckon so," he had replied. Few as the words were, Jane knew how infinitely much they implied.
There, if never before, he saw the fruit of her years of experience on steep slopes. Only such experience could have made the feat possible. Jane had to be hauled up, and the task was a painful one for her. Lassiter's turn came then, and he showed more strength and agility than Shefford had supposed him capable of.
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.
Jane Withersteen offered up no prayer for Dyer's soul. Lassiter's step sounded in the hall the familiar soft, silver-clinking step and she heard it with thrilling new emotions in which was a vague joy in her very fear of him. The door opened, and she saw him, the old Lassiter, slow, easy, gentle, cool, yet not exactly the same Lassiter.
The same swift glance, shifting low, brought into range of her sight a smoking gun and splashes of blood. "Ah-h!" she moaned, and was drifting, sinking again into darkness, when Lassiter's voice arrested her. "It's all right, Jane. It's all right." "Did you kill him?" she whispered. "Who? That fat party who was here? No. I didn't kill him." "Oh!... Lassiter!" "Say! It was queer for you to faint.
"Well, I reckon you've all had your say, an' now it's Lassiter's turn. Why, I was jest praying for this meetin'. Bess, jest look here." Gently he touched her arm and turned her to face the others, and then outspread his great hand to disclose a shiny, battered gold locket. "Open it," he said, with a singularly rich voice. Bess complied, but listlessly.
The men exchanged glances, and the meaning of Lassiter's keen inquiry and Judkins's bold reply, both unspoken, was not lost upon Jane. "Where's your hoss?" asked Lassiter, aloud. "Left him down the slope," answered Judkins. "I footed it in a ways, an' slept last night in the sage. I went to the place you told me you 'moss always slept, but didn't strike you."
"Lassiter," said Venters, with a half-bitter laugh, "my bed too, is the sage. Perhaps we may meet out there." "Mebbe so. But the sage is wide an' I won't be near. Good night." At Lassiter's low whistle the black horse whinnied, and carefully picked his blind way out of the grove.
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