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Updated: June 17, 2025
Jane and Lassiter, however, needed no watching, and showed they had never forgotten how to manage a horse. The Indian back-trailed yesterday's path for an hour, then headed west to the left, and entered a low pass. All parts of this plateau country looked alike, and Shefford was at some pains to tell the difference of this strange ground from that which he had been over.
Puffs of dust rose from the base of the long slope they had descended; tiny dark specks moved with the pace of a snail. "Shadd!" added the Indian. "I expected it," said Shefford, darkly, as he rose. "An' who's Shadd?" drawled Lassiter in his cool, slow speech. Briefly Shefford explained, and then, looking at Nas Ta Bega, he added: "The hardest-riding outfit in the country!
"Did you ever hear of a rider named Venters?" "Rider? You mean a cowboy? Venters. No, I never heard that name." "Did you ever hear of a gunman named Lassiter?" queried Shefford, with increasing emotion. "No." "Did you ever hear of a Mormon woman named Jane Withersteen?" "No." Shefford drew his breath sharply. He had followed a gleam he had caught a fleeting glimpse of it.
An' now when I know what it means what you've done I'm burnin' up with hell's fire!" "Oh, Lassiter no no you don't love me that way!" Jane cased. "If that's what love is, then I do." "Forgive me! I didn't mean to make you love me like that. Oh, what a tangle of our lives! You Milly Erne's brother! And I heedless, mad to melt your heart toward Mormons.
Judkins paused in his narrative, breathing heavily while he wiped his perspiring brow. "Thet's about all," he concluded. "Lassiter left the meetin'-house an' I hurried to catch up with him. He was bleedin' from three gunshots, none of them much to bother him. An' we come right up here. I found you layin' in the hall, an' I hed to work some over you."
Such a mistaken idea of his might unleash the bitter, fatal mood she sensed in him. At any cost she must placate this man; she knew the die was cast, and that if Lassiter did not soften to a woman's grace and beauty and wiles, then it would be because she could not make him. "I reckon you'll hear no more such talk from me," Lassiter went on, presently.
"You might have saved some of your breath. See here, Blake, cinch this in your mind. Lassiter has met some square Mormons! An' mebbe " "Blake," interrupted Jane, nervously anxious to terminate a colloquy that she perceived was an ordeal for him. "Go at once and fetch me a report of my horses." "Miss Withersteen!... You mean the big drove down in the sage-cleared fields?"
Yet as she thought of her great motive, of Tull, and of that other whose name she had schooled herself never to think of in connection with Milly Erne's avenger, she suddenly found she had no choice. And her creed gave her boldness far beyond the limit to which vanity would have led her. "Lassiter, I see so little of you now," she said, and was conscious of heat in her cheeks.
"Son, tell me all about this," presently said Lassiter as he seated himself on a stone and wiped his moist brow. Thereupon Venters began his narrative at the point where he had shot the rustler and Oldring's Masked Rider, and he rushed through it, telling all, not holding back even Bess's unreserved avowal of her love or his deepest emotions. "That's the story," he said, concluding.
At twilight they always returned to the house, where Fay kissed them and went in to her mother. Lassiter and Jane were left alone. Then, if there were anything that a good woman could do to win a man and still preserve her self-respect, it was something which escaped the natural subtlety of a woman determined to allure.
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