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Anyway, I'll hold Oldrin' up when he comes to the village an' find out about this girl. I knew the rustler years ago. He'll remember me." "Lassiter, if I ever meet Oldring I'll kill him!" cried Venters, with sudden intensity. "I reckon that'd be perfectly natural," replied the rider. "Make him think Bess is dead as she is to him and that old life." "Sure, sure, son. Cool down now.
He went in Snell's saloon, an' as there wasn't no gun play I had to go in, too. An' there, darn my pictures, if Lassiter wasn't standin' to the bar, drinking en' talkin' with Oldrin'." "Oldring!" whispered Venters. His voice, as all fire and pulse within him, seemed to freeze. "Let go my arm!" exclaimed Judkins. "Thet's my bad arm. Sure it was Oldrin'. What the hell's wrong with you, anyway?
"I've a dim memory of some other place, and women and children; but I can't make anything of it. Sometimes I think till I'm weary." "Then you can read you have books?" "Oh yes, I can read, and write, too, pretty well. Oldring is educated. He taught me, and years ago an old rustler lived with us, and he had been something different once. He was always teaching me."
Her drooping head straightened, and the large eyes, larger now and darker, met Venters's with a clear, steadfast gaze in which he read truth. It verified his own conviction. "Never knew? That's strange! Are you a Mormon?" "No." "Is Oldring a Mormon?" "No." "Do you care for him?" "Yes. I hate his men his life sometimes I almost hate him!"
It seemed that he had gone to kill a man Oldring! The name riveted his consciousness upon the one man of all men upon earth whom he had wanted to meet. He had met the rustler. Venters recalled the smoky haze of the saloon, the dark-visaged men, the huge Oldring. He saw him step out of the door, a splendid specimen of manhood, a handsome giant with purple-black and sweeping beard.
But his eyes were keen and used to the dark, and by peering closely he recognized the huge bulk and black-bearded visage of Oldring and the lithe, supple form of the rustler's lieutenant, a masked rider. They passed on; the darkness swallowed them.
Perhaps Oldring had another range farther on up the pass, and from there drove the cattle to distant Utah towns where he was little known But Venters came finally to doubt this.
"Oldring never stole the red herd. He made a deal with Mormons. The riders were to be called in, and Oldring was to drive the herd and keep it till a certain time I won't know when then drive it back to the range. What his share was I didn't hear." "Did you hear why that deal was made?" queried Venters. "No. But it was a trick of Mormons. They're full of tricks.
She had suffered some unforgivable wrong at the hands of Oldring. With that conviction Venters felt a shame throughout his body, and it marked the rekindling of fierce anger and ruthlessness. In the past long year he had nursed resentment. He had hated the wilderness the loneliness of the uplands. He had waited for something to come to pass. It had come.
He could not change the past; and, even if he had not loved Bess with all his soul, he had grown into a man who would not change the future he had planned for her. Only, and once for all, he must know the truth, know the worst, stifle all these insistent doubts and subtle hopes and jealous fancies, and kill the past by knowing truly what Bess had been to Oldring.
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