“Oh!...My friend!”

“No, Jane, I’m not one to quit when the game grows hot, no more than you.  This game, though, is new to me, an’ I don’t know the moves yet, else I wouldn’t have stepped in front of that bullet.”

“Have you no desire to hunt the man who fired at you—­to find him—­and—­ and kill him?”

“Well, I reckon I haven’t any great hankerin’ for that.”

“Oh, the wonder of it!...I knew—­I prayed—­I trusted.  Lassiter, I almost gave—­all myself to soften you to Mormons.  Thank God, and thank you, my friend....But, selfish woman that ] am, this is no great test.  What’s the life of one of those sneaking cowards to such a man as you?  I think of your great hate toward him who—­I think of your life’s implacable purpose.  Can it be—­”

“Wait!...Listen!” he whispered.  “I hear a hoss.”

He rose noiselessly, with his ear to the breeze.  Suddenly he pulled his sombrero down over his bandaged head and, swinging his gun-sheaths round in front, he stepped into the alcove.

“It’s a hoss—­comin’ fast,” he added.

Jane’s listening ear soon caught a faint, rapid, rhythmic beat of hoofs.  It came from the sage.  It gave her a thrill that she was at a loss to understand.  The sound rose stronger, louder.  Then came a clear, sharp difference when the horse passed from the sage trail to the hard-packed ground of the grove.  It became a ringing run—­swift in its bell-like clatterings, yet singular in longer pause than usual between the hoofbeats of a horse.

“It’s Wrangle!...It’s Wrangle!” cried Jane Withersteen.  “I’d know him from a million horses!”

Excitement and thrilling expectancy flooded out all Jane Withersteen s calm.  A tight band closed round her breast as she saw the giant sorrel flit in reddish-brown flashes across the openings in the green.  Then he was pounding down the lane—­thundering into the court—­crashing his great iron-shod hoofs on the stone flags.  Wrangle it was surely, but shaggy and wild-eyed, and sage-streaked, with dust-caked lather staining his flanks.  He reared and crashed down and plunged.  The rider leaped off, threw the bridle, and held hard on a lasso looped round Wrangle’s head and neck.  Janet’s heart sank as she tried to recognize Venters in the rider.  Something familiar struck her in the lofty stature in the sweep of powerful shoulders.  But this bearded, longhaired, unkempt man, who wore ragged clothes patched with pieces of skin, and boots that showed bare legs and feet—­this dusty, dark, and wild rider could not possibly be Venters.

“Whoa, Wrangle, old boy!  Come down.  Easy now.  So—­so—­so.  You re home, old boy, and presently you can have a drink of water you’ll remember.”

In the voice Jane knew the rider to be Venters.  He tied Wrangle to the hitching-rack and turned to the court.

“Oh, Bern!...You wild man!” she exclaimed.

“Jane—­Jane, it’s good to see you!  Hello, Lassiter!  Yes, it’s Venters.”