There was the night ride of Tull’s, which, viewed in the light of subsequent events, had a look of his covert machinations; Oldring and his Masked Rider and his rustlers riding muffled horses; the report that Tull had ridden out that morning with his man Jerry on the trail to Glaze, the strange disappearance of Jane Withersteen’s riders, the unusually determined attempt to kill the one Gentile still in her employ, an intention frustrated, no doubt, only by Judkin’s magnificent riding of her racer, and lastly the driving of the red herd.  These events, to Venters’s color of mind, had a dark relationship.  Remembering Jane’s accusation of bitterness, he tried hard to put aside his rancor in judging Tull.  But it was bitter knowledge that made him see the truth.  He had felt the shadow of an unseen hand; he had watched till he saw its dim outline, and then he had traced it to a man’s hate, to the rivalry of a Mormon Elder, to the power of a Bishop, to the long, far-reaching arm of a terrible creed.  That unseen hand had made its first move against Jane Withersteen.  Her riders had been called in, leaving her without help to drive seven thousand head of cattle.  But to Venters it seemed extraordinary that the power which had called in these riders had left so many cattle to be driven by rustlers and harried by wolves.  For hand in glove with that power was an insatiate greed; they were one and the same.

“What can Oldring do with twenty-five hundred head of cattle?” muttered Venters.  “Is he a Mormon?  Did he meet Tull last night?  It looks like a black plot to me.  But Tull and his churchmen wouldn’t ruin Jane Withersteen unless the Church was to profit by that ruin.  Where does Oldring come in?  I’m going to find out about these things.”

Wrangle did the twenty-five miles in three hours and walked little of the way.  When he had gotten warmed up he had been allowed to choose his own gait.  The afternoon had well advanced when Venters struck the trail of the red herd and found where it had grazed the night before.  Then Venters rested the horse and used his eyes.  Near at hand were a cow and a calf and several yearlings, and farther out in the sage some straggling steers.  He caught a glimpse of coyotes skulking near the cattle.  The slow sweeping gaze of the rider failed to find other living things within the field of sight.  The sage about him was breast-high to his horse, oversweet with its warm, fragrant breath, gray where it waved to the light, darker where the wind left it still, and beyond the wonderful haze-purple lent by distance.  Far across that wide waste began the slow lift of uplands through which Deception Pass cut its tortuous many-canyoned way.