“I’ll take it here—­if I must,” said Venters.  “But by God!—­Tull you’d better kill me outright.  That’ll be a dear whipping for you and your praying Mormons.  You’ll make me another Lassiter!”

The strange glow, the austere light which radiated from Tull’s face, might have been a holy joy at the spiritual conception of exalted duty.  But there was something more in him, barely hidden, a something personal and sinister, a deep of himself, an engulfing abyss.  As his religious mood was fanatical and inexorable, so would his physical hate be merciless.

“Elder, I—­I repent my words,” Jane faltered.  The religion in her, the long habit of obedience, of humility, as well as agony of fear, spoke in her voice.  “Spare the boy!” she whispered.

“You can’t save him now,” replied Tull stridently.

Her head was bowing to the inevitable.  She was grasping the truth, when suddenly there came, in inward constriction, a hardening of gentle forces within her breast.  Like a steel bar it was stiffening all that had been soft and weak in her.  She felt a birth in her of something new and unintelligible.  Once more her strained gaze sought the sage-slopes.  Jane Withersteen loved that wild and purple wilderness.  In times of sorrow it had been her strength, in happiness its beauty was her continual delight.  In her extremity she found herself murmuring, “Whence cometh my help!” It was a prayer, as if forth from those lonely purple reaches and walls of red and clefts of blue might ride a fearless man, neither creed-bound nor creed-mad, who would hold up a restraining hand in the faces of her ruthless people.

The restless movements of Tull’s men suddenly quieted down.  Then followed a low whisper, a rustle, a sharp exclamation.

“Look!” said one, pointing to the west.

“A rider!”

Jane Withersteen wheeled and saw a horseman, silhouetted against the western sky, coming riding out of the sage.  He had ridden down from the left, in the golden glare of the sun, and had been unobserved till close at hand.  An answer to her prayer!

“Do you know him?  Does any one know him?” questioned Tull, hurriedly.

His men looked and looked, and one by one shook their heads.

“He’s come from far,” said one.

“Thet’s a fine hoss,” said another.

“A strange rider.”

“Huh! he wears black leather,” added a fourth.

With a wave of his hand, enjoining silence, Tull stepped forward in such a way that he concealed Venters.

The rider reined in his mount, and with a lithe forward-slipping action appeared to reach the ground in one long step.  It was a peculiar movement in its quickness and inasmuch that while performing it the rider did not swerve in the slightest from a square front to the group before him.

“Look!” hoarsely whispered one of Tull’s companions.  “He packs two black-butted guns—­low down—­they’re hard to see—­black akin them black chaps.”