“Has oo a little dirl?” she inquired.

“No, lassie,” replied the rider.

Whatever Fay seemed to be searching for in Lassiter’s sun-reddened face and quiet eyes she evidently found.  “Oo tan tom to see me,” she added, and with that, shyness gave place to friendly curiosity.  First his sombrero with its leather band and silver ornaments commanded her attention; next his quirt, and then the clinking, silver spurs.  These held her for some time, but presently, true to childish fickleness, she left off playing with them to look for something else.  She laughed in glee as she ran her little hands down the slippery, shiny surface of Lassiter’s leather chaps.  Soon she discovered one of the hanging gun—­ sheaths, and she dragged it up and began tugging at the huge black handle of the gun.  Jane Withersteen repressed an exclamation.  What significance there was to her in the little girl’s efforts to dislodge that heavy weapon!  Jane Withersteen saw Fay’s play and her beauty and her love as most powerful allies to her own woman’s part in a game that suddenly had acquired a strange zest and a hint of danger.  And as for the rider, he appeared to have forgotten Jane in the wonder of this lovely child playing about him.  At first he was much the shyer of the two.  Gradually her confidence overcame his backwardness, and he had the temerity to stroke her golden curls with a great hand.  Fay rewarded his boldness with a smile, and when he had gone to the extreme of closing that great hand over her little brown one, she said, simply, “I like oo!”

Sight of his face then made Jane oblivious for the time to his character as a hater of Mormons.  Out of the mother longing that swelled her breast she divined the child hunger in Lassiter.

He returned the next day, and the next; and upon the following he came both at morning and at night.  Upon the evening of this fourth day Jane seemed to feel the breaking of a brooding struggle in Lassiter.  During all these visits he had scarcely a word to say, though he watched her and played absent-mindedly with Fay.  Jane had contented herself with silence.  Soon little Fay substituted for the expression of regard, “I like oo,” a warmer and more generous one, “I love oo.”

Thereafter Lassiter came oftener to see Jane and her little protegee.  Daily he grew more gentle and kind, and gradually developed a quaintly merry mood.  In the morning he lifted Fay upon his horse and let her ride as he walked beside her to the edge of the sage.  In the evening he played with the child at an infinite variety of games she invented, and then, oftener than not, he accepted Jane’s invitation to supper.  No other visitor came to Withersteen House during those days.  So that in spite of watchfulness he never forgot, Lassiter began to show he felt at home there.  After the meal they walked into the grove of cottonwoods or up by the lakes, and little Fay held Lassiter’s hand as much as she held Jane’s.  Thus a strange relationship was established, and Jane liked it.  At twilight they always returned to the house, where Fay kissed them and went in to her mother.  Lassiter and Jane were left alone.