Though Jane Withersteen gave them such liberality, she loved her possessions.  She loved the rich, green stretches of alfalfa, and the farms, and the grove, and the old stone house, and the beautiful, ever-faithful amber spring, and every one of a myriad of horses and colts and burros and fowls down to the smallest rabbit that nipped her vegetables; but she loved best her noble Arabian steeds.  In common with all riders of the upland sage Jane cherished two material things—­the cold, sweet, brown water that made life possible in the wilderness and the horses which were a part of that life.  When Lassiter asked her what Lassiter would be without his guns he was assuming that his horse was part of himself.  So Jane loved Black Star and Night because it was her nature to love all beautiful creatures—­perhaps all living things; and then she loved them because she herself was of the sage and in her had been born and bred the rider’s instinct to rely on his four-footed brother.  And when Jane gave Jerd the order to keep her favorites trained down to the day it was a half-conscious admission that presaged a time when she would need her fleet horses.

Jane had now, however, no leisure to brood over the coils that were closing round her.  Mrs. Larkin grew weaker as the August days began; she required constant care; there was little Fay to look after; and such household work as was imperative.  Lassiter put Bells in the stable with the other racers, and directed his efforts to a closer attendance upon Jane.  She welcomed the change.  He was always at hand to help, and it was her fortune to learn that his boast of being awkward around women had its root in humility and was not true.

His great, brown hands were skilled in a multiplicity of ways which a woman might have envied.  He shared Jane’s work, and was of especial help to her in nursing Mrs. Larkin.  The woman suffered most at night, and this often broke Jane’s rest.  So it came about that Lassiter would stay by Mrs. Larkin during the day, when she needed care, and Jane would make up the sleep she lost in night-watches.  Mrs. Larkin at once took kindly to the gentle Lassiter, and, without ever asking who or what he was, praised him to Jane.  “He’s a good man and loves children,” she said.  How sad to hear this truth spoken of a man whom Jane thought lost beyond all redemption!  Yet ever and ever Lassiter towered above her, and behind or through his black, sinister figure shone something luminous that strangely affected Jane.  Good and evil began to seem incomprehensibly blended in her judgment.  It was her belief that evil could not come forth from good; yet here was a murderer who dwarfed in gentleness, patience, and love any man she had ever known.

She had almost lost track of her more outside concerns when early one morning Judkins presented himself before her in the courtyard.

Thin, hard, burnt, bearded, with the dust and sage thick on him, with his leather wrist-bands shining from use, and his boots worn through on the stirrup side, he looked the rider of riders.  He wore two guns and carried a Winchester.