And swift and light as a panther Shefford leaped upon the man and, fastening powerful hands round the thick neck, bore him to his knees and bent back his head over the rail.  There was a convulsive struggle, a hard flinging of arms, a straining wrestle, and then Willetts was in a dreadful position.  Shefford held him in iron grasp.

“You damned, white-livered hypocrite—­I’m liable to kill you!” cried Shefford.  “I watched you and Glen Naspa that day up on the mountain.  I saw you embrace her.  I saw that she loved you.  Tell that, you liar!  That’ll be enough.”

The face of the missionary turned purple as Shefford forced his head back over the rail.

“I’ll kill you, man,” repeated Shefford, piercingly.  “Do you want to go to your God unprepared?  Say you made love to Glen Naspa—­tell that you persuaded her to leave her home.  Quick!”

Willetts raised a shaking hand and then Shefford relaxed the paralyzing grip and let his head come forward.  The half-strangled man gasped out a few incoherent words that his livid, guilty face made unnecessary.

Shefford gave him a shove and he fell into the dust at the feet of the Navajo.

“Gentlemen, I leave him to Nas Ta Bega,” said Shefford, with a strange change from passion to calmness.

Late that night, when the roystering visitors had gone or were deep in drunken slumber, a melancholy and strange procession filed out of Stonebridge.  Joe Lake and his armed comrades were escorting the Mormon women back to the hidden valley.  They were mounted on burros and mustangs, and in all that dark and somber line there was only one figure which shone white under the pale moon.

At the starting, until that white-clad figure had appeared, Shefford’s heart had seemed to be in his throat; and thereafter its beat was muffled and painful in his breast.  Yet there was some sad sweetness in the knowledge that he could see her now, be near her, watch over her.

By and by the overcast clouds drifted and the moon shone bright.  The night was still; the great dark mountain loomed to the stars; the numberless waves of rounded rock that must be crossed and circled lay deep in shadow.  There was only a steady pattering of light hoofs.

Shefford’s place was near the end of the line, and he kept well back, riding close to one woman and then another.  No word was spoken.  These sealed wives rode where their mounts were led or driven, as blind in their hoods as veiled Arab women in palanquins.  And their heads drooped wearily and their shoulders bent, as if under a burden.  It took an hour of steady riding to reach the ascent to the plateau, and here, with the beginning of rough and smooth and shadowed trail, the work of the escort began.  The line lengthened out and each man kept to the several women assigned to him.  Shefford had three, and one of them was the girl he loved.  She rode as if the world and time and life were naught to her.  As soon as he dared trust his voice and his control he meant to let her know the man whom perhaps she had not forgotten was there with her, a friend.  Six months!  It had been a lifetime to him.  Surely eternity to her!  Had she forgotten?  He felt like a coward who had basely deserted her.  Oh—­had he only known!