“She’s fixed him.  Don’t think of that.  It’s too late.  We ought to have saved her.”

“God! . . .  She begged me to hurry—­to take her away.”

“Think what we can do now to save her,” cut in the Mormon.

Shefford sustained a vivifying shock.  “To save her?” he echoed.

“Think, man!”

“Joe, I can hit the trail and let you tell them I killed him,” burst out Shefford in panting excitement.

“Reckon I can.”

“So help me God I’ll do it!”

The Mormon turned a dark and austere glance upon Shefford.

“You mustn’t leave her.  She killed him for your sake. . . .  You must fight for her now—­save her—­take her away.”

“But the law!”

“Law!” scoffed Joe.  “In these wilds men get killed and there’s no law.  But if she’s taken back to Stonebridge those iron-jawed old Mormons will make law enough to—­to . . .  Shefford, the thing is—­get her away.  Once out of the country, she’s safe.  Mormons keep their secrets.”

“I’ll take her.  Joe, will you help me?”

Shefford, even in his agitation, felt the Mormon’s silence to be a consent that need not have been asked.  And Shefford had a passionate gratefulness toward his comrade.  That stultifying and blinding prejudice which had always seemed to remove a Mormon outside the pale of certain virtue suffered final eclipse; and Joe Lake stood out a man, strange and crude, but with a heart and a soul.

“Joe, tell me what to do,” said Shefford, with a simplicity that meant he needed only to be directed.

“Pull yourself together.  Get your nerve back,” replied Joe.  “Reckon you’d better show yourself over there.  No one saw you come in this morning—­your absence from camp isn’t known.  It’s better you seem curious and shocked like the rest of us.  Come on.  We’ll go over.  And afterward we’ll get the Indian, and plan.”

They left camp and, crossing the brook, took the shaded path toward the village.  Hope of saving Fay, the need of all his strength and nerve and cunning to effect that end, gave Shefford the supreme courage to overcome his horror and fear.  On that short walk under the pinyons to Fay’s cabin he had suffered many changes of emotion, but never anything like this change which made him fierce and strong to fight, deep and crafty to plan, hard as iron to endure.

The village appeared very quiet, though groups of women stood at the doors of cabins.  If they talked, it was very low.  Henninger and Smith, two of the three Mormon men living in the village, were standing before the closed door of the school-house.  A tigerish feeling thrilled Shefford when he saw them on guard there.  Shefford purposely avoided looking at Fay’s cabin as long as he could keep from it.  When he had to look he saw several hooded, whispering women in the yard, and Beal, the other Mormon man, standing in the cabin door.  Upon the porch lay the long shape of a man, covered with blankets.