“Venters had spoken of a journey west that he and his wife meant to take some time.  But after the baby came he never mentioned his wife in connection with the trip.  I gathered that he felt compelled to go to clear up a mystery or to find something—­I did not make out just what.  But eventually, and it was about a year ago, he told me his story—­the strangest, wildest, and most tragic I ever heard.  I can’t tell it all now.  It is enough to say that fifteen years before he had been a rider for a rich Mormon woman named Jane Withersteen, of this village Cottonwoods.  She had adopted a beautiful Gentile child named Fay Larkin.  Her interest in Gentiles earned the displeasure of her churchmen, and as she was proud there came a breach.  Venters and a gunman named Lassiter became involved in her quarrel.  Finally Venters took to the canyon.  Here in the wilds he found the strange girl he eventually married.  For a long time they lived in a wonderful hidden valley, the entrance to which was guarded by a huge balancing rock.  Venters got away with the girl.  But Lassiter and Jane Withersteen and the child Fay Larkin were driven into the canyon.  They escaped to the valley where Venters had lived.  Lassiter rolled the balancing rock, and, crashing down the narrow trail, it loosened the weathered walls and closed the narrow outlet for ever.”

IV.  NEW FRIENDS

Shefford ended his narrative out of breath, pale, and dripping with sweat.  Withers sat leaning forward with an expression of intense interest.  Nas Ta Bega’s easy, graceful pose had succeeded to one of strained rigidity.  He seemed a statue of bronze.  Could a few intelligible words, Shefford wondered, have created that strange, listening posture?

“Venters got out of Utah, of course, as you know,” went on Shefford.  “He got out, knowing—­as I feel I would have known—­that Jane, Lassiter, and little Fay Larkin were shut up, walled up in Surprise Valley.  For years Venters considered it would not have been safe for him to venture to rescue them.  He had no fears for their lives.  They could live in Surprise Valley.  But Venters always intended to come back with Bess and find the valley and his friends.  No wonder he and Bess were haunted.  However, when his wife had the baby that made a difference.  It meant he had to go alone.  And he was thinking seriously of starting when—­when there were developments that made it desirable for me to leave Beaumont.  Venters’s story haunted me as he had been haunted.  I dreamed of that wild valley—­of little Fay Larkin grown to womanhood—­such a woman as Bess Venters was.  And the longing to come was great. . . .  And, Withers—­here I am.”

The trader reached out and gave Shefford the grip of a man in whom emotion was powerful, but deep and difficult to express.