But here to save him, to uplift him, came that strange mystic insight which had been the gift of the desert to him.  She was not dead.  He had found her.  What mattered obstacles, even that implacable creed to which she had been sacrificed, in the face of this blessed and overwhelming truth?  It was as mighty as the love suddenly dawning upon him.  A strong and terrible and deathly sweet wind seemed to fill his soul with the love of her.  It was her fate that had drawn him; and now it was her agony, her innocence, her beauty, that bound him for all time.  Patience and cunning and toil, passion and blood, the unquenchable spirit of a man to save—­these were nothing to give—­life itself were little, could he but free her.

Patience and cunning!  His sharpening mind cut these out as his greatest assets for the present.  And his thoughts flashed like light through his brain. . . .  Judge Stone and his court would fail to convict any Mormon in Stonebridge, just the same as they had failed in the northern towns.  They would go away, and Stonebridge would fall to the slow, sleepy tenor of its former way.  The hidden village must become known to all men, honest and outlawed, in that country, but this fact would hardly make any quick change in the plans of the Mormons.  They did not soon change.  They would send the sealed wives back to the canyon and, after the excitement had died down, visit them as usual.  Nothing, perhaps, would ever change these old Mormons but death.

Shefford resolved to remain in Stonebridge and ingratiate himself deeper into the regard of the Mormons.  He would find work there, if the sealed wives were not returned to the hidden village.  In case the women went back to the valley Shefford meant to resume his old duty of driving Withers’s pack-trains.  Wanting that opportunity, he would find some other work, some excuse to take him there.  In due time he would reveal to Fay Larkin that he knew her.  How the thought thrilled him!  She might deny, might persist in her fear, might fight to keep her secret.  But he would learn it—­hear her story—­hear what had become of Jane Withersteen and Lassiter—­and if they were alive, which now he believed he would find them—­and he would take them and Fay out of the country.

The duty, the great task, held a grim fascination for him.  He had a foreboding of the cost; he had a dark realization of the force he meant to oppose.  There were duty here and pity and unselfish love, but these alone did not actuate Shefford.  Mystically fate seemed again to come like a gleam and bid him follow.

When Shefford and Nas Ta Bega returned to the town hall the trial had been ended, the hall was closed, and only a few Indians and cowboys remained in the square, and they were about to depart.  On the street, however, and the paths and in the doorways of stores were knots of people, talking earnestly.  Shefford walked up and down, hoping to meet Withers or Joe Lake.  Nas Ta Bega said he would take the horses to water and feed and then return.