“Ma’am, you ask me to save him—­from your own people?”

“Ask you?  I beg of you!”

“But you don’t dream who you’re askin’.”

“Oh, sir, I pray you—­save him!”

These are Mormons, an’ I...”

“At—­at any cost—­save him.  For I—­I care for him!”

Tull snarled.  “You love-sick fool!  Tell your secrets.  There’ll be a way to teach you what you’ve never learned....Come men out of here!”

“Mormon, the young man stays,” said the rider.

Like a shot his voice halted Tull.

“What!”

“Who’ll keep him?  He’s my prisoner!” cried Tull, hotly.  “Stranger, again I tell you—­don’t mix here.  You’ve meddled enough.  Go your way now or—­”

“Listen!...He stays.”

Absolute certainty, beyond any shadow of doubt, breathed in the rider’s low voice.

“Who are you?  We are seven here.”

The rider dropped his sombrero and made a rapid movement, singular in that it left him somewhat crouched, arms bent and stiff, with the big black gun-sheaths swung round to the fore.

“Lassiter!”

It was Venters’s wondering, thrilling cry that bridged the fateful connection between the rider’s singular position and the dreaded name.

Tull put out a groping hand.  The life of his eyes dulled to the gloom with which men of his fear saw the approach of death.  But death, while it hovered over him, did not descend, for the rider waited for the twitching fingers, the downward flash of hand that did not come.  Tull, gathering himself together, turned to the horses, attended by his pale comrades.

CHAPTER II.  COTTONWOODS

Venters appeared too deeply moved to speak the gratitude his face expressed.  And Jane turned upon the rescuer and gripped his hands.  Her smiles and tears seemingly dazed him.  Presently as something like calmness returned, she went to Lassiter’s weary horse.

“I will water him myself,” she said, and she led the horse to a trough under a huge old cottonwood.  With nimble fingers she loosened the bridle and removed the bit.  The horse snorted and bent his head.  The trough was of solid stone, hollowed out, moss-covered and green and wet and cool, and the clear brown water that fed it spouted and splashed from a wooden pipe.

“He has brought you far to-day?”

“Yes, ma’am, a matter of over sixty miles, mebbe seventy.”

“A long ride—­a ride that—­Ah, he is blind!”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Lassiter.

“What blinded him?”

“Some men once roped an’ tied him, an’ then held white-iron close to his eyes.”

“Oh!  Men?  You mean devils....Were they your enemies—­Mormons?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“To take revenge on a horse!  Lassiter, the men of my creed are unnaturally cruel.  To my everlasting sorrow I confess it.  They have been driven, hated, scourged till their hearts have hardened.  But we women hope and pray for the time when our men will soften.”