The rider stepped away from her, moving out with the same slow, measured stride in which he had approached, and the fact that his action placed her wholly to one side, and him no nearer to Tull and his men, had a penetrating significance.

“Young feller, speak up,” he said to Venters.

“Here stranger, this’s none of your mix,” began Tull.  “Don’t try any interference.  You’ve been asked to drink and eat.  That’s more than you’d have got in any other village of the Utah border.  Water your horse and be on your way.”

“Easy—­easy—­I ain’t interferin’ yet,” replied the rider.  The tone of his voice had undergone a change.  A different man had spoken.  Where, in addressing Jane, he had been mild and gentle, now, with his first speech to Tull, he was dry, cool, biting.  “I’ve lest stumbled onto a queer deal.  Seven Mormons all packin’ guns, an’ a Gentile tied with a rope, an’ a woman who swears by his honesty!  Queer, ain’t that?”

“Queer or not, it’s none of your business,” retorted Tull.

“Where I was raised a woman’s word was law.  I ain’t quite outgrowed that yet.”

Tull fumed between amaze and anger.

“Meddler, we have a law here something different from woman’s whim—­ Mormon law!...Take care you don’t transgress it.”

“To hell with your Mormon law!”

The deliberate speech marked the rider’s further change, this time from kindly interest to an awakening menace.  It produced a transformation in Tull and his companions.  The leader gasped and staggered backward at a blasphemous affront to an institution he held most sacred.  The man Jerry, holding the horses, dropped the bridles and froze in his tracks.  Like posts the other men stood watchful-eyed, arms hanging rigid, all waiting.

“Speak up now, young man.  What have you done to be roped that way?”

“It’s a damned outrage!” burst out Venters.  “I’ve done no wrong.  I’ve offended this Mormon Elder by being a friend to that woman.”

“Ma’am, is it true—­what he says?” asked the rider of Jane, but his quiveringly alert eyes never left the little knot of quiet men.

“True?  Yes, perfectly true,” she answered.

“Well, young man, it seems to me that bein’ a friend to such a woman would be what you wouldn’t want to help an’ couldn’t help....What’s to be done to you for it?”

“They intend to whip me.  You know what that means—­in Utah!”

“I reckon,” replied the rider, slowly.

With his gray glance cold on the Mormons, with the restive bit-champing of the horses, with Jane failing to repress her mounting agitations, with Venters standing pale and still, the tension of the moment tightened.  Tull broke the spell with a laugh, a laugh without mirth, a laugh that was only a sound betraying fear.

“Come on, men!” he called.

Jane Withersteen turned again to the rider.

“Stranger, can you do nothing to save Venters?”