as a friend? Think!
Why, you'd ride down into the village with those terrible guns and kill
my enemies--who are also my churchmen."

"I reckon I might be riled up to jest about that," he replied, dryly.

She held out both hands to him.

"Lassiter! I'll accept your friendship--be proud of it--return it--if I
may keep you from killing another Mormon."

"I'll tell you one thing," he said, bluntly, as the gray lightning
formed in his eyes. "You're too good a woman to be sacrificed as you're
goin' to be.... No, I reckon you an' me can't be friends on such terms."

In her earnestness she stepped closer to him, repelled yet fascinated by
the sudden transition of his moods. That he would fight for her was at
once horrible and wonderful.

"You came here to kill a man--the man whom Milly Erne--"

"The man who dragged Milly Erne to hell--put it that way!... Jane
Withersteen, yes, that's why I came here. I'd tell so much to no other
livin' soul.... There're things such a woman as you'd never dream of--so
don't mention her again. Not till you tell me the name of the man!"

"Tell you! I? Never!"

"I reckon you will. An' I'll never ask you. I'm a man of strange beliefs
an' ways of thinkin', an' I seem to see into the future an' feel things
hard to explain. The trail I've been followin' for so many years
was twisted en' tangled, but it's straightenin' out now. An', Jane
Withersteen, you crossed it long ago to ease poor Milly's agony. That,
whether you want or not, makes Lassiter your friend. But you cross it
now strangely to mean somethin to me--God knows what!--unless by your
noble blindness to incite me to greater hatred of Mormon men."

Jane felt swayed by a strength that far exceeded her own. In a clash of
wills with this man she would go to the wall. If she were to influence
him it must be wholly through womanly allurement. There was that about
Lassiter which commanded her respect. She had abhorred his name; face
to face with him, she found she feared only his deeds. His mystic
suggestion, his foreshadowing of something that she was to mean to him,
pierced deep into her mind. She believed fate had thrown in her way the
lover or husband of Milly Erne. She believed that through her an evil
man might be reclaimed. His allusion to what he called her blindness
terrified her. Such a mistaken idea of his might unleash the bitter,
fatal mood she sensed in him. At any cost she must placate this man; she
knew the die was cast, an