was Mormon-born, and she was a friend to poor
and unfortunate Gentiles. She wished only to go on doing good and being
happy. And she thought of what that great ranch meant to her. She loved
it all--the grove of cottonwoods, the old stone house, the amber-tinted
water, and the droves of shaggy, dusty horses and mustangs, the sleek,
clean-limbed, blooded racers, and the browsing herds of cattle and the
lean, sun-browned riders of the sage.

While she waited there she forgot the prospect of untoward change. The
bray of a lazy burro broke the afternoon quiet, and it was comfortingly
suggestive of the drowsy farmyard, and the open corrals, and the green
alfalfa fields. Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it
rolled before her. Low swells of prairie-like ground sloped up to
the west. Dark, lonely cedar-trees, few and far between, stood out
strikingly, and at long distances ruins of red rocks. Farther on, up the
gradual slope, rose a broken wall, a huge monument, looming dark purple
and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that faded
in the north. Here to the westward was the light and color and beauty.
Northward the slope descended to a dim line of canyons from which rose
an up-Hinging of the earth, not mountainous, but a vast heave of purple
uplands, with ribbed and fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and
gray escarpments. Over it all crept the lengthening, waning afternoon
shadows.

The rapid beat of hoofs recalled Jane Withersteen to the question at
hand. A group of riders cantered up the lane, dismounted, and threw
their bridles. They were seven in number, and Tull, the leader, a tall,
dark man, was an elder of Jane's church.

"Did you get my message?" he asked, curtly.

"Yes," replied Jane.

"I sent word I'd give that rider Venters half an hour to come down to
the village. He didn't come."

"He knows nothing of it;" said Jane. "I didn't tell him. I've been
waiting here for you."

"Where is Venters?"

"I left him in the courtyard."

"Here, Jerry," called Tull, turning to his men, "take the gang and fetch
Venters out here if you have to rope him."

The dusty-booted and long-spurred riders clanked noisily into the grove
of cottonwoods and disappeared in the shade.

"Elder Tull, what do you mean by this?" demanded Jane. "If you must
arrest Venters you might have the courtesy to wait till he leaves my
home. And if you do arrest him it will be adding insult to injury. It's
a