stler," declared
Venters.

"Mebbe so."

"It's a hard country for any one, but hardest for Gentiles. Did you ever
know or hear of a Gentile prospering in a Mormon community?"

"I never did."

"Well, I want to get out of Utah. I've a mother living in Illinois. I
want to go home. It's eight years now."

The older man's sympathy moved Venters to tell his story. He had left
Quincy, run off to seek his fortune in the gold fields had never gotten
any farther than Salt Lake City, wandered here and there as helper,
teamster, shepherd, and drifted southward over the divide and across the
barrens and up the rugged plateau through the passes to the last border
settlements. Here he became a rider of the sage, had stock of his own,
and for a time prospered, until chance threw him in the employ of Jane
Withersteen.

"Lassiter, I needn't tell you the rest."

"Well, it'd be no news to me. I know Mormons. I've seen their women's
strange love en' patience en' sacrifice an' silence en' whet I call
madness for their idea of God. An' over against that I've seen the
tricks of men. They work hand in hand, all together, an' in the dark.
No man can hold out against them, unless he takes to packin' guns. For
Mormons are slow to kill. That's the only good I ever seen in their
religion. Venters, take this from me, these Mormons ain't just right in
their minds. Else could a Mormon marry one woman when he already has a
wife, an' call it duty?"

"Lassiter, you think as I think," returned Venters.

"How'd it come then that you never throwed a gun on Tull or some of
them?" inquired the rider, curiously.

"Jane pleaded with me, begged me to be patient, to overlook. She even
took my guns from me. I lost all before I knew it," replied Venters,
with the red color in his face. "But, Lassiter, listen. Out of the
wreck I saved a Winchester, two Colts, and plenty of shells. I packed
these down into Deception Pass. There, almost every day for six months,
I have practiced with my rifle till the barrel burnt my hands. Practised
the draw--the firing of a Colt, hour after hour!"

"Now that's interestin' to me," said Lassiter, with a quick uplift of
his head and a concentration of his gray gaze on Venters. "Could you
throw a gun before you began that practisin'?"

"Yes. And now..." Venters made a lightning-swift movement.

Lassiter smiled, and then his bronzed eyelids narrowed till his eyes
seemed mere gray slits. "You'll kill Tull!" He did not quest