ithersteen know?"

"Yes. But a red-hot running-iron couldn't burn that name out of her!"

Without further speech Lassiter started off, walking his horse and
Venters followed with his dogs. Half a mile down the slope they entered
a luxuriant growth of willows, and soon came into an open space carpeted
with grass like deep green velvet. The rushing of water and singing of
birds filled their ears. Venters led his comrade to a shady bower and
showed him Amber Spring. It was a magnificent outburst of clear, amber
water pouring from a dark, stone-lined hole. Lassiter knelt and drank,
lingered there to drink again. He made no comment, but Venters did not
need words. Next to his horse a rider of the sage loved a spring. And
this spring was the most beautiful and remarkable known to the upland
riders of southern Utah. It was the spring that made old Withersteen a
feudal lord and now enabled his daughter to return the toll which her
father had exacted from the toilers of the sage.

The spring gushed forth in a swirling torrent, and leaped down joyously
to make its swift way along a willow-skirted channel. Moss and ferns and
lilies overhung its green banks. Except for the rough-hewn stones that
held and directed the water, this willow thicket and glade had been left
as nature had made it.

Below were artificial lakes, three in number, one above the other
in banks of raised earth, and round about them rose the lofty
green-foliaged shafts of poplar trees. Ducks dotted the glassy surface
of the lakes; a blue heron stood motionless on a water-gate; kingfishers
darted with shrieking flight along the shady banks; a white hawk
sailed above; and from the trees and shrubs came the song of robins
and cat-birds. It was all in strange contrast to the endless slopes of
lonely sage and the wild rock environs beyond. Venters thought of the
woman who loved the birds and the green of the leaves and the murmur of
the water.

Next on the slope, just below the third and largest lake, were corrals
and a wide stone barn and open sheds and coops and pens. Here were
clouds of dust, and cracking sounds of hoofs, and romping colts and
heehawing burros. Neighing horses trampled to the corral fences. And
on the little windows of the barn projected bobbing heads of bays and
blacks and sorrels. When the two men entered the immense barnyard, from
all around the din increased. This welcome, however, was not seconded by
the several men and boys who vanished