led him but
once. Run? Say, he's swift as wind!"

When Venters's boot touched the stirrup the sorrel bolted, giving him
the rider's flying mount. The swing of this fiery horse recalled to
Venters days that were not really long past, when he rode into the sage
as the leader of Jane Withersteen's riders. Wrangle pulled hard on a
tight rein. He galloped out of the lane, down the shady border of
the grove, and hauled up at the watering-trough, where he pranced and
champed his bit. Venters got off and filled his canteen while the horse
drank. The dogs, Ring and Whitie, came trotting up for their drink. Then
Venters remounted and turned Wrangle toward the sage.

A wide, white trail wound away down the slope. One keen, sweeping glance
told Venters that there was neither man nor horse nor steer within the
limit of his vision, unless they were lying down in the sage. Ring loped
in the lead and Whitie loped in the rear. Wrangle settled gradually into
an easy swinging canter, and Venters's thoughts, now that the rush and
flurry of the start were past, and the long miles stretched before him,
reverted to a calm reckoning of late singular coincidences.

There was the night ride of Tull's, which, viewed in the light of
subsequent events, had a look of his covert machinations; Oldring and
his Masked Rider and his rustlers riding muffled horses; the report
that Tull had ridden out that morning with his man Jerry on the trail
to Glaze, the strange disappearance of Jane Withersteen's riders,
the unusually determined attempt to kill the one Gentile still in her
employ, an intention frustrated, no doubt, only by Judkin's magnificent
riding of her racer, and lastly the driving of the red herd. These
events, to Venters's color of mind, had a dark relationship. Remembering
Jane's accusation of bitterness, he tried hard to put aside his rancor
in judging Tull. But it was bitter knowledge that made him see the
truth. He had felt the shadow of an unseen hand; he had watched till he
saw its dim outline, and then he had traced it to a man's hate, to
the rivalry of a Mormon Elder, to the power of a Bishop, to the long,
far-reaching arm of a terrible creed. That unseen hand had made its
first move against Jane Withersteen. Her riders had been called in,
leaving her without help to drive seven thousand head of cattle. But to
Venters it seemed extraordinary that the power which had called in these
riders had left so many cattle to be driven by rustl