FAITH AND UNFAITH
enough that I got to you in time. . . . Now tell me about this Lassiter. I hear strange things."
"What do you wish to know?" queried Jane.
"About this man. You hired him?"
"Yes, he's riding for me. When my riders left me I had to have any one I could get."
"Is it true what I hear—that he's a gun-man, a Mormon-hater, steeped in blood?"
"True—terribly true, I fear."
"But what's he doing here in Cottonwoods? This place isn't notorious enough for such a man. Sterling and the villages north, where there's universal gun-packing and fights every day—where there are more men like him, it seems to me they would attract him most. We're only a wild, lonely border settlement. It's only recently that the rustlers have made killings here. Nor have there been saloons till lately, nor the drifting in of outcasts. Has not this gun-man some special mission here?"
Jane maintained silence.
"Tell me," ordered Bishop Dyer, sharply.
"Yes," she replied.
"Do you know what it is?"
"Yes."
"Tell me that."
"Bishop Dyer, I don't want to tell."
He waved his hand in an imperative gesture of command. The red once more leaped to his face, and in his steel-blue eyes glinted a pin-point of curiosity.
"That first day," whispered Jane, "Lassiter said he came here to find—Milly Erne's grave!"
With downcast eyes Jane watched the swift flow of the amber water. She saw it and tried to think of it, of the stones, of the ferns; but, like her body, her mind was in a leaden vise. Only the Bishop's voice could release her. Seemingly there was silence of longer duration than all her former life.
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