THE MILL-WHEEL OF STEERS
as a friend? Think! Why, you'd ride down into the village with those terrible guns and kill my enemies—who are also my churchmen."
"I reckon I might be riled up to jest about that," he replied, dryly.
She held out both hands to him.
"Lassiter! I'll accept your friendship—be proud of it—return it—if I may keep you from killing another Mormon."
"I'll tell you one thing," he said, bluntly, as the gray lightning formed in his eyes. "You're too good a woman to be sacrificed as you're goin' to be. . . . No, I reckon you an' me can't be friends on such terms."
In her earnestness she stepped closer to him, repelled yet fascinated by the sudden transition of his moods. That he would fight for her was at once horrible and wonderful.
"You came here to kill a man—the man whom Milly Erne—"
"The man who dragged Milly Erne to hell—put it that way! . . . Jane Withersteen, yes, that's why I came here. I'd tell so much to no other livin' soul. . . . There're things such a woman as you'd never dream of—so don't mention her again. Not till you tell me the name of the man!"
"Tell you! I? Never!"
"I reckon you will. An' I'll never ask you. I'm a man of strange beliefs an' ways of thinkin', an' I seem to see into the future an' feel things hard to explain. The trail I've been followin' for so many years was twisted an' tangled, but it's straightenin' out now. An', Jane Withersteen, you crossed it long ago to ease poor Milly's agony. That, whether you want or not, makes Lassiter your friend. But you cross it now strangely to mean somethin' to me—God knows what!—unless by your noble blindness to incite me to greater hatred of Mormon men."
73
