chin and full firm lips, at the dark-blue, proud, and passionate
eyes.

"If by some means I can keep him here a few days, a week--he will
never kill another Mormon," she mused. "Lassiter!...I shudder
when I think of that name, of him. But when I look at the man I
forget who he is--I almost like him. I remember only that he
saved Bern. He has suffered. I wonder what it was--did he love a
Mormon woman once? How splendidly he championed us poor
misunderstood souls! Somehow he knows--much."

Jane Withersteen joined her guests and bade them to her board.
Dismissing her woman, she waited upon them with her own hands. It
was a bountiful supper and a strange company. On her right sat
the ragged and half-starved Venters; and though blind eyes could
have seen what he counted for in the sum of her happiness, yet he
looked the gloomy outcast his allegiance had made him, and about
him there was the shadow of the ruin presaged by Tull. On her
left sat black-leather-garbed Lassiter looking like a man in a
dream. Hunger was not with him, nor composure, nor speech, and
when he twisted in frequent unquiet movements the heavy guns that
he had not removed knocked against the table-legs. If it had been
otherwise possible to forget the presence of Lassiter those
telling little jars would have rendered it unlikely. And Jane
Withersteen talked and smiled and laughed with all the dazzling
play of lips and eyes that a beautiful, daring woman could summon
to her purpose.

When the meal ended, and the men pushed back their chairs, she
leaned closer to Lassiter and looked square into his eyes.