She pressed his hand in response. He helped her to a seat beside
him on the bench. And he respected a silence that he divined was
full of woman's deep emotion beyond his understanding.

It was the moment when the last ruddy rays of the sunset
brightened momentarily before yielding to twilight. And for
Venters the outlook before him was in some sense similar to a
feeling of his future, and with searching eyes he studied the
beautiful purple, barren waste of sage. Here was the unknown and
the perilous. The whole scene impressed Venters as a wild,
austere, and mighty manifestation of nature. And as it somehow
reminded him of his prospect in life, so it suddenly resembled
the woman near him, only in her there were greater beauty and
peril, a mystery more unsolvable, and something nameless that
numbed his heart and dimmed his eye.

"Look! A rider!" exclaimed Jane, breaking the silence. "Can that
be Lassiter?"

Venters moved his glance once more to the west. A horseman showed
dark on the sky-line, then merged into the color of the sage.

"It might be. But I think not--that fellow was coming in. One of
your riders, more likely. Yes, I see him clearly now. And there's
another."

"I see them, too."

"Jane, your riders seem as many as the bunches of sage. I ran
into five yesterday 'way down near the trail to Deception Pass.