While she waited there she forgot the prospect of untoward
change. The bray of a lazy burro broke the afternoon quiet, and
it was comfortingly suggestive of the drowsy farmyard, and the
open corrals, and the green alfalfa fields. Her clear sight
intensified the purple sage-slope as it rolled before her. Low
swells of prairie-like ground sloped up to the west. Dark, lonely
cedar-trees, few and far between, stood out strikingly, and at
long distances ruins of red rocks. Farther on, up the gradual
slope, rose a broken wall, a huge monument, looming dark purple
and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that
faded in the north. Here to the westward was the light and color
and beauty. Northward the slope descended to a dim line of
canyons from which rose an up-Hinging of the earth, not
mountainous, but a vast heave of purple uplands, with ribbed and
fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and gray escarpments.
Over it all crept the lengthening, waning afternoon shadows.

The rapid beat of hoofs recalled Jane Withersteen to the question
at hand. A group of riders cantered up the lane, dismounted, and
threw their bridles. They were seven in number, and Tull, the
leader, a tall, dark man, was an elder of Jane's church.

"Did you get my message?" he asked, curtly.

"Yes," replied Jane.

"I sent word I'd give that rider Venters half an hour to come
down to the village. He didn't come."

"He knows nothing of it;" said Jane. "I didn't tell him. I've