Without further speech Lassiter started off, walking his horse
and Venters followed with his dogs. Half a mile down the slope
they entered a luxuriant growth of willows, and soon came into an
open space carpeted with grass like deep green velvet. The
rushing of water and singing of birds filled their ears. Venters
led his comrade to a shady bower and showed him Amber Spring. It
was a magnificent outburst of clear, amber water pouring from a
dark, stone-lined hole. Lassiter knelt and drank, lingered there
to drink again. He made no comment, but Venters did not need
words. Next to his horse a rider of the sage loved a spring. And
this spring was the most beautiful and remarkable known to the
upland riders of southern Utah. It was the spring that made old
Withersteen a feudal lord and now enabled his daughter to return
the toll which her father had exacted from the toilers of the
sage.

The spring gushed forth in a swirling torrent, and leaped down
joyously to make its swift way along a willow-skirted channel.
Moss and ferns and lilies overhung its green banks. Except for
the rough-hewn stones that held and directed the water, this
willow thicket and glade had been left as nature had made it.

Below were artificial lakes, three in number, one above the other
in banks of raised earth, and round about them rose the lofty
green-foliaged shafts of poplar trees. Ducks dotted the glassy
surface of the lakes; a blue heron stood motionless on a
water-gate; kingfishers darted with shrieking flight along the
shady banks; a white hawk sailed above; and from the trees and
shrubs came the song of robins and cat-birds. It was all in