..Her eyes have
always haunted me. She had one real friend--Jane Withersteen. But
Jane couldn't mend a broken heart, and Milly died."
For moments Lassiter did not speak, or turn his head.
"The man!" he exclaimed, presently, in husky accents.
"I haven't the slightest idea who the Mormon was," replied
Venters; "nor has any Gentile in Cottonwoods."
"Does Jane Withersteen know?"
"Yes. But a red-hot running-iron couldn't burn that name out of
her!"
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.
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