..Lassiter, in pleading for Dyer I've been pleading more
for my father. My father was a Mormon master, close to the
leaders of the church. It was my father who sent Dyer out to
proselyte. It was my father who had the blue-ice eye and the
beard of gold. It was my father you got trace of in the past
years. Truly, Dyer ruined Milly Erne--dragged her from her
home--to Utah--to Cottonwoods. But it was for my father! If Milly
Erne was ever wife of a Mormon that Mormon was my father! I never
knew--never will know whether or not she was a wife. Blind I may
be, Lassiter--fanatically faithful to a false religion I may have
been but I know justice, and my father is beyond human justice.
Surely he is meeting just punishment--somewhere. Always it has
appalled me--the thought of your killing Dyer for my father's
sins. So I have prayed!"
"Jane, the past is dead. In my love for you I forgot the past.
This thing I'm about to do ain't for myself or Milly or Fay. It s
not because of anythin' that ever happened in the past, but for
what is happenin' right now. It's for you!...An' listen. Since I
was a boy I've never thanked God for anythin'. If there is a
God--an' I've come to believe it--I thank Him now for the years
that made me Lassiter!...I can reach down en' feel these big
guns, en' know what I can do with them. An', Jane, only one of
the miracles Dyer professes to believe in can save him!"
Again for Jane Withersteen came the spinning of her brain in
darkness, and as she whirled in endless chaos she seemed to be
falling at the feet of a luminous figure--a man--Lassiter--who
had saved her from herself, who could not be changed, who would
slay rightfully.
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