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A sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds of yellow dust drifted froe

Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and troubled eyes A rider had just left her and it was histhe churchht to befriend a Gentile

She wondered if the unrest and strife that had lately coe of Cottonwoods was to involve her And then she sighed, re that her father had founded this remotest border settlement of southern Utah and that he had left it to her She owned all the ground and reat ranch, with its thousands of cattle, and the swiftest horses of the sage To her belonged Aave verdure and beauty to the village andpossible on that wild purple upland waste She could not escape being involved by whatever befell Cottonwoods

That year, 1871, hadin the lives of the peace-loving Mores to the north, had risen against the invasion of Gentile settlers and the forays of rustlers There had been opposition to the one and fighting with the other And now Cottonwoods had begun to wake and bestir itself and grown hard

Jane prayed that the tranquillity and sweetness of her life would not be permanently disrupted She meant to do so much more for her people than she had done She wanted the sleepy quiet pastoral days to last always Trouble between the Mormons and the Gentiles of the community would make her unhappy She was Mormon-born, and she was a friend to poor and unfortunate Gentiles She wished only to go on doing good and being happy

And she thought of what that great ranch rove of cottonwoods, the old stone house, the ay, dusty horses and s, the sleek, clean-li herds of cattle and the lean, sun-browned riders of the sage

While she waited there she forgot the prospect of untoward change The bray of a lazy burro broke the afternoon quiet, and it was coestive of the drowsy farreen alfalfa fields Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it rolled before her Loells 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 hugeits solitary,line that faded in the north Here to the as the light and color and beauty Northward the slope descended to a di of the earth, not mountainous, but a vast heave of purple uplands, with ribbed and fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and gray escarpments