Well, perhaps you've more to tell me than I've got to tell you." Briefly, in few words, Jane outlined the circumstances of her undoing in the weeks of his absence.
Under his beard and bronze she saw his face whiten in terrible wrath.
"Lassiter--what held you back ?" No time in the long period of fiery moments and sudden shocks had Jane Withersteen ever beheld Lassiter as calm and serene and cool as then.
"Jane had gloom enough without my addin' to it by shootin' up the village," he said.
As strange as Lassiter's coolness was Venters's curious, intent scrutiny of them both, and under it Jane felt a flaming tide wave from bosom to temples.
"Well--you're right," he said, with slow pause.

"It surprises me a little, that's all." Jane sensed then a slight alteration in Venters, and what it was, in her own confusion, she could not tell.

It had always been her intention to acquaint him with the deceit she had fallen to in her zeal to move Lassiter.

She did not mean to spare herself.

Yet now, at the moment, before these riders, it was an impossibility to explain.
Venters was speaking somewhat haltingly, without his former frankness.
"I found Oldring's hiding-place and your red herd.