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RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE By Zane Grey
CHAPTER I. LASSITER
A sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds
of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage.
Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and
troubled eyes. A rider had just left her and it was his message that
held her thoughtful and almost sad, awaiting the churchmen who were
coming to resent and attack her right to befriend a Gentile.
She wondered if the unrest and strife that had lately come to the
little village of Cottonwoods was to involve her. And then she sighed,
remembering 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 many of the cottages. Withersteen House was hers, and the
great ranch, with its thousands of cattle, and the swiftest horses of
the sage. To her belonged Amber Spring, the water which gave verdure
and beauty to the village and made living possible on that wild purple
upland waste. She could not escape being involved by whatever befell
Cottonwoods.
That year, 1871, had marked a change which had been gradually coming
in the lives of the peace-loving Mormons of the border. Glaze—Stone
Bridge—Sterling, villages 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 meant to her. She loved
it all—the grove of cottonwoods, the old stone house, the amber-tinted
water, and the droves of shaggy, dusty horses and mustangs, the sleek,
clean-limbed, blooded racers, and the browsing 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 comfortingly
suggestive of the drowsy farmyard, and the open corrals, and the green
alfalfa fields. Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it
rolled before her. Low swells 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 huge monument, looming dark purple
and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that faded
in the north. Here to the westward was the light and color and beauty.
Northward the slope descended to a dim line of canyons from which rose
an up-Hinging of the earth, not mountainous, but a vast heave of purple
uplands, with ribbed and fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and
gray escarpments. Over it all crept the lengthening, waning afternoon
shadows.
The rapid beat of hoofs recalled Jane Withersteen to the question at
hand. A group of riders cantered up the lane, dismounted, and threw
their bridles. They were seven in number, and Tull, the leader, a tall,
dark man, was an elder of Jane's church.
"Did you get my message?" he asked, curtly.
"Yes," replied Jane.
"I sent word I'd give that rider Venters half an hour to come down to
the village. He didn't come."
"He knows nothing of it;" said Jane. "I didn't tell him. I've been
waiting here for you."
"Where is Venters?"
"I left him in the courtyard."
"Here, Jerry," called Tull, turning to his men, "take the gang and fetch
Venters out here if you have to rope him."
The dusty-booted and long-spurred riders clanked noisily into the grove
of cottonwoods and disappeared in the shade.
"Elder Tull, what do you mean by this?" demanded Jane. "If you must
arrest Venters you might have the courtesy to wait till he leaves my
home. And if you do arrest him it will be adding insult to injury. It's
absurd to accuse Venters of being mixed up in that shooting fray in the
village last night. He was with me at the time. Besides, he let me take
charge of his guns. You're only using this as a pretext. What do you
mean to do to Venters?"
"I'll tell you presently," replied Tull. "But first tell me why you
defend this worthless rider?"
"Worthless!" exclaimed Jane, indignantly. "He's nothing of the kind.
He was the best rider I ever had. There's not a reason why I shouldn't
champion him and every reason why I should. It's no little shame to me,
Elder Tull, that through my friendship he has roused the enmity of my
people and become an outcast. Besides I owe him eternal gratitude for
saving the life of little Fay."
"I've heard of your love for Fay Larkin and that you intend to adopt
her. But—Jane Withersteen, the child is a Gentile!"
"Yes. But, Elder, I don't love the Mormon children any less because I
love a Gentile child. I shall adopt Fay if her mother will give her to
me."
"I'm not so much against that. You can give the child Mormon teaching,"
said Tull. "But I'm sick of seeing this fellow Venters hang around you.
I'm going to put a stop to it. You've so much love to throw away on
these beggars of Gentiles that I've an idea you might love Venters."
Tull spoke with the arrogance of a Mormon whose power could not be
brooked and with the passion of a man in whom jealousy had kindled a
consuming fire.
"Maybe I do love him," said Jane. She felt both fear and anger stir her
heart. "I'd never thought of that. Poor fellow! he certainly needs some
one to love him."
"This'll be a bad day for Venters unless you deny that," returned Tull,
grimly.
Tull's men appeared under the cottonwoods and led a young man out into
the lane. His ragged clothes were those of an outcast. But he stood tall
and straight, his wide shoulders flung back, with the muscles of his
bound arms rippling and a blue flame of defiance in the gaze he bent on
Tull.
For the first time Jane Withersteen felt Venters's real spirit. She
wondered if she would love this splendid youth. Then her emotion cooled
to the sobering sense of the issue at stake.
"Venters, will you leave Cottonwoods at once and forever?" asked Tull,
tensely.
"Why?" rejoined the rider.
"Because I order it."
Venters laughed in cool disdain.
The red leaped to Tull's dark cheek.
"If you don't go it means your ruin," he said, sharply.
"Ruin!" exclaimed Venters, passionately. "Haven't you already ruined me?
What do you call ruin? A year ago I was a rider. I had horses and cattle
of my own. I had a good name in Cottonwoods. And now when I come into
the village to see this woman you set your men on me. You hound me. You
trail me as if I were a rustler. I've no more to lose—except my life."
"Will you leave Utah?"
"Oh! I know," went on Venters, tauntingly, "it galls you, the idea of
beautiful Jane Withersteen being friendly to a poor Gentile. You want
her all yourself. You're a wiving Mormon. You have use for her—and
Withersteen House and Amber Spring and seven thousand head of cattle!"
Tull's hard jaw protruded, and rioting blood corded the veins of his
neck.
"Once more. Will you go?"
"NO!"
"Then I'll have you whipped within an inch of your life," replied Tull,
harshly. "I'll turn you out in the sage. And if you ever come back
you'll get worse."
Venters's agitated face grew coldly set and the bronze changed
Jane impulsively stepped forward. "Oh! Elder Tull!" she cried. "You
won't do that!"
Tull lifted a shaking finger toward her.
"That'll do from you. Understand, you'll not be allowed to hold this boy
to a friendship that's offensive to your Bishop. Jane Withersteen, your
father left you wealth and power. It has turned your head. You haven't
yet come to see the place of Mormon women. We've reasoned with you,
borne with you. We've patiently waited. We've let you have your fling,
which is more than I ever saw granted to a Mormon woman. But you haven't
come to your senses. Now, once for all, you can't have any further
friendship with Venters. He's going to be whipped, and he's got to leave
Utah!"
"Oh! Don't whip him! It would be dastardly!" implored Jane, with slow
certainty of her failing courage.
Tull always blunted her spirit, and she grew conscious that she had
feigned a boldness which she did not possess. He loomed up now in
different guise, not as a jealous suitor, but embodying the mysterious
despotism she had known from childhood—the power of her creed.
"Venters, will you take your whipping here or would you rather go out
in the sage?" asked Tull. He smiled a flinty smile that was more
than inhuman, yet seemed to give out of its dark aloofness a gleam of
righteousness.
"I'll take it here—if I must," said Venters. "But by God!—Tull you'd
better kill me outright. That'll be a dear whipping for you and your
praying Mormons. You'll make me another Lassiter!"
The strange glow, the austere light which radiated from Tull's face,
might have been a holy joy at the spiritual conception of exalted duty.
But there was something more in him, barely hidden, a something personal
and sinister, a deep of himself, an engulfing abyss. As his religious
mood was fanatical and inexorable, so would his physical hate be
merciless.
"Elder, I—I repent my words," Jane faltered. The religion in her, the
long habit of obedience, of humility, as well as agony of fear, spoke in
her voice. "Spare the boy!" she whispered.
"You can't save him now," replied Tull stridently.
Her head was bowing to the inevitable. She was grasping the truth,
when suddenly there came, in inward constriction, a hardening of gentle
forces within her breast. Like a steel bar it was stiffening all that
had been soft and weak in her. She felt a birth in her of something new
and unintelligible. Once more her strained gaze sought the sage-slopes.
Jane Withersteen loved that wild and purple wilderness. In times
of sorrow it had been her strength, in happiness its beauty was her
continual delight. In her extremity she found herself murmuring, "Whence
cometh my help!" It was a prayer, as if forth from those lonely purple
reaches and walls of red and clefts of blue might ride a fearless man,
neither creed-bound nor creed-mad, who would hold up a restraining hand
in the faces of her ruthless people.
The restless movements of Tull's men suddenly quieted down. Then
followed a low whisper, a rustle, a sharp exclamation.
"Look!" said one, pointing to the west.
"A rider!"
Jane Withersteen wheeled and saw a horseman, silhouetted against the
western sky, coming riding out of the sage. He had ridden down from the
left, in the golden glare of the sun, and had been unobserved till close
at hand. An answer to her prayer!
"Do you know him? Does any one know him?" questioned Tull, hurriedly.
His men looked and looked, and one by one shook their heads.
"He's come from far," said one.
"Thet's a fine hoss," said another.
"A strange rider."
"Huh! he wears black leather," added a fourth.
With a wave of his hand, enjoining silence, Tull stepped forward in such
a way that he concealed Venters.
The rider reined in his mount, and with a lithe forward-slipping
action appeared to reach the ground in one long step. It was a peculiar
movement in its quickness and inasmuch that while performing it the
rider did not swerve in the slightest from a square front to the group
before him.
"Look!" hoarsely whispered one of Tull's companions. "He packs two
black-butted guns—low down—they're hard to see—black akin them black
chaps."
"A gun-man!" whispered another. "Fellers, careful now about movin' your
hands."
The stranger's slow approach might have been a mere leisurely manner of
gait or the cramped short steps of a rider unused to walking; yet, as
well, it could have been the guarded advance of one who took no chances
with men.
"Hello, stranger!" called Tull. No welcome was in this greeting only a
gruff curiosity.
The rider responded with a curt nod. The wide brim of a black sombrero
cast a dark shade over his face. For a moment he closely regarded Tull
and his comrades, and then, halting in his slow walk, he seemed to
relax.
"Evenin', ma'am," he said to Jane, and removed his sombrero with quaint
grace.
Jane, greeting him, looked up into a face that she trusted instinctively
and which riveted her attention. It had all the characteristics of
the range rider's—the leanness, the red burn of the sun, and the set
changelessness that came from years of silence and solitude. But it was
not these which held her, rather the intensity of his gaze, a strained
weariness, a piercing wistfulness of keen, gray sight, as if the man
was forever looking for that which he never found. Jane's subtle woman's
intuition, even in that brief instant, felt a sadness, a hungering, a
secret.
"Jane Withersteen, ma'am?" he inquired.
"Yes," she replied.
"The water here is yours?"
"Yes."
"May I water my horse?"
"Certainly. There's the trough."
"But mebbe if you knew who I was—" He hesitated, with his glance on
the listening men. "Mebbe you wouldn't let me water him—though I ain't
askin' none for myself."
"Stranger, it doesn't matter who you are. Water your horse. And if you
are thirsty and hungry come into my house."
"Thanks, ma'am. I can't accept for myself—but for my tired horse—"
Trampling of hoofs interrupted the rider. More restless movements on
the part of Tull's men broke up the little circle, exposing the prisoner
Venters.
"Mebbe I've kind of hindered somethin'—for a few moments, perhaps?"
inquired the rider.
"Yes," replied Jane Withersteen, with a throb in her voice.
She felt the drawing power of his eyes; and then she saw him look at the
bound Venters, and at the men who held him, and their leader.
"In this here country all the rustlers an' thieves an' cut-throats
an' gun-throwers an' all-round no-good men jest happen to be Gentiles.
Ma'am, which of the no-good class does that young feller belong to?"
"He belongs to none of them. He's an honest boy."
"You KNOW that, ma'am?"
"Yes—yes."
"Then what has he done to get tied up that way?"
His clear and distinct question, meant for Tull as well as for Jane
Withersteen, stilled the restlessness and brought a momentary silence.
"Ask him," replied Jane, her voice rising high.
The rider stepped away from her, moving out with the same slow, measured
stride in which he had approached, and the fact that his action placed
her wholly to one side, and him no nearer to Tull and his men, had a
penetrating significance.
"Young feller, speak up," he said to Venters.
"Here stranger, this's none of your mix," began Tull. "Don't try any
interference. You've been asked to drink and eat. That's more than you'd
have got in any other village of the Utah border. Water your horse and
be on your way."
"Easy—easy—I ain't interferin' yet," replied the rider. The tone of
his voice had undergone a change. A different man had spoken. Where, in
addressing Jane, he had been mild and gentle, now, with his first speech
to Tull, he was dry, cool, biting. "I've lest stumbled onto a ***
deal. Seven Mormons all packin' guns, an' a Gentile tied with a rope,
an' a woman who swears by his honesty! ***, ain't that?"
"*** or not, it's none of your business," retorted Tull.
"Where I was raised a woman's word was law. I ain't quite outgrowed that
yet."
Tull fumed between amaze and anger.
"Meddler, we have a law here something different from woman's
whim—Mormon law!... Take care you don't transgress it."
"To hell with your Mormon law!"
The deliberate speech marked the rider's further change, this time from
kindly interest to an awakening menace. It produced a transformation in
Tull and his companions. The leader gasped and staggered backward at
a blasphemous affront to an institution he held most sacred. The man
Jerry, holding the horses, dropped the bridles and froze in his tracks.
Like posts the other men stood watchful-eyed, arms hanging rigid, all
waiting.
"Speak up now, young man. What have you done to be roped that way?"
"It's a damned outrage!" burst out Venters. "I've done no wrong. I've
offended this Mormon Elder by being a friend to that woman."
"Ma'am, is it true—what he says?" asked the rider of Jane, but his
quiveringly alert eyes never left the little knot of quiet men.
"True? Yes, perfectly true," she answered.
"Well, young man, it seems to me that bein' a friend to such a woman
would be what you wouldn't want to help an' couldn't help.... What's to
be done to you for it?"
"They intend to whip me. You know what that means—in Utah!"
"I reckon," replied the rider, slowly.
With his gray glance cold on the Mormons, with the restive bit-champing
of the horses, with Jane failing to repress her mounting agitations,
with Venters standing pale and still, the tension of the moment
tightened. Tull broke the spell with a laugh, a laugh without mirth, a
laugh that was only a sound betraying fear.
"Come on, men!" he called.
Jane Withersteen turned again to the rider.
"Stranger, can you do nothing to save Venters?"
"Ma'am, you ask me to save him—from your own people?"
"Ask you? I beg of you!"
"But you don't dream who you're askin'."
"Oh, sir, I pray you—save him!"
"These are Mormons, an' I..."
"At—at any cost—save him. For I—I care for him!"
Tull snarled. "You love-sick fool! Tell your secrets. There'll be a way
to teach you what you've never learned.... Come men out of here!"
"Mormon, the young man stays," said the rider.
Like a shot his voice halted Tull.
"What!"
"Who'll keep him? He's my prisoner!" cried Tull, hotly. "Stranger, again
I tell you—don't mix here. You've meddled enough. Go your way now or—"
"Listen!... He stays."
Absolute certainty, beyond any shadow of doubt, breathed in the rider's
low voice.
"Who are you? We are seven here."
The rider dropped his sombrero and made a rapid movement, singular in
that it left him somewhat crouched, arms bent and stiff, with the big
black gun-sheaths swung round to the fore.
"LASSITER!"
It was Venters's wondering, thrilling cry that bridged the fateful
connection between the rider's singular position and the dreaded name.
Tull put out a groping hand. The life of his eyes dulled to the gloom
with which men of his fear saw the approach of death. But death, while
it hovered over him, did not descend, for the rider waited for the
twitching fingers, the downward flash of hand that did not come. Tull,
gathering himself together, turned to the horses, attended by his pale
comrades.
CHAPTER II. COTTONWOODS
Venters appeared too deeply moved to speak the gratitude his face
expressed. And Jane turned upon the rescuer and gripped his hands.
Her smiles and tears seemingly dazed him. Presently as something like
calmness returned, she went to Lassiter's weary horse.
"I will water him myself," she said, and she led the horse to a trough
under a huge old cottonwood. With nimble fingers she loosened the bridle
and removed the bit. The horse snorted and bent his head. The trough was
of solid stone, hollowed out, moss-covered and green and wet and cool,
and the clear brown water that fed it spouted and splashed from a wooden
pipe.
"He has brought you far to-day?"
"Yes, ma'am, a matter of over sixty miles, mebbe seventy."
"A long ride—a ride that—Ah, he is blind!"
"Yes, ma'am," replied Lassiter.
"What blinded him?"
"Some men once roped an' tied him, an' then held white-iron close to his
eyes."
"Oh! Men? You mean devils.... Were they your enemies—Mormons?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"To take revenge on a horse! Lassiter, the men of my creed are
unnaturally cruel. To my everlasting sorrow I confess it. They have been
driven, hated, scourged till their hearts have hardened. But we women
hope and pray for the time when our men will soften."
"Beggin' your pardon, ma'am—that time will never come."
"Oh, it will!... Lassiter, do you think Mormon women wicked? Has your
hand been against them, too?"
"No. I believe Mormon women are the best and noblest, the most
long-sufferin', and the blindest, unhappiest women on earth."
"Ah!" She gave him a grave, thoughtful look. "Then you will break bread
with me?"
Lassiter had no ready response, and he uneasily shifted his weight
from one leg to another, and turned his sombrero round and round in his
hands. "Ma'am," he began, presently, "I reckon your kindness of heart
makes you overlook things. Perhaps I ain't well known hereabouts, but
back up North there's Mormons who'd rest uneasy in their graves at the
idea of me sittin' to table with you."
"I dare say. But—will you do it, anyway?" she asked.
"Mebbe you have a brother or relative who might drop in an' be offended,
an' I wouldn't want to—"
"I've not a relative in Utah that I know of. There's no one with a right
to question my actions." She turned smilingly to Venters. "You will come
in, Bern, and Lassiter will come in. We'll eat and be merry while we
may."
"I'm only wonderin' if Tull an' his men'll raise a storm down in the
village," said Lassiter, in his last weakening stand.
"Yes, he'll raise the storm—after he has prayed," replied Jane. "Come."
She led the way, with the bridle of Lassiter's horse over her arm.
They entered a grove and walked down a wide path shaded by great
low-branching cottonwoods. The last rays of the setting sun sent golden
bars through the leaves. The grass was deep and rich, welcome contrast
to sage-tired eyes. Twittering quail darted across the path, and from a
tree-top somewhere a robin sang its evening song, and on the still air
floated the freshness and murmur of flowing water.
The home of Jane Withersteen stood in a circle of cottonwoods, and was
a flat, long, red-stone structure with a covered court in the center
through which flowed a lively stream of amber-colored water. In the
massive blocks of stone and heavy timbers and solid doors and shutters
showed the hand of a man who had builded against pillage and time; and
in the flowers and mosses lining the stone-bedded stream, in the bright
colors of rugs and blankets on the court floor, and the cozy corner with
hammock and books and the clean-linened table, showed the grace of a
daughter who lived for happiness and the day at hand.
Jane turned Lassiter's horse loose in the thick grass. "You will want
him to be near you," she said, "or I'd have him taken to the alfalfa
fields." At her call appeared women who began at once to bustle about,
hurrying to and fro, setting the table. Then Jane, excusing herself,
went within.
She passed through a huge low ceiled chamber, like the inside of a fort,
and into a smaller one where a bright wood-fire blazed in an old open
fireplace, and from this into her own room. It had the same comfort as
was manifested in the home-like outer court; moreover, it was warm and
rich in soft hues.
Seldom did Jane Withersteen enter her room without looking into her
mirror. She knew she loved the reflection of that beauty which since
early childhood she had never been allowed to forget. Her relatives and
friends, and later a horde of Mormon and Gentile suitors, had fanned
the flame of natural vanity in her. So that at twenty-eight she scarcely
thought at all of her wonderful influence for good in the little
community where her father had left her practically its beneficent
landlord, but cared most for the dream and the assurance and the
allurement of her beauty. This time, however, she gazed into her
glass with more than the usual happy motive, without the usual slight
conscious smile. For she was thinking of more than the desire to be fair
in her own eyes, in those of her friend; she wondered if she were to
seem fair in the eyes of this Lassiter, this man whose name had crossed
the long, wild brakes of stone and plains of sage, this gentle-voiced,
sad-faced man who was a hater and a killer of Mormons. It was not
now her usual half-conscious vain obsession that actuated her as she
hurriedly changed her riding-dress to one of white, and then looked long
at the stately form with its gracious contours, at the fair face
with its strong chin and full firm lips, at the dark-blue, proud, and
passionate eyes.
"If by some means I can keep him here a few days, a week—he will never
kill another Mormon," she mused. "Lassiter!... I shudder when I think
of that name, of him. But when I look at the man I forget who he is—I
almost like him. I remember only that he saved Bern. He has suffered. I
wonder what it was—did he love a Mormon woman once? How splendidly he
championed us poor misunderstood souls! Somehow he knows—much."
Jane Withersteen joined her guests and bade them to her board.
Dismissing her woman, she waited upon them with her own hands. It was a
bountiful supper and a strange company. On her right sat the ragged
and half-starved Venters; and though blind eyes could have seen what
he counted for in the sum of her happiness, yet he looked the gloomy
outcast his allegiance had made him, and about him there was the shadow
of the ruin presaged by Tull. On her left sat black-leather-garbed
Lassiter looking like a man in a dream. Hunger was not with him, nor
composure, nor speech, and when he twisted in frequent unquiet movements
the heavy guns that he had not removed knocked against the table-legs.
If it had been otherwise possible to forget the presence of Lassiter
those telling little jars would have rendered it unlikely. And Jane
Withersteen talked and smiled and laughed with all the dazzling play
of lips and eyes that a beautiful, daring woman could summon to her
purpose.
When the meal ended, and the men pushed back their chairs, she leaned
closer to Lassiter and looked square into his eyes.
"Why did you come to Cottonwoods?"
Her question seemed to break a spell. The rider arose as if he had just
remembered himself and had tarried longer than his wont.
"Ma'am, I have hunted all over the southern Utah and Nevada
for—somethin'. An' through your name I learned where to find it—here
in Cottonwoods."
"My name! Oh, I remember. You did know my name when you spoke first.
Well, tell me where you heard it and from whom?"
"At the little village—Glaze, I think it's called—some fifty miles or
more west of here. An' I heard it from a Gentile, a rider who said you'd
know where to tell me to find—"
"What?" she demanded, imperiously, as Lassiter broke off.
"Milly Erne's grave," he answered low, and the words came with a wrench.
Venters wheeled in his chair to regard Lassiter in amazement, and Jane
slowly raised herself in white, still wonder.
"Milly Erne's grave?" she echoed, in a whisper. "What do you know of
Milly Erne, my best-beloved friend—who died in my arms? What were you
to her?"
"Did I claim to be anythin'?" he inquired. "I know
people—relatives—who have long wanted to know where she's buried,
that's all."
"Relatives? She never spoke of relatives, except a brother who was shot
in Texas. Lassiter, Milly Erne's grave is in a secret burying-ground on
my property."
"Will you take me there?... You'll be offendin' Mormons worse than by
breakin' bread with me."
"Indeed yes, but I'll do it. Only we must go unseen. To-morrow,
perhaps."
"Thank you, Jane Withersteen," replied the rider, and he bowed to her
and stepped backward out of the court.
"Will you not stay—sleep under my roof?" she asked.
"No, ma'am, an' thanks again. I never sleep indoors. An' even if I did
there's that gatherin' storm in the village below. No, no. I'll go to
the sage. I hope you won't suffer none for your kindness to me."
"Lassiter," said Venters, with a half-bitter laugh, "my bed too, is the
sage. Perhaps we may meet out there."
"Mebbe so. But the sage is wide an' I won't be near. Good night."
At Lassiter's low whistle the black horse whinnied, and carefully picked
his blind way out of the grove. The rider did not bridle him, but walked
beside him, leading him by touch of hand and together they passed slowly
into the shade of the cottonwoods.
"Jane, I must be off soon," said Venters. "Give me my guns. If I'd had
my guns—"
"Either my friend or the Elder of my church would be lying dead," she
interposed.
"Tull would be—surely."
"Oh, you fierce-blooded, savage youth! Can't I teach you forebearance,
mercy? Bern, it's divine to forgive your enemies. 'Let not the sun go
down upon thy wrath.'"
"Hush! Talk to me no more of mercy or religion—after to-day. To-day
this strange coming of Lassiter left me still a man, and now I'll die a
man!... Give me my guns."
Silently she went into the house, to return with a heavy cartridge-belt
and gun-filled sheath and a long rifle; these she handed to him, and as
he buckled on the belt she stood before him in silent eloquence.
"Jane," he said, in gentler voice, "don't look so. I'm not going out to
*** your churchman. I'll try to avoid him and all his men. But can't
you see I've reached the end of my rope? Jane, you're a wonderful woman.
Never was there a woman so unselfish and good. Only you're blind in one
way.... Listen!"
From behind the grove came the clicking sound of horses in a rapid trot.
"Some of your riders," he continued. "It's getting time for the night
shift. Let us go out to the bench in the grove and talk there."
It was still daylight in the open, but under the spreading cottonwoods
shadows were obscuring the lanes. Venters drew Jane off from one of
these into a shrub-lined trail, just wide enough for the two to walk
abreast, and in a roundabout way led her far from the house to a knoll
on the edge of the grove. Here in a secluded nook was a bench from
which, through an opening in the tree-tops, could be seen the sage-slope
and the wall of rock and the dim lines of canyons. Jane had not spoken
since Venters had shocked her with his first harsh speech; but all the
way she had clung to his arm, and now, as he stopped and laid his rifle
against the bench, she still clung to him.
"Jane, I'm afraid I must leave you."
"Bern!" she cried.
"Yes, it looks that way. My position is not a happy one—I can't feel
right—I've lost all—"
"I'll give you anything you—"
"Listen, please. When I say loss I don't mean what you think. I mean
loss of good-will, good name—that which would have enabled me to stand
up in this village without bitterness. Well, it's too late.... Now, as to
the future, I think you'd do best to give me up. Tull is implacable.
You ought to see from his intention to-day that—But you can't see. Your
blindness—your damned religion!... Jane, forgive me—I'm sore within and
something rankles. Well, I fear that invisible hand will turn its hidden
work to your ruin."
"Invisible hand? Bern!"
"I mean your Bishop." Venters said it deliberately and would not release
her as she started back. "He's the law. The edict went forth to ruin me.
Well, look at me! It'll now go forth to compel you to the will of the
Church."
"You wrong Bishop Dyer. Tull is hard, I know. But then he has been in
love with me for years."
"Oh, your faith and your excuses! You can't see what I know—and if you
did see it you'd not admit it to save your life. That's the Mormon
of you. These elders and bishops will do absolutely any deed to go on
building up the power and wealth of their church, their empire. Think
of what they've done to the Gentiles here, to me—think of Milly Erne's
fate!"
"What do you know of her story?"
"I know enough—all, perhaps, except the name of the Mormon who brought
her here. But I must stop this kind of talk."
She pressed his hand in response. He helped her to a seat beside him
on the bench. And he respected a silence that he divined was full of
woman's deep emotion beyond his understanding.
It was the moment when the last ruddy rays of the sunset brightened
momentarily before yielding to twilight. And for Venters the outlook
before him was in some sense similar to a feeling of his future, and
with searching eyes he studied the beautiful purple, barren waste of
sage. Here was the unknown and the perilous. The whole scene impressed
Venters as a wild, austere, and mighty manifestation of nature. And
as it somehow reminded him of his prospect in life, so it suddenly
resembled the woman near him, only in her there were greater beauty and
peril, a mystery more unsolvable, and something nameless that numbed his
heart and dimmed his eye.
"Look! A rider!" exclaimed Jane, breaking the silence. "Can that be
Lassiter?"
Venters moved his glance once more to the west. A horseman showed dark
on the sky-line, then merged into the color of the sage.
"It might be. But I think not—that fellow was coming in. One of your
riders, more likely. Yes, I see him clearly now. And there's another."
"I see them, too."
"Jane, your riders seem as many as the bunches of sage. I ran into five
yesterday 'way down near the trail to Deception Pass. They were with the
white herd."
"You still go to that canyon? Bern, I wish you wouldn't. Oldring and his
rustlers live somewhere down there."
"Well, what of that?"
"Tull has already hinted to your frequent trips into Deception Pass."
"I know." Venters uttered a short laugh. "He'll make a rustler of me
next. But, Jane, there's no water for fifty miles after I leave here,
and the nearest is in the canyon. I must drink and water my horse.
There! I see more riders. They are going out."
"The red herd is on the slope, toward the Pass."
Twilight was fast falling. A group of horsemen crossed the dark line
of low ground to become more distinct as they climbed the slope. The
silence broke to a clear call from an incoming rider, and, almost like
the peal of a hunting-horn, floated back the answer. The outgoing riders
moved swiftly, came sharply into sight as they topped a ridge to show
wild and black above the horizon, and then passed down, dimming into the
purple of the sage.
"I hope they don't meet Lassiter," said Jane.
"So do I," replied Venters. "By this time the riders of the night shift
know what happened to-day. But Lassiter will likely keep out of their
way."
"Bern, who is Lassiter? He's only a name to me—a terrible name."
"Who is he? I don't know, Jane. Nobody I ever met knows him. He talks a
little like a Texan, like Milly Erne. Did you note that?"
"Yes. How strange of him to know of her! And she lived here ten years
and has been dead two. Bern, what do you know of Lassiter? Tell me what
he has done—why you spoke of him to Tull—threatening to become another
Lassiter yourself?"
"Jane, I only heard things, rumors, stories, most of which I
disbelieved. At Glaze his name was known, but none of the riders or
ranchers I knew there ever met him. At Stone Bridge I never heard him
mentioned. But at Sterling and villages north of there he was spoken of
often. I've never been in a village which he had been known to visit.
There were many conflicting stories about him and his doings. Some said
he had shot up this and that Mormon village, and others denied it. I'm
inclined to believe he has, and you know how Mormons hide the truth. But
there was one feature about Lassiter upon which all agree—that he was
what riders in this country call a gun-man. He's a man with a marvelous
quickness and accuracy in the use of a Colt. And now that I've seen him
I know more. Lassiter was born without fear. I watched him with eyes
which saw him my friend. I'll never forget the moment I recognized him
from what had been told me of his crouch before the draw. It was then I
yelled his name. I believe that yell saved Tull's life. At any rate, I
know this, between Tull and death then there was not the breadth of the
littlest hair. If he or any of his men had moved a finger downward—"
Venters left his meaning unspoken, but at the suggestion Jane shuddered.
The pale afterglow in the west darkened with the merging of twilight
into night. The sage now spread out black and gloomy. One dim star
glimmered in the southwest sky. The sound of trotting horses had
ceased, and there was silence broken only by a faint, dry pattering of
cottonwood leaves in the soft night wind.
Into this peace and calm suddenly broke the high-keyed yelp of a coyote,
and from far off in the darkness came the faint answering note of a
trailing mate.
"Hello! the sage-dogs are barking," said Venters.
"I don't like to hear them," replied Jane. "At night, sometimes when I
lie awake, listening to the long mourn or breaking bark or wild howl, I
think of you asleep somewhere in the sage, and my heart aches."
"Jane, you couldn't listen to sweeter music, nor could I have a better
bed."
"Just think! Men like Lassiter and you have no home, no comfort, no
rest, no place to lay your weary heads. Well!... Let us be patient.
Tull's anger may cool, and time may help us. You might do some service
to the village—who can tell? Suppose you discovered the long-unknown
hiding-place of Oldring and his band, and told it to my riders? That
would disarm Tull's ugly hints and put you in favor. For years my riders
have trailed the tracks of stolen cattle. You know as well as I how
dearly we've paid for our ranges in this wild country. Oldring drives
our cattle down into the network of deceiving canyons, and somewhere far
to the north or east he drives them up and out to Utah markets. If you
will spend time in Deception Pass try to find the trails."
"Jane, I've thought of that. I'll try."
"I must go now. And it hurts, for now I'll never be sure of seeing you
again. But to-morrow, Bern?"
"To-morrow surely. I'll watch for Lassiter and ride in with him."
"Good night."
Then she left him and moved away, a white, gliding shape that soon
vanished in the shadows.
Venters waited until the faint slam of a door assured him she had
reached the house, and then, taking up his rifle, he noiselessly slipped
through the bushes, down the knoll, and on under the dark trees to the
edge of the grove. The sky was now turning from gray to blue; stars had
begun to lighten the earlier blackness; and from the wide flat sweep
before him blew a cool wind, fragrant with the breath of sage. Keeping
close to the edge of the cottonwoods, he went swiftly and silently
westward. The grove was long, and he had not reached the end when he
heard something that brought him to a halt. Low padded thuds told
him horses were coming this way. He sank down in the gloom, waiting,
listening. Much before he had expected, judging from sound, to his
amazement he descried horsemen near at hand. They were riding along the
border of the sage, and instantly he knew the hoofs of the horses were
muffled. Then the pale starlight afforded him indistinct sight of the
riders. But his eyes were keen and used to the dark, and by peering
closely he recognized the huge bulk and black-bearded visage of Oldring
and the lithe, supple form of the rustler's lieutenant, a masked rider.
They passed on; the darkness swallowed them. Then, farther out on the
sage, a dark, compact body of horsemen went by, almost without sound,
almost like specters, and they, too, melted into the night.
CHAPTER III. AMBER SPRING
No unusual circumstances was it for Oldring and some of his men to visit
Cottonwoods in the broad light of day, but for him to prowl about in
the dark with the hoofs of his horses muffled meant that mischief was
brewing. Moreover, to Venters the presence of the masked rider with
Oldring seemed especially ominous. For about this man there was mystery,
he seldom rode through the village, and when he did ride through it
was swiftly; riders seldom met by day on the sage, but wherever he rode
there always followed deeds as dark and mysterious as the mask he wore.
Oldring's band did not confine themselves to the rustling of cattle.
Venters lay low in the shade of the cottonwoods, pondering this chance
meeting, and not for many moments did he consider it safe to move on.
Then, with sudden impulse, he turned the other way and went back along
the grove. When he reached the path leading to Jane's home he decided
to go down to the village. So he hurried onward, with quick soft steps.
Once beyond the grove he entered the one and only street. It was
wide, lined with tall poplars, and under each row of trees, inside the
foot-path, were ditches where ran the water from Jane Withersteen's
spring.
Between the trees twinkled lights of cottage candles, and far down
flared bright windows of the village stores. When Venters got closer to
these he saw knots of men standing together in earnest conversation. The
usual lounging on the corners and benches and steps was not in evidence.
Keeping in the shadow Venters went closer and closer until he could hear
voices. But he could not distinguish what was said. He recognized many
Mormons, and looked hard for Tull and his men, but looked in vain.
Venters concluded that the rustlers had not passed along the village
street. No doubt these earnest men were discussing Lassiter's coming.
But Venters felt positive that Tull's intention toward himself that day
had not been and would not be revealed.
So Venters, seeing there was little for him to learn, began retracing
his steps. The church was dark, Bishop Dyer's home next to it was also
dark, and likewise Tull's cottage. Upon almost any night at this hour
there would be lights here, and Venters marked the unusual omission.
As he was about to pass out of the street to skirt the grove, he once
more slunk down at the sound of trotting horses. Presently he descried
two mounted men riding toward him. He hugged the shadow of a tree. Again
the starlight, brighter now, aided him, and he made out Tull's stalwart
figure, and beside him the short, froglike shape of the rider Jerry.
They were silent, and they rode on to disappear.
Venters went his way with busy, gloomy mind, revolving events of
the day, trying to reckon those brooding in the night. His thoughts
overwhelmed him. Up in that dark grove dwelt a woman who had been his
friend. And he skulked about her home, gripping a gun stealthily as an
Indian, a man without place or people or purpose. Above her hovered the
shadow of grim, hidden, secret power. No queen could have given more
royally out of a bounteous store than Jane Withersteen gave her people,
and likewise to those unfortunates whom her people hated. She asked only
the divine right of all women—freedom; to love and to live as her heart
willed. And yet prayer and her hope were vain.
"For years I've seen a storm clouding over her and the village of
Cottonwoods," muttered Venters, as he strode on. "Soon it'll burst. I
don't like the prospects." That night the villagers whispered in the
street—and night-riding rustlers muffled horses—and Tull was at work
in secret—and out there in the sage hid a man who meant something
terrible—Lassiter!
Venters passed the black cottonwoods, and, entering the sage, climbed
the gradual slope. He kept his direction in line with a western star.
From time to time he stopped to listen and heard only the usual familiar
bark of coyote and sweep of wind and rustle of sage. Presently a low
jumble of rocks loomed up darkly somewhat to his right, and, turning
that way, he whistled softly. Out of the rocks glided a dog that leaped
and whined about him. He climbed over rough, broken rock, picking his
way carefully, and then went down. Here it was darker, and sheltered
from the wind. A white object guided him. It was another dog, and this
one was asleep, curled up between a saddle and a pack. The animal
awoke and thumped his tail in greeting. Venters placed the saddle for a
pillow, rolled in his blankets, with his face upward to the stars. The
white dog snuggled close to him. The other whined and pattered a few
yards to the rise of ground and there crouched on guard. And in that
wild covert Venters shut his eyes under the great white stars and
intense vaulted blue, bitterly comparing their loneliness to his own,
and fell asleep.
When he awoke, day had dawned and all about him was bright steel-gray.
The air had a cold tang. Arising, he greeted the fawning dogs and
stretched his cramped body, and then, gathering together bunches of dead
sage sticks, he lighted a fire. Strips of dried beef held to the blaze
for a moment served him and the dogs. He drank from a canteen. There was
nothing else in his outfit; he had grown used to a scant fire. Then he
sat over the fire, palms outspread, and waited. Waiting had been his
chief occupation for months, and he scarcely knew what he waited for
unless it was the passing of the hours. But now he sensed action in the
immediate present; the day promised another meeting with Lassiter and
Lane, perhaps news of the rustlers; on the morrow he meant to take the
trail to Deception Pass.
And while he waited he talked to his dogs. He called them Ring and
Whitie; they were sheep-dogs, half collie, half deerhound, superb in
build, perfectly trained. It seemed that in his fallen fortunes these
dogs understood the nature of their value to him, and governed their
affection and faithfulness accordingly. Whitie watched him with somber
eyes of love, and Ring, crouched on the little rise of ground above,
kept tireless guard. When the sun rose, the white dog took the place of
the other, and Ring went to sleep at his master's feet.
By and by Venters rolled up his blankets and tied them and his meager
pack together, then climbed out to look for his horse. He saw him,
presently, a little way off in the sage, and went to fetch him. In that
country, where every rider boasted of a fine mount and was eager for a
race, where thoroughbreds dotted the wonderful grazing ranges, Venters
rode a horse that was sad proof of his misfortunes.
Then, with his back against a stone, Venters faced the east, and, stick
in hand and idle blade, he waited. The glorious sunlight filled the
valley with purple fire. Before him, to left, to right, waving, rolling,
sinking, rising, like low swells of a purple sea, stretched the sage.
Out of the grove of cottonwoods, a green patch on the purple, gleamed
the dull red of Jane Withersteen's old stone house. And from there
extended the wide green of the village gardens and orchards marked by
the graceful poplars; and farther down shone the deep, dark richness of
the alfalfa fields. Numberless red and black and white dots speckled the
sage, and these were cattle and horses.
So, watching and waiting, Venters let the time wear away. At length he
saw a horse rise above a ridge, and he knew it to be Lassiter's
black. Climbing to the highest rock, so that he would show against the
sky-line, he stood and waved his hat. The almost instant turning of
Lassiter's horse attested to the quickness of that rider's eye. Then
Venters climbed down, saddled his horse, tied on his pack, and, with
a word to his dogs, was about to ride out to meet Lassiter, when he
concluded to wait for him there, on higher ground, where the outlook was
commanding.
It had been long since Venters had experienced friendly greeting from
a man. Lassiter's warmed in him something that had grown cold from
neglect. And when he had returned it, with a strong grip of the iron
hand that held his, and met the gray eyes, he knew that Lassiter and he
were to be friends.
"Venters, let's talk awhile before we go down there," said Lassiter,
slipping his bridle. "I ain't in no hurry. Them's sure fine dogs you've
got." With a rider's eye he took in the points of Venter's horse, but
did not speak his thought. "Well, did anythin' come off after I left you
last night?"
Venters told him about the rustlers.
"I was snug hid in the sage," replied Lassiter, "an' didn't see or hear
no one. Oldrin's got a high hand here, I reckon. It's no news up in
Utah how he holes in canyons an' leaves no track." Lassiter was silent a
moment. "Me an' Oldrin' wasn't exactly strangers some years back when he
drove cattle into Bostil's Ford, at the head of the Rio ***. But he
got harassed there an' now he drives some place else."
"Lassiter, you knew him? Tell me, is he Mormon or Gentile?"
"I can't say. I've knowed Mormons who pretended to be Gentiles."
"No Mormon ever pretended that unless he was a rustler," declared
Venters.
"Mebbe so."
"It's a hard country for any one, but hardest for Gentiles. Did you ever
know or hear of a Gentile prospering in a Mormon community?"
"I never did."
"Well, I want to get out of Utah. I've a mother living in Illinois. I
want to go home. It's eight years now."
The older man's sympathy moved Venters to tell his story. He had left
Quincy, run off to seek his fortune in the gold fields had never gotten
any farther than Salt Lake City, wandered here and there as helper,
teamster, shepherd, and drifted southward over the divide and across the
barrens and up the rugged plateau through the passes to the last border
settlements. Here he became a rider of the sage, had stock of his own,
and for a time prospered, until chance threw him in the employ of Jane
Withersteen.
"Lassiter, I needn't tell you the rest."
"Well, it'd be no news to me. I know Mormons. I've seen their women's
strange love en' patience en' sacrifice an' silence en' whet I call
madness for their idea of God. An' over against that I've seen the
tricks of men. They work hand in hand, all together, an' in the dark.
No man can hold out against them, unless he takes to packin' guns. For
Mormons are slow to kill. That's the only good I ever seen in their
religion. Venters, take this from me, these Mormons ain't just right in
their minds. Else could a Mormon marry one woman when he already has a
wife, an' call it duty?"
"Lassiter, you think as I think," returned Venters.
"How'd it come then that you never throwed a gun on Tull or some of
them?" inquired the rider, curiously.
"Jane pleaded with me, begged me to be patient, to overlook. She even
took my guns from me. I lost all before I knew it," replied Venters,
with the red color in his face. "But, Lassiter, listen. Out of the
wreck I saved a Winchester, two Colts, and plenty of shells. I packed
these down into Deception Pass. There, almost every day for six months,
I have practiced with my rifle till the barrel burnt my hands. Practised
the draw—the firing of a Colt, hour after hour!"
"Now that's interestin' to me," said Lassiter, with a quick uplift of
his head and a concentration of his gray gaze on Venters. "Could you
throw a gun before you began that practisin'?"
"Yes. And now..." Venters made a lightning-swift movement.
Lassiter smiled, and then his bronzed eyelids narrowed till his eyes
seemed mere gray slits. "You'll kill Tull!" He did not question; he
affirmed.
"I promised Jane Withersteen I'd try to avoid Tull. I'll keep my word.
But sooner or later Tull and I will meet. As I feel now, if he even
looks at me I'll draw!"
"I reckon so. There'll be hell down there, presently." He paused a
moment and flicked a sage-brush with his quirt. "Venters, seein' as
you're considerable worked up, tell me Milly Erne's story."
Venters's agitation stilled to the trace of suppressed eagerness in
Lassiter's query.
"Milly Erne's story? Well, Lassiter, I'll tell you what I know. Milly
Erne had been in Cottonwoods years when I first arrived there, and most
of what I tell you happened before my arrival. I got to know her pretty
well. She was a slip of a woman, and crazy on religion. I conceived an
idea that I never mentioned—I thought she was at heart more Gentile
than Mormon. But she passed as a Mormon, and certainly she had the
Mormon woman's locked lips. You know, in every Mormon village there are
women who seem mysterious to us, but about Milly there was more than
the ordinary mystery. When she came to Cottonwoods she had a beautiful
little girl whom she loved passionately. Milly was not known openly in
Cottonwoods as a Mormon wife. That she really was a Mormon wife I have
no doubt. Perhaps the Mormon's other wife or wives would not acknowledge
Milly. Such things happen in these villages. Mormon wives wear
yokes, but they get jealous. Well, whatever had brought Milly to this
country—love or madness of religion—she repented of it. She gave up
teaching the village school. She quit the church. And she began to
fight Mormon upbringing for her baby girl. Then the Mormons put on the
screws—slowly, as is their way. At last the child disappeared. 'Lost'
was the report. The child was stolen, I know that. So do you. That
wrecked Milly Erne. But she lived on in hope. She became a slave. She
worked her heart and soul and life out to get back her child. She never
heard of it again. Then she sank.... I can see her now, a frail thing, so
transparent you could almost look through her—white like ashes—and her
eyes!... 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. 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 strange contrast to the endless slopes of
lonely sage and the wild rock environs beyond. Venters thought of the
woman who loved the birds and the green of the leaves and the murmur of
the water.
Next on the slope, just below the third and largest lake, were corrals
and a wide stone barn and open sheds and coops and pens. Here were
clouds of dust, and cracking sounds of hoofs, and romping colts and
heehawing burros. Neighing horses trampled to the corral fences. And
on the little windows of the barn projected bobbing heads of bays and
blacks and sorrels. When the two men entered the immense barnyard, from
all around the din increased. This welcome, however, was not seconded by
the several men and boys who vanished on sight.
Venters and Lassiter were turning toward the house when Jane appeared in
the lane leading a horse. In riding-skirt and blouse she seemed to have
lost some of her statuesque proportions, and looked more like a girl
rider than the mistress of Withersteen. She was brightly smiling, and
her greeting was warmly cordial.
"Good news," she announced. "I've been to the village. All is quiet.
I expected—I don't know what. But there's no excitement. And Tull has
ridden out on his way to Glaze."
"Tull gone?" inquired Venters, with surprise. He was wondering what
could have taken Tull away. Was it to avoid another meeting with
Lassiter that he went? Could it have any connection with the probable
nearness of Oldring and his gang?
"Gone, yes, thank goodness," replied Jane. "Now I'll have peace for a
while. Lassiter, I want you to see my horses. You are a rider, and
you must be a judge of horseflesh. Some of mine have Arabian blood.
My father got his best strain in Nevada from Indians who claimed their
horses were bred down from the original stock left by the Spaniards."
"Well, ma'am, the one you've been ridin' takes my eye," said Lassiter,
as he walked round the racy, clean-limbed, and fine-pointed roan.
"Where are the boys?" she asked, looking about. "Jerd, Paul, where are
you? Here, bring out the horses."
The sound of dropping bars inside the barn was the signal for the horses
to jerk their heads in the windows, to snort and stamp. Then they came
pounding out of the door, a file of thoroughbreds, to plunge about
the barnyard, heads and tails up, manes flying. They halted afar off,
squared away to look, came slowly forward with whinnies for their
mistress, and doubtful snorts for the strangers and their horses.
"Come—come—come," called Jane, holding out her hands. "Why,
Bells—Wrangle, where are your manners? Come, Black Star—come, Night.
Ah, you beauties! My racers of the sage!"
Only two came up to her; those she called Night and Black Star. Venters
never looked at them without delight. The first was soft dead black, the
other glittering black, and they were perfectly matched in size, both
being high and long-bodied, wide through the shoulders, with lithe,
powerful legs. That they were a woman's pets showed in the gloss of
skin, the fineness of mane. It showed, too, in the light of big eyes and
the gentle reach of eagerness.
"I never seen their like," was Lassiter's encomium, "an' in my day I've
seen a sight of horses. Now, ma'am, if you was wantin' to make a long
an' fast ride across the sage—say to elope—"
Lassiter ended there with dry humor, yet behind that was meaning. Jane
blushed and made arch eyes at him.
"Take care, Lassiter, I might think that a proposal," she replied,
gaily. "It's dangerous to propose elopement to a Mormon woman. Well,
I was expecting you. Now will be a good hour to show you Milly Erne's
grave. The day-riders have gone, and the night-riders haven't come in.
Bern, what do you make of that? Need I worry? You know I have to be made
to worry."
"Well, it's not usual for the night shift to ride in so late," replied
Venters, slowly, and his glance sought Lassiter's. "Cattle are usually
quiet after dark. Still, I've known even a coyote to stampede your white
herd."
"I refuse to borrow trouble. Come," said Jane.
They mounted, and, with Jane in the lead, rode down the lane, and,
turning off into a cattle trail, proceeded westward. Venters's dogs
trotted behind them. On this side of the ranch the outlook was different
from that on the other; the immediate foreground was rough and the sage
more rugged and less colorful; there were no dark-blue lines of canyons
to hold the eye, nor any uprearing rock walls. It was a long roll and
slope into gray obscurity. Soon Jane left the trail and rode into the
sage, and presently she dismounted and threw her bridle. The men did
likewise. Then, on foot, they followed her, coming out at length on the
rim of a low escarpment. She passed by several little ridges of earth to
halt before a faintly defined mound. It lay in the shade of a sweeping
sage-brush close to the edge of the promontory; and a rider could have
jumped his horse over it without recognizing a grave.
"Here!"
She looked sad as she spoke, but she offered no explanation for the
neglect of an unmarked, uncared-for grave. There was a little bunch of
pale, sweet lavender daisies, doubtless planted there by Jane.
"I only come here to remember and to pray," she said. "But I leave no
trail!"
A grave in the sage! How lonely this resting-place of Milly Erne! The
cottonwoods or the alfalfa fields were not in sight, nor was there any
rock or ridge or cedar to lend contrast to the monotony. Gray slopes,
tinging the purple, barren and wild, with the wind waving the sage,
swept away to the dim horizon.
Lassiter looked at the grave and then out into space. At that moment he
seemed a figure of bronze.
Jane touched Venters's arm and led him back to the horses.
"Bern!" cried Jane, when they were out of hearing. "Suppose Lassiter
were Milly's husband—the father of that little girl lost so long ago!"
"It might be, Jane. Let us ride on. If he wants to see us again he'll
come."
So they mounted and rode out to the cattle trail and began to climb.
From the height of the ridge, where they had started down, Venters
looked back. He did not see Lassiter, but his glance, drawn irresistibly
farther out on the gradual slope, caught sight of a moving cloud of
dust.
"Hello, a rider!"
"Yes, I see," said Jane.
"That fellow's riding hard. Jane, there's something wrong."
"Oh yes, there must be.... How he rides!"
The horse disappeared in the sage, and then puffs of dust marked his
course.
"He's short-cut on us—he's making straight for the corrals."
Venters and Jane galloped their steeds and reined in at the turning of
the lane. This lane led down to the right of the grove. Suddenly into
its lower entrance flashed a bay horse. Then Venters caught the fast
rhythmic beat of pounding hoofs. Soon his keen eye recognized the swing
of the rider in his saddle.
"It's Judkins, your Gentile rider!" he cried. "Jane, when Judkins rides
like that it means hell!"
CHAPTER IV. DECEPTION PASS
The rider thundered up and almost threw his foam-flecked horse in the
sudden stop. He was a giant form, and with fearless eyes.
"Judkins, you're all bloody!" cried Jane, in affright. "Oh, you've been
shot!"
"Nothin' much Miss Withersteen. I got a nick in the shoulder. I'm some
wet an' the hoss's been throwin' lather, so all this ain't blood."
"What's up?" queried Venters, sharply.
"Rustlers sloped off with the red herd."
"Where are my riders?" demanded Jane.
"Miss Withersteen, I was alone all night with the herd. At daylight this
mornin' the rustlers rode down. They began to shoot at me on sight. They
chased me hard an' far, burnin' powder all the time, but I got away."
"Jud, they meant to kill you," declared Venters.
"Now I wonder," returned Judkins. "They wanted me bad. An' it ain't
regular for rustlers to waste time chasin' one rider."
"Thank heaven you got away," said Jane. "But my riders—where are they?"
"I don't know. The night-riders weren't there last night when I rode
down, en' this mornin' I met no day-riders."
"Judkins! Bern, they've been set upon—killed by Oldring's men!"
"I don't think so," replied Venters, decidedly. "Jane, your riders
haven't gone out in the sage."
"Bern, what do you mean?" Jane Withersteen turned deathly pale.
"You remember what I said about the unseen hand?"
"Oh!... Impossible!"
"I hope so. But I fear—" Venters finished, with a shake of his head.
"Bern, you're bitter; but that's only natural. We'll wait to see what's
happened to my riders. Judkins, come to the house with me. Your wound
must be attended to."
"Jane, I'll find out where Oldring drives the herd," vowed Venters.
"No, no! Bern, don't risk it now—when the rustlers are in such shooting
mood."
"I'm going. Jud, how many cattle in that red herd?"
"Twenty-five hundred head."
"Whew! What on earth can Oldring do with so many cattle? Why, a hundred
head is a big steal. I've got to find out."
"Don't go," implored Jane.
"Bern, you want a hoss thet can run. Miss Withersteen, if it's not too
bold of me to advise, make him take a fast hoss or don't let him go."
"Yes, yes, Judkins. He must ride a horse that can't be caught. Which
one—Black Star—Night?"
"Jane, I won't take either," said Venters, emphatically. "I wouldn't
risk losing one of your favorites."
"Wrangle, then?"
"Thet's the hoss," replied Judkins. "Wrangle can outrun Black Star an'
Night. You'd never believe it, Miss Withersteen, but I know. Wrangle's
the biggest en' fastest hoss on the sage."
"Oh no, Wrangle can't beat Black Star. But, Bern, take Wrangle if you
will go. Ask Jerd for anything you need. Oh, be watchful careful.... God
speed you."
She clasped his hand, turned quickly away, and went down a lane with the
rider.
Venters rode to the barn, and, leaping off, shouted for Jerd. The boy
came running. Venters sent him for meat, bread, and dried fruits, to
be packed in saddlebags. His own horse he turned loose into the nearest
corral. Then he went for Wrangle. The giant sorrel had earned his name
for a trait the opposite of amiability. He came readily out of the barn,
but once in the yard he broke from Venters, and plunged about with ears
laid back. Venters had to rope him, and then he kicked down a section
of fence, stood on his hind legs, crashed down and fought the rope. Jerd
returned to lend a hand.
"Wrangle don't git enough work," said Jerd, as the big saddle went on.
"He's unruly when he's corralled, an' wants to run. Wait till he smells
the sage!"
"Jerd, this horse is an iron-jawed devil. I never straddled him but
once. Run? Say, he's swift as wind!"
When Venters's boot touched the stirrup the sorrel bolted, giving him
the rider's flying mount. The swing of this fiery horse recalled to
Venters days that were not really long past, when he rode into the sage
as the leader of Jane Withersteen's riders. Wrangle pulled *** a
tight rein. He galloped out of the lane, down the shady border of
the grove, and hauled up at the watering-trough, where he pranced and
champed his bit. Venters got off and filled his canteen while the horse
drank. The dogs, Ring and Whitie, came trotting up for their drink. Then
Venters remounted and turned Wrangle toward the sage.
A wide, white trail wound away down the slope. One keen, sweeping glance
told Venters that there was neither man nor horse nor steer within the
limit of his vision, unless they were lying down in the sage. Ring loped
in the lead and Whitie loped in the rear. Wrangle settled gradually into
an easy swinging canter, and Venters's thoughts, now that the rush and
flurry of the start were past, and the long miles stretched before him,
reverted to a calm reckoning of late singular coincidences.
There was the night ride of Tull's, which, viewed in the light of
subsequent events, had a look of his covert machinations; Oldring and
his Masked Rider and his rustlers riding muffled horses; the report
that Tull had ridden out that morning with his man Jerry on the trail
to Glaze, the strange disappearance of Jane Withersteen's riders,
the unusually determined attempt to kill the one Gentile still in her
employ, an intention frustrated, no doubt, only by Judkin's magnificent
riding of her racer, and lastly the driving of the red herd. These
events, to Venters's color of mind, had a dark relationship. Remembering
Jane's accusation of bitterness, he tried hard to put aside his rancor
in judging Tull. But it was bitter knowledge that made him see the
truth. He had felt the shadow of an unseen hand; he had watched till he
saw its dim outline, and then he had traced it to a man's hate, to
the rivalry of a Mormon Elder, to the power of a Bishop, to the long,
far-reaching arm of a terrible creed. That unseen hand had made its
first move against Jane Withersteen. Her riders had been called in,
leaving her without help to drive seven thousand head of cattle. But to
Venters it seemed extraordinary that the power which had called in these
riders had left so many cattle to be driven by rustlers and harried by
wolves. For hand in glove with that power was an insatiate greed; they
were one and the same.
"What can Oldring do with twenty-five hundred head of cattle?" muttered
Venters. "Is he a Mormon? Did he meet Tull last night? It looks like
a black plot to me. But Tull and his churchmen wouldn't ruin Jane
Withersteen unless the Church was to profit by that ruin. Where does
Oldring come in? I'm going to find out about these things."
Wrangle did the twenty-five miles in three hours and walked little of
the way. When he had gotten warmed up he had been allowed to choose his
own gait. The afternoon had well advanced when Venters struck the trail
of the red herd and found where it had grazed the night before. Then
Venters rested the horse and used his eyes. Near at hand were a cow
and a calf and several yearlings, and farther out in the sage some
straggling steers. He caught a glimpse of coyotes skulking near the
cattle. The slow sweeping gaze of the rider failed to find other living
things within the field of sight. The sage about him was breast-high to
his horse, oversweet with its warm, fragrant breath, gray where it
waved to the light, darker where the wind left it still, and beyond the
wonderful haze-purple lent by distance. Far across that wide waste began
the slow lift of uplands through which Deception Pass cut its tortuous
many-canyoned way.
Venters raised the bridle of his horse and followed the broad cattle
trail. The crushed sage resembled the path of a monster snake. In a few
miles of travel he passed several cows and calves that had escaped the
drive. Then he stood on the last high bench of the slope with the floor
of the valley beneath. The opening of the canyon showed in a break of
the sage, and the cattle trail paralleled it as far as he could see.
That trail led to an undiscovered point where Oldring drove cattle
into the pass, and many a rider who had followed it had never returned.
Venters satisfied himself that the rustlers had not deviated from their
usual course, and then he turned at right angles off the cattle trail
and made for the head of the pass.
The sun lost its heat and wore down to the western horizon, where it
changed from white to gold and rested like a huge ball about to roll on
its golden shadows down the slope. Venters watched the lengthening of
the rays and bars, and marveled at his own league-long shadow. The sun
sank. There was instant shading of brightness about him, and he saw a
kind of cold purple bloom creep ahead of him to cross the canyon, to
mount the opposite slope and chase and darken and bury the last golden
flare of sunlight.
Venters rode into a trail that he always took to get down into the
canyon. He dismounted and found no tracks but his own made days
previous. Nevertheless he sent the dog Ring ahead and waited. In a
little while Ring returned. Whereupon Venters led his horse on to the
break in the ground.
The opening into Deception Pass was one of the remarkable natural
phenomena in a country remarkable for vast slopes of sage, uplands
insulated by gigantic red walls, and deep canyons of mysterious source
and outlet. Here the valley floor was level, and here opened a narrow
chasm, a ragged vent in yellow walls of stone. The trail down the five
hundred feet of sheer depth always tested Venters's nerve. It was
bad going for even a burro. But Wrangle, as Venters led him, snorted
defiance or disgust rather than fear, and, like a hobbled horse on the
jump, lifted his ponderous iron-shod fore hoofs and crashed down over
the first rough step. Venters warmed to greater admiration of the
sorrel; and, giving him a loose bridle, he stepped down foot by foot.
Oftentimes the stones and shale started by Wrangle buried Venters to
his knees; again he was hard put to it to dodge a rolling boulder, there
were times when he could not see Wrangle for dust, and once he and the
horse rode a sliding shelf of yellow, weathered cliff. It was a trail
on which there could be no stops, and, therefore, if perilous, it was at
least one that did not take long in the descent.
Venters breathed lighter when that was over, and felt a sudden assurance
in the success of his enterprise. For at first it had been a reckless
determination to achieve something at any cost, and now it resolved
itself into an adventure worthy of all his reason and cunning, and
keenness of eye and ear.
Pinyon pines clustered in little clumps along the level floor of the
pass. Twilight had gathered under the walls. Venters rode into the trail
and up the canyon. Gradually the trees and caves and objects low down
turned black, and this blackness moved up the walls till night enfolded
the pass, while day still lingered above. The sky darkened; and stars
began to show, at first pale and then bright. Sharp notches of the
rim-wall, biting like teeth into the blue, were landmarks by which
Venters knew where his camping site lay. He had to feel his way through
a thicket of slender oaks to a spring where he watered Wrangle and drank
himself. Here he unsaddled and turned Wrangle loose, having no fear that
the horse would leave the thick, cool grass adjacent to the spring. Next
he satisfied his own hunger, fed Ring and Whitie and, with them curled
beside him, composed himself to await sleep.
There had been a time when night in the high altitude of these Utah
uplands had been satisfying to Venters. But that was before the
oppression of enemies had made the change in his mind. As a rider
guarding the herd he had never thought of the night's wildness and
loneliness; as an outcast, now when the full silence set in, and the
deep darkness, and trains of radiant stars shone cold and calm, he
lay with an ache in his heart. For a year he had lived as a black fox,
driven from his kind. He longed for the sound of a voice, the touch of
a hand. In the daytime there was riding from place to place, and the
gun practice to which something drove him, and other tasks that at least
necessitated action, at night, before he won sleep, there was strife in
his soul. He yearned to leave the endless sage slopes, the wilderness
of canyons, and it was in the lonely night that this yearning grew
unbearable. It was then that he reached forth to feel Ring or Whitie,
immeasurably grateful for the love and companionship of two dogs.
On this night the same old loneliness beset Venters, the old habit
of sad thought and burning unquiet had its way. But from it evolved a
conviction that his useless life had undergone a subtle change. He had
sensed it first when Wrangle swung him up to the high saddle, he knew
it now when he lay in the gateway of Deception Pass. He had no thrill of
adventure, rather a gloomy perception of great hazard, perhaps death. He
meant to find Oldring's retreat. The rustlers had fast horses, but none
that could catch Wrangle. Venters knew no rustler could creep upon him
at night when Ring and Whitie guarded his hiding-place. For the rest, he
had eyes and ears, and a long rifle and an unerring aim, which he meant
to use. Strangely his foreshadowing of change did not hold a thought
of the killing of Tull. It related only to what was to happen to him in
Deception Pass; and he could no more lift the veil of that mystery than
tell where the trails led to in that unexplored canyon. Moreover, he did
not care. And at length, tired out by stress of thought, he fell asleep.
When his eyes unclosed, day had come again, and he saw the rim of the
opposite wall tipped with the gold of sunrise. A few moments sufficed
for the morning's simple camp duties. Near at hand he found Wrangle,
and to his surprise the horse came to him. Wrangle was one of the horses
that left his viciousness in the home corral. What he wanted was to be
free of mules and burros and steers, to roll in dust-patches, and then
to run down the wide, open, windy sage-plains, and at night browse and
sleep in the cool wet grass of a springhole. Jerd knew the sorrel when
he said of him, "Wait till he smells the sage!"
Venters saddled and led him out of the oak thicket, and, leaping
astride, rode up the canyon, with Ring and Whitie trotting behind. An
old grass-grown trail followed the course of a shallow wash where flowed
a thin stream of water. The canyon was a hundred rods wide, its yellow
walls were perpendicular; it had abundant sage and a scant growth of oak
and pinon. For five miles it held to a comparatively straight bearing,
and then began a heightening of rugged walls and a deepening of the
floor. Beyond this point of sudden change in the character of the
canyon Venters had never explored, and here was the real door to the
intricacies of Deception Pass.
He reined Wrangle to a walk, halted now and then to listen, and then
proceeded cautiously with shifting and alert gaze. The canyon assumed
proportions that dwarfed those of its first ten miles. Venters rode on
and on, not losing in the interest of his wide surroundings any of his
caution or keen search for tracks or sight of living thing. If there
ever had been a trail here, he could not find it. He rode through sage
and clumps of pinon trees and grassy plots where long-petaled purple
lilies bloomed. He rode through a dark constriction of the pass no wider
than the lane in the grove at Cottonwoods. And he came out into a great
amphitheater into which jutted huge towering corners of a confluences of
intersecting canyons.
Venters sat his horse, and, with a rider's eye, studied this wild
cross-cut of huge stone gullies. Then he went on, guided by the course
of running water. If it had not been for the main stream of water
flowing north he would never have been able to tell which of those many
openings was a continuation of the pass. In crossing this amphitheater
he went by the mouths of five canyons, fording little streams that
flowed into the larger one. Gaining the outlet which he took to be the
pass, he rode on again under over hanging walls. One side was dark in
shade, the other light in sun. This narrow passageway turned and twisted
and opened into a valley that amazed Venters.
Here again was a sweep of purple sage, richer than upon the higher
levels. The valley was miles long, several wide, and inclosed by
unscalable walls. But it was the background of this valley that so
forcibly struck him. Across the sage-flat rose a strange up-flinging of
yellow rocks. He could not tell which were close and which were distant.
Scrawled mounds of stone, like mountain waves, seemed to roll up to
steep bare slopes and towers.
In this plain of sage Venters flushed birds and rabbits, and when he had
proceeded about a mile he caught sight of the bobbing white tails of
a herd of running antelope. He rode along the edge of the stream which
wound toward the western end of the slowly looming mounds of stone.
The high slope retreated out of sight behind the nearer protection.
To Venters the valley appeared to have been filled in by a mountain of
melted stone that had hardened in strange shapes of rounded outline.
He followed the stream till he lost it in a deep cut. Therefore Venters
quit the dark slit which baffled further search in that direction, and
rode out along the curved edge of stone where it met the sage. It was
not long before he came to a low place, and here Wrangle readily climbed
up.
All about him was ridgy roll of wind-smoothed, rain-washed rock. Not a
tuft of grass or a bunch of sage colored the dull rust-yellow. He saw
where, to the right, this uneven flow of stone ended in a blunt wall.
Leftward, from the hollow that lay at his feet, mounted a gradual
slow-swelling slope to a great height topped by leaning, cracked,
and ruined crags. Not for some time did he grasp the wonder of that
acclivity. It was no less than a mountain-side, glistening in the sun
like polished granite, with cedar-trees springing as if by magic out of
the denuded surface. Winds had swept it clear of weathered shale, and
rains had washed it free of dust. Far up the curved slope its beautiful
lines broke to meet the vertical rim-wall, to lose its grace in a
different order and color of rock, a stained yellow cliff of cracks and
caves and seamed crags. And straight before Venters was a scene less
striking but more significant to his keen survey. For beyond a mile
of the bare, hummocky rock began the valley of sage, and the mouths of
canyons, one of which surely was another gateway into the pass.
He got off his horse, and, giving the bridle to Ring to hold, he
commenced a search for the cleft where the stream ran. He was not
successful and concluded the water dropped into an underground passage.
Then he returned to where he had left Wrangle, and led him down off the
stone to the sage. It was a short ride to the opening canyons. There was
no reason for a choice of which one to enter. The one he rode into was a
clear, sharp shaft in yellow stone a thousand feet deep, with wonderful
wind-worn caves low down and high above buttressed and turreted
ramparts. Farther on Venters came into a region where deep indentations
marked the line of canyon walls. These were huge, cove-like blind
pockets extending back to a sharp corner with a dense growth of
underbrush and trees.
Venters penetrated into one of these offshoots, and, as he had hoped, he
found abundant grass. He had to bend the oak saplings to get his horse
through. Deciding to make this a hiding-place if he could find water, he
worked back to the limit of the shelving walls. In a little cluster of
silver spruces he found a spring. This inclosed nook seemed an ideal
place to leave his horse and to camp at night, and from which to make
stealthy trips on foot. The thick grass hid his trail; the dense growth
of oaks in the opening would serve as a barrier to keep Wrangle in, if,
indeed, the luxuriant browse would not suffice for that. So Venters,
leaving Whitie with the horse, called Ring to his side, and, rifle in
hand, worked his way out to the open. A careful photographing in mind
of the formation of the bold outlines of rimrock assured him he would be
able to return to his retreat even in the dark.
Bunches of scattered sage covered the center of the canyon, and among
these Venters threaded his way with the step of an Indian. At intervals
he put his hand on the dog and stopped to listen. There was a drowsy
hum of insects, but no other sound disturbed the warm midday stillness.
Venters saw ahead a turn, more abrupt than any yet. Warily he rounded
this corner, once again to halt bewildered.
The canyon opened fan-shaped into a great oval of green and gray
growths. It was the hub of an oblong wheel, and from it, at regular
distances, like spokes, ran the outgoing canyons. Here a dull red color
predominated over the fading yellow. The corners of wall bluntly rose,
scarred and scrawled, to taper into towers and serrated peaks and
pinnacled domes.
Venters pushed on more heedfully than ever. Toward the center of this
circle the sage-brush grew smaller and farther apart He was about to
sheer off to the right, where thickets and jumbles of fallen rock would
afford him cover, when he ran right upon a broad cattle trail. Like a
road it was, more than a trail, and the cattle tracks were fresh. What
surprised him more, they were wet! He pondered over this feature. It
had not rained. The only solution to this puzzle was that the cattle had
been driven through water, and water deep enough to wet their legs.
Suddenly Ring growled low. Venters rose cautiously and looked over the
sage. A band of straggling horsemen were riding across the oval. He
sank down, startled and trembling. "Rustlers!" he muttered. Hurriedly
he glanced about for a place to hide. Near at hand there was
nothing but sage-brush. He dared not risk crossing the open
patches to reach the rocks. Again he peeped over the sage. The
rustlers—four—five—seven—eight in all, were approaching, but not
directly in line with him. That was relief for a cold deadness which
seemed to be creeping inward along his veins. He crouched down with
bated breath and held the bristling dog.
He heard the click of iron-shod hoofs on stone, the coarse laughter of
men, and then voices gradually dying away. Long moments passed. Then he
rose. The rustlers were riding into a canyon. Their horses were tired,
and they had several pack animals; evidently they had traveled far.
Venters doubted that they were the rustlers who had driven the red herd.
Olding's band had split. Venters watched these horsemen disappear under
a bold canyon wall.
The rustlers had come from the northwest side of the oval. Venters kept
a steady gaze in that direction, hoping, if there were more, to see
from what canyon they rode. A quarter of an hour went by. Reward for his
vigilance came when he descried three more mounted men, far over to the
north. But out of what canyon they had ridden it was too late to tell.
He watched the three ride across the oval and round the jutting red
corner where the others had gone.
"Up that canyon!" exclaimed Venters. "Oldring's den! I've found it!"
A knotty point for Venters was the fact that the cattle tracks all
pointed west. The broad trail came from the direction of the canyon
into which the rustlers had ridden, and undoubtedly the cattle had been
driven out of it across the oval. There were no tracks pointing the
other way. It had been in his mind that Oldring had driven the red herd
toward the rendezvous, and not from it. Where did that broad trail come
down into the pass, and where did it lead? Venters knew he wasted
time in pondering the question, but it held a fascination not easily
dispelled. For many years Oldring's mysterious entrance and exit to
Deception Pass had been all-absorbing topics to sage-riders.
All at once the dog put an end to Venters's pondering. Ring sniffed the
air, turned slowly in his tracks with a whine, and then growled. Venters
wheeled. Two horsemen were within a hundred yards, coming straight at
him. One, lagging behind the other, was Oldring's Masked Rider.
Venters cunningly sank, slowly trying to merge into sage-brush. But,
guarded as his action was, the first horse detected it. He stopped
short, snorted, and shot up his ears. The rustler bent forward, as if
keenly peering ahead. Then, with a swift sweep, he *** a gun from its
sheath and fired.
The bullet zipped through the sage-brush. Flying bits of wood struck
Venters, and the hot, stinging pain seemed to lift him in one leap.
Like a flash the blue barrel of his rifle gleamed level and he shot
once—twice.
The foremost rustler dropped his weapon and toppled from his saddle, to
fall with his foot catching in a stirrup. The horse snorted wildly and
plunged away, dragging the rustler through the sage.
The Masked Rider huddled over his pommel slowly swaying to one side, and
then, with a faint, strange cry, slipped out of the saddle.
CHAPTER V. THE MASKED RIDER
Venters looked quickly from the fallen rustlers to the canyon where the
others had disappeared. He calculated on the time needed for running
horses to return to the open, if their riders heard shots. He waited
breathlessly. But the estimated time dragged by and no riders appeared.
Venters began presently to believe that the rifle reports had not
penetrated into the recesses of the canyon, and felt safe for the
immediate present.
He hurried to the spot where the first rustler had been dragged by his
horse. The man lay in deep grass, dead, jaw fallen, eyes protruding—a
sight that sickened Venters. The first man at whom he had ever aimed a
weapon he had shot through the heart. With the clammy sweat oozing
from every pore Venters dragged the rustler in among some boulders and
covered him with slabs of rock. Then he smoothed out the crushed trail
in grass and sage. The rustler's horse had stopped a quarter of a mile
off and was grazing.
When Venters rapidly strode toward the Masked Rider not even the cold
nausea that gripped him could wholly banish curiosity. For he had shot
Oldring's infamous lieutenant, whose face had never been seen. Venters
experienced a grim pride in the feat. What would Tull say to this
achievement of the outcast who rode too often to Deception Pass?
Venters's curious eagerness and expectation had not prepared him for the
shock he received when he stood over a slight, dark figure. The rustler
wore the black mask that had given him his name, but he had no weapons.
Venters glanced at the drooping horse, there were no gun-sheaths on the
saddle.
"A rustler who didn't pack guns!" muttered Venters. "He wears no belt.
He couldn't pack guns in that rig.... Strange!"
A low, gasping intake of breath and a sudden twitching of body told
Venters the rider still lived.
"He's alive!... I've got to stand here and watch him die. And I shot an
unarmed man."
Shrinkingly Venters removed the rider's wide sombrero and the black
cloth mask. This action disclosed bright chestnut hair, inclined to
curl, and a white, youthful face. Along the lower line of cheek and jaw
was a clear demarcation, where the brown of tanned skin met the white
that had been hidden from the sun.
"Oh, he's only a boy!... What! Can he be Oldring's Masked Rider?"
The boy showed signs of returning consciousness. He stirred; his lips
moved; a small brown hand clenched in his blouse.
Venters knelt with a gathering horror of his deed. His bullet had
entered the rider's right breast, high up to the shoulder. With hands
that shook, Venters untied a black scarf and ripped open the blood-wet
blouse.
First he saw a gaping hole, dark red against a whiteness of skin, from
which welled a slender red stream. Then the graceful, beautiful swell of
a woman's breast!
"A woman!" he cried. "A girl!... I've killed a girl!"
She suddenly opened eyes that transfixed Venters. They were fathomless
blue. Consciousness of death was there, a blended terror and pain, but
no consciousness of sight. She did not see Venters. She stared into the
unknown.
Then came a spasm of vitality. She writhed in a torture of reviving
strength, and in her convulsions she almost tore from Ventner's grasp.
Slowly she relaxed and sank partly back. The ungloved hand sought the
wound, and pressed so hard that her wrist half buried itself in her
***. Blood trickled between her spread fingers. And she looked at
Venters with eyes that saw him.
He cursed himself and the unerring aim of which he had been so proud. He
had seen that look in the eyes of a crippled antelope which he was
about to finish with his knife. But in her it had infinitely more—a
revelation of mortal spirit. The instinctive bringing to life was
there, and the divining helplessness and the terrible accusation of the
stricken.
"Forgive me! I didn't know!" burst out Venters.
"You shot me—you've killed me!" she whispered, in panting gasps. Upon
her lips appeared a fluttering, bloody froth. By that Venters knew
the air in her lungs was mixing with blood. "Oh, I knew—it
would—come—some day!... Oh, the burn!... Hold me—I'm sinking—it's all
dark.... Ah, God!... Mercy—"
Her rigidity loosened in one long quiver and she lay back limp, still,
white as snow, with closed eyes.
Venters thought then that she died. But the faint pulsation of her
breast assured him that life yet lingered. Death seemed only a matter
of moments, for the bullet had gone clear through her. Nevertheless, he
tore sageleaves from a bush, and, pressing them tightly over her wounds,
he bound the black scarf round her shoulder, tying it securely under
her arm. Then he closed the blouse, hiding from his sight that
blood-stained, accusing breast.
"What—now?" he questioned, with flying mind. "I must get out of here.
She's dying—but I can't leave her."
He rapidly surveyed the sage to the north and made out no animate
object. Then he picked up the girl's sombrero and the mask. This time
the mask gave him as great a shock as when he first removed it from
her face. For in the woman he had forgotten the rustler, and this black
strip of felt-cloth established the identity of Oldring's Masked Rider.
Venters had solved the mystery. He slipped his rifle under her, and,
lifting her carefully upon it, he began to retrace his steps. The
dog trailed in his shadow. And the horse, that had stood drooping by,
followed without a call. Venters chose the deepest tufts of grass and
clumps of sage on his return. From time to time he glanced over his
shoulder. He did not rest. His concern was to avoid jarring the girl and
to hide his trail. Gaining the narrow canyon, he turned and held close
to the wall till he reached his hiding-place. When he entered the dense
thicket of oaks he was hard put to it to force a way through. But he
held his burden almost upright, and by slipping side wise and bending
the saplings he got in. Through sage and grass he hurried to the grove
of silver spruces.
He laid the girl down, almost fearing to look at her. Though marble pale
and cold, she was living. Venters then appreciated the tax that long
carry had been to his strength. He sat down to rest. Whitie sniffed at
the pale girl and whined and crept to Venters's feet. Ring lapped the
water in the runway of the spring.
Presently Venters went out to the opening, caught the horse and, leading
him through the thicket, unsaddled him and tied him with a long halter.
Wrangle left his browsing long enough to whinny and toss his head.
Venters felt that he could not rest easily till he had secured the other
rustler's horse; so, taking his rifle and calling for Ring, he set out.
Swiftly yet watchfully he made his way through the canyon to the oval
and out to the cattle trail. What few tracks might have betrayed him
he obliterated, so only an expert tracker could have trailed him. Then,
with many a wary backward glance across the sage, he started to round
up the rustler's horse. This was unexpectedly easy. He led the horse to
lower ground, out of sight from the opposite side of the oval along the
shadowy western wall, and so on into his canyon and secluded camp.
The girl's eyes were open; a feverish spot burned in her cheeks she
moaned something unintelligible to Venters, but he took the movement of
her lips to mean that she wanted water. Lifting her head, he tipped the
canteen to her lips. After that she again lapsed into unconsciousness or
a weakness which was its counterpart. Venters noted, however, that the
burning flush had faded into the former pallor.
The sun set behind the high canyon rim, and a cool shade darkened the
walls. Venters fed the dogs and put a halter on the dead rustlers horse.
He allowed Wrangle to browse free. This done, he cut spruce boughs and
made a lean-to for the girl. Then, gently lifting her upon a blanket,
he folded the sides over her. The other blanket he wrapped about his
shoulders and found a comfortable seat against a spruce-tree that upheld
the little shack. Ring and Whitie lay near at hand, one asleep, the
other watchful.
Venters dreaded the night's vigil. At night his mind was active, and
this time he had to watch and think and feel beside a dying girl whom
he had all but murdered. A thousand excuses he invented for himself, yet
not one made any difference in his act or his self-reproach.
It seemed to him that when night fell black he could see her white face
so much more plainly.
"She'll go, presently," he said, "and be out of agony—thank God!"
Every little while certainty of her death came to him with a shock; and
then he would bend over and lay his ear on her breast. Her heart still
beat.
The early night blackness cleared to the cold starlight. The horses were
not moving, and no sound disturbed the deathly silence of the canyon.
"I'll bury her here," thought Venters, "and let her grave be as much a
mystery as her life was."
For the girl's few words, the look of her eyes, the prayer, had
strangely touched Venters.
"She was only a girl," he soliloquized. "What was she to Oldring?
Rustlers don't have wives nor sisters nor daughters. She was bad—that's
all. But somehow... well, she may not have willingly become the companion
of rustlers. That prayer of hers to God for mercy!... Life is strange
and cruel. I wonder if other members of Oldring's gang are women? Likely
enough. But what was his game? Oldring's Mask Rider! A name to make
villagers hide and lock their doors. A name credited with a dozen
murders, a hundred forays, and a thousand stealings of cattle. What
part did the girl have in this? It may have served Oldring to create
mystery."
Hours passed. The white stars moved across the narrow strip of dark-blue
sky above. The silence awoke to the low hum of insects. Venters watched
the immovable white face, and as he watched, hour by hour waiting for
death, the infamy of her passed from his mind. He thought only of the
sadness, the truth of the moment. Whoever she was—whatever she had
done—she was young and she was dying.
The after-part of the night wore on interminably. The starlight failed
and the gloom blackened to the darkest hour. "She'll die at the gray
of dawn," muttered Venters, remembering some old woman's fancy. The
blackness paled to gray, and the gray lightened and day peeped over
the eastern rim. Venters listened at the breast of the girl. She
still lived. Did he only imagine that her heart beat stronger, ever so
slightly, but stronger? He pressed his ear closer to her breast. And he
rose with his own pulse quickening.
"If she doesn't die soon—she's got a chance—the barest chance to
live," he said.
He wondered if the internal bleeding had ceased. There was no more film
of blood upon her lips. But no corpse could have been whiter. Opening
her blouse, he untied the scarf, and carefully picked away the sage
leaves from the wound in her shoulder. It had closed. Lifting her
lightly, he ascertained that the same was true of the hole where the
bullet had come out. He reflected on the fact that clean wounds closed
quickly in the healing upland air. He recalled instances of riders who
had been cut and shot apparently to fatal issues; yet the blood had
clotted, the wounds closed, and they had recovered. He had no way to
tell if internal hemorrhage still went on, but he believed that it had
stopped. Otherwise she would surely not have lived so long. He marked
the entrance of the bullet, and concluded that it had just touched the
upper lobe of her lung. Perhaps the wound in the lung had also closed.
As he began to wash the blood stains from her breast and carefully
rebandage the wound, he was vaguely conscious of a strange, grave
happiness in the thought that she might live.
Broad daylight and a hint of sunshine high on the cliff-rim to the west
brought him to consideration of what he had better do. And while busy
with his few camp tasks he revolved the thing in his mind. It would not
be wise for him to remain long in his present hiding-place. And if he
intended to follow the cattle trail and try to find the rustlers he had
better make a move at once. For he knew that rustlers, being riders,
would not make much of a day's or night's absence from camp for one
or two of their number; but when the missing ones failed to show up in
reasonable time there would be a search. And Venters was afraid of that.
"A good tracker could trail me," he muttered. "And I'd be cornered here.
Let's see. Rustlers are a lazy set when they're not on the ride. I'll
risk it. Then I'll change my hiding-place."
He carefully cleaned and reloaded his guns. When he rose to go he bent
a long glance down upon the unconscious girl. Then ordering Whitie and
Ring to keep guard, he left the camp.
The safest cover lay close under the wall of the canyon, and here
through the dense thickets Venters made his slow, listening advance
toward the oval. Upon gaining the wide opening he decided to cross it
and follow the left wall till he came to the cattle trail. He scanned
the oval as keenly as if hunting for antelope. Then, stooping, he stole
from one cover to another, taking advantage of rocks and bunches of
sage, until he had reached the thickets under the opposite wall. Once
there, he exercised extreme caution in his surveys of the ground ahead,
but increased his speed when moving. Dodging from bush to bush, he
passed the mouths of two canyons, and in the entrance of a third canyon
he crossed a wash of swift clear water, to come abruptly upon the cattle
trail.
It followed the low bank of the wash, and, keeping it in sight, Venters
hugged the line of sage and thicket. Like the curves of a serpent the
canyon wound for a mile or more and then opened into a valley. Patches
of red showed clear against the purple of sage, and farther out on the
level dotted strings of red led away to the wall of rock.
"Ha, the red herd!" exclaimed Venters.
Then dots of white and black told him there were cattle of other colors
in this inclosed valley. Oldring, the rustler, was also a rancher.
Venters's calculating eye took count of stock that outnumbered the red
herd.
"What a range!" went on Venters. "Water and grass enough for fifty
thousand head, and no riders needed!"
After his first burst of surprise and rapid calculation Venters lost no
time there, but slunk again into the sage on his back trail. With the
discovery of Oldring's hidden cattle-range had come enlightenment
on several problems. Here the rustler kept his stock, here was Jane
Withersteen's red herd; here were the few cattle that had disappeared
from the Cottonwoods slopes during the last two years. Until Oldring had
driven the red herd his thefts of cattle for that time had not been
more than enough to supply meat for his men. Of late no drives had been
reported from Sterling or the villages north. And Venters knew that the
riders had wondered at Oldring's inactivity in that particular field.
He and his band had been active enough in their visits to Glaze and
Cottonwoods; they always had gold; but of late the amount gambled
away and drunk and thrown away in the villages had given rise to much
conjecture. Oldring's more frequent visits had resulted in new saloons,
and where there had formerly been one raid or shooting fray in the
little hamlets there were now many. Perhaps Oldring had another range
farther on up the pass, and from there drove the cattle to distant Utah
towns where he was little known But Venters came finally to doubt this.
And, from what he had learned in the last few days, a belief began to
form in Venters's mind that Oldring's intimidations of the villages and
the mystery of the Masked Rider, with his alleged evil deeds, and the
fierce resistance offered any trailing riders, and the rustling of
cattle—these things were only the craft of the rustler-chief to conceal
his real life and purpose and work in Deception Pass.
And like a scouting Indian Venters crawled through the sage of the oval
valley, crossed trail after trail on the north side, and at last entered
the canyon out of which headed the cattle trail, and into which he had
watched the rustlers disappear.
If he had used caution before, now he strained every nerve to force
himself to creeping stealth and to sensitiveness of ear. He crawled
along so hidden that he could not use his eyes except to aid himself in
the toilsome progress through the brakes and ruins of cliff-wall. Yet
from time to time, as he rested, he saw the massive red walls growing
higher and wilder, more looming and broken. He made note of the fact
that he was turning and climbing. The sage and thickets of oak and
brakes of alder gave place to pinyon pine growing out of rocky soil.
Suddenly a low, dull murmur assailed his ears. At first he thought it
was thunder, then the slipping of a weathered slope of rock. But it was
incessant, and as he progressed it filled out deeper and from a murmur
changed into a soft roar.
"Falling water," he said. "There's volume to that. I wonder if it's the
stream I lost."
The roar bothered him, for he could hear nothing else. Likewise,
however, no rustlers could hear him. Emboldened by this and sure that
nothing but a bird could see him, he arose from his hands and knees to
hurry on. An opening in the pinyons warned him that he was nearing the
height of slope.
He gained it, and dropped low with a burst of astonishment. Before him
stretched a short canyon with rounded stone floor bare of grass or sage
or tree, and with curved, shelving walls. A broad rippling stream flowed
toward him, and at the back of the canyon waterfall burst from a wide
rent in the cliff, and, bounding down in two green steps, spread into a
long white sheet.
If Venters had not been indubitably certain that he had entered the
right canyon his astonishment would not have been so great. There had
been no breaks in the walls, no side canyons entering this one where the
rustlers' tracks and the cattle trail had guided him, and, therefore, he
could not be wrong. But here the canyon ended, and presumably the trails
also.
"That cattle trail headed out of here," Venters kept saying to himself.
"It headed out. Now what I want to know is how on earth did cattle ever
get in here?"
If he could be sure of anything it was of the careful scrutiny he had
given that cattle track, every hoofmark of which headed straight west.
He was now looking east at an immense round boxed corner of canyon down
which tumbled a thin, white veil of water, scarcely twenty yards wide.
Somehow, somewhere, his calculations had gone wrong. For the first time
in years he found himself doubting his rider's skill in finding tracks,
and his memory of what he had actually seen. In his anxiety to keep
under cover he must have lost himself in this offshoot of Deception
Pass, and thereby in some unaccountable manner, missed the canyon with
the trails. There was nothing else for him to think. Rustlers could not
fly, nor cattle jump down thousand-foot precipices. He was only proving
what the sage-riders had long said of this labyrinthine system of
deceitful canyons and valleys—trails led down into Deception Pass, but
no rider had ever followed them.
On a sudden he heard above the soft roar of the waterfall an unusual
sound that he could not define. He dropped flat behind a stone and
listened. From the direction he had come swelled something that
resembled a strange muffled pounding and splashing and ringing. Despite
his nerve the chill sweat began to dampen his forehead. What might not
be possible in this stonewalled maze of mystery? The unnatural sound
passed beyond him as he lay gripping his rifle and fighting for
coolness. Then from the open came the sound, now distinct and different.
Venters recognized a hobble-bell of a horse, and the cracking of iron on
submerged stones, and the hollow splash of hoofs in water.
Relief surged over him. His mind caught again at realities, and
curiosity prompted him to peep from behind the rock.
In the middle of the stream waded a long string of packed burros driven
by three superbly mounted men. Had Venters met these dark-clothed,
dark-visaged, heavily armed men anywhere in Utah, let alone in this
robbers' retreat, he would have recognized them as rustlers. The
discerning eye of a rider saw the signs of a long, arduous trip. These
men were packing in supplies from one of the northern villages. They
were tired, and their horses were almost played out, and the burros
plodded on, after the manner of their kind when exhausted, faithful and
patient, but as if every weary, splashing, slipping step would be their
last.
All this Venters noted in one glance. After that he watched with a
thrilling eagerness. Straight at the waterfall the rustlers drove the
burros, and straight through the middle, where the water spread into a
fleecy, thin film like dissolving smoke. Following closely, the rustlers
rode into this white mist, showing in bold black relief for an instant,
and then they vanished.
Venters drew a full breath that rushed out in brief and sudden
utterance.
"Good Heaven! Of all the holes for a rustler!... There's a cavern under
that waterfall, and a passageway leading out to a canyon beyond. Oldring
hides in there. He needs only to guard a trail leading down from
the sage-flat above. Little danger of this outlet to the pass being
discovered. I stumbled on it by luck, after I had given up. And now I
know the truth of what puzzled me most—why that cattle trail was wet!"
He wheeled and ran down the slope, and out to the level of the
sage-brush. Returning, he had no time to spare, only now and then,
between dashes, a moment when he stopped to cast sharp eyes ahead. The
abundant grass left no trace of his trail. Short work he made of the
distance to the circle of canyons. He doubted that he would ever see it
again; he knew he never wanted to; yet he looked at the red corners
and towers with the eyes of a rider picturing landmarks never to be
forgotten.
Here he spent a panting moment in a slow-circling gaze of the sage-oval
and the gaps between the bluffs. Nothing stirred except the gentle wave
of the tips of the brush. Then he pressed on past the mouths of several
canyons and over ground new to him, now close under the eastern wall.
This latter part proved to be easy traveling, well screened from
possible observation from the north and west, and he soon covered it
and felt safer in the deepening shade of his own canyon. Then the huge,
notched bulge of red rim loomed over him, a mark by which he knew again
the deep cove where his camp lay hidden. As he penetrated the thicket,
safe again for the present, his thoughts reverted to the girl he had
left there. The afternoon had far advanced. How would he find her? He
ran into camp, frightening the dogs.
The girl lay with wide-open, dark eyes, and they dilated when he knelt
beside her. The flush of fever shone in her cheeks. He lifted her and
held water to her dry lips, and felt an inexplicable sense of lightness
as he saw her swallow in a slow, choking gulp. Gently he laid her back.
"Who—are—you?" she whispered, haltingly.
"I'm the man who shot you," he replied.
"You'll—not—kill me—now?"
"No, no."
"What—will—you—do—with me?"
"When you get better—strong enough—I'll take you back to the canyon
where the rustlers ride through the waterfall."
As with a faint shadow from a flitting wing overhead, the marble
whiteness of her face seemed to change.
"Don't—take—me—back—there!"
End of Chapter V �