Riders of the Purple Sage (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by Zane Grey

  When he awoke, day had dawned and all about him was 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 fare. 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 Jane, perhaps news of the rustlers; on the morrow he meant to take the trail to Deception Pass.

  While he waited, he talked to his dogs. He called them Ring and Whitie. They were sheep dogs, half collie, half deer hound, 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, 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. 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 skyline, 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. 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 a while 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 Venters'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 canons 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 Virgin. But he got harassed there, an' now he drives someplace else."

  "Lassiter, you knew him? Tell me, is he Mormon or Gentile?"

  "I can't say. I've known 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 anyone, 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 an' patience an' sacrifice an' what I call madness for their idea of God. An' over against that I've seen the tricks of the 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 had a wife, an' call it duty?"

  "Lassiter, you think as I think," returned Venters.

  "How'd it come then that you never threw 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. Practiced 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 practicin'?"

  "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 sagebrush 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. "hilly 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 who 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 ba
ck 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 the 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 they 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, stonelined 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. 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 that 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 around 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 catbirds. 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 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. From 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 bright, 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 around the racy, cleanlimbed, 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 far 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 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 waitin' 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 think of that? Need I worry? You know I have been 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 canons 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 sagebrush 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 for 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, tingeing 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 once Milly's husband... before she was brought to Cottonwoods?"

  "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!"

  The rider thundered up and almost threw his foamflecked horse in the sudden stop. He was of 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 stick in the shoulder. I'm some wet an' the hoss's been throwin' lather, so all this ain't blood."