Riders of the Purple Sage (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by Zane Grey

  "Look at that one... he puddles in the mud," said Bess. "And there! See him dive. Hear them gnawing. I'd think they'd break their teeth. How's it they can stay out of the water and under the water?" And she laughed.

  Then Venters and Bess wandered farther, and perhaps not all unconsciously this time, wended their slow steps to the cave of the cliff-dwellers, where she liked best to go. The tangled thicket and the long slant of dust and little chips of weathered rock, and the steep bench of stone, and the worn steps-all were arduous work for Bess in the climbing. But she gained the shelf, gasping, hot of cheek, glad of eye, with her hand in Venters's. Here they rested. The beautiful valley glittered below with its millions of wind-turned leaves bright-faced in the sun, and the mighty bridge towered heavenward, crowned with blue sky. Bess, however, never rested for long. Soon she was exploring, and Venters followed. She dragged forth from corners and shelves a multitude of crudely fashioned and painted pieces of pottery, and he carried them. They peeped down into the dark holes of the kivas, and Bess gleefully dropped a stone, and waited for the long-coming hollow sound to rise. They peeped into the little globular homes, like mud-wasp's nests, and wondered if these had been storage places for grain or baby cribs, or what, and they crawled into the larger houses, and laughed when they bumped their heads on the low roofs, and they dug in the dust of the floors and they brought from dust and darkness armloads of treasure that they carried to the light. Flints and stones and strange, curved sticks and pottery they found, and twisted grass rope that crumbled in their hands, and bits of whitish stone that crushed to powder at a touch and seemed to vanish in the air.

  "That white stuff was bone," said Venters slowly. "Bone of a cliff-dweller!"

  "No!" exclaimed Bess.

  "Here's another piece. Look! Whew! Dry, powdery smoke! That's bone."

  Then it was that Venters's primitive, child-like mood, like a savage's, seeing yet unthinking, gave way to the encroachment of civilized thought. The world had not been made for a single day's play or fancy or idle watching. The world was old. Nowhere could be gotten a better idea of its age than in this gigantic, silent tomb. The gray ashes in Venters's hand had once been bone of a human being like himself. The pale gloom of the cave had shadowed people long ago. He saw that Bess had received the same shock-could not in moments such as this escape her feeling, living, thinking destiny.

  "Bern, people have lived here," she said with wide, thoughtful eyes.

  "Yes," he replied.

  "How long ago?"

  "A thousand years and more."

  "What were they?"

  "Cliff-dwellers. Men who had enemies and made their homes high... out of reach."

  "They had to fight?"

  "Yes."

  "They fought for... what?"

  "For life. For their homes, food, children, parents... for their women!"

  "Has the world changed any in a thousand years?"

  "I don't know... perhaps very little."

  "Have men?"

  "I hope so... I think so."

  "Things crowd into my mind," she went on, and the wistful light in her eyes told Venters the truth of her thoughts. "I've ridden the border of Utah. I've seen people... know how they live... but they must be few of all who are living. I had my books and I studied them. But all that doesn't help me anymore. I want to go out into the big world and see it. Yet I want to stay here more. What's to become of me? Are we cliff-dwellers? We're alone here. I'm happy when I don't think. These... these bones that fly into dust... they make me sick, and a little afraid. Did the people who lived here have the same feelings as we have? What was the good of their living at all? They're gone! What's the meaning of it all... of us?"

  "Bess, you ask more than I can tell. It's beyond me. Only there was laughter here once... and now there's death. Men cut these little steps, made these arrowheads and mealing stones, plaited the ropes we found, and left their bones to crumble in our fingers. As far as time is concerned, it might all have been yesterday. We're here today. Maybe we're higher in the scale of human beings... in intelligence. But who knows? We can't be any higher in the things for which life is lived at all."

  "What are they?"

  "Why... I suppose relationships, friendship... love."

  "Love!"

  "Yes. Love of man for woman... love of woman for man. That's the nature... the meaning... the best of life itself."

  She said no more. Wistfulness of glance deepened into sadness.

  "Come, let us go," said Venters.

  Action brightened her. Beside him holding her hand, she slipped down the shelf, ran down the long steep slant of sliding stones, out of the cloud of dust, and likewise out of the pale gloom.

  "We beat the slide!" she cried.

  The miniature avalanche cracked and roared and rattled itself into an inertness at the base of the incline. Yellow dust, like the gloom of the cave, but not so changeless, drifted away on the wind; the roar clapped an echo from the cliff-returned-went back, and came again to die in hollowness. Down on the sunny terrace there was a different atmosphere. Ring and Whine leaped around Bess. Once more she was smiling, gay and thoughtless, with the dream mood in the shadow of her eyes.

  "Bess, I haven't seen that since last summer. Look," said Venters, pointing to the scalloped edge of rolling, purple clouds that peeped over the western wall. "We're in for a storm."

  "Oh, I hope not. I'm afraid of storms."

  "Are you? Why?"

  "Have you ever been down in one of these walled-up pockets in a bad storm?"

  "No, now that I think of it, I haven't."

  "Well, it's trouble. Every summer I get scared to death, and hide somewhere in the dark. Storms up on the sage are bad, but nothing to what they are down in the canons. And in this little valley... why, echoes can rap back and forth so quick they'll split our ears."

  "We're perfectly safe here, Bess."

  "I know. But that hasn't anything to do with it... I'm afraid of lightning. And thunderclaps hurt my head. If we have a bad storm... will you stay close by me?"

  "Yes."

  When they got back to camp, the afternoon was closing, and it was exceedingly sultry. Not a breath of air stirred the aspen leaves, and, when these did not quiver, the air was, indeed, still. The dark purple clouds moved almost imperceptibly out of the west.

  "What have we for supper?" asked Bess.

  "Rabbit."

  "Bern... can't you think of another new way to cook rabbit?" went on Bess with earnestness.

  "What do you think I am... a magician?" retorted Venters.

  "I wouldn't dare tell you. But, Bern, do you want me to turn into a rabbit?"

  There was a dark blue merry flashing of eyes, and a parting of lips-then she laughed. In that moment she was naive and wholesome.

  "Rabbit seems to agree with you," replied Venters. "You are well and strong... and growing very pretty."

  Anything in the nature of a compliment he had never before said to her, and just now he responded to a sudden curiosity to see its effect. Bess stared as if she had not heard aright, slowly blushed, and completely lost her poise in happy confusion.

  "I'd better go right away," he continued, "and fetch supplies from Cottonwoods."

  A startlingly swift change in the nature of her agitation made him reproach himself for his abruptness.

  "No... no... don't go!" she said. "I didn't mean that about the rabbit. I... I was only trying to be... funny. Don't leave me all alone?"

  "Bess, I must go sometime."

  "Wait then. Wait till after the storms."

  The purple cloud bank darkened the lower edge of the setting sun, crept up and up, obscuring its fiery red heart, and finally passed over the last ruddy crescent of its upper rim. The intense, dead silence awakened to a long, low, rumbling roll of thunder.

  "We've had big, black clouds before this without rain," said Venters. "But there's no doubt about that thunder. The storms are coming. I'm glad. Every rider on the sage will hear that th
under with glad ears."

  Venters and Bess finished their simple meal, and the few tasks around the camp, then faced the open terrace, the valley, and the west to watch and await the approaching storm.

  It required keen vision to see any movement whatsoever in the purple clouds. By infinitesimal degrees the dark cloud line merged upward into the golden red haze of the afterglow of sunset. A shadow lengthened from under the western wall across the valley. As straight and rigid as steel rose the delicate, spear-pointed silver spruces; the aspen leaves, by nature pendant and quivering, hung, limp and heavy; no slender, leaning blade of grass moved. A gentle plashing of water came from the ravine. Then again from out of the west sounded the low, dull, and rumbling roll of thunder.

  A wave, a ripple of light, a trembling and turning of the aspen leaves, like the approach of a breeze on the water, crossed the valley from the west, and the hill, and the deadly stillness, and the sultry air, passed away as a cool wind. The night bird of the canon with his clear and melancholy notes announced the twilight, and from all along the cliffs rose the faint murmur and moan and mourn of the wind singing in the caves. The bank of clouds now swept hugely out of the western sky. Its front was purple and black with gray between, a bulging, mushrooming, vast thing instinct with storm. It had a dark, angry, threatening aspect. As if all the power of the winds were pushing and piling behind, it rolled ponderously across the sky. A red flare burned out instantaneously, flashed from west to east, and died. Then from the deepest black of the purple cloud burst a boom. It was like the bowling of a huge boulder along the crags and ramparts, and seemed to roll on and fall into the valley to bound and bang and boom from cliff to cliff.

  "Oh!" cried Bess with her hands over her ears. "What did I tell you?"

  "Why, Bess, be reasonable," said Venters.

  "I'm a coward."

  "Not quite that, I hope. It's strange you're afraid. I love a storm."

  "I tell you, a storm down in these canons is an awful thing. I know. Oldring hated storms. His men were afraid of them. There was one who went deaf in a bad storm, and never could hear again."

  "Maybe I have a lot to learn, Bess. I'll lose my guess if this storm isn't bad enough. We're going to have heavy wind first... then lightning and thunder, then the rain. Let's stay out as long as we can."

  The tips of the cottonwoods and the oaks waved to the east, and the rings of aspens along the terraces twinkled their myriad of bright faces in fleet and glancing gleam. A low roar rose from the leaves of the forest, and the spruces swished in the rising wind. It came in gusts, with light breezes between. As it increased in strength, the hills shortened in length till there was a strong and steady blow all the time, and violent puffs at intervals, and sudden whirling currents. The clouds spread over the valley, rolling swiftly and low, and twilight faded into a sweeping darkness. Then the singing of the wind in the caves drowned the soft roar of rustling leaves; the song swelled to a mourning, moaning wail, then, with the gathering power of the wind, the wail changed to a shriek. Steadily the wind strengthened and constantly the strange sound changed.

  The last bit of blue sky yielded to the onsweep of clouds. Like angry surf the pale gleams of gray amid the purple of that scudding front swept beyond the eastern rampart of the valley. The purple deepened to black. Broad sheets of lightning flared over the western wall. There were not yet any ropes or zigzag streaks darting down through the gathering darkness. The storm center was still beyond Surprise Valley.

  "Listen... listen!" cried Bess, her lips close to Venters's ear. "You'll hear Oldring's Knell!"

  "What's that?"

  "Oldring's Knell. When the wind blows a gale in the caves, it makes what the rustlers call Oldring's Knell. They believe it bodes his death. I think he believes so, too. It's not like any sound on earth. It's beginning. Listen!"

  The gale swooped down with a hollow, unearthly howl. It yelled and pealed and shrilled and shrieked. It was made up of a thousand piercing cries. It was a rising and a moving sound. Beginning at the western break of the valley, it rushed along each gigantic cliff, whistling into the caves and cracks, to mount in power, to bellow a blast through the great stone bridge. Gone-as into an engulfing roar of surging waters-it seemed to shoot back, and begin all over again.

  It was only wind, thought Venters. Here sped and shrieked the sculptor that carved out the wonderful caves in the cliffs. It was only a gale, but as Venters listened, as his ears became accustomed to the fury and strife, out of it all, or through it or above it, pealed low and perfectly clear and persistently uniform a strange sound that had no counterpart in all the sounds of the elements. It was not of earth or of life. It was the grief and agony of the gale. A knell to all upon whom it blew!

  Black night enfolded the valley. Venters could not see his companion, and knew of her presence only through the tightening hold of her hand on his arm. He felt the dogs huddle closer to him. Suddenly the dense black vault overhead split asunder to a blue-white, dazzling streak of lightning. The whole valley lay vividly clear and luminously bright in his sight. Up-reared, vast and magnificent, the stone bridge glimmered like some grand god of storm in the lightning's fire. Then all flashed black again-blacker than pitch-a thick, impenetrable, coal blackness. There came a ripping, cracking report. Instantly an echo resounded with a clapping crash. The initial report was nothing to the echo. It was a terrible, living, reverberating, detonating crash. The walls threw the sound across and could have made no greater roar if it had slipped into an avalanche. From cliff to cliff the echo went in crashing retort, and banged in lessening power, and boomed in thinner volume, and clapped weaker and weaker till a final clap could not reach across to the waiting cliff.

  In the pitchy darkness Venters led Bess and, groping his way by feel of hand, found the entrance to her cave, and lifted her up. On the instant, a blinding flash of lightning illumined the cave and all about him. He saw Bess's face, white now with dark, frightened eyes. He saw the dogs leap up, and he followed suit. The golden glare vanished-all was black-then came the splitting crack and the infernal din of echoes.

  Bess shrank closer to him, and closer, found his hands and pressed them tightly over her ears, and dropped her face upon his shoulder, and hid her eyes.

  Then the storm burst with a succession of ropes and streaks and shafts of lightning, playing continuously, filling the valley with a broken radiance, and the cracking shots followed each other swiftly till the echoes blended in one fearful, deepening crash.

  Venters looked out upon the beautiful valleybeautiful now as never before-mystic in its transparent, luminous gloom-weird in the quivering, golden haze of lightning. The dark spruces were tipped with glimmering lights; the aspens bent low in the winds; as waves in a tempest at sea the forest of oaks tossed wildly and shone with gleams of fire. Across the valley the huge cavern of the cliff-dwellers yawned in the glare, every little black window as clear as at noonday, but the night and the storm added to their tragedy. Flung arching to the black clouds, the great stone bridge seemed to bear the brunt of the storm. It caught the full fury of the rushing wind. It lifted its noble crown to meet the lightnings. Venters thought of the eagles and their lofty nest in a niche under the arch. A driving pall of rain, black as the clouds, came sweeping on to obscure the bridge, and the gleaming walls, and the shining valley. The lightning played incessantly, streaking down through opaque darkness of rain. The roar of the wind, with its strange knell, and the re-crashing echoes mingled with the roar of the flooding rain-and all seemingly were deadened and drowned in a world of sound.

  In the dimming, pale light Venters looked down upon the girl. She had sunk into his arms, upon his breast, burying her face. She clung to him. He felt the softness of her, and the warmth, and the quick heave of her breast. He saw the dark, slender, graceful outline of her form. A woman lay in his arms! And he held her closer. He who had been alone in the sad, silent watches of the night was not now and never must be again alone. He who had yearned for the touch of a
hand felt the long tremble and the heartbeat of a woman. By what strange chance had she come to love him! By what change-by what marvel had she grown into a treasure!

  No more did he listen to the rush and roar of thunderstorm. For with the touch of clinging hands and throbbing bosom he grew conscious of an inward storm-the tingling of new chords of thought. Strange music of unheard joyous bells-sad dreams dawning to wakeful delight dissolving doubt, resurging hope, force, fire, and freedom-unutterable sweetness of desire. A storm in his heart - a storm of real love!

  When the storm abated, Venters sought his own cave, and late in the night, as his blood cooled and the stir and throb and thrill subsided, he fell asleep.

  With the breaking of dawn his eyes opened. The valley lay drenched and bathed, a burnished oval of glittering green. The rain-washed walls glistened in the morning light. Waterfalls of many forms poured over the rims. One, a broad lacy sheet, thin as smoke, slid over the western notch and struck a ledge in its downward fall, to bound into broader leap, to burst far below-into white and gold and rosy mist.

  Venters prepared for the day, knowing himself a different man.

  "It's a glorious morning," said Bess in greeting.

  "Yes. After the storm, the west wind," he replied.

  "Last night was I... very much of a baby?" she asked, watching him.

  "Pretty much."

  "Oh! I couldn't help it."

  "I'm glad you were afraid."

  "Why?" she asked in slow surprise.

  "I'11 tell you someday," he answered soberly. Then around the campfire and through the morning meal he was silent. Afterward he strolled thoughtfully off alone along the terrace. He climbed a great yellow rock raising its crest among the spruces, and there he sat down to face the valley and the west wind and thoughts as fresh and sweet.

  "I love her!"

  Aloud he spoke-unburdened his heart-confessed his secret. For an instant the golden valley swam before his eyes, and the walls waved, and all about him whirled with the tumult within. "I love her! I understand now. I loved Jane Withersteen but not that way."