Riders of the Purple Sage (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by Zane Grey

  "The second letter was written more than two years after the first. It was from Salt Lake City. It simply said that Milly had heard her brother was on her trail. She asked Frank to tell her brother to give up the search because, if he didn't, she would suffer in a way too horrible to tell. She didn't beg, she just stated a fact, an' made the simple request. An' she ended that letter by sayin' she would soon leave Salt Lake with the man she had come to love, an' would never be heard of again.

  "I recognized Milly's handwritin', an' I recognized her way of puttin' things. But that second letter told me of some great change in her. Ponderin' over it, I felt at last she'd either come to love that feller with the gold beard an' his religion, or some terrible fear had made her lie an' say so. I couldn't be sure which. But, of course, I meant to find out. I'll say here, if I'd known Mormons then as I do now, I'd've left Milly to her fate. For mebbe she was right about what she'd suffer if I kept on her trail. But I was young an' wild them days. First I went to the town outside where she'd been kept and where she'd had her baby after her conversion in that cave. I got that skunk who owned the place, an' took him out in the woods, an' made him tell all he knew. That wasn't much as to length, but it was pure hell's fire in substance. This time I left him some incapacitated for any more skunk work short of hell. Then I hit the trail for Utah.

  "That was fourteen years ago. I saw the incomin' of most of the Mormons. It was a wild country an' a wild time. I rode from town to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, camp to camp. I never stayed long in one place. I never had but one idea. I never rested. Four years went by, an' I knew every trail in northern Utah. I kept on, an', as time went by an' I'd begun to grow old in my search, I had firmer, blinder faith in whatever was guidin' me. Once I read about a feller who sailed the seven seas an' traveled the world, an' he had a story to tell, an' whenever he'd see the man he must tell that story to, he'd know him on sight. I was like that, only I had a question to ask. An' always I knew the man I must ask it of. So I never really lost the trail, though for years it was the dimmest trail ever followed by any man.

  "Then come a change in my luck. Along in central Utah I rounded up Hurd, an' I whispered somethin' in his ear, an' watched his face, an' then threw a gun against his bowels. An' he died with his teeth so tight shut I couldn't have pried them open with a knife. Slack an' Metzger that same year both heard me whisper the same question, an' neither would they speak a word when they lay dyin'. Long before, I'd learned no man of this breed or class... or God knows what... would give up any secrets. I had to see in a man's fear of death the connection with Milly Erne's fate. An', as the years passed, at long intervals I would find such a man.

  "So, as I drifted on the long trail down into southern Utah, my name preceded me, an' I had to meet a people prepared for me, an' ready with guns. They made me a gunman. An' that suited me. In all this time, signs of the proselyter an' the giant with the blue-ice eyes an' the gold beard seemed to fade dimmer out of the trail. Only twice in ten years did I find a trace of that mysterious man who had visited the proselyter at my home village. What he had to do with Milly's fate was beyond all hope for me to learn, unless my guidin' spirit led me to him. As for the other man, I knew, as sure as I breathed an' the stars shone an' the wind blew, that I'd meet him someday.

  "Eighteen years in all I've been on the trail. An' it led me to the last, lonely villages on the Utah border. Eighteen years! I feel pretty old now. I was only twenty when I hit that trail. Well, as I told you, back here a ways a Gentile said Jane Withersteen could tell me about Milly Erne an' show me her grave!"

  The low voice ceased, and Lassiter closely turned his sombrero around and around, and appeared to be counting the silver ornaments on the band. Jane leaned toward him, petrified in a position of waiting, listening intensity. She could have shrieked, but power of tongue and lips was denied her. She saw only this sad, gray, passion-worn man, and she heard only the faint rustling of the leaves.

  "Well, I came to Cottonwoods," went on Lassiter, "an' you showed me Milly's grave. An' though your teeth have been shut tighter'n them of all the dead men lyin' back along that trail... jest the same you told me the secret I've lived these eighteen years to hear. Jane, I said you'd tell me without ever me askin'. I didn't need to ask my question here. The day, you remember when that fat party threw a gun at me, in your court, an'...

  "For God's sake, hush," whispered Jane, blindly holding up her hands.

  "I seen in your face that Dyer, now a bishop, was the proselyter who had brought Milly Erne to her ruin!"

  Then for Jane Withersteen there was a spinning of her brain in darkness, and in what seemed an endless fall into whirling chaos she clung to consciousness, and reeled from this black, circling storm to find she clutched Lassiter as if she were drowning. As by a lightning stroke she sprang from her dull apathy into exquisite torture.

  "It's a lie! Lassiter! No, no," she moaned. "I swear to God... you're wrong!"

  "Stop! You'd perjure yourself... you... in the name of God! But I'll spare you that. You poor woman! Still blind! Still faithful! Listen. I know. Let that settle it. An' I give up my purpose!"

  "What is it... you... say?"

  "I give up my purpose. I've come to see an' feel differently. I can't help poor Milly. An' I've outgrown revenge. I've come to see I can be no judge of men. I can't kill a man jest for hate. Hate ain't the same with me since I loved you an' little Fay."

  "Lassiter, you mean you won't kill him?" Jane whispered.

  "No."

  "For my sake?"

  "I reckon. I can't understand, but I'll respect your feelin's."

  "Because you... oh, because you love me? Eighteen years. You were that terrible Lassiter. And now... because you love me?"

  "That's it, Jane."

  "Oh, you'll make me love you. How can I help but love you? My heart must be stone. But, oh, Lassiter, wait, wait! Give me time. I'm not what I was. Once it was so easy to love. Now it's easier to hate. Wait! My faith in God... some God... still lives. By it, I see happier times for you... poor, passion-swayed wanderer! For me... a miserable broken woman. I loved your sister Milly. I will love you. I can't have fallen so low... I can't be so abandoned by God... that I've no love left to give you. Wait! Let us forget Milly's sad life. Ah! I knew it as no one else on earth! There's one thing I shall tell you... if you are at my deathbed... but I can't speak now."

  "I reckon I don't want to hear no more," said Lassiter.

  Jane leaned against him, and with a pressing and breaking in her breast, as if some pent-up force had rent out its way, she fell into a paroxysm of weeping. Lassiter held her in silent sympathy. By degrees, she regained composure, and was rising, sensible of being relieved of a weighty, long-congested burden, when a sudden start on Lassiter's part alarmed her.

  "I heard bosses... bosses with muffled hoofs," he said, and he got up guardedly.

  "Where's Fay?" asked Jane, hurriedly glancing around the shady knoll. The bright-haired child, who had appeared to be close all the time, was not in sight.

  "Fay!" called Jane.

  No answering shout of glee! No patter of flying feet! Jane saw Lassiter stiffen.

  "Fay... oh, Fay!" Jane almost screamed.

  The leaves quivered and rustled; a lonesome cricket chirped in the grass; a bee hummed by. The silence of the waning afternoon breathed hateful portent. It terrified Jane. When had silence been so infernal?

  "She's... only... strayed... out... of... earshot," faltered Jane, looking at Lassiter.

  Pale, rigid as a statue, the rider stood, not in listening, searching posture, but in one of doomed certainty. Suddenly he grasped Jane with an iron hand, and, turning his face from her gaze, he strode with her down the knoll.

  "See... Fay played here last... a house of stones an' sticks... an' here's a corral of pebbles with leaves for bosses," said Lassiter stridently, and pointed to the ground. "Back an' forth she trailed here... see, she's buried somethin'... a dead grasshopper... there's a tombstone
... here she went, chasin' a lizard... see the tiny, streaked trail... she pulled away from this cottonwood. Look in the dust of the path... the letters you taught her... she's drawn pictures of birds an' hosses an' people. Look, a cross. My God, Jane, your cross!"

  Lassiter dragged Jane on and, as if from a book, read the meaning of little Fay's trail. All the way down the knoll-through the shrubbery-around and around a cottonwood-Fay's vagrant fancy left records of her sweet musings and innocent play. Long had she lingered around a bird nest to leave therein the gaudy wing of a butterfly. Long had she played beside the running stream, sending adrift vessels freighted with pebbly cargo. Then she had wandered through the deep grass, her tiny feet scarcely turning a fragile blade, and she had dreamed beside some old, faded flowers. Thus her steps led her into the broad lane. The little, dimpled imprints of her bare feet showed clean-cut in the dust. They went a little way down the lane and, at a point where they stopped, the great tracks of a man led out from the shrubbery and returned.

  Footprints told the story of little Fay's abduction. In anguish Jane Withersteen turned speechlessly, appealingly to Lassiter, and, confirming her fears, she saw him grayfaced, aged all in a moment, stricken as if by a mortal blow. Then all her life seemed to fall about her in wreck and ruin.

  "It's all over," she heard her voice whisper. "It's ended. I'm going... I'm going...

  "Where?" demanded Lassiter, suddenly looming darkly over her.

  "To... to those cruel men... my "enemies....

  "Speak names!" thundered Lassiter.

  "To Bishop Dyer... to Tull," went on Jane, shocked into obedience.

  "Well... what for?"

  "I want little Fay. I can't live without her. They've stolen her as they stole Milly Erne's child. I must have little Fay... I want only her. I give up. I'll go and tell Bishop Dyer... I'm broken. I'll tell him I'm ready for the yoke... only give me back Fay... and... and I'll marry Tull."

  "Christ!" hissed Lassiter.

  His long arm leaped at her, and, almost running, he dragged her under the cottonwoods, across the court, into the huge hall of Withersteen House, and he shut the door with a force that jarred the heavy walls. Black Star and Night and Bells, since their return, had been locked in this hall, and now they stamped on the stone floor.

  Lassiter released Jane, and like a dizzy man swayed from her, and appeared to be writhing in a kind of convulsion with hoarse, unintelligible, strangled cries. They ceased, and he leaned, shaking, against a table where he kept his rider's accoutrements and began fumbling in his saddlebags. His action brought a clinking, metallic sound-the rattling of gun cartridges. His fingers trembled as he slipped cartridges into an extra belt, but as he buckled it over the one he habitually wore, his hands became steady. This second belt contained two guns, smaller than the black ones swinging low, and he slipped them around so his coat hid them. Then he fell to swift action. Jane Withersteen watched him in fascination that yet admitted of no clue to his intentions, and she saw him rapidly saddle Black Star and Night. Then he was drawing her into the light of the huge window, standing over her, gripping her arm with fingers of steely ice.

  "Yes, Jane... it's ended... but you're not goin' to Dyer. I'm goin' instead."

  Looking at him-he was so terrible of aspect-she could not comprehend his words. Who was this man with the face gray as death, with eyes that would have made her shriek had she the strength, with the strange, ruthlessly bitter lips? Where had vanished the gentle Lassiter? What was this presence in the hall, about him, about her-this cold, invisible presence?

  "Yes, it's ended, Jane," he was saying, so awfully quiet and cool and implacable, "an' I'm goin' to make a little call. I'll lock you in here an', when I get back, have the saddlebags full of meat an' bread. An' be ready to ride!"

  "Lassiter!" cried Jane.

  Desperately she tried to meet his gray eyes-in vaindesperately she tried again, fought herself as feeling and thought resurged in torment-and she succeeded-and then she knew.

  "No... no... no!" she wailed. "You said you'd foregone your vengeance. You promised not to kill Bishop Dyer."

  "If you wanted to talk to me about him... leave off the bishop. I don't understand that name, or its use."

  "Oh, hadn't you forgone your vengeance on... on Dyer?"

  "Yes."

  "But... your actions... your words... your guns... your terrible looks! They don't seem foregoing vengeance."

  "Jane, now it's justice."

  "You'll... kill him?"

  "If God lets me live another hour. If not God... then the devil who drives me."

  "You'll... kill him... for yourself... for your vengeful hate?"

  "No!"

  "For Milly Erne's sake?"

  "No!"

  "For little Fay's?"

  "No!"

  "Oh... my God... for whose?"

  "For yours!"

  "His blood on my soul!" whispered Jane, and she fell to her knees. This was the long-pending hour of fruition. The habit of years-the religious passion of her life-leaped from lethargy-and the long months of gradual drifting to doubt were as if they had never been. "If you spill his blood, it'll be on my soul... and on my father's. Listen"-and she clasped his knees and clung there as he tried to raise her-"am I nothing to you?"

  "Woman... don't trifle at words. I love you. An', by God, I'll soon prove it!"

  "I'll ride away with you... marry you, if only you'll spare him!"

  His answer was a cold, ringing, terrible laugh.

  "Lassiter... I'll love you... spare him!"

  "No!"

  She sprang up in despairing, breaking spirit, and encircled his neck with her arms, and held him in an embrace that he strove vainly to loosen. "Lassiter, would you kill me? I'm fighting my last fight for the principles of my youth... love of religion, love of Father. You don't know... you can't guess the truth, and... oh, God... I can't speak it. My lips grow numb. Lassiter, my soul's being wrenched. I feel the blackness... the terror... the pain of death. I'm sinking... I'm losing all. I'm changing. All I've gone through is nothing to this hour. Pity me... help me in my weakness. You're strong again. Oh, so cruelly, coldly strong! I see you... feel you as some other Lassiter! My master! So be merciful... spare him!"

  Her answer was a ruthless smile.

  She clung the closer to him and leaned her panting breast on him, and lifted her face to his. "Lassiter, I do love you! It's leaped out of my agony. It comes suddenly... with terrible blow of truth. You are a man! I never knew it till now. Some wonderful change came to me when you buckled on these guns and turned that gray awful face... I loved you then. All my life I've loved, but never as now. No woman can love like a broken woman. If it were not for one thing... just one thing... oh, God... I can't speak it. I'd glory in your manhood... the lion in you that means to slay for me. Believe me... and spare Dyer. Be merciful... great as it's in you to be great... oh... listen and believe. I have nothing, but I'm a woman... a beautiful woman, Lassiter, a passionate, loving woman... and I love you. Take me... with marriage or without... hide me in some wild place... and love me and mend my broken heart. Spare him and take me away."

  She lifted her face closer and closer to his, until their lips nearly touched, and she hung upon his neck and, with strength almost spent, pressed and still pressed her palpitating body to his.

  "Kiss me," she whispered blindly.

  "No... not at your price," he answered. His voice had changed or she had lost clearness of hearing.

  "Kiss me.... Are you a man? Kiss me and save me."

  "Jane, you never played fair with me. But now you're blisterin' your lips... blackenin' your soul with lies!"

  "By the memory of my mother... by my Bible... no! No! I have no Bible! But by my hope of heaven I swear I love you!"

  Lassiter's gray lips formed soundless words that meant even her love would not avail to bend his will. As if the hold of her arms was that of a child's, he loosened it and stepped away.

  "Wait! Don't go... oh! Hear a
last word! May a more just and merciful God than the God I was taught to worship judge me... forgive me... save me! For I can no longer keep silent! Lassiter, in pleading for Dyer, I've been pleading more for my father. My father was a Mormon master, close to the leaders of the church. It was my father who sent Dyer out to proselyte. It was my father who had the blue-ice eyes and the beard of gold. It was my father you got trace of in the past years. Truly Dyer plotted the ruin of Milly Erne... dragged her from her home... to Utah... finally to Cottonwoods. But it was always for my father. If Milly Erne was ever wife of a Mormon, that Mormon was my father. I never knew... never will know whether or not she was truly a Mormon wife... but she had a Mormon's child. Blind I may be, Lassiter... fanatically faithful to a false religion I may have been, but I know justice, and my father is beyond human justice. My father was the father of Milly's baby. I believe he was Fay's real father, although he never married Fay's mother. Missus Larkin died here. I don't know for certain... she wouldn't tell me even when she was dying and had come to trust me... but Fay may be... my half sister! Surely he is meeting just punishment... somewhere. Always it has appalled me... the thought of your killing Dyer for my father's sins. So I have prayed!"

  "Jane, the past is dead. In my love for you I forgot the past. This thing I'm about to do ain't for myself, or Milly, or Fay. It's not because of anythin' that ever happened in the past, but for what is happenin' right now. It's for you! An', listen. Since I was a boy, I've never thanked God for anythin'. If there is a God... an' I've come to believe it... I thank him now for the years that made me... Lassiter. I can reach down an' feel these big guns, an' know what I can do with them. An' Jane, only one of the miracles Dyer professes to believe in can save him."