Riders of the Purple Sage

by Zane Grey

  CHAPTER V. THE MASKED RIDER

  Venters looked quickly from the fallen rustlers to the canyon where theothers had disappeared. He calculated on the time needed for runninghorses to return to the open, if their riders heard shots. He waitedbreathlessly. But the estimated time dragged by and no riders appeared.Venters began presently to believe that the rifle reports had notpenetrated into the recesses of the canyon, and felt safe for theimmediate present.

  He hurried to the spot where the first rustler had been dragged by hishorse. The man lay in deep grass, dead, jaw fallen, eyes protruding--asight that sickened Venters. The first man at whom he had ever aimed aweapon he had shot through the heart. With the clammy sweat oozingfrom every pore Venters dragged the rustler in among some boulders andcovered him with slabs of rock. Then he smoothed out the crushed trailin grass and sage. The rustler's horse had stopped a quarter of a mileoff and was grazing.

  When Venters rapidly strode toward the Masked Rider not even the coldnausea that gripped him could wholly banish curiosity. For he had shotOldring's infamous lieutenant, whose face had never been seen. Ventersexperienced a grim pride in the feat. What would Tull say to thisachievement of the outcast who rode too often to Deception Pass?

  Venters's curious eagerness and expectation had not prepared him for theshock he received when he stood over a slight, dark figure. The rustlerwore 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 thesaddle.

  "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 toldVenters the rider still lived.

  "He's alive!... I've got to stand here and watch him die. And I shot anunarmed man."

  Shrinkingly Venters removed the rider's wide sombrero and the blackcloth mask. This action disclosed bright chestnut hair, inclined tocurl, and a white, youthful face. Along the lower line of cheek and jawwas a clear demarcation, where the brown of tanned skin met the whitethat 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 lipsmoved; a small brown hand clenched in his blouse.

  Venters knelt with a gathering horror of his deed. His bullet hadentered the rider's right breast, high up to the shoulder. With handsthat shook, Venters untied a black scarf and ripped open the blood-wetblouse.

  First he saw a gaping hole, dark red against a whiteness of skin, fromwhich welled a slender red stream. Then the graceful, beautiful swell ofa woman's breast!

  "A woman!" he cried. "A girl!... I've killed a girl!"

  She suddenly opened eyes that transfixed Venters. They were fathomlessblue. Consciousness of death was there, a blended terror and pain, butno consciousness of sight. She did not see Venters. She stared into theunknown.

  Then came a spasm of vitality. She writhed in a torture of revivingstrength, and in her convulsions she almost tore from Ventner's grasp.Slowly she relaxed and sank partly back. The ungloved hand sought thewound, and pressed so hard that her wrist half buried itself in herbosom. Blood trickled between her spread fingers. And she looked atVenters with eyes that saw him.

  He cursed himself and the unerring aim of which he had been so proud. Hehad seen that look in the eyes of a crippled antelope which he wasabout to finish with his knife. But in her it had infinitely more--arevelation of mortal spirit. The instinctive bringing to life wasthere, and the divining helplessness and the terrible accusation of thestricken.

  "Forgive me! I didn't know!" burst out Venters.

  "You shot me--you've killed me!" she whispered, in panting gasps. Uponher lips appeared a fluttering, bloody froth. By that Venters knewthe air in her lungs was mixing with blood. "Oh, I knew--itwould--come--some day!... Oh, the burn!... Hold me--I'm sinking--it's alldark.... 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 herbreast assured him that life yet lingered. Death seemed only a matterof moments, for the bullet had gone clear through her. Nevertheless, hetore sageleaves from a bush, and, pressing them tightly over her wounds,he bound the black scarf round her shoulder, tying it securely underher arm. Then he closed the blouse, hiding from his sight thatblood-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 animateobject. Then he picked up the girl's sombrero and the mask. This timethe mask gave him as great a shock as when he first removed it fromher face. For in the woman he had forgotten the rustler, and this blackstrip 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. Thedog trailed in his shadow. And the horse, that had stood drooping by,followed without a call. Venters chose the deepest tufts of grass andclumps of sage on his return. From time to time he glanced over hisshoulder. He did not rest. His concern was to avoid jarring the girl andto hide his trail. Gaining the narrow canyon, he turned and held closeto the wall till he reached his hiding-place. When he entered the densethicket of oaks he was hard put to it to force a way through. But heheld his burden almost upright, and by slipping side wise and bendingthe saplings he got in. Through sage and grass he hurried to the groveof silver spruces.

  He laid the girl down, almost fearing to look at her. Though marble paleand cold, she was living. Venters then appreciated the tax that longcarry had been to his strength. He sat down to rest. Whitie sniffed atthe pale girl and whined and crept to Venters's feet. Ring lapped thewater in the runway of the spring.

  Presently Venters went out to the opening, caught the horse and, leadinghim 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 otherrustler'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 ovaland out to the cattle trail. What few tracks might have betrayed himhe obliterated, so only an expert tracker could have trailed him. Then,with many a wary backward glance across the sage, he started to roundup the rustler's horse. This was unexpectedly easy. He led the horse tolower ground, out of sight from the opposite side of the oval along theshadowy western wall, and so on into his canyon and secluded camp.

  The girl's eyes were open; a feverish spot burned in her cheeks shemoaned something unintelligible to Venters, but he took the movement ofher lips to mean that she wanted water. Lifting her head, he tipped thecanteen to her lips. After that she again lapsed into unconsciousness ora weakness which was its counterpart. Venters noted, however, that theburning flush had faded into the former pallor.

  The sun set behind the high canyon rim, and a cool shade darkened thewalls. 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 andmade 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 hisshoulders and found a comfortable seat against a spruce-tree that upheldthe little shack. Ring and Whitie lay near at hand, one asleep, theother watchful.

  Venters dreaded the night's vigil. At night his mind was active, andthis time he had to watch and think and feel beside a dying girl whomhe had all but murdered. A thousand excuses he invented for himself, yetnot 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 faceso 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 h
im with a shock; andthen he would bend over and lay his ear on her breast. Her heart stillbeat.

  The early night blackness cleared to the cold starlight. The horses werenot 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 amystery as her life was."

  For the girl's few words, the look of her eyes, the prayer, hadstrangely 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'sall. But somehow... well, she may not have willingly become the companionof rustlers. That prayer of hers to God for mercy!... Life is strangeand cruel. I wonder if other members of Oldring's gang are women? Likelyenough. But what was his game? Oldring's Mask Rider! A name to makevillagers hide and lock their doors. A name credited with a dozenmurders, a hundred forays, and a thousand stealings of cattle. Whatpart did the girl have in this? It may have served Oldring to createmystery."

  Hours passed. The white stars moved across the narrow strip of dark-bluesky above. The silence awoke to the low hum of insects. Venters watchedthe immovable white face, and as he watched, hour by hour waiting fordeath, the infamy of her passed from his mind. He thought only of thesadness, the truth of the moment. Whoever she was--whatever she haddone--she was young and she was dying.

  The after-part of the night wore on interminably. The starlight failedand the gloom blackened to the darkest hour. "She'll die at the grayof dawn," muttered Venters, remembering some old woman's fancy. Theblackness paled to gray, and the gray lightened and day peeped overthe eastern rim. Venters listened at the breast of the girl. Shestill lived. Did he only imagine that her heart beat stronger, ever soslightly, but stronger? He pressed his ear closer to her breast. And herose with his own pulse quickening.

  "If she doesn't die soon--she's got a chance--the barest chance tolive," he said.

  He wondered if the internal bleeding had ceased. There was no more filmof blood upon her lips. But no corpse could have been whiter. Openingher blouse, he untied the scarf, and carefully picked away the sageleaves from the wound in her shoulder. It had closed. Lifting herlightly, he ascertained that the same was true of the hole where thebullet had come out. He reflected on the fact that clean wounds closedquickly in the healing upland air. He recalled instances of riders whohad been cut and shot apparently to fatal issues; yet the blood hadclotted, the wounds closed, and they had recovered. He had no way totell if internal hemorrhage still went on, but he believed that it hadstopped. Otherwise she would surely not have lived so long. He markedthe entrance of the bullet, and concluded that it had just touched theupper 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 carefullyrebandage the wound, he was vaguely conscious of a strange, gravehappiness in the thought that she might live.

  Broad daylight and a hint of sunshine high on the cliff-rim to the westbrought him to consideration of what he had better do. And while busywith his few camp tasks he revolved the thing in his mind. It would notbe wise for him to remain long in his present hiding-place. And if heintended to follow the cattle trail and try to find the rustlers he hadbetter 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 oneor two of their number; but when the missing ones failed to show up inreasonable 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'llrisk it. Then I'll change my hiding-place."

  He carefully cleaned and reloaded his guns. When he rose to go he benta long glance down upon the unconscious girl. Then ordering Whitie andRing to keep guard, he left the camp.

  The safest cover lay close under the wall of the canyon, and herethrough the dense thickets Venters made his slow, listening advancetoward the oval. Upon gaining the wide opening he decided to cross itand follow the left wall till he came to the cattle trail. He scannedthe oval as keenly as if hunting for antelope. Then, stooping, he stolefrom one cover to another, taking advantage of rocks and bunches ofsage, until he had reached the thickets under the opposite wall. Oncethere, he exercised extreme caution in his surveys of the ground ahead,but increased his speed when moving. Dodging from bush to bush, hepassed the mouths of two canyons, and in the entrance of a third canyonhe crossed a wash of swift clear water, to come abruptly upon the cattletrail.

  It followed the low bank of the wash, and, keeping it in sight, Ventershugged the line of sage and thicket. Like the curves of a serpent thecanyon wound for a mile or more and then opened into a valley. Patchesof red showed clear against the purple of sage, and farther out on thelevel 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 colorsin this inclosed valley. Oldring, the rustler, was also a rancher.Venters's calculating eye took count of stock that outnumbered the redherd.

  "What a range!" went on Venters. "Water and grass enough for fiftythousand head, and no riders needed!"

  After his first burst of surprise and rapid calculation Venters lost notime there, but slunk again into the sage on his back trail. With thediscovery of Oldring's hidden cattle-range had come enlightenmenton several problems. Here the rustler kept his stock, here was JaneWithersteen's red herd; here were the few cattle that had disappearedfrom the Cottonwoods slopes during the last two years. Until Oldring haddriven the red herd his thefts of cattle for that time had not beenmore than enough to supply meat for his men. Of late no drives had beenreported from Sterling or the villages north. And Venters knew that theriders had wondered at Oldring's inactivity in that particular field.He and his band had been active enough in their visits to Glaze andCottonwoods; they always had gold; but of late the amount gambledaway and drunk and thrown away in the villages had given rise to muchconjecture. Oldring's more frequent visits had resulted in new saloons,and where there had formerly been one raid or shooting fray in thelittle hamlets there were now many. Perhaps Oldring had another rangefarther on up the pass, and from there drove the cattle to distant Utahtowns 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 toform in Venters's mind that Oldring's intimidations of the villages andthe mystery of the Masked Rider, with his alleged evil deeds, and thefierce resistance offered any trailing riders, and the rustling ofcattle--these things were only the craft of the rustler-chief to concealhis real life and purpose and work in Deception Pass.

  And like a scouting Indian Venters crawled through the sage of the ovalvalley, crossed trail after trail on the north side, and at last enteredthe canyon out of which headed the cattle trail, and into which he hadwatched the rustlers disappear.

  If he had used caution before, now he strained every nerve to forcehimself to creeping stealth and to sensitiveness of ear. He crawledalong so hidden that he could not use his eyes except to aid himself inthe toilsome progress through the brakes and ruins of cliff-wall. Yetfrom time to time, as he rested, he saw the massive red walls growinghigher and wilder, more looming and broken. He made note of the factthat he was turning and climbing. The sage and thickets of oak andbrakes of alder gave place to pinyon pine growing out of rocky soil.Suddenly a low, dull murmur assailed his ears. At first he thought itwas thunder, then the slipping of a weathered slope of rock. But it wasincessant, and as he progressed it filled out deeper and from a murmurchanged into a soft roar.

  "Falling water," he said. "There's volume to that. I wonder if it's thestream I lost."

  The roar bothered him, for he could hear nothing else. Likewise,however, no rustlers could hear him. Emboldened by this and sure thatnothing but a bird could see him, he arose from his hands and knees tohurry on. An opening in the pinyons warned him that he was nearing theheight of slope. />
  He gained it, and dropped low with a burst of astonishment. Before himstretched a short canyon with rounded stone floor bare of grass or sageor tree, and with curved, shelving walls. A broad rippling stream flowedtoward him, and at the back of the canyon waterfall burst from a widerent in the cliff, and, bounding down in two green steps, spread into along white sheet.

  If Venters had not been indubitably certain that he had entered theright canyon his astonishment would not have been so great. There hadbeen no breaks in the walls, no side canyons entering this one where therustlers' tracks and the cattle trail had guided him, and, therefore, hecould not be wrong. But here the canyon ended, and presumably the trailsalso.

  "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 everget in here?"

  If he could be sure of anything it was of the careful scrutiny he hadgiven that cattle track, every hoofmark of which headed straight west.He was now looking east at an immense round boxed corner of canyon downwhich tumbled a thin, white veil of water, scarcely twenty yards wide.Somehow, somewhere, his calculations had gone wrong. For the first timein 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 keepunder cover he must have lost himself in this offshoot of DeceptionPass, and thereby in some unaccountable manner, missed the canyon withthe trails. There was nothing else for him to think. Rustlers could notfly, nor cattle jump down thousand-foot precipices. He was only provingwhat the sage-riders had long said of this labyrinthine system ofdeceitful canyons and valleys--trails led down into Deception Pass, butno rider had ever followed them.

  On a sudden he heard above the soft roar of the waterfall an unusualsound that he could not define. He dropped flat behind a stone andlistened. From the direction he had come swelled something thatresembled a strange muffled pounding and splashing and ringing. Despitehis nerve the chill sweat began to dampen his forehead. What might notbe possible in this stonewalled maze of mystery? The unnatural soundpassed beyond him as he lay gripping his rifle and fighting forcoolness. Then from the open came the sound, now distinct and different.Venters recognized a hobble-bell of a horse, and the cracking of iron onsubmerged stones, and the hollow splash of hoofs in water.

  Relief surged over him. His mind caught again at realities, andcuriosity prompted him to peep from behind the rock.

  In the middle of the stream waded a long string of packed burros drivenby three superbly mounted men. Had Venters met these dark-clothed,dark-visaged, heavily armed men anywhere in Utah, let alone in thisrobbers' retreat, he would have recognized them as rustlers. Thediscerning eye of a rider saw the signs of a long, arduous trip. Thesemen were packing in supplies from one of the northern villages. Theywere tired, and their horses were almost played out, and the burrosplodded on, after the manner of their kind when exhausted, faithful andpatient, but as if every weary, splashing, slipping step would be theirlast.

  All this Venters noted in one glance. After that he watched with athrilling eagerness. Straight at the waterfall the rustlers drove theburros, and straight through the middle, where the water spread into afleecy, thin film like dissolving smoke. Following closely, the rustlersrode 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 suddenutterance.

  "Good Heaven! Of all the holes for a rustler!... There's a cavern underthat waterfall, and a passageway leading out to a canyon beyond. Oldringhides in there. He needs only to guard a trail leading down fromthe sage-flat above. Little danger of this outlet to the pass beingdiscovered. I stumbled on it by luck, after I had given up. And now Iknow 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 thesage-brush. Returning, he had no time to spare, only now and then,between dashes, a moment when he stopped to cast sharp eyes ahead. Theabundant grass left no trace of his trail. Short work he made of thedistance to the circle of canyons. He doubted that he would ever see itagain; he knew he never wanted to; yet he looked at the red cornersand towers with the eyes of a rider picturing landmarks never to beforgotten.

  Here he spent a panting moment in a slow-circling gaze of the sage-ovaland the gaps between the bluffs. Nothing stirred except the gentle waveof the tips of the brush. Then he pressed on past the mouths of severalcanyons and over ground new to him, now close under the eastern wall.This latter part proved to be easy traveling, well screened frompossible observation from the north and west, and he soon covered itand 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 againthe deep cove where his camp lay hidden. As he penetrated the thicket,safe again for the present, his thoughts reverted to the girl he hadleft there. The afternoon had far advanced. How would he find her? Heran into camp, frightening the dogs.

  The girl lay with wide-open, dark eyes, and they dilated when he kneltbeside her. The flush of fever shone in her cheeks. He lifted her andheld water to her dry lips, and felt an inexplicable sense of lightnessas 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 canyonwhere the rustlers ride through the waterfall."

  As with a faint shadow from a flitting wing overhead, the marblewhiteness of her face seemed to change.

  "Don't--take--me--back--there!"