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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Riders of the Purple Sage
+
+Author: Zane Grey
+
+Release Date: May, 1998 [eBook #1300]
+[Most recently updated: January 3, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Bill Brewer, Rick Fane and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
+
+By Zane Grey
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAPTER I. LASSITER
+ CHAPTER II. COTTONWOODS
+ CHAPTER III. AMBER SPRING
+ CHAPTER IV. DECEPTION PASS
+ CHAPTER V. THE MASKED RIDER
+ CHAPTER VI. THE MILL-WHEEL OF STEERS
+ CHAPTER VII. THE DAUGHTER OF WITHERSTEEN
+ CHAPTER VIII. SURPRISE VALLEY
+ CHAPTER IX. SILVER SPRUCE AND ASPENS
+ CHAPTER X. LOVE
+ CHAPTER XI. FAITH AND UNFAITH
+ CHAPTER XII. THE INVISIBLE HAND
+ CHAPTER XIII. SOLITUDE AND STORM
+ CHAPTER XIV. WEST WIND
+ CHAPTER XV. SHADOWS ON THE SAGE-SLOPE
+ CHAPTER XVI. GOLD
+ CHAPTER XVII. WRANGLE’S RACE RUN
+ CHAPTER XVIII. OLDRING’S KNELL
+ CHAPTER XIX. FAY
+ CHAPTER XX. LASSITER’S WAY
+ CHAPTER XXI. BLACK STAR AND NIGHT
+ CHAPTER XXII. RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
+ CHAPTER XXIII. THE FALL OF BALANCING ROCK
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ “He has brought you far to-day?”
+ Like a flash the blue barrel of his rifle gleamed level and he shot once—twice.
+ “Oh, he’s only a boy!... What! Can he be Oldring’s Masked Rider?”
+ “What on earth is that?”
+ He did not pause until he gained the narrow divide
+ “Bess, I’ll not go again”
+ It was Jane’s gaze riveted upon the rider that made Bishop Dyer turn.
+ Venters and Bess finished their simple meal—then faced the open terrace, to watch and await the approaching storm.
+ just as Wrangle plunged again he caught the whizz of a leaden missile
+ and Venters shot him through the heart
+ “Don’t—look—back!”
+ When he and Bess rode up out of the hollow the sun was low.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+LASSITER
+
+
+A sharp clip-clop 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 cañons from
+which rose an up-flinging 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 to gray.
+
+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
+queer deal. Seven Mormons all packin’ guns, an’ a Gentile tied with a
+rope, an’ a woman who swears by his honesty! Queer, ain’t that?”
+
+“Queer 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?”
+
+
+[Illustration: “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
+murder 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 cañons. 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 cañon? 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 cañon. 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 cañons, 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 circumstance 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 Jane, 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 cañons 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 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 cañons 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 hard on 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-cañoned 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 cañon 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 cañon, 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
+cañon. 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 cañons 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.
+
+Piñon 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 cañon. 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 cañons, 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 cañon. 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 cañon, 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 cañon was a hundred rods wide, its
+yellow walls were perpendicular; it had abundant sage and a scant
+growth of oak and piñon. 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 piñon-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
+confluence of intersecting cañons.
+
+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 cañons, 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
+cañons, 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 cañons. 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 cañon 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 cañon, 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 cañon 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 cañons. 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 cañon. 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon!” 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 cañon 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 jerked 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: 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 cañon 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 cañon, 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?”
+
+
+[Illustration: “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
+bosom. 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 cañon, 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon 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
+cañon.
+
+“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 Masked 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 cañon, 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 cañons, and in the entrance of a third cañon
+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
+cañon 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 cañon 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 piñon 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 piñons 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon his astonishment would not have been so great. There had
+been no breaks in the walls, no side cañons entering this one where the
+rustlers’ tracks and the cattle trail had guided him, and, therefore,
+he could not be wrong. But here the cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañons 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 cañon 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 cañons. 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
+cañons 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 cañon. 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 cañon
+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!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+THE MILL-WHEEL OF STEERS
+
+
+Meantime, at the ranch, when Judkins’s news had sent Venters on the
+trail of the rustlers, Jane Withersteen led the injured man to her
+house and with skilled fingers dressed the gunshot wound in his arm.
+
+“Judkins, what do you think happened to my riders?”
+
+“I—I d rather not say,” he replied.
+
+“Tell me. Whatever you’ll tell me I’ll keep to myself. I’m beginning to
+worry about more than the loss of a herd of cattle. Venters hinted
+of—but tell me, Judkins.”
+
+“Well, Miss Withersteen, I think as Venters thinks—your riders have
+been called in.”
+
+“Judkins!... By whom?”
+
+“You know who handles the reins of your Mormon riders.”
+
+“Do you dare insinuate that my churchmen have ordered in my riders?”
+
+“I ain’t insinuatin’ nothin’, Miss Withersteen,” answered Judkins, with
+spirit. “I know what I’m talking about. I didn’t want to tell you.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t believe that! I’ll not believe it! Would Tull leave my
+herds at the mercy of rustlers and wolves just because—because—? No,
+no! It’s unbelievable.”
+
+“Yes, thet particular thing’s onheard of around Cottonwoods. But,
+beggin’ pardon, Miss Withersteen, there never was any other rich Mormon
+woman here on the border, let alone one thet’s taken the bit between
+her teeth.”
+
+That was a bold thing for the reserved Judkins to say, but it did not
+anger her. This rider’s crude hint of her spirit gave her a glimpse of
+what others might think. Humility and obedience had been hers always.
+But had she taken the bit between her teeth? Still she wavered. And
+then, with quick spurt of warm blood along her veins, she thought of
+Black Star when he got the bit fast between his iron jaws and ran wild
+in the sage. If she ever started to run! Jane smothered the glow and
+burn within her, ashamed of a passion for freedom that opposed her
+duty.
+
+“Judkins, go to the village,” she said, “and when you have learned
+anything definite about my riders please come to me at once.”
+
+When he had gone Jane resolutely applied her mind to a number of tasks
+that of late had been neglected. Her father had trained her in the
+management of a hundred employees and the working of gardens and
+fields; and to keep record of the movements of cattle and riders. And
+beside the many duties she had added to this work was one of extreme
+delicacy, such as required all her tact and ingenuity. It was an
+unobtrusive, almost secret aid which she rendered to the Gentile
+families of the village. Though Jane Withersteen never admitted so to
+herself, it amounted to no less than a system of charity. But for her
+invention of numberless kinds of employment, for which there was no
+actual need, these families of Gentiles, who had failed in a Mormon
+community, would have starved.
+
+In aiding these poor people Jane thought she deceived her keen
+churchmen, but it was a kind of deceit for which she did not pray to be
+forgiven. Equally as difficult was the task of deceiving the Gentiles,
+for they were as proud as they were poor. It had been a great grief to
+her to discover how these people hated her people; and it had been a
+source of great joy that through her they had come to soften in hatred.
+At any time this work called for a clearness of mind that precluded
+anxiety and worry; but under the present circumstances it required all
+her vigor and obstinate tenacity to pin her attention upon her task.
+
+Sunset came, bringing with the end of her labor a patient calmness and
+power to wait that had not been hers earlier in the day. She expected
+Judkins, but he did not appear. Her house was always quiet; to-night,
+however, it seemed unusually so. At supper her women served her with a
+silent assiduity; it spoke what their sealed lips could not utter—the
+sympathy of Mormon women. Jerd came to her with the key of the great
+door of the stone stable, and to make his daily report about the
+horses. One of his daily duties was to give Black Star and Night and
+the other racers a ten-mile run. This day it had been omitted, and the
+boy grew confused in explanations that she had not asked for. She did
+inquire if he would return on the morrow, and Jerd, in mingled surprise
+and relief, assured her he would always work for her. Jane missed the
+rattle and trot, canter and gallop of the incoming riders on the hard
+trails. Dusk shaded the grove where she walked; the birds ceased
+singing; the wind sighed through the leaves of the cottonwoods, and the
+running water murmured down its stone-bedded channel. The glimmering of
+the first star was like the peace and beauty of the night. Her faith
+welled up in her heart and said that all would soon be right in her
+little world. She pictured Venters about his lonely camp-fire sitting
+between his faithful dogs. She prayed for his safety, for the success
+of his undertaking.
+
+Early the next morning one of Jane’s women brought in word that Judkins
+wished to speak to her. She hurried out, and in her surprise to see him
+armed with rifle and revolver, she forgot her intention to inquire
+about his wound.
+
+“Judkins! Those guns? You never carried guns.”
+
+“It’s high time, Miss Withersteen,” he replied. “Will you come into the
+grove? It ain’t jest exactly safe for me to be seen here.”
+
+She walked with him into the shade of the cottonwoods.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Miss Withersteen, I went to my mother’s house last night. While there,
+some one knocked, an’ a man asked for me. I went to the door. He wore a
+mask. He said I’d better not ride any more for Jane Withersteen. His
+voice was hoarse an’ strange, disguised I reckon, like his face. He
+said no more, an’ ran off in the dark.”
+
+“Did you know who he was?” asked Jane, in a low voice.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Jane did not ask to know; she did not want to know; she feared to know.
+All her calmness fled at a single thought.
+
+“Thet’s why I’m packin’ guns,” went on Judkins. “For I’ll never quit
+ridin’ for you, Miss Withersteen, till you let me go.”
+
+“Judkins, do you want to leave me?”
+
+“Do I look thet way? Give me a hoss—a fast hoss, an’ send me out on the
+sage.”
+
+“Oh, thank you, Judkins! You’re more faithful than my own people. I
+ought not accept your loyalty—you might suffer more through it. But
+what in the world can I do? My head whirls. The wrong to Venters—the
+stolen herd—these masks, threats, this coil in the dark! I can’t
+understand! But I feel something dark and terrible closing in around
+me.”
+
+“Miss Withersteen, it’s all simple enough,” said Judkins, earnestly.
+“Now please listen—an’ beggin’ your pardon—jest turn thet deaf Mormon
+ear aside, an’ let me talk clear an’ plain in the other. I went around
+to the saloons an’ the stores an’ the loafin’ places yesterday. All
+your riders are in. There’s talk of a vigilance band organized to hunt
+down rustlers. They call themselves ‘The Riders.’ Thet’s the
+report—thet’s the reason given for your riders leavin’ you. Strange
+thet only a few riders of other ranchers joined the band! An’ Tull’s
+man, Jerry Card—he’s the leader. I seen him en’ his hoss. He ain’t been
+to Glaze. I’m not easy to fool on the looks of a hoss thet’s traveled
+the sage. Tull an’ Jerry didn’t ride to Glaze!... Well, I met Blake en’
+Dorn, both good friends of mine, usually, as far as their Mormon lights
+will let ’em go. But these fellers couldn’t fool me, an’ they didn’t
+try very hard. I asked them, straight out like a man, why they left you
+like thet. I didn’t forget to mention how you nursed Blake’s poor old
+mother when she was sick, an’ how good you was to Dorn’s kids. They
+looked ashamed, Miss Withersteen. An’ they jest froze up—thet dark set
+look thet makes them strange an’ different to me. But I could tell the
+difference between thet first natural twinge of conscience an’ the
+later look of some secret thing. An’ the difference I caught was thet
+they couldn’t help themselves. They hadn’t no say in the matter. They
+looked as if their bein’ unfaithful to you was bein’ faithful to a
+higher duty. An’ there’s the secret. Why it’s as plain as—as sight of
+my gun here.”
+
+“Plain!... My herds to wander in the sage—to be stolen! Jane
+Withersteen a poor woman! Her head to be brought low and her spirit
+broken!... Why, Judkins, it’s plain enough.”
+
+“Miss Withersteen, let me get what boys I can gather, an’ hold the
+white herd. It’s on the slope now, not ten miles out—three thousand
+head, an’ all steers. They’re wild, an’ likely to stampede at the pop
+of a jack-rabbit’s ears. We’ll camp right with them, en’ try to hold
+them.”
+
+“Judkins, I’ll reward you some day for your service, unless all is
+taken from me. Get the boys and tell Jerd to give you pick of my
+horses, except Black Star and Night. But—do not shed blood for my
+cattle nor heedlessly risk your lives.”
+
+Jane Withersteen rushed to the silence and seclusion of her room, and
+there could not longer hold back the bursting of her wrath. She went
+stone-blind in the fury of a passion that had never before showed its
+power. Lying upon her bed, sightless, voiceless, she was a writhing,
+living flame. And she tossed there while her fury burned and burned,
+and finally burned itself out.
+
+Then, weak and spent, she lay thinking, not of the oppression that
+would break her, but of this new revelation of self. Until the last few
+days there had been little in her life to rouse passions. Her
+forefathers had been Vikings, savage chieftains who bore no cross and
+brooked no hindrance to their will. Her father had inherited that
+temper; and at times, like antelope fleeing before fire on the slope,
+his people fled from his red rages. Jane Withersteen realized that the
+spirit of wrath and war had lain dormant in her. She shrank from black
+depths hitherto unsuspected. The one thing in man or woman that she
+scorned above all scorn, and which she could not forgive, was hate.
+Hate headed a flaming pathway straight to hell. All in a flash, beyond
+her control there had been in her a birth of fiery hate. And the man
+who had dragged her peaceful and loving spirit to this degradation was
+a minister of God’s word, an Elder of her church, the counselor of her
+beloved Bishop.
+
+The loss of herds and ranges, even of Amber Spring and the Old Stone
+House, no longer concerned Jane Withersteen, she faced the foremost
+thought of her life, what she now considered the mightiest problem—the
+salvation of her soul.
+
+She knelt by her bedside and prayed; she prayed as she had never prayed
+in all her life—prayed to be forgiven for her sin to be immune from
+that dark, hot hate; to love Tull as her minister, though she could not
+love him as a man; to do her duty by her church and people and those
+dependent upon her bounty; to hold reverence of God and womanhood
+inviolate.
+
+When Jane Withersteen rose from that storm of wrath and prayer for help
+she was serene, calm, sure—a changed woman. She would do her duty as
+she saw it, live her life as her own truth guided her. She might never
+be able to marry a man of her choice, but she certainly never would
+become the wife of Tull. Her churchmen might take her cattle and
+horses, ranges and fields, her corrals and stables, the house of
+Withersteen and the water that nourished the village of Cottonwoods;
+but they could not force her to marry Tull, they could not change her
+decision or break her spirit. Once resigned to further loss, and sure
+of herself, Jane Withersteen attained a peace of mind that had not been
+hers for a year. She forgave Tull, and felt a melancholy regret over
+what she knew he considered duty, irrespective of his personal feeling
+for her. First of all, Tull, as he was a man, wanted her for himself;
+and secondly, he hoped to save her and her riches for his church. She
+did not believe that Tull had been actuated solely by his minister’s
+zeal to save her soul. She doubted her interpretation of one of his
+dark sayings—that if she were lost to him she might as well be lost to
+heaven. Jane Withersteen’s common sense took arms against the binding
+limits of her religion; and she doubted that her Bishop, whom she had
+been taught had direct communication with God—would damn her soul for
+refusing to marry a Mormon. As for Tull and his churchmen, when they
+had harassed her, perhaps made her poor, they would find her
+unchangeable, and then she would get back most of what she had lost. So
+she reasoned, true at last to her faith in all men, and in their
+ultimate goodness.
+
+The clank of iron hoofs upon the stone courtyard drew her hurriedly
+from her retirement. There, beside his horse, stood Lassiter, his dark
+apparel and the great black gun-sheaths contrasting singularly with his
+gentle smile. Jane’s active mind took up her interest in him and her
+half-determined desire to use what charm she had to foil his evident
+design in visiting Cottonwoods. If she could mitigate his hatred of
+Mormons, or at least keep him from killing more of them, not only would
+she be saving her people, but also be leading back this bloodspiller to
+some semblance of the human.
+
+“Mornin’, ma’am,” he said, black sombrero in hand.
+
+“Lassiter I’m not an old woman, or even a madam,” she replied, with her
+bright smile. “If you can’t say Miss Withersteen—call me Jane.”
+
+“I reckon Jane would be easier. First names are always handy for me.”
+
+“Well, use mine, then. Lassiter, I’m glad to see you. I’m in trouble.”
+
+Then she told him of Judkins’s return, of the driving of the red herd,
+of Venters’s departure on Wrangle, and the calling-in of her riders.
+
+“’Pears to me you’re some smilin’ an’ pretty for a woman with so much
+trouble,” he remarked.
+
+“Lassiter! Are you paying me compliments? But, seriously I’ve made up
+my mind not to be miserable. I’ve lost much, and I’ll lose more.
+Nevertheless, I won’t be sour, and I hope I’ll never be unhappy—again.”
+
+Lassiter twisted his hat round and round, as was his way, and took his
+time in replying.
+
+“Women are strange to me. I got to back-trailin’ myself from them long
+ago. But I’d like a game woman. Might I ask, seein’ as how you take
+this trouble, if you’re goin’ to fight?”
+
+“Fight! How? Even if I would, I haven’t a friend except that boy who
+doesn’t dare stay in the village.”
+
+“I make bold to say, ma’am—Jane—that there’s another, if you want him.”
+
+“Lassiter!... Thank you. But how can I accept you as a friend? Think!
+Why, you’d ride down into the village with those terrible guns and kill
+my enemies—who are also my churchmen.”
+
+“I reckon I might be riled up to jest about that,” he replied, dryly.
+
+She held out both hands to him.
+
+“Lassiter! I’ll accept your friendship—be proud of it—return it—if I
+may keep you from killing another Mormon.”
+
+“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, bluntly, as the gray lightning
+formed in his eyes. “You’re too good a woman to be sacrificed as you’re
+goin’ to be.... No, I reckon you an’ me can’t be friends on such
+terms.”
+
+In her earnestness she stepped closer to him, repelled yet fascinated
+by the sudden transition of his moods. That he would fight for her was
+at once horrible and wonderful.
+
+“You came here to kill a man—the man whom Milly Erne—”
+
+“The man who dragged Milly Erne to hell—put it that way!... Jane
+Withersteen, yes, that’s why I came here. I’d tell so much to no other
+livin’ soul.... There’re things such a woman as you’d never dream of—so
+don’t mention her again. Not till you tell me the name of the man!”
+
+“Tell you! I? Never!”
+
+“I reckon you will. An’ I’ll never ask you. I’m a man of strange
+beliefs an’ ways of thinkin’, an’ I seem to see into the future an’
+feel things hard to explain. The trail I’ve been followin’ for so many
+years was twisted en’ tangled, but it’s straightenin’ out now. An’,
+Jane Withersteen, you crossed it long ago to ease poor Milly’s agony.
+That, whether you want or not, makes Lassiter your friend. But you
+cross it now strangely to mean somethin’ to me—God knows what!—unless
+by your noble blindness to incite me to greater hatred of Mormon men.”
+
+Jane felt swayed by a strength that far exceeded her own. In a clash of
+wills with this man she would go to the wall. If she were to influence
+him it must be wholly through womanly allurement. There was that about
+Lassiter which commanded her respect. She had abhorred his name; face
+to face with him, she found she feared only his deeds. His mystic
+suggestion, his foreshadowing of something that she was to mean to him,
+pierced deep into her mind. She believed fate had thrown in her way the
+lover or husband of Milly Erne. She believed that through her an evil
+man might be reclaimed. His allusion to what he called her blindness
+terrified her. Such a mistaken idea of his might unleash the bitter,
+fatal mood she sensed in him. At any cost she must placate this man;
+she knew the die was cast, and that if Lassiter did not soften to a
+woman’s grace and beauty and wiles, then it would be because she could
+not make him.
+
+“I reckon you’ll hear no more such talk from me,” Lassiter went on,
+presently. “Now, Miss Jane, I rode in to tell you that your herd of
+white steers is down on the slope behind them big ridges. An’ I seen
+somethin’ goin’ on that’d be mighty interestin’ to you, if you could
+see it. Have you a field-glass?”
+
+“Yes, I have two glasses. I’ll get them and ride out with you. Wait,
+Lassiter, please,” she said, and hurried within. Sending word to Jerd
+to saddle Black Star and fetch him to the court, she then went to her
+room and changed to the riding-clothes she always donned when going
+into the sage. In this male attire her mirror showed her a jaunty,
+handsome rider. If she expected some little need of admiration from
+Lassiter, she had no cause for disappointment. The gentle smile that
+she liked, which made of him another person, slowly overspread his
+face.
+
+“If I didn’t take you for a boy!” he exclaimed. “It’s powerful queer
+what difference clothes make. Now I’ve been some scared of your
+dignity, like when the other night you was all in white but in this
+rig—”
+
+Black Star came pounding into the court, dragging Jerd half off his
+feet, and he whistled at Lassiter’s black. But at sight of Jane all his
+defiant lines seemed to soften, and with tosses of his beautiful head
+he whipped his bridle.
+
+“Down, Black Star, down,” said Jane.
+
+He dropped his head, and, slowly lengthening, he bent one foreleg, then
+the other, and sank to his knees. Jane slipped her left foot in the
+stirrup, swung lightly into the saddle, and Black Star rose with a
+ringing stamp. It was not easy for Jane to hold him to a canter through
+the grove, and like the wind he broke when he saw the sage. Jane let
+him have a couple of miles of free running on the open trail, and then
+she coaxed him in and waited for her companion. Lassiter was not long
+in catching up, and presently they were riding side by side. It
+reminded her how she used to ride with Venters. Where was he now? She
+gazed far down the slope to the curved purple lines of Deception Pass
+and involuntarily shut her eyes with a trembling stir of nameless fear.
+
+“We’ll turn off here,” Lassiter said, “en’ take to the sage a mile or
+so. The white herd is behind them big ridges.”
+
+“What are you going to show me?” asked Jane. “I’m prepared—don’t be
+afraid.”
+
+He smiled as if he meant that bad news came swiftly enough without
+being presaged by speech.
+
+When they reached the lee of a rolling ridge Lassiter dismounted,
+motioning to her to do likewise. They left the horses standing, bridles
+down. Then Lassiter, carrying the field-glasses began to lead the way
+up the slow rise of ground. Upon nearing the summit he halted her with
+a gesture.
+
+“I reckon we’d see more if we didn’t show ourselves against the sky,”
+he said. “I was here less than an hour ago. Then the herd was seven or
+eight miles south, an’ if they ain’t bolted yet—”
+
+“Lassiter!... Bolted?”
+
+“That’s what I said. Now let’s see.”
+
+Jane climbed a few more paces behind him and then peeped over the
+ridge. Just beyond began a shallow swale that deepened and widened into
+a valley and then swung to the left. Following the undulating sweep of
+sage, Jane saw the straggling lines and then the great body of the
+white herd. She knew enough about steers, even at a distance of four or
+five miles, to realize that something was in the wind. Bringing her
+field-glass into use, she moved it slowly from left to right, which
+action swept the whole herd into range. The stragglers were restless;
+the more compactly massed steers were browsing. Jane brought the glass
+back to the big sentinels of the herd, and she saw them trot with quick
+steps, stop short and toss wide horns, look everywhere, and then trot
+in another direction.
+
+“Judkins hasn’t been able to get his boys together yet,” said Jane.
+“But he’ll be there soon. I hope not too late. Lassiter, what’s
+frightening those big leaders?”
+
+“Nothin’ jest on the minute,” replied Lassiter. “Them steers are
+quietin’ down. They’ve been scared, but not bad yet. I reckon the whole
+herd has moved a few miles this way since I was here.”
+
+“They didn’t browse that distance—not in less than an hour. Cattle
+aren’t sheep.”
+
+“No, they jest run it, en’ that looks bad.”
+
+“Lassiter, what frightened them?” repeated Jane, impatiently.
+
+“Put down your glass. You’ll see at first better with a naked eye. Now
+look along them ridges on the other side of the herd, the ridges where
+the sun shines bright on the sage.... That’s right. Now look en’ look
+hard en’ wait.”
+
+Long-drawn moments of straining sight rewarded Jane with nothing save
+the low, purple rim of ridge and the shimmering sage.
+
+“It’s begun again!” whispered Lassiter, and he gripped her arm.
+“Watch.... There, did you see that?”
+
+“No, no. Tell me what to look for?”
+
+“A white flash—a kind of pin-point of quick light—a gleam as from sun
+shinin’ on somethin’ white.”
+
+Suddenly Jane’s concentrated gaze caught a fleeting glint. Quickly she
+brought her glass to bear on the spot. Again the purple sage, magnified
+in color and size and wave, for long moments irritated her with its
+monotony. Then from out of the sage on the ridge flew up a broad, white
+object, flashed in the sunlight and vanished. Like magic it was, and
+bewildered Jane.
+
+“What on earth is that?”
+
+
+[Illustration: “What on earth is that?”]
+
+
+“I reckon there’s some one behind that ridge throwin’ up a sheet or a
+white blanket to reflect the sunshine.”
+
+“Why?” queried Jane, more bewildered than ever.
+
+“To stampede the herd,” replied Lassiter, and his teeth clicked.
+
+“Ah!” She made a fierce, passionate movement, clutched the glass
+tightly, shook as with the passing of a spasm, and then dropped her
+head. Presently she raised it to greet Lassiter with something like a
+smile. “My righteous brethren are at work again,” she said, in scorn.
+She had stifled the leap of her wrath, but for perhaps the first time
+in her life a bitter derision curled her lips. Lassiter’s cool gray
+eyes seemed to pierce her. “I said I was prepared for anything; but
+that was hardly true. But why would they—anybody stampede my cattle?”
+
+“That’s a Mormon’s godly way of bringin’ a woman to her knees.”
+
+“Lassiter, I’ll die before I ever bend my knees. I might be led: I
+won’t be driven. Do you expect the herd to bolt?”
+
+“I don’t like the looks of them big steers. But you can never tell.
+Cattle sometimes stampede as easily as buffalo. Any little flash or
+move will start them. A rider gettin’ down an’ walkin’ toward them
+sometimes will make them jump an’ fly. Then again nothin’ seems to
+scare them. But I reckon that white flare will do the biz. It’s a new
+one on me, an’ I’ve seen some ridin’ an’ rustlin’. It jest takes one of
+them God-fearin’ Mormons to think of devilish tricks.”
+
+“Lassiter, might not this trick be done by Oldring’s men?” asked Jane,
+ever grasping at straws.
+
+“It might be, but it ain’t,” replied Lassiter. “Oldring’s an honest
+thief. He don’t skulk behind ridges to scatter your cattle to the four
+winds. He rides down on you, an’ if you don’t like it you can throw a
+gun.”
+
+Jane bit her tongue to refrain from championing men who at the very
+moment were proving to her that they were little and mean compared even
+with rustlers.
+
+“Look!... Jane, them leadin’ steers have bolted. They’re drawin’ the
+stragglers, an’ that’ll pull the whole herd.”
+
+Jane was not quick enough to catch the details called out by Lassiter,
+but she saw the line of cattle lengthening. Then, like a stream of
+white bees pouring from a huge swarm, the steers stretched out from the
+main body. In a few moments, with astonishing rapidity, the whole herd
+got into motion. A faint roar of trampling hoofs came to Jane’s ears,
+and gradually swelled; low, rolling clouds of dust began to rise above
+the sage.
+
+“It’s a stampede, an’ a hummer,” said Lassiter.
+
+“Oh, Lassiter! The herd’s running with the valley! It leads into the
+cañon! There’s a straight jump-off!”
+
+“I reckon they’ll run into it, too. But that’s a good many miles yet.
+An’, Jane, this valley swings round almost north before it goes east.
+That stampede will pass within a mile of us.”
+
+The long, white, bobbing line of steers streaked swiftly through the
+sage, and a funnel-shaped dust-cloud arose at a low angle. A dull
+rumbling filled Jane’s ears.
+
+“I’m thinkin’ of millin’ that herd,” said Lassiter. His gray glance
+swept up the slope to the west. “There’s some specks an’ dust way off
+toward the village. Mebbe that’s Judkins an’ his boys. It ain’t likely
+he’ll get here in time to help. You’d better hold Black Star here on
+this high ridge.”
+
+He ran to his horse and, throwing off saddle-bags and tightening the
+cinches, he leaped astride and galloped straight down across the
+valley.
+
+Jane went for Black Star and, leading him to the summit of the ridge,
+she mounted and faced the valley with excitement and expectancy. She
+had heard of milling stampeded cattle, and knew it was a feat
+accomplished by only the most daring riders.
+
+The white herd was now strung out in a line two miles long. The dull
+rumble of thousands of hoofs deepened into continuous low thunder, and
+as the steers swept swiftly closer the thunder became a heavy roll.
+Lassiter crossed in a few moments the level of the valley to the
+eastern rise of ground and there waited the coming of the herd.
+Presently, as the head of the white line reached a point opposite to
+where Jane stood, Lassiter spurred his black into a run.
+
+Jane saw him take a position on the off side of the leaders of the
+stampede, and there he rode. It was like a race. They swept on down the
+valley, and when the end of the white line neared Lassiter’s first
+stand the head had begun to swing round to the west. It swung slowly
+and stubbornly, yet surely, and gradually assumed a long, beautiful
+curve of moving white. To Jane’s amaze she saw the leaders swinging,
+turning till they headed back toward her and up the valley. Out to the
+right of these wild plunging steers ran Lassiter’s black, and Jane’s
+keen eye appreciated the fleet stride and sure-footedness of the blind
+horse. Then it seemed that the herd moved in a great curve, a huge
+half-moon with the points of head and tail almost opposite, and a mile
+apart. But Lassiter relentlessly crowded the leaders, sheering them to
+the left, turning them little by little. And the dust-blinded wild
+followers plunged on madly in the tracks of their leaders. This
+ever-moving, ever-changing curve of steers rolled toward Jane and when
+below her, scarce half a mile, it began to narrow and close into a
+circle. Lassiter had ridden parallel with her position, turned toward
+her, then aside, and now he was riding directly away from her, all the
+time pushing the head of that bobbing line inward.
+
+It was then that Jane, suddenly understanding Lassiter’s feat stared
+and gasped at the riding of this intrepid man. His horse was fleet and
+tireless, but blind. He had pushed the leaders around and around till
+they were about to turn in on the inner side of the end of that line of
+steers. The leaders were already running in a circle; the end of the
+herd was still running almost straight. But soon they would be
+wheeling. Then, when Lassiter had the circle formed, how would he
+escape? With Jane Withersteen prayer was as ready as praise; and she
+prayed for this man’s safety. A circle of dust began to collect. Dimly,
+as through a yellow veil, Jane saw Lassiter press the leaders inward to
+close the gap in the sage. She lost sight of him in the dust, again she
+thought she saw the black, riderless now, rear and drag himself and
+fall. Lassiter had been thrown—lost! Then he reappeared running out of
+the dust into the sage. He had escaped, and she breathed again.
+
+Spellbound, Jane Withersteen watched this stupendous millwheel of
+steers. Here was the milling of the herd. The white running circle
+closed in upon the open space of sage. And the dust circles closed
+above into a pall. The ground quaked and the incessant thunder of
+pounding hoofs rolled on. Jane felt deafened, yet she thrilled to a new
+sound. As the circle of sage lessened the steers began to bawl, and
+when it closed entirely there came a great upheaval in the center, and
+a terrible thumping of heads and clicking of horns. Bawling, climbing,
+goring, the great mass of steers on the inside wrestled in a crashing
+din, heaved and groaned under the pressure. Then came a deadlock. The
+inner strife ceased, and the hideous roar and crash. Movement went on
+in the outer circle, and that, too, gradually stilled. The white herd
+had come to a stop, and the pall of yellow dust began to drift away on
+the wind.
+
+Jane Withersteen waited on the ridge with full and grateful heart.
+Lassiter appeared, making his weary way toward her through the sage.
+And up on the slope Judkins rode into sight with his troop of boys. For
+the present, at least, the white herd would be looked after.
+
+When Lassiter reached her and laid his hand on Black Star’s mane, Jane
+could not find speech.
+
+“Killed—my—hoss,” he panted.
+
+“Oh! I’m sorry,” cried Jane. “Lassiter! I know you can’t replace him,
+but I’ll give you any one of my racers—Bells, or Night, even Black
+Star.”
+
+“I’ll take a fast hoss, Jane, but not one of your favorites,” he
+replied. “Only—will you let me have Black Star now an’ ride him over
+there an’ head off them fellers who stampeded the herd?”
+
+He pointed to several moving specks of black and puffs of dust in the
+purple sage.
+
+“I can head them off with this hoss, an’ then—”
+
+“Then, Lassiter?”
+
+“They’ll never stampede no more cattle.”
+
+“Oh! No! No!... Lassiter, I won’t let you go!”
+
+But a flush of fire flamed in her cheeks, and her trembling hands shook
+Black Star’s bridle, and her eyes fell before Lassiter’s.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+THE DAUGHTER OF WITHERSTEEN
+
+
+“Lassiter, will you be my rider?” Jane had asked him.
+
+“I reckon so,” he had replied.
+
+Few as the words were, Jane knew how infinitely much they implied. She
+wanted him to take charge of her cattle and horse and ranges, and save
+them if that were possible. Yet, though she could not have spoken aloud
+all she meant, she was perfectly honest with herself. Whatever the
+price to be paid, she must keep Lassiter close to her; she must shield
+from him the man who had led Milly Erne to Cottonwoods. In her fear she
+so controlled her mind that she did not whisper this Mormon’s name to
+her own soul, she did not even think it. Besides, beyond this thing she
+regarded as a sacred obligation thrust upon her, was the need of a
+helper, of a friend, of a champion in this critical time. If she could
+rule this gun-man, as Venters had called him, if she could even keep
+him from shedding blood, what strategy to play his flame and his
+presence against the game of oppression her churchmen were waging
+against her? Never would she forget the effect on Tull and his men when
+Venters shouted Lassiter’s name. If she could not wholly control
+Lassiter, then what she could do might put off the fatal day.
+
+One of her safe racers was a dark bay, and she called him Bells because
+of the way he struck his iron shoes on the stones. When Jerd led out
+this slender, beautifully built horse Lassiter suddenly became all
+eyes. A rider’s love of a thoroughbred shone in them. Round and round
+Bells he walked, plainly weakening all the time in his determination
+not to take one of Jane’s favorite racers.
+
+“Lassiter, you’re half horse, and Bells sees it already,” said Jane,
+laughing. “Look at his eyes. He likes you. He’ll love you, too. How can
+you resist him? Oh, Lassiter, but Bells can run! It’s nip and tuck
+between him and Wrangle, and only Black Star can beat him. He’s too
+spirited a horse for a woman. Take him. He’s yours.”
+
+“I jest am weak where a hoss’s concerned,” said Lassiter. “I’ll take
+him, an’ I’ll take your orders, ma’am.”
+
+“Well, I’m glad, but never mind the ma’am. Let it still be Jane.”
+
+From that hour, it seemed, Lassiter was always in the saddle, riding
+early and late, and coincident with his part in Jane’s affairs the days
+assumed their old tranquillity. Her intelligence told her this was only
+the lull before the storm, but her faith would not have it so.
+
+She resumed her visits to the village, and upon one of these she
+encountered Tull. He greeted her as he had before any trouble came
+between them, and she, responsive to peace if not quick to forget, met
+him halfway with manner almost cheerful. He regretted the loss of her
+cattle; he assured her that the vigilantes which had been organized
+would soon rout the rustlers; when that had been accomplished her
+riders would likely return to her.
+
+“You’ve done a headstrong thing to hire this man Lassiter,” Tull went
+on, severely. “He came to Cottonwoods with evil intent.”
+
+“I had to have somebody. And perhaps making him my rider may turn out
+best in the end for the Mormons of Cottonwoods.”
+
+“You mean to stay his hand?”
+
+“I do—if I can.”
+
+“A woman like you can do anything with a man. That would be well, and
+would atone in some measure for the errors you have made.”
+
+He bowed and passed on. Jane resumed her walk with conflicting
+thoughts. She resented Elder Tull’s cold, impassive manner that looked
+down upon her as one who had incurred his just displeasure. Otherwise
+he would have been the same calm, dark-browed, impenetrable man she had
+known for ten years. In fact, except when he had revealed his passion
+in the matter of the seizing of Venters, she had never dreamed he could
+be other than the grave, reproving preacher. He stood out now a
+strange, secretive man. She would have thought better of him if he had
+picked up the threads of their quarrel where they had parted. Was Tull
+what he appeared to be? The question flung itself in-voluntarily over
+Jane Withersteen’s inhibitive habit of faith without question. And she
+refused to answer it. Tull could not fight in the open. Venters had
+said, Lassiter had said, that her Elder shirked fight and worked in the
+dark. Just now in this meeting Tull had ignored the fact that he had
+sued, exhorted, demanded that she marry him. He made no mention of
+Venters. His manner was that of the minister who had been outraged, but
+who overlooked the frailties of a woman. Beyond question he seemed
+unutterably aloof from all knowledge of pressure being brought to bear
+upon her, absolutely guiltless of any connection with secret power over
+riders, with night journeys, with rustlers and stampedes of cattle. And
+that convinced her again of unjust suspicions. But it was convincement
+through an obstinate faith. She shuddered as she accepted it, and that
+shudder was the nucleus of a terrible revolt.
+
+Jane turned into one of the wide lanes leading from the main street and
+entered a huge, shady yard. Here were sweet-smelling clover, alfalfa,
+flowers, and vegetables, all growing in happy confusion. And like these
+fresh green things were the dozens of babies, tots, toddlers, noisy
+urchins, laughing girls, a whole multitude of children of one family.
+For Collier Brandt, the father of all this numerous progeny, was a
+Mormon with four wives.
+
+The big house where they lived was old, solid, picturesque, the lower
+part built of logs, the upper of rough clapboards, with vines growing
+up the outside stone chimneys. There were many wooden-shuttered
+windows, and one pretentious window of glass proudly curtained in
+white. As this house had four mistresses, it likewise had four separate
+sections, not one of which communicated with another, and all had to be
+entered from the outside.
+
+In the shade of a wide, low, vine-roofed porch Jane found Brandt’s
+wives entertaining Bishop Dyer. They were motherly women, of
+comparatively similar ages, and plain-featured, and just at this moment
+anything but grave. The Bishop was rather tall, of stout build, with
+iron-gray hair and beard, and eyes of light blue. They were merry now;
+but Jane had seen them when they were not, and then she feared him as
+she had feared her father.
+
+The women flocked around her in welcome.
+
+“Daughter of Withersteen,” said the Bishop, gaily, as he took her hand,
+“you have not been prodigal of your gracious self of late. A Sabbath
+without you at service! I shall reprove Elder Tull.”
+
+“Bishop, the guilt is mine. I’ll come to you and confess,” Jane
+replied, lightly; but she felt the undercurrent of her words.
+
+“Mormon love-making!” exclaimed the Bishop, rubbing his hands. “Tull
+keeps you all to himself.”
+
+“No. He is not courting me.”
+
+“What? The laggard! If he does not make haste I’ll go a-courting myself
+up to Withersteen House.”
+
+There was laughter and further bantering by the Bishop, and then mild
+talk of village affairs, after which he took his leave, and Jane was
+left with her friend, Mary Brandt.
+
+“Jane, you’re not yourself. Are you sad about the rustling of the
+cattle? But you have so many, you are so rich.”
+
+Then Jane confided in her, telling much, yet holding back her doubts of
+fear.
+
+“Oh, why don’t you marry Tull and be one of us?”
+
+“But, Mary, I don’t love Tull,” said Jane, stubbornly.
+
+“I don’t blame you for that. But, Jane Withersteen, you’ve got to
+choose between the love of man and love of God. Often we Mormon women
+have to do that. It’s not easy. The kind of happiness you want I wanted
+once. I never got it, nor will you, unless you throw away your soul.
+We’ve all watched your affair with Venters in fear and trembling. Some
+dreadful thing will come of it. You don’t want him hanged or shot—or
+treated worse, as that Gentile boy was treated in Glaze for fooling
+round a Mormon woman. Marry Tull. It’s your duty as a Mormon. You’ll
+feel no rapture as his wife—but think of Heaven! Mormon women don’t
+marry for what they expect on earth. Take up the cross, Jane. Remember
+your father found Amber Spring, built these old houses, brought Mormons
+here, and fathered them. You are the daughter of Withersteen!”
+
+Jane left Mary Brandt and went to call upon other friends. They
+received her with the same glad welcome as had Mary, lavished upon her
+the pent-up affection of Mormon women, and let her go with her ears
+ringing of Tull, Venters, Lassiter, of duty to God and glory in Heaven.
+
+“Verily,” murmured Jane, “I don’t know myself when, through all this, I
+remain unchanged—nay, more fixed of purpose.”
+
+She returned to the main street and bent her thoughtful steps toward
+the center of the village. A string of wagons drawn by oxen was
+lumbering along. These “sage-freighters,” as they were called, hauled
+grain and flour and merchandise from Sterling, and Jane laughed
+suddenly in the midst of her humility at the thought that they were her
+property, as was one of the three stores for which they freighted
+goods. The water that flowed along the path at her feet, and turned
+into each cottage-yard to nourish garden and orchard, also was hers, no
+less her private property because she chose to give it free. Yet in
+this village of Cottonwoods, which her father had founded and which she
+maintained she was not her own mistress; she was not able to abide by
+her own choice of a husband. She was the daughter of Withersteen.
+Suppose she proved it, imperiously! But she quelled that proud
+temptation at its birth.
+
+Nothing could have replaced the affection which the village people had
+for her; no power could have made her happy as the pleasure her
+presence gave. As she went on down the street past the stores with
+their rude platform entrances, and the saloons where tired horses stood
+with bridles dragging, she was again assured of what was the bread and
+wine of life to her—that she was loved. Dirty boys playing in the
+ditch, clerks, teamsters, riders, loungers on the corners, ranchers on
+dusty horses, little girls running errands, and women hurrying to the
+stores all looked up at her coming with glad eyes.
+
+Jane’s various calls and wandering steps at length led her to the
+Gentile quarter of the village. This was at the extreme southern end,
+and here some thirty Gentile families lived in huts and shacks and
+log-cabins and several dilapidated cottages. The fortunes of these
+inhabitants of Cottonwoods could be read in their abodes. Water they
+had in abundance, and therefore grass and fruit-trees and patches of
+alfalfa and vegetable gardens. Some of the men and boys had a few stray
+cattle, others obtained such intermittent employment as the Mormons
+reluctantly tendered them. But none of the families was prosperous,
+many were very poor, and some lived only by Jane Withersteen’s
+beneficence.
+
+As it made Jane happy to go among her own people, so it saddened her to
+come in contact with these Gentiles. Yet that was not because she was
+unwelcome; here she was gratefully received by the women, passionately
+by the children. But poverty and idleness, with their attendant
+wretchedness and sorrow, always hurt her. That she could alleviate this
+distress more now than ever before proved the adage that it was an ill
+wind that blew nobody good. While her Mormon riders were in her employ
+she had found few Gentiles who would stay with her, and now she was
+able to find employment for all the men and boys. No little shock was
+it to have man after man tell her that he dare not accept her kind
+offer.
+
+“It won’t do,” said one Carson, an intelligent man who had seen better
+days. “We’ve had our warning. Plain and to the point! Now there’s
+Judkins, he packs guns, and he can use them, and so can the daredevil
+boys he’s hired. But they’ve little responsibility. Can we risk having
+our homes burned in our absence?”
+
+Jane felt the stretching and chilling of the skin of her face as the
+blood left it.
+
+“Carson, you and the others rent these houses?” she asked.
+
+“You ought to know, Miss Withersteen. Some of them are yours.”
+
+“I know?... Carson, I never in my life took a day’s labor for rent or a
+yearling calf or a bunch of grass, let alone gold.”
+
+“Bivens, your store-keeper, sees to that.”
+
+“Look here, Carson,” went on Jane, hurriedly, and now her cheeks were
+burning. “You and Black and Willet pack your goods and move your
+families up to my cabins in the grove. They’re far more comfortable
+than these. Then go to work for me. And if aught happens to you there
+I’ll give you money—gold enough to leave Utah!”
+
+The man choked and stammered, and then, as tears welled into his eyes,
+he found the use of his tongue and cursed. No gentle speech could ever
+have equaled that curse in eloquent expression of what he felt for Jane
+Withersteen. How strangely his look and tone reminded her of Lassiter!
+
+“No, it won’t do,” he said, when he had somewhat recovered himself.
+“Miss Withersteen, there are things that you don’t know, and there’s
+not a soul among us who can tell you.”
+
+“I seem to be learning many things, Carson. Well, then, will you let me
+aid you—say till better times?”
+
+“Yes, I will,” he replied, with his face lighting up. “I see what it
+means to you, and you know what it means to me. Thank you! And if
+better times ever come, I’ll be only too happy to work for you.”
+
+“Better times will come. I trust God and have faith in man. Good day,
+Carson.”
+
+The lane opened out upon the sage-inclosed alfalfa fields, and the last
+habitation, at the end of that lane of hovels, was the meanest.
+Formerly it had been a shed; now it was a home. The broad leaves of a
+wide-spreading cottonwood sheltered the sunken roof of weathered
+boards. Like an Indian hut, it had one floor. Round about it were a few
+scanty rows of vegetables, such as the hand of a weak woman had time
+and strength to cultivate. This little dwelling-place was just outside
+the village limits, and the widow who lived there had to carry her
+water from the nearest irrigation ditch. As Jane Withersteen entered
+the unfenced yard a child saw her, shrieked with joy, and came tearing
+toward her with curls flying. This child was a little girl of four
+called Fay. Her name suited her, for she was an elf, a sprite, a
+creature so fairy-like and beautiful that she seemed unearthly.
+
+“Muvver sended for oo,” cried Fay, as Jane kissed her, “an’ oo never
+tome.”
+
+“I didn’t know, Fay; but I’ve come now.”
+
+Fay was a child of outdoors, of the garden and ditch and field, and she
+was dirty and ragged. But rags and dirt did not hide her beauty. The
+one thin little bedraggled garment she wore half covered her fine, slim
+body. Red as cherries were her cheeks and lips; her eyes were violet
+blue, and the crown of her childish loveliness was the curling golden
+hair. All the children of Cottonwoods were Jane Withersteen’s friends,
+she loved them all. But Fay was dearest to her. Fay had few playmates,
+for among the Gentile children there were none near her age, and the
+Mormon children were forbidden to play with her. So she was a shy,
+wild, lonely child.
+
+“Muvver’s sick,” said Fay, leading Jane toward the door of the hut.
+
+Jane went in. There was only one room, rather dark and bare, but it was
+clean and neat. A woman lay upon a bed.
+
+“Mrs. Larkin, how are you?” asked Jane, anxiously.
+
+“I’ve been pretty bad for a week, but I’m better now.”
+
+“You haven’t been here all alone—with no one to wait on you?”
+
+“Oh no! My women neighbors are kind. They take turns coming in.”
+
+“Did you send for me?”
+
+“Yes, several times.”
+
+“But I had no word—no messages ever got to me.”
+
+“I sent the boys, and they left word with your women that I was ill and
+would you please come.”
+
+A sudden deadly sickness seized Jane. She fought the weakness, as she
+fought to be above suspicious thoughts, and it passed, leaving her
+conscious of her utter impotence. That, too, passed as her spirit
+rebounded. But she had again caught a glimpse of dark underhand
+domination, running its secret lines this time into her own household.
+Like a spider in the blackness of night an unseen hand had begun to run
+these dark lines, to turn and twist them about her life, to plait and
+weave a web. Jane Withersteen knew it now, and in the realization
+further coolness and sureness came to her, and the fighting courage of
+her ancestors.
+
+“Mrs. Larkin, you’re better, and I’m so glad,” said Jane. “But may I
+not do something for you—a turn at nursing, or send you things, or take
+care of Fay?”
+
+“You’re so good. Since my husband’s been gone what would have become of
+Fay and me but for you? It was about Fay that I wanted to speak to you.
+This time I thought surely I’d die, and I was worried about Fay. Well,
+I’ll be around all right shortly, but my strength’s gone and I won’t
+live long. So I may as well speak now. You remember you’ve been asking
+me to let you take Fay and bring her up as your daughter?”
+
+“Indeed yes, I remember. I’ll be happy to have her. But I hope the
+day—”
+
+“Never mind that. The day’ll come—sooner or later. I refused your
+offer, and now I’ll tell you why.”
+
+“I know why,” interposed Jane. “It’s because you don’t want her brought
+up as a Mormon.”
+
+“No, it wasn’t altogether that.” Mrs. Larkin raised her thin hand and
+laid it appealingly on Jane’s. “I don’t like to tell you. But—it’s
+this: I told all my friends what you wanted. They know you, care for
+you, and they said for me to trust Fay to you. Women will talk, you
+know. It got to the ears of Mormons—gossip of your love for Fay and
+your wanting her. And it came straight back to me, in jealousy,
+perhaps, that you wouldn’t take Fay as much for love of her as because
+of your religious duty to bring up another girl for some Mormon to
+marry.”
+
+“That’s a damnable lie!” cried Jane Withersteen.
+
+“It was what made me hesitate,” went on Mrs. Larkin, “but I never
+believed it at heart. And now I guess I’ll let you—”
+
+“Wait! Mrs. Larkin, I may have told little white lies in my life, but
+never a lie that mattered, that hurt any one. Now believe me. I love
+little Fay. If I had her near me I’d grow to worship her. When I asked
+for her I thought only of that love.... Let me prove this. You and Fay
+come to live with me. I’ve such a big house, and I’m so lonely. I’ll
+help nurse you, take care of you. When you’re better you can work for
+me. I’ll keep little Fay and bring her up—without Mormon teaching. When
+she’s grown, if she should want to leave me, I’ll send her, and not
+empty-handed, back to Illinois where you came from. I promise you.”
+
+“I knew it was a lie,” replied the mother, and she sank back upon her
+pillow with something of peace in her white, worn face. “Jane
+Withersteen, may Heaven bless you! I’ve been deeply grateful to you.
+But because you’re a Mormon I never felt close to you till now. I don’t
+know much about religion as religion, but your God and my God are the
+same.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+SURPRISE VALLEY
+
+
+Back in that strange cañon, which Venters had found indeed a valley of
+surprises, the wounded girl’s whispered appeal, almost a prayer, not to
+take her back to the rustlers crowned the events of the last few days
+with a confounding climax. That she should not want to return to them
+staggered Venters. Presently, as logical thought returned, her appeal
+confirmed his first impression—that she was more unfortunate than
+bad—and he experienced a sensation of gladness. If he had known before
+that Oldring’s Masked Rider was a woman his opinion would have been
+formed and he would have considered her abandoned. But his first
+knowledge had come when he lifted a white face quivering in a
+convulsion of agony; he had heard God’s name whispered by blood-stained
+lips; through her solemn and awful eyes he had caught a glimpse of her
+soul. And just now had come the entreaty to him,
+“Don’t—take—me—back—there!”
+
+Once for all Venters’s quick mind formed a permanent conception of this
+poor girl. He based it, not upon what the chances of life had made her,
+but upon the revelation of dark eyes that pierced the infinite, upon a
+few pitiful, halting words that betrayed failure and wrong and misery,
+yet breathed the truth of a tragic fate rather than a natural leaning
+to evil.
+
+“What’s your name?” he inquired.
+
+“Bess,” she answered.
+
+“Bess what?”
+
+“That’s enough—just Bess.”
+
+The red that deepened in her cheeks was not all the flush of fever.
+Venters marveled anew, and this time at the tint of shame in her face,
+at the momentary drooping of long lashes. She might be a rustler’s
+girl, but she was still capable of shame, she might be dying, but she
+still clung to some little remnant of honor.
+
+“Very well, Bess. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But this matters—what
+shall I do with you?”
+
+“Are—you—a rider?” she whispered.
+
+“Not now. I was once. I drove the Withersteen herds. But I lost my
+place—lost all I owned—and now I’m—I’m a sort of outcast. My name’s
+Bern Venters.”
+
+“You won’t—take me—to Cottonwoods—or Glaze? I’d be—hanged.”
+
+“No, indeed. But I must do something with you. For it’s not safe for me
+here. I shot that rustler who was with you. Sooner or later he’ll be
+found, and then my tracks. I must find a safer hiding-place where I
+can’t be trailed.”
+
+“Leave me—here.”
+
+“Alone—to die!”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I will not.” Venters spoke shortly with a kind of ring in his voice.
+
+“What—do you want—to do—with me?” Her whispering grew difficult, so low
+and faint that Venters had to stoop to hear her.
+
+“Why, let’s see,” he replied, slowly. “I’d like to take you some place
+where I could watch by you, nurse you, till you’re all right.”
+
+“And—then?”
+
+“Well, it’ll be time to think of that when you’re cured of your wound.
+It’s a bad one. And—Bess, if you don’t want to live—if you don’t fight
+for life—you’ll never—”
+
+“Oh! I want—to live! I’m afraid—to die. But I’d rather—die—than go
+back—to—to—”
+
+“To Oldring?” asked Venters, interrupting her in turn.
+
+Her lips moved in an affirmative.
+
+“I promise not to take you back to him or to Cottonwoods or to Glaze.”
+
+The mournful earnestness of her gaze suddenly shone with unutterable
+gratitude and wonder. And as suddenly Venters found her eyes beautiful
+as he had never seen or felt beauty. They were as dark blue as the sky
+at night. Then the flashing changed to a long, thoughtful look, in
+which there was a wistful, unconscious searching of his face, a look
+that trembled on the verge of hope and trust.
+
+“I’ll try—to live,” she said. The broken whisper just reached his ears.
+“Do what—you want—with me.”
+
+“Rest then—don’t worry—sleep,” he replied.
+
+Abruptly he arose, as if words had been decision for him, and with a
+sharp command to the dogs he strode from the camp. Venters was
+conscious of an indefinite conflict of change within him. It seemed to
+be a vague passing of old moods, a dim coalescing of new forces, a
+moment of inexplicable transition. He was both cast down and uplifted.
+He wanted to think and think of the meaning, but he resolutely
+dispelled emotion. His imperative need at present was to find a safe
+retreat, and this called for action.
+
+So he set out. It still wanted several hours before dark. This trip he
+turned to the left and wended his skulking way southward a mile or more
+to the opening of the valley, where lay the strange scrawled rocks. He
+did not, however, venture boldly out into the open sage, but clung to
+the right-hand wall and went along that till its perpendicular line
+broke into the long incline of bare stone.
+
+Before proceeding farther he halted, studying the strange character of
+this slope and realizing that a moving black object could be seen far
+against such background. Before him ascended a gradual swell of smooth
+stone. It was hard, polished, and full of pockets worn by centuries of
+eddying rain-water. A hundred yards up began a line of grotesque
+cedar-trees, and they extended along the slope clear to its most
+southerly end. Beyond that end Venters wanted to get, and he concluded
+the cedars, few as they were, would afford some cover.
+
+Therefore he climbed swiftly. The trees were farther up than he had
+estimated, though he had from long habit made allowance for the
+deceiving nature of distances in that country. When he gained the cover
+of cedars he paused to rest and look, and it was then he saw how the
+trees sprang from holes in the bare rock. Ages of rain had run down the
+slope, circling, eddying in depressions, wearing deep round holes.
+There had been dry seasons, accumulations of dust, wind-blown seeds,
+and cedars rose wonderfully out of solid rock. But these were not
+beautiful cedars. They were gnarled, twisted into weird contortions, as
+if growth were torture, dead at the tops, shrunken, gray, and old.
+Theirs had been a bitter fight, and Venters felt a strange sympathy for
+them. This country was hard on trees—and men.
+
+He slipped from cedar to cedar, keeping them between him and the open
+valley. As he progressed, the belt of trees widened and he kept to its
+upper margin. He passed shady pockets half full of water, and, as he
+marked the location for possible future need, he reflected that there
+had been no rain since the winter snows. From one of these shady holes
+a rabbit hopped out and squatted down, laying its ears flat.
+
+Venters wanted fresh meat now more than when he had only himself to
+think of. But it would not do to fire his rifle there. So he broke off
+a cedar branch and threw it. He crippled the rabbit, which started to
+flounder up the slope. Venters did not wish to lose the meat, and he
+never allowed crippled game to escape, to die lingeringly in some
+covert. So after a careful glance below, and back toward the cañon, he
+began to chase the rabbit.
+
+The fact that rabbits generally ran uphill was not new to him. But it
+presently seemed singular why this rabbit, that might have escaped
+downward, chose to ascend the slope. Venters knew then that it had a
+burrow higher up. More than once he jerked over to seize it, only in
+vain, for the rabbit by renewed effort eluded his grasp. Thus the chase
+continued on up the bare slope. The farther Venters climbed the more
+determined he grew to catch his quarry. At last, panting and sweating,
+he captured the rabbit at the foot of a steeper grade. Laying his rifle
+on the bulge of rising stone, he killed the animal and slung it from
+his belt.
+
+Before starting down he waited to catch his breath. He had climbed far
+up that wonderful smooth slope, and had almost reached the base of
+yellow cliff that rose skyward, a huge scarred and cracked bulk. It
+frowned down upon him as if to forbid further ascent. Venters bent over
+for his rifle, and, as he picked it up from where it leaned against the
+steeper grade, he saw several little nicks cut in the solid stone.
+
+They were only a few inches deep and about a foot apart. Venters began
+to count them—one—two—three—four—on up to sixteen. That number carried
+his glance to the top of his first bulging bench of cliff-base. Above,
+after a more level offset, was still steeper slope, and the line of
+nicks kept on, to wind round a projecting corner of wall.
+
+A casual glance would have passed by these little dents; if Venters had
+not known what they signified he would never have bestowed upon them
+the second glance. But he knew they had been cut there by hand, and,
+though age-worn, he recognized them as steps cut in the rock by the
+cliff-dwellers. With a pulse beginning to beat and hammer away his
+calmness, he eyed that indistinct line of steps, up to where the
+buttress of wall hid further sight of them. He knew that behind the
+corner of stone would be a cave or a crack which could never be
+suspected from below. Chance, that had sported with him of late, now
+directed him to a probable hiding-place. Again he laid aside his rifle,
+and, removing boots and belt, he began to walk up the steps. Like a
+mountain goat, he was agile, sure-footed, and he mounted the first
+bench without bending to use his hands. The next ascent took grip of
+fingers as well as toes, but he climbed steadily, swiftly, to reach the
+projecting corner, and slipped around it. Here he faced a notch in the
+cliff. At the apex he turned abruptly into a ragged vent that split the
+ponderous wall clear to the top, showing a narrow streak of blue sky.
+
+At the base this vent was dark, cool, and smelled of dry, musty dust.
+It zigzagged so that he could not see ahead more than a few yards at a
+time. He noticed tracks of wildcats and rabbits in the dusty floor. At
+every turn he expected to come upon a huge cavern full of little square
+stone houses, each with a small aperture like a staring dark eye. The
+passage lightened and widened, and opened at the foot of a narrow,
+steep, ascending chute.
+
+Venters had a moment’s notice of the rock, which was of the same
+smoothness and hardness as the slope below, before his gaze went
+irresistibly upward to the precipitous walls of this wide ladder of
+granite. These were ruined walls of yellow sandstone, and so split and
+splintered, so overhanging with great sections of balancing rim, so
+impending with tremendous crumbling crags, that Venters caught his
+breath sharply, and, appalled, he instinctively recoiled as if a step
+upward might jar the ponderous cliffs from their foundation. Indeed, it
+seemed that these ruined cliffs were but awaiting a breath of wind to
+collapse and come tumbling down. Venters hesitated. It would be a
+foolhardy man who risked his life under the leaning, waiting avalanches
+of rock in that gigantic split. Yet how many years had they leaned
+there without falling! At the bottom of the incline was an immense heap
+of weathered sandstone all crumbling to dust, but there were no huge
+rocks as large as houses, such as rested so lightly and frightfully
+above, waiting patiently and inevitably to crash down. Slowly split
+from the parent rock by the weathering process, and carved and
+sculptured by ages of wind and rain, they waited their moment. Venters
+felt how foolish it was for him to fear these broken walls; to fear
+that, after they had endured for thousands of years, the moment of his
+passing should be the one for them to slip. Yet he feared it.
+
+“What a place to hide!” muttered Venters. “I’ll climb—I’ll see where
+this thing goes. If only I can find water!”
+
+With teeth tight shut he essayed the incline. And as he climbed he bent
+his eyes downward. This, however, after a little grew impossible; he
+had to look to obey his eager, curious mind. He raised his glance and
+saw light between row on row of shafts and pinnacles and crags that
+stood out from the main wall. Some leaned against the cliff, others
+against each other; many stood sheer and alone; all were crumbling,
+cracked, rotten. It was a place of yellow, ragged ruin. The passage
+narrowed as he went up; it became a slant, hard for him to stick on; it
+was smooth as marble. Finally he surmounted it, surprised to find the
+walls still several hundred feet high, and a narrow gorge leading down
+on the other side. This was a divide between two inclines, about twenty
+yards wide. At one side stood an enormous rock. Venters gave it a
+second glance, because it rested on a pedestal. It attracted closer
+attention. It was like a colossal pear of stone standing on its stem.
+Around the bottom were thousands of little nicks just distinguishable
+to the eye. They were marks of stone hatchets. The cliff-dwellers had
+chipped and chipped away at this boulder till it rested its tremendous
+bulk upon a mere pin-point of its surface. Venters pondered. Why had
+the little stone-men hacked away at that big boulder? It bore no
+semblance to a statue or an idol or a godhead or a sphinx.
+Instinctively he put his hands on it and pushed; then his shoulder and
+heaved. The stone seemed to groan, to stir, to grate, and then to move.
+It tipped a little downward and hung balancing for a long instant,
+slowly returned, rocked slightly, groaned, and settled back to its
+former position.
+
+Venters divined its significance. It had been meant for defense. The
+cliff-dwellers, driven by dreaded enemies to this last stand, had
+cunningly cut the rock until it balanced perfectly, ready to be
+dislodged by strong hands. Just below it leaned a tottering crag that
+would have toppled, starting an avalanche on an acclivity where no
+sliding mass could stop. Crags and pinnacles, splintered cliffs, and
+leaning shafts and monuments, would have thundered down to block
+forever the outlet to Deception Pass.
+
+“That was a narrow shave for me,” said Venters, soberly. “A balancing
+rock! The cliff-dwellers never had to roll it. They died, vanished, and
+here the rock stands, probably little changed.... But it might serve
+another lonely dweller of the cliffs. I’ll hide up here somewhere, if I
+can only find water.”
+
+He descended the gorge on the other side. The slope was gradual, the
+space narrow, the course straight for many rods. A gloom hung between
+the up-sweeping walls. In a turn the passage narrowed to scarce a dozen
+feet, and here was darkness of night. But light shone ahead; another
+abrupt turn brought day again, and then wide open space.
+
+Above Venters loomed a wonderful arch of stone bridging the cañon rims,
+and through the enormous round portal gleamed and glistened a beautiful
+valley shining under sunset gold reflected by surrounding cliffs. He
+gave a start of surprise. The valley was a cove a mile long, half that
+wide, and its enclosing walls were smooth and stained, and curved
+inward, forming great caves. He decided that its floor was far higher
+than the level of Deception Pass and the intersecting cañons. No purple
+sage colored this valley floor. Instead there were the white of aspens,
+streaks of branch and slender trunk glistening from the green of
+leaves, and the darker green of oaks, and through the middle of this
+forest, from wall to wall, ran a winding line of brilliant green which
+marked the course of cottonwoods and willows.
+
+“There’s water here—and this is the place for me,” said Venters. “Only
+birds can peep over those walls, I’ve gone Oldring one better.”
+
+Venters waited no longer, and turned swiftly to retrace his steps. He
+named the cañon Surprise Valley and the huge boulder that guarded the
+outlet Balancing Rock. Going down he did not find himself attended by
+such fears as had beset him in the climb; still, he was not easy in
+mind and could not occupy himself with plans of moving the girl and his
+outfit until he had descended to the notch. There he rested a moment
+and looked about him. The pass was darkening with the approach of
+night. At the corner of the wall, where the stone steps turned, he saw
+a spur of rock that would serve to hold the noose of a lasso. He needed
+no more aid to scale that place. As he intended to make the move under
+cover of darkness, he wanted most to be able to tell where to climb up.
+So, taking several small stones with him, he stepped and slid down to
+the edge of the slope where he had left his rifle and boots. He placed
+the stones some yards apart. He left the rabbit lying upon the bench
+where the steps began. Then he addressed a keen-sighted, remembering
+gaze to the rim-wall above. It was serrated, and between two spears of
+rock, directly in line with his position, showed a zigzag crack that at
+night would let through the gleam of sky. This settled, he put on his
+belt and boots and prepared to descend. Some consideration was
+necessary to decide whether or not to leave his rifle there. On the
+return, carrying the girl and a pack, it would be added encumbrance;
+and after debating the matter he left the rifle leaning against the
+bench. As he went straight down the slope he halted every few rods to
+look up at his mark on the rim. It changed, but he fixed each change in
+his memory. When he reached the first cedar-tree, he tied his scarf
+upon a dead branch, and then hurried toward camp, having no more
+concern about finding his trail upon the return trip.
+
+Darkness soon emboldened and lent him greater speed. It occurred to
+him, as he glided into the grassy glade near camp and head the whinny
+of a horse, that he had forgotten Wrangle. The big sorrel could not be
+gotten into Surprise Valley. He would have to be left here.
+
+Venters determined at once to lead the other horses out through the
+thicket and turn them loose. The farther they wandered from this cañon
+the better it would suit him. He easily descried Wrangle through the
+gloom, but the others were not in sight. Venters whistled low for the
+dogs, and when they came trotting to him he sent them out to search for
+the horses, and followed. It soon developed that they were not in the
+glade nor the thicket. Venters grew cold and rigid at the thought of
+rustlers having entered his retreat. But the thought passed, for the
+demeanor of Ring and Whitie reassured him. The horses had wandered
+away.
+
+Under the clump of silver spruces a denser mantle of darkness, yet not
+so thick that Venter’s night-practiced eyes could not catch the white
+oval of a still face. He bent over it with a slight suspension of
+breath that was both caution lest he frighten her and chill uncertainty
+of feeling lest he find her dead. But she slept, and he arose to
+renewed activity.
+
+He packed his saddle-bags. The dogs were hungry, they whined about him
+and nosed his busy hands; but he took no time to feed them nor to
+satisfy his own hunger. He slung the saddlebags over his shoulders and
+made them secure with his lasso. Then he wrapped the blankets closer
+about the girl and lifted her in his arms. Wrangle whinnied and thumped
+the ground as Venters passed him with the dogs. The sorrel knew he was
+being left behind, and was not sure whether he liked it or not. Venters
+went on and entered the thicket. Here he had to feel his way in pitch
+blackness and to wedge his progress between the close saplings. Time
+meant little to him now that he had started, and he edged along with
+slow side movement till he got clear of the thicket. Ring and Whitie
+stood waiting for him. Taking to the open aisles and patches of the
+sage, he walked guardedly, careful not to stumble or step in dust or
+strike against spreading sage-branches.
+
+If he were burdened he did not feel it. From time to time, when he
+passed out of the black lines of shade into the wan starlight, he
+glanced at the white face of the girl lying in his arms. She had not
+awakened from her sleep or stupor. He did not rest until he cleared the
+black gate of the cañon. Then he leaned against a stone breast-high to
+him and gently released the girl from his hold. His brow and hair and
+the palms of his hands were wet, and there was a kind of nervous
+contraction of his muscles. They seemed to ripple and string tense. He
+had a desire to hurry and no sense of fatigue. A wind blew the scent of
+sage in his face. The first early blackness of night passed with the
+brightening of the stars. Somewhere back on his trail a coyote yelped,
+splitting the dead silence. Venters’s faculties seemed singularly
+acute.
+
+He lifted the girl again and pressed on. The valley afforded better
+traveling than the cañon. It was lighter, freer of sage, and there were
+no rocks. Soon, out of the pale gloom shone a still paler thing, and
+that was the low swell of slope. Venters mounted it and his dogs walked
+beside him. Once upon the stone he slowed to snail pace, straining his
+sight to avoid the pockets and holes. Foot by foot he went up. The
+weird cedars, like great demons and witches chained to the rock and
+writhing in silent anguish, loomed up with wide and twisting naked
+arms. Venters crossed this belt of cedars, skirted the upper border,
+and recognized the tree he had marked, even before he saw his waving
+scarf.
+
+Here he knelt and deposited the girl gently, feet first and slowly laid
+her out full length. What he feared was to reopen one of her wounds. If
+he gave her a violent jar, or slipped and fell! But the supreme
+confidence so strangely felt that night admitted no such blunders.
+
+The slope before him seemed to swell into obscurity to lose its
+definite outline in a misty, opaque cloud that shaded into the
+over-shadowing wall. He scanned the rim where the serrated points
+speared the sky, and he found the zigzag crack. It was dim, only a
+shade lighter than the dark ramparts, but he distinguished it, and that
+served.
+
+Lifting the girl, he stepped upward, closely attending to the nature of
+the path under his feet. After a few steps he stopped to mark his line
+with the crack in the rim. The dogs clung closer to him. While chasing
+the rabbit this slope had appeared interminable to him; now, burdened
+as he was, he did not think of length or height or toil. He remembered
+only to avoid a misstep and to keep his direction. He climbed on, with
+frequent stops to watch the rim, and before he dreamed of gaining the
+bench he bumped his knees into it, and saw, in the dim gray light, his
+rifle and the rabbit. He had come straight up without mishap or
+swerving off his course, and his shut teeth unlocked.
+
+As he laid the girl down in the shallow hollow of the little ridge with
+her white face upturned, she opened her eyes. Wide, staring black, at
+once like both the night and the stars, they made her face seem still
+whiter.
+
+“Is—it—you?” she asked, faintly.
+
+“Yes,” replied Venters.
+
+“Oh! Where—are we?”
+
+“I’m taking you to a safe place where no one will ever find you. I must
+climb a little here and call the dogs. Don’t be afraid. I’ll soon come
+for you.”
+
+She said no more. Her eyes watched him steadily for a moment and then
+closed. Venters pulled off his boots and then felt for the little steps
+in the rock. The shade of the cliff above obscured the point he wanted
+to gain, but he could see dimly a few feet before him. What he had
+attempted with care he now went at with surpassing lightness. Buoyant,
+rapid, sure, he attained the corner of wall and slipped around it. Here
+he could not see a hand before his face, so he groped along, found a
+little flat space, and there removed the saddle-bags. The lasso he took
+back with him to the corner and looped the noose over the spur of rock.
+
+“Ring—Whitie—come,” he called, softly.
+
+Low whines came up from below.
+
+“Here! Come, Whitie—Ring,” he repeated, this time sharply.
+
+Then followed scraping of claws and pattering of feet; and out of the
+gray gloom below him swiftly climbed the dogs to reach his side and
+pass beyond.
+
+Venters descended, holding to the lasso. He tested its strength by
+throwing all his weight upon it. Then he gathered the girl up, and,
+holding her securely in his left arm, he began to climb, at every few
+steps jerking his right hand upward along the lasso. It sagged at each
+forward movement he made, but he balanced himself lightly during the
+interval when he lacked the support of a taut rope. He climbed as if he
+had wings, the strength of a giant, and knew not the sense of fear. The
+sharp corner of cliff seemed to cut out of the darkness. He reached it
+and the protruding shelf, and then, entering the black shade of the
+notch, he moved blindly but surely to the place where he had left the
+saddle-bags. He heard the dogs, though he could not see them. Once more
+he carefully placed the girl at his feet. Then, on hands and knees, he
+went over the little flat space, feeling for stones. He removed a
+number, and, scraping the deep dust into a heap, he unfolded the outer
+blanket from around the girl and laid her upon this bed. Then he went
+down the slope again for his boots, rifle, and the rabbit, and,
+bringing also his lasso with him, he made short work of that trip.
+
+“Are—you—there?” The girl’s voice came low from the blackness.
+
+“Yes,” he replied, and was conscious that his laboring breast made
+speech difficult.
+
+“Are we—in a cave?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, listen!... The waterfall!... I hear it! You’ve brought me back!”
+
+Venters heard a murmuring moan that one moment swelled to a pitch
+almost softly shrill and the next lulled to a low, almost inaudible
+sigh.
+
+“That’s—wind blowing—in the—cliffs,” he panted. “You’re far from
+Oldring’s—cañon.”
+
+The effort it cost him to speak made him conscious of extreme lassitude
+following upon great exertion. It seemed that when he lay down and drew
+his blanket over him the action was the last before utter prostration.
+He stretched inert, wet, hot, his body one great strife of throbbing,
+stinging nerves and bursting veins. And there he lay for a long while
+before he felt that he had begun to rest.
+
+Rest came to him that night, but no sleep. Sleep he did not want. The
+hours of strained effort were now as if they had never been, and he
+wanted to think. Earlier in the day he had dismissed an inexplicable
+feeling of change; but now, when there was no longer demand on his
+cunning and strength and he had time to think, he could not catch the
+illusive thing that had sadly perplexed as well as elevated his spirit.
+
+Above him, through a V-shaped cleft in the dark rim of the cliff, shone
+the lustrous stars that had been his lonely accusers for a long, long
+year. To-night they were different. He studied them. Larger, whiter,
+more radiant they seemed; but that was not the difference he meant.
+Gradually it came to him that the distinction was not one he saw, but
+one he felt. In this he divined as much of the baffling change as he
+thought would be revealed to him then. And as he lay there, with the
+singing of the cliff-winds in his ears, the white stars above the dark,
+bold vent, the difference which he felt was that he was no longer
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+SILVER SPRUCE AND ASPENS
+
+
+The rest of that night seemed to Venters only a few moments of
+starlight, a dark overcasting of sky, an hour or so of gray gloom, and
+then the lighting of dawn.
+
+When he had bestirred himself, feeding the hungry dogs and breaking his
+long fast, and had repacked his saddle-bags, it was clear daylight,
+though the sun had not tipped the yellow wall in the east. He concluded
+to make the climb and descent into Surprise Valley in one trip. To that
+end he tied his blanket upon Ring and gave Whitie the extra lasso and
+the rabbit to carry. Then, with the rifle and saddle-bags slung upon
+his back, he took up the girl. She did not awaken from heavy slumber.
+
+That climb up under the rugged, menacing brows of the broken cliffs, in
+the face of a grim, leaning boulder that seemed to be weary of its
+age-long wavering, was a tax on strength and nerve that Venters felt
+equally with something sweet and strangely exulting in its
+accomplishment. He did not pause until he gained the narrow divide and
+there he rested. Balancing Rock loomed huge, cold in the gray light of
+dawn, a thing without life, yet it spoke silently to Venters: “I am
+waiting to plunge down, to shatter and crash, roar and boom, to bury
+your trail, and close forever the outlet to Deception Pass!”
+
+
+[Illustration: He did not pause until he gained the narrow divide]
+
+
+On the descent of the other side Venters had easy going, but was
+somewhat concerned because Whitie appeared to have succumbed to
+temptation, and while carrying the rabbit was also chewing on it. And
+Ring evidently regarded this as an injury to himself, especially as he
+had carried the heavier load. Presently he snapped at one end of the
+rabbit and refused to let go. But his action prevented Whitie from
+further misdoing, and then the two dogs pattered down, carrying the
+rabbit between them.
+
+Venters turned out of the gorge, and suddenly paused stock-still,
+astounded at the scene before him. The curve of the great stone bridge
+had caught the sunrise, and through the magnificent arch burst a
+glorious stream of gold that shone with a long slant down into the
+center of Surprise Valley. Only through the arch did any sunlight pass,
+so that all the rest of the valley lay still asleep, dark green,
+mysterious, shadowy, merging its level into walls as misty and soft as
+morning clouds.
+
+Venters then descended, passing through the arch, looking up at its
+tremendous height and sweep. It spanned the opening to Surprise Valley,
+stretching in almost perfect curve from rim to rim. Even in his hurry
+and concern Venters could not but feel its majesty, and the thought
+came to him that the cliff-dwellers must have regarded it as an object
+of worship.
+
+Down, down, down Venters strode, more and more feeling the weight of
+his burden as he descended, and still the valley lay below him. As all
+other cañons and coves and valleys had deceived him, so had this deep,
+nestling oval. At length he passed beyond the slope of weathered stone
+that spread fan-shape from the arch, and encountered a grassy terrace
+running to the right and about on a level with the tips of the oaks and
+cottonwoods below. Scattered here and there upon this shelf were clumps
+of aspens, and he walked through them into a glade that surpassed in
+beauty and adaptability for a wild home, any place he had ever seen.
+Silver spruces bordered the base of a precipitous wall that rose
+loftily. Caves indented its surface, and there were no detached ledges
+or weathered sections that might dislodge a stone. The level ground,
+beyond the spruces, dropped down into a little ravine. This was one
+dense line of slender aspens from which came the low splashing of
+water. And the terrace, lying open to the west, afforded unobstructed
+view of the valley of green treetops.
+
+For his camp Venters chose a shady, grassy plot between the silver
+spruces and the cliff. Here, in the stone wall, had been wonderfully
+carved by wind or washed by water several deep caves above the level of
+the terrace. They were clean, dry, roomy.
+
+He cut spruce boughs and made a bed in the largest cave and laid the
+girl there. The first intimation that he had of her being aroused from
+sleep or lethargy was a low call for water.
+
+He hurried down into the ravine with his canteen. It was a shallow,
+grass-green place with aspens growing up everywhere. To his delight he
+found a tiny brook of swift-running water. Its faint tinge of amber
+reminded him of the spring at Cottonwoods, and the thought gave him a
+little shock. The water was so cold it made his fingers tingle as he
+dipped the canteen. Having returned to the cave, he was glad to see the
+girl drink thirstily. This time he noted that she could raise her head
+slightly without his help.
+
+“You were thirsty,” he said. “It’s good water. I’ve found a fine place.
+Tell me—how do you feel?”
+
+“There’s pain—here,” she replied, and moved her hand to her left side.
+
+“Why, that’s strange! Your wounds are on your right side. I believe
+you’re hungry. Is the pain a kind of dull ache—a gnawing?”
+
+“It’s like—that.”
+
+“Then it’s hunger.” Venters laughed, and suddenly caught himself with a
+quick breath and felt again the little shock. When had he laughed?
+“It’s hunger,” he went on. “I’ve had that gnaw many a time. I’ve got it
+now. But you mustn’t eat. You can have all the water you want, but no
+food just yet.”
+
+“Won’t I—starve?”
+
+“No, people don’t starve easily. I’ve discovered that. You must lie
+perfectly still and rest and sleep—for days.”
+
+“My hands—are dirty; my face feels—so hot and sticky; my boots hurt.”
+It was her longest speech as yet, and it trailed off in a whisper.
+
+“Well, I’m a fine nurse!”
+
+It annoyed him that he had never thought of these things. But then,
+awaiting her death and thinking of her comfort were vastly different
+matters. He unwrapped the blanket which covered her. What a slender
+girl she was! No wonder he had been able to carry her miles and pack
+her up that slippery ladder of stone. Her boots were of soft, fine
+leather, reaching clear to her knees. He recognized the make as one of
+a boot-maker in Sterling. Her spurs, that he had stupidly neglected to
+remove, consisted of silver frames and gold chains, and the rowels,
+large as silver dollars, were fancifully engraved. The boots slipped
+off rather hard. She wore heavy woollen rider’s stockings, half length,
+and these were pulled up over the ends of her short trousers. Venters
+took off the stockings to note her little feet were red and swollen. He
+bathed them. Then he removed his scarf and bathed her face and hands.
+
+“I must see your wounds now,” he said, gently.
+
+She made no reply, but watched him steadily as he opened her blouse and
+untied the bandage. His strong fingers trembled a little as he removed
+it. If the wounds had reopened! A chill struck him as he saw the angry
+red bullet-mark, and a tiny stream of blood winding from it down her
+white breast. Very carefully he lifted her to see that the wound in her
+back had closed perfectly. Then he washed the blood from her breast,
+bathed the wound, and left it unbandaged, open to the air.
+
+Her eyes thanked him.
+
+“Listen,” he said, earnestly. “I’ve had some wounds, and I’ve seen
+many. I know a little about them. The hole in your back has closed. If
+you lie still three days the one in your breast will close and you’ll
+be safe. The danger from hemorrhage will be over.”
+
+He had spoken with earnest sincerity, almost eagerness.
+
+“Why—do you—want me—to get well?” she asked, wonderingly.
+
+The simple question seemed unanswerable except on grounds of humanity.
+But the circumstances under which he had shot this strange girl, the
+shock and realization, the waiting for death, the hope, had resulted in
+a condition of mind wherein Venters wanted her to live more than he had
+ever wanted anything. Yet he could not tell why. He believed the
+killing of the rustler and the subsequent excitement had disturbed him.
+For how else could he explain the throbbing of his brain, the heat of
+his blood, the undefined sense of full hours, charged, vibrant with
+pulsating mystery where once they had dragged in loneliness?
+
+“I shot you,” he said, slowly, “and I want you to get well so I shall
+not have killed a woman. But—for your own sake, too—”
+
+A terrible bitterness darkened her eyes, and her lips quivered.
+
+“Hush,” said Venters. “You’ve talked too much already.”
+
+In her unutterable bitterness he saw a darkness of mood that could not
+have been caused by her present weak and feverish state. She hated the
+life she had led, that she probably had been compelled to lead. She had
+suffered some unforgivable wrong at the hands of Oldring. With that
+conviction Venters felt a shame throughout his body, and it marked the
+rekindling of fierce anger and ruthlessness. In the past long year he
+had nursed resentment. He had hated the wilderness—the loneliness of
+the uplands. He had waited for something to come to pass. It had come.
+Like an Indian stealing horses he had skulked into the recesses of the
+cañons. He had found Oldring’s retreat; he had killed a rustler; he had
+shot an unfortunate girl, then had saved her from this unwitting act,
+and he meant to save her from the consequent wasting of blood, from
+fever and weakness. Starvation he had to fight for her and for himself.
+Where he had been sick at the letting of blood, now he remembered it in
+grim, cold calm. And as he lost that softness of nature, so he lost his
+fear of men. He would watch for Oldring, biding his time, and he would
+kill this great black-bearded rustler who had held a girl in bondage,
+who had used her to his infamous ends.
+
+Venters surmised this much of the change in him—idleness had passed;
+keen, fierce vigor flooded his mind and body; all that had happened to
+him at Cottonwoods seemed remote and hard to recall; the difficulties
+and perils of the present absorbed him, held him in a kind of spell.
+
+First, then, he fitted up the little cave adjoining the girl’s room for
+his own comfort and use. His next work was to build a fireplace of
+stones and to gather a store of wood. That done, he spilled the
+contents of his saddle-bags upon the grass and took stock. His outfit
+consisted of a small-handled axe, a hunting-knife, a large number of
+cartridges for rifle or revolver, a tin plate, a cup, and a fork and
+spoon, a quantity of dried beef and dried fruits, and small canvas bags
+containing tea, sugar, salt, and pepper. For him alone this supply
+would have been bountiful to begin a sojourn in the wilderness, but he
+was no longer alone. Starvation in the uplands was not an unheard-of
+thing; he did not, however, worry at all on that score, and feared only
+his possible inability to supply the needs of a woman in a weakened and
+extremely delicate condition.
+
+If there was no game in the valley—a contingency he doubted—it would
+not be a great task for him to go by night to Oldring’s herd and pack
+out a calf. The exigency of the moment was to ascertain if there were
+game in Surprise Valley. Whitie still guarded the dilapidated rabbit,
+and Ring slept near by under a spruce. Venters called Ring and went to
+the edge of the terrace, and there halted to survey the valley.
+
+He was prepared to find it larger than his unstudied glances had made
+it appear; for more than a casual idea of dimensions and a hasty
+conception of oval shape and singular beauty he had not had time. Again
+the felicity of the name he had given the valley struck him forcibly.
+Around the red perpendicular walls, except under the great arc of
+stone, ran a terrace fringed at the cliff-base by silver spruces; below
+that first terrace sloped another wider one densely overgrown with
+aspens, and the center of the valley was a level circle of oaks and
+alders, with the glittering green line of willows and cottonwood
+dividing it in half. Venters saw a number and variety of birds flitting
+among the trees. To his left, facing the stone bridge, an enormous
+cavern opened in the wall; and low down, just above the tree-tops, he
+made out a long shelf of cliff-dwellings, with little black, staring
+windows or doors. Like eyes they were, and seemed to watch him. The few
+cliff-dwellings he had seen—all ruins—had left him with haunting memory
+of age and solitude and of something past. He had come, in a way, to be
+a cliff-dweller himself, and those silent eyes would look down upon
+him, as if in surprise that after thousands of years a man had invaded
+the valley. Venters felt sure that he was the only white man who had
+ever walked under the shadow of the wonderful stone bridge, down into
+that wonderful valley with its circle of caves and its terraced rings
+of silver spruce and aspens.
+
+The dog growled below and rushed into the forest. Venters ran down the
+declivity to enter a zone of light shade streaked with sunshine. The
+oak-trees were slender, none more than half a foot thick, and they grew
+close together, intermingling their branches. Ring came running back
+with a rabbit in his mouth. Venters took the rabbit and, holding the
+dog near him, stole softly on. There were fluttering of wings among the
+branches and quick bird-notes, and rustling of dead leaves and rapid
+patterings. Venters crossed well-worn trails marked with fresh tracks;
+and when he had stolen on a little farther he saw many birds and
+running quail, and more rabbits than he could count. He had not
+penetrated the forest of oaks for a hundred yards, had not approached
+anywhere near the line of willows and cottonwoods which he knew grew
+along a stream. But he had seen enough to know that Surprise Valley was
+the home of many wild creatures.
+
+Venters returned to camp. He skinned the rabbits, and gave the dogs the
+one they had quarreled over, and the skin of this he dressed and hung
+up to dry, feeling that he would like to keep it. It was a particularly
+rich, furry pelt with a beautiful white tail. Venters remembered that
+but for the bobbing of that white tail catching his eye he would not
+have espied the rabbit, and he would never have discovered Surprise
+Valley. Little incidents of chance like this had turned him here and
+there in Deception Pass; and now they had assumed to him the
+significance and direction of destiny.
+
+His good fortune in the matter of game at hand brought to his mind the
+necessity of keeping it in the valley. Therefore he took the axe and
+cut bundles of aspens and willows, and packed them up under the bridge
+to the narrow outlet of the gorge. Here he began fashioning a fence, by
+driving aspens into the ground and lacing them fast with willows. Trip
+after trip he made down for more building material, and the afternoon
+had passed when he finished the work to his satisfaction. Wildcats
+might scale the fence, but no coyote could come in to search for prey,
+and no rabbits or other small game could escape from the valley.
+
+Upon returning to camp he set about getting his supper at ease, around
+a fine fire, without hurry or fear of discovery. After hard work that
+had definite purpose, this freedom and comfort gave him peculiar
+satisfaction. He caught himself often, as he kept busy round the
+camp-fire, stopping to glance at the quiet form in the cave, and at the
+dogs stretched cozily near him, and then out across the beautiful
+valley. The present was not yet real to him.
+
+While he ate, the sun set beyond a dip in the rim of the curved wall.
+As the morning sun burst wondrously through a grand arch into this
+valley, in a golden, slanting shaft, so the evening sun, at the moment
+of setting, shone through a gap of cliffs, sending down a broad red
+burst to brighten the oval with a blaze of fire. To Venters both
+sunrise and sunset were unreal.
+
+A cool wind blew across the oval, waving the tips of oaks, and while
+the light lasted, fluttering the aspen leaves into millions of facets
+of red, and sweeping the graceful spruces. Then with the wind soon came
+a shade and a darkening, and suddenly the valley was gray. Night came
+there quickly after the sinking of the sun. Venters went softly to look
+at the girl. She slept, and her breathing was quiet and slow. He lifted
+Ring into the cave, with stern whisper for him to stay there on guard.
+Then he drew the blanket carefully over her and returned to the
+camp-fire.
+
+Though exceedingly tired, he was yet loath to yield to lassitude, but
+this night it was not from listening, watchful vigilance; it was from a
+desire to realize his position. The details of his wild environment
+seemed the only substance of a strange dream. He saw the darkening
+rims, the gray oval turning black, the undulating surface of forest,
+like a rippling lake, and the spear-pointed spruces. He heard the
+flutter of aspen leaves and the soft, continuous splash of falling
+water. The melancholy note of a cañon bird broke clear and lonely from
+the high cliffs. Venters had no name for this night singer, and he had
+never seen one, but the few notes, always pealing out just at darkness,
+were as familiar to him as the cañon silence. Then they ceased, and the
+rustle of leaves and the murmur of water hushed in a growing sound that
+Venters fancied was not of earth. Neither had he a name for this, only
+it was inexpressibly wild and sweet. The thought came that it might be
+a moan of the girl in her last outcry of life, and he felt a tremor
+shake him. But no! This sound was not human, though it was like
+despair. He began to doubt his sensitive perceptions, to believe that
+he half-dreamed what he thought he heard. Then the sound swelled with
+the strengthening of the breeze, and he realized it was the singing of
+the wind in the cliffs.
+
+By and by a drowsiness overcame him, and Venters began to nod, half
+asleep, with his back against a spruce. Rousing himself and calling
+Whitie, he went to the cave. The girl lay barely visible in the
+dimness. Ring crouched beside her, and the patting of his tail on the
+stone assured Venters that the dog was awake and faithful to his duty.
+Venters sought his own bed of fragrant boughs; and as he lay back,
+somehow grateful for the comfort and safety, the night seemed to steal
+away from him and he sank softly into intangible space and rest and
+slumber.
+
+Venters awakened to the sound of melody that he imagined was only the
+haunting echo of dream music. He opened his eyes to another surprise of
+this valley of beautiful surprises. Out of his cave he saw the
+exquisitely fine foliage of the silver spruces crossing a round space
+of blue morning sky; and in this lacy leafage fluttered a number of
+gray birds with black and white stripes and long tails. They were
+mocking-birds, and they were singing as if they wanted to burst their
+throats. Venters listened. One long, silver-tipped branch dropped
+almost to his cave, and upon it, within a few yards of him, sat one of
+the graceful birds. Venters saw the swelling and quivering of its
+throat in song. He arose, and when he slid down out of his cave the
+birds fluttered and flew farther away.
+
+Venters stepped before the opening of the other cave and looked in. The
+girl was awake, with wide eyes and listening look, and she had a hand
+on Ring’s neck.
+
+“Mocking-birds!” she said.
+
+“Yes,” replied Venters, “and I believe they like our company.”
+
+“Where are we?”
+
+“Never mind now. After a little I’ll tell you.”
+
+“The birds woke me. When I heard them—and saw the shiny trees—and the
+blue sky—and then a blaze of gold dropping down—I wondered—”
+
+She did not complete her fancy, but Venters imagined he understood her
+meaning. She appeared to be wandering in mind. Venters felt her face
+and hands and found them burning with fever. He went for water, and was
+glad to find it almost as cold as if flowing from ice. That water was
+the only medicine he had, and he put faith in it. She did not want to
+drink, but he made her swallow, and then he bathed her face and head
+and cooled her wrists.
+
+The day began with the heightening of the fever. Venters spent the time
+reducing her temperature, cooling her hot cheeks and temples. He kept
+close watch over her, and at the least indication of restlessness, that
+he knew led to tossing and rolling of the body, he held her tightly, so
+no violent move could reopen her wounds. Hour after hour she babbled
+and laughed and cried and moaned in delirium; but whatever her secret
+was she did not reveal it. Attended by something somber for Venters,
+the day passed. At night in the cool winds the fever abated and she
+slept.
+
+The second day was a repetition of the first. On the third he seemed to
+see her wither and waste away before his eyes. That day he scarcely
+went from her side for a moment, except to run for fresh, cool water;
+and he did not eat. The fever broke on the fourth day and left her
+spent and shrunken, a slip of a girl with life only in her eyes. They
+hung upon Venters with a mute observance, and he found hope in that.
+
+To rekindle the spark that had nearly flickered out, to nourish the
+little life and vitality that remained in her, was Venters’s problem.
+But he had little resource other than the meat of the rabbits and
+quail; and from these he made broths and soups as best he could, and
+fed her with a spoon. It came to him that the human body, like the
+human soul, was a strange thing and capable of recovering from terrible
+shocks. For almost immediately she showed faint signs of gathering
+strength. There was one more waiting day, in which he doubted, and
+spent long hours by her side as she slept, and watched the gentle swell
+of her breast rise and fall in breathing, and the wind stir the tangled
+chestnut curls. On the next day he knew that she would live.
+
+Upon realizing it he abruptly left the cave and sought his accustomed
+seat against the trunk of a big spruce, where once more he let his
+glance stray along the sloping terraces. She would live, and the somber
+gloom lifted out of the valley, and he felt relief that was pain. Then
+he roused to the call of action, to the many things he needed to do in
+the way of making camp fixtures and utensils, to the necessity of
+hunting food, and the desire to explore the valley.
+
+But he decided to wait a few more days before going far from camp,
+because he fancied that the girl rested easier when she could see him
+near at hand. And on the first day her languor appeared to leave her in
+a renewed grip of life. She awoke stronger from each short slumber; she
+ate greedily, and she moved about in her bed of boughs; and always, it
+seemed to Venters, her eyes followed him. He knew now that her recovery
+would be rapid. She talked about the dogs, about the caves, the valley,
+about how hungry she was, till Venters silenced her, asking her to put
+off further talk till another time. She obeyed, but she sat up in her
+bed, and her eyes roved to and fro, and always back to him.
+
+Upon the second morning she sat up when he awakened her, and would not
+permit him to bathe her face and feed her, which actions she performed
+for herself. She spoke little, however, and Venters was quick to catch
+in her the first intimations of thoughtfulness and curiosity and
+appreciation of her situation. He left camp and took Whitie out to hunt
+for rabbits. Upon his return he was amazed and somewhat anxiously
+concerned to see his invalid sitting with her back to a corner of the
+cave and her bare feet swinging out. Hurriedly he approached, intending
+to advise her to lie down again, to tell her that perhaps she might
+overtax her strength. The sun shone upon her, glinting on the little
+head with its tangle of bright hair and the small, oval face with its
+pallor, and dark-blue eyes underlined by dark-blue circles. She looked
+at him and he looked at her. In that exchange of glances he imagined
+each saw the other in some different guise. It seemed impossible to
+Venters that this frail girl could be Oldring’s Masked Rider. It
+flashed over him that he had made a mistake which presently she would
+explain.
+
+“Help me down,” she said.
+
+“But—are you well enough?” he protested. “Wait—a little longer.”
+
+“I’m weak—dizzy. But I want to get down.”
+
+He lifted her—what a light burden now!—and stood her upright beside
+him, and supported her as she essayed to walk with halting steps. She
+was like a stripling of a boy; the bright, small head scarcely reached
+his shoulder. But now, as she clung to his arm, the rider’s costume she
+wore did not contradict, as it had done at first, his feeling of her
+femininity. She might be the famous Masked Rider of the uplands, she
+might resemble a boy; but her outline, her little hands and feet, her
+hair, her big eyes and tremulous lips, and especially a something that
+Venters felt as a subtle essence rather than what he saw, proclaimed
+her sex.
+
+She soon tired. He arranged a comfortable seat for her under the spruce
+that overspread the camp-fire.
+
+“Now tell me—everything,” she said.
+
+He recounted all that had happened from the time of his discovery of
+the rustlers in the cañon up to the present moment.
+
+“You shot me—and now you’ve saved my life?”
+
+“Yes. After almost killing you I’ve pulled you through.”
+
+“Are you glad?”
+
+“I should say so!”
+
+Her eyes were unusually expressive, and they regarded him steadily; she
+was unconscious of that mirroring of her emotions and they shone with
+gratefulness and interest and wonder and sadness.
+
+“Tell me—about yourself?” she asked.
+
+He made this a briefer story, telling of his coming to Utah, his
+various occupations till he became a rider, and then how the Mormons
+had practically driven him out of Cottonwoods, an outcast.
+
+Then, no longer able to withstand his own burning curiosity, he
+questioned her in turn.
+
+“Are you Oldring’s Masked Rider?”
+
+“Yes,” she replied, and dropped her eyes.
+
+“I knew it—I recognized your figure—and mask, for I saw you once. Yet I
+can’t believe it!... But you never _were_ really that rustler, as we
+riders knew him? A thief—a marauder—a kidnapper of women—a murderer of
+sleeping riders!”
+
+“No! I never stole—or harmed any one—in all my life. I only rode and
+rode—”
+
+“But why—why?” he burst out. “Why the name? I understand Oldring made
+you ride. But the black mask—the mystery—the things laid to your
+hands—the threats in your infamous name—the night-riding credited to
+you—the evil deeds deliberately blamed on you and acknowledged by
+rustlers—even Oldring himself! Why? Tell me why?”
+
+“I never knew that,” she answered low. Her drooping head straightened,
+and the large eyes, larger now and darker, met Venters’s with a clear,
+steadfast gaze in which he read truth. It verified his own conviction.
+
+“Never knew? That’s strange! Are you a Mormon?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Is Oldring a Mormon?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Do you—care for him?”
+
+“Yes. I hate his men—his life—sometimes I almost hate him!”
+
+Venters paused in his rapid-fire questioning, as if to brace him self
+to ask for a truth that would be abhorrent for him to confirm, but
+which he seemed driven to hear.
+
+“What are—what _were_ you to Oldring?”
+
+Like some delicate thing suddenly exposed to blasting heat, the girl
+wilted; her head dropped, and into her white, wasted cheeks crept the
+red of shame.
+
+Venters would have given anything to recall that question. It seemed so
+different—his thought when spoken. Yet her shame established in his
+mind something akin to the respect he had strangely been hungering to
+feel for her.
+
+“D—n that question!—forget it!” he cried, in a passion of pain for her
+and anger at himself. “But once and for all—tell me—I know it, yet I
+want to hear you say so—you couldn’t help yourself?”
+
+“Oh no.”
+
+“Well, that makes it all right with me,” he went on, honestly. “I—I
+want you to feel that... you see—we’ve been thrown together—and—and I
+want to help you—not hurt you. I thought life had been cruel to me, but
+when I think of yours I feel mean and little for my complaining.
+Anyway, I was a lonely outcast. And now!... I don’t see very clearly
+what it all means. Only we are here—together. We’ve got to stay here,
+for long, surely till you are well. But you’ll never go back to
+Oldring. And I’m sure helping you will help me, for I was sick in mind.
+There’s something now for me to do. And if I can win back your
+strength—then get you away, out of this wild country—help you somehow
+to a happier life—just think how good that’ll be for me!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+LOVE
+
+
+During all these waiting days Venters, with the exception of the
+afternoon when he had built the gate in the gorge, had scarcely gone
+out of sight of camp and never out of hearing. His desire to explore
+Surprise Valley was keen, and on the morning after his long talk with
+the girl he took his rifle and, calling Ring, made a move to start. The
+girl lay back in a rude chair of boughs he had put together for her.
+She had been watching him, and when he picked up the gun and called the
+dog Venters thought she gave a nervous start.
+
+“I’m only going to look over the valley,” he said.
+
+“Will you be gone long?”
+
+“No,” he replied, and started off. The incident set him thinking of his
+former impression that, after her recovery from fever, she did not seem
+at ease unless he was close at hand. It was fear of being alone, due,
+he concluded, most likely to her weakened condition. He must not leave
+her much alone.
+
+As he strode down the sloping terrace, rabbits scampered before him,
+and the beautiful valley quail, as purple in color as the sage on the
+uplands, ran fleetly along the ground into the forest. It was pleasant
+under the trees, in the gold-flecked shade, with the whistle of quail
+and twittering of birds everywhere. Soon he had passed the limit of his
+former excursions and entered new territory. Here the woods began to
+show open glades and brooks running down from the slope, and presently
+he emerged from shade into the sunshine of a meadow. The shaking of the
+high grass told him of the running of animals, what species he could
+not tell, but from Ring’s manifest desire to have a chase they were
+evidently some kind wilder than rabbits. Venters approached the willow
+and cottonwood belt that he had observed from the height of slope. He
+penetrated it to find a considerable stream of water and great
+half-submerged mounds of brush and sticks, and all about him were old
+and new gnawed circles at the base of the cottonwoods.
+
+“Beaver!” he exclaimed. “By all that’s lucky! The meadow’s full of
+beaver! How did they ever get here?”
+
+Beaver had not found a way into the valley by the trail of the
+cliff-dwellers, of that he was certain; and he began to have more than
+curiosity as to the outlet or inlet of the stream. When he passed some
+dead water, which he noted was held by a beaver dam, there was a
+current in the stream, and it flowed west. Following its course, he
+soon entered the oak forest again, and passed through to find himself
+before massed and jumbled ruins of cliff wall. There were tangled
+thickets of wild plum-trees and other thorny growths that made passage
+extremely laborsome. He found innumerable tracks of wildcats and foxes.
+Rustlings in the thick undergrowth told him of stealthy movements of
+these animals. At length his further advance appeared futile, for the
+reason that the stream disappeared in a split at the base of immense
+rocks over which he could not climb. To his relief he concluded that
+though beaver might work their way up the narrow chasm where the water
+rushed, it would be impossible for men to enter the valley there.
+
+This western curve was the only part of the valley where the walls had
+been split asunder, and it was a wildly rough and inaccessible corner.
+Going back a little way, he leaped the stream and headed toward the
+southern wall. Once out of the oaks he found again the low terrace of
+aspens, and above that the wide, open terrace fringed by silver
+spruces. This side of the valley contained the wind or water worn
+caves. As he pressed on, keeping to the upper terrace, cave after cave
+opened out of the cliff; now a large one, now a small one. Then yawned,
+quite suddenly and wonderfully above him, the great cavern of the
+cliff-dwellers.
+
+It was still a goodly distance, and he tried to imagine, if it appeared
+so huge from where he stood, what it would be when he got there. He
+climbed the terrace and then faced a long, gradual ascent of weathered
+rock and dust, which made climbing too difficult for attention to
+anything else. At length he entered a zone of shade, and looked up. He
+stood just within the hollow of a cavern so immense that he had no
+conception of its real dimensions. The curved roof, stained by ages of
+leakage, with buff and black and rust-colored streaks, swept up and
+loomed higher and seemed to soar to the rim of the cliff. Here again
+was a magnificent arch, such as formed the grand gateway to the valley,
+only in this instance it formed the dome of a cave instead of the span
+of a bridge.
+
+Venters passed onward and upward. The stones he dislodged rolled down
+with strange, hollow crack and roar. He had climbed a hundred rods
+inward, and yet he had not reached the base of the shelf where the
+cliff-dwellings rested, a long half-circle of connected stone house,
+with little dark holes that he had fancied were eyes. At length he
+gained the base of the shelf, and here found steps cut in the rock.
+These facilitated climbing, and as he went up he thought how easily
+this vanished race of men might once have held that stronghold against
+an army. There was only one possible place to ascend, and this was
+narrow and steep.
+
+Venters had visited cliff-dwellings before, and they had been in ruins,
+and of no great character or size but this place was of proportions
+that stunned him, and it had not been desecrated by the hand of man,
+nor had it been crumbled by the hand of time. It was a stupendous tomb.
+It had been a city. It was just as it had been left by its builders.
+The little houses were there, the smoke-blackened stains of fires, the
+pieces of pottery scattered about cold hearths, the stone hatchets; and
+stone pestles and mealing-stones lay beside round holes polished by
+years of grinding maize—lay there as if they had been carelessly
+dropped yesterday. But the cliff-dwellers were gone!
+
+Dust! They were dust on the floor or at the foot of the shelf, and
+their habitations and utensils endured. Venters felt the sublimity of
+that marvelous vaulted arch, and it seemed to gleam with a glory of
+something that was gone. How many years had passed since the
+cliff-dwellers gazed out across the beautiful valley as he was gazing
+now? How long had it been since women ground grain in those polished
+holes? What time had rolled by since men of an unknown race lived,
+loved, fought, and died there? Had an enemy destroyed them? Had disease
+destroyed them, or only that greatest destroyer—time? Venters saw a
+long line of blood-red hands painted low down upon the yellow roof of
+stone. Here was strange portent, if not an answer to his queries. The
+place oppressed him. It was light, but full of a transparent gloom. It
+smelled of dust and musty stone, of age and disuse. It was sad. It was
+solemn. It had the look of a place where silence had become master and
+was now irrevocable and terrible and could not be broken. Yet, at the
+moment, from high up in the carved crevices of the arch, floated down
+the low, strange wail of wind—a knell indeed for all that had gone.
+
+Venters, sighing, gathered up an armful of pottery, such pieces as he
+thought strong enough and suitable for his own use, and bent his steps
+toward camp. He mounted the terrace at an opposite point to which he
+had left. He saw the girl looking in the direction he had gone. His
+footsteps made no sound in the deep grass, and he approached close
+without her being aware of his presence. Whitie lay on the ground near
+where she sat, and he manifested the usual actions of welcome, but the
+girl did not notice them. She seemed to be oblivious to everything near
+at hand. She made a pathetic figure drooping there, with her sunny hair
+contrasting so markedly with her white, wasted cheeks and her hands
+listlessly clasped and her little bare feet propped in the framework of
+the rude seat. Venters could have sworn and laughed in one breath at
+the idea of the connection between this girl and Oldring’s Masked
+Rider. She was the victim of more than accident of fate—a victim to
+some deep plot the mystery of which burned him. As he stepped forward
+with a half-formed thought that she was absorbed in watching for his
+return, she turned her head and saw him. A swift start, a change rather
+than rush of blood under her white cheeks, a flashing of big eyes that
+fixed their glance upon him, transformed her face in that single
+instant of turning, and he knew she had been watching for him, that his
+return was the one thing in her mind. She did not smile; she did not
+flush; she did not look glad. All these would have meant little
+compared to her indefinite expression. Venters grasped the peculiar,
+vivid, vital something that leaped from her face. It was as if she had
+been in a dead, hopeless clamp of inaction and feeling, and had been
+suddenly shot through and through with quivering animation. Almost it
+was as if she had returned to life.
+
+And Venters thought with lightning swiftness, “I’ve saved her—I’ve
+unlinked her from that old life—she was watching as if I were all she
+had left on earth—she belongs to me!” The thought was startlingly new.
+Like a blow it was in an unprepared moment. The cheery salutation he
+had ready for her died unborn and he tumbled the pieces of pottery
+awkwardly on the grass while some unfamiliar, deep-seated emotion,
+mixed with pity and glad assurance of his power to succor her, held him
+dumb.
+
+“What a load you had!” she said. “Why, they’re pots and crocks! Where
+did you get them?”
+
+Venters laid down his rifle, and, filling one of the pots from his
+canteen, he placed it on the smoldering campfire.
+
+“Hope it’ll hold water,” he said, presently. “Why, there’s an enormous
+cliff-dwelling just across here. I got the pottery there. Don’t you
+think we needed something? That tin cup of mine has served to make tea,
+broth, soup—everything.”
+
+“I noticed we hadn’t a great deal to cook in.”
+
+She laughed. It was the first time. He liked that laugh, and though he
+was tempted to look at her, he did not want to show his surprise or his
+pleasure.
+
+“Will you take me over there, and all around in the valley—pretty soon,
+when I’m well?” she added.
+
+“Indeed I shall. It’s a wonderful place. Rabbits so thick you can’t
+step without kicking one out. And quail, beaver, foxes, wildcats. We’re
+in a regular den. But—haven’t you ever seen a cliff-dwelling?”
+
+“No. I’ve heard about them, though. The—the men say the Pass is full of
+old houses and ruins.”
+
+“Why, I should think you’d have run across one in all your riding
+around,” said Venters. He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully,
+and he essayed a perfectly casual manner, and pretended to be busy
+assorting pieces of pottery. She must have no cause again to suffer
+shame for curiosity of his. Yet never in all his days had he been so
+eager to hear the details of anyone’s life.
+
+“When I rode—I rode like the wind,” she replied, “and never had time to
+stop for anything.”
+
+“I remember that day I—I met you in the Pass—how dusty you were, how
+tired your horse looked. Were you always riding?”
+
+“Oh, no. Sometimes not for months, when I was shut up in the cabin.”
+
+Venters tried to subdue a hot tingling.
+
+“You were shut up, then?” he asked, carelessly.
+
+“When Oldring went away on his long trips—he was gone for months
+sometimes—he shut me up in the cabin.”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“Perhaps to keep me from running away. I always threatened that.
+Mostly, though, because the men got drunk at the villages. But they
+were always good to me. I wasn’t afraid.”
+
+“A prisoner! That must have been hard on you?”
+
+“I liked that. As long as I can remember I’ve been locked up there at
+times, and those times were the only happy ones I ever had. It’s a big
+cabin, high up on a cliff, and I could look out. Then I had dogs and
+pets I had tamed, and books. There was a spring inside, and food
+stored, and the men brought me fresh meat. Once I was there one whole
+winter.”
+
+It now required deliberation on Venters’s part to persist in his
+unconcern and to keep at work. He wanted to look at her, to volley
+questions at her.
+
+“As long as you can remember—you’ve lived in Deception Pass?” he went
+on.
+
+“I’ve a dim memory of some other place, and women and children; but I
+can’t make anything of it. Sometimes I think till I’m weary.”
+
+“Then you can read—you have books?”
+
+“Oh yes, I can read, and write, too, pretty well. Oldring is educated.
+He taught me, and years ago an old rustler lived with us, and he had
+been something different once. He was always teaching me.”
+
+“So Oldring takes long trips,” mused Venters. “Do you know where he
+goes?”
+
+“No. Every year he drives cattle north of Sterling—then does not return
+for months. I heard him accused once of living two lives—and he killed
+the man. That was at Stone Bridge.”
+
+Venters dropped his apparent task and looked up with an eagerness he no
+longer strove to hide.
+
+“Bess,” he said, using her name for the first time, “I suspected
+Oldring was something besides a rustler. Tell me, what’s his purpose
+here in the Pass? I believe much that he has done was to hide his real
+work here.”
+
+“You’re right. He’s more than a rustler. In fact, as the men say, his
+rustling cattle is now only a bluff. There’s gold in the cañons!”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“Yes, there’s gold, not in great quantities, but gold enough for him
+and his men. They wash for gold week in and week out. Then they drive a
+few cattle and go into the villages to drink and shoot and kill—to
+bluff the riders.”
+
+“Drive a few cattle! But, Bess, the Withersteen herd, the red
+herd—twenty-five hundred head! That’s not a few. And I tracked them
+into a valley near here.”
+
+“Oldring never stole the red herd. He made a deal with Mormons. The
+riders were to be called in, and Oldring was to drive the herd and keep
+it till a certain time—I won’t know when—then drive it back to the
+range. What his share was I didn’t hear.”
+
+“Did you hear _why_ that deal was made?” queried Venters.
+
+“No. But it was a trick of Mormons. They’re full of tricks. I’ve heard
+Oldring’s men tell about Mormons. Maybe the Withersteen woman wasn’t
+minding her halter! I saw the man who made the deal. He was a little,
+queer-shaped man, all humped up. He sat his horse well. I heard one of
+our men say afterward there was no better rider on the sage than this
+fellow. What was the name? I forget.”
+
+“Jerry Card?” suggested Venters.
+
+“That’s it. I remember—it’s a name easy to remember—and Jerry Card
+appeared to be on fair terms with Oldring’s men.”
+
+“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Venters, thoughtfully. Verification of
+his suspicions in regard to Tull’s underhand work—for the deal with
+Oldring made by Jerry Card assuredly had its inception in the Mormon
+Elder’s brain, and had been accomplished through his orders—revived in
+Venters a memory of hatred that had been smothered by press of other
+emotions. Only a few days had elapsed since the hour of his encounter
+with Tull, yet they had been forgotten and now seemed far off, and the
+interval one that now appeared large and profound with incalculable
+change in his feelings. Hatred of Tull still existed in his heart, but
+it had lost its white heat. His affection for Jane Withersteen had not
+changed in the least; nevertheless, he seemed to view it from another
+angle and see it as another thing—what, he could not exactly define.
+The recalling of these two feelings was to Venters like getting
+glimpses into a self that was gone; and the wonder of them—perhaps the
+change which was too illusive for him—was the fact that a strange
+irritation accompanied the memory and a desire to dismiss it from mind.
+And straightway he did dismiss it, to return to thoughts of his
+significant present.
+
+“Bess, tell me one more thing,” he said. “Haven’t you known any
+women—any young people?”
+
+“Sometimes there were women with the men; but Oldring never let me know
+them. And all the young people I ever saw in my life was when I rode
+fast through the villages.”
+
+Perhaps that was the most puzzling and thought-provoking thing she had
+yet said to Venters. He pondered, more curious the more he learned, but
+he curbed his inquisitive desires, for he saw her shrinking on the
+verge of that shame, the causing of which had occasioned him such
+self-reproach. He would ask no more. Still he had to think, and he
+found it difficult to think clearly. This sad-eyed girl was so utterly
+different from what it would have been reason to believe such a
+remarkable life would have made her. On this day he had found her
+simple and frank, as natural as any girl he had ever known. About her
+there was something sweet. Her voice was low and well modulated. He
+could not look into her face, meet her steady, unabashed, yet wistful
+eyes, and think of her as the woman she had confessed herself.
+Oldring’s Masked Rider sat before him, a girl dressed as a man. She had
+been made to ride at the head of infamous forays and drives. She had
+been imprisoned for many months of her life in an obscure cabin. At
+times the most vicious of men had been her companions; and the vilest
+of women, if they had not been permitted to approach her, had, at
+least, cast their shadows over her. But—but in spite of all this—there
+thundered at Venters some truth that lifted its voice higher than the
+clamoring facts of dishonor, some truth that was the very life of her
+beautiful eyes; and it was innocence.
+
+In the days that followed, Venters balanced perpetually in mind this
+haunting conception of innocence over against the cold and sickening
+fact of an unintentional yet actual gift. How could it be possible for
+the two things to be true? He believed the latter to be true, and he
+would not relinquish his conviction of the former; and these
+conflicting thoughts augmented the mystery that appeared to be a part
+of Bess. In those ensuing days, however, it became clear as clearest
+light that Bess was rapidly regaining strength; that, unless reminded
+of her long association with Oldring, she seemed to have forgotten it;
+that, like an Indian who lives solely from moment to moment, she was
+utterly absorbed in the present.
+
+Day by day Venters watched the white of her face slowly change to
+brown, and the wasted cheeks fill out by imperceptible degrees. There
+came a time when he could just trace the line of demarcation between
+the part of her face once hidden by a mask and that left exposed to
+wind and sun. When that line disappeared in clear bronze tan it was as
+if she had been washed clean of the stigma of Oldring’s Masked Rider.
+The suggestion of the mask always made Venters remember; now that it
+was gone he seldom thought of her past. Occasionally he tried to piece
+together the several stages of strange experience and to make a whole.
+He had shot a masked outlaw the very sight of whom had been ill omen to
+riders; he had carried off a wounded woman whose bloody lips quivered
+in prayer; he had nursed what seemed a frail, shrunken boy; and now he
+watched a girl whose face had become strangely sweet, whose dark-blue
+eyes were ever upon him without boldness, without shyness, but with a
+steady, grave, and growing light. Many times Venters found the clear
+gaze embarrassing to him, yet, like wine, it had an exhilarating
+effect. What did she think when she looked at him so? Almost he
+believed she had no thought at all. All about her and the present there
+in Surprise Valley, and the dim yet subtly impending future, fascinated
+Venters and made him thoughtful as all his lonely vigils in the sage
+had not.
+
+Chiefly it was the present that he wished to dwell upon; but it was the
+call of the future which stirred him to action. No idea had he of what
+that future had in store for Bess and him. He began to think of
+improving Surprise Valley as a place to live in, for there was no
+telling how long they would be compelled to stay there. Venters
+stubbornly resisted the entering into his mind of an insistent thought
+that, clearly realized, might have made it plain to him that he did not
+want to leave Surprise Valley at all. But it was imperative that he
+consider practical matters; and whether or not he was destined to stay
+long there, he felt the immediate need of a change of diet. It would be
+necessary for him to go farther afield for a variety of meat, and also
+that he soon visit Cottonwoods for a supply of food.
+
+It occurred again to Venters that he could go to the cañon where
+Oldring kept his cattle, and at little risk he could pack out some
+beef. He wished to do this, however, without letting Bess know of it
+till after he had made the trip. Presently he hit upon the plan of
+going while she was asleep.
+
+That very night he stole out of camp, climbed up under the stone
+bridge, and entered the outlet to the Pass. The gorge was full of
+luminous gloom. Balancing Rock loomed dark and leaned over the pale
+descent. Transformed in the shadowy light, it took shape and dimensions
+of a spectral god waiting—waiting for the moment to hurl himself down
+upon the tottering walls and close forever the outlet to Deception
+Pass. At night more than by day Venters felt something fearful and
+fateful in that rock, and that it had leaned and waited through a
+thousand years to have somehow to deal with his destiny.
+
+“Old man, if you must roll, wait till I get back to the girl, and then
+roll!” he said, aloud, as if the stones were indeed a god.
+
+And those spoken words, in their grim note to his ear, as well as
+contents to his mind, told Venters that he was all but drifting on a
+current which he had not power nor wish to stem.
+
+Venters exercised his usual care in the matter of hiding tracks from
+the outlet, yet it took him scarcely an hour to reach Oldring’s cattle.
+Here sight of many calves changed his original intention, and instead
+of packing out meat he decided to take a calf out alive. He roped one,
+securely tied its feet, and swung it over his shoulder. Here was an
+exceedingly heavy burden, but Venters was powerful—he could take up a
+sack of grain and with ease pitch it over a pack-saddle—and he made
+long distance without resting. The hardest work came in the climb up to
+the outlet and on through to the valley. When he had accomplished it,
+he became fired with another idea that again changed his intention. He
+would not kill the calf, but keep it alive. He would go back to
+Oldring’s herd and pack out more calves. Thereupon he secured the calf
+in the best available spot for the moment and turned to make a second
+trip.
+
+When Venters got back to the valley with another calf, it was close
+upon daybreak. He crawled into his cave and slept late. Bess had no
+inkling that he had been absent from camp nearly all night, and only
+remarked solicitously that he appeared to be more tired than usual, and
+more in the need of sleep. In the afternoon Venters built a gate across
+a small ravine near camp, and here corralled the calves; and he
+succeeded in completing his task without Bess being any the wiser.
+
+That night he made two more trips to Oldring’s range, and again on the
+following night, and yet another on the next. With eight calves in his
+corral, he concluded that he had enough; but it dawned upon him then
+that he did not want to kill one. “I’ve rustled Oldring’s cattle,” he
+said, and laughed. He noted then that all the calves were red. “Red!”
+he exclaimed. “From the red herd. I’ve stolen Jane Withersteen’s
+cattle!... That’s about the strangest thing yet.”
+
+One more trip he undertook to Oldring’s valley, and this time he roped
+a yearling steer and killed it and cut out a small quarter of beef. The
+howling of coyotes told him he need have no apprehension that the work
+of his knife would be discovered. He packed the beef back to camp and
+hung it upon a spruce-tree. Then he sought his bed.
+
+On the morrow he was up bright and early, glad that he had a surprise
+for Bess. He could hardly wait for her to come out. Presently she
+appeared and walked under the spruce. Then she approached the
+camp-fire. There was a tinge of healthy red in the bronze of her
+cheeks, and her slender form had begun to round out in graceful lines.
+
+“Bess, didn’t you say you were tired of rabbit?” inquired Venters. “And
+quail and beaver?”
+
+“Indeed I did.”
+
+“What would you like?”
+
+“I’m tired of meat, but if we have to live on it I’d like some beef.”
+
+“Well, how does that strike you?” Venters pointed to the quarter
+hanging from the spruce-tree. “We’ll have fresh beef for a few days,
+then we’ll cut the rest into strips and dry it.”
+
+“Where did you get that?” asked Bess, slowly.
+
+“I stole that from Oldring.”
+
+“You went back to the cañon—you risked—” While she hesitated the tinge
+of bloom faded out of her cheeks.
+
+“It wasn’t any risk, but it was hard work.”
+
+“I’m sorry I said I was tired of rabbit. Why! How—When did you get that
+beef?”
+
+“Last night.”
+
+“While I was asleep?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I woke last night sometime—but I didn’t know.”
+
+Her eyes were widening, darkening with thought, and whenever they did
+so the steady, watchful, seeing gaze gave place to the wistful light.
+In the former she saw as the primitive woman without thought; in the
+latter she looked inward, and her gaze was the reflection of a troubled
+mind. For long Venters had not seen that dark change, that deepening of
+blue, which he thought was beautiful and sad. But now he wanted to make
+her think.
+
+“I’ve done more than pack in that beef,” he said. “For five nights I’ve
+been working while you slept. I’ve got eight calves corralled near a
+ravine. Eight calves, all alive and doing fine!”
+
+“You went five nights!”
+
+All that Venters could make of the dilation of her eyes, her slow
+pallor, and her exclamation, was fear—fear for herself or for him.
+
+“Yes. I didn’t tell you, because I knew you were afraid to be left
+alone.”
+
+“Alone?” She echoed his word, but the meaning of it was nothing to her.
+She had not even thought of being left alone. It was not, then, fear
+for herself, but for him. This girl, always slow of speech and action,
+now seemed almost stupid. She put forth a hand that might have
+indicated the groping of her mind. Suddenly she stepped swiftly to him,
+with a look and touch that drove from him any doubt of her quick
+intelligence or feeling.
+
+“Oldring has men watch the herds—they would kill you. You must never go
+again!”
+
+When she had spoken, the strength and the blaze of her died, and she
+swayed toward Venters.
+
+“_Bess, I’ll not go again_,” he said, catching her.
+
+
+[Illustration: “Bess, I’ll not go again”]
+
+
+She leaned against him, and her body was limp and vibrated to a long,
+wavering tremble. Her face was upturned to his. Woman’s face, woman’s
+eyes, woman’s lips—all acutely and blindly and sweetly and terribly
+truthful in their betrayal! But as her fear was instinctive, so was her
+clinging to this one and only friend.
+
+Venters gently put her from him and steadied her upon her feet; and all
+the while his blood raced wild, and a thrilling tingle unsteadied his
+nerve, and something—that he had seen and felt in her—that he could not
+understand—seemed very close to him, warm and rich as a fragrant
+breath, sweet as nothing had ever before been sweet to him.
+
+With all his will Venters strove for calmness and thought and judgment
+unbiased by pity, and reality unswayed by sentiment. Bess’s eyes were
+still fixed upon him with all her soul bright in that wistful light.
+Swiftly, resolutely he put out of mind all of her life except what had
+been spent with him. He scorned himself for the intelligence that made
+him still doubt. He meant to judge her as she had judged him. He was
+face to face with the inevitableness of life itself. He saw destiny in
+the dark, straight path of her wonderful eyes. Here was the simplicity,
+the sweetness of a girl contending with new and strange and enthralling
+emotions here the living truth of innocence; here the blind terror of a
+woman confronted with the thought of death to her savior and protector.
+All this Venters saw, but, besides, there was in Bess’s eyes a
+slow-dawning consciousness that seemed about to break out in glorious
+radiance.
+
+“Bess, are you thinking?” he asked.
+
+“Yes—oh yes!”
+
+“Do you realize we are here alone—man and woman?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Have you thought that we may make our way out to civilization, or we
+may have to stay here—alone—hidden from the world all our lives?”
+
+“I never thought—till now.”
+
+“Well, what’s your choice—to go—or to stay here—alone with me?”
+
+“Stay!” New-born thought of self, ringing vibrantly in her voice, gave
+her answer singular power.
+
+Venters trembled, and then swiftly turned his gaze from her face—from
+her eyes. He knew what she had only half divined—that she loved him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+FAITH AND UNFAITH
+
+
+At Jane Withersteen’s home the promise made to Mrs. Larkin to care for
+little Fay had begun to be fulfilled. Like a gleam of sunlight through
+the cottonwoods was the coming of the child to the gloomy house of
+Withersteen. The big, silent halls echoed with childish laughter. In
+the shady court, where Jane spent many of the hot July days, Fay’s tiny
+feet pattered over the stone flags and splashed in the amber stream.
+She prattled incessantly. What difference, Jane thought, a child made
+in her home! It had never been a real home, she discovered. Even the
+tidiness and neatness she had so observed, and upon which she had
+insisted to her women, became, in the light of Fay’s smile, habits that
+now lost their importance. Fay littered the court with Jane’s books and
+papers, and other toys her fancy improvised, and many a strange craft
+went floating down the little brook.
+
+And it was owing to Fay’s presence that Jane Withersteen came to see
+more of Lassiter. The rider had for the most part kept to the sage. He
+rode for her, but he did not seek her except on business; and Jane had
+to acknowledge in pique that her overtures had been made in vain. Fay,
+however, captured Lassiter the moment he first laid eyes on her.
+
+Jane was present at the meeting, and there was something about it which
+dimmed her sight and softened her toward this foe of her people. The
+rider had clanked into the court, a tired yet wary man, always looking
+for the attack upon him that was inevitable and might come from any
+quarter; and he had walked right upon little Fay. The child had been
+beautiful even in her rags and amid the surroundings of the hovel in
+the sage, but now, in a pretty white dress, with her shining curls
+brushed and her face clean and rosy, she was lovely. She left her play
+and looked up at Lassiter.
+
+If there was not an instinct for all three of them in that meeting, an
+unreasoning tendency toward a closer intimacy, then Jane Withersteen
+believed she had been subject to a queer fancy. She imagined any child
+would have feared Lassiter. And Fay Larkin had been a lonely, a
+solitary elf of the sage, not at all an ordinary child, and exquisitely
+shy with strangers. She watched Lassiter with great, round, grave eyes,
+but showed no fear. The rider gave Jane a favorable report of cattle
+and horses; and as he took the seat to which she invited him, little
+Fay edged as much as half an inch nearer. Jane replied to his look of
+inquiry and told Fay’s story. The rider’s gray, earnest gaze troubled
+her. Then he turned to Fay and smiled in a way that made Jane doubt her
+sense of the true relation of things. How could Lassiter smile so at a
+child when he had made so many children fatherless? But he did smile,
+and to the gentleness she had seen a few times he added something that
+was infinitely sad and sweet. Jane’s intuition told her that Lassiter
+had never been a father, but if life ever so blessed him he would be a
+good one. Fay, also, must have found that smile singularly winning. For
+she edged closer and closer, and then, by way of feminine capitulation,
+went to Jane, from whose side she bent a beautiful glance upon the
+rider.
+
+Lassiter only smiled at her.
+
+Jane watched them, and realized that now was the moment she should
+seize, if she was ever to win this man from his hatred. But the step
+was not easy to take. The more she saw of Lassiter the more she
+respected him, and the greater her respect the harder it became to lend
+herself to mere coquetry. Yet as she thought of her great motive, of
+Tull, and of that other whose name she had schooled herself never to
+think of in connection with Milly Erne’s avenger, she suddenly found
+she had no choice. And her creed gave her boldness far beyond the limit
+to which vanity would have led her.
+
+“Lassiter, I see so little of you now,” she said, and was conscious of
+heat in her cheeks.
+
+“I’ve been riding hard,” he replied.
+
+“But you can’t live in the saddle. You come in sometimes. Won’t you
+come here to see me—oftener?”
+
+“Is that an order?”
+
+“Nonsense! I simply ask you to come to see me when you find time.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+The query once heard was not so embarrassing to Jane as she might have
+imagined. Moreover, it established in her mind a fact that there
+existed actually other than selfish reasons for her wanting to see him.
+And as she had been bold, so she determined to be both honest and
+brave.
+
+“I’ve reasons—only one of which I need mention,” she answered. “If it’s
+possible I want to change you toward my people. And on the moment I can
+conceive of little I wouldn’t do to gain that end.”
+
+How much better and freer Jane felt after that confession! She meant to
+show him that there was one Mormon who could play a game or wage a
+fight in the open.
+
+“I reckon,” said Lassiter, and he laughed.
+
+It was the best in her, if the most irritating, that Lassiter always
+aroused.
+
+“Will you come?” She looked into his eyes, and for the life of her
+could not quite subdue an imperiousness that rose with her spirit. “I
+never asked so much of any man—except Bern Venters.”
+
+“’Pears to me that you’d run no risk, or Venters, either. But mebbe
+that doesn’t hold good for me.”
+
+“You mean it wouldn’t be safe for you to be often here? You look for
+ambush in the cottonwoods?”
+
+“Not that so much.”
+
+At this juncture little Fay sidled over to Lassiter.
+
+“Has oo a little dirl?” she inquired.
+
+“No, lassie,” replied the rider.
+
+Whatever Fay seemed to be searching for in Lassiter’s sun-reddened face
+and quiet eyes she evidently found. “Oo tan tom to see me,” she added,
+and with that, shyness gave place to friendly curiosity. First his
+sombrero with its leather band and silver ornaments commanded her
+attention; next his quirt, and then the clinking, silver spurs. These
+held her for some time, but presently, true to childish fickleness, she
+left off playing with them to look for something else. She laughed in
+glee as she ran her little hands down the slippery, shiny surface of
+Lassiter’s leather chaps. Soon she discovered one of the hanging
+gun—sheaths, and she dragged it up and began tugging at the huge black
+handle of the gun. Jane Withersteen repressed an exclamation. What
+significance there was to her in the little girl’s efforts to dislodge
+that heavy weapon! Jane Withersteen saw Fay’s play and her beauty and
+her love as most powerful allies to her own woman’s part in a game that
+suddenly had acquired a strange zest and a hint of danger. And as for
+the rider, he appeared to have forgotten Jane in the wonder of this
+lovely child playing about him. At first he was much the shyer of the
+two. Gradually her confidence overcame his backwardness, and he had the
+temerity to stroke her golden curls with a great hand. Fay rewarded his
+boldness with a smile, and when he had gone to the extreme of closing
+that great hand over her little brown one, she said, simply, “I like
+oo!”
+
+Sight of his face then made Jane oblivious for the time to his
+character as a hater of Mormons. Out of the mother longing that swelled
+her breast she divined the child hunger in Lassiter.
+
+He returned the next day, and the next; and upon the following he came
+both at morning and at night. Upon the evening of this fourth day Jane
+seemed to feel the breaking of a brooding struggle in Lassiter. During
+all these visits he had scarcely a word to say, though he watched her
+and played absent-mindedly with Fay. Jane had contented herself with
+silence. Soon little Fay substituted for the expression of regard, “I
+like oo,” a warmer and more generous one, “I love oo.”
+
+Thereafter Lassiter came oftener to see Jane and her little protégée.
+Daily he grew more gentle and kind, and gradually developed a quaintly
+merry mood. In the morning he lifted Fay upon his horse and let her
+ride as he walked beside her to the edge of the sage. In the evening he
+played with the child at an infinite variety of games she invented, and
+then, oftener than not, he accepted Jane’s invitation to supper. No
+other visitor came to Withersteen House during those days. So that in
+spite of watchfulness he never forgot, Lassiter began to show he felt
+at home there. After the meal they walked into the grove of cottonwoods
+or up by the lakes, and little Fay held Lassiter’s hand as much as she
+held Jane’s. Thus a strange relationship was established, and Jane
+liked it. At twilight they always returned to the house, where Fay
+kissed them and went in to her mother. Lassiter and Jane were left
+alone.
+
+Then, if there were anything that a good woman could do to win a man
+and still preserve her self-respect, it was something which escaped the
+natural subtlety of a woman determined to allure. Jane’s vanity, that
+after all was not great, was soon satisfied with Lassiter’s silent
+admiration. And her honest desire to lead him from his dark,
+blood-stained path would never have blinded her to what she owed
+herself. But the driving passion of her religion, and its call to save
+Mormons’ lives, one life in particular, bore Jane Withersteen close to
+an infringement of her womanhood. In the beginning she had reasoned
+that her appeal to Lassiter must be through the senses. With whatever
+means she possessed in the way of adornment she enhanced her beauty.
+And she stooped to artifices that she knew were unworthy of her, but
+which she deliberately chose to employ. She made of herself a girl in
+every variable mood wherein a girl might be desirable. In those moods
+she was not above the methods of an inexperienced though natural flirt.
+She kept close to him whenever opportunity afforded; and she was
+forever playfully, yet passionately underneath the surface, fighting
+him for possession of the great black guns. These he would never yield
+to her. And so in that manner their hands were often and long in
+contact. The more of simplicity that she sensed in him the greater the
+advantage she took.
+
+She had a trick of changing—and it was not altogether voluntary—from
+this gay, thoughtless, girlish coquettishness to the silence and the
+brooding, burning mystery of a woman’s mood. The strength and passion
+and fire of her were in her eyes, and she so used them that Lassiter
+had to see this depth in her, this haunting promise more fitted to her
+years than to the flaunting guise of a wilful girl.
+
+The July days flew by. Jane reasoned that if it were possible for her
+to be happy during such a time, then she was happy. Little Fay
+completely filled a long aching void in her heart. In fettering the
+hands of this Lassiter she was accomplishing the greatest good of her
+life, and to do good even in a small way rendered happiness to Jane
+Withersteen. She had attended the regular Sunday services of her
+church; otherwise she had not gone to the village for weeks. It was
+unusual that none of her churchmen or friends had called upon her of
+late; but it was neglect for which she was glad. Judkins and his boy
+riders had experienced no difficulty in driving the white herd. So
+these warm July days were free of worry, and soon Jane hoped she had
+passed the crisis; and for her to hope was presently to trust, and then
+to believe. She thought often of Venters, but in a dreamy, abstract
+way. She spent hours teaching and playing with little Fay. And the
+activity of her mind centered around Lassiter. The direction she had
+given her will seemed to blunt any branching off of thought from that
+straight line. The mood came to obsess her.
+
+In the end, when her awakening came, she learned that she had builded
+better than she knew. Lassiter, though kinder and gentler than ever,
+had parted with his quaint humor and his coldness and his tranquillity
+to become a restless and unhappy man. Whatever the power of his deadly
+intent toward Mormons, that passion now had a rival, the one equally
+burning and consuming. Jane Withersteen had one moment of exultation
+before the dawn of a strange uneasiness. What if she had made of
+herself a lure, at tremendous cost to him and to her, and all in vain!
+
+That night in the moonlit grove she summoned all her courage and,
+turning suddenly in the path, she faced Lassiter and leaned close to
+him, so that she touched him and her eyes looked up to his.
+
+“Lassiter!... Will you do anything for me?”
+
+In the moonlight she saw his dark, worn face change, and by that change
+she seemed to feel him immovable as a wall of stone.
+
+Jane slipped her hands down to the swinging gun-sheaths, and when she
+had locked her fingers around the huge, cold handles of the guns, she
+trembled as with a chilling ripple over all her body.
+
+“May I take your guns?”
+
+“Why?” he asked, and for the first time to her his voice carried a
+harsh note. Jane felt his hard, strong hands close round her wrists. It
+was not wholly with intent that she leaned toward him, for the look of
+his eyes and the feel of his hands made her weak.
+
+“It’s no trifle—no woman’s whim—it’s deep—as my heart. Let me take
+them?”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I want to keep you from killing more men—Mormons. You must let me save
+you from more wickedness—more wanton bloodshed—” Then the truth forced
+itself falteringly from her lips. “You must—let—help me to keep my vow
+to Milly Erne. I swore to her—as she lay dying—that if ever any one
+came here to avenge her—I swore I would stay his hand. Perhaps I—I
+alone can save the—the man who—who—Oh, Lassiter!... I feel that I can’t
+change you—then soon you’ll be out to kill—and you’ll kill by
+instinct—and among the Mormons you kill will be the one—who...
+Lassiter, if you care a little for me—let me—for my sake—let me take
+your guns!”
+
+As if her hands had been those of a child, he unclasped their clinging
+grip from the handles of his guns, and, pushing her away, he turned his
+gray face to her in one look of terrible realization and then strode
+off into the shadows of the cottonwoods.
+
+When the first shock of her futile appeal to Lassiter had passed, Jane
+took his cold, silent condemnation and abrupt departure not so much as
+a refusal to her entreaty as a hurt and stunned bitterness for her
+attempt at his betrayal. Upon further thought and slow consideration of
+Lassiter’s past actions, she believed he would return and forgive her.
+The man could not be hard to a woman, and she doubted that he could
+stay away from her. But at the point where she had hoped to find him
+vulnerable she now began to fear he was proof against all persuasion.
+The iron and stone quality that she had early suspected in him had
+actually cropped out as an impregnable barrier. Nevertheless, if
+Lassiter remained in Cottonwoods she would never give up her hope and
+desire to change him. She would change him if she had to sacrifice
+everything dear to her except hope of heaven. Passionately devoted as
+she was to her religion, she had yet refused to marry a Mormon. But a
+situation had developed wherein self paled in the great white light of
+religious duty of the highest order. That was the leading motive, the
+divinely spiritual one; but there were other motives, which, like
+tentacles, aided in drawing her will to the acceptance of a possible
+abnegation. And through the watches of that sleepless night Jane
+Withersteen, in fear and sorrow and doubt, came finally to believe that
+if she must throw herself into Lassiter’s arms to make him abide by
+“Thou shalt not kill!” she would yet do well.
+
+In the morning she expected Lassiter at the usual hour, but she was not
+able to go at once to the court, so she sent little Fay. Mrs. Larkin
+was ill and required attention. It appeared that the mother, from the
+time of her arrival at Withersteen House, had relaxed and was slowly
+losing her hold on life. Jane had believed that absence of worry and
+responsibility coupled with good nursing and comfort would mend Mrs.
+Larkin’s broken health. Such, however, was not the case.
+
+When Jane did get out to the court, Fay was there alone, and at the
+moment embarking on a dubious voyage down the stone-lined amber stream
+upon a craft of two brooms and a pillow. Fay was as delightfully wet as
+she could possibly wish to get.
+
+Clatter of hoofs distracted Fay and interrupted the scolding she was
+gleefully receiving from Jane. The sound was not the light-spirited
+trot that Bells made when Lassiter rode him into the outer court. This
+was slower and heavier, and Jane did not recognize in it any of her
+other horses. The appearance of Bishop Dyer startled Jane. He
+dismounted with his rapid, jerky motion flung the bridle, and, as he
+turned toward the inner court and stalked up on the stone flags, his
+boots rang. In his authoritative front, and in the red anger
+unmistakably flaming in his face, he reminded Jane of her father.
+
+“Is that the Larkin pauper?” he asked, bruskly, without any greeting to
+Jane.
+
+“It’s Mrs. Larkin’s little girl,” replied Jane, slowly.
+
+“I hear you intend to raise the child?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Of course you mean to give her Mormon bringing-up?”
+
+“No.”
+
+His questions had been swift. She was amazed at a feeling that some one
+else was replying for her.
+
+“I’ve come to say a few things to you.” He stopped to measure her with
+stern, speculative eye.
+
+Jane Withersteen loved this man. From earliest childhood she had been
+taught to revere and love bishops of her church. And for ten years
+Bishop Dyer had been the closest friend and counselor of her father,
+and for the greater part of that period her own friend and Scriptural
+teacher. Her interpretation of her creed and her religious activity in
+fidelity to it, her acceptance of mysterious and holy Mormon truths,
+were all invested in this Bishop. Bishop Dyer as an entity was next to
+God. He was God’s mouthpiece to the little Mormon community at
+Cottonwoods. God revealed himself in secret to this mortal.
+
+And Jane Withersteen suddenly suffered a paralyzing affront to her
+consciousness of reverence by some strange, irresistible twist of
+thought wherein she saw this Bishop as a man. And the train of thought
+hurdled the rising, crying protests of that other self whose poise she
+had lost. It was not her Bishop who eyed her in curious measurement. It
+was a man who tramped into her presence without removing his hat, who
+had no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks, as
+in action, he made her think of a bull stamping cross-grained into a
+corral. She had heard of Bishop Dyer forgetting the minister in the
+fury of a common man, and now she was to feel it. The glance by which
+she measured him in turn momentarily veiled the divine in the ordinary.
+He looked a rancher; he was booted, spurred, and covered with dust; he
+carried a gun at his hip, and she remembered that he had been known to
+use it. But during the long moment while he watched her there was
+nothing commonplace in the slow-gathering might of his wrath.
+
+“Brother Tull has talked to me,” he began. “It was your father’s wish
+that you marry Tull, and my order. You refused him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You would not give up your friendship with that tramp Venters?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“But you’ll do as _I_ order!” he thundered. “Why, Jane Withersteen, you
+are in danger of becoming a heretic! You can thank your Gentile friends
+for that. You face the damning of your soul to perdition.”
+
+In the flux and reflux of the whirling torture of Jane’s mind, that
+new, daring spirit of hers vanished in the old habitual order of her
+life. She was a Mormon, and the Bishop regained ascendance.
+
+“It’s well I got you in time, Jane Withersteen. What would your father
+have said to these goings-on of yours? He would have put you in a stone
+cage on bread and water. He would have taught you something about
+Mormonism. Remember, you’re a _born_ Mormon. There have been Mormons
+who turned heretic—damn their souls!—but no born Mormon ever left us
+yet. Ah, I see your shame. Your faith is not shaken. You are only a
+wild girl.” The Bishop’s tone softened. “Well, it’s enough that I got
+to you in time.... Now tell me about this Lassiter. I hear strange
+things.”
+
+“What do you wish to know?” queried Jane.
+
+“About this man. You hired him?”
+
+“Yes, he’s riding for me. When my riders left me I had to have any one
+I could get.”
+
+“Is it true what I hear—that he’s a gun-man, a Mormon-hater, steeped in
+blood?”
+
+“True—terribly true, I fear.”
+
+“But what’s he doing here in Cottonwoods? This place isn’t notorious
+enough for such a man. Sterling and the villages north, where there’s
+universal gun-packing and fights every day—where there are more men
+like him, it seems to me they would attract him most. We’re only a
+wild, lonely border settlement. It’s only recently that the rustlers
+have made killings here. Nor have there been saloons till lately, nor
+the drifting in of outcasts. Has not this gun-man some special mission
+here?”
+
+Jane maintained silence.
+
+“Tell me,” ordered Bishop Dyer, sharply.
+
+“Yes,” she replied.
+
+“Do you know what it is?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Tell me that.”
+
+“Bishop Dyer, I don’t want to tell.”
+
+He waved his hand in an imperative gesture of command. The red once
+more leaped to his face, and in his steel-blue eyes glinted a pin-point
+of curiosity.
+
+“That first day,” whispered Jane, “Lassiter said he came here to
+find—Milly Erne’s grave!”
+
+With downcast eyes Jane watched the swift flow of the amber water. She
+saw it and tried to think of it, of the stones, of the ferns; but, like
+her body, her mind was in a leaden vise. Only the Bishop’s voice could
+release her. Seemingly there was silence of longer duration than all
+her former life.
+
+“For what—else?” When Bishop Dyer’s voice did cleave the silence it was
+high, curiously shrill, and on the point of breaking. It released
+Jane’s tongue, but she could not lift her eyes.
+
+“To kill the man who persuaded Milly Erne to abandon her home and her
+husband—and her God!”
+
+With wonderful distinctness Jane Withersteen heard her own clear voice.
+She heard the water murmur at her feet and flow on to the sea; she
+heard the rushing of all the waters in the world. They filled her ears
+with low, unreal murmurings—these sounds that deadened her brain and
+yet could not break the long and terrible silence. Then, from
+somewhere—from an immeasurable distance—came a slow, guarded, clinking,
+clanking step. Into her it shot electrifying life. It released the
+weight upon her numbed eyelids. Lifting her eyes she saw—ashen, shaken,
+stricken—not the Bishop but the man! And beyond him, from round the
+corner came that soft, silvery step. A long black boot with a gleaming
+spur swept into sight—and then Lassiter! Bishop Dyer did not see, did
+not hear: he stared at Jane in the throes of sudden revelation.
+
+“Ah, I understand!” he cried, in hoarse accents. “That’s why you made
+love to this Lassiter—to bind his hands!”
+
+It was Jane’s gaze riveted upon the rider that made Bishop Dyer turn.
+Then clear sight failed her. Dizzily, in a blur, she saw the Bishop’s
+hand jerk to his hip. She saw gleam of blue and spout of red. In her
+ears burst a thundering report. The court floated in darkening circles
+around her, and she fell into utter blackness.
+
+
+[Illustration: It was Jane’s gaze riveted upon the rider that made
+Bishop Dyer turn.]
+
+
+The darkness lightened, turned to slow-drifting haze, and lifted.
+Through a thin film of blue smoke she saw the rough-hewn timbers of the
+court roof. A cool, damp touch moved across her brow. She smelled
+powder, and it was that which galvanized her suspended thought. She
+moved, to see that she lay prone upon the stone flags with her head on
+Lassiter’s knee, and he was bathing her brow with water from the
+stream. The same swift glance, shifting low, brought into range of her
+sight a smoking gun and splashes of blood.
+
+“_Ah-h!_” she moaned, and was drifting, sinking again into darkness,
+when Lassiter’s voice arrested her.
+
+“It’s all right, Jane. It’s all right.”
+
+“Did—you—kill—him?” she whispered.
+
+“Who? That fat party who was here? No. I didn’t kill him.”
+
+“Oh!... Lassiter!”
+
+“Say! It was queer for you to faint. I thought you were such a strong
+woman, not faintish like that. You’re all right now—only some pale. I
+thought you’d never come to. But I’m awkward round women folks. I
+couldn’t think of anythin’.”
+
+“Lassiter!... the gun there!... the blood!”
+
+“So that’s troublin’ you. I reckon it needn’t. You see it was this way.
+I come round the house an’ seen that fat party an’ heard him talkin’
+loud. Then he seen me, an’ very impolite goes straight for his gun. He
+oughtn’t have tried to throw a gun on me—whatever his reason was. For
+that’s meetin’ me on my own grounds. I’ve seen runnin’ molasses that
+was quicker’n him. Now I didn’t know who he was, visitor or friend or
+relation of yours, though I seen he was a Mormon all over, an’ I
+couldn’t get serious about shootin’. So I winged him—put a bullet
+through his arm as he was pullin’ at his gun. An’ he dropped the gun
+there, an’ a little blood. I told him he’d introduced himself
+sufficient, an’ to please move out of my vicinity. An’ he went.”
+
+Lassiter spoke with slow, cool, soothing voice, in which there was a
+hint of levity, and his touch, as he continued to bathe her brow, was
+gentle and steady. His impassive face, and the kind gray eyes, further
+stilled her agitation.
+
+“He drew on you first, and you deliberately shot to cripple him—you
+wouldn’t kill him—you—_Lassiter?_”
+
+“That’s about the size of it.”
+
+Jane kissed his hand.
+
+All that was calm and cool about Lassiter instantly vanished.
+
+“Don’t do that! I won’t stand it! An’ I don’t care a damn who that fat
+party was.”
+
+He helped Jane to her feet and to a chair. Then with the wet scarf he
+had used to bathe her face he wiped the blood from the stone flags and,
+picking up the gun, he threw it upon a couch. With that he began to
+pace the court, and his silver spurs jangled musically, and the great
+gun-sheaths softly brushed against his leather chaps.
+
+“So—it’s true—what I heard him say?” Lassiter asked, presently halting
+before her. “You made love to me—to bind my hands?”
+
+“Yes,” confessed Jane. It took all her woman’s courage to meet the gray
+storm of his glance.
+
+“All these days that you’ve been so friendly an’ like a pardner—all
+these evenin’s that have been so bewilderin’ to me—your beauty—an’—an’
+the way you looked an’ came close to me—they were woman’s tricks to
+bind my hands?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“An’ your sweetness that seemed so natural, an’ your throwin’ little
+Fay an’ me so much together—to make me love the child—all that was for
+the same reason?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Lassiter flung his arms—a strange gesture for him.
+
+“Mebbe it wasn’t much in your Mormon thinkin’, for you to play that
+game. But to ring the child in—that was hellish!”
+
+Jane’s passionate, unheeding zeal began to loom darkly.
+
+“Lassiter, whatever my intention in the beginning, Fay loves you
+dearly—and I—I’ve grown to—to like you.”
+
+“That’s powerful kind of you, now,” he said. Sarcasm and scorn made his
+voice that of a stranger. “An’ you sit there an’ look me straight in
+the eyes! You’re a wonderful strange woman, Jane Withersteen.”
+
+“I’m not ashamed, Lassiter. I told you I’d try to change you.”
+
+“Would you mind tellin’ me just what you tried?”
+
+“I tried to make you see beauty in me and be softened by it. I wanted
+you to care for me so that I could influence you. It wasn’t easy. At
+first you were stone-blind. Then I hoped you’d love little Fay, and
+through that come to feel the horror of making children fatherless.”
+
+“Jane Withersteen, either you’re a fool or noble beyond my
+understandin’. Mebbe you’re both. I know you’re blind. What you meant
+is one thing—what you _did_ was to make me love you.”
+
+“Lassiter!”
+
+“I reckon I’m a human bein’, though I never loved any one but my
+sister, Milly Erne. That was long—”
+
+“Oh, are you Milly’s brother?”
+
+“Yes, I was, an’ I loved her. There never was any one but her in my
+life till now. Didn’t I tell you that long ago I back-trailed myself
+from women? I was a Texas ranger till—till Milly left home, an’ then I
+became somethin’ else—Lassiter! For years I’ve been a lonely man set on
+one thing. I came here an’ met you. An’ now I’m not the man I was. The
+change was gradual, an’ I took no notice of it. I understand now that
+never-satisfied longin’ to see you, listen to you, watch you, feel you
+near me. It’s plain now why you were never out of my thoughts. I’ve had
+no thoughts but of you. I’ve lived an’ breathed for you. An’ now when I
+know what it means—what you’ve done—I’m burnin’ up with hell’s fire!”
+
+“Oh, Lassiter—no—no—you don’t love me that way!” Jane cased.
+
+“If that’s what love is, then I do.”
+
+“Forgive me! I didn’t mean to make you love me like that. Oh, what a
+tangle of our lives! You—Milly Erne’s brother! And I—heedless, mad to
+melt your heart toward Mormons. Lassiter, I may be wicked but not
+wicked enough to hate. If I couldn’t hate Tull, could I hate you?”
+
+“After all, Jane, mebbe you’re only blind—Mormon blind. That only can
+explain what’s close to selfishness—”
+
+“I’m not selfish. I despise the very word. If I were free—”
+
+“But you’re not free. Not free of Mormonism. An’ in playin’ this game
+with me you’ve been unfaithful.”
+
+“Un-faithful!” faltered Jane.
+
+“Yes, I said unfaithful. You’re faithful to your Bishop an’ unfaithful
+to yourself. You’re false to your womanhood an’ true to your religion.
+But for a savin’ innocence you’d have made yourself low an’
+vile—betrayin’ yourself, betrayin’ me—all to bind my hands an’ keep me
+from snuffin’ out Mormon life. It’s your damned Mormon blindness.”
+
+“Is it vile—is it blind—is it only Mormonism to save human life? No,
+Lassiter, that’s God’s law, divine, universal for all Christians.”
+
+“The blindness I mean is blindness that keeps you from seein’ the
+truth. I’ve known many good Mormons. But some are blacker than hell.
+You won’t see that even when you know it. Else, why all this blind
+passion to save the life of that—that....”
+
+Jane shut out the light, and the hands she held over her eyes trembled
+and quivered against her face.
+
+“Blind—yes, en’ let me make it clear en’ simple to you,” Lassiter went
+on, his voice losing its tone of anger. “Take, for instance, that idea
+of yours last night when you wanted my guns. It was good an’ beautiful,
+an’ showed your heart—but—why, Jane, it was crazy. Mind I’m assumin’
+that life to me is as sweet as to any other man. An’ to preserve that
+life is each man’s first an’ closest thought. Where would any man be on
+this border without guns? Where, especially, would Lassiter be? Well,
+I’d be under the sage with thousands of other men now livin’ an’ sure
+better men than me. Gun-packin’ in the West since the Civil War has
+growed into a kind of moral law. An’ out here on this border it’s the
+difference between a man an’ somethin’ not a man. Look what your takin’
+Venters’s guns from him all but made him! Why, your churchmen carry
+guns. Tull has killed a man an’ drawed on others. Your Bishop has shot
+a half dozen men, an’ it wasn’t through prayers of his that they
+recovered. An’ to-day he’d have shot me if he’d been quick enough on
+the draw. Could I walk or ride down into Cottonwoods without my guns?
+This is a wild time, Jane Withersteen, this year of our Lord eighteen
+seventy-one.”
+
+“No time—for a woman!” exclaimed Jane, brokenly. “Oh, Lassiter, I feel
+helpless—lost—and don’t know where to turn. If I _am_ blind—then—I need
+some one—a friend—you, Lassiter—more than ever!”
+
+“Well, I didn’t say nothin’ about goin’ back on you, did I?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+THE INVISIBLE HAND
+
+
+Jane received a letter from Bishop Dyer, not in his own handwriting,
+which stated that the abrupt termination of their interview had left
+him in some doubt as to her future conduct. A slight injury had
+incapacitated him from seeking another meeting at present, the letter
+went on to say, and ended with a request which was virtually a command,
+that she call upon him at once.
+
+The reading of the letter acquainted Jane Withersteen with the fact
+that something within her had all but changed. She sent no reply to
+Bishop Dyer nor did she go to see him. On Sunday she remained absent
+from the service—for the second time in years—and though she did not
+actually suffer there was a dead-lock of feelings deep within her, and
+the waiting for a balance to fall on either side was almost as bad as
+suffering. She had a gloomy expectancy of untoward circumstances, and
+with it a keen-edged curiosity to watch developments. She had a
+half-formed conviction that her future conduct—as related to her
+churchmen—was beyond her control and would be governed by their
+attitude toward her. Something was changing in her, forming, waiting
+for decision to make it a real and fixed thing. She had told Lassiter
+that she felt helpless and lost in the fateful tangle of their lives;
+and now she feared that she was approaching the same chaotic condition
+of mind in regard to her religion. It appalled her to find that she
+questioned phases of that religion. Absolute faith had been her
+serenity. Though leaving her faith unshaken, her serenity had been
+disturbed, and now it was broken by open war between her and her
+ministers. That something within her—a whisper—which she had tried in
+vain to hush had become a ringing voice, and it called to her to wait.
+She had transgressed no laws of God. Her churchmen, however invested
+with the power and the glory of a wonderful creed, however they sat in
+inexorable judgment of her, must now practice toward her the simple,
+common, Christian virtue they professed to preach, “Do unto others as
+you would have others do unto you!”
+
+Jane Withersteen, waiting in darkness of mind, remained faithful still.
+But it was darkness that must soon be pierced by light. If her faith
+were justified, if her churchmen were trying only to intimidate her,
+the fact would soon be manifest, as would their failure, and then she
+would redouble her zeal toward them and toward what had been the best
+work of her life—work for the welfare and happiness of those among whom
+she lived, Mormon and Gentile alike. If that secret, intangible power
+closed its coils round her again, if that great invisible hand moved
+here and there and everywhere, slowly paralyzing her with its mystery
+and its inconceivable sway over her affairs, then she would know beyond
+doubt that it was not chance, nor jealousy, nor intimidation, nor
+ministerial wrath at her revolt, but a cold and calculating policy
+thought out long before she was born, a dark, immutable will of whose
+empire she and all that was hers was but an atom.
+
+Then might come her ruin. Then might come her fall into black storm.
+Yet she would rise again, and to the light. God would be merciful to a
+driven woman who had lost her way.
+
+A week passed. Little Fay played and prattled and pulled at Lassiter’s
+big black guns. The rider came to Withersteen House oftener than ever.
+Jane saw a change in him, though it did not relate to his kindness and
+gentleness. He was quieter and more thoughtful. While playing with Fay
+or conversing with Jane he seemed to be possessed of another self that
+watched with cool, roving eyes, that listened, listened always as if
+the murmuring amber stream brought messages, and the moving leaves
+whispered something. Lassiter never rode Bells into the court any more,
+nor did he come by the lane or the paths. When he appeared it was
+suddenly and noiselessly out of the dark shadow of the grove.
+
+“I left Bells out in the sage,” he said, one day at the end of that
+week. “I must carry water to him.”
+
+“Why not let him drink at the trough or here?” asked Jane, quickly.
+
+“I reckon it’ll be safer for me to slip through the grove. I’ve been
+watched when I rode in from the sage.”
+
+“Watched? By whom?”
+
+“By a man who thought he was well hid. But my eyes are pretty sharp.
+An’, Jane,” he went on, almost in a whisper, “I reckon it’d be a good
+idea for us to talk low. You’re spied on here by your women.”
+
+“Lassiter!” she whispered in turn. “That’s hard to believe. My women
+love me.”
+
+“What of that?” he asked. “Of course they love you. But they’re Mormon
+women.”
+
+Jane’s old, rebellious loyalty clashed with her doubt.
+
+“I won’t believe it,” she replied, stubbornly.
+
+“Well then, just act natural an’ talk natural, an’ pretty soon—give
+them time to hear us—pretend to go over there to the table, en’ then
+quick-like make a move for the door en’ open it.”
+
+“I will,” said Jane, with heightened color. Lassiter was right; he
+never made mistakes; he would not have told her unless he positively
+knew. Yet Jane was so tenacious of faith that she had to see with her
+own eyes, and so constituted that to employ even such small deceit
+toward her women made her ashamed, and angry for her shame as well as
+theirs. Then a singular thought confronted her that made her hold up
+this simple ruse—which hurt her, though it was well justified—against
+the deceit she had wittingly and eagerly used toward Lassiter. The
+difference was staggering in its suggestion of that blindness of which
+he had accused her. Fairness and justice and mercy, that she had
+imagined were anchor-cables to hold fast her soul to righteousness had
+not been hers in the strange, biased duty that had so exalted and
+confounded her.
+
+Presently Jane began to act her little part, to laugh and play with
+Fay, to talk of horses and cattle to Lassiter. Then she made deliberate
+mention of a book in which she kept records of all pertaining to her
+stock, and she walked slowly toward the table, and when near the door
+she suddenly whirled and thrust it open. Her sharp action nearly
+knocked down a woman who had undoubtedly been listening.
+
+“Hester,” said Jane, sternly, “you may go home, and you need not come
+back.”
+
+Jane shut the door and returned to Lassiter. Standing unsteadily, she
+put her hand on his arm. She let him see that doubt had gone, and how
+this stab of disloyalty pained her.
+
+“Spies! My own women!... Oh, miserable!” she cried, with flashing,
+tearful eyes.
+
+“I hate to tell you,” he replied. By that she knew he had long spared
+her. “It’s begun again—that work in the dark.”
+
+“Nay, Lassiter—it never stopped!”
+
+So bitter certainty claimed her at last, and trust fled Withersteen
+House and fled forever. The women who owed much to Jane Withersteen
+changed not in love for her, nor in devotion to their household work,
+but they poisoned both by a thousand acts of stealth and cunning and
+duplicity. Jane broke out once and caught them in strange, stone-faced,
+unhesitating falsehood. Thereafter she broke out no more. She forgave
+them because they were driven. Poor, fettered, and sealed Hagars, how
+she pitied them! What terrible thing bound them and locked their lips,
+when they showed neither consciousness of guilt toward their
+benefactress nor distress at the slow wearing apart of long-established
+and dear ties?
+
+“The blindness again!” cried Jane Withersteen. “In my sisters as in
+me!... O God!”
+
+There came a time when no words passed between Jane and her women.
+Silently they went about their household duties, and secretly they went
+about the underhand work to which they had been bidden. The gloom of
+the house and the gloom of its mistress, which darkened even the bright
+spirit of little Fay, did not pervade these women. Happiness was not
+among them, but they were aloof from gloom. They spied and listened;
+they received and sent secret messengers; and they stole Jane’s books
+and records, and finally the papers that were deeds of her possessions.
+Through it all they were silent, rapt in a kind of trance. Then one by
+one, without leave or explanation or farewell, they left Withersteen
+House, and never returned.
+
+Coincident with this disappearance Jane’s gardeners and workers in the
+alfalfa fields and stable men quit her, not even asking for their
+wages. Of all her Mormon employees about the great ranch only Jerd
+remained. He went on with his duty, but talked no more of the change
+than if it had never occurred.
+
+“Jerd,” said Jane, “what stock you can’t take care of turn out in the
+sage. Let your first thought be for Black Star and Night. Keep them in
+perfect condition. Run them every day and watch them always.”
+
+Though Jane Withersteen gave them such liberality, she loved her
+possessions. She loved the rich, green stretches of alfalfa, and the
+farms, and the grove, and the old stone house, and the beautiful,
+ever-faithful amber spring, and every one of a myriad of horses and
+colts and burros and fowls down to the smallest rabbit that nipped her
+vegetables; but she loved best her noble Arabian steeds. In common with
+all riders of the upland sage Jane cherished two material things—the
+cold, sweet, brown water that made life possible in the wilderness and
+the horses which were a part of that life. When Lassiter asked her what
+Lassiter would be without his guns he was assuming that his horse was
+part of himself. So Jane loved Black Star and Night because it was her
+nature to love all beautiful creatures—perhaps all living things; and
+then she loved them because she herself was of the sage and in her had
+been born and bred the rider’s instinct to rely on his four-footed
+brother. And when Jane gave Jerd the order to keep her favorites
+trained down to the day it was a half-conscious admission that presaged
+a time when she would need her fleet horses.
+
+Jane had now, however, no leisure to brood over the coils that were
+closing round her. Mrs. Larkin grew weaker as the August days began;
+she required constant care; there was little Fay to look after; and
+such household work as was imperative. Lassiter put Bells in the stable
+with the other racers, and directed his efforts to a closer attendance
+upon Jane. She welcomed the change. He was always at hand to help, and
+it was her fortune to learn that his boast of being awkward around
+women had its root in humility and was not true.
+
+His great, brown hands were skilled in a multiplicity of ways which a
+woman might have envied. He shared Jane’s work, and was of especial
+help to her in nursing Mrs. Larkin. The woman suffered most at night,
+and this often broke Jane’s rest. So it came about that Lassiter would
+stay by Mrs. Larkin during the day, when she needed care, and Jane
+would make up the sleep she lost in night-watches. Mrs. Larkin at once
+took kindly to the gentle Lassiter, and, without ever asking who or
+what he was, praised him to Jane. “He’s a good man and loves children,”
+she said. How sad to hear this truth spoken of a man whom Jane thought
+lost beyond all redemption! Yet ever and ever Lassiter towered above
+her, and behind or through his black, sinister figure shone something
+luminous that strangely affected Jane. Good and evil began to seem
+incomprehensibly blended in her judgment. It was her belief that evil
+could not come forth from good; yet here was a murderer who dwarfed in
+gentleness, patience, and love any man she had ever known.
+
+She had almost lost track of her more outside concerns when early one
+morning Judkins presented himself before her in the courtyard.
+
+Thin, hard, burnt, bearded, with the dust and sage thick on him, with
+his leather wrist-bands shining from use, and his boots worn through on
+the stirrup side, he looked the rider of riders. He wore two guns and
+carried a Winchester.
+
+Jane greeted him with surprise and warmth, set meat and bread and drink
+before him; and called Lassiter out to see him. The men exchanged
+glances, and the meaning of Lassiter’s keen inquiry and Judkins’s bold
+reply, both unspoken, was not lost upon Jane.
+
+“Where’s your hoss?” asked Lassiter, aloud.
+
+“Left him down the slope,” answered Judkins. “I footed it in a ways,
+an’ slept last night in the sage. I went to the place you told me you
+’most always slept, but didn’t strike you.”
+
+“I moved up some, near the spring, an’ now I go there nights.”
+
+“Judkins—the white herd?” queried Jane, hurriedly.
+
+“Miss Withersteen, I make proud to say I’ve not lost a steer. Fer a
+good while after thet stampede Lassiter milled we hed no trouble. Why,
+even the sage dogs left us. But it’s begun agin—thet flashin’ of lights
+over ridge tips, an’ queer puffin’ of smoke, en’ then at night strange
+whistles en’ noises. But the herd’s acted magnificent. An’ my boys,
+say, Miss Withersteen, they’re only kids, but I ask no better riders. I
+got the laugh in the village fer takin’ them out. They’re a wild lot,
+an’ you know boys hev more nerve than grown men, because they don’t
+know what danger is. I’m not denyin’ there’s danger. But they glory in
+it, an’ mebbe I like it myself—anyway, we’ll stick. We’re goin’ to
+drive the herd on the far side of the first break of Deception Pass.
+There’s a great round valley over there, an’ no ridges or piles of
+rocks to aid these stampeders. The rains are due. We’ll hev plenty of
+water fer a while. An’ we can hold thet herd from anybody except
+Oldrin’. I come in fer supplies. I’ll pack a couple of burros an’ drive
+out after dark to-night.”
+
+“Judkins, take what you want from the store-room. Lassiter will help
+you. I—I can’t thank you enough... but—wait.”
+
+Jane went to the room that had once been her father’s, and from a
+secret chamber in the thick stone wall she took a bag of gold, and,
+carrying it back to the court, she gave it to the rider.
+
+“There, Judkins, and understand that I regard it as little for your
+loyalty. Give what is fair to your boys, and keep the rest. Hide it.
+Perhaps that would be wisest.”
+
+“Oh... Miss Withersteen!” ejaculated the rider. “I couldn’t earn so
+much in—in ten years. It’s not right—I oughtn’t take it.”
+
+“Judkins, you know I’m a rich woman. I tell you I’ve few faithful
+friends. I’ve fallen upon evil days. God only knows what will become of
+me and mine! So take the gold.”
+
+She smiled in understanding of his speechless gratitude, and left him
+with Lassiter. Presently she heard him speaking low at first, then in
+louder accents emphasized by the thumping of his rifle on the stones.
+“As infernal a job as even you, Lassiter, ever heerd of.”
+
+“Why, son,” was Lassiter’s reply, “this breakin’ of Miss Withersteen
+may seem bad to you, but it ain’t bad—yet. Some of these wall-eyed
+fellers who look jest as if they was walkin’ in the shadow of Christ
+himself, right down the sunny road, now they can think of things en’ do
+things that are really hell-bent.”
+
+Jane covered her ears and ran to her own room, and there like caged
+lioness she paced to and fro till the coming of little Fay reversed her
+dark thoughts.
+
+The following day, a warm and muggy one threatening rain awhile Jane
+was resting in the court, a horseman clattered through the grove and up
+to the hitching-rack. He leaped off and approached Jane with the manner
+of a man determined to execute difficult mission, yet fearful of its
+reception. In the gaunt, wiry figure and the lean, brown face Jane
+recognized one of her Mormon riders, Blake. It was he of whom Judkins
+had long since spoken. Of all the riders ever in her employ Blake owed
+her the most, and as he stepped before her, removing his hat and making
+manly efforts to subdue his emotion, he showed that he remembered.
+
+“Miss Withersteen, mother’s dead,” he said.
+
+“Oh—Blake!” exclaimed Jane, and she could say no more.
+
+“She died free from pain in the end, and she’s buried—resting at last,
+thank God!... I’ve come to ride for you again, if you’ll have me. Don’t
+think I mentioned mother to get your sympathy. When she was living and
+your riders quit, I had to also. I was afraid of what might be
+done—said to her.... Miss Withersteen, we can’t talk of—of what’s going
+on now—”
+
+“Blake, do you know?”
+
+“I know a great deal. You understand, my lips are shut. But without
+explanation or excuse I offer my services. I’m a Mormon—I hope a good
+one. But—there are some things!... It’s no use, Miss Withersteen, I
+can’t say any more—what I’d like to. But will you take me back?”
+
+“Blake!... You know what it means?”
+
+“I don’t care. I’m sick of—of—I’ll show you a Mormon who’ll be true to
+you!”
+
+“But, Blake—how terribly you might suffer for that!”
+
+“Maybe. Aren’t you suffering now?”
+
+“God knows indeed I am!”
+
+“Miss Withersteen, it’s a liberty on my part to speak so, but I know
+you pretty well—know you’ll never give in. I wouldn’t if I were you.
+And I—I must—Something makes me tell you the worst is yet to come.
+That’s all. I absolutely can’t say more. Will you take me back—let me
+ride for you—show everybody what I mean?”
+
+“Blake, it makes me happy to hear you. How my riders hurt me when they
+quit!” Jane felt the hot tears well to her eyes and splash down upon
+her hands. “I thought so much of them—tried so hard to be good to them.
+And not one was true. You’ve made it easy to forgive. Perhaps many of
+them really feel as you do, but dare not return to me. Still, Blake, I
+hesitate to take you back. Yet I want you so much.”
+
+“Do it, then. If you’re going to make your life a lesson to Mormon
+women, let me make mine a lesson to the men. Right is right. I believe
+in you, and here’s my life to prove it.”
+
+“You hint it may mean your life!” said Jane, breathless and low.
+
+“We won’t speak of that. I want to come back. I want to do what every
+rider aches in his secret heart to do for you.... Miss Withersteen, I
+hoped it’d not be necessary to tell you that my mother on her deathbed
+told me to have courage. She knew how the thing galled me—she told me
+to come back.... Will you take me?”
+
+“God bless you, Blake! Yes, I’ll take you back. And will you—will you
+accept gold from me?”
+
+“Miss Withersteen!”
+
+“I just gave Judkins a bag of gold. I’ll give you one. If you will not
+take it you must not come back. You might ride for me a few
+months—weeks—days till the storm breaks. Then you’d have nothing, and
+be in disgrace with your people. We’ll forearm you against poverty, and
+me against endless regret. I’ll give you gold which you can hide—till
+some future time.”
+
+“Well, if it pleases you,” replied Blake. “But you know I never thought
+of pay. Now, Miss Withersteen, one thing more. I want to see this man
+Lassiter. Is he here?”
+
+“Yes, but, Blake—what—Need you see him? Why?” asked Jane, instantly
+worried. “I can speak to him—tell him about you.”
+
+“That won’t do. I want to—I’ve got to tell him myself. Where is he?”
+
+“Lassiter is with Mrs. Larkin. She is ill. I’ll call him,” answered
+Jane, and going to the door she softly called for the rider. A faint,
+musical jingle preceded his step—then his tall form crossed the
+threshold.
+
+“Lassiter, here’s Blake, an old rider of mine. He has come back to me
+and he wishes to speak to you.”
+
+Blake’s brown face turned exceedingly pale.
+
+“Yes, I had to speak to you,” he said, swiftly. “My name’s Blake. I’m a
+Mormon and a rider. Lately I quit Miss Withersteen. I’ve come to beg
+her to take me back. Now I don’t know you; but I know—what you are. So
+I’ve this to say to your face. It would never occur to this woman to
+imagine—let alone suspect me to be a spy. She couldn’t think it might
+just be a low plot to come here and shoot you in the back. Jane
+Withersteen hasn’t that kind of a mind.... Well, I’ve not come for
+that. I want to help her—to pull a bridle along with Judkins and—and
+you. The thing is—do you believe me?”
+
+“I reckon I do,” replied Lassiter. How this slow, cool speech
+contrasted with Blake’s hot, impulsive words! “You might have saved
+some of your breath. See here, Blake, cinch this in your mind. Lassiter
+has met some square Mormons! An’ mebbe—”
+
+“Blake,” interrupted Jane, nervously anxious to terminate a colloquy
+that she perceived was an ordeal for him. “Go at once and fetch me a
+report of my horses.”
+
+“Miss Withersteen!... You mean the big drove—down in the sage-cleared
+fields?”
+
+“Of course,” replied Jane. “My horses are all there, except the blooded
+stock I keep here.”
+
+“Haven’t you heard—then?”
+
+“Heard? No! What’s happened to them?”
+
+“They’re gone, Miss Withersteen, gone these ten days past. Dorn told
+me, and I rode down to see for myself.”
+
+“Lassiter—did you know?” asked Jane, whirling to him.
+
+“I reckon so.... But what was the use to tell you?”
+
+It was Lassiter turning away his face and Blake studying the stone
+flags at his feet that brought Jane to the understanding of what she
+betrayed. She strove desperately, but she could not rise immediately
+from such a blow.
+
+“My horses! My horses! What’s become of them?”
+
+“Dorn said the riders report another drive by Oldring.... And I trailed
+the horses miles down the slope toward Deception Pass.”
+
+“My red herd’s gone! My horses gone! The white herd will go next. I can
+stand that. But if I lost Black Star and Night, it would be like
+parting with my own flesh and blood. Lassiter—Blake—am I in danger of
+losing my racers?”
+
+“A rustler—or—or anybody stealin’ hosses of yours would most of all
+want the blacks,” said Lassiter. His evasive reply was affirmative
+enough. The other rider nodded gloomy acquiescence.
+
+“Oh! Oh!” Jane Withersteen choked, with violent utterance.
+
+“Let me take charge of the blacks?” asked Blake. “One more rider won’t
+be any great help to Judkins. But I might hold Black Star and Night, if
+you put such store on their value.”
+
+“Value! Blake, I love my racers. Besides, there’s another reason why I
+mustn’t lose them. You go to the stables. Go with Jerd every day when
+he runs the horses, and don’t let them out of your sight. If you would
+please me—win my gratitude, guard my black racers.”
+
+When Blake had mounted and ridden out of the court Lassiter regarded
+Jane with the smile that was becoming rarer as the days sped by.
+
+“’Pears to me, as Blake says, you do put some store on them hosses. Now
+I ain’t gainsayin’ that the Arabians are the handsomest hosses I ever
+seen. But Bells can beat Night, an’ run neck en’ neck with Black Star.”
+
+“Lassiter, don’t tease me now. I’m miserable—sick. Bells is fast, but
+he can’t stay with the blacks, and you know it. Only Wrangle can do
+that.”
+
+“I’ll bet that big raw-boned brute can more’n show his heels to your
+black racers. Jane, out there in the sage, on a long chase, Wrangle
+could kill your favorites.”
+
+“No, no,” replied Jane, impatiently. “Lassiter, why do you say that so
+often? I know you’ve teased me at times, and I believe it’s only
+kindness. You’re always trying to keep my mind off worry. But you mean
+more by this repeated mention of my racers?”
+
+“I reckon so.” Lassiter paused, and for the thousandth time in her
+presence moved his black sombrero round and round, as if counting the
+silver pieces on the band. “Well, Jane, I’ve sort of read a little
+that’s passin’ in your mind.”
+
+“You think I might fly from my home—from Cottonwoods—from the Utah
+border?”
+
+“I reckon. An’ if you ever do an’ get away with the blacks I wouldn’t
+like to see Wrangle left here on the sage. Wrangle could catch you. I
+know Venters had him. But you can never tell. Mebbe he hasn’t got him
+now.... Besides—things are happenin’, an’ somethin’ of the same queer
+nature might have happened to Venters.”
+
+“God knows you’re right!... Poor Bern, how long he’s gone! In my
+trouble I’ve been forgetting him. But, Lassiter, I’ve little fear for
+him. I’ve heard my riders say he’s as keen as a wolf.... As to your
+reading my thoughts—well, your suggestion makes an actual thought of
+what was only one of my dreams. I believe I dreamed of flying from this
+wild borderland, Lassiter. I’ve strange dreams. I’m not always
+practical and thinking of my many duties, as you said once. For
+instance—if I dared—if I dared I’d ask you to saddle the blacks and
+ride away with me—and hide me.”
+
+“Jane!”
+
+The rider’s sunburnt face turned white. A few times Jane had seen
+Lassiter’s cool calm broken—when he had met little Fay, when he had
+learned how and why he had come to love both child and mistress, when
+he had stood beside Milly Erne’s grave. But one and all they could not
+be considered in the light of his present agitation. Not only did
+Lassiter turn white—not only did he grow tense, not only did he lose
+his coolness, but also he suddenly, violently, hungrily took her into
+his arms and crushed her to his breast.
+
+“Lassiter!” cried Jane, trembling. It was an action for which she took
+sole blame. Instantly, as if dazed, weakened, he released her. “Forgive
+me!” went on Jane. “I’m always forgetting your—your feelings. I thought
+of you as my faithful friend. I’m always making you out more than
+human... only, let me say—I meant that—about riding away. I’m wretched,
+sick of this—this—Oh, something bitter and black grows on my heart!”
+
+“Jane, the hell—of it,” he replied, with deep intake of breath, “is you
+_can’t_ ride away. Mebbe realizin’ it accounts for my grabbin’ you—that
+way, as much as the crazy boy’s rapture your words gave me. I don’t
+understand myself.... But the hell of this game is—you _can’t_ ride
+away.”
+
+“Lassiter!... What on earth do you mean? I’m an absolutely free woman.”
+
+“You ain’t absolutely anythin’ of the kind.... I reckon I’ve got to
+tell you!”
+
+“Tell me all. It’s uncertainty that makes me a coward. It’s faith and
+hope—blind love, if you will, that makes me miserable. Every day I
+awake believing—still believing. The day grows, and with it doubts,
+fears, and that black bat hate that bites hotter and hotter into my
+heart. Then comes night—I pray—I pray for all, and for myself—I
+sleep—and I awake free once more, trustful, faithful, to believe—to
+hope! Then, O my God! I grow and live a thousand years till night
+again!... But if you want to see me a woman, tell me why I can’t ride
+away—tell me what more I’m to lose—tell me the worst.”
+
+“Jane, you’re watched. There’s no single move of yours, except when
+you’re hid in your house, that ain’t seen by sharp eyes. The cottonwood
+grove’s full of creepin’, crawlin’ men. Like Indians in the grass. When
+you rode, which wasn’t often lately, the sage was full of sneakin’ men.
+At night they crawl under your windows into the court, an’ I reckon
+into the house. Jane Withersteen, you know, never locked a door! This
+here grove’s a hummin’ bee-hive of mysterious happenin’s. Jane, it
+ain’t so much that these spies keep out of my way as me keepin’ out of
+theirs. They’re goin’ to try to kill me. That’s plain. But mebbe I’m as
+hard to shoot in the back as in the face. So far I’ve seen fit to watch
+only. This all means, Jane, that you’re a marked woman. You can’t get
+away—not now. Mebbe later, when you’re broken, you might. But that’s
+sure doubtful. Jane, you’re to lose the cattle that’s left—your home
+an’ ranch—an’ Amber Spring. You can’t even hide a sack of gold! For it
+couldn’t be slipped out of the house, day or night, an’ hid or buried,
+let alone be rid off with. You may lose all. I’m tellin’ you, Jane,
+hopin’ to prepare you, if the worst does come. I told you once before
+about that strange power I’ve got to feel things.”
+
+“Lassiter, what can I do?”
+
+“Nothin’, I reckon, except know what’s comin’ an’ wait an’ be game. If
+you’d let me make a call on Tull, an’ a long-deferred call on—”
+
+“Hush!... Hush!” she whispered.
+
+“Well, even that wouldn’t help you any in the end.”
+
+“What does it mean? Oh, what does it mean? I am my father’s daughter—a
+Mormon, yet I can’t see! I’ve not failed in religion—in duty. For years
+I’ve given with a free and full heart. When my father died I was rich.
+If I’m still rich it’s because I couldn’t find enough ways to become
+poor. What am I, what are my possessions to set in motion such
+intensity of secret oppression?”
+
+“Jane, the mind behind it all is an empire builder.”
+
+“But, Lassiter, I would give freely—all I own to avert this—this
+wretched thing. If I gave—that would leave me with faith still. Surely
+my—my churchmen think of my soul? If I lose my trust in them—”
+
+“Child, be still!” said Lassiter, with a dark dignity that had in it
+something of pity. “You are a woman, fine en’ big an’ strong, an’ your
+heart matches your size. But in mind you’re a child. I’ll say a little
+more—then I’m done. I’ll never mention this again. Among many thousands
+of women you’re one who has bucked against your churchmen. They tried
+you out, an’ failed of persuasion, an’ finally of threats. You meet now
+the cold steel of a will as far from Christlike as the universe is
+wide. You’re to be broken. Your body’s to be held, given to some man,
+made, if possible, to bring children into the world. But your soul?...
+What do they care for your soul?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+SOLITUDE AND STORM
+
+
+In his hidden valley Venters awakened from sleep, and his ears rang
+with innumerable melodies from full-throated mockingbirds, and his eyes
+opened wide upon the glorious golden shaft of sunlight shining through
+the great stone bridge. The circle of cliffs surrounding Surprise
+Valley lay shrouded in morning mist, a dim blue low down along the
+terraces, a creamy, moving cloud along the ramparts. The oak forest in
+the center was a plumed and tufted oval of gold.
+
+He saw Bess under the spruces. Upon her complete recovery of strength
+she always rose with the dawn. At the moment she was feeding the quail
+she had tamed. And she had begun to tame the mocking-birds. They
+fluttered among the branches overhead and some left off their songs to
+flit down and shyly hop near the twittering quail. Little gray and
+white rabbits crouched in the grass, now nibbling, now laying long ears
+flat and watching the dogs.
+
+Venters’s swift glance took in the brightening valley, and Bess and her
+pets, and Ring and Whitie. It swept over all to return again and rest
+upon the girl. She had changed. To the dark trousers and blouse she had
+added moccasins of her own make, but she no longer resembled a boy. No
+eye could have failed to mark the rounded contours of a woman. The
+change had been to grace and beauty. A glint of warm gold gleamed from
+her hair, and a tint of red shone in the clear dark brown of cheeks.
+The haunting sweetness of her lips and eyes, that earlier had been
+illusive, a promise, had become a living fact. She fitted harmoniously
+into that wonderful setting; she was like Surprise Valley—wild and
+beautiful.
+
+Venters leaped out of his cave to begin the day.
+
+He had postponed his journey to Cottonwoods until after the passing of
+the summer rains. The rains were due soon. But until their arrival and
+the necessity for his trip to the village he sequestered in a far
+corner of mind all thought of peril, of his past life, and almost that
+of the present. It was enough to live. He did not want to know what lay
+hidden in the dim and distant future. Surprise Valley had enchanted
+him. In this home of the cliff-dwellers there were peace and quiet and
+solitude, and another thing, wondrous as the golden morning shaft of
+sunlight, that he dared not ponder over long enough to understand.
+
+The solitude he had hated when alone he had now come to love. He was
+assimilating something from this valley of gleams and shadows. From
+this strange girl he was assimilating more.
+
+The day at hand resembled many days gone before. As Venters had no
+tools with which to build, or to till the terraces, he remained idle.
+Beyond the cooking of the simple fare there were no tasks. And as there
+were no tasks, there was no system. He and Bess began one thing, to
+leave it; to begin another, to leave that; and then do nothing but lie
+under the spruces and watch the great cloud-sails majestically move
+along the ramparts, and dream and dream. The valley was a golden,
+sunlit world. It was silent. The sighing wind and the twittering quail
+and the singing birds, even the rare and seldom-occurring hollow crack
+of a sliding weathered stone, only thickened and deepened that
+insulated silence.
+
+Venters and Bess had vagrant minds.
+
+“Bess, did I tell you about my horse Wrangle?” inquired Venters.
+
+“A hundred times,” she replied.
+
+“Oh, have I? I’d forgotten. I want you to see him. He’ll carry us
+both.”
+
+“I’d like to ride him. Can he run?”
+
+“Run? He’s a demon. Swiftest horse on the sage! I hope he’ll stay in
+that cañon.”
+
+“He’ll stay.”
+
+They left camp to wander along the terraces, into the aspen ravines,
+under the gleaming walls. Ring and Whitie wandered in the fore, often
+turning, often trotting back, open-mouthed and solemn-eyed and happy.
+Venters lifted his gaze to the grand archway over the entrance to the
+valley, and Bess lifted hers to follow his, and both were silent.
+Sometimes the bridge held their attention for a long time. To-day a
+soaring eagle attracted them.
+
+“How he sails!” exclaimed Bess. “I wonder where his mate is?”
+
+“She’s at the nest. It’s on the bridge in a crack near the top. I see
+her often. She’s almost white.”
+
+They wandered on down the terrace, into the shady, sun-flecked forest.
+A brown bird fluttered crying from a bush. Bess peeped into the leaves.
+“Look! A nest and four little birds. They’re not afraid of us. See how
+they open their mouths. They’re hungry.”
+
+Rabbits rustled the dead brush and pattered away. The forest was full
+of a drowsy hum of insects. Little darts of purple, that were running
+quail, crossed the glades. And a plaintive, sweet peeping came from the
+coverts. Bess’s soft step disturbed a sleeping lizard that scampered
+away over the leaves. She gave chase and caught it, a slim creature of
+nameless color but of exquisite beauty.
+
+“Jewel eyes,” she said. “It’s like a rabbit—afraid. We won’t eat you.
+There—go.”
+
+Murmuring water drew their steps down into a shallow shaded ravine
+where a brown brook brawled softly over mossy stones. Multitudes of
+strange, gray frogs with white spots and black eyes lined the rocky
+bank and leaped only at close approach. Then Venters’s eye descried a
+very thin, very long green snake coiled round a sapling. They drew
+closer and closer till they could have touched it. The snake had no
+fear and watched them with scintillating eyes.
+
+“It’s pretty,” said Bess. “How tame! I thought snakes always ran.”
+
+“No. Even the rabbits didn’t run here till the dogs chased them.”
+
+On and on they wandered to the wild jumble of massed and broken
+fragments of cliff at the west end of the valley. The roar of the
+disappearing stream dinned in their ears. Into this maze of rocks they
+threaded a tortuous way, climbing, descending, halting to gather wild
+plums and great lavender lilies, and going on at the will of fancy.
+Idle and keen perceptions guided them equally.
+
+“Oh, let us climb there!” cried Bess, pointing upward to a small space
+of terrace left green and shady between huge abutments of broken cliff.
+And they climbed to the nook and rested and looked out across the
+valley to the curling column of blue smoke from their campfire. But the
+cool shade and the rich grass and the fine view were not what they had
+climbed for. They could not have told, although whatever had drawn them
+was well-satisfying. Light, sure-footed as a mountain goat, Bess
+pattered down at Venters’s heels; and they went on, calling the dogs,
+eyes dreamy and wide, listening to the wind and the bees and the
+crickets and the birds.
+
+Part of the time Ring and Whitie led the way, then Venters, then Bess;
+and the direction was not an object. They left the sun-streaked shade
+of the oaks, brushed the long grass of the meadows, entered the green
+and fragrant swaying willows, to stop, at length, under the huge old
+cottonwoods where the beavers were busy.
+
+Here they rested and watched. A dam of brush and logs and mud and
+stones backed the stream into a little lake. The round, rough beaver
+houses projected from the water. Like the rabbits, the beavers had
+become shy. Gradually, however, as Venters and Bess knelt low, holding
+the dogs, the beavers emerged to swim with logs and gnaw at cottonwoods
+and pat mud walls with their paddle-like tails, and, glossy and shiny
+in the sun, to go on with their strange, persistent industry. They were
+the builders. The lake was a mud-hole, and the immediate environment a
+scarred and dead region, but it was a wonderful home of wonderful
+animals.
+
+“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 houses, like mud-wasp nests, and wondered if these had
+been store-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 which 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 which crushed to powder at a touch and seemed to vanish
+in the air.
+
+“That white stuff was bone,” said Venters, slowly. “Bones 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, childlike 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 a 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 any more. I want to go out into the big world and see it. Yet I
+want to stay here more. What’s to become of us? 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 once 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 silence. There was life—and now
+there’s death. Men cut these little steps, made these arrow-heads 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 to-day. 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 relationship, 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 his 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
+inert mass 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 in echo from the cliff, returned, went back, and came again to
+die in the hollowness. Down on the sunny terrace there was a different
+atmosphere. Ring and Whitie 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 I think of it, I haven’t.”
+
+“Well, it’s terrible. 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 here in the cañons. 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. The truth is I’m
+afraid of lightning and thunder, and thunder-claps hurt my head. If we
+have a bad storm, will you stay close to 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 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.
+
+“Oh!” cried Bess, nervously.
+
+“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 thunder 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: Venters and Bess finished their simple meal—then faced
+the open terrace, to watch and await the approaching storm.]
+
+
+It required keen vision to see any movement whatever 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 blade
+of grass moved. A gentle splashing 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 lull and the deadly stillness and the sultry air passed
+away on a cool wind.
+
+The night bird of the cañon, with 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 the 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 cañons 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’ve lots 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
+lulls 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 swift roar of rustling leaves; then 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 on-sweep 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, with 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 of all upon
+which 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. Upreared, 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.
+And there came a ripping, crashing report. Instantly an echo resounded
+with clapping crash. The initial report was nothing to the echo. It was
+a terrible, living, reverberating, detonating crash. The wall threw the
+sound across, and could have made no greater roar if it had slipped in
+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 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, deafening crash.
+
+Venters looked out upon the beautiful valley—beautiful 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 heart-beat 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 the thunder-storm. For
+with the touch of clinging hands and the 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 breast—a storm of real
+love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+WEST WIND
+
+
+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 unclosed. 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’ll tell you some day,” he answered, soberly. Then around the
+camp-fire 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.
+
+“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 tumult within.
+
+“I love her!... I understand now.”
+
+Reviving memory of Jane Withersteen and thought of the complications of
+the present amazed him with proof of how far he had drifted from his
+old life. He discovered that he hated to take up the broken threads, to
+delve into dark problems and difficulties. In this beautiful valley he
+had been living a beautiful dream. Tranquillity had come to him, and
+the joy of solitude, and interest in all the wild creatures and
+crannies of this incomparable valley—and love. Under the shadow of the
+great stone bridge God had revealed Himself to Venters.
+
+“The world seems very far away,” he muttered, “but it’s there—and I’m
+not yet done with it. Perhaps I never shall be.... Only—how glorious it
+would be to live here always and never think again!”
+
+Whereupon the resurging reality of the present, as if in irony of his
+wish, steeped him instantly in contending thought. Out of it all he
+presently evolved these things: he must go to Cottonwoods; he must
+bring supplies back to Surprise Valley; he must cultivate the soil and
+raise corn and stock, and, most imperative of all, he must decide the
+future of the girl who loved him and whom he loved. The first of these
+things required tremendous effort, the last one, concerning Bess,
+seemed simply and naturally easy of accomplishment. He would marry her.
+Suddenly, as from roots of poisonous fire, flamed up the forgotten
+truth concerning her. It seemed to wither and shrivel up all his joy on
+its hot, tearing way to his heart. She had been Oldring’s Masked Rider.
+To Venters’s question, “What were you to Oldring?” she had answered
+with scarlet shame and drooping head.
+
+“What do I care who she is or what she was!” he cried, passionately.
+And he knew it was not his old self speaking. It was this softer,
+gentler man who had awakened to new thoughts in the quiet valley.
+Tenderness, masterful in him now, matched the absence of joy and
+blunted the knife-edge of entering jealousy. Strong and passionate
+effort of will, surprising to him, held back the poison from piercing
+his soul.
+
+“Wait!... Wait!” he cried, as if calling. His hand pressed his breast,
+and he might have called to the pang there. “Wait! It’s all so
+strange—so wonderful. Anything can happen. Who am I to judge her? I’ll
+glory in my love for her. But I can’t tell it—can’t give up to it.”
+
+Certainly he could not then decide her future. Marrying her was
+impossible in Surprise Valley and in any village south of Sterling.
+Even without the mask she had once worn she would easily have been
+recognized as Oldring’s Rider. No man who had ever seen her would
+forget her, regardless of his ignorance as to her sex. Then more
+poignant than all other argument was the fact that he did not want to
+take her away from Surprise Valley. He resisted all thought of that. He
+had brought her to the most beautiful and wildest place of the uplands;
+he had saved her, nursed her back to strength, watched her bloom as one
+of the valley lilies; he knew her life there to be pure and sweet—she
+belonged to him, and he loved her. Still these were not all the reasons
+why he did not want to take her away. Where could they go? He feared
+the rustlers—he feared the riders—he feared the Mormons. And if he
+should ever succeed in getting Bess safely away from these immediate
+perils, he feared the sharp eyes of women and their tongues, the big
+outside world with its problems of existence. He must wait to decide
+her future, which, after all, was deciding his own. But between her
+future and his something hung impending. Like Balancing Rock, which
+waited darkly over the steep gorge, ready to close forever the outlet
+to Deception Pass, that nameless thing, as certain yet intangible as
+fate, must fall and close forever all doubts and fears of the future.
+
+“I’ve dreamed,” muttered Venters, as he rose. “Well, why not?... To
+dream is happiness! But let me just once see this clearly wholly; then
+I can go on dreaming till the thing falls. I’ve got to tell Jane
+Withersteen. I’ve dangerous trips to take. I’ve work here to make
+comfort for this girl. She’s mine. I’ll fight to keep her safe from
+that old life. I’ve already seen her forget it. I love her. And if a
+beast ever rises in me I’ll burn my hand off before I lay it on her
+with shameful intent. And, by God! sooner or later I’ll kill the man
+who hid her and kept her in Deception Pass!”
+
+As he spoke the west wind softly blew in his face. It seemed to soothe
+his passion. That west wind was fresh, cool, fragrant, and it carried a
+sweet, strange burden of far-off things—tidings of life in other
+climes, of sunshine asleep on other walls—of other places where reigned
+peace. It carried, too, sad truth of human hearts and mystery—of
+promise and hope unquenchable. Surprise Valley was only a little niche
+in the wide world whence blew that burdened wind. Bess was only one of
+millions at the mercy of unknown motive in nature and life. Content had
+come to Venters in the valley; happiness had breathed in the slow, warm
+air; love as bright as light had hovered over the walls and descended
+to him; and now on the west wind came a whisper of the eternal triumph
+of faith over doubt.
+
+“How much better I am for what has come to me!” he exclaimed. “I’ll let
+the future take care of itself. Whatever falls, I’ll be ready.”
+
+Venters retraced his steps along the terrace back to camp, and found
+Bess in the old familiar seat, waiting and watching for his return.
+
+“I went off by myself to think a little,” he explained.
+
+“You never looked that way before. What—what is it? Won’t you tell me?”
+
+“Well, Bess, the fact is I’ve been dreaming a lot. This valley makes a
+fellow dream. So I forced myself to think. We can’t live this way much
+longer. Soon I’ll simply have to go to Cottonwoods. We need a whole
+pack train of supplies. I can get—”
+
+“Can you go safely?” she interrupted.
+
+“Why, I’m sure of it. I’ll ride through the Pass at night. I haven’t
+any fear that Wrangle isn’t where I left him. And once on him—Bess,
+just wait till you see that horse!”
+
+“Oh, I want to see him—to ride him. But—but, Bern, this is what
+troubles me,” she said. “Will—will you come back?”
+
+“Give me four days. If I’m not back in four days you’ll know I’m dead.
+For that only shall keep me.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“Bess, I’ll come back. There’s danger—I wouldn’t lie to you—but I can
+take care of myself.”
+
+“Bern, I’m sure—oh, I’m sure of it! All my life I’ve watched hunted
+men. I can tell what’s in them. And I believe you can ride and shoot
+and see with any rider of the sage. It’s not—not that I—fear.”
+
+“Well, what is it, then?”
+
+“Why—why—why should you come back at all?”
+
+“I couldn’t leave you here alone.”
+
+“You might change your mind when you get to the village—among old
+friends—”
+
+“I won’t change my mind. As for old friends—” He uttered a short,
+expressive laugh.
+
+“Then—there—there must be a—a woman!” Dark red mantled the clear tan of
+temple and cheek and neck. Her eyes were eyes of shame, upheld a long
+moment by intense, straining search for the verification of her fear.
+Suddenly they drooped, her head fell to her knees, her hands flew to
+her hot cheeks.
+
+“Bess—look here,” said Venters, with a sharpness due to the violence
+with which he checked his quick, surging emotion.
+
+As if compelled against her will—answering to an irresistible
+voice—Bess raised her head, looked at him with sad, dark eyes, and
+tried to whisper with tremulous lips.
+
+“There’s no woman,” went on Venters, deliberately holding her glance
+with his. “Nothing on earth, barring the chances of life, can keep me
+away.”
+
+Her face flashed and flushed with the glow of a leaping joy; but like
+the vanishing of a gleam it disappeared to leave her as he had never
+beheld her.
+
+“I am nothing—I am lost—I am nameless!”
+
+“Do you _want_ me to come back?” he asked, with sudden stern coldness.
+“Maybe _you_ want to go back to Oldring!”
+
+That brought her erect, trembling and ashy pale, with dark, proud eyes
+and mute lips refuting his insinuation.
+
+“Bess, I beg your pardon. I shouldn’t have said that. But you angered
+me. I intend to work—to make a home for you here—to be a—a brother to
+you as long as ever you need me. And you must forget what you
+are—were—I mean, and be happy. When you remember that old life you are
+bitter, and it hurts me.”
+
+“I was happy—I shall be very happy. Oh, you’re so good that—that it
+kills me! If I think, I can’t believe it. I grow sick with wondering
+_why_. I’m only a—_let me say it_—only a lost, nameless—girl of the
+rustlers. _Oldring’s Girl_, they called me. That you should save me—be
+so good and kind—want to make me happy—why, it’s beyond belief. No
+wonder I’m wretched at the thought of your leaving me. But I’ll be
+wretched and bitter no more. I promise you. If only I could repay you
+even a little—”
+
+“You’ve repaid me a hundredfold. Will you believe me?”
+
+“Believe you! I couldn’t do else.”
+
+“Then listen!... Saving you, I saved myself. Living here in this valley
+with you, I’ve found myself. I’ve learned to think while I was
+dreaming. I never troubled myself about God. But God, or some wonderful
+spirit, has whispered to me here. I absolutely deny the truth of what
+you say about yourself. I can’t explain it. There are things too deep
+to tell. Whatever the terrible wrongs you’ve suffered, God holds you
+blameless. I see that—feel that in you every moment you are near me.
+I’ve a mother and a sister ’way back in Illinois. If I could I’d take
+you to them—to-morrow.”
+
+“_If it were true!_ Oh, I might—I might lift my head!” she cried.
+
+“Lift it then—you child. For I swear it’s true.”
+
+She did lift her head with the singular wild grace always a part of her
+actions, with that old unconscious intimation of innocence which always
+tortured Venters, but now with something more—a spirit rising from the
+depths that linked itself to his brave words.
+
+“I’ve been thinking—too,” she cried, with quivering smile and swelling
+breast. “I’ve discovered myself—too. I’m young—I’m alive—I’m so
+full—oh! I’m a woman!”
+
+“Bess, I believe I can claim credit of that last discovery—before you,”
+Venters said, and laughed.
+
+“Oh, there’s more—there’s something I must tell you.”
+
+“Tell it, then.”
+
+“When will you go to Cottonwoods?”
+
+“As soon as the storms are past, or the worst of them.”
+
+“I’ll tell you before you go. I can’t now. I don’t know how I shall
+then. But it must be told. I’d never let you leave me without knowing.
+For in spite of what you say there’s a chance you mightn’t come back.”
+
+Day after day the west wind blew across the valley. Day after day the
+clouds clustered gray and purple and black. The cliffs sang and the
+caves rang with Oldring’s knell, and the lightning flashed, the thunder
+rolled, the echoes crashed and crashed, and the rains flooded the
+valley. Wild flowers sprang up everywhere, swaying with the lengthening
+grass on the terraces, smiling wanly from shady nooks, peeping
+wondrously from year-dry crevices of the walls. The valley bloomed into
+a paradise. Every single moment, from the breaking of the gold bar
+through the bridge at dawn on to the reddening of rays over the western
+wall, was one of colorful change. The valley swam in thick, transparent
+haze, golden at dawn, warm and white at noon, purple in the twilight.
+At the end of every storm a rainbow curved down into the leaf-bright
+forest to shine and fade and leave lingeringly some faint essence of
+its rosy iris in the air.
+
+Venters walked with Bess, once more in a dream, and watched the lights
+change on the walls, and faced the wind from out of the west.
+
+Always it brought softly to him strange, sweet tidings of far-off
+things. It blew from a place that was old and whispered of youth. It
+blew down the grooves of time. It brought a story of the passing hours.
+It breathed low of fighting men and praying women. It sang clearly the
+song of love. That ever was the burden of its tidings—youth in the
+shady woods, waders through the wet meadows, boy and girl at the
+hedgerow stile, bathers in the booming surf, sweet, idle hours on
+grassy, windy hills, long strolls down moonlit lanes—everywhere in
+far-off lands, fingers locked and bursting hearts and longing lips—from
+all the world tidings of unquenchable love.
+
+Often, in these hours of dreams he watched the girl, and asked himself
+of what was she dreaming? For the changing light of the valley
+reflected its gleam and its color and its meaning in the changing light
+of her eyes. He saw in them infinitely more than he saw in his dreams.
+He saw thought and soul and nature—strong vision of life. All tidings
+the west wind blew from distance and age he found deep in those
+dark-blue depths, and found them mysteries solved. Under their wistful
+shadow he softened, and in the softening felt himself grow a sadder, a
+wiser, and a better man.
+
+While the west wind blew its tidings, filling his heart full, teaching
+him a man’s part, the days passed, the purple clouds changed to white,
+and the storms were over for that summer.
+
+“I must go now,” he said.
+
+“When?” she asked.
+
+“At once—to-night.”
+
+“I’m glad the time has come. It dragged at me. Go—for you’ll come back
+the sooner.”
+
+Late in the afternoon, as the ruddy sun split its last flame in the
+ragged notch of the western wall, Bess walked with Venters along the
+eastern terrace, up the long, weathered slope, under the great stone
+bridge. They entered the narrow gorge to climb around the fence long
+before built there by Venters. Farther than this she had never been.
+Twilight had already fallen in the gorge. It brightened to waning
+shadow in the wider ascent. He showed her Balancing Rock, of which he
+had often told her, and explained its sinister leaning over the outlet.
+Shuddering, she looked down the long, pale incline with its closed-in,
+toppling walls.
+
+“What an awful trail! Did you carry me up here?”
+
+“I did, surely,” replied he.
+
+“It frightens me, somehow. Yet I never was afraid of trails. I’d ride
+anywhere a horse could go, and climb where he couldn’t. But there’s
+something fearful here. I feel as—as if the place was watching me.”
+
+“Look at this rock. It’s balanced here—balanced perfectly. You know I
+told you the cliff-dwellers cut the rock, and why. But they’re gone and
+the rock waits. Can’t you see—feel how it waits here? I moved it once,
+and I’ll never dare again. A strong heave would start it. Then it would
+fall and bang, and smash that crag, and jar the walls, and close
+forever the outlet to Deception Pass!”
+
+“Ah! When you come back I’ll steal up here and push and push with all
+my might to roll the rock and close forever the outlet to the Pass!”
+She said it lightly, but in the undercurrent of her voice was a heavier
+note, a ring deeper than any ever given mere play of words.
+
+“Bess!... You can’t dare me! Wait till I come back with supplies—then
+roll the stone.”
+
+“I—was—in—fun.” Her voice now throbbed low. “Always you must be free to
+go when you will. Go now... this place presses on me—stifles me.”
+
+“I’m going—but you had something to tell me?”
+
+“Yes.... Will you—come back?”
+
+“I’ll come if I live.”
+
+“But—but you mightn’t come?”
+
+“That’s possible, of course. It’ll take a good deal to kill me. A man
+couldn’t have a faster horse or keener dog. And, Bess, I’ve guns, and
+I’ll use them if I’m pushed. But don’t worry.”
+
+“I’ve faith in you. I’ll not worry until after four days. Only—because
+you mightn’t come—I _must_ tell you—”
+
+She lost her voice. Her pale face, her great, glowing, earnest eyes,
+seemed to stand alone out of the gloom of the gorge. The dog whined,
+breaking the silence.
+
+“I _must_ tell you—because you mightn’t come back,” she whispered. “You
+_must_ know what—what I think of your goodness—of you. Always I’ve been
+tongue-tied. I seemed not to be grateful. It was deep in my heart. Even
+now—if I were other than I am—I couldn’t tell you. But I’m nothing—only
+a rustler’s girl—nameless—infamous. You’ve saved me—and I’m—I’m yours
+to do with as you like.... With all my heart and soul—I love you!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+SHADOWS ON THE SAGE-SLOPE
+
+
+In the cloudy, threatening, waning summer days shadows lengthened down
+the sage-slope, and Jane Withersteen likened them to the shadows
+gathering and closing in around her life.
+
+Mrs. Larkin died, and little Fay was left an orphan with no known
+relative. Jane’s love redoubled. It was the saving brightness of a
+darkening hour. Fay turned now to Jane in childish worship. And Jane at
+last found full expression for the mother-longing in her heart. Upon
+Lassiter, too, Mrs. Larkin’s death had some subtle reaction. Before, he
+had often, without explanation, advised Jane to send Fay back to any
+Gentile family that would take her in. Passionately and reproachfully
+and wonderingly Jane had refused even to entertain such an idea. And
+now Lassiter never advised it again, grew sadder and quieter in his
+contemplation of the child, and infinitely more gentle and loving.
+Sometimes Jane had a cold, inexplicable sensation of dread when she saw
+Lassiter watching Fay. What did the rider see in the future? Why did
+he, day by day, grow more silent, calmer, cooler, yet sadder in
+prophetic assurance of something to be?
+
+No doubt, Jane thought, the rider, in his almost superhuman power of
+foresight, saw behind the horizon the dark, lengthening shadows that
+were soon to crowd and gloom over him and her and little Fay. Jane
+Withersteen awaited the long-deferred breaking of the storm with a
+courage and embittered calm that had come to her in her extremity. Hope
+had not died. Doubt and fear, subservient to her will, no longer gave
+her sleepless nights and tortured days. Love remained. All that she had
+loved she now loved the more. She seemed to feel that she was defiantly
+flinging the wealth of her love in the face of misfortune and of hate.
+No day passed but she prayed for all—and most fervently for her
+enemies. It troubled her that she had lost, or had never gained, the
+whole control of her mind. In some measure reason and wisdom and
+decision were locked in a chamber of her brain, awaiting a key. Power
+to think of some things was taken from her. Meanwhile, abiding a day of
+judgment, she fought ceaselessly to deny the bitter drops in her cup,
+to tear back the slow, the intangibly slow growth of a hot, corrosive
+lichen eating into her heart.
+
+On the morning of August 10th, Jane, while waiting in the court for
+Lassiter, heard a clear, ringing report of a rifle. It came from the
+grove, somewhere toward the corrals. Jane glanced out in alarm. The day
+was dull, windless, soundless. The leaves of the cottonwoods drooped,
+as if they had foretold the doom of Withersteen House and were now
+ready to die and drop and decay. Never had Jane seen such shade. She
+pondered on the meaning of the report. Revolver shots had of late
+cracked from different parts of the grove—spies taking snap-shots at
+Lassiter from a cowardly distance! But a rifle report meant more.
+Riders seldom used rifles. Judkins and Venters were the exceptions she
+called to mind. Had the men who hounded her hidden in her grove, taken
+to the rifle to rid her of Lassiter, her last friend? It was
+probable—it was likely. And she did not share his cool assumption that
+his death would never come at the hands of a Mormon. Long had she
+expected it. His constancy to her, his singular reluctance to use the
+fatal skill for which he was famed—both now plain to all Mormons—laid
+him open to inevitable assassination. Yet what charm against ambush and
+aim and enemy he seemed to bear about him! No, Jane reflected, it was
+not charm; only a wonderful training of eye and ear, and sense of
+impending peril. Nevertheless that could not forever avail against
+secret attack.
+
+That moment a rustling of leaves attracted her attention; then the
+familiar clinking accompaniment of a slow, soft, measured step, and
+Lassiter walked into the court.
+
+“Jane, there’s a fellow out there with a long gun,” he said, and,
+removing his sombrero, showed his head bound in a bloody scarf.
+
+“I heard the shot; I knew it was meant for you. Let me see—you can’t be
+badly injured?”
+
+“I reckon not. But mebbe it wasn’t a close call!... I’ll sit here in
+this corner where nobody can see me from the grove.” He untied the
+scarf and removed it to show a long, bleeding furrow above his left
+temple.
+
+“It’s only a cut,” said Jane. “But how it bleeds! Hold your scarf over
+it just a moment till I come back.”
+
+She ran into the house and returned with bandages; and while she bathed
+and dressed the wound Lassiter talked.
+
+“That fellow had a good chance to get me. But he must have flinched
+when he pulled the trigger. As I dodged down I saw him run through the
+trees. He had a rifle. I’ve been expectin’ that kind of gun play. I
+reckon now I’ll have to keep a little closer hid myself. These fellers
+all seem to get chilly or shaky when they draw a bead on me, but one of
+them might jest happen to hit me.”
+
+“Won’t you go away—leave Cottonwoods as I’ve begged you to—before some
+one does happen to hit you?” she appealed to him.
+
+“I reckon I’ll stay.”
+
+“But, oh, Lassiter—your blood will be on my hands!”
+
+“See here, lady, look at your hands now, right now. Aren’t they fine,
+firm, white hands? Aren’t they bloody now? Lassiter’s blood! That’s a
+queer thing to stain your beautiful hands. But if you could only see
+deeper you’d find a redder color of blood. Heart color, Jane!”
+
+“Oh!... My friend!”
+
+“No, Jane, I’m not one to quit when the game grows hot, no more than
+you. This game, though, is new to me, an’ I don’t know the moves yet,
+else I wouldn’t have stepped in front of that bullet.”
+
+“Have you no desire to hunt the man who fired at you—to find
+him—and—and kill him?”
+
+“Well, I reckon I haven’t any great hankerin’ for that.”
+
+“Oh, the wonder of it!... I knew—I prayed—I trusted. Lassiter, I almost
+gave—all myself to soften you to Mormons. Thank God, and thank you, my
+friend.... But, selfish woman that I am, this is no great test. What’s
+the life of one of those sneaking cowards to such a man as you? I think
+of your great hate toward him who—I think of your life’s implacable
+purpose. Can it be—”
+
+“Wait!... Listen!” he whispered. “I hear a hoss.”
+
+He rose noiselessly, with his ear to the breeze. Suddenly he pulled his
+sombrero down over his bandaged head and, swinging his gun-sheaths
+round in front, he stepped into the alcove.
+
+“It’s a hoss—comin’ fast,” he added.
+
+Jane’s listening ear soon caught a faint, rapid, rhythmic beat of
+hoofs. It came from the sage. It gave her a thrill that she was at a
+loss to understand. The sound rose stronger, louder. Then came a clear,
+sharp difference when the horse passed from the sage trail to the
+hard-packed ground of the grove. It became a ringing run—swift in its
+bell-like clatterings, yet singular in longer pause than usual between
+the hoofbeats of a horse.
+
+“It’s Wrangle!... It’s Wrangle!” cried Jane Withersteen. “I’d know him
+from a million horses!”
+
+Excitement and thrilling expectancy flooded out all Jane Withersteen’s
+calm. A tight band closed round her breast as she saw the giant sorrel
+flit in reddish-brown flashes across the openings in the green. Then he
+was pounding down the lane—thundering into the court—crashing his great
+iron-shod hoofs on the stone flags. Wrangle it was surely, but shaggy
+and wild-eyed, and sage-streaked, with dust-caked lather staining his
+flanks. He reared and crashed down and plunged. The rider leaped off,
+threw the bridle, and held hard on a lasso looped round Wrangle’s head
+and neck. Janet’s heart sank as she tried to recognize Venters in the
+rider. Something familiar struck her in the lofty stature in the sweep
+of powerful shoulders. But this bearded, longhaired, unkempt man, who
+wore ragged clothes patched with pieces of skin, and boots that showed
+bare legs and feet—this dusty, dark, and wild rider could not possibly
+be Venters.
+
+“Whoa, Wrangle, old boy! Come down. Easy now. So—so—so. You’re home,
+old boy, and presently you can have a drink of water you’ll remember.”
+
+In the voice Jane knew the rider to be Venters. He tied Wrangle to the
+hitching-rack and turned to the court.
+
+“Oh, Bern!... You wild man!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Jane—Jane, it’s good to see you! Hello, Lassiter! Yes, it’s Venters.”
+
+Like rough iron his hard hand crushed Jane’s. In it she felt the
+difference she saw in him. Wild, rugged, unshorn—yet how splendid! He
+had gone away a boy—he had returned a man. He appeared taller, wider of
+shoulder, deeper-chested, more powerfully built. But was that only her
+fancy—he had always been a young giant—was the change one of spirit? He
+might have been absent for years, proven by fire and steel, grown like
+Lassiter, strong and cool and sure. His eyes—were they keener, more
+flashing than before?—met hers with clear, frank, warm regard, in which
+perplexity was not, nor discontent, nor pain.
+
+“Look at me long as you like,” he said, with a laugh. “I’m not much to
+look at. And, Jane, neither you nor Lassiter, can brag. You’re paler
+than I ever saw you. Lassiter, here, he wears a bloody bandage under
+his hat. That reminds me. Some one took a flying shot at me down in the
+sage. It made Wrangle run some.... Well, perhaps you’ve more to tell me
+than I’ve got to tell you.”
+
+Briefly, in few words, Jane outlined the circumstances of her undoing
+in the weeks of his absence.
+
+Under his beard and bronze she saw his face whiten in terrible wrath.
+
+“Lassiter—what held you back?”
+
+No time in the long period of fiery moments and sudden shocks had Jane
+Withersteen ever beheld Lassiter as calm and serene and cool as then.
+
+“Jane had gloom enough without my addin’ to it by shootin’ up the
+village,” he said.
+
+As strange as Lassiter’s coolness was Venters’s curious, intent
+scrutiny of them both, and under it Jane felt a flaming tide wave from
+bosom to temples.
+
+“Well—you’re right,” he said, with slow pause. “It surprises me a
+little, that’s all.”
+
+Jane sensed then a slight alteration in Venters, and what it was, in
+her own confusion, she could not tell. It had always been her intention
+to acquaint him with the deceit she had fallen to in her zeal to move
+Lassiter. She did not mean to spare herself. Yet now, at the moment,
+before these riders, it was an impossibility to explain.
+
+Venters was speaking somewhat haltingly, without his former frankness.
+“I found Oldring’s hiding-place and your red herd. I learned—I know—I’m
+sure there was a deal between Tull and Oldring.” He paused and shifted
+his position and his gaze. He looked as if he wanted to say something
+that he found beyond him. Sorrow and pity and shame seemed to contend
+for mastery over him. Then he raised himself and spoke with effort.
+“Jane I’ve cost you too much. You’ve almost ruined yourself for me. It
+was wrong, for I’m not worth it. I never deserved such friendship.
+Well, maybe it’s not too late. You must give me up. Mind, I haven’t
+changed. I am just the same as ever. I’ll see Tull while I’m here, and
+tell him to his face.”
+
+“Bern, it’s too late,” said Jane.
+
+“I’ll _make_ him believe!” cried Venters, violently.
+
+“You ask me to break our friendship?”
+
+“Yes. If you don’t, I shall.”
+
+“Forever?”
+
+“Forever!”
+
+Jane sighed. Another shadow had lengthened down the sage slope to cast
+further darkness upon her. A melancholy sweetness pervaded her
+resignation. The boy who had left her had returned a man, nobler,
+stronger, one in whom she divined something unbending as steel. There
+might come a moment later when she would wonder why she had not fought
+against his will, but just now she yielded to it. She liked him as
+well—nay, more, she thought, only her emotions were deadened by the
+long, menacing wait for the bursting storm.
+
+Once before she had held out her hand to him—when she gave it; now she
+stretched it tremblingly forth in acceptance of the decree circumstance
+had laid upon them. Venters bowed over it kissed it, pressed it hard,
+and half stifled a sound very like a sob. Certain it was that when he
+raised his head tears glistened in his eyes.
+
+“Some—women—have a hard lot,” he said, huskily. Then he shook his
+powerful form, and his rags lashed about him. “I’ll say a few things to
+Tull—when I meet him.”
+
+“Bern—you’ll not draw on Tull? Oh, that must not be! Promise me—”
+
+“I promise you this,” he interrupted, in stern passion that thrilled
+while it terrorized her. “If you say one more word for that plotter
+I’ll kill him as I would a mad coyote!”
+
+Jane clasped her hands. Was this fire-eyed man the one whom she had
+once made as wax to her touch? Had Venters become Lassiter and Lassiter
+Venters?
+
+“I’ll—say no more,” she faltered.
+
+“Jane, Lassiter once called you blind,” said Venters. “It must be true.
+But I won’t upbraid you. Only don’t rouse the devil in me by praying
+for Tull! I’ll try to keep cool when I meet him. That’s all. Now
+there’s one more thing I want to ask of you—the last. I’ve found a
+valley down in the Pass. It’s a wonderful place. I intend to stay
+there. It’s so hidden I believe no one can find it. There’s good water,
+and browse, and game. I want to raise corn and stock. I need to take in
+supplies. Will you give them to me?”
+
+“Assuredly. The more you take the better you’ll please me—and perhaps
+the less my—my enemies will get.”
+
+“Venters, I reckon you’ll have trouble packin’ anythin’ away,” put in
+Lassiter.
+
+“I’ll go at night.”
+
+“Mebbe that wouldn’t be best. You’d sure be stopped. You’d better go
+early in the mornin’—say, just after dawn. That’s the safest time to
+move round here.”
+
+“Lassiter, I’ll be hard to stop,” returned Venters, darkly.
+
+“I reckon so.”
+
+“Bern,” said Jane, “go first to the riders’ quarters and get yourself a
+complete outfit. You’re a—a sight. Then help yourself to whatever else
+you need—burros, packs, grain, dried fruits, and meat. You must take
+coffee and sugar and flour—all kinds of supplies. Don’t forget corn and
+seeds. I remember how you used to starve. Please—please take all you
+can pack away from here. I’ll make a bundle for you, which you mustn’t
+open till you’re in your valley. How I’d like to see it! To judge by
+you and Wrangle, how wild it must be!”
+
+Jane walked down into the outer court and approached the sorrel.
+Upstarting, he laid back his ears and eyed her.
+
+“Wrangle—dear old Wrangle,” she said, and put a caressing hand on his
+matted mane. “Oh, he’s wild, but he knows me! Bern, can he run as fast
+as ever?”
+
+“Run? Jane, he’s done sixty miles since last night at dark, and I could
+make him kill Black Star right now in a ten-mile race.”
+
+“He never could,” protested Jane. “He couldn’t even if he was fresh.”
+
+“I reckon mebbe the best hoss’ll prove himself yet,” said Lassiter,
+“an’, Jane, if it ever comes to that race I’d like you to be on
+Wrangle.”
+
+“I’d like that, too,” rejoined Venters. “But, Jane, maybe Lassiter’s
+hint is extreme. Bad as your prospects are, you’ll surely never come to
+the running point.”
+
+“Who knows!” she replied, with mournful smile.
+
+“No, no, Jane, it can’t be so bad as all that. Soon as I see Tull
+there’ll be a change in your fortunes. I’ll hurry down to the
+village.... Now don’t worry.”
+
+Jane retired to the seclusion of her room. Lassiter’s subtle
+forecasting of disaster, Venters’s forced optimism, neither remained in
+mind. Material loss weighed nothing in the balance with other losses
+she was sustaining. She wondered dully at her sitting there, hands
+folded listlessly, with a kind of numb deadness to the passing of time
+and the passing of her riches. She thought of Venters’s friendship. She
+had not lost that, but she had lost him. Lassiter’s friendship—that was
+more than love—it would endure, but soon he, too, would be gone. Little
+Fay slept dreamlessly upon the bed, her golden curls streaming over the
+pillow. Jane had the child’s worship. Would she lose that, too? And if
+she did, what then would be left? Conscience thundered at her that
+there was left her religion. Conscience thundered that she should be
+grateful on her knees for this baptism of fire; that through
+misfortune, sacrifice, and suffering her soul might be fused pure gold.
+But the old, spontaneous, rapturous spirit no more exalted her. She
+wanted to be a woman—not a martyr. Like the saint of old who mortified
+his flesh, Jane Withersteen had in her the temper for heroic martyrdom,
+if by sacrificing herself she could save the souls of others. But here
+the damnable verdict blistered her that the more she sacrificed herself
+the blacker grew the souls of her churchmen. There was something
+terribly wrong with her soul, something terribly wrong with her
+churchmen and her religion. In the whirling gulf of her thought there
+was yet one shining light to guide her, to sustain her in her hope; and
+it was that, despite her errors and her frailties and her blindness,
+she had one absolute and unfaltering hold on ultimate and supreme
+justice. That was love. “Love your enemies as yourself!” was a divine
+word, entirely free from any church or creed.
+
+Jane’s meditations were disturbed by Lassiter’s soft, tinkling step in
+the court. Always he wore the clinking spurs. Always he was in
+readiness to ride. She passed out and called him into the huge, dim
+hall.
+
+“I think you’ll be safer here. The court is too open,” she said.
+
+“I reckon,” replied Lassiter. “An’ it’s cooler here. The day’s sure
+muggy. Well, I went down to the village with Venters.”
+
+“Already! Where is he?” queried Jane, in quick amaze.
+
+“He’s at the corrals. Blake’s helpin’ him get the burros an’ packs
+ready. That Blake is a good fellow.”
+
+“Did—did Bern meet Tull?”
+
+“I guess he did,” answered Lassiter, and he laughed dryly.
+
+“Tell me! Oh, you exasperate me! You’re so cool, so calm! For Heaven’s
+sake, tell me what happened!”
+
+“First time I’ve been in the village for weeks,” went on Lassiter,
+mildly. “I reckon there ain’t been more of a show for a long time. Me
+an’ Venters walkin’ down the road! It was funny. I ain’t sayin’ anybody
+was particular glad to see us. I’m not much thought of hereabouts, an’
+Venters he sure looks like what you called him, a wild man. Well, there
+was some runnin’ of folks before we got to the stores. Then everybody
+vamoosed except some surprised rustlers in front of a saloon. Venters
+went right in the stores an’ saloons, an’ of course I went along. I
+don’t know which tickled me the most—the actions of many fellers we
+met, or Venters’s nerve. Jane, I was downright glad to be along. You
+see _that_ sort of thing is my element, an’ I’ve been away from it for
+a spell. But we didn’t find Tull in one of them places. Some Gentile
+feller at last told Venters he’d find Tull in that long buildin’ next
+to Parsons’s store. It’s a kind of meetin’-room; and sure enough, when
+we peeped in, it was half full of men.
+
+“Venters yelled: ‘Don’t anybody pull guns! We ain’t come for that!’
+Then he tramped in, an’ I was some put to keep alongside him. There was
+a hard, scrapin’ sound of feet, a loud cry, an’ then some whisperin’,
+an’ after that stillness you could cut with a knife. Tull was there,
+an’ that fat party who once tried to throw a gun on me, an’ other
+important-lookin’ men, en’ that little frog-legged feller who was with
+Tull the day I rode in here. I wish you could have seen their faces,
+’specially Tull’s an’ the fat party’s. But there ain’t no use of me
+tryin’ to tell you how they looked.
+
+“Well, Venters an’ I stood there in the middle of the room with that
+batch of men all in front of us, en’ not a blamed one of them winked an
+eyelash or moved a finger. It was natural, of course, for me to notice
+many of them packed guns. That’s a way of mine, first noticin’ them
+things. Venters spoke up, an’ his voice sort of chilled an’ cut, en’ he
+told Tull he had a few things to say.”
+
+Here Lassiter paused while he turned his sombrero round and round, in
+his familiar habit, and his eyes had the look of a man seeing over
+again some thrilling spectacle, and under his red bronze there was
+strange animation.
+
+“Like a shot, then, Venters told Tull that the friendship between you
+an’ him was all over, an’ he was leaving your place. He said you’d both
+of you broken off in the hope of propitiatin’ your people, but you
+hadn’t changed your mind otherwise, an’ never would.
+
+“Next he spoke up for you. I ain’t goin’ to tell you what he said.
+Only—no other woman who ever lived ever had such tribute! You had a
+champion, Jane, an’ never fear that those thick-skulled men don’t know
+you now. It couldn’t be otherwise. He spoke the ringin’, lightnin’
+truth.... Then he accused Tull of the underhand, miserable robbery of a
+helpless woman. He told Tull where the red herd was, of a deal made
+with Oldrin’, that Jerry Card had made the deal. I thought Tull was
+goin’ to drop, an’ that little frog-legged cuss, he looked some limp
+an’ white. But Venters’s voice would have kept anybody’s legs from
+bucklin’. I was stiff myself. He went on an’ called Tull—called him
+every bad name ever known to a rider, an’ then some. He cursed Tull. I
+never hear a man get such a cursin’. He laughed in scorn at the idea of
+Tull bein’ a minister. He said Tull an’ a few more dogs of hell builded
+their empire out of the hearts of such innocent an’ God-fearin’ women
+as Jane Withersteen. He called Tull a binder of women, a callous beast
+who hid behind a mock mantle of righteousness—an’ the last an’ lowest
+coward on the face of the earth. To prey on weak women through their
+religion—that was the last unspeakable crime!
+
+“Then he finished, an’ by this time he’d almost lost his voice. But his
+whisper was enough. ‘Tull,’ he said, ‘_she_ begged me not to draw on
+you to-day. _She_ would pray for you if you burned her at the stake....
+But listen!... I swear if you and I ever come face to face again, I’ll
+kill you!’
+
+“We backed out of the door then, an’ up the road. But nobody follered
+us.”
+
+Jane found herself weeping passionately. She had not been conscious of
+it till Lassiter ended his story, and she experienced exquisite pain
+and relief in shedding tears. Long had her eyes been dry, her grief
+deep; long had her emotions been dumb. Lassiter’s story put her on the
+rack; the appalling nature of Venters’s act and speech had no parallel
+as an outrage; it was worse than bloodshed. Men like Tull had been
+shot, but had one ever been so terribly denounced in public?
+Over-mounting her horror, an uncontrollable, quivering passion shook
+her very soul. It was sheer human glory in the deed of a fearless man.
+It was hot, primitive instinct to live—to fight. It was a kind of mad
+joy in Venters’s chivalry. It was close to the wrath that had first
+shaken her in the beginning of this war waged upon her.
+
+“Well, well, Jane, don’t take it that way,” said Lassiter, in evident
+distress. “I had to tell you. There’s some things a feller jest can’t
+keep. It’s strange you give up on hearin’ that, when all this long time
+you’ve been the gamest woman I ever seen. But I don’t know women. Mebbe
+there’s reason for you to cry. I know this—nothin’ ever rang in my soul
+an’ so filled it as what Venters did. I’d like to have done it, but—I’m
+only good for throwin’ a gun, en’ it seems you hate that.... Well, I’ll
+be goin’ now.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Venters took Wrangle to the stable. The sorrel’s shy a shoe, an’ I’ve
+got to help hold the big devil an’ put on another.”
+
+“Tell Bern to come for the pack I want to give him—and—and to say
+good-by,” called Jane, as Lassiter went out.
+
+Jane passed the rest of that day in a vain endeavor to decide what and
+what not to put in the pack for Venters. This task was the last she
+would ever perform for him, and the gifts were the last she would ever
+make him. So she picked and chose and rejected, and chose again, and
+often paused in sad revery, and began again, till at length she filled
+the pack.
+
+It was about sunset, and she and Fay had finished supper and were
+sitting in the court, when Venters’s quick steps rang on the stones.
+She scarcely knew him, for he had changed the tattered garments, and
+she missed the dark beard and long hair. Still he was not the Venters
+of old. As he came up the steps she felt herself pointing to the pack,
+and heard herself speaking words that were meaningless to her. He said
+good-by; he kissed her, released her, and turned away. His tall figure
+blurred in her sight, grew dim through dark, streaked vision, and then
+he vanished.
+
+Twilight fell around Withersteen House, and dusk and night. Little Fay
+slept; but Jane lay with strained, aching eyes. She heard the wind
+moaning in the cottonwoods and mice squeaking in the walls. The night
+was interminably long, yet she prayed to hold back the dawn. What would
+another day bring forth? The blackness of her room seemed blacker for
+the sad, entering gray of morning light. She heard the chirp of
+awakening birds, and fancied she caught a faint clatter of hoofs. Then
+low, dull distant, throbbed a heavy gunshot. She had expected it, was
+waiting for it; nevertheless, an electric shock checked her heart,
+froze the very living fiber of her bones. That vise-like hold on her
+faculties apparently did not relax for a long time, and it was a voice
+under her window that released her.
+
+“Jane!... Jane!” softly called Lassiter.
+
+She answered somehow.
+
+“It’s all right. Venters got away. I thought mebbe you’d heard that
+shot, en’ I was worried some.”
+
+“What was it—who fired?”
+
+“Well—some fool feller tried to stop Venters out there in the sage—an’
+he only stopped lead!... I think it’ll be all right. I haven’t seen or
+heard of any other fellers round. Venters’ll go through safe. An’,
+Jane, I’ve got Bells saddled, an’ I’m going to trail Venters. Mind, I
+won’t show myself unless he falls foul of somebody an’ needs me. I want
+to see if this place where he’s goin’ is safe for him. He says nobody
+can track him there. I never seen the place yet I couldn’t track a man
+to. Now, Jane, you stay indoors while I’m gone, an’ keep close watch on
+Fay. Will you?”
+
+“Yes! Oh yes!”
+
+“An’ another thing, Jane,” he continued, then paused for long—“another
+thing—if you ain’t here when I come back—if you’re _gone_—don’t fear,
+I’ll trail you—I’ll find you out.”
+
+“My dear Lassiter, where could I be gone—as you put it?” asked Jane, in
+curious surprise.
+
+“I reckon you might be somewhere. Mebbe tied in an old barn—or
+corralled in some gulch—or chained in a cave! _Milly Erne was_—till she
+give in! Mebbe that’s news to you.... Well, if you’re gone I’ll hunt
+for you.”
+
+“No, Lassiter,” she replied, sadly and low. “If I’m gone just forget
+the unhappy woman whose blinded selfish deceit you repaid with kindness
+and love.”
+
+She heard a deep, muttering curse, under his breath, and then the
+silvery tinkling of his spurs as he moved away.
+
+Jane entered upon the duties of that day with a settled, gloomy calm.
+Disaster hung in the dark clouds, in the shade, in the humid west wind.
+Blake, when he reported, appeared without his usual cheer; and Jerd
+wore a harassed look of a worn and worried man. And when Judkins put in
+appearance, riding a lame horse, and dismounted with the cramp of a
+rider, his dust-covered figure and his darkly grim, almost dazed
+expression told Jane of dire calamity. She had no need of words.
+
+“Miss Withersteen, I have to report—loss of the—white herd,” said
+Judkins, hoarsely.
+
+“Come, sit down, you look played out,” replied Jane, solicitously. She
+brought him brandy and food, and while he partook of refreshments, of
+which he appeared badly in need, she asked no questions.
+
+“No one rider—could hev done more—Miss Withersteen,” he went on,
+presently.
+
+“Judkins, don’t be distressed. You’ve done more than any other rider.
+I’ve long expected to lose the white herd. It’s no surprise. It’s in
+line with other things that are happening. I’m grateful for your
+service.”
+
+“Miss Withersteen, I knew how you’d take it. But if anythin’, that
+makes it harder to tell. You see, a feller wants to do so much fer you,
+an’ I’d got fond of my job. We led the herd a ways off to the north of
+the break in the valley. There was a big level an’ pools of water an’
+tip-top browse. But the cattle was in a high nervous condition. Wild—as
+wild as antelope! You see, they’d been so scared they never slept. I
+ain’t a-goin’ to tell you of the many tricks that were pulled off out
+there in the sage. But there wasn’t a day for weeks thet the herd
+didn’t get started to run. We allus managed to ride ’em close an’ drive
+’em back an’ keep ’em bunched. Honest, Miss Withersteen, them steers
+was _thin_. They was _thin_ when water and grass was everywhere. _Thin_
+at this season—thet’ll tell you how your steers was pestered. Fer
+instance, one night a strange runnin’ streak of fire run right through
+the herd. That streak was a coyote—_with an oiled an’ blazin’ tail!_
+Fer I shot it an’ found out. We had hell with the herd that night, an’
+if the sage an’ grass hadn’t been wet—we, hosses, steers, an’ all would
+hev burned up. But I said I wasn’t goin’ to tell you any of the
+tricks.... Strange now, Miss Withersteen, when the stampede did come it
+was from natural cause—jest a whirlin’ devil of dust. You’ve seen the
+like often. An’ this wasn’t no big whirl, fer the dust was mostly
+settled. It had dried out in a little swale, an’ ordinarily no steer
+would ever hev run fer it. But the herd was nervous en’ wild. An’ jest
+as Lassiter said, when that bunch of white steers got to movin’ they
+was as bad as buffalo. I’ve seen some buffalo stampedes back in
+Nebraska, an’ this bolt of the steers was the same kind.
+
+“I tried to mill the herd jest as Lassiter did. But I wasn’t equal to
+it, Miss Withersteen. I don’t believe the rider lives who could hev
+turned thet herd. We kept along of the herd fer miles, an’ more’n one
+of my boys tried to get the steers a-millin’. It wasn’t no use. We got
+off level ground, goin’ down, an’ then the steers ran somethin’ fierce.
+We left the little gullies an’ washes level-full of dead steers.
+Finally I saw the herd was makin’ to pass a kind of low pocket between
+ridges. There was a hog-back—as we used to call ’em—a pile of rocks
+stickin’ up, and I saw the herd was goin’ to split round it, or swing
+out to the left. An’ I wanted ’em to go to the right so mebbe we’d be
+able to drive ’em into the pocket. So, with all my boys except three, I
+rode hard to turn the herd a little to the right. We couldn’t budge
+’em. They went on en’ split round the rocks, en’ the most of ’em was
+turned sharp to the left by a deep wash we hedn’t seen—hed no chance to
+see.
+
+“The other three boys—Jimmy Vail, Joe Willis, an’ thet little Cairns
+boy—a nervy kid! they, with Cairns leadin’, tried to buck thet herd
+round to the pocket. It was a wild, fool idee. I couldn’t do nothin’.
+The boys got hemmed in between the steers an’ the wash—thet they hedn’t
+no chance to see, either. Vail an’ Willis was run down right before our
+eyes. An’ Cairns, who rode a fine hoss, he did some ridin’. I never
+seen equaled, en’ would hev beat the steers if there’d been any room to
+run in. I was high up an’ could see how the steers kept spillin’ by
+twos an’ threes over into the wash. Cairns put his hoss to a place thet
+was too wide fer any hoss, an’ broke his neck an’ the hoss’s too. We
+found that out after, an’ as fer Vail an’ Willis—two thousand steers
+ran over the poor boys. There wasn’t much left to pack home fer
+burying!... An’, Miss Withersteen, thet all happened yesterday, en’ I
+believe, if the white herd didn’t run over the wall of the Pass, it’s
+runnin’ yet.”
+
+On the morning of the second day after Judkins’s recital, during which
+time Jane remained indoors a prey to regret and sorrow for the boy
+riders, and a new and now strangely insistent fear for her own person,
+she again heard what she had missed more than she dared honestly
+confess—the soft, jingling step of Lassiter. Almost overwhelming relief
+surged through her, a feeling as akin to joy as any she could have been
+capable of in those gloomy hours of shadow, and one that suddenly
+stunned her with the significance of what Lassiter had come to mean to
+her. She had begged him, for his own sake, to leave Cottonwoods. She
+might yet beg that, if her weakening courage permitted her to dare
+absolute loneliness and helplessness, but she realized now that if she
+were left alone her life would become one long, hideous nightmare.
+
+When his soft steps clinked into the hall, in answer to her greeting,
+and his tall, black-garbed form filled the door, she felt an
+inexpressible sense of immediate safety. In his presence she lost her
+fear of the dim passageways of Withersteen House and of every sound.
+Always it had been that, when he entered the court or the hall, she had
+experienced a distinctly sickening but gradually lessening shock at
+sight of the huge black guns swinging at his sides. This time the
+sickening shock again visited her, it was, however, because a revealing
+flash of thought told her that it was not alone Lassiter who was
+thrillingly welcome, but also his fatal weapons. They meant so much.
+How she had fallen—how broken and spiritless must she be—to have still
+the same old horror of Lassiter’s guns and his name, yet feel somehow a
+cold, shrinking protection in their law and might and use.
+
+“Did you trail Venters—find his wonderful valley?” she asked, eagerly.
+
+“Yes, an’ I reckon it’s sure a wonderful place.”
+
+“Is he safe there?”
+
+“That’s been botherin’ me some. I tracked him an’ part of the trail was
+the hardest I ever tackled. Mebbe there’s a rustler or somebody in this
+country who’s as good at trackin’ as I am. If that’s so Venters ain’t
+safe.”
+
+“Well—tell me all about Bern and his valley.”
+
+To Jane’s surprise Lassiter showed disinclination for further talk
+about his trip. He appeared to be extremely fatigued. Jane reflected
+that one hundred and twenty miles, with probably a great deal of
+climbing on foot, all in three days, was enough to tire any rider.
+Moreover, it presently developed that Lassiter had returned in a mood
+of singular sadness and preoccupation. She put it down to a moodiness
+over the loss of her white herd and the now precarious condition of her
+fortune.
+
+Several days passed, and as nothing happened, Jane’s spirits began to
+brighten. Once in her musings she thought that this tendency of hers to
+rebound was as sad as it was futile. Meanwhile, she had resumed her
+walks through the grove with little Fay.
+
+One morning she went as far as the sage. She had not seen the slope
+since the beginning of the rains, and now it bloomed a rich deep
+purple. There was a high wind blowing, and the sage tossed and waved
+and colored beautifully from light to dark. Clouds scudded across the
+sky and their shadows sailed darkly down the sunny slope.
+
+Upon her return toward the house she went by the lane to the stables,
+and she had scarcely entered the great open space with its corrals and
+sheds when she saw Lassiter hurriedly approaching. Fay broke from her
+and, running to a corral fence, began to pat and pull the long, hanging
+ears of a drowsy burro.
+
+One look at Lassiter armed her for a blow.
+
+Without a word he led her across the wide yard to the rise of the
+ground upon which the stable stood.
+
+“Jane—look!” he said, and pointed to the ground.
+
+Jane glanced down, and again, and upon steadier vision made out
+splotches of blood on the stones, and broad, smooth marks in the dust,
+leading out toward the sage.
+
+“What made these?” she asked.
+
+“I reckon somebody has dragged dead or wounded men out to where there
+was hosses in the sage.”
+
+“Dead—or—wounded—men!”
+
+“I reckon—Jane, are you strong? Can you bear up?”
+
+His hands were gently holding hers, and his eyes—suddenly she could no
+longer look into them. “Strong?” she echoed, trembling. “I—I will be.”
+
+Up on the stone-flag drive, nicked with the marks made by the iron-shod
+hoofs of her racers, Lassiter led her, his grasp ever growing firmer.
+
+“Where’s Blake—and—and Jerb?” she asked, haltingly.
+
+“I don’t know where Jerb is. Bolted, most likely,” replied Lassiter, as
+he took her through the stone door. “But Blake—poor Blake! He’s gone
+forever!... Be prepared, Jane.”
+
+With a cold prickling of her skin, with a queer thrumming in her ears,
+with fixed and staring eyes, Jane saw a gun lying at her feet with
+chamber swung and empty, and discharged shells scattered near.
+
+Outstretched upon the stable floor lay Blake, ghastly white—dead—one
+hand clutching a gun and the other twisted in his bloody blouse.
+
+“Whoever the thieves were, whether your people or rustlers—Blake killed
+some of them!” said Lassiter.
+
+“Thieves?” whispered Jane.
+
+“I reckon. Hoss-thieves!... Look!” Lassiter waved his hand toward the
+stalls.
+
+The first stall—Bells’s stall—was empty. All the stalls were empty. No
+racer whinnied and stamped greeting to her. Night was gone! Black Star
+was gone!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+GOLD
+
+
+As Lassiter had reported to Jane, Venters “went through” safely, and
+after a toilsome journey reached the peaceful shelter of Surprise
+Valley. When finally he lay wearily down under the silver spruces,
+resting from the strain of dragging packs and burros up the slope and
+through the entrance to Surprise Valley, he had leisure to think, and a
+great deal of the time went in regretting that he had not been frank
+with his loyal friend, Jane Withersteen.
+
+But, he kept continually recalling, when he had stood once more face to
+face with her and had been shocked at the change in her and had heard
+the details of her adversity, he had not had the heart to tell her of
+the closer interest which had entered his life. He had not lied; yet he
+had kept silence.
+
+Bess was in transports over the stores of supplies and the outfit he
+had packed from Cottonwoods. He had certainly brought a hundred times
+more than he had gone for; enough, surely, for years, perhaps to make
+permanent home in the valley. He saw no reason why he need ever leave
+there again.
+
+After a day of rest he recovered his strength and shared Bess’s
+pleasure in rummaging over the endless packs, and began to plan for the
+future. And in this planning, his trip to Cottonwoods, with its revived
+hate of Tull and consequent unleashing of fierce passions, soon faded
+out of mind. By slower degrees his friendship for Jane Withersteen and
+his contrition drifted from the active preoccupation of his present
+thought to a place in memory, with more and more infrequent recalls.
+
+And as far as the state of his mind was concerned, upon the second day
+after his return, the valley, with its golden hues and purple shades,
+the speaking west wind and the cool, silent night, and Bess’s watching
+eyes with their wonderful light, so wrought upon Venters that he might
+never have left them at all.
+
+That very afternoon he set to work. Only one thing hindered him upon
+beginning, though it in no wise checked his delight, and that in the
+multiplicity of tasks planned to make a paradise out of the valley he
+could not choose the one with which to begin. He had to grow into the
+habit of passing from one dreamy pleasure to another, like a bee going
+from flower to flower in the valley, and he found this wandering habit
+likely to extend to his labors. Nevertheless, he made a start.
+
+At the outset he discovered Bess to be both a considerable help in some
+ways and a very great hindrance in others. Her excitement and joy were
+spurs, inspirations; but she was utterly impracticable in her ideas,
+and she flitted from one plan to another with bewildering vacillation.
+Moreover, he fancied that she grew more eager, youthful, and sweet; and
+he marked that it was far easier to watch her and listen to her than it
+was to work. Therefore he gave her tasks that necessitated her going
+often to the cave where he had stored his packs.
+
+Upon the last of these trips, when he was some distance down the
+terrace and out of sight of camp, he heard a scream, and then the sharp
+barking of the dogs.
+
+For an instant he straightened up, amazed. Danger for her had been
+absolutely out of his mind. She had seen a rattlesnake—or a wildcat.
+Still she would not have been likely to scream at sight of either; and
+the barking of the dogs was ominous. Dropping his work, he dashed back
+along the terrace. Upon breaking through a clump of aspens he saw the
+dark form of a man in the camp. Cold, then hot, Venters burst into
+frenzied speed to reach his guns. He was cursing himself for a
+thoughtless fool when the man’s tall form became familiar and he
+recognized Lassiter. Then the reversal of emotions changed his run to a
+walk; he tried to call out, but his voice refused to carry; when he
+reached camp there was Lassiter staring at the white-faced girl. By
+that time Ring and Whitie had recognized him.
+
+“Hello, Venters! I’m makin’ you a visit,” said Lassiter, slowly. “An’
+I’m some surprised to see you’ve a—a young feller for company.”
+
+One glance had sufficed for the keen rider to read Bess’s real sex, and
+for once his cool calm had deserted him. He stared till the white of
+Bess’s cheeks flared into crimson. That, if it were needed, was the
+concluding evidence of her femininity, for it went fittingly with her
+sun-tinted hair and darkened, dilated eyes, the sweetness of her mouth,
+and the striking symmetry of her slender shape.
+
+“Heavens! Lassiter!” panted Venters, when he caught his breath. “What
+relief—it’s only you! How—in the name of all that’s wonderful—did you
+ever get here?”
+
+“I trailed you. We—I wanted to know where you was, if you had a safe
+place. So I trailed you.”
+
+“Trailed me,” cried Venters, bluntly.
+
+“I reckon. It was some of a job after I got to them smooth rocks. I was
+all day trackin’ you up to them little cut steps in the rock. The rest
+was easy.”
+
+“Where’s your hoss? I hope you hid him.”
+
+“I tied him in them queer cedars down on the slope. He can’t be seen
+from the valley.”
+
+“That’s good. Well, well! I’m completely dumfounded. It was my idea
+that no man could track me in here.”
+
+“I reckon. But if there’s a tracker in these uplands as good as me he
+can find you.”
+
+“That’s bad. That’ll worry me. But, Lassiter, now you’re here I’m glad
+to see you. And—and my companion here is not a young fellow!... Bess,
+this is a friend of mine. He saved my life once.”
+
+The embarrassment of the moment did not extend to Lassiter. Almost at
+once his manner, as he shook hands with Bess, relieved Venters and put
+the girl at ease. After Venters’s words and one quick look at Lassiter,
+her agitation stilled, and, though she was shy, if she were conscious
+of anything out of the ordinary in the situation, certainly she did not
+show it.
+
+“I reckon I’ll only stay a little while,” Lassiter was saying. “An’ if
+you don’t mind troublin’, I’m hungry. I fetched some biscuits along,
+but they’re gone. Venters, this place is sure the wonderfullest ever
+seen. Them cut steps on the slope! That outlet into the gorge! An’ it’s
+like climbin’ up through hell into heaven to climb through that gorge
+into this valley! There’s a queer-lookin’ rock at the top of the
+passage. I didn’t have time to stop. I’m wonderin’ how you ever found
+this place. It’s sure interestin’.”
+
+During the preparation and eating of dinner Lassiter listened mostly,
+as was his wont, and occasionally he spoke in his quaint and dry way.
+Venters noted, however, that the rider showed an increasing interest in
+Bess. He asked her no questions, and only directed his attention to her
+while she was occupied and had no opportunity to observe his scrutiny.
+It seemed to Venters that Lassiter grew more and more absorbed in his
+study of Bess, and that he lost his coolness in some strange, softening
+sympathy. Then, quite abruptly, he arose and announced the necessity
+for his early departure. He said good-by to Bess in a voice gentle and
+somewhat broken, and turned hurriedly away. Venters accompanied him,
+and they had traversed the terrace, climbed the weathered slope, and
+passed under the stone bridge before either spoke again.
+
+Then Lassiter put a great hand on Venters’s shoulder and wheeled him to
+meet a smoldering fire of gray eyes.
+
+“Lassiter, I couldn’t tell Jane! I couldn’t,” burst out Venters,
+reading his friend’s mind. “I tried. But I couldn’t. She wouldn’t
+understand, and she has troubles enough. And I love the girl!”
+
+“Venters, I reckon this beats me. I’ve seen some queer things in my
+time, too. This girl—who is she?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“Don’t know! What is she, then?”
+
+“I don’t know that, either. Oh, it’s the strangest story you ever
+heard. I must tell you. But you’ll never believe.”
+
+“Venters, women were always puzzles to me. But for all that, if this
+girl ain’t a child, an’ as innocent, I’m no fit person to think of
+virtue an’ goodness in anybody. Are you goin’ to be square with her?”
+
+“I am—so help me God!”
+
+“I reckoned so. Mebbe my temper oughtn’t led me to make sure. But, man,
+she’s a woman in all but years. She’s sweeter’n the sage.”
+
+“Lassiter, I know, I know. And the _hell_ of it is that in spite of her
+innocence and charm she’s—she’s not what she seems!”
+
+“I wouldn’t want to—of course, I couldn’t call you a liar, Venters,”
+said the older man.
+
+“What’s more, she was Oldring’s Masked Rider!”
+
+Venters expected to floor his friend with that statement, but he was
+not in any way prepared for the shock his words gave. For an instant he
+was astounded to see Lassiter stunned; then his own passionate
+eagerness to unbosom himself, to tell the wonderful story, precluded
+any other thought.
+
+“Son, tell me all about this,” presently said Lassiter as he seated
+himself on a stone and wiped his moist brow.
+
+Thereupon Venters began his narrative at the point where he had shot
+the rustler and Oldring’s Masked Rider, and he rushed through it,
+telling all, not holding back even Bess’s unreserved avowal of her love
+or his deepest emotions.
+
+“That’s the story,” he said, concluding. “I love her, though I’ve never
+told her. If I did tell her I’d be ready to marry her, and that seems
+impossible in this country. I’d be afraid to risk taking her anywhere.
+So I intend to do the best I can for her here.”
+
+“The longer I live the stranger life is,” mused Lassiter, with downcast
+eyes. “I’m reminded of somethin’ you once said to Jane about hands in
+her game of life. There’s that unseen hand of power, an’ Tull’s black
+hand, an’ my red one, an’ your indifferent one, an’ the girl’s little
+brown, helpless one. An’, Venters there’s another one that’s all-wise
+an’ all-wonderful. _That’s_ the hand guidin’ Jane Withersteen’s game of
+life!... Your story’s one to daze a far clearer head than mine. I can’t
+offer no advice, even if you asked for it. Mebbe I can help you.
+Anyway, I’ll hold Oldrin’ up when he comes to the village an’ find out
+about this girl. I knew the rustler years ago. He’ll remember me.”
+
+“Lassiter, if I ever meet Oldring I’ll kill him!” cried Venters, with
+sudden intensity.
+
+“I reckon that’d be perfectly natural,” replied the rider.
+
+“Make him think Bess is dead—as she is to him and that old life.”
+
+“Sure, sure, son. Cool down now. If you’re goin’ to begin pullin’ guns
+on Tull an’ Oldrin’ you want to be cool. I reckon, though, you’d better
+keep hid here. Well, I must be leavin’.”
+
+“One thing, Lassiter. You’ll not tell Jane about Bess? Please don’t!”
+
+“I reckon not. But I wouldn’t be afraid to bet that after she’d got
+over anger at your secrecy—Venters, she’d be furious once in her
+life!—she’d think more of you. I don’t mind sayin’ for myself that I
+think you’re a good deal of a man.”
+
+In the further ascent Venters halted several times with the intention
+of saying good-by, yet he changed his mind and kept on climbing till
+they reached Balancing Rock. Lassiter examined the huge rock, listened
+to Venters’s idea of its position and suggestion, and curiously placed
+a strong hand upon it.
+
+“Hold on!” cried Venters. “I heaved at it once and have never gotten
+over my scare.”
+
+“Well, you do seem uncommon nervous,” replied Lassiter, much amused.
+“Now, as for me, why I always had the funniest notion to roll stones!
+When I was a kid I did it, an’ the bigger I got the bigger stones I’d
+roll. Ain’t that funny? Honest—even now I often get off my hoss just to
+tumble a big stone over a precipice, en’ watch it drop, en’ listen to
+it bang an’ boom. I’ve started some slides in my time, an’ don’t you
+forget it. I never seen a rock I wanted to roll as bad as this one!
+Wouldn’t there jest be roarin’, crashin’ hell down that trail?”
+
+“You’d close the outlet forever!” exclaimed Venters. “Well, good-by,
+Lassiter. Keep my secret and don’t forget me. And be mighty careful how
+you get out of the valley below. The rustlers’ cañon isn’t more than
+three miles up the Pass. Now you’ve tracked me here, I’ll never feel
+safe again.”
+
+In his descent to the valley, Venters’s emotion, roused to stirring
+pitch by the recital of his love story, quieted gradually, and in its
+place came a sober, thoughtful mood. All at once he saw that he was
+serious, because he would never more regain his sense of security while
+in the valley. What Lassiter could do another skilful tracker might
+duplicate. Among the many riders with whom Venters had ridden he
+recalled no one who could have taken his trail at Cottonwoods and have
+followed it to the edge of the bare slope in the pass, let alone up
+that glistening smooth stone. Lassiter, however, was not an ordinary
+rider. Instead of hunting cattle tracks he had likely spent a goodly
+portion of his life tracking men. It was not improbable that among
+Oldring’s rustlers there was one who shared Lassiter’s gift for
+trailing. And the more Venters dwelt on this possibility the more
+perturbed he grew.
+
+Lassiter’s visit, moreover, had a disquieting effect upon Bess, and
+Venters fancied that she entertained the same thought as to future
+seclusion. The breaking of their solitude, though by a well-meaning
+friend, had not only dispelled all its dream and much of its charm, but
+had instilled a canker of fear. Both had seen the footprint in the
+sand.
+
+Venters did no more work that day. Sunset and twilight gave way to
+night, and the cañon bird whistled its melancholy notes, and the wind
+sang softly in the cliffs, and the camp-fire blazed and burned down to
+red embers. To Venters a subtle difference was apparent in all of
+these, or else the shadowy change had been in him. He hoped that on the
+morrow this slight depression would have passed away.
+
+In that measure, however, he was doomed to disappointment. Furthermore,
+Bess reverted to a wistful sadness that he had not observed in her
+since her recovery. His attempt to cheer her out of it resulted in
+dismal failure, and consequently in a darkening of his own mood. Hard
+work relieved him; still, when the day had passed, his unrest returned.
+Then he set to deliberate thinking, and there came to him the startling
+conviction that he must leave Surprise Valley and take Bess with him.
+As a rider he had taken many chances, and as an adventurer in Deception
+Pass he had unhesitatingly risked his life, but now he would run no
+preventable hazard of Bess’s safety and happiness, and he was too keen
+not to see that hazard. It gave him a pang to think of leaving the
+beautiful valley just when he had the means to establish a permanent
+and delightful home there. One flashing thought tore in hot temptation
+through his mind—why not climb up into the gorge, roll Balancing Rock
+down the trail, and close forever the outlet to Deception Pass? “That
+was the beast in me—showing his teeth!” muttered Venters, scornfully.
+“I’ll just kill him good and quick! I’ll be fair to this girl, if it’s
+the last thing I do on earth!”
+
+Another day went by, in which he worked less and pondered more and all
+the time covertly watched Bess. Her wistfulness had deepened into
+downright unhappiness, and that made his task to tell her all the
+harder. He kept the secret another day, hoping by some chance she might
+grow less moody, and to his exceeding anxiety she fell into far deeper
+gloom. Out of his own secret and the torment of it he divined that she,
+too, had a secret and the keeping of it was torturing her. As yet he
+had no plan thought out in regard to how or when to leave the valley,
+but he decided to tell her the necessity of it and to persuade her to
+go. Furthermore, he hoped his speaking out would induce her to unburden
+her own mind.
+
+“Bess, what’s wrong with you?” he asked.
+
+“Nothing,” she answered, with averted face.
+
+Venters took hold of her gently, though masterfully, forced her to meet
+his eyes.
+
+“You can’t look at me and lie,” he said. “Now—what’s wrong with you?
+You’re keeping something from me. Well, I’ve got a secret, too, and I
+intend to tell it presently.”
+
+“Oh—I _have_ a secret. I was crazy to tell you when you came back.
+That’s why I was so silly about everything. I kept holding my secret
+back—gloating over it. But when Lassiter came I got an idea—that
+changed my mind. Then I hated to tell you.”
+
+“Are you going to now?”
+
+“Yes—yes. I was coming to it. I tried yesterday, but you were so cold.
+I was afraid. I couldn’t keep it much longer.”
+
+“Very well, most mysterious lady, tell your wonderful secret.”
+
+“You needn’t laugh,” she retorted, with a first glimpse of reviving
+spirit. “I can take the laugh out of you in one second.”
+
+“It’s a go.”
+
+She ran through the spruces to the cave, and returned carrying
+something which was manifestly heavy. Upon nearer view he saw that
+whatever she held with such evident importance had been bound up in a
+black scarf he well remembered. That alone was sufficient to make him
+tingle with curiosity.
+
+“Have you any idea what I did in your absence?” she asked.
+
+“I imagine you lounged about, waiting and watching for me,” he replied,
+smiling. “I’ve my share of conceit, you know.”
+
+“You’re wrong. I worked. Look at my hands.” She dropped on her knees
+close to where he sat, and, carefully depositing the black bundle, she
+held out her hands. The palms and inside of her fingers were white,
+puckered, and worn.
+
+“Why, Bess, you’ve been fooling in the water,” he said.
+
+“Fooling? Look here!” With deft fingers she spread open the black
+scarf, and the bright sun shone upon a dull, glittering heap of gold.
+
+“Gold!” he ejaculated.
+
+“Yes, gold! See, pounds of gold! I found it—washed it out of the
+stream—picked it out grain by grain, nugget by nugget!”
+
+“Gold!” he cried.
+
+“Yes. Now—now laugh at my secret!”
+
+For a long minute Venters gazed. Then he stretched forth a hand to feel
+if the gold was real.
+
+“_Gold!_” he almost shouted. “Bess, there are hundreds—thousands of
+dollars’ worth here!”
+
+He leaned over to her, and put his hand, strong and clenching now, on
+hers.
+
+“Is there more where this came from?” he whispered.
+
+“Plenty of it, all the way up the stream to the cliff. You know I’ve
+often washed for gold. Then I’ve heard the men talk. I think there’s no
+great quantity of gold here, but enough for—for a fortune for _you_.”
+
+“That—was—your—secret!”
+
+“Yes. I hate gold. For it makes men mad. I’ve seen them drunk with joy
+and dance and fling themselves around. I’ve seen them curse and rave.
+I’ve seen them fight like dogs and roll in the dust. I’ve seen them
+kill each other for gold.”
+
+“Is that why you hated to tell me?”
+
+“Not—not altogether.” Bess lowered her head. “It was because I knew
+you’d never stay here long after you found gold.”
+
+“You were afraid I’d leave you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Listen!... You great, simple child! Listen... You sweet, wonderful,
+wild, blue-eyed girl! I was tortured by my secret. It was that I knew
+we—_we_ must leave the valley. We can’t stay here much longer. I
+couldn’t think how we’d get away—out of the country—or how we’d live,
+if we ever got out. I’m a beggar. That’s why I kept my secret. I’m
+poor. It takes money to make way beyond Sterling. We couldn’t ride
+horses or burros or walk forever. So while I knew we must go, I was
+distracted over how to go and what to do. _Now!_ We’ve gold! Once
+beyond Sterling, we’ll be safe from rustlers. We’ve no others to fear.
+
+“Oh! Listen! Bess!” Venters now heard his voice ringing high and sweet,
+and he felt Bess’s cold hands in his crushing grasp as she leaned
+toward him pale, breathless. “This is how much I’d leave you! You made
+me live again! I’ll take you away—far away from this wild country.
+You’ll begin a new life. You’ll be happy. You shall see cities, ships,
+people. You shall have anything your heart craves. All the shame and
+sorrow of your life shall be forgotten—as if they had never been. This
+is how much I’d leave you here alone—you sad-eyed girl. I love you!
+Didn’t you know it? How could you fail to know it? I love you! I’m
+free! I’m a man—a man you’ve made—no more a beggar!... Kiss me! This is
+how much I’d leave you here alone—you beautiful, strange, unhappy girl.
+But I’ll make you happy. What—what do I care for—your past! I love you!
+I’ll take you home to Illinois—to my mother. Then I’ll take you to far
+places. I’ll make up all you’ve lost. Oh, I know you love me—knew it
+before you told me. And it changed my life. And you’ll go with me, not
+as my companion as you are here, nor my sister, but, Bess, darling!...
+_As my wife!_”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+WRANGLE’S RACE RUN
+
+
+The plan eventually decided upon by the lovers was for Venters to go to
+the village, secure a horse and some kind of a disguise for Bess, or at
+least less striking apparel than her present garb, and to return
+post-haste to the valley. Meanwhile, she would add to their store of
+gold. Then they would strike the long and perilous trail to ride out of
+Utah. In the event of his inability to fetch back a horse for her, they
+intended to make the giant sorrel carry double. The gold, a little
+food, saddle blankets, and Venters’s guns were to compose the light
+outfit with which they would make the start.
+
+“I love this beautiful place,” said Bess. “It’s hard to think of
+leaving it.”
+
+“Hard! Well, I should think so,” replied Venters. “Maybe—in years—” But
+he did not complete in words his thought that might be possible to
+return after many years of absence and change.
+
+Once again Bess bade Venters farewell under the shadow of Balancing
+Rock, and this time it was with whispered hope and tenderness and
+passionate trust. Long after he had left her, all down through the
+outlet to the Pass, the clinging clasp of her arms, the sweetness of
+her lips, and the sense of a new and exquisite birth of character in
+her remained hauntingly and thrillingly in his mind. The girl who had
+sadly called herself nameless and nothing had been marvelously
+transformed in the moment of his avowal of love. It was something to
+think over, something to warm his heart, but for the present it had
+absolutely to be forgotten so that all his mind could be addressed to
+the trip so fraught with danger.
+
+He carried only his rifle, revolver, and a small quantity of bread and
+meat, and thus lightly burdened, he made swift progress down the slope
+and out into the valley. Darkness was coming on, and he welcomed it.
+Stars were blinking when he reached his old hiding-place in the split
+of cañon wall, and by their aid he slipped through the dense thickets
+to the grassy enclosure. Wrangle stood in the center of it with his
+head up, and he appeared black and of gigantic proportions in the dim
+light. Venters whistled softly, began a slow approach, and then called.
+The horse snorted and, plunging away with dull, heavy sound of hoofs,
+he disappeared in the gloom. “Wilder than ever!” muttered Venters. He
+followed the sorrel into the narrowing split between the walls, and
+presently had to desist because he could not see a foot in advance. As
+he went back toward the open Wrangle jumped out of an ebony shadow of
+cliff and like a thunderbolt shot huge and black past him down into the
+starlit glade. Deciding that all attempts to catch Wrangle at night
+would be useless, Venters repaired to the shelving rock where he had
+hidden saddle and blanket, and there went to sleep.
+
+The first peep of day found him stirring, and as soon as it was light
+enough to distinguish objects, he took his lasso off his saddle and
+went out to rope the sorrel. He espied Wrangle at the lower end of the
+cove and approached him in a perfectly natural manner. When he got near
+enough, Wrangle evidently recognized him, but was too wild to stand. He
+ran up the glade and on into the narrow lane between the walls. This
+favored Venters’s speedy capture of the horse, so, coiling his noose
+ready to throw, he hurried on. Wrangle let Venters get to within a
+hundred feet and then he broke. But as he plunged by, rapidly getting
+into his stride, Venters made a perfect throw with the rope. He had
+time to brace himself for the shock; nevertheless, Wrangle threw him
+and dragged him several yards before halting.
+
+“You wild devil,” said Venters, as he slowly pulled Wrangle up. “Don’t
+you know me? Come now—old fellow—so—so—”
+
+Wrangle yielded to the lasso and then to Venters’s strong hand. He was
+as straggly and wild-looking as a horse left to roam free in the sage.
+He dropped his long ears and stood readily to be saddled and bridled.
+But he was exceedingly sensitive, and quivered at every touch and
+sound. Venters led him to the thicket, and, bending the close saplings
+to let him squeeze through, at length reached the open. Sharp survey in
+each direction assured him of the usual lonely nature of the cañon,
+then he was in the saddle, riding south.
+
+Wrangle’s long, swinging canter was a wonderful ground-gainer. His
+stride was almost twice that of an ordinary horse; and his endurance
+was equally remarkable. Venters pulled him in occasionally, and walked
+him up the stretches of rising ground and along the soft washes.
+Wrangle had never yet shown any indication of distress while Venters
+rode him. Nevertheless, there was now reason to save the horse,
+therefore Venters did not resort to the hurry that had characterized
+his former trip. He camped at the last water in the Pass. What distance
+that was to Cottonwoods he did not know; he calculated, however, that
+it was in the neighborhood of fifty miles.
+
+Early in the morning he proceeded on his way, and about the middle of
+the forenoon reached the constricted gap that marked the southerly end
+of the Pass, and through which led the trail up to the sage-level. He
+spied out Lassiter’s tracks in the dust, but no others, and
+dismounting, he straightened out Wrangle’s bridle and began to lead him
+up the trail. The short climb, more severe on beast than on man,
+necessitated a rest on the level above, and during this he scanned the
+wide purple reaches of slope.
+
+Wrangle whistled his pleasure at the smell of the sage. Remounting,
+Venters headed up the white trail with the fragrant wind in his face.
+He had proceeded for perhaps a couple of miles when Wrangle stopped
+with a suddenness that threw Venters heavily against the pommel.
+
+“What’s wrong, old boy?” called Venters, looking down for a loose shoe
+or a snake or a foot lamed by a picked-up stone. Unrewarded, he raised
+himself from his scrutiny. Wrangle stood stiff head high, with his long
+ears erect. Thus guided, Venters swiftly gazed ahead to make out a
+dust-clouded, dark group of horsemen riding down the slope. If they had
+seen him, it apparently made no difference in their speed or direction.
+
+“Wonder who they are!” exclaimed Venters. He was not disposed to run.
+His cool mood tightened under grip of excitement as he reflected that,
+whoever the approaching riders were, they could not be friends. He
+slipped out of the saddle and led Wrangle behind the tallest
+sage-brush. It might serve to conceal them until the riders were close
+enough for him to see who they were; after that he would be indifferent
+to how soon they discovered him.
+
+After looking to his rifle and ascertaining that it was in working
+order, he watched, and as he watched, slowly the force of a bitter
+fierceness, long dormant, gathered ready to flame into life. If those
+riders were not rustlers he had forgotten how rustlers looked and rode.
+On they came, a small group, so compact and dark that he could not tell
+their number. How unusual that their horses did not see Wrangle! But
+such failure, Venters decided, was owing to the speed with which they
+were traveling. They moved at a swift canter affected more by rustlers
+than by riders. Venters grew concerned over the possibility that these
+horsemen would actually ride down on him before he had a chance to tell
+what to expect. When they were within three hundred yards he
+deliberately led Wrangle out into the trail.
+
+Then he heard shouts, and the hard scrape of sliding hoofs, and saw
+horses rear and plunge back with up-flung heads and flying manes.
+Several little white puffs of smoke appeared sharply against the black
+background of riders and horses, and shots rang out. Bullets struck far
+in front of Venters, and whipped up the dust and then hummed low into
+the sage. The range was great for revolvers, but whether the shots were
+meant to kill or merely to check advance, they were enough to fire that
+waiting ferocity in Venters. Slipping his arm through the bridle, so
+that Wrangle could not get away, Venters lifted his rifle and pulled
+the trigger twice.
+
+He saw the first horseman lean sideways and fall. He saw another lurch
+in his saddle and heard a cry of pain. Then Wrangle, plunging in
+fright, lifted Venters and nearly threw him. He jerked the horse down
+with a powerful hand and leaped into the saddle. Wrangle plunged again,
+dragging his bridle, that Venters had not had time to throw in place.
+Bending over with a swift movement, he secured it and dropped the loop
+over the pommel. Then, with grinding teeth, he looked to see what the
+issue would be.
+
+The band had scattered so as not to afford such a broad mark for
+bullets. The riders faced Venters, some with red-belching guns. He
+heard a sharper report, and just as Wrangle plunged again he caught the
+whizz of a leaden missile that would have hit him but for Wrangle’s
+sudden jump. A swift, hot wave, turning cold, passed over Venters.
+Deliberately he picked out the one rider with a carbine, and killed
+him. Wrangle snorted shrilly and bolted into the sage. Venters let him
+run a few rods, then with iron arm checked him.
+
+
+[Illustration: just as Wrangle plunged again he caught the whizz of a
+leaden missile]
+
+
+Five riders, surely rustlers, were left. One leaped out of the saddle
+to secure his fallen comrade’s carbine. A shot from Venters, which
+missed the man but sent the dust flying over him made him run back to
+his horse. Then they separated. The crippled rider went one way; the
+one frustrated in his attempt to get the carbine rode another, Venters
+thought he made out a third rider, carrying a strange-appearing bundle
+and disappearing in the sage. But in the rapidity of action and vision
+he could not discern what it was. Two riders with three horses swung
+out to the right. Afraid of the long rifle—a burdensome weapon seldom
+carried by rustlers or riders—they had been put to rout.
+
+Suddenly Venters discovered that one of the two men last noted was
+riding Jane Withersteen’s horse Bells—the beautiful bay racer she had
+given to Lassiter. Venters uttered a savage outcry. Then the small,
+wiry, frog-like shape of the second rider, and the ease and grace of
+his seat in the saddle—things so strikingly incongruous—grew more and
+more familiar in Venters’s sight.
+
+“_Jerry Card!_” cried Venters.
+
+It was indeed Tull’s right-hand man. Such a white hot wrath inflamed
+Venters that he fought himself to see with clearer gaze.
+
+“It’s Jerry Card!” he exclaimed, instantly. “_And he’s riding Black
+Star and leading Night!_”
+
+The long-kindling, stormy fire in Venters’s heart burst into flame. He
+spurred Wrangle, and as the horse lengthened his stride Venters slipped
+cartridges into the magazine of his rifle till it was once again full.
+Card and his companion were now half a mile or more in advance, riding
+easily down the slope. Venters marked the smooth gait, and understood
+it when Wrangle galloped out of the sage into the broad cattle trail,
+down which Venters had once tracked Jane Withersteen’s red herd. This
+hard-packed trail, from years of use, was as clean and smooth as a
+road. Venters saw Jerry Card look back over his shoulder, the other
+rider did likewise. Then the three racers lengthened their stride to
+the point where the swinging canter was ready to break into a gallop.
+
+“Wrangle, the race’s on,” said Venters, grimly. “We’ll canter with them
+and gallop with them and run with them. We’ll let them set the pace.”
+
+Venters knew he bestrode the strongest, swiftest, most tireless horse
+ever ridden by any rider across the Utah uplands. Recalling Jane
+Withersteen’s devoted assurance that Night could run neck and neck with
+Wrangle, and Black Star could show his heels to him, Venters wished
+that Jane were there to see the race to recover her blacks and in the
+unqualified superiority of the giant sorrel. Then Venters found himself
+thankful that she was absent, for he meant that race to end in Jerry
+Card’s death. The first flush, the raging of Venters’s wrath, passed,
+to leave him in sullen, almost cold possession of his will. It was a
+deadly mood, utterly foreign to his nature, engendered, fostered, and
+released by the wild passions of wild men in a wild country. The
+strength in him then—the thing rife in him that was not hate, but
+something as remorseless—might have been the fiery fruition of a whole
+lifetime of vengeful quest. Nothing could have stopped him.
+
+Venters thought out the race shrewdly. The rider on Bells would
+probably drop behind and take to the sage. What he did was of little
+moment to Venters. To stop Jerry Card, his evil hidden career as well
+as his present flight, and then to catch the blacks—that was all that
+concerned Venters. The cattle trail wound for miles and miles down the
+slope. Venters saw with a rider’s keen vision ten, fifteen, twenty
+miles of clear purple sage. There were no on-coming riders or rustlers
+to aid Card. His only chance to escape lay in abandoning the stolen
+horses and creeping away in the sage to hide. In ten miles Wrangle
+could run Black Star and Night off their feet, and in fifteen he could
+kill them outright. So Venters held the sorrel in, letting Card make
+the running. It was a long race that would save the blacks.
+
+In a few miles of that swinging canter Wrangle had crept appreciably
+closer to the three horses. Jerry Card turned again, and when he saw
+how the sorrel had gained, he put Black Star to a gallop. Night and
+Bells, on either side of him, swept into his stride.
+
+Venters loosened the rein on Wrangle and let him break into a gallop.
+The sorrel saw the horses ahead and wanted to run. But Venters
+restrained him. And in the gallop he gained more than in the canter.
+Bells was fast in that gait, but Black Star and Night had been trained
+to run. Slowly Wrangle closed the gap down to a quarter of a mile, and
+crept closer and closer.
+
+Jerry Card wheeled once more. Venters distinctly saw the red flash of
+his red face. This time he looked long. Venters laughed. He knew what
+passed in Card’s mind. The rider was trying to make out what horse it
+happened to be that thus gained on Jane Withersteen’s peerless racers.
+Wrangle had so long been away from the village that not improbably
+Jerry had forgotten. Besides, whatever Jerry’s qualifications for his
+fame as the greatest rider of the sage, certain it was that his best
+point was not far-sightedness. He had not recognized Wrangle. After
+what must have been a searching gaze he got his comrade to face about.
+This action gave Venters amusement. It spoke so surely of the facts
+that neither Card nor the rustler actually knew their danger. Yet if
+they kept to the trail—and the last thing such men would do would be to
+leave it—they were both doomed.
+
+This comrade of Card’s whirled far around in his saddle, and he even
+shaded his eyes from the sun. He, too, looked long. Then, all at once,
+he faced ahead again and, bending lower in the saddle, began to fling
+his right arm up and down. That flinging Venters knew to be the lashing
+of Bells. Jerry also became active. And the three racers lengthened out
+into a run.
+
+“Now, Wrangle!” cried Venters. “Run, you big devil! Run!”
+
+Venters laid the reins on Wrangle’s neck and dropped the loop over the
+pommel. The sorrel needed no guiding on that smooth trail. He was
+surer-footed in a run than at any other fast gait, and his running gave
+the impression of something devilish. He might now have been actuated
+by Venters’s spirit; undoubtedly his savage running fitted the mood of
+his rider. Venters bent forward swinging with the horse, and gripped
+his rifle. His eye measured the distance between him and Jerry Card.
+
+In less than two miles of running Bells began to drop behind the
+blacks, and Wrangle began to overhaul him. Venters anticipated that the
+rustler would soon take to the sage. Yet he did not. Not improbably he
+reasoned that the powerful sorrel could more easily overtake Bells in
+the heavier going outside of the trail. Soon only a few hundred yards
+lay between Bells and Wrangle. Turning in his saddle, the rustler began
+to shoot, and the bullets beat up little whiffs of dust. Venters raised
+his rifle, ready to take snap shots, and waited for favorable
+opportunity when Bells was out of line with the forward horses. Venters
+had it in him to kill these men as if they were skunk-bitten coyotes,
+but also he had restraint enough to keep from shooting one of Jane’s
+beloved Arabians.
+
+No great distance was covered, however, before Bells swerved to the
+left, out of line with Black Star and Night. Then Venters, aiming high
+and waiting for the pause between Wrangle’s great strides, began to
+take snap shots at the rustler. The fleeing rider presented a broad
+target for a rifle, but he was moving swiftly forward and bobbing up
+and down. Moreover, shooting from Wrangle’s back was shooting from a
+thunderbolt. And added to that was the danger of a low-placed bullet
+taking effect on Bells. Yet, despite these considerations, making the
+shot exceedingly difficult, Venters’s confidence, like his
+implacability, saw a speedy and fatal termination of that rustler’s
+race. On the sixth shot the rustler threw up his arms and took a flying
+tumble off his horse. He rolled over and over, hunched himself to a
+half-erect position, fell, and then dragged himself into the sage. As
+Venters went thundering by he peered keenly into the sage, but caught
+no sign of the man. Bells ran a few hundred yards, slowed up, and had
+stopped when Wrangle passed him.
+
+Again Venters began slipping fresh cartridges into the magazine of his
+rifle, and his hand was so sure and steady that he did not drop a
+single cartridge. With the eye of a rider and the judgment of a
+marksman he once more measured the distance between him and Jerry Card.
+Wrangle had gained, bringing him into rifle range. Venters was hard put
+to it now not to shoot, but thought it better to withhold his fire.
+Jerry, who, in anticipation of a running fusillade, had huddled himself
+into a little twisted ball on Black Star’s neck, now surmising that
+this pursuer would make sure of not wounding one of the blacks, rose to
+his natural seat in the saddle.
+
+In his mind perhaps, as certainly as in Venters’s, this moment was the
+beginning of the real race.
+
+Venters leaned forward to put his hand on Wrangle’s neck, then backward
+to put it on his flank. Under the shaggy, dusty hair trembled and
+vibrated and rippled a wonderful muscular activity. But Wrangle’s flesh
+was still cold. What a cold-blooded brute thought Venters, and felt in
+him a love for the horse he had never given to any other. It would not
+have been humanly possible for any rider, even though clutched by hate
+or revenge or a passion to save a loved one or fear of his own life, to
+be astride the sorrel to swing with his swing, to see his magnificent
+stride and hear the rapid thunder of his hoofs, to ride him in that
+race and not glory in the ride.
+
+So, with his passion to kill still keen and unabated, Venters lived out
+that ride, and drank a rider’s sage-sweet cup of wildness to the dregs.
+
+When Wrangle’s long mane, lashing in the wind, stung Venters in the
+cheek, the sting added a beat to his flying pulse. He bent a downward
+glance to try to see Wrangle’s actual stride, and saw only twinkling,
+darting streaks and the white rush of the trail. He watched the
+sorrel’s savage head, pointed level, his mouth still closed and dry,
+but his nostrils distended as if he were snorting unseen fire. Wrangle
+was the horse for a race with death. Upon each side Venters saw the
+sage merged into a sailing, colorless wall. In front sloped the lay of
+ground with its purple breadth split by the white trail. The wind,
+blowing with heavy, steady blast into his face, sickened him with
+enduring, sweet odor, and filled his ears with a hollow, rushing roar.
+
+Then for the hundredth time he measured the width of space separating
+him from Jerry Card. Wrangle had ceased to gain. The blacks were
+proving their fleetness. Venters watched Jerry Card, admiring the
+little rider’s horsemanship. He had the incomparable seat of the upland
+rider, born in the saddle. It struck Venters that Card had changed his
+position, or the position of the horses. Presently Venters remembered
+positively that Jerry had been leading Night on the right-hand side of
+the trail. The racer was now on the side to the left. No—it was Black
+Star. But, Venters argued in amaze, Jerry had been mounted on Black
+Star. Another clearer, keener gaze assured Venters that Black Star was
+really riderless. Night now carried Jerry Card.
+
+“He’s changed from one to the other!” ejaculated Venters, realizing the
+astounding feat with unstinted admiration. “Changed at full speed!
+Jerry Card, that’s what you’ve done unless I’m drunk on the smell of
+sage. But I’ve got to see the trick before I believe it.”
+
+Thenceforth, while Wrangle sped on, Venters glued his eyes to the
+little rider. Jerry Card rode as only he could ride. Of all the daring
+horsemen of the uplands, Jerry was the one rider fitted to bring out
+the greatness of the blacks in that long race. He had them on a dead
+run, but not yet at the last strained and killing pace. From time to
+time he glanced backward, as a wise general in retreat calculating his
+chances and the power and speed of pursuers, and the moment for the
+last desperate burst. No doubt, Card, with his life at stake, gloried
+in that race, perhaps more wildly than Venters. For he had been born to
+the sage and the saddle and the wild. He was more than half horse. Not
+until the last call—the sudden up-flashing instinct of
+self-preservation—would he lose his skill and judgment and nerve and
+the spirit of that race. Venters seemed to read Jerry’s mind. That
+little crime-stained rider was actually thinking of his horses,
+husbanding their speed, handling them with knowledge of years, glorying
+in their beautiful, swift, racing stride, and wanting them to win the
+race when his own life hung suspended in quivering balance. Again Jerry
+whirled in his saddle and the sun flashed red on his face. Turning, he
+drew Black Star closer and closer toward Night, till they ran side by
+side, as one horse. Then Card raised himself in the saddle, slipped out
+of the stirrups, and, somehow twisting himself, leaped upon Black Star.
+He did not even lose the swing of the horse. Like a leech he was there
+in the other saddle, and as the horses separated, his right foot, that
+had been apparently doubled under him, shot down to catch the stirrup.
+The grace and dexterity and daring of that rider’s act won something
+more than admiration from Venters.
+
+For the distance of a mile Jerry rode Black Star and then changed back
+to Night. But all Jerry’s skill and the running of the blacks could
+avail little more against the sorrel.
+
+Venters peered far ahead, studying the lay of the land. Straightaway
+for five miles the trail stretched, and then it disappeared in hummocky
+ground. To the right, some few rods, Venters saw a break in the sage,
+and this was the rim of Deception Pass. Across the dark cleft gleamed
+the red of the opposite wall. Venters imagined that the trail went down
+into the Pass somewhere north of those ridges. And he realized that he
+must and would overtake Jerry Card in this straight course of five
+miles.
+
+Cruelly he struck his spurs into Wrangle’s flanks. A light touch of
+spur was sufficient to make Wrangle plunge. And now, with a ringing,
+wild snort, he seemed to double up in muscular convulsions and to shoot
+forward with an impetus that almost unseated Venters. The sage blurred
+by, the trail flashed by, and the wind robbed him of breath and
+hearing. Jerry Card turned once more. And the way he shifted to Black
+Star showed he had to make his last desperate running. Venters aimed to
+the side of the trail and sent a bullet puffing the dust beyond Jerry.
+Venters hoped to frighten the rider and get him to take to the sage.
+But Jerry returned the shot, and his ball struck dangerously close in
+the dust at Wrangle’s flying feet. Venters held his fire then, while
+the rider emptied his revolver. For a mile, with Black Star leaving
+Night behind and doing his utmost, Wrangle did not gain; for another
+mile he gained little, if at all. In the third he caught up with the
+now galloping Night and began to gain rapidly on the other black.
+
+Only a hundred yards now stretched between Black Star and Wrangle. The
+giant sorrel thundered on—and on—and on. In every yard he gained a
+foot. He was whistling through his nostrils, wringing wet, flying
+lather, and as hot as fire. Savage as ever, strong as ever, fast as
+ever, but each tremendous stride jarred Venters out of the saddle!
+Wrangle’s power and spirit and momentum had begun to run him off his
+legs. Wrangle’s great race was nearly won—and run. Venters seemed to
+see the expanse before him as a vast, sheeted, purple plain sliding
+under him. Black Star moved in it as a blur. The rider, Jerry Card,
+appeared a mere dot bobbing dimly. Wrangle thundered on—on—on! Venters
+felt the increase in quivering, straining shock after every leap.
+Flecks of foam flew into Venters’s eyes, burning him, making him see
+all the sage as red. But in that red haze he saw, or seemed to see,
+Black Star suddenly riderless and with broken gait. Wrangle thundered
+on to change his pace with a violent break. Then Venters pulled him
+hard. From run to gallop, gallop to canter, canter to trot, trot to
+walk, and walk to stop, the great sorrel ended his race.
+
+Venters looked back. Black Star stood riderless in the trail. Jerry
+Card had taken to the sage. Far up the white trail Night came trotting
+faithfully down. Venters leaped off, still half blind, reeling dizzily.
+In a moment he had recovered sufficiently to have a care for Wrangle.
+Rapidly he took off the saddle and bridle. The sorrel was reeking,
+heaving, whistling, shaking. But he had still the strength to stand,
+and for him Venters had no fears.
+
+As Venters ran back to Black Star he saw the horse stagger on shaking
+legs into the sage and go down in a heap. Upon reaching him Venters
+removed the saddle and bridle. Black Star had been killed on his legs,
+Venters thought. He had no hope for the stricken horse. Black Star lay
+flat, covered with bloody froth, mouth wide, tongue hanging, eyes
+glaring, and all his beautiful body in convulsions.
+
+Unable to stay there to see Jane’s favorite racer die, Venters hurried
+up the trail to meet the other black. On the way he kept a sharp
+lookout for Jerry Card. Venters imagined the rider would keep well out
+of range of the rifle, but, as he would be lost on the sage without a
+horse, not improbably he would linger in the vicinity on the chance of
+getting back one of the blacks. Night soon came trotting up, hot and
+wet and run out. Venters led him down near the others, and unsaddling
+him, let him loose to rest. Night wearily lay down in the dust and
+rolled, proving himself not yet spent.
+
+Then Venters sat down to rest and think. Whatever the risk, he was
+compelled to stay where he was, or comparatively near, for the night.
+The horses must rest and drink. He must find water. He was now seventy
+miles from Cottonwoods, and, he believed, close to the cañon where the
+cattle trail must surely turn off and go down into the Pass. After a
+while he rose to survey the valley.
+
+He was very near to the ragged edge of a deep cañon into which the
+trail turned. The ground lay in uneven ridges divided by washes, and
+these sloped into the cañon. Following the cañon line, he saw where its
+rim was broken by other intersecting cañons, and farther down red walls
+and yellow cliffs leading toward a deep blue cleft that he made sure
+was Deception Pass. Walking out a few rods to a promontory, he found
+where the trail went down. The descent was gradual, along a
+stone-walled trail, and Venters felt sure that this was the place where
+Oldring drove cattle into the Pass. There was, however, no indication
+at all that he ever had driven cattle out at this point. Oldring had
+many holes to his burrow.
+
+In searching round in the little hollows Venters, much to his relief,
+found water. He composed himself to rest and eat some bread and meat,
+while he waited for a sufficient time to elapse so that he could safely
+give the horses a drink. He judged the hour to be somewhere around
+noon. Wrangle lay down to rest and Night followed suit. So long as they
+were down Venters intended to make no move. The longer they rested the
+better, and the safer it would be to give them water. By and by he
+forced himself to go over to where Black Star lay, expecting to find
+him dead. Instead he found the racer partially if not wholly recovered.
+There was recognition, even fire, in his big black eyes. Venters was
+overjoyed. He sat by the black for a long time. Black Star presently
+labored to his feet with a heave and a groan, shook himself, and
+snorted for water. Venters repaired to the little pool he had found,
+filled his sombrero, and gave the racer a drink. Black Star gulped it
+at one draught, as if it were but a drop, and pushed his nose into the
+hat and snorted for more. Venters now led Night down to drink, and
+after a further time Black Star also. Then the blacks began to graze.
+
+The sorrel had wandered off down the sage between the trail and the
+cañon. Once or twice he disappeared in little swales. Finally Venters
+concluded Wrangle had grazed far enough, and, taking his lasso, he went
+to fetch him back. In crossing from one ridge to another he saw where
+the horse had made muddy a pool of water. It occurred to Venters then
+that Wrangle had drunk his fill, and did not seem the worse for it, and
+might be anything but easy to catch. And, true enough, he could not
+come within roping reach of the sorrel. He tried for an hour, and gave
+up in disgust. Wrangle did not seem so wild as simply perverse. In a
+quandary Venters returned to the other horses, hoping much, yet
+doubting more, that when Wrangle had grazed to suit himself he might be
+caught.
+
+As the afternoon wore away Venters’s concern diminished, yet he kept
+close watch on the blacks and the trail and the sage. There was no
+telling of what Jerry Card might be capable. Venters sullenly
+acquiesced to the idea that the rider had been too quick and too shrewd
+for him. Strangely and doggedly, however, Venters clung to his
+foreboding of Card’s downfall.
+
+The wind died away; the red sun topped the far distant western rise of
+slope; and the long, creeping purple shadows lengthened. The rims of
+the cañons gleamed crimson and the deep clefts appeared to belch forth
+blue smoke. Silence enfolded the scene.
+
+It was broken by a horrid, long-drawn scream of a horse and the
+thudding of heavy hoofs. Venters sprang erect and wheeled south. Along
+the cañon rim, near the edge, came Wrangle, once more in thundering
+flight.
+
+Venters gasped in amazement. Had the wild sorrel gone mad? His head was
+high and twisted, in a most singular position for a running horse.
+Suddenly Venters descried a frog-like shape clinging to Wrangle’s neck.
+Jerry Card! Somehow he had straddled Wrangle and now stuck like a huge
+burr. But it was his strange position and the sorrel’s wild scream that
+shook Venters’s nerves. Wrangle was pounding toward the turn where the
+trail went down. He plunged onward like a blind horse. More than one of
+his leaps took him to the very edge of the precipice.
+
+Jerry Card was bent forward with his teeth fast in the front of
+Wrangle’s nose! Venters saw it, and there flashed over him a memory of
+this trick of a few desperate riders. He even thought of one rider who
+had worn off his teeth in this terrible hold to break or control
+desperate horses. Wrangle had indeed gone mad. The marvel was what
+guided him. Was it the half-brute, the more than half-horse instinct of
+Jerry Card? Whatever the mystery, it was true. And in a few more rods
+Jerry would have the sorrel turning into the trail leading down into
+the cañon.
+
+“No—Jerry!” whispered Venters, stepping forward and throwing up the
+rifle. He tried to catch the little humped, frog-like shape over the
+sights. It was moving too fast; it was too small. Yet Venters shot
+once... twice... the third time... four times... five! All wasted shots
+and precious seconds!
+
+With a deep-muttered curse Venters caught Wrangle through the sights
+and pulled the trigger. Plainly he heard the bullet thud. Wrangle
+uttered a horrible strangling sound. In swift death action he whirled,
+and with one last splendid leap he cleared the cañon rim. And he
+whirled downward with the little frog-like shape clinging to his neck!
+
+There was a pause which seemed never ending, a shock, and an instant’s
+silence.
+
+Then up rolled a heavy crash, a long roar of sliding rocks dying away
+in distant echo, then silence unbroken.
+
+Wrangle’s race was run.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+OLDRING’S KNELL
+
+
+Some forty hours or more later Venters created a commotion in
+Cottonwoods by riding down the main street on Black Star and leading
+Bells and Night. He had come upon Bells grazing near the body of a dead
+rustler, the only incident of his quick ride into the village.
+
+Nothing was farther from Venters’s mind than bravado. No thought came
+to him of the defiance and boldness of riding Jane Withersteen’s racers
+straight into the arch-plotter’s stronghold. He wanted men to see the
+famous Arabians; he wanted men to see them dirty and dusty, bearing all
+the signs of having been driven to their limit; he wanted men to see
+and to know that the thieves who had ridden them out into the sage had
+not ridden them back. Venters had come for that and for more—he wanted
+to meet Tull face to face; if not Tull, then Dyer; if not Dyer, then
+anyone in the secret of these master conspirators. Such was Venters’s
+passion. The meeting with the rustlers, the unprovoked attack upon him,
+the spilling of blood, the recognition of Jerry Card and the horses,
+the race, and that last plunge of mad Wrangle—all these things, fuel on
+fuel to the smoldering fire, had kindled and swelled and leaped into
+living flame. He could have shot Dyer in the midst of his religious
+services at the altar; he could have killed Tull in front of wives and
+babes.
+
+He walked the three racers down the broad, green-bordered village road.
+He heard the murmur of running water from Amber Spring. Bitter waters
+for Jane Withersteen! Men and women stopped to gaze at him and the
+horses. All knew him; all knew the blacks and the bay. As well as if it
+had been spoken, Venters read in the faces of men the intelligence that
+Jane Withersteen’s Arabians had been known to have been stolen. Venters
+reined in and halted before Dyer’s residence. It was a low, long, stone
+structure resembling Withersteen House. The spacious front yard was
+green and luxuriant with grass and flowers; gravel walks led to the
+huge porch; a well-trimmed hedge of purple sage separated the yard from
+the church grounds; birds sang in the trees; water flowed musically
+along the walks; and there were glad, careless shouts of children. For
+Venters the beauty of this home, and the serenity and its apparent
+happiness, all turned red and black. For Venters a shade overspread the
+lawn, the flowers, the old vine-clad stone house. In the music of the
+singing birds, in the murmur of the running water, he heard an ominous
+sound. Quiet beauty—sweet music—innocent laughter! By what monstrous
+abortion of fate did these abide in the shadow of Dyer?
+
+Venters rode on and stopped before Tull’s cottage. Women stared at him
+with white faces and then flew from the porch. Tull himself appeared at
+the door, bent low, craning his neck. His dark face flashed out of
+sight; the door banged; a heavy bar dropped with a hollow sound.
+
+Then Venters shook Black Star’s bridle, and, sharply trotting, led the
+other horses to the center of the village. Here at the intersecting
+streets and in front of the stores he halted once more. The usual
+lounging atmosphere of that prominent corner was not now in evidence.
+Riders and ranchers and villagers broke up what must have been
+absorbing conversation. There was a rush of many feet, and then the
+walk was lined with faces.
+
+Venters’s glance swept down the line of silent stone-faced men. He
+recognized many riders and villagers, but none of those he had hoped to
+meet. There was no expression in the faces turned toward him. All of
+them knew him, most were inimical, but there were few who were not
+burning with curiosity and wonder in regard to the return of Jane
+Withersteen’s racers. Yet all were silent. Here were the familiar
+characteristics—masked feeling—strange secretiveness—expressionless
+expression of mystery and hidden power.
+
+“Has anybody here seen Jerry Card?” queried Venters, in a loud voice.
+
+In reply there came not a word, not a nod or shake of head, not so much
+as dropping eye or twitching lip—nothing but a quiet, stony stare.
+
+“Been under the knife? You’ve a fine knife-wielder here—one Tull, I
+believe!... Maybe you’ve all had your tongues cut out?”
+
+This passionate sarcasm of Venters brought no response, and the stony
+calm was as oil on the fire within him.
+
+“I see some of you pack guns, too!” he added, in biting scorn. In the
+long, tense pause, strung keenly as a tight wire, he sat motionless on
+Black Star. “All right,” he went on. “Then let some of you take this
+message to Tull. Tell him I’ve seen Jerry Card! ... Tell him Jerry Card
+_will never return!_”
+
+Thereupon, in the same dead calm, Venters backed Black Star away from
+the curb, into the street, and out of range. He was ready now to ride
+up to Withersteen House and turn the racers over to Jane.
+
+“Hello, Venters!” a familiar voice cried, hoarsely, and he saw a man
+running toward him. It was the rider Judkins who came up and gripped
+Venters’s hand. “Venters, I could hev dropped when I seen them hosses.
+But thet sight ain’t a marker to the looks of you. What’s wrong? Hev
+you gone crazy? You must be crazy to ride in here this way—with them
+hosses—talkie’ thet way about Tull en’ Jerry Card.”
+
+“Jud, I’m not crazy—only mad clean through,” replied Venters.
+
+“Wal, now, Bern, I’m glad to hear some of your old self in your voice.
+Fer when you come up you looked like the corpse of a dead rider with
+fire fer eyes. You hed thet crowd too stiff fer throwin’ guns. Come,
+we’ve got to hev a talk. Let’s go up the lane. We ain’t much safe
+here.”
+
+Judkins mounted Bells and rode with Venters up to the cottonwood grove.
+Here they dismounted and went among the trees.
+
+“Let’s hear from you first,” said Judkins. “You fetched back them
+hosses. Thet _is_ the trick. An’, of course, you got Jerry the same as
+you got Horne.”
+
+“Horne!”
+
+“Sure. He was found dead yesterday all chewed by coyotes, en’ he’d been
+shot plumb center.”
+
+“Where was he found?”
+
+“At the split down the trail—you know where Oldring’s cattle trail runs
+off north from the trail to the pass.”
+
+“That’s where I met Jerry and the rustlers. What was Horne doing with
+them? I thought Horne was an honest cattle-man.”
+
+“Lord—Bern, don’t ask me thet! I’m all muddled now tryin’ to figure
+things.”
+
+Venters told of the fight and the race with Jerry Card and its tragic
+conclusion.
+
+“I knowed it! I knowed all along that Wrangle was the best hoss!”
+exclaimed Judkins, with his lean face working and his eyes lighting.
+“Thet was a race! Lord, I’d like to hev seen Wrangle jump the cliff
+with Jerry. An’ thet was good-by to the grandest hoss an’ rider ever on
+the sage!... But, Bern, after you got the hosses why’d you want to bolt
+right in Tull’s face?”
+
+“I want him to know. An’ if I can get to him I’ll—”
+
+“You can’t get near Tull,” interrupted Judkins. “Thet vigilante bunch
+hev taken to bein’ bodyguard for Tull an’ Dyer, too.”
+
+“Hasn’t Lassiter made a break yet?” inquired Venters, curiously.
+
+“Naw!” replied Judkins, scornfully. “Jane turned his head. He’s mad in
+love over her—follers her like a dog. He ain’t no more Lassiter! He’s
+lost his nerve, he doesn’t look like the same feller. It’s village
+talk. Everybody knows it. He hasn’t thrown a gun, an’ he won’t!”
+
+“Jud, I’ll bet he does,” replied Venters, earnestly. “Remember what I
+say. This Lassiter is something more than a gun-man. Jud, he’s big—he’s
+great!... I feel that in him. God help Tull and Dyer when Lassiter does
+go after them. For horses and riders and stone walls won’t save them.”
+
+“Wal, hev it your way, Bern. I hope you’re right. Nat’rully I’ve been
+some sore on Lassiter fer gittin’ soft. But I ain’t denyin’ his nerve,
+or whatever’s great in him thet sort of paralyzes people. No later ’n
+this mornin’ I seen him saunterin’ down the lane, quiet an’ slow. An’
+like his guns he comes black—_black_, thet’s Lassiter. Wal, the crowd
+on the corner never batted an eye, en’ I’ll gamble my hoss thet there
+wasn’t one who hed a heartbeat till Lassiter got by. He went in Snell’s
+saloon, an’ as there wasn’t no gun play I had to go in, too. An’ there,
+darn my pictures, if Lassiter wasn’t standin’ to the bar, drinking en’
+talkin’ with Oldrin’.”
+
+“_Oldring!_” whispered Venters. His voice, as all fire and pulse within
+him, seemed to freeze.
+
+“Let go my arm!” exclaimed Judkins. “Thet’s my bad arm. Sure it was
+Oldrin’. What the hell’s wrong with you, anyway? Venters, I tell you
+somethin’s wrong. You’re whiter ’n a sheet. You can’t be _scared_ of
+the rustler. I don’t believe you’ve got a scare in you. Wal, now, jest
+let me talk. You know I like to talk, an’ if I’m slow I allus git there
+sometime. As I said, Lassiter was talkie’ chummy with Oldrin’. There
+wasn’t no hard feelin’s. An’ the gang wasn’t payin’ no pertic’lar
+attention. But like a cat watchin’ a mouse I hed my eyes on them two
+fellers. It was strange to me, thet confab. I’m gittin’ to think a lot,
+fer a feller who doesn’t know much. There’s been some queer deals
+lately an’ this seemed to me the queerest. These men stood to the bar
+alone, an’ so close their big gun-hilts butted together. I seen Oldrin’
+was some surprised at first, an’ Lassiter was cool as ice. They talked,
+an’ presently at somethin’ Lassiter said the rustler bawled out a
+curse, an’ then he jest fell up against the bar, an’ sagged there. The
+gang in the saloon looked around an’ laughed, an’ thet’s about all.
+Finally Oldrin’ turned, and it was easy to see somethin’ hed shook him.
+Yes, sir, thet big rustler—you know he’s as broad as he is long, an’
+the powerfulest build of a man—yes, sir, the nerve had been taken out
+of him. Then, after a little, he began to talk an’ said a lot to
+Lassiter, an’ by an’ by it didn’t take much of an eye to see thet
+Lassiter was gittin’ hit hard. I never seen him anyway but cooler ’n
+ice—till then. He seemed to be hit harder ’n Oldrin’, only he didn’t
+roar out thet way. He jest kind of sunk in, an’ looked an’ looked, an’
+he didn’t see a livin’ soul in thet saloon. Then he sort of come to,
+an’ shakin’ hands—mind you, _shakin’ hands_ with Oldrin’—he went out. I
+couldn’t help thinkin’ how easy even a boy could hev dropped the great
+gun-man then!... Wal, the rustler stood at the bar fer a long time, en’
+he was seein’ things far off, too; then he come to an’ roared fer
+whisky, an’ gulped a drink thet was big enough to drown me.”
+
+“Is Oldring here now?” whispered Venters. He could not speak above a
+whisper. Judkins’s story had been meaningless to him.
+
+“He’s at Snell’s yet. Bern, I hevn’t told you yet thet the rustlers hev
+been raisin’ hell. They shot up Stone Bridge an’ Glaze, an’ fer three
+days they’ve been here drinkin’ an’ gamblin’ an’ throwin’ of gold.
+These rustlers hev a pile of gold. If it was gold dust or nugget gold
+I’d hev reason to think, but it’s new coin gold, as if it had jest come
+from the United States treasury. An’ the coin’s genuine. Thet’s all
+been proved. The truth is Oldrin’s on a rampage. A while back he lost
+his Masked Rider, an’ they say he’s wild about thet. I’m wonderin’ if
+Lassiter could hev told the rustler anythin’ about thet little masked,
+hard-ridin’ devil. Ride! He was most as good as Jerry Card. An’, Bern,
+I’ve been wonderin’ if you know—”
+
+“Judkins, you’re a good fellow,” interrupted Venters. “Some day I’ll
+tell you a story. I’ve no time now. Take the horses to Jane.”
+
+Judkins stared, and then, muttering to himself, he mounted Bells, and
+stared again at Venters, and then, leading the other horses, he rode
+into the grove and disappeared.
+
+Once, long before, on the night Venters had carried Bess through the
+cañon and up into Surprise Valley, he had experienced the strangeness
+of faculties singularly, tinglingly acute. And now the same sensation
+recurred. But it was different in that he felt cold, frozen, mechanical
+incapable of free thought, and all about him seemed unreal, aloof,
+remote. He hid his rifle in the sage, marking its exact location with
+extreme care. Then he faced down the lane and strode toward the center
+of the village. Perceptions flashed upon him, the faint, cold touch of
+the breeze, a cold, silvery tinkle of flowing water, a cold sun shining
+out of a cold sky, song of birds and laugh of children, coldly distant.
+Cold and intangible were all things in earth and heaven. Colder and
+tighter stretched the skin over his face; colder and harder grew the
+polished butts of his guns; colder and steadier became his hands as he
+wiped the clammy sweat from his face or reached low to his gun-sheaths.
+Men meeting him in the walk gave him wide berth. In front of Bevin’s
+store a crowd melted apart for his passage, and their faces and
+whispers were faces and whispers of a dream. He turned a corner to meet
+Tull face to face, eye to eye. As once before he had seen this man pale
+to a ghastly, livid white so again he saw the change. Tull stopped in
+his tracks, with right hand raised and shaking. Suddenly it dropped,
+and he seemed to glide aside, to pass out of Venters’s sight. Next he
+saw many horses with bridles down—all clean-limbed, dark bays or
+blacks—rustlers’ horses! Loud voices and boisterous laughter, rattle of
+dice and scrape of chair and clink of gold, burst in mingled din from
+an open doorway. He stepped inside.
+
+With the sight of smoke-hazed room and drinking, cursing, gambling,
+dark-visaged men, reality once more dawned upon Venters.
+
+His entrance had been unnoticed, and he bent his gaze upon the drinkers
+at the bar. Dark-clothed, dark-faced men they all were, burned by the
+sun, bow-legged as were most riders of the sage, but neither lean nor
+gaunt. Then Venters’s gaze passed to the tables, and swiftly it swept
+over the hard-featured gamesters, to alight upon the huge, shaggy,
+black head of the rustler chief.
+
+“_Oldring!_” he cried, and to him his voice seemed to split a bell in
+his ears.
+
+It stilled the din.
+
+That silence suddenly broke to the scrape and crash of Oldring’s chair
+as he rose; and then, while he passed, a great gloomy figure, again the
+thronged room stilled in silence yet deeper.
+
+“Oldring, a word with you!” continued Venters.
+
+“Ho! What’s this?” boomed Oldring, in frowning scrutiny.
+
+“Come outside, alone. A word for you—_from your Masked Rider!_”
+
+Oldring kicked a chair out of his way and lunged forward with a stamp
+of heavy boot that jarred the floor. He waved down his muttering,
+rising men.
+
+Venters backed out of the door and waited, hearing, as no sound had
+ever before struck into his soul, the rapid, heavy steps of the
+rustler.
+
+Oldring appeared, and Venters had one glimpse of his great breadth and
+bulk, his gold-buckled belt with hanging guns, his high-top boots with
+gold spurs. In that moment Venters had a strange, unintelligible
+curiosity to see Oldring alive. The rustler’s broad brow, his large
+black eyes, his sweeping beard, as dark as the wing of a raven, his
+enormous width of shoulder and depth of chest, his whole splendid
+presence so wonderfully charged with vitality and force and strength,
+seemed to afford Venters an unutterable fiendish joy because for that
+magnificent manhood and life he meant cold and sudden death.
+
+_“Oldring, Bess is alive! But she’s dead to you—dead to the life you
+made her lead—dead as you will be in one second!”_
+
+Swift as lightning Venters’s glance dropped from Oldring’s rolling eyes
+to his hands. One of them, the right, swept out, then toward his
+gun—and Venters shot him through the heart.
+
+
+[Illustration: and Venters shot him through the heart]
+
+
+Slowly Oldring sank to his knees, and the hand, dragging at the gun,
+fell away. Venters’s strangely acute faculties grasped the meaning of
+that limp arm, of the swaying hulk, of the gasp and heave, of the
+quivering beard. But was that awful spirit in the black eyes only one
+of vitality?
+
+“_Man—why—didn’t—you—wait? Bess—was_—” Oldring’s whisper died under his
+beard, and with a heavy lurch he fell forward.
+
+Bounding swiftly away, Venters fled around the corner, across the
+street, and, leaping a hedge, he ran through yard, orchard, and garden
+to the sage. Here, under cover of the tall brush, he turned west and
+ran on to the place where he had hidden his rifle. Securing that, he
+again set out into a run, and, circling through the sage, came up
+behind Jane Withersteen’s stable and corrals. With laboring, dripping
+chest, and pain as of a knife thrust in his side, he stopped to regain
+his breath, and while resting his eyes roved around in search of a
+horse. Doors and windows of the stable were open wide and had a
+deserted look. One dejected, lonely burro stood in the near corral.
+Strange indeed was the silence brooding over the once happy, noisy home
+of Jane Withersteen’s pets.
+
+He went into the corral, exercising care to leave no tracks, and led
+the burro to the watering-trough. Venters, though not thirsty, drank
+till he could drink no more. Then, leading the burro over hard ground,
+he struck into the sage and down the slope.
+
+He strode swiftly, turning from time to time to scan the slope for
+riders. His head just topped the level of sage-brush, and the burro
+could not have been seen at all. Slowly the green of Cottonwoods sank
+behind the slope, and at last a wavering line of purple sage met the
+blue of sky.
+
+To avoid being seen, to get away, to hide his trail—these were the sole
+ideas in his mind as he headed for Deception Pass, and he directed all
+his acuteness of eye and ear, and the keenness of a rider’s judgment
+for distance and ground, to stern accomplishment of the task. He kept
+to the sage far to the left of the trail leading into the Pass. He
+walked ten miles and looked back a thousand times. Always the graceful,
+purple wave of sage remained wide and lonely, a clear, undotted waste.
+Coming to a stretch of rocky ground, he took advantage of it to cross
+the trail and then continued down on the right. At length he persuaded
+himself that he would be able to see riders mounted on horses before
+they could see him on the little burro, and he rode bareback.
+
+Hour by hour the tireless burro kept to his faithful, steady trot. The
+sun sank and the long shadows lengthened down the slope. Moving veils
+of purple twilight crept out of the hollows and, mustering and forming
+on the levels, soon merged and shaded into night. Venters guided the
+burro nearer to the trail, so that he could see its white line from the
+ridges, and rode on through the hours.
+
+Once down in the Pass without leaving a trail, he would hold himself
+safe for the time being. When late in the night he reached the break in
+the sage, he sent the burro down ahead of him, and started an avalanche
+that all but buried the animal at the bottom of the trail. Bruised and
+battered as he was, he had a moment’s elation, for he had hidden his
+tracks. Once more he mounted the burro and rode on. The hour was the
+blackest of the night when he made the thicket which inclosed his old
+camp. Here he turned the burro loose in the grass near the spring, and
+then lay down on his old bed of leaves.
+
+He felt only vaguely, as outside things, the ache and burn and throb of
+the muscles of his body. But a dammed-up torrent of emotion at last
+burst its bounds, and the hour that saw his release from immediate
+action was one that confounded him in the reaction of his spirit. He
+suffered without understanding why. He caught glimpses into himself,
+into unlit darkness of soul. The fire that had blistered him and the
+cold which had frozen him now united in one torturing possession of his
+mind and heart, and like a fiery steed with ice-shod feet, ranged his
+being, ran rioting through his blood, trampling the resurging good,
+dragging ever at the evil.
+
+Out of the subsiding chaos came a clear question. What had happened? He
+had left the valley to go to Cottonwoods. Why? It seemed that he had
+gone to kill a man—Oldring! The name riveted his consciousness upon the
+one man of all men upon earth whom he had wanted to meet. He had met
+the rustler. Venters recalled the smoky haze of the saloon, the
+dark-visaged men, the huge Oldring. He saw him step out of the door, a
+splendid specimen of manhood, a handsome giant with purple-black and
+sweeping beard. He remembered inquisitive gaze of falcon eyes. He heard
+himself repeating: “_Oldring, Bess is alive! But she’s dead to you_,”
+and he felt himself jerk, and his ears throbbed to the thunder of a
+gun, and he saw the giant sink slowly to his knees. Was that only the
+vitality of him—that awful light in the eyes—only the hard-dying life
+of a tremendously powerful brute? A broken whisper, strange as death:
+“_Man—why—didn’t—you wait! Bess—was_—” And Oldring plunged face
+forward, dead.
+
+“I killed him,” cried Venters, in remembering shock. “But it wasn’t
+_that_. Ah, the look in his eyes and his whisper!”
+
+Herein lay the secret that had clamored to him through all the tumult
+and stress of his emotions. What a look in the eyes of a man shot
+through the heart! It had been neither hate nor ferocity nor fear of
+men nor fear of death. It had been no passionate glinting spirit of a
+fearless foe, willing shot for shot, life for life, but lacking
+physical power. Distinctly recalled now, never to be forgotten, Venters
+saw in Oldring’s magnificent eyes the rolling of great, glad
+surprise—softness—love! Then came a shadow and the terrible superhuman
+striving of his spirit to speak. Oldring shot through the heart, had
+fought and forced back death, not for a moment in which to shoot or
+curse, but to whisper strange words.
+
+What words for a dying man to whisper! Why had not Venters waited? For
+what? That was no plea for life. It was regret that there was not a
+moment of life left in which to speak. Bess was—Herein lay renewed
+torture for Venters. What had Bess been to Oldring? The old question,
+like a specter, stalked from its grave to haunt him. He had overlooked,
+he had forgiven, he had loved and he had forgotten; and now, out of the
+mystery of a dying man’s whisper rose again that perverse, unsatisfied,
+jealous uncertainty. Bess had loved that splendid, black-crowned
+giant—by her own confession she had loved him; and in Venters’s soul
+again flamed up the jealous hell. Then into the clamoring hell burst
+the shot that had killed Oldring, and it rang in a wild fiendish
+gladness, a hateful, vengeful joy. That passed to the memory of the
+love and light in Oldring’s eyes and the mystery in his whisper. So the
+changing, swaying emotions fluctuated in Venters’s heart.
+
+This was the climax of his year of suffering and the crucial struggle
+of his life. And when the gray dawn came he rose, a gloomy, almost
+heartbroken man, but victor over evil passions. He could not change the
+past; and, even if he had not loved Bess with all his soul, he had
+grown into a man who would not change the future he had planned for
+her. Only, and once for all, he must know the truth, know the worst,
+stifle all these insistent doubts and subtle hopes and jealous fancies,
+and kill the past by knowing truly what Bess had been to Oldring. For
+that matter he knew—he had always known, but he must hear it spoken.
+Then, when they had safely gotten out of that wild country to take up a
+new and an absorbing life, she would forget, she would be happy, and
+through that, in the years to come, he could not but find life worth
+living.
+
+All day he rode slowly and cautiously up the Pass, taking time to peer
+around corners, to pick out hard ground and grassy patches, and to make
+sure there was no one in pursuit. In the night sometime he came to the
+smooth, scrawled rocks dividing the valley, and here set the burro at
+liberty. He walked beyond, climbed the slope and the dim, starlit
+gorge. Then, weary to the point of exhaustion, he crept into a shallow
+cave and fell asleep.
+
+In the morning, when he descended the trail, he found the sun was
+pouring a golden stream of light through the arch of the great stone
+bridge. Surprise Valley, like a valley of dreams, lay mystically soft
+and beautiful, awakening to the golden flood which was rolling away its
+slumberous bands of mist, brightening its walled faces.
+
+While yet far off he discerned Bess moving under the silver spruces,
+and soon the barking of the dogs told him that they had seen him. He
+heard the mocking-birds singing in the trees, and then the twittering
+of the quail. Ring and Whitie came bounding toward him, and behind them
+ran Bess, her hands outstretched.
+
+“Bern! You’re back! You’re back!” she cried, in joy that rang of her
+loneliness.
+
+“Yes, I’m back,” he said, as she rushed to meet him.
+
+She had reached out for him when suddenly, as she saw him closely,
+something checked her, and as quickly all her joy fled, and with it her
+color, leaving her pale and trembling.
+
+“Oh! What’s happened?”
+
+“A good deal has happened, Bess. I don’t need to tell you what. And I’m
+played out. Worn out in mind more than body.”
+
+“Dear—you look strange to me!” faltered Bess.
+
+“Never mind that. I’m all right. There’s nothing for you to be scared
+about. Things are going to turn out just as we have planned. As soon as
+I’m rested we’ll make a break to get out of the country. Only now,
+right now, I must know the truth about you.”
+
+“Truth about me?” echoed Bess, shrinkingly. She seemed to be casting
+back into her mind for a forgotten key. Venters himself, as he saw her,
+received a pang.
+
+“Yes—the truth. Bess, don’t misunderstand. I haven’t changed that way.
+I love you still. I’ll love you more afterward. Life will be just as
+sweet—sweeter to us. We’ll be—be married as soon as ever we can. We’ll
+be happy—but there’s a devil in me. A perverse, jealous devil! Then
+I’ve queer fancies. I forgot for a long time. Now all those fiendish
+little whispers of doubt and faith and fear and hope come torturing me
+again. I’ve got to kill them with the truth.”
+
+“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” she replied, frankly.
+
+“Then by Heaven! we’ll have it over and done with!... Bess—did Oldring
+love you?”
+
+“Certainly he did.”
+
+“Did—did you love him?”
+
+“Of course. I told you so.”
+
+“How can you tell it so lightly?” cried Venters, passionately. “Haven’t
+you any sense of—of—” He choked back speech. He felt the rush of pain
+and passion. He seized her in rude, strong hands and drew her close. He
+looked straight into her dark-blue eyes. They were shadowing with the
+old wistful light, but they were as clear as the limpid water of the
+spring. They were earnest, solemn in unutterable love and faith and
+abnegation. Venters shivered. He knew he was looking into her soul. He
+knew she could not lie in that moment; but that she might tell the
+truth, looking at him with those eyes, almost killed his belief in
+purity.
+
+“What are—what were you to—to Oldring?” he panted, fiercely.
+
+“I am his daughter,” she replied, instantly.
+
+Venters slowly let go of her. There was a violent break in the force of
+his feeling—then creeping blankness.
+
+“What—was it—you said?” he asked, in a kind of dull wonder.
+
+“I am his daughter.”
+
+“Oldring’s daughter?” queried Venters, with life gathering in his
+voice.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+With a passionately awakening start he grasped her hands and drew her
+close.
+
+“All the time—you’ve been Oldring’s daughter?”
+
+“Yes, of course all the time—always.”
+
+“But Bess, you told me—you let me think—I made out you were—a—so—so
+ashamed.”
+
+“It is my shame,” she said, with voice deep and full, and now the
+scarlet fired her cheek. “I told you—I’m nothing—nameless—just Bess,
+Oldring’s girl!”
+
+“I know—I remember. But I never thought—” he went on, hurriedly,
+huskily. “That time—when you lay dying—you prayed—you—somehow I got the
+idea you were bad.”
+
+“Bad?” she asked, with a little laugh.
+
+She looked up with a faint smile of bewilderment and the absolute
+unconsciousness of a child. Venters gasped in the gathering might of
+the truth. She did not understand his meaning.
+
+“Bess! Bess!” He clasped her in his arms, hiding her eyes against his
+breast. She must not see his face in that moment. And he held her while
+he looked out across the valley. In his dim and blinded sight, in the
+blur of golden light and moving mist, he saw Oldring. She was the
+rustler’s nameless daughter. Oldring had loved her. He had so guarded
+her, so kept her from women and men and knowledge of life that her mind
+was as a child’s. That was part of the secret—part of the mystery. That
+was the wonderful truth. Not only was she not bad, but good, pure,
+innocent above all innocence in the world—the innocence of lonely
+girlhood.
+
+He saw Oldring’s magnificent eyes, inquisitive, searching, softening.
+He saw them flare in amaze, in gladness, with love, then suddenly
+strain in terrible effort of will. He heard Oldring whisper and saw him
+sway like a log and fall. Then a million bellowing, thundering
+voices—gunshots of conscience, thunderbolts of remorse—dinned horribly
+in his ears. He had killed Bess’s father. Then a rushing wind filled
+his ears like a moan of wind in the cliffs, a knell indeed—Oldring’s
+knell.
+
+He dropped to his knees and hid his face against Bess, and grasped her
+with the hands of a drowning man.
+
+“My God!... My God!... Oh, Bess!... Forgive me! Never mind what I’ve
+done—what I’ve thought. But forgive me. I’ll give you my life. I’ll
+live for you. I’ll love you. Oh, I do love you as no man ever loved a
+woman. I want you to know—to remember that I fought a fight for
+you—however blind I was. I thought—I thought—never mind what I
+thought—but I loved you—I asked you to marry me. Let that—let me have
+that to hug to my heart. Oh, Bess, I was driven! And I might have
+known! I could not rest nor sleep till I had this mystery solved. God!
+how things work out!”
+
+“Bern, you’re weak—trembling—you talk wildly,” cried Bess. “You’ve
+overdone your strength. There’s nothing to forgive. There’s no mystery
+except your love for me. You have come back to me!”
+
+And she clasped his head tenderly in her arms and pressed it closely to
+her throbbing breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+FAY
+
+
+At the home of Jane Withersteen Little Fay was climbing Lassiter’s
+knee.
+
+“Does oo love me?” she asked.
+
+Lassiter, who was as serious with Fay as he was gentle and loving,
+assured her in earnest and elaborate speech that he was her devoted
+subject. Fay looked thoughtful and appeared to be debating the
+duplicity of men or searching for a supreme test to prove this
+cavalier.
+
+“Does oo love my new muvver?” she asked, with bewildering suddenness.
+
+Jane Withersteen laughed, and for the first time in many a day she felt
+a stir of her pulse and warmth in her cheek.
+
+It was a still drowsy summer of afternoon, and the three were sitting
+in the shade of the wooded knoll that faced the sage-slope. Little
+Fay’s brief spell of unhappy longing for her mother—the childish,
+mystic gloom—had passed, and now where Fay was there were prattle and
+laughter and glee. She had emerged from sorrow to be the incarnation of
+joy and loveliness. She had grown supernaturally sweet and beautiful.
+For Jane Withersteen the child was an answer to prayer, a blessing, a
+possession infinitely more precious than all she had lost. For
+Lassiter, Jane divined that little Fay had become a religion.
+
+“Does oo love my new muvver?” repeated Fay.
+
+Lassiter’s answer to this was a modest and sincere affirmative.
+
+“Why don’t oo marry my new muvver an’ be my favver?”
+
+Of the thousands of questions put by little Fay to Lassiter this was
+the first he had been unable to answer.
+
+“Fay—Fay, don’t ask questions like that,” said Jane.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because,” replied Jane. And she found it strangely embarrassing to
+meet the child’s gaze. It seemed to her that Fay’s violet eyes looked
+through her with piercing wisdom.
+
+“Oo love him, don’t oo?”
+
+“Dear child—run and play,” said Jane, “but don’t go too far. Don’t go
+from this little hill.”
+
+Fay pranced off wildly, joyous over freedom that had not been granted
+her for weeks.
+
+“Jane, why are children more sincere than grown-up persons?” asked
+Lassiter.
+
+“Are they?”
+
+“I reckon so. Little Fay there—she sees things as they appear on the
+face. An Indian does that. So does a dog. An’ an Indian an’ a dog are
+most of the time right in what they see. Mebbe a child is always
+right.”
+
+“Well, what does Fay see?” asked Jane.
+
+“I reckon you know. I wonder what goes on in Fay’s mind when she sees
+part of the truth with the wise eyes of a child, an’ wantin’ to know
+more, meets with strange falseness from you? Wait! You are false in a
+way, though you’re the best woman I ever knew. What I want to say is
+this. Fay has taken you’re pretendin’ to—to care for me for the thing
+it looks on the face. An’ her little formin’ mind asks questions. An’
+the answers she gets are different from the looks of things. So she’ll
+grow up gradually takin’ on that falseness, an’ be like the rest of the
+women, an’ men, too. An’ the truth of this falseness to life is proved
+by your appearin’ to love me when you don’t. Things aren’t what they
+seem.”
+
+“Lassiter, you’re right. A child should be told the absolute truth.
+But—is that possible? I haven’t been able to do it, and all my life
+I’ve loved the truth, and I’ve prided myself upon being truthful. Maybe
+that was only egotism. I’m learning much, my friend. Some of those
+blinding scales have fallen from my eyes. And—and as to caring for you,
+I think I care a great deal. How much, how little, I couldn’t say. My
+heart is almost broken, Lassiter. So now is not a good time to judge of
+affection. I can still play and be merry with Fay. I can still dream.
+But when I attempt serious thought I’m dazed. I don’t think. I don’t
+care any more. I don’t pray!... Think of that, my friend! But in spite
+of my numb feeling I believe I’ll rise out of all this dark agony a
+better woman, with greater love of man and God. I’m on the rack now;
+I’m senseless to all but pain, and growing dead to that. Sooner or
+later I shall rise out of this stupor. I’m waiting the hour.”
+
+“It’ll soon come, Jane,” replied Lassiter, soberly. “Then I’m afraid
+for you. Years are terrible things, an’ for years you’ve been bound.
+Habit of years is strong as life itself. Somehow, though, I believe as
+you—that you’ll come out of it all a finer woman. I’m waitin’, too. An’
+I’m wonderin’—I reckon, Jane, that marriage between us is out of all
+human reason?”
+
+“Lassiter!... My dear friend!... It’s impossible for us to marry!”
+
+“Why—as Fay says?” inquired Lassiter, with gentle persistence.
+
+“Why! I never thought why. But it’s not possible. I am Jane, daughter
+of Withersteen. My father would rise out of his grave. I’m of Mormon
+birth. I’m being broken. But I’m still a Mormon woman. And you—you are
+Lassiter!”
+
+“Mebbe I’m not so much Lassiter as I used to be.”
+
+“What was it you said? Habit of years is strong as life itself! You
+can’t change the one habit—the purpose of your life. For you still pack
+those black guns! You still nurse your passion for blood.”
+
+A smile, like a shadow, flickered across his face.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Lassiter, I lied to you. But I beg of you—don’t you lie to me. I’ve
+great respect for you. I believe you’re softened toward most, perhaps
+all, my people except—But when I speak of your purpose, your hate, your
+guns, I have only him in mind. I don’t believe you’ve changed.”
+
+For answer he unbuckled the heavy cartridge-belt, and laid it with the
+heavy, swing gun-sheaths in her lap.
+
+“Lassiter!” Jane whispered, as she gazed from him to the black, cold
+guns. Without them he appeared shorn of strength, defenseless, a
+smaller man. Was she Delilah? Swiftly, conscious of only one
+motive—refusal to see this man called craven by his enemies—she rose,
+and with blundering fingers buckled the belt round his waist where it
+belonged.
+
+“Lassiter, _I_ am the coward.”
+
+“Come with me out of Utah—where I can put away my guns an’ be a man,”
+he said. “I reckon I’ll prove it to you then! Come! You’ve got Black
+Star back, an’ Night an’ Bells. Let’s take the racers an’ little Fay,
+en’ race out of Utah. The hosses an’ the child are all you have left.
+Come!”
+
+“No, no, Lassiter. I’ll never leave Utah. What would I do in the world
+with my broken fortunes and my broken heart? I’ll never leave these
+purple slopes I love so well.”
+
+“I reckon I ought to ’ve knowed that. Presently you’ll be livin’ down
+here in a hovel, en’ presently Jane Withersteen will be a memory. I
+only wanted to have a chance to show you how a man—_any_ man—can be
+better ’n he was. If we left Utah I could prove—I reckon I could prove
+this thing you call love. It’s strange, an’ hell an’ heaven at once,
+Jane Withersteen. ’Pears to me that you’ve thrown away your big heart
+on love—love of religion an’ duty an’ churchmen, an’ riders an’ poor
+families an’ poor children! Yet you can’t see what love is—how it
+changes a person!... Listen, an’ in tellin’ you Milly Erne’s story I’ll
+show you how love changed her.
+
+“Milly an’ me was children when our family moved from Missouri to
+Texas, an’ we growed up in Texas ways same as if we’d been born there.
+We had been poor, an’ there we prospered. In time the little village
+where we went became a town, an’ strangers an’ new families kept movin’
+in. Milly was the belle them days. I can see her now, a little girl no
+bigger ’n a bird, an’ as pretty. She had the finest eyes, dark
+blue-black when she was excited, an’ beautiful all the time. You
+remember Milly’s eyes! An’ she had light-brown hair with streaks of
+gold, an’ a mouth that every feller wanted to kiss.
+
+“An’ about the time Milly was the prettiest an’ the sweetest, along
+came a young minister who began to ride some of a race with the other
+fellers for Milly. An’ he won. Milly had always been strong on
+religion, an’ when she met Frank Erne she went in heart an’ soul for
+the salvation of souls. Fact was, Milly, through study of the Bible an’
+attendin’ church an’ revivals, went a little out of her head. It didn’t
+worry the old folks none, an’ the only worry to me was Milly’s
+everlastin’ prayin’ an’ workin’ to save my soul. She never converted
+me, but we was the best of comrades, an’ I reckon no brother an’ sister
+ever loved each other better. Well, Frank Erne an me hit up a great
+friendship. He was a strappin’ feller, good to look at, an’ had the
+most pleasin’ ways. His religion never bothered me, for he could hunt
+an’ fish an’ ride an’ be a good feller. After buffalo once, he come
+pretty near to savin’ my life. We got to be thick as brothers, an’ he
+was the only man I ever seen who I thought was good enough for Milly.
+An’ the day they were married I got drunk for the only time in my life.
+
+“Soon after that I left home—it seems Milly was the only one who could
+keep me home—an’ I went to the bad, as to prosperin’ I saw some pretty
+hard life in the Pan Handle, an’ then I went North. In them days Kansas
+an’ Nebraska was as bad, come to think of it, as these days right here
+on the border of Utah. I got to be pretty handy with guns. An’ there
+wasn’t many riders as could beat me ridin’. An’ I can say all
+modest-like that I never seen the white man who could track a hoss or a
+steer or a man with me. Afore I knowed it two years slipped by, an’ all
+at once I got homesick, an’ pulled a bridle south.
+
+“Things at home had changed. I never got over that homecomin’. Mother
+was dead an’ in her grave. Father was a silent, broken man, killed
+already on his feet. Frank Erne was a ghost of his old self, through
+with workin’, through with preachin’, almost through with livin’, an’
+Milly was gone!... It was a long time before I got the story. Father
+had no mind left, an’ Frank Erne was _afraid_ to talk. So I had to pick
+up what’d happened from different people.
+
+“It ’pears that soon after I left home another preacher come to the
+little town. An’ he an’ Frank become rivals. This feller was different
+from Frank. He preached some other kind of religion, and he was quick
+an’ passionate, where Frank was slow an’ mild. He went after people,
+women specially. In looks he couldn’t compare to Frank Erne, but he had
+power over women. He had a voice, an’ he talked an’ talked an’ preached
+an’ preached. Milly fell under his influence. She became mightily
+interested in his religion. Frank had patience with her, as was his
+way, an’ let her be as interested as she liked. All religions were
+devoted to one God, he said, an’ it wouldn’t hurt Milly none to study a
+different point of view. So the new preacher often called on Milly, an’
+sometimes in Frank’s absence. Frank was a cattle-man between Sundays.
+
+“Along about this time an incident come off that I couldn’t get much
+light on. A stranger come to town, an’ was seen with the preacher. This
+stranger was a big man with an eye like blue ice, an’ a beard of gold.
+He had money, an’ he ’peared a man of mystery, an’ the town went to
+buzzin’ when he disappeared about the same time as a young woman known
+to be mightily interested in the new preacher’s religion. Then,
+presently, along comes a man from somewheres in Illinois, en’ he up an’
+spots this preacher as a famous Mormon proselyter. That riled Frank
+Erne as nothin’ ever before, an’ from rivals they come to be bitter
+enemies. An’ it ended in Frank goin’ to the meetin’-house where Milly
+was listenin’, en’ before her en’ everybody else he called that
+preacher—called him, well, almost as hard as Venters called Tull here
+sometime back. An’ Frank followed up that call with a hosswhippin’, en’
+he drove the proselyter out of town.
+
+“People noticed, so ’twas said, that Milly’s sweet disposition changed.
+Some said it was because she would soon become a mother, en’ others
+said she was pinin’ after the new religion. An’ there was women who
+said right out that she was pinin’ after the Mormon. Anyway, one
+mornin’ Frank rode in from one of his trips, to find Milly gone. He had
+no real near neighbors—livin’ a little out of town—but those who was
+nearest said a wagon had gone by in the night, an’ they thought it
+stopped at her door. Well, tracks always tell, an’ there was the wagon
+tracks an’ hoss tracks an’ man tracks. The news spread like wildfire
+that Milly had run off from her husband. Everybody but Frank believed
+it an’ wasn’t slow in tellin’ why she run off. Mother had always hated
+that strange streak of Milly’s, takin’ up with the new religion as she
+had, an’ she believed Milly ran off with the Mormon. That hastened
+mother’s death, an’ she died unforgivin’. Father wasn’t the kind to bow
+down under disgrace or misfortune but he had surpassin’ love for Milly,
+an’ the loss of her broke him.
+
+“From the minute I heard of Milly’s disappearance I never believed she
+went off of her own free will. I knew Milly, an’ I knew she _couldn’t_
+have done that. I stayed at home awhile, tryin’ to make Frank Erne
+talk. But if he knowed anythin’ then he wouldn’t tell it. So I set out
+to find Milly. An’ I tried to get on the trail of that proselyter. I
+knew if I ever struck a town he’d visited that I’d get a trail. I knew,
+too, that nothin’ short of hell would stop his proselytin’. An’ I rode
+from town to town. I had a blind faith that somethin’ was guidin’ me.
+An’ as the weeks an’ months went by I growed into a strange sort of a
+man, I guess. Anyway, people were afraid of me. Two years after that,
+way over in a corner of Texas, I struck a town where my man had been.
+He’d jest left. People said he came to that town _without_ a woman. I
+back-trailed my man through Arkansas an’ Mississippi, an’ the old trail
+got hot again in Texas. I found the town where he first went after
+leavin’ home. An’ here I got track of Milly. I found a cabin where she
+had given birth to her baby. There was no way to tell whether she’d
+been kept a prisoner or not. The feller who owned the place was a mean,
+silent sort of a skunk, an’ as I was leavin’ I jest took a chance an’
+left my mark on him. Then I went home again.
+
+“It was to find I hadn’t any home, no more. Father had been dead a
+year. Frank Erne still lived in the house where Milly had left him. I
+stayed with him awhile, an’ I grew old watchin’ him. His farm had gone
+to weed, his cattle had strayed or been rustled, his house weathered
+till it wouldn’t keep out rain nor wind. An’ Frank set on the porch and
+whittled sticks, an’ day by day wasted away. There was times when he
+ranted about like a crazy man, but mostly he was always sittin’ an’
+starin’ with eyes that made a man curse. I figured Frank had a secret
+fear that I needed to know. An’ when I told him I’d trailed Milly for
+near three years an’ had got trace of her, an’ saw where she’d had her
+baby, I thought he would drop dead at my feet. An’ when he’d come round
+more natural-like he begged me to _give up_ the trail. But he wouldn’t
+explain. So I let him alone, an’ watched him day en’ night.
+
+“An’ I found there was one thing still precious to him, an’ it was a
+little drawer where he kept his papers. This was in the room where he
+slept. An’ it ’peared he seldom slept. But after bein’ patient I got
+the contents of that drawer an’ found two letters from Milly. One was a
+long letter written a few months after her disappearance. She had been
+bound an’ gagged an’ dragged away from her home by three men, an’ she
+named them—Hurd, Metzger, Slack. They was strangers to her. She was
+taken to the little town where I found trace of her two years after.
+But she didn’t send the letter from that town. There she was penned in.
+’Peared that the proselytes, who had, of course, come on the scene, was
+not runnin’ any risks of losin’ her. She went on to say that for a time
+she was out of her head, an’ when she got right again all that kept her
+alive was the baby. It was a beautiful baby, she said, an’ all she
+thought an’ dreamed of was somehow to get baby back to its father, an’
+then she’d thankfully lay down and die. An’ the letter ended abrupt, in
+the middle of a sentence, en’ it wasn’t signed.
+
+“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 City with the man she had come to love, en’ 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
+an’ his religion, or some terrible fear 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 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 where
+she’d first been taken, an’ I went to the place where she’d been kept.
+I got that skunk who owned the place, an’ took him out in the woods,
+an’ made him tell all he knowed. 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 knowed 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 seen the man to whom he must tell that story he
+knowed him on sight. I was like that, only I had a question to ask. An’
+always I knew the man of whom I must ask. So I never really lost the
+trail, though for many 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 throwed 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 connections 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 gun-man. 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 en’ the stars
+shone en’ the wind blew, that I’d meet him some day.
+
+“Eighteen years I’ve been on the trail. An’ it led me to the last
+lonely villages of 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 slowly turned his sombrero round and
+round, and appeared to be counting the silver ornaments on the band.
+Jane, leaning toward him, sat as if petrified, listening intently,
+waiting to hear more. She could have shrieked, but power of tongue and
+lips were 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 throwed a gun on me in your
+court, an’—”
+
+“Oh! Hush!” whispered Jane, blindly holding up her hands.
+
+“_I seen in your face that Dyer, now a bishop, was the proselyter who
+ruined Milly Erne!_”
+
+For an instant Jane Withersteen’s brain was a whirling chaos and she
+recovered to find herself grasping at Lassiter like one drowning. And
+as if by a lightning stroke she sprang from her dull apathy into
+exquisite torture.
+
+“_It’s a lie!_ Lassiter! No, no!” she moaned. “I swear—you’re wrong!”
+
+“Stop! You’d perjure yourself! 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 outgrowed revenge. I’ve come to see I can be
+no judge for men. I can’t kill a man jest for hate. Hate ain’t the same
+with me since I loved you and 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 easy 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 death-bed, but I
+can’t speak now.”
+
+“I reckon I don’t want to hear no more,” said Lassiter.
+
+Jane leaned against him, as if some pent-up force had rent its way out,
+she fell into a paroxysm of weeping. Lassiter held her in silent
+sympathy. By degrees she regained composure, and she was rising,
+sensible of being relieved of a weighty burden, when a sudden start on
+Lassiter’s part alarmed her.
+
+“I heard hosses—hosses with muffled hoofs!” he said; and he got up
+guardedly.
+
+“Where’s Fay?” asked Jane, hurriedly glancing round 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
+from the knoll.
+
+“See—Fay played here last—a house of stones an’ sticks.... An’ here’s a
+corral of pebbles with leaves for hosses,” 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
+bark off this cottonwood... look in the dust of the path—the letters
+you taught her—she’s drawn pictures of birds en’ hosses an’ people....
+Look, a cross! Oh, 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,
+round and round a cottonwood, Fay’s vagrant fancy left records of her
+sweet musings and innocent play. Long had she lingered round 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 then, at a point where they
+stopped, the great tracks of a man led out from the shrubbery and
+returned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+LASSITER’S WAY
+
+
+Footprints told the story of little Fay’s abduction. In anguish Jane
+Withersteen turned speechlessly to Lassiter, and, confirming her fears,
+she saw him gray-faced, 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—”
+
+“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!”
+
+“_Never!_” hissed Lassiter.
+
+His long arm leaped at her. 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 with a
+hoarse cry and leaned shaking against a table where he kept his rider’s
+accoutrements. He began to fumble 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 round so that his coat hid them. Then he fell to swift
+action. Jane Withersteen watched him, fascinated but uncomprehending
+and she saw him rapidly saddle Black Star and Night. Then he drew her
+into the light of the huge windows, standing over her, gripping her arm
+with fingers like cold steel.
+
+“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 was 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 saddle-bags full of meat an bread.
+An’ be ready to ride!”
+
+“Lassiter!” cried Jane.
+
+Desperately she tried to meet his gray eyes, in vain, desperately 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 want to talk to me about him—leave off the Bishop. I don’t
+understand that name, or its use.”
+
+“Oh, hadn’t you foregone 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—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. And 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.
+“Listen. Am I nothing to you?”
+
+“Woman—don’t trifle at words! I love you! An’ I’ll soon prove it.”
+
+“I’ll give myself to you—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 I can’t speak ill. 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! You’re killing me. I see you—feel you as some other Lassiter!
+My master, be merciful—spare him!”
+
+His 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 a 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 showed 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—and yet! 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—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
+could 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 eye and the beard of
+gold. It was my father you got trace of in the past years. Truly, Dyer
+ruined Milly Erne—dragged her from her home—to Utah—to Cottonwoods.
+_But it was 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 a wife. 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. 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 en’ feel these big guns, en’ know what I can do with
+them. An’, Jane, only one of the miracles Dyer professes to believe in
+can save him!”
+
+Again for Jane Withersteen came the spinning of her brain in darkness,
+and as she whirled in endless chaos she seemed to be falling at the
+feet of a luminous figure—a man—Lassiter—who had saved her from
+herself, who could not be changed, who would slay rightfully. Then she
+slipped into utter blackness.
+
+When she recovered from her faint she became aware that she was lying
+on a couch near the window in her sitting-room. Her brow felt damp and
+cold and wet, some one was chafing her hands; she recognized Judkins,
+and then saw that his lean, hard face wore the hue and look of
+excessive agitation.
+
+“Judkins!” Her voice broke weakly.
+
+“Aw, Miss Withersteen, you’re comin’ round fine. Now jest lay still a
+little. You’re all right; everythin’s all right.”
+
+“Where is—he?”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Lassiter!”
+
+“You needn’t worry none about him.”
+
+“Where is he? Tell me—instantly.”
+
+“Wal, he’s in the other room patchin’ up a few triflin’ bullet holes.”
+
+_“Ah!... Bishop’ Dyer?”_
+
+“When I seen him last—a matter of half an hour ago, he was on his
+knees. He was some busy, _but_ he wasn’t prayin’!”
+
+“How strangely you talk! I’ll sit up. I’m—well, strong again. Tell me.
+Dyer on his knees! What was he doing?”
+
+“Wal, beggin’ your pardon fer blunt talk, Miss Withersteen, Dyer was on
+his knees an’ _not_ prayin’. You remember his big, broad hands? You’ve
+seen ’em raised in blessin’ over old gray men an’ little curly-headed
+children like—like Fay Larkin! Come to think of thet, I disremember
+ever hearin’ of his liftin’ his big hands in blessin’ over a _woman_.
+Wal, when I seen him last—jest a little while ago—he was on his knees,
+_not_ prayin’, as I remarked—an’ he was pressin’ his big hands over
+some bigger wounds.”
+
+“Man, you drive me mad! Did Lassiter kill Dyer?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Did he kill Tull?”
+
+“No. Tull’s out of the village with most of his riders. He’s expected
+back before evenin’. Lassiter will hev to git away before Tull en’ his
+riders come in. It’s sure death fer him here. An’ wuss fer you, too,
+Miss Withersteen. There’ll be some of an uprisin’ when Tull gits back.”
+
+“I shall ride away with Lassiter. Judkins, tell me all you saw—all you
+know about this killing.” She realized, without wonder or amaze, how
+Judkins’s one word, affirming the death of Dyer—that the catastrophe
+had fallen—had completed the change whereby she had been molded or
+beaten or broken into another woman. She felt calm, slightly cold,
+strong as she had not been strong since the first shadow fell upon her.
+
+“I jest saw about all of it, Miss Withersteen, an’ I’ll be glad to tell
+you if you’ll only hev patience with me,” said Judkins, earnestly. “You
+see, I’ve been pecooliarly interested, an’ nat’rully I’m some excited.
+An’ I talk a lot thet mebbe ain’t necessary, but I can’t help thet.
+
+“I was at the meetin’-house where Dyer was holdin’ court. You know he
+allus acts as magistrate an’ judge when Tull’s away. An’ the trial was
+fer tryin’ what’s left of my boy riders—thet helped me hold your
+cattle—fer a lot of hatched-up things the boys never did. We’re used to
+thet, an’ the boys wouldn’t hev minded bein’ locked up fer a while, or
+hevin’ to dig ditches, or whatever the judge laid down. You see, I
+divided the gold you give me among all my boys, an’ they all hid it,
+en’ they all feel rich. Howsomever, court was adjourned before the
+judge passed sentence. Yes, ma’m, court was adjourned some strange an’
+quick, much as if lightnin’ hed struck the meetin’-house.
+
+“I hed trouble attendin’ the trial, but I got in. There was a good many
+people there, all my boys, an’ Judge Dyer with his several clerks. Also
+he hed with him the five riders who’ve been guardin’ him pretty close
+of late. They was Carter, Wright, Jengessen, an’ two new riders from
+Stone Bridge. I didn’t hear their names, but I heard they was handy men
+with guns an’ they looked more like rustlers than riders. Anyway, there
+they was, the five all in a row.
+
+“Judge Dyer was tellin’ Willie Kern, one of my best an’ steadiest
+boys—Dyer was tellin’ him how there was a ditch opened near Willie’s
+home lettin’ water through his lot, where it hadn’t ought to go. An’
+Willie was tryin’ to git a word in to prove he wasn’t at home all the
+day it happened—which was true, as I know—but Willie couldn’t git a
+word in, an’ then Judge Dyer went on layin’ down the law. An’ all to
+onct he happened to look down the long room. An’ if ever any man turned
+to stone he was thet man.
+
+“Nat’rully I looked back to see what hed acted so powerful strange on
+the judge. An’ there, half-way up the room, in the middle of the wide
+aisle, stood Lassiter! All white an’ black he looked, an’ I can’t think
+of anythin’ he resembled, onless it’s death. Venters made thet same
+room some still an’ chilly when he called Tull; but this was different.
+I give my word, Miss Withersteen, thet I went cold to my very marrow. I
+don’t know why. But Lassiter had a way about him thet’s awful. He spoke
+a word—a name—I couldn’t understand it, though he spoke clear as a
+bell. I was too excited, mebbe. Judge Dyer must hev understood it, an’
+a lot more thet was mystery to me, for he pitched forrard out of his
+chair right onto the platform.
+
+“Then them five riders, Dyer’s bodyguards, they jumped up, an’ two of
+them thet I found out afterward were the strangers from Stone Bridge,
+they piled right out of a winder, so quick you couldn’t catch your
+breath. It was plain they wasn’t Mormons.
+
+“Jengessen, Carter, an’ Wright eyed Lassiter, for what must hev been a
+second an’ seemed like an hour, an’ they went white en’ strung. But
+they didn’t weaken nor lose their nerve.
+
+“I hed a good look at Lassiter. He stood sort of stiff, bendin’ a
+little, an’ both his arms were crooked an’ his hands looked like a
+hawk’s claws. But there ain’t no tellin’ how his eyes looked. I know
+this, though, an’ thet is his eyes could read the mind of any man about
+to throw a gun. An’ in watchin’ him, of course, I couldn’t see the
+three men go fer their guns. An’ though I was lookin’ right at
+Lassiter—lookin’ hard—I couldn’t see how he drawed. He was quicker’n
+eyesight—thet’s all. But I seen the red spurtin’ of his guns, en’ heard
+his shots jest the very littlest instant before I heard the shots of
+the riders. An’ when I turned, Wright an’ Carter was down, en’
+Jengessen, who’s tough like a steer, was pullin’ the trigger of a
+wabblin’ gun. But it was plain he was shot through, plumb center. An’
+sudden he fell with a crash, an’ his gun clattered on the floor.
+
+“Then there was a hell of a silence. Nobody breathed. Sartin I didn’t,
+anyway. I saw Lassiter slip a smokin’ gun back in a belt. But he hadn’t
+throwed either of the big black guns, an’ I thought thet strange. An’
+all this was happenin’ quick—you can’t imagine how quick.
+
+“There come a scrapin’ on the floor an’ Dyer got up, his face like
+lead. I wanted to watch Lassiter, but Dyer’s face, onct I seen it like
+thet, glued my eyes. I seen him go fer his gun—why, I could hev done
+better, quicker—an’ then there was a thunderin’ shot from Lassiter, an’
+it hit Dyer’s right arm, an’ his gun went off as it dropped. He looked
+at Lassiter like a cornered sage-wolf, an’ sort of howled, an’ reached
+down fer his gun. He’d jest picked it off the floor an’ was raisin’ it
+when another thunderin’ shot almost tore thet arm off—so it seemed to
+me. The gun dropped again an’ he went down on his knees, kind of
+flounderin’ after it. It was some strange an’ terrible to see his awful
+earnestness. Why would such a man cling so to life? Anyway, he got the
+gun with left hand an’ was raisin’ it, pullin’ trigger in his madness,
+when the third thunderin’ shot hit his left arm, an’ he dropped the gun
+again. But thet left arm wasn’t useless yet, fer he grabbed up the gun,
+an’ with a shakin’ aim thet would hev been pitiful to me—in any other
+man—he began to shoot. One wild bullet struck a man twenty feet from
+Lassiter. An’ it killed thet man, as I seen afterward. Then come a
+bunch of thunderin’ shots—nine I calkilated after, fer they come so
+quick I couldn’t count them—an’ I knew Lassiter hed turned the black
+guns loose on Dyer.
+
+“I’m tellin’ you straight, Miss Withersteen, fer I want you to know.
+Afterward you’ll git over it. I’ve seen some soul-rackin’ scenes on
+this Utah border, but this was the awfulest. I remember I closed my
+eyes, an’ fer a minute I thought of the strangest things, out of place
+there, such as you’d never dream would come to mind. I saw the sage,
+an’ runnin’ hosses—an’ thet’s the beautfulest sight to me—an’ I saw dim
+things in the dark, an’ there was a kind of hummin’ in my ears. An’ I
+remember distinctly—fer it was what made all these things whirl out of
+my mind an’ opened my eyes—I remember distinctly it was the smell of
+gunpowder.
+
+“The court had about adjourned fer thet judge. He was on his knees, en’
+he wasn’t prayin’. He was gaspin’ an’ tryin’ to press his big,
+floppin’, crippled hands over his body. Lassiter had sent all those
+last thunderin’ shots through his body. Thet was Lassiter’s way.
+
+“An’ Lassiter spoke, en’ if I ever forgit his words I’ll never forgit
+the sound of his voice.
+
+“‘_Proselyter_, I reckon you’d better call quick on thet God who
+reveals Hisself to you on earth, because He won’t be visitin’ the place
+you’re goin’ to!’
+
+“An’ then I seen Dyer look at his big, hangin’ hands thet wasn’t big
+enough fer the last work he set them to. An’ he looked up at Lassiter.
+An’ then he stared horrible at somethin’ thet wasn’t Lassiter, nor
+anyone there, nor the room, nor the branches of purple sage peepin’
+into the winder. Whatever he seen, it was with the look of a man who
+_discovers_ somethin’ too late. Thet’s a terrible look!... An’ with a
+horrible _understandin’_ cry he slid forrard on his face.”
+
+Judkins paused in his narrative, breathing heavily while he wiped his
+perspiring brow.
+
+“Thet’s about all,” he concluded. “Lassiter left the meetin’-house an’
+I hurried to catch up with him. He was bleedin’ from three gunshots,
+none of them much to bother him. An’ we come right up here. I found you
+layin’ in the hall, an’ I hed to work some over you.”
+
+Jane Withersteen offered up no prayer for Dyer’s soul.
+
+Lassiter’s step sounded in the hall—the familiar soft, silver-clinking
+step—and she heard it with thrilling new emotions in which was a vague
+joy in her very fear of him. The door opened, and she saw him, the old
+Lassiter, slow, easy, gentle, cool, yet not exactly the same Lassiter.
+She rose, and for a moment her eyes blurred and swam in tears.
+
+“Are you—all—all right?” she asked, tremulously.
+
+“I reckon.”
+
+“Lassiter, I’ll ride away with you. Hide me till danger is past—till we
+are forgotten—then take me where you will. Your people shall be my
+people, and your God my God!”
+
+He kissed her hand with the quaint grace and courtesy that came to him
+in rare moments.
+
+“Black Star an’ Night are ready,” he said, simply.
+
+His quiet mention of the black racers spurred Jane to action. Hurrying
+to her room, she changed to her rider’s suit, packed her jewelry, and
+the gold that was left, and all the woman’s apparel for which there was
+space in the saddle-bags, and then returned to the hall. Black Star
+stamped his iron-shod hoofs and tossed his beautiful head, and eyed her
+with knowing eyes.
+
+“Judkins, I give Bells to you,” said Jane. “I hope you will always keep
+him and be good to him.”
+
+Judkins mumbled thanks that he could not speak fluently, and his eyes
+flashed.
+
+Lassiter strapped Jane’s saddle-bags upon Black Star, and led the
+racers out into the court.
+
+“Judkins, you ride with Jane out into the sage. If you see any riders
+comin’ shout quick twice. An’, Jane, _don’t look back!_ I’ll catch up
+soon. We’ll get to the break into the Pass before midnight, an’ then
+wait until mornin’ to go down.”
+
+Black Star bent his graceful neck and bowed his noble head, and his
+broad shoulders yielded as he knelt for Jane to mount.
+
+She rode out of the court beside Judkins, through the grove, across the
+wide lane into the sage, and she realized that she was leaving
+Withersteen House forever, and she did not look back. A strange,
+dreamy, calm peace pervaded her soul. Her doom had fallen upon her,
+but, instead of finding life no longer worth living she found it doubly
+significant, full of sweetness as the western breeze, beautiful and
+unknown as the sage-slope stretching its purple sunset shadows before
+her. She became aware of Judkins’s hand touching hers; she heard him
+speak a husky good-by; then into the place of Bells shot the
+dead-black, keen, racy nose of Night, and she knew Lassiter rode beside
+her.
+
+“_Don’t—look—back!_” he said, and his voice, too, was not clear.
+
+
+[Illustration: “Don’t—look—back!”]
+
+
+Facing straight ahead, seeing only the waving, shadowy sage, Jane held
+out her gauntleted hand, to feel it enclosed in strong clasp. So she
+rode on without a backward glance at the beautiful grove of
+Cottonwoods. She did not seem to think of the past of what she left
+forever, but of the color and mystery and wildness of the sage-slope
+leading down to Deception Pass, and of the future. She watched the
+shadows lengthen down the slope; she felt the cool west wind sweeping
+by from the rear; and she wondered at low, yellow clouds sailing
+swiftly over her and beyond.
+
+“_Don’t look—back!_” said Lassiter.
+
+Thick-driving belts of smoke traveled by on the wind, and with it came
+a strong, pungent odor of burning wood.
+
+Lassiter had fired Withersteen House! But Jane did not look back.
+
+A misty veil obscured the clear, searching gaze she had kept
+steadfastly upon the purple slope and the dim lines of cañons. It
+passed, as passed the rolling clouds of smoke, and she saw the valley
+deepening into the shades of twilight. Night came on, swift as the
+fleet racers, and stars peeped out to brighten and grow, and the huge,
+windy, eastern heave of sage-level paled under a rising moon and turned
+to silver. Blanched in moonlight, the sage yet seemed to hold its hue
+of purple and was infinitely more wild and lonely. So the night hours
+wore on, and Jane Withersteen never once looked back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+BLACK STAR AND NIGHT
+
+
+The time had come for Venters and Bess to leave their retreat. They
+were at great pains to choose the few things they would be able to
+carry with them on the journey out of Utah.
+
+“Bern, whatever kind of a pack’s this, anyhow?” questioned Bess, rising
+from her work with reddened face.
+
+Venters, absorbed in his own task, did not look up at all, and in reply
+said he had brought so much from Cottonwoods that he did not recollect
+the half of it.
+
+“A woman packed this!” Bess exclaimed.
+
+He scarcely caught her meaning, but the peculiar tone of her voice
+caused him instantly to rise, and he saw Bess on her knees before an
+open pack which he recognized as the one given him by Jane.
+
+“By George!” he ejaculated, guiltily, and then at sight of Bess’s face
+he laughed outright.
+
+“A woman packed this,” she repeated, fixing woeful, tragic eyes on him.
+
+“Well, is that a crime?”
+
+“There—there _is_ a woman, after all!”
+
+“Now Bess—”
+
+“You’ve lied to me!”
+
+Then and there Venters found it imperative to postpone work for the
+present. All her life Bess had been isolated, but she had inherited
+certain elements of the eternal feminine.
+
+“But there _was_ a woman and you _did_ lie to me,” she kept repeating,
+after he had explained.
+
+“What of that? Bess, I’ll get angry at you in a moment. Remember you’ve
+been pent up all your life. I venture to say that if you’d been out in
+the world you’d have had a dozen sweethearts and have told many a lie
+before this.”
+
+“I wouldn’t anything of the kind,” declared Bess, indignantly.
+
+“Well—perhaps not lie. But you’d have had the sweethearts—You couldn’t
+have helped that—being so pretty.”
+
+This remark appeared to be a very clever and fortunate one; and the
+work of selecting and then of stowing all the packs in the cave went on
+without further interruption.
+
+Venters closed up the opening of the cave with a thatch of willows and
+aspens, so that not even a bird or a rat could get in to the sacks of
+grain. And this work was in order with the precaution habitually
+observed by him. He might not be able to get out of Utah, and have to
+return to the valley. But he owed it to Bess to make the attempt, and
+in case they were compelled to turn back he wanted to find that fine
+store of food and grain intact. The outfit of implements and utensils
+he packed away in another cave.
+
+“Bess, we have enough to live here all our lives,” he said once,
+dreamily.
+
+“Shall I go roll Balancing Rock?” she asked, in light speech, but with
+deep-blue fire in her eyes.
+
+“No—no.”
+
+“Ah, you don’t forget the gold and the world,” she sighed.
+
+“Child, you forget the beautiful dresses and the travel—and
+everything.”
+
+“Oh, I want to go. But I want to stay!”
+
+“I feel the same way.”
+
+They let the eight calves out of the corral, and kept only two of the
+burros Venters had brought from Cottonwoods. These they intended to
+ride. Bess freed all her pets—the quail and rabbits and foxes.
+
+The last sunset and twilight and night were both the sweetest and
+saddest they had ever spent in Surprise Valley. Morning brought keen
+exhilaration and excitement. When Venters had saddled the two burros,
+strapped on the light packs and the two canteens, the sunlight was
+dispersing the lazy shadows from the valley. Taking a last look at the
+caves and the silver spruces, Venters and Bess made a reluctant start,
+leading the burros. Ring and Whitie looked keen and knowing. Something
+seemed to drag at Venters’s feet and he noticed Bess lagged behind.
+Never had the climb from terrace to bridge appeared so long.
+
+Not till they reached the opening of the gorge did they stop to rest
+and take one last look at the valley. The tremendous arch of stone
+curved clear and sharp in outline against the morning sky. And through
+it streaked the golden shaft. The valley seemed an enchanted circle of
+glorious veils of gold and wraiths of white and silver haze and dim,
+blue, moving shade—beautiful and wild and unreal as a dream.
+
+“We—we can—th—think of it—always—re—remember,” sobbed Bess.
+
+“Hush! Don’t cry. Our valley has only fitted us for a better life
+somewhere. Come!”
+
+They entered the gorge and he closed the willow gate. From rosy, golden
+morning light they passed into cool, dense gloom. The burros pattered
+up the trail with little hollow-cracking steps. And the gorge widened
+to narrow outlet and the gloom lightened to gray. At the divide they
+halted for another rest. Venters’s keen, remembering gaze searched
+Balancing Rock, and the long incline, and the cracked toppling walls,
+but failed to note the slightest change.
+
+The dogs led the descent; then came Bess leading her burro; then
+Venters leading his. Bess kept her eyes bent downward. Venters,
+however, had an irresistible desire to look upward at Balancing Rock.
+It had always haunted him, and now he wondered if he were really to get
+through the outlet before the huge stone thundered down. He fancied
+that would be a miracle. Every few steps he answered to the strange,
+nervous fear and turned to make sure the rock still stood like a giant
+statue. And, as he descended, it grew dimmer in his sight. It changed
+form; it swayed; it nodded darkly; and at last, in his heightened
+fancy, he saw it heave and roll. As in a dream when he felt himself
+falling yet knew he would never fall, so he saw this long-standing
+thunderbolt of the little stone-men plunge down to close forever the
+outlet to Deception Pass.
+
+And while he was giving way to unaccountable dread imaginations the
+descent was accomplished without mishap.
+
+“I’m glad that’s over,” he said, breathing more freely. “I hope I’m by
+that hanging rock for good and all. Since almost the moment I first saw
+it I’ve had an idea that it was waiting for me. Now, when it does fall,
+if I’m thousands of miles away, I’ll hear it.”
+
+With the first glimpses of the smooth slope leading down to the
+grotesque cedars and out to the Pass, Venters’s cool nerve returned.
+One long survey to the left, then one to the right, satisfied his
+caution. Leading the burros down to the spur of rock, he halted at the
+steep incline.
+
+“Bess, here’s the bad place, the place I told you about, with the cut
+steps. You start down, leading your burro. Take your time and hold on
+to him if you slip. I’ve got a rope on him and a half-hitch on this
+point of rock, so I can let him down safely. Coming up here was a
+killing job. But it’ll be easy going down.”
+
+Both burros passed down the difficult stairs cut by the cliff-dwellers,
+and did it without a misstep. After that the descent down the slope and
+over the mile of scrawled, ripped, and ridged rock required only
+careful guidance, and Venters got the burros to level ground in a
+condition that caused him to congratulate himself.
+
+“Oh, if we only had Wrangle!” exclaimed Venters. “But we’re lucky.
+That’s the worst of our trail passed. We’ve only men to fear now. If we
+get up in the sage we can hide and slip along like coyotes.”
+
+They mounted and rode west through the valley and entered the cañon.
+From time to time Venters walked, leading his burro. When they got by
+all the cañons and gullies opening into the Pass they went faster and
+with fewer halts. Venters did not confide in Bess the alarming fact
+that he had seen horses and smoke less than a mile up one of the
+intersecting cañons. He did not talk at all. And long after he had
+passed this cañon and felt secure once more in the certainty that they
+had been unobserved he never relaxed his watchfulness. But he did not
+walk any more, and he kept the burros at a steady trot. Night fell
+before they reached the last water in the Pass and they made camp by
+starlight. Venters did not want the burros to stray, so he tied them
+with long halters in the grass near the spring. Bess, tired out and
+silent, laid her head in a saddle and went to sleep between the two
+dogs. Venters did not close his eyes. The cañon silence appeared full
+of the low, continuous hum of insects. He listened until the hum grew
+into a roar, and then, breaking the spell, once more he heard it low
+and clear. He watched the stars and the moving shadows, and always his
+glance returned to the girl’s dimly pale face. And he remembered how
+white and still it had once looked in the starlight. And again stern
+thought fought his strange fancies. Would all his labor and his love be
+for naught? Would he lose her, after all? What did the dark shadow
+around her portend? Did calamity lurk on that long upland trail through
+the sage? Why should his heart swell and throb with nameless fear? He
+listened to the silence and told himself that in the broad light of day
+he could dispel this leaden-weighted dread.
+
+At the first hint of gray over the eastern rim he awoke Bess, saddled
+the burros, and began the day’s travel. He wanted to get out of the
+Pass before there was any chance of riders coming down. They gained the
+break as the first red rays of the rising sun colored the rim.
+
+For once, so eager was he to get up to level ground, he did not send
+Ring or Whitie in advance. Encouraging Bess to hurry pulling at his
+patient, plodding burro, he climbed the soft, steep trail.
+
+Brighter and brighter grew the light. He mounted the last broken edge
+of rim to have the sun-fired, purple sage-slope burst upon him as a
+glory. Bess panted up to his side, tugging on the halter of her burro.
+
+“We’re up!” he cried, joyously. “There’s not a dot on the sage. We’re
+safe. We’ll not be seen! Oh, Bess—”
+
+Ring growled and sniffed the keen air and bristled. Venters clutched at
+his rifle. Whitie sometimes made a mistake, but Ring never. The dull
+thud of hoofs almost deprived Venters of power to turn and see from
+where disaster threatened. He felt his eyes dilate as he stared at
+Lassiter leading Black Star and Night out of the sage, with Jane
+Withersteen, in rider’s costume, close beside them.
+
+For an instant Venters felt himself whirl dizzily in the center of vast
+circles of sage. He recovered partially, enough to see Lassiter
+standing with a glad smile and Jane riveted in astonishment.
+
+“Why, Bern!” she exclaimed. “How good it is to see you! We’re riding
+away, you see. The storm burst—and I’m a ruined woman!... I thought you
+were alone.”
+
+Venters, unable to speak for consternation, and bewildered out of all
+sense of what he ought or ought not to do, simply stared at Jane.
+
+“Son, where are you bound for?” asked Lassiter.
+
+“Not safe—where I was. I’m—we’re going out of Utah—back East,” he found
+tongue to say.
+
+“I reckon this meetin’s the luckiest thing that ever happened to you
+an’ to me—an’ to Jane—an’ to Bess,” said Lassiter, coolly.
+
+“_Bess!_” cried Jane, with a sudden leap of blood to her pale cheek.
+
+It was entirely beyond Venters to see any luck in that meeting.
+
+Jane Withersteen took one flashing, woman’s glance at Bess’s scarlet
+face, at her slender, shapely form.
+
+“Venters! is this a girl—a woman?” she questioned, in a voice that
+stung.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Did you have her in that wonderful valley?”
+
+“Yes, but Jane—”
+
+“All the time you were gone?”
+
+“Yes, but I couldn’t tell—”
+
+“Was it for _her_ you asked me to give you supplies? Was it for _her_
+that you wanted to make your valley a paradise?”
+
+“Oh—Jane—”
+
+“Answer me.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, you liar!” And with these passionate words Jane Withersteen
+succumbed to fury. For the second time in her life she fell into the
+ungovernable rage that had been her father’s weakness. And it was worse
+than his, for she was a jealous woman—jealous even of her friends.
+
+As best he could, he bore the brunt of her anger. It was not only his
+deceit to her that she visited upon him, but her betrayal by religion,
+by life itself.
+
+Her passion, like fire at white heat, consumed itself in little time.
+Her physical strength failed, and still her spirit attempted to go on
+in magnificent denunciation of those who had wronged her. Like a tree
+cut deep into its roots, she began to quiver and shake, and her anger
+weakened into despair. And her ringing voice sank into a broken, husky
+whisper. Then, spent and pitiable, upheld by Lassiter’s arm, she turned
+and hid her face in Black Star’s mane.
+
+Numb as Venters was when at length Jane Withersteen lifted her head and
+looked at him, he yet suffered a pang.
+
+“Jane, the girl is innocent!” he cried.
+
+“Can you expect me to believe that?” she asked, with weary, bitter
+eyes.
+
+“I’m not that kind of a liar. And you know it. If I lied—if I kept
+silent when honor should have made me speak, it was to spare you. I
+came to Cottonwoods to tell you. But I couldn’t add to your pain. I
+intended to tell you I had come to love this girl. But, Jane I hadn’t
+forgotten how good you were to me. I haven’t changed at all toward you.
+I prize your friendship as I always have. But, however it may look to
+you—don’t be unjust. The girl is innocent. Ask Lassiter.”
+
+“Jane, she’s jest as sweet an’ innocent as little Fay,” said Lassiter.
+There was a faint smile upon his face and a beautiful light.
+
+Venters saw, and knew that Lassiter saw, how Jane Withersteen’s
+tortured soul wrestled with hate and threw it—with scorn doubt,
+suspicion, and overcame all.
+
+“Bern, if in my misery I accused you unjustly, I crave forgiveness,”
+she said. “I’m not what I once was. Tell me—who is this girl?”
+
+“Jane, she is Oldring’s daughter, and his Masked Rider. Lassiter will
+tell you how I shot her for a rustler, saved her life—all the story.
+It’s a strange story, Jane, as wild as the sage. But it’s true—true as
+her innocence. That you must believe.”
+
+“Oldring’s Masked Rider! Oldring’s daughter!” exclaimed Jane. “And
+she’s innocent! You ask me to believe much. If this girl is—is what you
+say, how could she be going away with the man who killed her father?”
+
+“Why did you tell that?” cried Venters, passionately.
+
+Jane’s question had roused Bess out of stupefaction. Her eyes suddenly
+darkened and dilated. She stepped toward Venters and held up both hands
+as if to ward off a blow.
+
+“Did—did you kill Oldring?”
+
+“I did, Bess, and I hate myself for it. But you know I never dreamed he
+was your father. I thought he’d wronged you. I killed him when I was
+madly jealous.”
+
+For a moment Bess was shocked into silence.
+
+“But he was my father!” she broke out, at last. “And now I must go
+back—I can’t go with you. It’s all over—that beautiful dream. Oh, I
+_knew_ it couldn’t come true. You can’t take me now.”
+
+“If you forgive me, Bess, it’ll all come right in the end!” implored
+Venters.
+
+“It can’t be right. I’ll go back. After all, I loved him. He was good
+to me. I can’t forget that.”
+
+“If you go back to Oldring’s men I’ll follow you, and then they’ll kill
+me,” said Venters, hoarsely.
+
+“Oh no, Bern, you’ll not come. Let me go. It’s best for you to forget
+me. I’ve brought you only pain and dishonor.”
+
+She did not weep. But the sweet bloom and life died out of her face.
+She looked haggard and sad, all at once stunted; and her hands dropped
+listlessly; and her head drooped in slow, final acceptance of a
+hopeless fate.
+
+“Jane, look there!” cried Venters, in despairing grief. “Need you have
+told her? Where was all your kindness of heart? This girl has had a
+wretched, lonely life. And I’d found a way to make her happy. You’ve
+killed it. You’ve killed something sweet and pure and hopeful, just as
+sure as you breathe.”
+
+“Oh, Bern! It was a slip. I never thought—I never thought!” replied
+Jane. “How could I tell she didn’t know?”
+
+Lassiter suddenly moved forward, and with the beautiful light on his
+face now strangely luminous, he looked at Jane and Venters and then let
+his soft, bright gaze rest on Bess.
+
+“Well, I reckon you’ve all had your say, an’ now it’s Lassiter’s turn.
+Why, I was jest praying for this meetin’. Bess, jest look here.”
+
+Gently he touched her arm and turned her to face the others, and then
+outspread his great hand to disclose a shiny, battered gold locket.
+
+“Open it,” he said, with a singularly rich voice.
+
+Bess complied, but listlessly.
+
+“Jane—Venters—come closer,” went on Lassiter. “Take a look at the
+picture. Don’t you know the woman?”
+
+Jane, after one glance, drew back.
+
+“Milly Erne!” she cried, wonderingly.
+
+Venters, with tingling pulse, with something growing on him, recognized
+in the faded miniature portrait the eyes of Milly Erne.
+
+“Yes, that’s Milly,” said Lassiter, softly. “Bess, did you ever see her
+face—look hard—with all your heart an’ soul?”
+
+“The eyes seem to haunt me,” whispered Bess. “Oh, I can’t
+remember—they’re eyes of my dreams—but—but—”
+
+Lassiter’s strong arm went round her and he bent his head.
+
+“Child, I thought you’d remember her eyes. They’re the same beautiful
+eyes you’d see if you looked in a mirror or a clear spring. They’re
+your mother’s eyes. You are Milly Erne’s child. Your name is Elizabeth
+Erne. You’re not Oldring’s daughter. You’re the daughter of Frank Erne,
+a man once my best friend. Look! Here’s his picture beside Milly’s. He
+was handsome, an’ as fine an’ gallant a Southern gentleman as I ever
+seen. Frank came of an old family. You come of the best of blood, lass,
+and blood tells.”
+
+Bess slipped through his arm to her knees and hugged the locket to her
+bosom, and lifted wonderful, yearning eyes.
+
+“It—can’t—be—true!”
+
+“Thank God, lass, it _is_ true,” replied Lassiter. “Jane an’ Bern
+here—they both recognize Milly. They see Milly in you. They’re so
+knocked out they can’t tell you, that’s all.”
+
+“Who are you?” whispered Bess.
+
+“I reckon I’m Milly’s brother an’ your uncle!... Uncle Jim! Ain’t that
+fine?”
+
+“Oh, I can’t believe—Don’t raise me! Bern, let me kneel. I see truth in
+your face—in Miss Withersteen’s. But let me hear it all—all on my
+knees. Tell me _how_ it’s true!”
+
+“Well, Elizabeth, listen,” said Lassiter. “Before you was born your
+father made a mortal enemy of a Mormon named Dyer. They was both
+ministers an’ come to be rivals. Dyer stole your mother away from her
+home. She gave birth to you in Texas eighteen years ago. Then she was
+taken to Utah, from place to place, an’ finally to the last border
+settlement—Cottonwoods. You was about three years old when you was
+taken away from Milly. She never knew what had become of you. But she
+lived a good while hopin’ and prayin’ to have you again. Then she gave
+up an’ died. An’ I may as well put in here your father died ten years
+ago. Well, I spent my time tracin’ Milly, an’ some months back I landed
+in Cottonwoods. An’ jest lately I learned all about you. I had a talk
+with Oldrin’ an’ told him you was dead, an’ he told me what I had so
+long been wantin’ to know. It was Dyer, of course, who stole you from
+Milly. Part reason he was sore because Milly refused to give you Mormon
+teachin’, but mostly he still hated Frank Erne so infernally that he
+made a deal with Oldrin’ to take you an’ bring you up as an infamous
+rustler an’ rustler’s girl. The idea was to break Frank Erne’s heart if
+he ever came to Utah—to show him his daughter with a band of low
+rustlers. Well—Oldrin’ took you, brought you up from childhood, an’
+then made you his Masked Rider. He made you infamous. He kept that part
+of the contract, but he learned to love you as a daughter an’ never let
+any but his own men know you was a girl. I heard him say that with my
+own ears, an’ I saw his big eyes grow dim. He told me how he had
+guarded you always, kept you locked up in his absence, was always at
+your side or near you on those rides that made you famous on the sage.
+He said he an’ an old rustler whom he trusted had taught you how to
+read an’ write. They selected the books for you. Dyer had wanted you
+brought up the vilest of the vile! An’ Oldrin’ brought you up the
+innocentest of the innocent. He said you didn’t know what vileness was.
+I can hear his big voice tremble now as he said it. He told me how the
+men—rustlers an’ outlaws—who from time to time tried to approach you
+familiarly—he told me how he shot them dead. I’m tellin’ you this
+’specially because you’ve showed such shame—sayin’ you was nameless an’
+all that. Nothin’ on earth can be wronger than that idea of yours. An’
+the truth of it is here. Oldrin’ swore to me that if Dyer died,
+releasin’ the contract, he intended to hunt up your father an’ give you
+back to him. It seems Oldrin’ wasn’t all bad, en’ he sure loved you.”
+
+Venters leaned forward in passionate remorse.
+
+“Oh, Bess! I know Lassiter speaks the truth. For when I shot Oldring he
+dropped to his knees and fought with unearthly power to speak. And he
+said: ‘Man—why—didn’t—you—wait? Bess was—’ Then he fell dead. And I’ve
+been haunted by his look and words. Oh, Bess, what a strange, splendid
+thing for Oldring to do! It all seems impossible. But, dear, you really
+are not what you thought.”
+
+“Elizabeth Erne!” cried Jane Withersteen. “I loved your mother and I
+see her in you!”
+
+What had been incredible from the lips of men became, in the tone,
+look, and gesture of a woman, a wonderful truth for Bess. With little
+tremblings of all her slender body she rocked to and fro on her knees.
+The yearning wistfulness of her eyes changed to solemn splendor of joy.
+She believed. She was realizing happiness. And as the process of
+thought was slow, so were the variations of her expression. Her eyes
+reflected the transformation of her soul. Dark, brooding, hopeless
+belief—clouds of gloom—drifted, paled, vanished in glorious light. An
+exquisite rose flush—a glow—shone from her face as she slowly began to
+rise from her knees. A spirit uplifted her. All that she had held as
+base dropped from her.
+
+Venters watched her in joy too deep for words. By it he divined
+something of what Lassiter’s revelation meant to Bess, but he knew he
+could only faintly understand. That moment when she seemed to be lifted
+by some spiritual transfiguration was the most beautiful moment of his
+life. She stood with parted, quivering lips, with hands tightly
+clasping the locket to her heaving breast. A new conscious pride of
+worth dignified the old wild, free grace and poise.
+
+“Uncle Jim!” she said, tremulously, with a different smile from any
+Venters had ever seen on her face.
+
+Lassiter took her into his arms.
+
+“I reckon. It’s powerful fine to hear that,” replied Lassiter,
+unsteadily.
+
+Venters, feeling his eyes grow hot and wet, turned away, and found
+himself looking at Jane Withersteen. He had almost forgotten her
+presence. Tenderness and sympathy were fast hiding traces of her
+agitation. Venters read her mind—felt the reaction of her noble
+heart—saw the joy she was beginning to feel at the happiness of others.
+And suddenly blinded, choked by his emotions, he turned from her also.
+He knew what she would do presently; she would make some magnificent
+amend for her anger; she would give some manifestation of her love;
+probably all in a moment, as she had loved Milly Erne, so would she
+love Elizabeth Erne.
+
+“’Pears to me, folks, that we’d better talk a little serious now,”
+remarked Lassiter, at length. “Time flies.”
+
+“You’re right,” replied Venters, instantly. “I’d forgotten
+time—place—danger. Lassiter, you’re riding away. Jane’s leaving
+Withersteen House?”
+
+“Forever,” replied Jane.
+
+“I fired Withersteen House,” said Lassiter.
+
+“Dyer?” questioned Venters, sharply.
+
+“I reckon where Dyer’s gone there won’t be any kidnappin’ of girls.”
+
+“Ah! I knew it. I told Judkins—And Tull?” went on Venters,
+passionately.
+
+“Tull wasn’t around when I broke loose. By now he’s likely on our trail
+with his riders.”
+
+“Lassiter, you’re going into the Pass to hide till all this storm blows
+over?”
+
+“I reckon that’s Jane’s idea. I’m thinkin’ the storm’ll be a powerful
+long time blowin’ over. I was comin’ to join you in Surprise Valley.
+You’ll go back now with me?”
+
+“No. I want to take Bess out of Utah. Lassiter, Bess found gold in the
+valley. We’ve a saddle-bag full of gold. If we can reach Sterling—”
+
+“Man! how’re you ever goin’ to do that? Sterlin’ is a hundred miles.”
+
+“My plan is to ride on, keeping sharp lookout. Somewhere up the trail
+we’ll take to the sage and go round Cottonwoods and then hit the trail
+again.”
+
+“It’s a bad plan. You’ll kill the burros in two days.”
+
+“Then we’ll walk.”
+
+“That’s more bad an’ worse. Better go back down the Pass with me.”
+
+“Lassiter, this girl has been hidden all her life in that lonely
+place,” went on Venters. “Oldring’s men are hunting me. We’d not be
+safe there any longer. Even if we would be I’d take this chance to get
+her out. I want to marry her. She shall have some of the pleasures of
+life—see cities and people. We’ve gold—we’ll be rich. Why, life opens
+sweet for both of us. And, by Heaven! I’ll get her out or lose my life
+in the attempt!”
+
+“I reckon if you go on with them burros you’ll lose your life all
+right. Tull will have riders all over this sage. You can’t get out on
+them burros. It’s a fool idea. That’s not doin’ best by the girl. Come
+with me en’ take chances on the rustlers.”
+
+Lassiter’s cool argument made Venters waver, not in determination to
+go, but in hope of success.
+
+“Bess, I want you to know. Lassiter says the trip’s almost useless now.
+I’m afraid he’s right. We’ve got about one chance in a hundred to go
+through. Shall we take it? Shall we go on?”
+
+“We’ll go on,” replied Bess.
+
+“That settles it, Lassiter.”
+
+Lassiter spread wide his hands, as if to signify he could do no more,
+and his face clouded.
+
+Venters felt a touch on his elbow. Jane stood beside him with a hand on
+his arm. She was smiling. Something radiated from her, and like an
+electric current accelerated the motion of his blood.
+
+“Bern, you’d be right to die rather than not take Elizabeth out of
+Utah—out of this wild country. You must do it. You’ll show her the
+great world, with all its wonders. Think how little she has seen! Think
+what delight is in store for her! You have gold, You will be free; you
+will make her happy. What a glorious prospect! I share it with you.
+I’ll think of you—dream of you—pray for you.”
+
+“Thank you, Jane,” replied Venters, trying to steady his voice. “It
+does look bright. Oh, if we were only across that wide, open waste of
+sage!”
+
+“Bern, the trip’s as good as made. It’ll be safe—easy. It’ll be a
+glorious ride,” she said, softly.
+
+Venters stared. Had Jane’s troubles made her insane? Lassiter, too,
+acted queerly, all at once beginning to turn his sombrero round in
+hands that actually shook.
+
+“You are a rider. She is a rider. This will be the ride of your lives,”
+added Jane, in that same soft undertone, almost as if she were musing
+to herself.
+
+“Jane!” he cried.
+
+“I give you Black Star and Night!”
+
+“_Black Star and Night!_” he echoed.
+
+“It’s done. Lassiter, put our saddle-bags on the burros.”
+
+Only when Lassiter moved swiftly to execute her bidding did Venters’s
+clogged brain grasp at literal meanings. He leaped to catch Lassiter’s
+busy hands.
+
+“No, no! What are you doing?” he demanded, in a kind of fury. “I won’t
+take her racers. What do you think I am? It’d be monstrous. Lassiter!
+stop it, I say!... You’ve got her to save. You’ve miles and miles to
+go. Tull is trailing you. There are rustlers in the Pass. Give me back
+that saddle-bag!”
+
+“Son—cool down,” returned Lassiter, in a voice he might have used to a
+child. But the grip with which he tore away Venters’s grasping hands
+was that of a giant. “Listen—you fool boy! Jane’s sized up the
+situation. The burros’ll do for us. We’ll sneak along an’ hide. I’ll
+take your dogs an’ your rifle. Why, it’s the trick. The blacks are
+yours, an’ sure as I can throw a gun you’re goin’ to ride safe out of
+the sage.”
+
+“Jane—stop him—please stop him,” gasped Venters. “I’ve lost my
+strength. I can’t do—anything. This is hell for me! Can’t you see that?
+I’ve ruined you—it was through me you lost all. You’ve only Black Star
+and Night left. You love these horses. Oh! I know how you must love
+them now! And—you’re trying to give them to me. To help me out of Utah!
+To save the girl I love!”
+
+“That will be my glory.”
+
+Then in the white, rapt face, in the unfathomable eyes, Venters saw
+Jane Withersteen in a supreme moment. This moment was one wherein she
+reached up to the height for which her noble soul had ever yearned. He,
+after disrupting the calm tenor of her peace, after bringing down on
+her head the implacable hostility of her churchmen, after teaching her
+a bitter lesson of life—he was to be her salvation. And he turned away
+again, this time shaken to the core of his soul. Jane Withersteen was
+the incarnation of selflessness. He experienced wonder and terror,
+exquisite pain and rapture. What were all the shocks life had dealt him
+compared to the thought of such loyal and generous friendship?
+
+And instantly, as if by some divine insight, he knew himself in the
+remaking—tried, found wanting; but stronger, better, surer—and he
+wheeled to Jane Withersteen, eager, joyous, passionate, wild, exalted.
+He bent to her; he left tears and kisses on her hands.
+
+“Jane, I—I can’t find words—now,” he said. “I’m beyond words. Only—I
+understand. And I’ll take the blacks.”
+
+“Don’t be losin’ no more time,” cut in Lassiter. “I ain’t certain, but
+I think I seen a speck up the sage-slope. Mebbe I was mistaken. But,
+anyway, we must all be movin’. I’ve shortened the stirrups on Black
+Star. Put Bess on him.”
+
+Jane Withersteen held out her arms.
+
+“Elizabeth Erne!” she cried, and Bess flew to her.
+
+How inconceivably strange and beautiful it was for Venters to see Bess
+clasped to Jane Withersteen’s breast!
+
+Then he leaped astride Night.
+
+“Venters, ride straight on up the slope,” Lassiter was saying, “’an if
+you don’t meet any riders keep on till you’re a few miles from the
+village, then cut off in the sage an’ go round to the trail. But you’ll
+most likely meet riders with Tull. Jest keep right on till you’re jest
+out of gunshot an’ then make your cut-off into the sage. They’ll ride
+after you, but it won’t be no use. You can ride, an’ Bess can ride.
+When you’re out of reach turn on round to the west, an’ hit the trail
+somewhere. Save the hosses all you can, but don’t be afraid. Black Star
+and Night are good for a hundred miles before sundown, if you have to
+push them. You can get to Sterlin’ by night if you want. But better
+make it along about to-morrow mornin’. When you get through the notch
+on the Glaze trail, swing to the right. You’ll be able to see both
+Glaze an’ Stone Bridge. Keep away from them villages. You won’t run no
+risk of meetin’ any of Oldrin’s rustlers from Sterlin’ on. You’ll find
+water in them deep hollows north of the Notch. There’s an old trail
+there, not much used, en’ it leads to Sterlin’. That’s your trail. An’
+one thing more. If Tull pushes you—or keeps on persistent-like, for a
+few miles—jest let the blacks out an’ lose him an’ his riders.”
+
+“Lassiter, may we meet again!” said Venters, in a deep voice.
+
+“Son, it ain’t likely—it ain’t likely. Well, Bess Oldrin’—Masked
+Rider—Elizabeth Erne—now you climb on Black Star. I’ve heard you could
+ride. Well, every rider loves a good horse. An’, lass, there never was
+but one that could beat Black Star.”
+
+“Ah, Lassiter, there never was any horse that could beat Black Star,”
+said Jane, with the old pride.
+
+“I often wondered—mebbe Venters rode out that race when he brought back
+the blacks. Son, was Wrangle the best hoss?”
+
+“No, Lassiter,” replied Venters. For this lie he had his reward in
+Jane’s quick smile.
+
+“Well, well, my hoss-sense ain’t always right. An’ here I’m talkin’ a
+lot, wastin’ time. It ain’t so easy to find an’ lose a pretty niece all
+in one hour! Elizabeth—good-by!”
+
+“Oh, Uncle Jim!... Good-by!”
+
+“Elizabeth Erne, be happy! Good-by,” said Jane.
+
+“Good-by—oh—good-by!” In lithe, supple action Bess swung up to Black
+Star’s saddle.
+
+“Jane Withersteen!... Good-by!” called Venters hoarsely.
+
+“Bern—Bess—riders of the purple sage—good-by!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
+
+
+Black Star and Night, answering to spur, swept swiftly westward along
+the white, slow-rising, sage-bordered trail. Venters heard a mournful
+howl from Ring, but Whitie was silent. The blacks settled into their
+fleet, long-striding gallop. The wind sweetly fanned Venters’s hot
+face. From the summit of the first low-swelling ridge he looked back.
+Lassiter waved his hand; Jane waved her scarf. Venters replied by
+standing in his stirrups and holding high his sombrero. Then the dip of
+the ridge hid them. From the height of the next he turned once more.
+Lassiter, Jane, and the burros had disappeared. They had gone down into
+the Pass. Venters felt a sensation of irreparable loss.
+
+“Bern—look!” called Bess, pointing up the long slope.
+
+A small, dark, moving dot split the line where purple sage met blue
+sky. That dot was a band of riders.
+
+“Pull the black, Bess.”
+
+They slowed from gallop to canter, then to trot. The fresh and eager
+horses did not like the check.
+
+“Bern, Black Star has great eyesight.”
+
+“I wonder if they’re Tull’s riders. They might be rustlers. But it’s
+all the same to us.”
+
+The black dot grew to a dark patch moving under low dust clouds. It
+grew all the time, though very slowly. There were long periods when it
+was in plain sight, and intervals when it dropped behind the sage. The
+blacks trotted for half an hour, for another half-hour, and still the
+moving patch appeared to stay on the horizon line. Gradually, however,
+as time passed, it began to enlarge, to creep down the slope, to
+encroach upon the intervening distance.
+
+“Bess, what do you make them out?” asked Venters. “I don’t think
+they’re rustlers.”
+
+“They’re sage-riders,” replied Bess. “I see a white horse and several
+grays. Rustlers seldom ride any horses but bays and blacks.”
+
+“That white horse is Tull’s. Pull the black, Bess. I’ll get down and
+cinch up. We’re in for some riding. Are you afraid?”
+
+“Not now,” answered the girl, smiling.
+
+“You needn’t be. Bess, you don’t weigh enough to make Black Star know
+you’re on him. I won’t be able to stay with you. You’ll leave Tull and
+his riders as if they were standing still.”
+
+“How about you?”
+
+“Never fear. If I can’t stay with you I can still laugh at Tull.”
+
+“Look, Bern! They’ve stopped on that ridge. They see us.”
+
+“Yes. But we’re too far yet for them to make out who we are. They’ll
+recognize the blacks first. We’ve passed most of the ridges and the
+thickest sage. Now, when I give the word, let Black Star go and ride!”
+
+Venters calculated that a mile or more still intervened between them
+and the riders. They were approaching at a swift canter. Soon Venters
+recognized Tull’s white horse, and concluded that the riders had
+likewise recognized Black Star and Night. But it would be impossible
+for Tull yet to see that the blacks were not ridden by Lassiter and
+Jane. Venters noted that Tull and the line of horsemen, perhaps ten or
+twelve in number, stopped several times and evidently looked hard down
+the slope. It must have been a puzzling circumstance for Tull. Venters
+laughed grimly at the thought of what Tull’s rage would be when he
+finally discovered the trick. Venters meant to sheer out into the sage
+before Tull could possibly be sure who rode the blacks.
+
+The gap closed to a distance of half a mile. Tull halted. His riders
+came up and formed a dark group around him. Venters thought he saw him
+wave his arms and was certain of it when the riders dashed into the
+sage, to right and left of the trail. Tull had anticipated just the
+move held in mind by Venters.
+
+“Now Bess!” shouted Venters. “Strike north. Go round those riders and
+turn west.”
+
+Black Star sailed over the low sage, and in a few leaps got into his
+stride and was running. Venters spurred Night after him. It was hard
+going in the sage. The horses could run as well there, but keen
+eyesight and judgment must constantly be used by the riders in choosing
+ground. And continuous swerving from aisle to aisle between the brush,
+and leaping little washes and mounds of the pack-rats, and breaking
+through sage, made rough riding. When Venters had turned into a long
+aisle he had time to look up at Tull’s riders. They were now strung out
+into an extended line riding northeast. And, as Venters and Bess were
+holding due north, this meant, if the horses of Tull and his riders had
+the speed and the staying power, they would head the blacks and turn
+them back down the slope. Tull’s men were not saving their mounts; they
+were driving them desperately. Venters feared only an accident to Black
+Star or Night, and skilful riding would mitigate possibility of that.
+One glance ahead served to show him that Bess could pick a course
+through the sage as well as he. She looked neither back nor at the
+running riders, and bent forward over Black Star’s neck and studied the
+ground ahead.
+
+It struck Venters, presently, after he had glanced up from time to
+time, that Bess was drawing away from him as he had expected. He had,
+however, only thought of the light weight Black Star was carrying and
+of his superior speed; he saw now that the black was being ridden as
+never before, except when Jerry Card lost the race to Wrangle. How
+easily, gracefully, naturally, Bess sat her saddle! She could ride!
+Suddenly Venters remembered she had said she could ride. But he had not
+dreamed she was capable of such superb horsemanship. Then all at once,
+flashing over him, thrilling him, came the recollection that Bess was
+Oldring’s Masked Rider.
+
+He forgot Tull—the running riders—the race. He let Night have a free
+rein and felt him lengthen out to suit himself, knowing he would keep
+to Black Star’s course, knowing that he had been chosen by the best
+rider now on the upland sage. For Jerry Card was dead. And fame had
+rivaled him with only one rider, and that was the slender girl who now
+swung so easily with Black Star’s stride. Venters had abhorred her
+notoriety, but now he took passionate pride in her skill, her daring,
+her power over a horse. And he delved into his memory, recalling famous
+rides which he had heard related in the villages and round the
+camp-fires. Oldring’s Masked Rider! Many times this strange rider, at
+once well known and unknown, had escaped pursuers by matchless riding.
+He had to run the gantlet of vigilantes down the main street of Stone
+Bridge, leaving dead horses and dead rustlers behind. He had jumped his
+horse over the Gerber Wash, a deep, wide ravine separating the fields
+of Glaze from the wild sage. He had been surrounded north of Sterling;
+and he had broken through the line. How often had been told the story
+of day stampedes, of night raids, of pursuit, and then how the Masked
+Rider, swift as the wind, was gone in the sage! A fleet, dark horse—a
+slender, dark form—a black mask—a driving run down the slope—a dot on
+the purple sage—a shadowy, muffled steed disappearing in the night!
+
+And this Masked Rider of the uplands had been Elizabeth Erne!
+
+The sweet sage wind rushed in Venters’s face and sang a song in his
+ears. He heard the dull, rapid beat of Night’s hoofs; he saw Black Star
+drawing away, farther and farther. He realized both horses were
+swinging to the west. Then gunshots in the rear reminded him of Tull.
+Venters looked back. Far to the side, dropping behind, trooped the
+riders. They were shooting. Venters saw no puffs or dust, heard no
+whistling bullets. He was out of range. When he looked back again
+Tull’s riders had given up pursuit. The best they could do, no doubt,
+had been to get near enough to recognize who really rode the blacks.
+Venters saw Tull drooping in his saddle.
+
+Then Venters pulled Night out of his running stride. Those few miles
+had scarcely warmed the black, but Venters wished to save him. Bess
+turned, and, though she was far away, Venters caught the white glint of
+her waving hand. He held Night to a trot and rode on, seeing Bess and
+Black Star, and the sloping upward stretch of sage, and from time to
+time the receding black riders behind. Soon they disappeared behind a
+ridge, and he turned no more. They would go back to Lassiter’s trail
+and follow it, and follow in vain. So Venters rode on, with the wind
+growing sweeter to taste and smell, and the purple sage richer and the
+sky bluer in his sight; and the song in his ears ringing. By and by
+Bess halted to wait for him, and he knew she had come to the trail.
+When he reached her it was to smile at sight of her standing with arms
+round Black Star’s neck.
+
+“Oh, Bern! I love him!” she cried. “He’s beautiful; he knows; and how
+he can run! I’ve had fast horses. But Black Star!... Wrangle never beat
+him!”
+
+“I’m wondering if I didn’t dream that. Bess, the blacks are grand. What
+it must have cost Jane—ah!—well, when we get out of this wild country
+with Star and Night, back to my old home in Illinois, we’ll buy a
+beautiful farm with meadows and springs and cool shade. There we’ll
+turn the horses free—free to roam and browse and drink—never to feel a
+spur again—never to be ridden!”
+
+“I would like that,” said Bess.
+
+They rested. Then, mounting, they rode side by side up the white trail.
+The sun rose higher behind them. Far to the left a low line of green
+marked the site of Cottonwoods. Venters looked once and looked no more.
+Bess gazed only straight ahead. They put the blacks to the long,
+swinging rider’s canter, and at times pulled them to a trot, and
+occasionally to a walk. The hours passed, the miles slipped behind, and
+the wall of rock loomed in the fore. The Notch opened wide. It was a
+rugged, stony pass, but with level and open trail, and Venters and Bess
+ran the blacks through it. An old trail led off to the right, taking
+the line of the wall, and this Venters knew to be the trail mentioned
+by Lassiter.
+
+The little hamlet, Glaze, a white and green patch in the vast waste of
+purple, lay miles down a slope much like the Cottonwoods slope, only
+this descended to the west. And miles farther west a faint green spot
+marked the location of Stone Bridge. All the rest of that world was
+seemingly smooth, undulating sage, with no ragged lines of cañons to
+accentuate its wildness.
+
+“Bess, we’re safe—we’re free!” said Venters. “We’re alone on the sage.
+We’re half way to Sterling.”
+
+“Ah! I wonder how it is with Lassiter and Miss Withersteen.”
+
+“Never fear, Bess. He’ll outwit Tull. He’ll get away and hide her
+safely. He might climb into Surprise Valley, but I don’t think he’ll go
+so far.”
+
+“Bern, will we ever find any place like our beautiful valley?”
+
+“No. But, dear, listen. Well go back some day, after years—ten years.
+Then we’ll be forgotten. And our valley will be just as we left it.”
+
+“What if Balancing Rock falls and closes the outlet to the Pass?”
+
+“I’ve thought of that. I’ll pack in ropes and ropes. And if the
+outlet’s closed we’ll climb up the cliffs and over them to the valley
+and go down on rope ladders. It could be done. I know just where to
+make the climb, and I’ll never forget.”
+
+“Oh yes, let us go back!”
+
+“It’s something sweet to look forward to. Bess, it’s like all the
+future looks to me.”
+
+“Call me—Elizabeth,” she said, shyly.
+
+“Elizabeth Erne! It’s a beautiful name. But I’ll never forget Bess. Do
+you know—have you thought that very soon—by this time to-morrow—you
+will be Elizabeth Venters?”
+
+So they rode on down the old trail. And the sun sloped to the west, and
+a golden sheen lay on the sage. The hours sped now; the afternoon
+waned. Often they rested the horses. The glisten of a pool of water in
+a hollow caught Venters’s eye, and here he unsaddled the blacks and let
+them roll and drink and browse. When he and Bess rode up out of the
+hollow the sun was low, a crimson ball, and the valley seemed veiled in
+purple fire and smoke. It was that short time when the sun appeared to
+rest before setting, and silence, like a cloak of invisible life, lay
+heavy on all that shimmering world of sage.
+
+
+[Illustration: When he and Bess rode up out of the hollow the sun was
+low.]
+
+
+They watched the sun begin to bury its red curve under the dark
+horizon.
+
+“We’ll ride on till late,” he said. “Then you can sleep a little, while
+I watch and graze the horses. And we’ll ride into Sterling early
+to-morrow. We’ll be married!... We’ll be in time to catch the stage.
+We’ll tie Black Star and Night behind—and then—for a country not wild
+and terrible like this!”
+
+“Oh, Bern!... But look! The sun is setting on the sage—the last time
+for us till we dare come again to the Utah border. Ten years! Oh, Bern,
+look, so you will never forget!”
+
+Slumbering, fading purple fire burned over the undulating sage ridges.
+Long streaks and bars and shafts and spears fringed the far western
+slope. Drifting, golden veils mingled with low, purple shadows. Colors
+and shades changed in slow, wondrous transformation.
+
+Suddenly Venters was startled by a low, rumbling roar—so low that it
+was like the roar in a sea-shell.
+
+“Bess, did you hear anything?” he whispered.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Listen!... Maybe I only imagined—_Ah!_”
+
+Out of the east or north from remote distance, breathed an infinitely
+low, continuously long sound—deep, weird, detonating, thundering,
+deadening—dying.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+THE FALL OF BALANCING ROCK
+
+
+Through tear-blurred sight Jane Withersteen watched Venters and
+Elizabeth Erne and the black racers disappear over the ridge of sage.
+
+“They’re gone!” said Lassiter. “An’ they’re safe now. An’ there’ll
+never be a day of their comin’ happy lives but what they’ll remember
+Jane Withersteen an’—an’ Uncle Jim!... I reckon, Jane, we’d better be
+on our way.”
+
+The burros obediently wheeled and started down the break with little
+cautious steps, but Lassiter had to leash the whining dogs and lead
+them. Jane felt herself bound in a feeling that was neither
+listlessness nor indifference, yet which rendered her incapable of
+interest. She was still strong in body, but emotionally tired. That
+hour at the entrance to Deception Pass had been the climax of her
+suffering—the flood of her wrath—the last of her sacrifice—the
+supremity of her love—and the attainment of peace. She thought that if
+she had little Fay she would not ask any more of life.
+
+Like an automaton she followed Lassiter down the steep trail of dust
+and bits of weathered stone; and when the little slides moved with her
+or piled around her knees she experienced no alarm. Vague relief came
+to her in the sense of being enclosed between dark stone walls, deep
+hidden from the glare of sun, from the glistening sage. Lassiter
+lengthened the stirrup straps on one of the burros and bade her mount
+and ride close to him. She was to keep the burro from cracking his
+little hard hoofs on stones. Then she was riding on between dark,
+gleaming walls. There were quiet and rest and coolness in this cañon.
+She noted indifferently that they passed close under shady, bulging
+shelves of cliff, through patches of grass and sage and thicket and
+groves of slender trees, and over white, pebbly washes, and around
+masses of broken rock. The burros trotted tirelessly; the dogs, once
+more free, pattered tirelessly; and Lassiter led on with never a stop,
+and at every open place he looked back. The shade under the walls gave
+place to sunlight. And presently they came to a dense thicket of
+slender trees, through which they passed to rich, green grass and
+water. Here Lassiter rested the burros for a little while, but he was
+restless, uneasy, silent, always listening, peering under the trees.
+She dully reflected that enemies were behind them—before them; still
+the thought awakened no dread or concern or interest.
+
+At his bidding she mounted and rode on close to the heels of his burro.
+The cañon narrowed; the walls lifted their rugged rims higher; and the
+sun shone down hot from the center of the blue stream of sky above.
+Lassiter traveled slower, with more exceeding care as to the ground he
+chose, and he kept speaking low to the dogs. They were now
+hunting-dogs—keen, alert, suspicious, sniffing the warm breeze. The
+monotony of the yellow walls broke in change of color and smooth
+surface, and the rugged outline of rims grew craggy. Splits appeared in
+deep breaks, and gorges running at right angles, and then the Pass
+opened wide at a junction of intersecting cañons.
+
+Lassiter dismounted, led his burro, called the dogs close, and
+proceeded at snail pace through dark masses of rock and dense thickets
+under the left wall. Long he watched and listened before venturing to
+cross the mouths of side cañons. At length he halted, fled his burro,
+lifted a warning hand to Jane, and then slipped away among the
+boulders, and, followed by the stealthy dogs, disappeared from sight.
+The time he remained absent was neither short nor long to Jane
+Withersteen.
+
+When he reached her side again he was pale, and his lips were set in a
+hard line, and his gray eyes glittered coldly. Bidding her dismount, he
+led the burros into a covert of stones and cedars, and tied them.
+
+“Jane, I’ve run into the fellers I’ve been lookin’ for, an’ I’m goin’
+after them,” he said.
+
+“Why?” she asked.
+
+“I reckon I won’t take time to tell you.”
+
+“Couldn’t we slip by without being seen?”
+
+“Likely enough. But that ain’t my game. An’ I’d like to know, in case I
+don’t come back, what you’ll do.”
+
+“What can I do?”
+
+“I reckon you can go back to Tull. Or stay in the Pass an’ be taken off
+by rustlers. Which’ll you do?”
+
+“I don’t know. I can’t think very well. But I believe I’d rather be
+taken off by rustlers.”
+
+Lassiter sat down, put his head in his hands, and remained for a few
+moments in what appeared to be deep and painful thought. When he lifted
+his face it was haggard, lined, cold as sculptured marble.
+
+“I’ll go. I only mentioned that chance of my not comin’ back. I’m
+pretty sure to come.”
+
+“Need you risk so much? Must you fight more? Haven’t you shed enough
+blood?”
+
+“I’d like to tell you why I’m goin’,” he continued, in coldness he had
+seldom used to her. She remarked it, but it was the same to her as if
+he had spoken with his old gentle warmth. “But I reckon I won’t. Only,
+I’ll say that mercy an’ goodness, such as is in you, though they’re the
+grand things in human nature, can’t be lived up to on this Utah border.
+Life’s hell out here. You think—or you used to think—that your religion
+made this life heaven. Mebbe them scales on your eyes has dropped now.
+Jane, I wouldn’t have you no different, an’ that’s why I’m going to try
+to hide you somewhere in this Pass. I’d like to hide many more women,
+for I’ve come to see there are more like you among your people. An’ I’d
+like you to see jest how hard an’ cruel this border life is. It’s
+bloody. You’d think churches an’ churchmen would make it better. They
+make it worse. You give names to things—bishops, elders, ministers,
+Mormonism, duty, faith, glory. You dream—or you’re driven mad. I’m a
+man, an’ I know. I name fanatics, followers, blind women, oppressors,
+thieves, ranchers, rustlers, riders. An’ we have—what you’ve lived
+through these last months. It can’t be helped. But it can’t last
+always. An’ remember this—some day the border’ll be better, cleaner,
+for the ways of men like Lassiter!”
+
+She saw him shake his tall form erect, look at her strangely and
+steadfastly, and then, noiselessly, stealthily slip away amid the rocks
+and trees. Ring and Whitie, not being bidden to follow, remained with
+Jane. She felt extreme weariness, yet somehow it did not seem to be of
+her body. And she sat down in the shade and tried to think. She saw a
+creeping lizard, cactus flowers, the drooping burros, the resting dogs,
+an eagle high over a yellow crag. Once the meanest flower, a color, the
+flight of the bee, or any living thing had given her deepest joy.
+Lassiter had gone off, yielding to his incurable blood lust, probably
+to his own death; and she was sorry, but there was no feeling in her
+sorrow.
+
+Suddenly from the mouth of the cañon just beyond her rang out a clear,
+sharp report of a rifle. Echoes clapped. Then followed a piercingly
+high yell of anguish, quickly breaking. Again echoes clapped, in grim
+imitation. Dull revolver shots—hoarse yells—pound of hoofs—shrill
+neighs of horses—commingling of echoes—and again silence! Lassiter must
+be busily engaged, thought Jane, and no chill trembled over her, no
+blanching tightened her skin. Yes, the border was a bloody place. But
+life had always been bloody. Men were blood-spillers. Phases of the
+history of the world flashed through her mind—Greek and Roman wars,
+dark, mediæval times, the crimes in the name of religion. On sea, on
+land, everywhere—shooting, stabbing, cursing, clashing, fighting men!
+Greed, power, oppression, fanaticism, love, hate, revenge, justice,
+freedom—for these, men killed one another.
+
+She lay there under the cedars, gazing up through the delicate lacelike
+foliage at the blue sky, and she thought and wondered and did not care.
+
+More rattling shots disturbed the noonday quiet. She heard a sliding of
+weathered rock, a hoarse shout of warning, a yell of alarm, again the
+clear, sharp crack of the rifle, and another cry that was a cry of
+death. Then rifle reports pierced a dull volley of revolver shots.
+Bullets whizzed over Jane’s hiding-place; one struck a stone and whined
+away in the air. After that, for a time, succeeded desultory shots; and
+then they ceased under long, thundering fire from heavier guns.
+
+Sooner or later, then, Jane heard the cracking of horses’ hoofs on the
+stones, and the sound came nearer and nearer. Silence intervened until
+Lassiter’s soft, jingling step assured her of his approach. When he
+appeared he was covered with blood.
+
+“All right, Jane,” he said. “I come back. An’ don’t worry.”
+
+With water from a canteen he washed the blood from his face and hands.
+
+“Jane, hurry now. Tear my scarf in two, en’ tie up these places. That
+hole through my hand is some inconvenient, worse’n this at over my ear.
+There—you’re doin’ fine! Not a bit nervous—no tremblin’. I reckon I
+ain’t done your courage justice. I’m glad you’re brave jest now—you’ll
+need to be. Well, I was hid pretty good, enough to keep them from
+shootin’ me deep, but they was slingin’ lead close all the time. I used
+up all the rifle shells, an’ en I went after them. Mebbe you heard. It
+was then I got hit. Had to use up every shell in my own gun, an’ they
+did, too, as I seen. Rustlers an’ Mormons, Jane! An’ now I’m packin’
+five bullet holes in my carcass, an’ guns without shells. Hurry, now.”
+
+He unstrapped the saddle-bags from the burros, slipped the saddles and
+let them lie, turned the burros loose, and, calling the dogs, led the
+way through stones and cedars to an open where two horses stood.
+
+“Jane, are you strong?” he asked.
+
+“I think so. I’m not tired,” Jane replied.
+
+“I don’t mean that way. Can you bear up?”
+
+“I think I can bear anything.”
+
+“I reckon you look a little cold an’ thick. So I’m preparin’ you.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“I didn’t tell you why I jest had to go after them fellers. I couldn’t
+tell you. I believe you’d have died. But I can tell you now—if you’ll
+bear up under a shock?”
+
+“Go on, my friend.”
+
+“_I’ve got little Fay!_ Alive—bad hurt—but she’ll live!”
+
+Jane Withersteen’s dead-locked feeling, rent by Lassiter’s deep,
+quivering voice, leaped into an agony of sensitive life.
+
+“Here,” he added, and showed her where little Fay lay on the grass.
+
+Unable to speak, unable to stand, Jane dropped on her knees. By that
+long, beautiful golden hair Jane recognized the beloved Fay. But Fay’s
+loveliness was gone. Her face was drawn and looked old with grief. But
+she was not dead—her heart beat—and Jane Withersteen gathered strength
+and lived again.
+
+“You see I jest had to go after Fay,” Lassiter was saying, as he knelt
+to bathe her little pale face. “But I reckon I don’t want no more
+choices like the one I had to make. There was a crippled feller in that
+bunch, Jane. Mebbe Venters crippled him. Anyway, that’s why they were
+holding up here. I seen little Fay first thing, en’ was hard put to it
+to figure out a way to get her. An’ I wanted hosses, too. I had to take
+chances. So I crawled close to their camp. One feller jumped a hoss
+with little Fay, an’ when I shot him, of course she dropped. She’s
+stunned an’ bruised—she fell right on her head. Jane, she’s comin’ to!
+She ain’t bad hurt!”
+
+Fay’s long lashes fluttered; her eyes opened. At first they seemed
+glazed over. They looked dazed by pain. Then they quickened, darkened,
+to shine with intelligence—bewilderment—memory—and sudden wonderful
+joy.
+
+“Muvver—Jane!” she whispered.
+
+“Oh, little Fay, little Fay!” cried Jane, lifting, clasping the child
+to her.
+
+“_Now_, we’ve got to rustle!” said Lassiter, in grim coolness. “Jane,
+look down the Pass!”
+
+Across the mounds of rock and sage Jane caught sight of a band of
+riders filing out of the narrow neck of the Pass; and in the lead was a
+white horse, which, even at a distance of a mile or more, she knew.
+
+“Tull!” she almost screamed.
+
+“I reckon. But, Jane, we’ve still got the game in our hands. They’re
+ridin’ tired hosses. Venters likely give them a chase. He wouldn’t
+forget that. An’ we’ve fresh hosses.”
+
+Hurriedly he strapped on the saddle-bags, gave quick glance to girths
+and cinches and stirrups, then leaped astride.
+
+“Lift little Fay up,” he said.
+
+With shaking arms Jane complied.
+
+“Get back your nerve, woman! This’s life or death now. Mind that. Climb
+up! Keep your wits. Stick close to me. Watch where your hoss’s goin’
+en’ ride!”
+
+Somehow Jane mounted; somehow found strength to hold the reins, to
+spur, to cling on, to ride. A horrible quaking, craven fear possessed
+her soul. Lassiter led the swift flight across the wide space, over
+washes, through sage, into a narrow cañon where the rapid clatter of
+hoofs rapped sharply from the walls. The wind roared in her ears; the
+gleaming cliffs swept by; trail and sage and grass moved under her.
+Lassiter’s bandaged, blood-stained face turned to her; he shouted
+encouragement; he looked back down the Pass; he spurred his horse. Jane
+clung on, spurring likewise. And the horses settled from hard, furious
+gallop into a long-striding, driving run. She had never ridden at
+anything like that pace; desperately she tried to get the swing of the
+horse, to be of some help to him in that race, to see the best of the
+ground and guide him into it. But she failed of everything except to
+keep her seat the saddle, and to spur and spur. At times she closed her
+eyes unable to bear sight of Fay’s golden curls streaming in the wind.
+She could not pray; she could not rail; she no longer cared for
+herself. All of life, of good, of use in the world, of hope in heaven
+entered in Lassiter’s ride with little Fay to safety. She would have
+tried to turn the iron-jawed brute she rode, she would have given
+herself to that relentless, dark-browed Tull. But she knew Lassiter
+would turn with her, so she rode on and on.
+
+Whether that run was of moments or hours Jane Withersteen could not
+tell. Lassiter’s horse covered her with froth that blew back in white
+streams. Both horses ran their limit, were allowed slow down in time to
+save them, and went on dripping, heaving, staggering.
+
+“Oh, Lassiter, we must run—we must run!”
+
+He looked back, saying nothing. The bandage had blown from his head,
+and blood trickled down his face. He was bowing under the strain of
+injuries, of the ride, of his burden. Yet how cool and gay he
+looked—how intrepid!
+
+The horses walked, trotted, galloped, ran, to fall again to walk. Hours
+sped or dragged. Time was an instant—an eternity. Jane Withersteen felt
+hell pursuing her, and dared not look back for fear she would fall from
+her horse.
+
+“Oh, Lassiter! Is he coming?”
+
+The grim rider looked over his shoulder, but said no word. Fay’s golden
+hair floated on the breeze. The sun shone; the walls gleamed; the sage
+glistened. And then it seemed the sun vanished, the walls shaded, the
+sage paled. The horses walked—trotted—galloped—ran—to fall again to
+walk. Shadows gathered under shelving cliffs. The cañon turned,
+brightened, opened into a long, wide, wall-enclosed valley. Again the
+sun, lowering in the west, reddened the sage. Far ahead round, scrawled
+stone appeared to block the Pass.
+
+“Bear up, Jane, bear up!” called Lassiter. “It’s our game, if you don’t
+weaken.”
+
+“Lassiter! Go on—_alone!_ Save little Fay!”
+
+“Only with you!”
+
+“Oh!—I’m a coward—a miserable coward! I can’t fight or think or hope or
+pray! I’m lost! Oh, Lassiter, look back! Is he coming? I’ll not—hold
+out—”
+
+“Keep your breath, woman, an’ ride not for yourself or for me, but for
+Fay!”
+
+A last breaking run across the sage brought Lassiter’s horse to a walk.
+
+“He’s done,” said the rider.
+
+“Oh, no—no!” moaned Jane.
+
+“Look back, Jane, look back. Three—four miles we’ve come across this
+valley, en’ no Tull yet in sight. Only a few more miles!”
+
+Jane looked back over the long stretch of sage, and found the narrow
+gap in the wall, out of which came a file of dark horses with a white
+horse in the lead. Sight of the riders acted upon Jane as a stimulant.
+The weight of cold, horrible terror lessened. And, gazing forward at
+the dogs, at Lassiter’s limping horse, at the blood on his face, at the
+rocks growing nearer, last at Fay’s golden hair, the ice left her
+veins, and slowly, strangely, she gained hold of strength that she
+believed would see her to the safety Lassiter promised. And, as she
+gazed, Lassiter’s horse stumbled and fell.
+
+He swung his leg and slipped from the saddle.
+
+“Jane, take the child,” he said, and lifted Fay up. Jane clasped her
+arms suddenly strong. “They’re gainin’,” went on Lassiter, as he
+watched the pursuing riders. “But we’ll beat ’em yet.”
+
+Turning with Jane’s bridle in his hand, he was about to start when he
+saw the saddle-bag on the fallen horse.
+
+“I’ve jest about got time,” he muttered, and with swift fingers that
+did not blunder or fumble he loosened the bag and threw it over his
+shoulder. Then he started to run, leading Jane’s horse, and he ran, and
+trotted, and walked, and ran again. Close ahead now Jane saw a rise of
+bare rock. Lassiter reached it, searched along the base, and, finding a
+low place, dragged the weary horse up and over round, smooth stone.
+Looking backward, Jane saw Tull’s white horse not a mile distant, with
+riders strung out in a long line behind him. Looking forward, she saw
+more valley to the right, and to the left a towering cliff. Lassiter
+pulled the horse and kept on.
+
+Little Fay lay in her arms with wide-open eyes—eyes which were still
+shadowed by pain, but no longer fixed, glazed in terror. The golden
+curls blew across Jane’s lips; the little hands feebly clasped her arm;
+a ghost of a troubled, trustful smile hovered round the sweet lips. And
+Jane Withersteen awoke to the spirit of a lioness.
+
+Lassiter was leading the horse up a smooth slope toward cedar trees of
+twisted and bleached appearance. Among these he halted.
+
+“Jane, give me the girl en’ get down,” he said. As if it wrenched him
+he unbuckled the empty black guns with a strange air of finality. He
+then received Fay in his arms and stood a moment looking backward.
+Tull’s white horse mounted the ridge of round stone, and several bays
+or blacks followed. “I wonder what he’ll think when he sees them empty
+guns. Jane, bring your saddle-bag and climb after me.”
+
+A glistening, wonderful bare slope, with little holes, swelled up and
+up to lose itself in a frowning yellow cliff. Jane closely watched her
+steps and climbed behind Lassiter. He moved slowly. Perhaps he was only
+husbanding his strength. But she saw drops of blood on the stone, and
+then she knew. They climbed and climbed without looking back. Her
+breast labored; she began to feel as if little points of fiery steel
+were penetrating her side into her lungs. She heard the panting of
+Lassiter and the quicker panting of the dogs.
+
+“Wait—here,” he said.
+
+Before her rose a bulge of stone, nicked with little cut steps, and
+above that a corner of yellow wall, and overhanging that a vast,
+ponderous cliff.
+
+The dogs pattered up, disappeared round the corner. Lassiter mounted
+the steps with Fay, and he swayed like a drunken man, and he too
+disappeared. But instantly he returned alone, and half ran, half
+slipped down to her.
+
+Then from below pealed up hoarse shouts of angry men. Tull and several
+of his riders had reached the spot where Lassiter had parted with his
+guns.
+
+“You’ll need that breath—mebbe!” said Lassiter, facing downward, with
+glittering eyes.
+
+“Now, Jane, the last pull,” he went on. “Walk up them little steps.
+I’ll follow an’ steady you. Don’t think. Jest go. Little Fay’s above.
+Her eyes are open. She jest said to me, ‘_Where’s muvver Jane?_’”
+
+Without a fear or a tremor or a slip or a touch of Lassiter’s hand Jane
+Withersteen walked up that ladder of cut steps.
+
+He pushed her round the corner of the wall. Fay lay, with wide staring
+eyes, in the shade of a gloomy wall. The dogs waited. Lassiter picked
+up the child and turned into a dark cleft. It zigzagged. It widened. It
+opened. Jane was amazed at a wonderfully smooth and steep incline
+leading up between ruined, splintered, toppling walls. A red haze from
+the setting sun filled this passage. Lassiter climbed with slow,
+measured steps, and blood dripped from him to make splotches on the
+white stone. Jane tried not to step in his blood, but was compelled,
+for she found no other footing. The saddle-bag began to drag her down;
+she gasped for breath, she thought her heart was bursting. Slower,
+slower yet the rider climbed, whistling as he breathed. The incline
+widened. Huge pinnacles and monuments of stone stood alone, leaning
+fearfully. Red sunset haze shone through cracks where the wall had
+split. Jane did not look high, but she felt the overshadowing of broken
+rims above. She felt that it was a fearful, menacing place. And she
+climbed on in heartrending effort. And she fell beside Lassiter and Fay
+at the top of the incline in a narrow, smooth divide.
+
+He staggered to his feet—staggered to a huge, leaning rock that rested
+on a small pedestal. He put his hand on it—the hand that had been shot
+through—and Jane saw blood drip from the ragged hole. Then he fell.
+
+“Jane—I—can’t—do—it!” he whispered.
+
+“What?”
+
+“Roll the—stone!... All my—life I’ve loved—to roll stones—en’ now
+I—can’t!”
+
+“What of it? You talk strangely. Why roll that stone?”
+
+“I planned to—fetch you here—to roll this stone. See! It’ll smash the
+crags—loosen the walls—close the outlet!”
+
+As Jane Withersteen gazed down that long incline, walled in by
+crumbling cliffs, awaiting only the slightest jar to make them fall
+asunder, she saw Tull appear at the bottom and begin to climb. A rider
+followed him—another—and another.
+
+“See! Tull! The riders!”
+
+“Yes—they’ll get us—now.”
+
+“Why? Haven’t you strength left to roll the stone?”
+
+“Jane—it ain’t that—I’ve lost my nerve!”
+
+“_You!_... Lassiter!”
+
+“I wanted to roll it—meant to—but I—can’t. Venters’s valley is down
+behind here. We could—live there. But if I roll the stone—we’re shut in
+for always. I don’t dare. I’m thinkin’ of you!”
+
+“Lassiter! Roll the stone!” she cried.
+
+He arose, tottering, but with set face, and again he placed the bloody
+hand on the Balancing Rock. Jane Withersteen gazed from him down the
+passageway. Tull was climbing. Almost, she thought, she saw his dark,
+relentless face. Behind him more riders climbed. What did they mean for
+Fay—for Lassiter—for herself?
+
+“_Roll the stone!... Lassiter, I love you!_”
+
+Under all his deathly pallor, and the blood, and the iron of seared
+cheek and lined brow, worked a great change. He placed both hands on
+the rock and then leaned his shoulder there and braced his powerful
+body.
+
+“ROLL THE STONE!”
+
+It stirred, it groaned, it grated, it moved, and with a slow grinding,
+as of wrathful relief, began to lean. It had waited ages to fall, and
+now was slow in starting. Then, as if suddenly instinct with life, it
+leaped hurtlingly down to alight on the steep incline, to bound more
+swiftly into the air, to gather momentum, to plunge into the lofty
+leaning crag below. The crag thundered into atoms. A wave of air—a
+splitting shock! Dust shrouded the sunset red of shaking rims; dust
+shrouded Tull as he fell on his knees with uplifted arms. Shafts and
+monuments and sections of wall fell majestically.
+
+From the depths there rose a long-drawn rumbling roar. The outlet to
+Deception Pass closed forever.
+
+
+
+
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