Riders of the Purple Sage. Zane Grey
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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 from the little windows of the barn projected bobbing heads of bays and blacks and sorrels. When the two men entered the immense barnyard, from all around the din increased. This welcome, however, was not seconded by the several men and boys who vanished on sight.
Venters and Lassiter were turning toward the house when Jane appeared in the lane leading a horse. In riding-skirt and blouse she seemed to have lost some of her statuesque proportions, and looked more like a girl rider than the mistress of Withersteen. She was 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