Riders of the Purple Sage

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Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
Etext prepared by Bill Brewer, billbrewer@ttu.edu

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

ZANE GREY

CHAPTER I. LASSITER

A sharp clip-crop 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
canyons from which rose an up-Hinging 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

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 croup 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, madame?"

"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, en' 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.

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?"

"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. Thev 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.

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