Riders of the Purple Sage

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"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 canyon 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 canyon--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.

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 dirt?" 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
protegee. 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.

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