Riders of the Purple Sage

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"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 see 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.

"Tor 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.

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."

"Unfaithful!" 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 toils
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.

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