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George W. Crile - "The Origin and Nature of Emotions"

G.K. Chesterton - "The Trees of Pride"

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse - "A Damsel in Distress"

Samuel Butler - "God the Known and God the Unknown"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Riders of the Purple Sage

Z >> Zane Grey >> Riders of the Purple Sage




"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 Iyin' 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? 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!"

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."

"War, 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?"

"War, 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."

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