Riders of the Purple Sage

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"I reckon so. There'll be hell down there, presently." He paused
a moment and flicked a sage-brush with his quirt. "Venters,
seein' as you're considerable worked up, tell me Milly Erne's
story."

Venters's agitation stilled to the trace of suppressed eagerness
in Lassiter's query.

"Milly Erne's story? Well, Lassiter, I'll tell you what I know.
Milly Erne had been in Cottonwoods years when I first arrived
there, and most of what I tell you happened before my arrival. I
got to know her pretty well. She was a slip of a woman, and crazy
on religion. I conceived an idea that I never mentioned--I
thought she was at heart more Gentile than Mormon. But she passed
as a Mormon, and certainly she had the Mormon woman's locked
lips. You know, in every Mormon village there are women who seem
mysterious to us, but about Milly there was more than the
ordinary mystery. When she came to Cottonwoods she had a
beautiful little girl whom she loved passionately. Milly was not
known openly in Cottonwoods as a Mormon wife. That she really was
a Mormon wife I have no doubt. Perhaps the Mormon's other wife or
wives would not acknowledge Milly. Such things happen in these
villages. Mormon wives wear yokes, but they get jealous. Well,
whatever had brought Milly to this country-- love or madness of
religion--she repented of it. She gave up teaching the village
school. She quit the church. And she began to fight Mormon
upbringing for her baby girl. Then the Mormons put on the
screws-- slowly, as is their way. At last the child disappeared.
'Lost' was the report. The child was stolen, I know that. So do
you. That wrecked Milly Erne. But she lived on in hope. She
became a slave. She worked her heart and soul and life out to get
back her child. She never heard of it again. Then she sank....I
can see her now, a frail thing, so transparent you could almost
look through her--white like ashes--and her eyes!...Her eyes have
always haunted me. She had one real friend--Jane Withersteen. But
Jane couldn't mend a broken heart, and Milly died."

For moments Lassiter did not speak, or turn his head.

"The man!" he exclaimed, presently, in husky accents.

"I haven't the slightest idea who the Mormon was," replied
Venters; "nor has any Gentile in Cottonwoods."

"Does Jane Withersteen know?"

"Yes. But a red-hot running-iron couldn't burn that name out of
her!"

Without further speech Lassiter started off, walking his horse
and Venters followed with his dogs. Half a mile down the slope
they entered a luxuriant growth of willows, and soon came into an
open space carpeted with grass like deep green velvet. The
rushing of water and singing of birds filled their ears. Venters
led his comrade to a shady bower and showed him Amber Spring. It
was a magnificent outburst of clear, amber water pouring from a
dark, stone-lined hole. Lassiter knelt and drank, lingered there
to drink again. He made no comment, but Venters did not need
words. Next to his horse a rider of the sage loved a spring. And
this spring was the most beautiful and remarkable known to the
upland riders of southern Utah. It was the spring that made old
Withersteen a feudal lord and now enabled his daughter to return
the toll which her father had exacted from the toilers of the
sage.

The spring gushed forth in a swirling torrent, and leaped down
joyously to make its swift way along a willow-skirted channel.
Moss and ferns and lilies overhung its green banks. Except for
the rough-hewn stones that held and directed the water, this
willow thicket and glade had been left as nature had made it.

Below were artificial lakes, three in number, one above the other
in banks of raised earth, and round about them rose the lofty
green-foliaged shafts of poplar trees. Ducks dotted the glassy
surface of the lakes; a blue heron stood motionless on a
water-gate; kingfishers darted with shrieking flight along the
shady banks; a white hawk sailed above; and from the trees and
shrubs came the song of robins and cat-birds. It was all in
strange contrast to the endless slopes of lonely sage and the
wild rock environs beyond. Venters thought of the woman who loved
the birds and the green of the leaves and the murmur of the
water.

Next on the slope, just below the third and largest lake, were
corrals and a wide stone barn and open sheds and coops and pens.
Here were clouds of dust, and cracking sounds of hoofs, and
romping colts and heehawing burros. Neighing horses trampled to
the corral fences. And on the little windows of the barn
projected bobbing heads of bays and blacks and sorrels. When the
two men entered the immense barnyard, from all around the din
increased. This welcome, however, was not seconded by the several
men and boys who vanished on sight.

Venters and Lassiter were turning toward the house when Jane
appeared in the lane leading a horse. In riding-skirt and blouse
she seemed to have lost some of her statuesque proportions, and
looked more like a girl rider than the mistress of Withersteen.
She was brightly smiling, and her greeting was warmly cordial.

"Good news," she announced. "I've been to the village. All is
quiet. I expected--I don't know what. But there's no excitement.
And Tull has ridden out on his way to Glaze."

"Tull gone?" inquired Venters, with surprise. He was wondering
what could have taken Tull away. Was it to avoid another meeting
with Lassiter that he went? Could it have any connection with the
probable nearness of Oldring and his gang?

"Gone, yes, thank goodness," replied Jane. "Now I'll have peace
for a while. Lassiter, I want you to see my horses. You are a
rider, and you must be a judge of horseflesh. Some of mine have
Arabian blood. My father got his best strain in Nevada from
Indians who claimed their horses were bred down from the original
stock left by the Spaniards."

"Well, ma'am, the one you've been ridin' takes my eye," said
Lassiter, as he walked round the racy, clean-limbed, and
fine-pointed roan.

"Where are the boys?" she asked, looking about. "Jerd, Paul,
where are you? Here, bring out the horses."

Lee sound of dropping bars inside the barn was the signal for the
horses to jerk their heads in the windows, to snort and stamp.
Then they came pounding out of the door, a file of thoroughbreds,
to plunge about the barnyard, heads and tails up, manes flying.
They halted afar off, squared away to look, came slowly forward
with whinnies for their mistress, and doubtful snorts for the
strangers and their horses.

"Come--come--come," called Jane, holding out her hands. "Why,
Bells-- Wrangle, where are your manners? Come, Black Star--come,
Night. Ah, you beauties! My racers of the sage!"

Only two came up to her; those she called Night and Black Star.
Venters never looked at them without delight. The first was soft
dead black, the other glittering black, and they were perfectly
matched in size, both being high and long-bodied, wide through
the shoulders, with lithe, powerful legs. That they were a
woman's pets showed in the gloss of skin, the fineness of mane.
It showed, too, in the light of big eyes and the gentle reach of
eagerness.

"I never seen their like," was Lassiter's encomium, "an' in my
day I've seen a sight of horses. Now, ma'am, if you was wantin'
to make a long an' fast ride across the sage--say to
elope--"

Lassiter ended there with dry humor, yet behind that was meaning.
Jane blushed and made arch eyes at him.

"Take care, Lassiter, I might think that a proposal," she
replied, gaily. "It's dangerous to propose elopement to a Mormon
woman. Well, I was expecting you. Now will be a good hour to show
you Milly Erne's grave. The day-riders have gone, and the
night-riders haven't come in. Bern, what do you make of that?
Need I worry? You know I have to be made to worry."

"Well, it's not usual for the night shift to ride in so late,"
replied Venters, slowly, and his glance sought Lassiter's.
"Cattle are usually quiet after dark. Still, I've known even a
coyote to stampede your white herd."

"I refuse to borrow trouble. Come," said Jane.

They mounted, and, with Jane in the lead, rode down the lane,
and, turning off into a cattle trail, proceeded westward.
Venters's dogs trotted behind them. On this side of the ranch the
outlook was different from that on the other; the immediate
foreground was rough and the sage more rugged and less colorful;
there were no dark-blue lines of canyons to hold the eye, nor any
uprearing rock walls. It was a long roll and slope into gray
obscurity. Soon Jane left the trail and rode into the sage, and
presently she dismounted and threw her bridle. The men did
likewise. Then, on foot, they followed her, coming out at length
on the rim of a low escarpment. She passed by several little
ridges of earth to halt before a faintly defined mound. It lay in
the shade of a sweeping sage-brush close to the edge of the
promontory; and a rider could have jumped his horse over it
without recognizing a grave.

"Here!"

She looked sad as she spoke, but she offered no explanation for
the neglect of an unmarked, uncared-for grave. There was a little
bunch of pale, sweet lavender daisies, doubtless planted there by
Jane.

"I only come here to remember and to pray," she said. "But I
leave no trail!"

A grave in the sage! How lonely this resting-place of Milly Erne!
The cottonwoods or the alfalfa fields were not in sight, nor was
there any rock or ridge or cedar to lend contrast to the
monotony. Gray slopes, tinging the purple, barren and wild, with
the wind waving the sage, swept away to the dim
horizon.

Lassiter looked at the grave and then out into space. At that
moment he seemed a figure of bronze.

Jane touched Venters's arm and led him back to the horses.

"Bern!" cried Jane, when they were out of hearing. "Suppose
Lassiter were Milly's husband--the father of that little girl
lost so long ago!"

"It might be, Jane. Let us ride on. If he wants to see us again
he'll come."

So they mounted and rode out to the cattle trail and began to
climb. From the height of the ridge, where they had started down,
Venters looked back. He did not see Lassiter, but his glance,
drawn irresistibly farther out on the gradual slope, caught sight
of a moving cloud of dust.

"Hello, a rider!"

"Yes, I see," said Jane.

"That fellow's riding hard. Jane, there's something wrong."

"Oh yes, there must be....How he rides!"

The horse disappeared in the sage, and then puffs of dust marked
his course.

"He's short-cut on us--he's making straight for the corrals."

Venters and Jane galloped their steeds and reined in at the
turning of the lane. This lane led down to the right of the
grove. Suddenly into its lower entrance flashed a bay horse. Then
Venters caught the fast rhythmic beat of pounding hoofs. Soon his
keen eye recognized the swing of the rider in his saddle.

"It's Judkins, your Gentile rider!" he cried. "Jane, when Judkins
rides like that it means hell!"

CHAPTER IV. DECEPTION PASS

The rider thundered up and almost threw his foam-flecked horse in
the sudden stop. He was a giant form, and with fearless eyes.

"Judkins, you're all bloody!" cried Jane, in affright. "Oh,
you've been shot!"

"Nothin' much Miss Withersteen. I got a nick in the shoulder. I'm
some wet an' the hoss's been throwin' lather, so all this ain't
blood."

"What's up?" queried Venters, sharply.

"Rustlers sloped off with the red herd."

"Where are my riders?" demanded Jane.

"Miss Withersteen, I was alone all night with the herd. At
daylight this mornin' the rustlers rode down. They began to shoot
at me on sight. They chased me hard an' far, burnin' powder all
the time, but I got away."

"Jud, they meant to kill you," declared Venters.

"Now I wonder," returned Judkins. "They wanted me bad. An' it
ain't regular for rustlers to waste time chasin' one rider."

"Thank heaven you got away," said Jane. "But my riders--where are
they?"

"I don't know. The night-riders weren't there last night when I
rode down, en' this mornin' I met no day-riders."

"Judkins! Bern, they've been set upon--killed by Oldring's men!"

"I don't think so," replied Venters, decidedly. "Jane, your
riders haven't gone out in the sage."

"Bern, what do you mean?" Jane Withersteen turned deathly pale.

"You remember what I said about the unseen hand?"

"Oh!...Impossible!"

"I hope so. But I fear--" Venters finished, with a shake of his
head.

"Bern, you're bitter; but that's only natural. We'll wait to see
what's happened to my riders. Judkins, come to the house with me.
Your wound must be attended to."

"Jane, I'll find out where Oldring drives the herd," vowed
Venters.

"No, no! Bern, don't risk it now--when the rustlers are in such
shooting mood."

"I'm going. Jud, how many cattle in that red herd?"

"Twenty-five hundred head."

"Whew! What on earth can Oldring do with so many cattle? Why, a
hundred head is a big steal. I've got to find out."

"Don't go," implored Jane.

"Bern, you want a hoss thet can run. Miss Withersteen, if it's
not too bold of me to advise, make him take a fast hoss or don't
let him go."

"Yes, yes, Judkins. He must ride a horse that can't be caught.
Which one--Black Star--Night?"

"Jane, I won't take either," said Venters, emphatically. "I
wouldn't risk losing one of your favorites."

"Wrangle, then?"

"Thet's the hoss," replied Judkins. "Wrangle can outrun Black
Star an' Night. You'd never believe it, Miss Withersteen, but I
know. Wrangle's the biggest en' fastest hoss on the sage."

"Oh no, Wrangle can't beat Black Star. But, Bern, take Wrangle if
you will go. Ask Jerd for anything you need. Oh, be watchful
careful.... God speed you."

She clasped his hand, turned quickly away, and went down a lane
with the rider.

Venters rode to the barn, and, leaping off, shouted for Jerd. The
boy came running. Venters sent him for meat, bread, and dried
fruits, to be packed in saddlebags. His own horse he turned loose
into the nearest corral. Then he went for Wrangle. The giant
sorrel had earned his name for a trait the opposite of
amiability. He came readily out of the barn, but once in the yard
he broke from Venters, and plunged about with ears laid back.
Venters had to rope him, and then he kicked down a section of
fence, stood on his hind legs, crashed down and fought the rope.
Jerd returned to lend a hand.

"Wrangle don't git enough work," said Jerd, as the big saddle
went on. "He's unruly when he's corralled, an' wants to run. Wait
till he smells the sage!"

"Jerd, this horse is an iron-jawed devil. I never straddled him
but once. Run? Say, he's swift as wind!"

When Venters's boot touched the stirrup the sorrel bolted, giving
him the rider's flying mount. The swing of this fiery horse
recalled to Venters days that were not really long past, when he
rode into the sage as the leader of Jane Withersteen's riders.
Wrangle pulled hard on a tight rein. He galloped out of the lane,
down the shady border of the grove, and hauled up at the
watering-trough, where he pranced and champed his bit. Venters
got off and filled his canteen while the horse drank. The dogs,
Ring and Whitie, came trotting up for their drink. Then Venters
remounted and turned Wrangle toward the sage.

A wide, white trail wound away down the slope. One keen, sweeping
glance told Venters that there was neither man nor horse nor
steer within the limit of his vision, unless they were lying down
in the sage. Ring loped in the lead and Whitie loped in the rear.
Wrangle settled gradually into an easy swinging canter, and
Venters's thoughts, now that the rush and flurry of the start
were past, and the long miles stretched before him, reverted to a
calm reckoning of late singular coincidences.

There was the night ride of Tull's, which, viewed in the light of
subsequent events, had a look of his covert machinations; Oldring
and his Masked Rider and his rustlers riding muffled horses; the
report that Tull had ridden out that morning with his man Jerry
on the trail to Glaze, the strange disappearance of Jane
Withersteen's riders, the unusually determined attempt to kill
the one Gentile still in her employ, an intention frustrated, no
doubt, only by Judkin's magnificent riding of her racer, and
lastly the driving of the red herd. These events, to Venters's
color of mind, had a dark relationship. Remembering Jane's
accusation of bitterness, he tried hard to put aside his rancor
in judging Tull. But it was bitter knowledge that made him see
the truth. He had felt the shadow of an unseen hand; he had
watched till he saw its dim outline, and then he had traced it to
a man's hate, to the rivalry of a Mormon Elder, to the power of a
Bishop, to the long, far-reaching arm of a terrible creed. That
unseen hand had made its first move against Jane Withersteen. Her
riders had been called in, leaving her without help to drive
seven thousand head of cattle. But to Venters it seemed
extraordinary that the power which had called in these riders had
left so many cattle to be driven by rustlers and harried by
wolves. For hand in glove with that power was an insatiate greed;
they were one and the same.

"What can Oldring do with twenty-five hundred head of cattle?"
muttered Venters. "Is he a Mormon? Did he meet Tull last night?
It looks like a black plot to me. But Tull and his churchmen
wouldn't ruin Jane Withersteen unless the Church was to profit by
that ruin. Where does Oldring come in? I'm going to find out
about these things."

Wrangle did the twenty-five miles in three hours and walked
little of the way. When he had gotten warmed up he had been
allowed to choose his own gait. The afternoon had well advanced
when Venters struck the trail of the red herd and found where it
had grazed the night before. Then Venters rested the horse and
used his eyes. Near at hand were a cow and a calf and several
yearlings, and farther out in the sage some straggling steers. He
caught a glimpse of coyotes skulking near the cattle. The slow
sweeping gaze of the rider failed to find other living things
within the field of sight. The sage about him was breast-high to
his horse, oversweet with its warm, fragrant breath, gray where
it waved to the light, darker where the wind left it still, and
beyond the wonderful haze-purple lent by distance. Far across
that wide waste began the slow lift of uplands through which
Deception Pass cut its tortuous many-canyoned way.

Venters raised the bridle of his horse and followed the broad
cattle trail. The crushed sage resembled the path of a monster
snake. In a few miles of travel he passed several cows and calves
that had escaped the drive. Then he stood on the last high bench
of the slope with the floor of the valley beneath. The opening of
the canyon showed in a break of the sage, and the cattle trail
paralleled it as far as he could see. That trail led to an
undiscovered point where Oldring drove cattle into the pass, and
many a rider who had followed it had never returned. Venters
satisfied himself that the rustlers had not deviated from their
usual course, and then he turned at right angles off the cattle
trail and made for the head of the pass.

The sun lost its heat and wore down to the western horizon, where
it changed from white to gold and rested like a huge ball about
to roll on its golden shadows down the slope. Venters watched the
lengthening of the rays and bars, and marveled at his own
league-long shadow. The sun sank. There was instant shading of
brightness about him, and he saw a kind of cold purple bloom
creep ahead of him to cross the canyon, to mount the opposite
slope and chase and darken and bury the last golden flare of
sunlight.

Venters rode into a trail that he always took to get down into
the canyon. He dismounted and found no tracks but his own made
days previous. Nevertheless he sent the dog Ring ahead and
waited. In a little while Ring returned. Whereupon Venters led
his horse on to the break in the ground.

The opening into Deception Pass was one of the remarkable natural
phenomena in a country remarkable for vast slopes of sage,
uplands insulated by gigantic red walls, and deep canyons of
mysterious source and outlet. Here the valley floor was level,
and here opened a narrow chasm, a ragged vent in yellow walls of
stone. The trail down the five hundred feet of sheer depth always
tested Venters's nerve. It was bad going for even a burro. But
Wrangle, as Venters led him, snorted defiance or disgust rather
than fear, and, like a hobbled horse on the jump, lifted his
ponderous iron-shod fore hoofs and crashed down over the first
rough step. Venters warmed to greater admiration of the sorrel;
and, giving him a loose bridle, he stepped down foot by foot.
Oftentimes the stones and shale started by Wrangle buried Venters
to his knees; again he was hard put to it to dodge a rolling
boulder, there were times when he could not see Wrangle for dust,
and once he and the horse rode a sliding shelf of yellow,
weathered cliff. It was a trail on which there could be no stops,
and, therefore, if perilous, it was at least one that did not
take long in the descent.

Venters breathed lighter when that was over, and felt a sudden
assurance in the success of his enterprise. For at first it had
been a reckless determination to achieve something at any cost,
and now it resolved itself into an adventure worthy of all his
reason and cunning, and keenness of eye and ear.

Pinyon pines clustered in little clumps along the level floor of
the pass. Twilight had gathered under the walls. Venters rode
into the trail and up the canyon. Gradually the trees and caves
and objects low down turned black, and this blackness moved up
the walls till night enfolded the pass, while day still lingered
above. The sky darkened; and stars began to show, at first pale
and then bright. Sharp notches of the rim-wall, biting like teeth
into the blue, were landmarks by which Venters knew where his
camping site lay. He had to feel his way through a thicket of
slender oaks to a spring where he watered Wrangle and drank
himself. Here he unsaddled and turned Wrangle loose, having no
fear that the horse would leave the thick, cool grass adjacent to
the spring. Next he satisfied his own hunger, fed Ring and Whitie
and, with them curled beside him, composed himself to await
sleep.

There had been a time when night in the high altitude of these
Utah uplands had been satisfying to Venters. But that was before
the oppression of enemies had made the change in his mind. As a
rider guarding the herd he had never thought of the night's
wildness and loneliness; as an outcast, now when the full silence
set in, and the deep darkness, and trains of radiant stars shone
cold and calm, he lay with an ache in his heart. For a year he
had lived as a black fox, driven from his kind. He longed for the
sound of a voice, the touch of a hand. In the daytime there was
riding from place to place, and the gun practice to which
something drove him, and other tasks that at least necessitated
action, at night, before he won sleep, there was strife in his
soul. He yearned to leave the endless sage slopes, the wilderness
of canyons, and it was in the lonely night that this yearning
grew unbearable. It was then that he reached forth to feel Ring
or Whitie, immeasurably grateful for the love and companionship
of two dogs.

On this night the same old loneliness beset Venters, the old
habit of sad thought and burning unquiet had its way. But from it
evolved a conviction that his useless life had undergone a subtle
change. He had sensed it first when Wrangle swung him up to the
high saddle, he knew it now when he lay in the gateway of
Deception Pass. He had no thrill of adventure, rather a gloomy
perception of great hazard, perhaps death. He meant to find
Oldring's retreat. The rustlers had fast horses, but none that
could catch Wrangle. Venters knew no rustler could creep upon him
at night when Ring and Whitie guarded his hiding-place. For the
rest, he had eyes and ears, and a long rifle and an unerring aim,
which he meant to use. Strangely his foreshadowing of change did
not hold a thought of the killing of Tull. It related only to
what was to happen to him in Deception Pass; and he could no more
lift the veil of that mystery than tell where the trails led to
in that unexplored canyon. Moreover, he did not care. And at
length, tired out by stress of thought, he fell asleep.

When his eyes unclosed, day had come again, and he saw the rim of
the opposite wall tipped with the gold of sunrise. A few moments
sufficed for the morning's simple camp duties. Near at hand he
found Wrangle, and to his surprise the horse came to him. Wrangle
was one of the horses that left his viciousness in the home
corral. What he wanted was to be free of mules and burros and
steers, to roll in dust-patches, and then to run down the wide,
open, windy sage-plains, and at night browse and sleep in the
cool wet grass of a springhole. Jerd knew the sorrel when he said
of him, "Wait till he smells the sage!"

Venters saddled and led him out of the oak thicket, and, leaping
astride, rode up the canyon, with Ring and Whitie trotting
behind. An old grass-grown trail followed the course of a shallow
wash where flowed a thin stream of water. The canyon was a
hundred rods wide, its yellow walls were perpendicular; it had
abundant sage and a scant growth of oak and pinon. For five miles
it held to a comparatively straight bearing, and then began a
heightening of rugged walls and a deepening of the floor. Beyond
this point of sudden change in the character of the canyon
Venters had never explored, and here was the real door to the
intricacies of Deception Pass.

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