Riders of the Purple Sage

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Venters awakened to the sound of melody that he imagined was only
the haunting echo of dream music. He opened his eyes to another
surprise of this valley of beautiful surprises. Out of his cave
he saw the exquisitely fine foliage of the silver spruces
crossing a round space of blue morning sky; and in this lacy
leafage fluttered a number of gray birds with black and white
stripes and long tails. They were mocking-birds, and they were
singing as if they wanted to burst their throats. Venters
listened. One long, silver-tipped branch dropped almost to his
cave, and upon it, within a few yards of him, sat one of the
graceful birds. Venters saw the swelling and quivering of its
throat in song. He arose, and when he slid down out of his cave
the birds fluttered and flew farther away.

Venters stepped before the opening of the other cave and looked
in. The girl was awake, with wide eyes and listening look, and
she had a hand on Ring's neck.

"Mocking-birds!" she said.

"Yes," replied Venters, "and I believe they like our company."

"Where are we?"

"Never mind now. After a little I'll tell you."

"The birds woke me. When I heard them--and saw the shiny
trees--and the blue sky--and then a blaze of gold dropping
down--I wondered--"

She did not complete her fancy, but Venters imagined he
understood her meaning. She appeared to be wandering in mind.
Venters felt her face and hands and found them burning with
fever. He went for water, and was glad to find it almost as cold
as if flowing from ice. That water was the only medicine he had,
and he put faith in it. She did not want to drink, but he made
her swallow, and then he bathed her face and head and cooled her
wrists.

The day began with the heightening of the fever. Venters spent
the time reducing her temperature, cooling her hot cheeks and
temples. He kept close watch over her, and at the least
indication of restlessness, that he knew led to tossing and
rolling of the body, he held her tightly, so no violent move
could reopen her wounds. Hour after hour she babbled and laughed
and cried and moaned in delirium; but whatever her secret was she
did not reveal it.

Attended by something somber for Venters, the day passed. At
night in the cool winds the fever abated and she slept.

The second day was a repetition of the first. On the third he
seemed to see her wither and waste away before his eyes. That day
he scarcely went from her side for a moment, except to run for
fresh, cool water; and he did not eat. The fever broke on the
fourth day and left her spent and shrunken, a slip of a girl with
life only in her eyes. They hung upon Venters with a mute
observance, and he found hope in that.

To rekindle the spark that had nearly flickered out, to nourish
the little life and vitality that remained in her, was Venters's
problem. But he had little resource other than the meat of the
rabbits and quail; and from these he made broths and soups as
best he could, and fed her with a spoon. It came to him that the
human body, like the human soul, was a strange thing and capable
of recovering from terrible shocks. For almost immediately she
showed faint signs of gathering strength. There was one more
waiting day, in which he doubted, and spent long hours by her
side as she slept, and watched the gentle swell of her breast
rise and fall in breathing, and the wind stir the tangled
chestnut curls. On the next day he knew that she would live.

Upon realizing it he abruptly left the cave and sought his
accustomed seat against the trunk of a big spruce, where once
more he let his glance stray along the sloping terraces. She
would live, and the somber gloom lifted out of the valley, and he
felt relief that was pain. Then he roused to the call of action,
to the many things he needed to do in the way of making camp
fixtures and utensils, to the necessity of hunting food, and the
desire to explore the valley.

But he decided to wait a few more days before going far from
camp, because he fancied that the girl rested easier when she
could see him near at hand. And on the first day her languor
appeared to leave her in a renewed grip of life. She awoke
stronger from each short slumber; she ate greedily, and she moved
about In her bed of boughs; and always, it seemed to Venters, her
eyes followed him. He knew now that her recovery would be rapid.
She talked about the dogs, about the caves, the valley, about how
hungry she was, till Venters silenced her, asking her to put off
further talk till another time. She obeyed, but she sat up in her
bed, and her eyes roved to and fro, and always back to him.

Upon the second morning she sat up when he awakened her, and
would not permit him to bathe her face and feed her, which
actions she performed for herself. She spoke little, however, and
Venters was quick to catch in her the first intimations of
thoughtfulness and curiosity and appreciation of her situation.
He left camp and took Whitie out to hunt for rabbits. Upon his
return he was amazed and somewhat anxiously concerned to see his
invalid sitting with her back to a corner of the cave and her
bare feet swinging out. Hurriedly he approached, intending to
advise her to lie down again, to tell her that perhaps she might
overtax her strength. The sun shone upon her, glinting on the
little head with its tangle of bright hair and the small, oval
face with its pallor, and dark-blue eyes underlined by dark-blue
circles. She looked at him and he looked at her. In that exchange
of glances he imagined each saw the other in some different
guise. It seemed impossible to Venters that this frail girl could
be Oldring's Masked Rider. It flashed over him that he had made a
mistake which presently she would explain.

"Help me down," she said.

"But--are you well enough?" he protested. "Wait--a little
longer."

"I'm weak--dizzy. But I want to get down."

He lifted her--what a light burden now!--and stood her upright
beside him, and supported her as she essayed to walk with halting
steps. She was like a stripling of a boy; the bright, small head
scarcely reached his shoulder. But now, as she clung to his arm,
the rider's costume she wore did not contradict, as it had done
at first, his feeling of her femininity. She might be the famous
Masked Rider of the uplands, she might resemble a boy; but her
outline, her little hands and feet, her hair, her big eyes and
tremulous lips, and especially a something that Venters felt as a
subtle essence rather than what he saw, proclaimed her sex.

She soon tired. He arranged a comfortable seat for her under the
spruce that overspread the camp-fire.

"Now tell me--everything," she said.

He recounted all that had happened from the time of his discovery
of the rustlers in the canyon up to the present moment.

"You shot me--and now you've saved my life?"

"Yes. After almost killing you I've pulled you through."

"Are you glad?"

"I should say so!"

Her eyes were unusually expressive, and they regarded him
steadily; she was unconscious of that mirroring of her emotions
and they shone with gratefulness and interest and wonder and
sadness.

"Tell me--about yourself?" she asked.

He made this a briefer story, telling of his coming to Utah, his
various occupations till he became a rider, and then how the
Mormons had practically driven him out of Cottonwoods, an
outcast.

Then, no longer able to withstand his own burning curiosity, he
questioned her in turn.

"Are you Oldring's Masked Rider?"

"Yes," she replied, and dropped her eyes.

"I knew it--I recognized your figure--and mask, for I saw you
once. Yet I can't believe it!...But you never were really that
rustler, as we riders knew him? A thief--a marauder--a kidnapper
of women--a murderer of sleeping riders!"

"No! I never stole--or harmed any one--in all my life. I only
rode and rode--"

"But why--why?" he burst out. "Why the name? I understand Oldring
made you ride. But the black mask--the mystery--the things laid
to your hands--the threats in your infamous name--the
night-riding credited to you--the evil deeds deliberately blamed
on you and acknowledged by rustlers--even Oldring himself! Why?
Tell me why?"

"I never knew that," she answered low. Her drooping head
straightened, and the large eyes, larger now and darker, met
Venters's with a clear, steadfast gaze in which he read truth. It
verified his own conviction.

"Never knew? That's strange! Are you a Mormon?"

"No."

"Is Oldring a Mormon?"

"No."

"Do you--care for him?"

"Yes. I hate his men--his life--sometimes I almost hate
him!"

Venters paused in his rapid-fire questioning, as if to brace him
self to ask for a truth that would be abhorrent for him to
confirm, but which he seemed driven to hear.

"What are--what were you to Oldring?"

Like some delicate thing suddenly exposed to blasting heat, the
girl wilted; her head dropped, and into her white, wasted cheeks
crept the red of shame.

Venters would have given anything to recall that question. It
seemed so different--his thought when spoken. Yet her shame
established in his mind something akin to the respect he had
strangely been hungering to feel for her.

"D--n that question!--forget it!" he cried, in a passion of pain
for her and anger at himself. "But once and for all--tell me--I
know it, yet I want to hear you say so--you couldn't help
yourself?"

"Oh no."

"Well, that makes it all right with me," he went on, honestly.
"I--I want you to feel that...you see--we've been thrown
together--and--and I want to help you--not hurt you. I thought
life had been cruel to me, but when I think of yours I feel mean
and little for my complaining. Anyway, I was a lonely outcast.
And now!...I don't see very clearly what it all means. Only we
are here--together. We've got to stay here, for long, surely till
you are well. But you'll never go back to Oldring. And I'm sure
helping you will help me, for I was sick in mind. There's
something now for me to do. And if I can win back your
strength--then get you away, out of this wild country--help you
somehow to a happier life--just think how good that'll be for
me!"

CHAPTER X. LOVE

During all these waiting days Venters, with the exception of the
afternoon when he had built the gate in the gorge, had scarcely
gone out of sight of camp and never out of hearing. His desire to
explore Surprise Valley was keen, and on the morning after his
long talk with the girl he took his rifle and, calling Ring, made
a move to start. The girl lay back in a rude chair of boughs he
had put together for her. She had been watching him, and when he
picked up the gun and called the dog Venters thought she gave a
nervous start.

"I'm only going to look over the valley," he said.

"Will you be gone long?"

"No," he replied, and started off. The incident set him thinking
of his former impression that, after her recovery from fever, she
did not seem at ease unless he was close at hand. It was fear of
being alone, due, he concluded, most likely to her weakened
condition. He must not leave her much alone.

As he strode down the sloping terrace, rabbits scampered before
him, and the beautiful valley quail, as purple in color as the
sage on the uplands, ran fleetly along the ground into the
forest. It was pleasant under the trees, in the gold-flecked
shade, with the whistle of quail and twittering of birds
everywhere. Soon he had passed the limit of his former excursions
and entered new territory. Here the woods began to show open
glades and brooks running down from the slope, and presently he
emerged from shade into the sunshine of a meadow. The shaking of
the high grass told him of the running of animals, what species
he could Dot tell, but from Ring's manifest desire to have a
chase they were evidently some kind wilder than rabbits. Venters
approached the willow and cottonwood belt that he had observed
from the height of slope. He penetrated it to find a considerable
stream of water and great half-submerged mounds of brush and
sticks, and all about him were old and new gnawed circles at the
base of the cottonwoods.

"Beaver!" he exclaimed. "By all that's lucky! The meadow's full
of beaver! How did they ever get here?"

Beaver had not found a way into the valley by the trail of the
cliff-dwellers, of that he was certain; and he began to have more
than curiosity as to the outlet or inlet of the stream. When he
passed some dead water, which he noted was held by a beaver dam,
there was a current in the stream, and it flowed west. Following
its course, he soon entered the oak forest again, and passed
through to find himself before massed and jumbled ruins of cliff
wall. There were tangled thickets of wild plum-trees and other
thorny growths that made passage extremely laborsome. He found
innumerable tracks of wildcats and foxes. Rustlings in the thick
undergrowth told him of stealthy movements of these animals. At
length his further advance appeared futile, for the reason that
the stream disappeared in a split at the base of immense rocks
over which he could not climb. To his relief he concluded that
though beaver might work their way up the narrow chasm where the
water rushed, it would be impossible for men to enter the valley
there.

This western curve was the only part of the valley where the
walls had been split asunder, and it was a wildly rough and
inaccessible corner. Going back a little way, he leaped the
stream and headed toward the southern wall. Once out of the oaks
he found again the low terrace of aspens, and above that the
wide, open terrace fringed by silver spruces. This side of the
valley contained the wind or water worn caves. As he pressed on,
keeping to the upper terrace, cave after cave opened out of the
cliff; now a large one, now a small one. Then yawned, quite
suddenly and wonderfully above him, the great cavern of the
cliff-dwellers.

It was still a goodly distance, and he tried to imagine, if it
appeared so huge from where he stood, what it would be when he
got there. He climbed the terrace and then faced a long, gradual
ascent of weathered rock and dust, which made climbing too
difficult for attention to anything else. At length he entered a
zone of shade, and looked up. He stood just within the hollow of
a cavern so immense that he had no conception of its real
dimensions. The curved roof, stained by ages of leakage, with
buff and black and rust-colored streaks, swept up and loomed
higher and seemed to soar to the rim of the cliff. Here again was
a magnificent arch, such as formed the grand gateway to the
valley, only in this instance it formed the dome of a cave
instead of the span of a bridge.

Venters passed onward and upward. The stones he dislodged rolled
down with strange, hollow crack and roar. He had climbed a
hundred rods inward, and yet he had not reached the base of the
shelf where the cliff-dwellings rested, a long half-circle of
connected stone house, with little dark holes that he had fancied
were eyes. At length he gained the base of the shelf, and here
found steps cut in the rock. These facilitated climbing, and as
he went up he thought how easily this vanished race of men might
once have held that stronghold against an army. There was only
one possible place to ascend, and this was narrow and steep.

Venters had visited cliff-dwellings before, and they had been in
ruins, and of no great character or size but this place was of
proportions that stunned him, and it had not been desecrated by
the hand of man, nor had it been crumbled by the hand of time. It
was a stupendous tomb. It had been a city. It was just as it had
been left by its builders. The little houses were there, the
smoke-blackened stains of fires, the pieces of pottery scattered
about cold hearths, the stone hatchets; and stone pestles and
mealing-stones lay beside round holes polished by years of
grinding maize--lay there as if they had been carelessly dropped
yesterday. But the cliff-dwellers were gone!

Dust! They were dust on the floor or at the foot of the shelf,
and their habitations and utensils endured. Venters felt the
sublimity of that marvelous vaulted arch, and it seemed to gleam
with a glory of something that was gone. How many years had
passed since the cliff-dwellers gazed out across the beautiful
valley as he was gazing now? How long had it been since women
ground grain in those polished holes? What time had rolled by
since men of an unknown race lived, loved, fought, and died
there? Had an enemy destroyed them? Had disease destroyed them,
or only that greatest destroyer--time? Venters saw a long line of
blood-red hands painted low down upon the yellow roof of stone.
Here was strange portent, if not an answer to his queries. The
place oppressed him. It was light, but full of a transparent
gloom. It smelled of dust and musty stone, of age and disuse. It
was sad. It was solemn. It had the look of a place where silence
had become master and was now irrevocable and terrible and could
not be broken. Yet, at the moment, from high up in the carved
crevices of the arch, floated down the low, strange wail of
wind--a knell indeed for all that had gone.

Venters, sighing, gathered up an armful of pottery, such pieces
as he thought strong enough and suitable for his own use, and
bent his steps toward camp. He mounted the terrace at an opposite
point to which he had left. He saw the girl looking in the
direction he had gone. His footsteps made no sound in the deep
grass, and he approached close without her being aware of his
presence. Whitie lay on the ground near where she sat, and he
manifested the usual actions of welcome, but the girl did not
notice them. She seemed to be oblivious to everything near at
hand. She made a pathetic figure drooping there, with her sunny
hair contrasting so markedly with her white, wasted cheeks and
her hands listlessly clasped and her little bare feet propped in
the framework of the rude seat. Venters could have sworn and
laughed in one breath at the idea of the connection between this
girl and Oldring's Masked Rider. She was the victim of more than
accident of fate--a victim to some deep plot the mystery of which
burned him. As he stepped forward with a half-formed thought that
she was absorbed in watching for his return, she turned her head
and saw him. A swift start, a change rather than rush of blood
under her white cheeks, a flashing of big eyes that fixed their
glance upon him, transformed her face in that single instant of
turning, and he knew she had been watching for him, that his
return was the one thing in her mind. She did not smile; she did
not flush; she did not look glad. All these would have meant
little compared to her indefinite expression. Venters grasped the
peculiar, vivid, vital something that leaped from her face. It
was as if she had been in a dead, hopeless clamp of inaction and
feeling, and had been suddenly shot through and through with
quivering animation. Almost it was as if she had returned to
life.

And Venters thought with lightning swiftness, "I've saved
her--I've unlinked her from that old life--she was watching as if
I were all she had left on earth--she belongs to me!" The thought
was startlingly new. Like a blow it was in an unprepared moment.
The cheery salutation he had ready for her died unborn and he
tumbled the pieces of pottery awkwardly on the grass while some
unfamiliar, deep-seated emotion, mixed with pity and glad
assurance of his power to succor her, held him dumb.

"What a load you had!" she said. "Why, they're pots and crocks!
Where did you get them?"

Venters laid down his rifle, and, filling one of the pots from
his canteen, he placed it on the smoldering campfire.

"Hope it'll hold water," he said, presently. "Why, there's an
enormous cliff-dwelling just across here. I got the pottery
there. Don't you think we needed something? That tin cup of mine
has served to make tea, broth, soup--everything."

"I noticed we hadn't a great deal to cook in."

She laughed. It was the first time. He liked that laugh, and
though he was tempted to look at her, he did not want to show his
surprise or his pleasure.

"Will you take me over there, and all around in the
valley--pretty soon, when I'm well?" she added.

"Indeed I shall. It's a wonderful place. Rabbits so thick you
can't step without kicking one out. And quail, beaver, foxes,
wildcats. We're in a regular den. But--haven't you ever seen a
cliff-dwelling?'

"No. I've heard about them, though. The--the men say the Pass is
full of old houses and ruins."

"Why, I should think you'd have run across one in all your riding
around," said Venters. He spoke slowly, choosing his words
carefully, and he essayed a perfectly casual manner, and
pretended to be busy assorting pieces of pottery. She must have
no cause again to suffer shame for curiosity of his. Yet never in
all his days had he been so eager to hear the details of anyone's
life

"When I rode--I rode like the wind," she replied, "and never had
time to stop for anything."

"I remember that day I--I met you in the Pass--how dusty you
were, how tired your horse looked. Were you always riding?"

"Oh, no. Sometimes not for months, when I was shut up in the
cabin."

Venters tried to subdue a hot tingling.

"You were shut up, then?" he asked, carelessly.

"When Oldring went away on his long trips--he was gone for months
sometimes--he shut me up in the cabin."

"What for?"

"Perhaps to keep me from running away. I always threatened that.
Mostly, though, because the men got drunk at the villages. But
they were always good to me. I wasn't afraid."

"A prisoner! That must have been hard on you?"

"I liked that. As long as I can remember I've been locked up
there at times, and those times were the only happy ones I ever
had. It's a big cabin, high up on a cliff, and I could look out.
Then I had dogs and pets I had tamed, and books. There was a
spring inside, and food stored, and the men brought me fresh
meat. Once I was there one whole winter."

It now required deliberation on Venters's part to persist in his
unconcern and to keep at work. He wanted to look at her, to
volley questions at her.

"As long as you can remember--you've lived in Deception Pass?" he
went on.

"I've a dim memory of some other place, and women and children;
but I can't make anything of it. Sometimes I think till I'm
weary."

"Then you can read--you have books?"

"Oh yes, I can read, and write, too, pretty well. Oldring is
educated. He taught me, and years ago an old rustler lived with
us, and he had been something different once. He was always
teaching me."

"So Oldring takes long trips," mused Venters. "Do you know where
he goes?"

"No. Every year he drives cattle north of Sterling--then does not
return for months. I heard him accused once of living two
lives--and he killed the man. That was at Stone Bridge."

Venters dropped his apparent task and looked up with an eagerness
he no longer strove to hide.

"Bess," he said, using her name for the first time, "I suspected
Oldring was something besides a rustler. Tell me, what's his
purpose here in the Pass? I believe much that he has done was to
hide his real work here."

"You're right. He's more than a rustler. In fact, as the men say,
his rustling cattle is now only a bluff. There's gold in the
canyons!"

"Ah!"

"Yes, there's gold, not in great quantities, but gold enough for
him and his men. They wash for gold week in and week out. Then
they drive a few cattle and go into the villages to drink and
shoot and kill--to bluff the riders."

"Drive a few cattle! But, Bess, the Withersteen herd, the red
herd-- twenty-five hundred head! That's not a few. And I tracked
them into a valley near here."

"Oldring never stole the red herd. He made a deal with Mormons.
The riders were to be called in, and Oldring was to drive the
herd and keep it till a certain time--I won't know when--then
drive it back to the range. What his share was I didn't hear."

"Did you hear why that deal was made?" queried Venters.

"No. But it was a trick of Mormons. They're full of tricks. I've
heard Oldring's men tell about Mormons. Maybe the Withersteen
woman wasn't minding her halter! I saw the man who made the deal.
He was a little, queer-shaped man, all humped up. He sat his
horse well. I heard one of our men say afterward there was no
better rider on the sage than this fellow. What was the name? I
forget."

"Jerry Card?" suggested Venters.

"That's it. I remember--it's a name easy to remember--and Jerry
Card appeared to be on fair terms with Oldring's men."

"I shouldn't wonder," replied Venters, thoughtfully. Verification
of his suspicions in regard to Tull's underhand work--for the
deal with Oldring made by Jerry Card assuredly had its inception
in the Mormon Elder's brain, and had been accomplished through
his orders--revived in Venters a memory of hatred that had been
smothered by press of other emotions. Only a few days had elapsed
since the hour of his encounter with Tull, yet they had been
forgotten and now seemed far off, and the interval one that now
appeared large and profound with incalculable change in his
feelings. Hatred of Tull still existed in his heart, but it had
lost its white heat. His affection for Jane Withersteen had not
changed in the least; nevertheless, he seemed to view it from
another angle and see it as another thing--what, he could not
exactly define. The recalling of these two feelings was to
Venters like getting glimpses into a self that was gone; and the
wonder of them--perhaps the change which was too illusive for
him--was the fact that a strange irritation accompanied the
memory and a desire to dismiss it from mind. And straightway he
did dismiss it, to return to thoughts of his significant present.

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