Riders of The Purple Sage

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

By Zane Grey
This edition published by Obooko Publishing with immense respect and

gratitude to the author.
www.obooko.com
Although you do not have to pay for this book, certain parts thereof, including cover
design, images and formatting may be protected by international Copyright laws. You
may use this edition strictly for your personal enjoyment only: it must not be hosted or
redistributed on other websites without the written permission of the publishers or
offered for sale in any form. If you paid for this book, or to gain access to it, we suggest
you demand a refund and report the transaction to the publisher.
Note: this story is the original work written many decades ago and may contain terms
that are not politically correct today.
2
www.obooko.com
CHAPTER I. LASSITER
A sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds
of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage.
Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and
troubled eyes. A rider had just left her and it was his message that held her
thoughtful and almost sad, awaiting the churchmen who were coming to resent
and attack her right to befriend a Gentile.
She wondered if the unrest and strife that had lately come to the little
village of Cottonwoods was to involve her. And then she sighed, remembering
that her father had founded this remotest border settlement of southern Utah
and that he had left it to her. She owned all the ground and many of the cottages.
Withersteen House was hers, and the great ranch, with its thousands of cattle,
and the swiftest horses of the sage. To her belonged Amber Spring, the water
which gave verdure and beauty to the village and made living possible on that
wild purple upland waste. She could not escape being involved by whatever
befell Cottonwoods.
That year, 1871, had marked a change which had been gradually coming in
the lives of the peace-loving Mormons of the border. Glaze—Stone Bridge—
Sterling, villages to the north, had risen against the invasion of Gentile settlers
and the forays of rustlers. There had been opposition to the one and fighting with
the other. And now Cottonwoods had begun to wake and bestir itself and grown
hard.
Jane prayed that the tranquillity and sweetness of her life would not be
permanently disrupted. She meant to do so much more for her people than she
had done. She wanted the sleepy quiet pastoral days to last always. Trouble
between the Mormons and the Gentiles of the community would make her
unhappy. She was Mormon-born, and she was a friend to poor and unfortunate
Gentiles. She wished only to go on doing good and being happy. And she thought
of what that great ranch meant to her. She loved it all—the grove of cottonwoods,
the old stone house, the amber-tinted water, and the droves of shaggy, dusty
horses and mustangs, the sleek, clean-limbed, blooded racers, and the browsing
herds of cattle and the lean, sun-browned riders of the sage.
While she waited there she forgot the prospect of untoward change. The
bray of a lazy burro broke the afternoon quiet, and it was comfortingly
suggestive of the drowsy farmyard, and the open corrals, and the green alfalfa
fields. Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it rolled before her.
Low swells of prairie-like ground sloped up to the west. Dark, lonely cedar-trees,
3
few and far between, stood out strikingly, and at long distances ruins of red
rocks. Farther on, up the gradual slope, rose a broken wall, a huge monument,
looming dark purple and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that
faded in the north. Here to the westward was the light and color and beauty.
Northward the slope descended to a dim line of canyons from which rose an up-
flinging of the earth, not mountainous, but a vast heave of purple uplands, with
ribbed and fan-shaped walls, castle-crowned cliffs, and gray escarpments. Over it
all crept the lengthening, waning afternoon shadows.
The rapid beat of hoofs recalled Jane Withersteen to the question at hand.
A group of riders cantered up the lane, dismounted, and threw their bridles. They
were seven in number, and Tull, the leader, a tall, dark man, was an elder of
Jane's church.
“Did you get my message?” he asked, curtly.
“Yes,” replied Jane.
“I sent word I'd give that rider Venters half an hour to come down to the
village. He didn't come.”
“He knows nothing of it;” said Jane. “I didn't tell him. I've been waiting here
for you.”
“Where is Venters?”
“I left him in the courtyard.”
“Here, Jerry,” called Tull, turning to his men, “take the gang and fetch
Venters out here if you have to rope him.”
The dusty-booted and long-spurred riders clanked noisily into the grove of
cottonwoods and disappeared in the shade.
“Elder Tull, what do you mean by this?” demanded Jane. “If you must
arrest Venters you might have the courtesy to wait till he leaves my home. And if
you do arrest him it will be adding insult to injury. It's absurd to accuse Venters
of being mixed up in that shooting fray in the village last night. He was with me at
the time. Besides, he let me take charge of his guns. You're only using this as a
pretext. What do you mean to do to Venters?”
“I'll tell you presently,” replied Tull. “But first tell me why you defend this
worthless rider?”
“Worthless!” exclaimed Jane, indignantly. “He's nothing of the kind. He was
the best rider I ever had. There's not a reason why I shouldn't champion him and
every reason why I should. It's no little shame to me, Elder Tull, that through my
friendship he has roused the enmity of my people and become an outcast.
Besides I owe him eternal gratitude for saving the life of little Fay.”
4
www.obooko.com
“I've heard of your love for Fay Larkin and that you intend to adopt her.
But—Jane Withersteen, the child is a Gentile!”
“Yes. But, Elder, I don't love the Mormon children any less because I love a
Gentile child. I shall adopt Fay if her mother will give her to me.”
“I'm not so much against that. You can give the child Mormon teaching,”
said Tull. “But I'm sick of seeing this fellow Venters hang around you. I'm going to
put a stop to it. You've so much love to throw away on these beggars of Gentiles
that I've an idea you might love Venters.”
Tull spoke with the arrogance of a Mormon whose power could not be
brooked and with the passion of a man in whom jealousy had kindled a
consuming fire.
“Maybe I do love him,” said Jane. She felt both fear and anger stir her heart.
“I'd never thought of that. Poor fellow! he certainly needs some one to love him.”
“This'll be a bad day for Venters unless you deny that,” returned Tull,
grimly.
Tull's men appeared under the cottonwoods and led a young man out into
the lane. His ragged clothes were those of an outcast. But he stood tall and
straight, his wide shoulders flung back, with the muscles of his bound arms
rippling and a blue flame of defiance in the gaze he bent on Tull.
For the first time Jane Withersteen felt Venters's real spirit. She wondered
if she would love this splendid youth. Then her emotion cooled to the sobering
sense of the issue at stake.
“Venters, will you leave Cottonwoods at once and forever?” asked Tull,
tensely.
“Why?” rejoined the rider.
“Because I order it.”
Venters laughed in cool disdain.
The red leaped to Tull's dark cheek.
“If you don't go it means your ruin,” he said, sharply.
“Ruin!” exclaimed Venters, passionately. “Haven't you already ruined me?
What do you call ruin? A year ago I was a rider. I had horses and cattle of my
own. I had a good name in Cottonwoods. And now when I come into the village to
see this woman you set your men on me. You hound me. You trail me as if I were
a rustler. I've no more to lose—except my life.”
“Will you leave Utah?”
“Oh! I know,” went on Venters, tauntingly, “it galls you, the idea of
beautiful Jane Withersteen being friendly to a poor Gentile. You want her all
5
yourself. You're a wiving Mormon. You have use for her—and Withersteen House
and Amber Spring and seven thousand head of cattle!”
Tull's hard jaw protruded, and rioting blood corded the veins of his neck.
“Once more. Will you go?”
“NO!”
“Then I'll have you whipped within an inch of your life,” replied Tull,
harshly. “I'll turn you out in the sage. And if you ever come back you'll get worse.”
Venters's agitated face grew coldly set and the bronze changed
Jane impulsively stepped forward. “Oh! Elder Tull!” she cried. “You won't
do that!”
Tull lifted a shaking finger toward her.
“That'll do from you. Understand, you'll not be allowed to hold this boy to
a friendship that's offensive to your Bishop. Jane Withersteen, your father left
you wealth and power. It has turned your head. You haven't yet come to see the
place of Mormon women. We've reasoned with you, borne with you. We've
patiently waited. We've let you have your fling, which is more than I ever saw
granted to a Mormon woman. But you haven't come to your senses. Now, once
for all, you can't have any further friendship with Venters. He's going to be
whipped, and he's got to leave Utah!”
“Oh! Don't whip him! It would be dastardly!” implored Jane, with slow
certainty of her failing courage.
Tull always blunted her spirit, and she grew conscious that she had
feigned a boldness which she did not possess. He loomed up now in different
guise, not as a jealous suitor, but embodying the mysterious despotism she had
known from childhood—the power of her creed.
“Venters, will you take your whipping here or would you rather go out in
the sage?” asked Tull. He smiled a flinty smile that was more than inhuman, yet
seemed to give out of its dark aloofness a gleam of righteousness.
“I'll take it here—if I must,” said Venters. “But by God!—Tull you'd better
kill me outright. That'll be a dear whipping for you and your praying Mormons.
You'll make me another Lassiter!”
The strange glow, the austere light which radiated from Tull's face, might
have been a holy joy at the spiritual conception of exalted duty. But there was
something more in him, barely hidden, a something personal and sinister, a deep
of himself, an engulfing abyss. As his religious mood was fanatical and inexorable,
so would his physical hate be merciless.
6
www.obooko.com
“Elder, I—I repent my words,” Jane faltered. The religion in her, the long
habit of obedience, of humility, as well as agony of fear, spoke in her voice. “Spare
the boy!” she whispered.
“You can't save him now,” replied Tull stridently.
Her head was bowing to the inevitable. She was grasping the truth, when
suddenly there came, in inward constriction, a hardening of gentle forces within
her breast. Like a steel bar it was stiffening all that had been soft and weak in her.
She felt a birth in her of something new and unintelligible. Once more her
strained gaze sought the sage-slopes. Jane Withersteen loved that wild and
purple wilderness. In times of sorrow it had been her strength, in happiness its
beauty was her continual delight. In her extremity she found herself murmuring,
“Whence cometh my help!” It was a prayer, as if forth from those lonely purple
reaches and walls of red and clefts of blue might ride a fearless man, neither
creed-bound nor creed-mad, who would hold up a restraining hand in the faces
of her ruthless people.
The restless movements of Tull's men suddenly quieted down. Then
followed a low whisper, a rustle, a sharp exclamation.
“Look!” said one, pointing to the west.
“A rider!”
Jane Withersteen wheeled and saw a horseman, silhouetted against the
western sky, coming riding out of the sage. He had ridden down from the left, in
the golden glare of the sun, and had been unobserved till close at hand. An
answer to her prayer!
“Do you know him? Does any one know him?” questioned Tull, hurriedly.
His men looked and looked, and one by one shook their heads.
“He's come from far,” said one.
“Thet's a fine hoss,” said another.
“A strange rider.”
“Huh! he wears black leather,” added a fourth.
With a wave of his hand, enjoining silence, Tull stepped forward in such a
way that he concealed Venters.
The rider reined in his mount, and with a lithe forward-slipping action
appeared to reach the ground in one long step. It was a peculiar movement in its
quickness and inasmuch that while performing it the rider did not swerve in the
slightest from a square front to the group before him.
“Look!” hoarsely whispered one of Tull's companions. “He packs two
black-butted guns—low down—they're hard to see—black akin them black
chaps.”
7
“A gun-man!” whispered another. “Fellers, careful now about movin' your

hands.”
The stranger's slow approach might have been a mere leisurely manner of
gait or the cramped short steps of a rider unused to walking; yet, as well, it could
have been the guarded advance of one who took no chances with men.
“Hello, stranger!” called Tull. No welcome was in this greeting only a gruff
curiosity.
The rider responded with a curt nod. The wide brim of a black sombrero
cast a dark shade over his face. For a moment he closely regarded Tull and his
comrades, and then, halting in his slow walk, he seemed to relax.
“Evenin', ma'am,” he said to Jane, and removed his sombrero with quaint
grace.
Jane, greeting him, looked up into a face that she trusted instinctively and
which riveted her attention. It had all the characteristics of the range rider's—the
leanness, the red burn of the sun, and the set changelessness that came from
years of silence and solitude. But it was not these which held her, rather the
intensity of his gaze, a strained weariness, a piercing wistfulness of keen, gray
sight, as if the man was forever looking for that which he never found. Jane's
subtle woman's intuition, even in that brief instant, felt a sadness, a hungering, a
secret.
“Jane Withersteen, ma'am?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she replied.
“The water here is yours?”
“Yes.”
“May I water my horse?”
“Certainly. There's the trough.”
“But mebbe if you knew who I was—” He hesitated, with his glance on the
listening men. “Mebbe you wouldn't let me water him—though I ain't askin' none
for myself.”
“Stranger, it doesn't matter who you are. Water your horse. And if you are
thirsty and hungry come into my house.”
“Thanks, ma'am. I can't accept for myself—but for my tired horse—”
Trampling of hoofs interrupted the rider. More restless movements on the
part of Tull's men broke up the little circle, exposing the prisoner Venters.
“Mebbe I've kind of hindered somethin'—for a few moments, perhaps?”
inquired the rider.
“Yes,” replied Jane Withersteen, with a throb in her voice.
8
www.obooko.com
She felt the drawing power of his eyes; and then she saw him look at the
bound Venters, and at the men who held him, and their leader.
“In this here country all the rustlers an' thieves an' cut-throats an' gun-
throwers an' all-round no-good men jest happen to be Gentiles. Ma'am, which of
the no-good class does that young feller belong to?”
“He belongs to none of them. He's an honest boy.”
“You KNOW that, ma'am?”
“Yes—yes.”
“Then what has he done to get tied up that way?”
His clear and distinct question, meant for Tull as well as for Jane
Withersteen, stilled the restlessness and brought a momentary silence.
“Ask him,” replied Jane, her voice rising high.
The rider stepped away from her, moving out with the same slow,
measured stride in which he had approached, and the fact that his action placed
her wholly to one side, and him no nearer to Tull and his men, had a penetrating
significance.
“Young feller, speak up,” he said to Venters.
“Here stranger, this's none of your mix,” began Tull. “Don't try any
interference. You've been asked to drink and eat. That's more than you'd have
got in any other village of the Utah border. Water your horse and be on your
way.”
“Easy—easy—I ain't interferin' yet,” replied the rider. The tone of his voice
had undergone a change. A different man had spoken. Where, in addressing Jane,
he had been mild and gentle, now, with his first speech to Tull, he was dry, cool,
biting. “I've lest stumbled onto a queer deal. Seven Mormons all packin' guns, an'
a Gentile tied with a rope, an' a woman who swears by his honesty! Queer, ain't
that?”
“Queer or not, it's none of your business,” retorted Tull.
“Where I was raised a woman's word was law. I ain't quite outgrowed that
yet.”
Tull fumed between amaze and anger.
“Meddler, we have a law here something different from woman's whim—
Mormon law!... Take care you don't transgress it.”
“To hell with your Mormon law!”
The deliberate speech marked the rider's further change, this time from
kindly interest to an awakening menace. It produced a transformation in Tull and
his companions. The leader gasped and staggered backward at a blasphemous
affront to an institution he held most sacred. The man Jerry, holding the horses,
9
dropped the bridles and froze in his tracks. Like posts the other men stood
watchful-eyed, arms hanging rigid, all waiting.
“Speak up now, young man. What have you done to be roped that way?”
“It's a damned outrage!” burst out Venters. “I've done no wrong. I've
offended this Mormon Elder by being a friend to that woman.”
“Ma'am, is it true—what he says?” asked the rider of Jane, but his
quiveringly alert eyes never left the little knot of quiet men.
“True? Yes, perfectly true,” she answered.
“Well, young man, it seems to me that bein' a friend to such a woman
would be what you wouldn't want to help an' couldn't help.... What's to be done
to you for it?”
“They intend to whip me. You know what that means—in Utah!”
“I reckon,” replied the rider, slowly.
With his gray glance cold on the Mormons, with the restive bit-champing
of the horses, with Jane failing to repress her mounting agitations, with Venters
standing pale and still, the tension of the moment tightened. Tull broke the spell
with a laugh, a laugh without mirth, a laugh that was only a sound betraying fear.
“Come on, men!” he called.
Jane Withersteen turned again to the rider.
“Stranger, can you do nothing to save Venters?”
“Ma'am, you ask me to save him—from your own people?”
“Ask you? I beg of you!”
“But you don't dream who you're askin'.”
“Oh, sir, I pray you—save him!”
“These are Mormons, an' I...”
“At—at any cost—save him. For I—I care for him!”
Tull snarled. “You love-sick fool! Tell your secrets. There'll be a way to
teach you what you've never learned.... Come men out of here!”
“Mormon, the young man stays,” said the rider.
Like a shot his voice halted Tull.
“What!”
“Who'll keep him? He's my prisoner!” cried Tull, hotly. “Stranger, again I
tell you—don't mix here. You've meddled enough. Go your way now or—”
“Listen!... He stays.”
Absolute certainty, beyond any shadow of doubt, breathed in the rider's
low voice.
“Who are you? We are seven here.”
10
www.obooko.com
The rider dropped his sombrero and made a rapid movement, singular in
that it left him somewhat crouched, arms bent and stiff, with the big black gun-
sheaths swung round to the fore.
“LASSITER!”
It was Venters's wondering, thrilling cry that bridged the fateful
connection between the rider's singular position and the dreaded name.
Tull put out a groping hand. The life of his eyes dulled to the gloom with
which men of his fear saw the approach of death. But death, while it hovered
over him, did not descend, for the rider waited for the twitching fingers, the
downward flash of hand that did not come. Tull, gathering himself together,
turned to the horses, attended by his pale comrades.
CHAPTER II. COTTONWOODS
Venters appeared too deeply moved to speak the gratitude his face
expressed. And Jane turned upon the rescuer and gripped his hands. Her smiles
and tears seemingly dazed him. Presently as something like calmness returned,
she went to Lassiter's weary horse.
“I will water him myself,” she said, and she led the horse to a trough under
a huge old cottonwood. With nimble fingers she loosened the bridle and removed
the bit. The horse snorted and bent his head. The trough was of solid stone,
hollowed out, moss-covered and green and wet and cool, and the clear brown
water that fed it spouted and splashed from a wooden pipe.
“He has brought you far to-day?”
“Yes, ma'am, a matter of over sixty miles, mebbe seventy.”
“A long ride—a ride that—Ah, he is blind!”
“Yes, ma'am,” replied Lassiter.
“What blinded him?”
“Some men once roped an' tied him, an' then held white-iron close to his
eyes.”
“Oh! Men? You mean devils.... Were they your enemies—Mormons?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“To take revenge on a horse! Lassiter, the men of my creed are unnaturally
cruel. To my everlasting sorrow I confess it. They have been driven, hated,
11
scourged till their hearts have hardened. But we women hope and pray for the
time when our men will soften.”
“Beggin' your pardon, ma'am—that time will never come.”
“Oh, it will!... Lassiter, do you think Mormon women wicked? Has your
hand been against them, too?”
“No. I believe Mormon women are the best and noblest, the most long-
sufferin', and the blindest, unhappiest women on earth.”
“Ah!” She gave him a grave, thoughtful look. “Then you will break bread
with me?”
Lassiter had no ready response, and he uneasily shifted his weight from
one leg to another, and turned his sombrero round and round in his hands.
“Ma'am,” he began, presently, “I reckon your kindness of heart makes you
overlook things. Perhaps I ain't well known hereabouts, but back up North
there's Mormons who'd rest uneasy in their graves at the idea of me sittin' to
table with you.”
“I dare say. But—will you do it, anyway?” she asked.
“Mebbe you have a brother or relative who might drop in an' be offended,
an' I wouldn't want to—”
“I've not a relative in Utah that I know of. There's no one with a right to
question my actions.” She turned smilingly to Venters. “You will come in, Bern,
and Lassiter will come in. We'll eat and be merry while we may.”
“I'm only wonderin' if Tull an' his men'll raise a storm down in the village,”
said Lassiter, in his last weakening stand.
“Yes, he'll raise the storm—after he has prayed,” replied Jane. “Come.”
She led the way, with the bridle of Lassiter's horse over her arm. They
entered a grove and walked down a wide path shaded by great low-branching
cottonwoods. The last rays of the setting sun sent golden bars through the leaves.
The grass was deep and rich, welcome contrast to sage-tired eyes. Twittering
quail darted across the path, and from a tree-top somewhere a robin sang its
evening song, and on the still air floated the freshness and murmur of flowing
water.
The home of Jane Withersteen stood in a circle of cottonwoods, and was a
flat, long, red-stone structure with a covered court in the center through which
flowed a lively stream of amber-colored water. In the massive blocks of stone and
heavy timbers and solid doors and shutters showed the hand of a man who had
builded against pillage and time; and in the flowers and mosses lining the stone-
bedded stream, in the bright colors of rugs and blankets on the court floor, and
12
www.obooko.com
the cozy corner with hammock and books and the clean-linened table, showed
the grace of a daughter who lived for happiness and the day at hand.
Jane turned Lassiter's horse loose in the thick grass. “You will want him to
be near you,” she said, “or I'd have him taken to the alfalfa fields.” At her call
appeared women who began at once to bustle about, hurrying to and fro, setting
the table. Then Jane, excusing herself, went within.
She passed through a huge low ceiled chamber, like the inside of a fort, and
into a smaller one where a bright wood-fire blazed in an old open fireplace, and
from this into her own room. It had the same comfort as was manifested in the
home-like outer court; moreover, it was warm and rich in soft hues.
Seldom did Jane Withersteen enter her room without looking into her
mirror. She knew she loved the reflection of that beauty which since early
childhood she had never been allowed to forget. Her relatives and friends, and
later a horde of Mormon and Gentile suitors, had fanned the flame of natural
vanity in her. So that at twenty-eight she scarcely thought at all of her wonderful
influence for good in the little community where her father had left her
practically its beneficent landlord, but cared most for the dream and the
assurance and the allurement of her beauty. This time, however, she gazed into
her glass with more than the usual happy motive, without the usual slight
conscious smile. For she was thinking of more than the desire to be fair in her
own eyes, in those of her friend; she wondered if she were to seem fair in the
eyes of this Lassiter, this man whose name had crossed the long, wild brakes of
stone and plains of sage, this gentle-voiced, sad-faced man who was a hater and a
killer of Mormons. It was not now her usual half-conscious vain obsession that
actuated her as she hurriedly changed her riding-dress to one of white, and then
looked long at the stately form with its gracious contours, at the fair face with its
strong chin and full firm lips, at the dark-blue, proud, and passionate eyes.
“If by some means I can keep him here a few days, a week—he will never
kill another Mormon,” she mused. “Lassiter!... I shudder when I think of that
name, of him. But when I look at the man I forget who he is—I almost like him. I
remember only that he saved Bern. He has suffered. I wonder what it was—did
he love a Mormon woman once? How splendidly he championed us poor
misunderstood souls! Somehow he knows—much.”
Jane Withersteen joined her guests and bade them to her board.
Dismissing her woman, she waited upon them with her own hands. It was a
bountiful supper and a strange company. On her right sat the ragged and half-
starved Venters; and though blind eyes could have seen what he counted for in
the sum of her happiness, yet he looked the gloomy outcast his allegiance had
13
made him, and about him there was the shadow of the ruin presaged by Tull. On
her left sat black-leather-garbed Lassiter looking like a man in a dream. Hunger
was not with him, nor composure, nor speech, and when he twisted in frequent
unquiet movements the heavy guns that he had not removed knocked against the
table-legs. If it had been otherwise possible to forget the presence of Lassiter
those telling little jars would have rendered it unlikely. And Jane Withersteen
talked and smiled and laughed with all the dazzling play of lips and eyes that a
beautiful, daring woman could summon to her purpose.
When the meal ended, and the men pushed back their chairs, she leaned
closer to Lassiter and looked square into his eyes.
“Why did you come to Cottonwoods?”
Her question seemed to break a spell. The rider arose as if he had just
remembered himself and had tarried longer than his wont.
“Ma'am, I have hunted all over the southern Utah and Nevada for—
somethin'. An' through your name I learned where to find it—here in
Cottonwoods.”
“My name! Oh, I remember. You did know my name when you spoke first.
Well, tell me where you heard it and from whom?”
“At the little village—Glaze, I think it's called—some fifty miles or more
west of here. An' I heard it from a Gentile, a rider who said you'd know where to
tell me to find—”
“What?” she demanded, imperiously, as Lassiter broke off.
“Milly Erne's grave,” he answered low, and the words came with a wrench.
Venters wheeled in his chair to regard Lassiter in amazement, and Jane
slowly raised herself in white, still wonder.
“Milly Erne's grave?” she echoed, in a whisper. “What do you know of Milly
Erne, my best-beloved friend—who died in my arms? What were you to her?”
“Did I claim to be anythin'?” he inquired. “I know people—relatives—who
have long wanted to know where she's buried, that's all.”
“Relatives? She never spoke of relatives, except a brother who was shot in
Texas. Lassiter, Milly Erne's grave is in a secret burying-ground on my property.”
“Will you take me there?... You'll be offendin' Mormons worse than by
breakin' bread with me.”
“Indeed yes, but I'll do it. Only we must go unseen. To-morrow, perhaps.”
“Thank you, Jane Withersteen,” replied the rider, and he bowed to her and
stepped backward out of the court.
“Will you not stay—sleep under my roof?” she asked.
14
www.obooko.com
“No, ma'am, an' thanks again. I never sleep indoors. An' even if I did there's
that gatherin' storm in the village below. No, no. I'll go to the sage. I hope you
won't suffer none for your kindness to me.”
“Lassiter,” said Venters, with a half-bitter laugh, “my bed too, is the sage.
Perhaps we may meet out there.”
“Mebbe so. But the sage is wide an' I won't be near. Good night.”
At Lassiter's low whistle the black horse whinnied, and carefully picked his
blind way out of the grove. The rider did not bridle him, but walked beside him,
leading him by touch of hand and together they passed slowly into the shade of
the cottonwoods.
“Jane, I must be off soon,” said Venters. “Give me my guns. If I'd had my
guns—”
“Either my friend or the Elder of my church would be lying dead,” she
interposed.
“Tull would be—surely.”
“Oh, you fierce-blooded, savage youth! Can't I teach you forebearance,
mercy? Bern, it's divine to forgive your enemies. 'Let not the sun go down upon
thy wrath.'”
“Hush! Talk to me no more of mercy or religion—after to-day. To-day this
strange coming of Lassiter left me still a man, and now I'll die a man!... Give me
my guns.”
Silently she went into the house, to return with a heavy cartridge-belt and
gun-filled sheath and a long rifle; these she handed to him, and as he buckled on
the belt she stood before him in silent eloquence.
“Jane,” he said, in gentler voice, “don't look so. I'm not going out to murder
your churchman. I'll try to avoid him and all his men. But can't you see I've
reached the end of my rope? Jane, you're a wonderful woman. Never was there a
woman so unselfish and good. Only you're blind in one way.... Listen!”
From behind the grove came the clicking sound of horses in a rapid trot.
“Some of your riders,” he continued. “It's getting time for the night shift.
Let us go out to the bench in the grove and talk there.”
It was still daylight in the open, but under the spreading cottonwoods
shadows were obscuring the lanes. Venters drew Jane off from one of these into a
shrub-lined trail, just wide enough for the two to walk abreast, and in a
roundabout way led her far from the house to a knoll on the edge of the grove.
Here in a secluded nook was a bench from which, through an opening in the tree-
tops, could be seen the sage-slope and the wall of rock and the dim lines of
canyons. Jane had not spoken since Venters had shocked her with his first harsh
15
speech; but all the way she had clung to his arm, and now, as he stopped and laid
his rifle against the bench, she still clung to him.
“Jane, I'm afraid I must leave you.”
“Bern!” she cried.
“Yes, it looks that way. My position is not a happy one—I can't feel right—
I've lost all—”
“I'll give you anything you—”
“Listen, please. When I say loss I don't mean what you think. I mean loss of
good-will, good name—that which would have enabled me to stand up in this
village without bitterness. Well, it's too late.... Now, as to the future, I think you'd
do best to give me up. Tull is implacable. You ought to see from his intention to-
day that—But you can't see. Your blindness—your damned religion!... Jane,
forgive me—I'm sore within and something rankles. Well, I fear that invisible
hand will turn its hidden work to your ruin.”
“Invisible hand? Bern!”
“I mean your Bishop.” Venters said it deliberately and would not release
her as she started back. “He's the law. The edict went forth to ruin me. Well, look
at me! It'll now go forth to compel you to the will of the Church.”
“You wrong Bishop Dyer. Tull is hard, I know. But then he has been in love
with me for years.”
“Oh, your faith and your excuses! You can't see what I know—and if you
did see it you'd not admit it to save your life. That's the Mormon of you. These
elders and bishops will do absolutely any deed to go on building up the power
and wealth of their church, their empire. Think of what they've done to the
Gentiles here, to me—think of Milly Erne's fate!”
“What do you know of her story?”
“I know enough—all, perhaps, except the name of the Mormon who
brought her here. But I must stop this kind of talk.”
She pressed his hand in response. He helped her to a seat beside him on
the bench. And he respected a silence that he divined was full of woman's deep
emotion beyond his understanding.
It was the moment when the last ruddy rays of the sunset brightened
momentarily before yielding to twilight. And for Venters the outlook before him
was in some sense similar to a feeling of his future, and with searching eyes he
studied the beautiful purple, barren waste of sage. Here was the unknown and
the perilous. The whole scene impressed Venters as a wild, austere, and mighty
manifestation of nature. And as it somehow reminded him of his prospect in life,
so it suddenly resembled the woman near him, only in her there were greater
16
www.obooko.com
beauty and peril, a mystery more unsolvable, and something nameless that
numbed his heart and dimmed his eye.
“Look! A rider!” exclaimed Jane, breaking the silence. “Can that be
Lassiter?”
Venters moved his glance once more to the west. A horseman showed dark
on the sky-line, then merged into the color of the sage.
“It might be. But I think not—that fellow was coming in. One of your riders,
more likely. Yes, I see him clearly now. And there's another.”
“I see them, too.”
“Jane, your riders seem as many as the bunches of sage. I ran into five
yesterday 'way down near the trail to Deception Pass. They were with the white
herd.”
“You still go to that canyon? Bern, I wish you wouldn't. Oldring and his
rustlers live somewhere down there.”
“Well, what of that?”
“Tull has already hinted to your frequent trips into Deception Pass.”
“I know.” Venters uttered a short laugh. “He'll make a rustler of me next.
But, Jane, there's no water for fifty miles after I leave here, and the nearest is in
the canyon. I must drink and water my horse. There! I see more riders. They are
going out.”
“The red herd is on the slope, toward the Pass.”
Twilight was fast falling. A group of horsemen crossed the dark line of low
ground to become more distinct as they climbed the slope. The silence broke to a
clear call from an incoming rider, and, almost like the peal of a hunting-horn,
floated back the answer. The outgoing riders moved swiftly, came sharply into
sight as they topped a ridge to show wild and black above the horizon, and then
passed down, dimming into the purple of the sage.
“I hope they don't meet Lassiter,” said Jane.
“So do I,” replied Venters. “By this time the riders of the night shift know
what happened to-day. But Lassiter will likely keep out of their way.”
“Bern, who is Lassiter? He's only a name to me—a terrible name.”
“Who is he? I don't know, Jane. Nobody I ever met knows him. He talks a
little like a Texan, like Milly Erne. Did you note that?”
“Yes. How strange of him to know of her! And she lived here ten years and
has been dead two. Bern, what do you know of Lassiter? Tell me what he has
done—why you spoke of him to Tull—threatening to become another Lassiter
yourself?”
17
“Jane, I only heard things, rumors, stories, most of which I disbelieved. At

Glaze his name was known, but none of the riders or ranchers I knew there ever
met him. At Stone Bridge I never heard him mentioned. But at Sterling and
villages north of there he was spoken of often. I've never been in a village which
he had been known to visit. There were many conflicting stories about him and
his doings. Some said he had shot up this and that Mormon village, and others
denied it. I'm inclined to believe he has, and you know how Mormons hide the
truth. But there was one feature about Lassiter upon which all agree—that he
was what riders in this country call a gun-man. He's a man with a marvelous
quickness and accuracy in the use of a Colt. And now that I've seen him I know
more. Lassiter was born without fear. I watched him with eyes which saw him
my friend. I'll never forget the moment I recognized him from what had been told
me of his crouch before the draw. It was then I yelled his name. I believe that yell
saved Tull's life. At any rate, I know this, between Tull and death then there was
not the breadth of the littlest hair. If he or any of his men had moved a finger
downward—”
Venters left his meaning unspoken, but at the suggestion Jane shuddered.
The pale afterglow in the west darkened with the merging of twilight into
night. The sage now spread out black and gloomy. One dim star glimmered in the
southwest sky. The sound of trotting horses had ceased, and there was silence
broken only by a faint, dry pattering of cottonwood leaves in the soft night wind.
Into this peace and calm suddenly broke the high-keyed yelp of a coyote,
and from far off in the darkness came the faint answering note of a trailing mate.
“Hello! the sage-dogs are barking,” said Venters.
“I don't like to hear them,” replied Jane. “At night, sometimes when I lie
awake, listening to the long mourn or breaking bark or wild howl, I think of you
asleep somewhere in the sage, and my heart aches.”
“Jane, you couldn't listen to sweeter music, nor could I have a better bed.”
“Just think! Men like Lassiter and you have no home, no comfort, no rest,
no place to lay your weary heads. Well!... Let us be patient. Tull's anger may cool,
and time may help us. You might do some service to the village—who can tell?
Suppose you discovered the long-unknown hiding-place of Oldring and his band,
and told it to my riders? That would disarm Tull's ugly hints and put you in favor.
For years my riders have trailed the tracks of stolen cattle. You know as well as I
how dearly we've paid for our ranges in this wild country. Oldring drives our
cattle down into the network of deceiving canyons, and somewhere far to the
north or east he drives them up and out to Utah markets. If you will spend time in
Deception Pass try to find the trails.”
18
www.obooko.com
“Jane, I've thought of that. I'll try.”

“I must go now. And it hurts, for now I'll never be sure of seeing you again.
But to-morrow, Bern?”
“To-morrow surely. I'll watch for Lassiter and ride in with him.”
“Good night.”
Then she left him and moved away, a white, gliding shape that soon
vanished in the shadows.
Venters waited until the faint slam of a door assured him she had reached
the house, and then, taking up his rifle, he noiselessly slipped through the bushes,
down the knoll, and on under the dark trees to the edge of the grove. The sky was
now turning from gray to blue; stars had begun to lighten the earlier blackness;
and from the wide flat sweep before him blew a cool wind, fragrant with the
breath of sage. Keeping close to the edge of the cottonwoods, he went swiftly and
silently westward. The grove was long, and he had not reached the end when he
heard something that brought him to a halt. Low padded thuds told him horses
were coming this way. He sank down in the gloom, waiting, listening. Much
before he had expected, judging from sound, to his amazement he descried
horsemen near at hand. They were riding along the border of the sage, and
instantly he knew the hoofs of the horses were muffled. Then the pale starlight
afforded him indistinct sight of the riders. But his eyes were keen and used to the
dark, and by peering closely he recognized the huge bulk and black-bearded
visage of Oldring and the lithe, supple form of the rustler's lieutenant, a masked
rider. They passed on; the darkness swallowed them. Then, farther out on the
sage, a dark, compact body of horsemen went by, almost without sound, almost
like specters, and they, too, melted into the night.
CHAPTER III. AMBER SPRING
No unusual circumstances was it for Oldring and some of his men to visit
Cottonwoods in the broad light of day, but for him to prowl about in the dark
with the hoofs of his horses muffled meant that mischief was brewing. Moreover,
to Venters the presence of the masked rider with Oldring seemed especially
ominous. For about this man there was mystery, he seldom rode through the
village, and when he did ride through it was swiftly; riders seldom met by day on
the sage, but wherever he rode there always followed deeds as dark and
19
mysterious as the mask he wore. Oldring's band did not confine themselves to
the rustling of cattle.
Venters lay low in the shade of the cottonwoods, pondering this chance
meeting, and not for many moments did he consider it safe to move on. Then,
with sudden impulse, he turned the other way and went back along the grove.
When he reached the path leading to Jane's home he decided to go down to the
village. So he hurried onward, with quick soft steps. Once beyond the grove he
entered the one and only street. It was wide, lined with tall poplars, and under
each row of trees, inside the foot-path, were ditches where ran the water from
Jane Withersteen's spring.
Between the trees twinkled lights of cottage candles, and far down flared
bright windows of the village stores. When Venters got closer to these he saw
knots of men standing together in earnest conversation. The usual lounging on
the corners and benches and steps was not in evidence. Keeping in the shadow
Venters went closer and closer until he could hear voices. But he could not
distinguish what was said. He recognized many Mormons, and looked hard for
Tull and his men, but looked in vain. Venters concluded that the rustlers had not
passed along the village street. No doubt these earnest men were discussing
Lassiter's coming. But Venters felt positive that Tull's intention toward himself
that day had not been and would not be revealed.
So Venters, seeing there was little for him to learn, began retracing his
steps. The church was dark, Bishop Dyer's home next to it was also dark, and
likewise Tull's cottage. Upon almost any night at this hour there would be lights
here, and Venters marked the unusual omission.
As he was about to pass out of the street to skirt the grove, he once more
slunk down at the sound of trotting horses. Presently he descried two mounted
men riding toward him. He hugged the shadow of a tree. Again the starlight,
brighter now, aided him, and he made out Tull's stalwart figure, and beside him
the short, froglike shape of the rider Jerry. They were silent, and they rode on to
disappear.
Venters went his way with busy, gloomy mind, revolving events of the day,
trying to reckon those brooding in the night. His thoughts overwhelmed him. Up
in that dark grove dwelt a woman who had been his friend. And he skulked about
her home, gripping a gun stealthily as an Indian, a man without place or people
or purpose. Above her hovered the shadow of grim, hidden, secret power. No
queen could have given more royally out of a bounteous store than Jane
Withersteen gave her people, and likewise to those unfortunates whom her
20
www.obooko.com
people hated. She asked only the divine right of all women—freedom; to love and
to live as her heart willed. And yet prayer and her hope were vain.
“For years I've seen a storm clouding over her and the village of
Cottonwoods,” muttered Venters, as he strode on. “Soon it'll burst. I don't like the
prospects.” That night the villagers whispered in the street—and night-riding
rustlers muffled horses—and Tull was at work in secret—and out there in the
sage hid a man who meant something terrible—Lassiter!
Venters passed the black cottonwoods, and, entering the sage, climbed the
gradual slope. He kept his direction in line with a western star. From time to time
he stopped to listen and heard only the usual familiar bark of coyote and sweep
of wind and rustle of sage. Presently a low jumble of rocks loomed up darkly
somewhat to his right, and, turning that way, he whistled softly. Out of the rocks
glided a dog that leaped and whined about him. He climbed over rough, broken
rock, picking his way carefully, and then went down. Here it was darker, and
sheltered from the wind. A white object guided him. It was another dog, and this
one was asleep, curled up between a saddle and a pack. The animal awoke and
thumped his tail in greeting. Venters placed the saddle for a pillow, rolled in his
blankets, with his face upward to the stars. The white dog snuggled close to him.
The other whined and pattered a few yards to the rise of ground and there
crouched on guard. And in that wild covert Venters shut his eyes under the great
white stars and intense vaulted blue, bitterly comparing their loneliness to his
own, and fell asleep.
When he awoke, day had dawned and all about him was bright steel-gray.
The air had a cold tang. Arising, he greeted the fawning dogs and stretched his
cramped body, and then, gathering together bunches of dead sage sticks, he
lighted a fire. Strips of dried beef held to the blaze for a moment served him and
the dogs. He drank from a canteen. There was nothing else in his outfit; he had
grown used to a scant fire. Then he sat over the fire, palms outspread, and
waited. Waiting had been his chief occupation for months, and he scarcely knew
what he waited for unless it was the passing of the hours. But now he sensed
action in the immediate present; the day promised another meeting with Lassiter
and Jane, perhaps news of the rustlers; on the morrow he meant to take the trail
to Deception Pass.
And while he waited he talked to his dogs. He called them Ring and Whitie;
they were sheep-dogs, half collie, half deerhound, superb in build, perfectly
trained. It seemed that in his fallen fortunes these dogs understood the nature of
their value to him, and governed their affection and faithfulness accordingly.
Whitie watched him with somber eyes of love, and Ring, crouched on the little
21
rise of ground above, kept tireless guard. When the sun rose, the white dog took
the place of the other, and Ring went to sleep at his master's feet.
By and by Venters rolled up his blankets and tied them and his meager
pack together, then climbed out to look for his horse. He saw him, presently, a
little way off in the sage, and went to fetch him. In that country, where every
rider boasted of a fine mount and was eager for a race, where thoroughbreds
dotted the wonderful grazing ranges, Venters rode a horse that was sad proof of
his misfortunes.
Then, with his back against a stone, Venters faced the east, and, stick in
hand and idle blade, he waited. The glorious sunlight filled the valley with purple
fire. Before him, to left, to right, waving, rolling, sinking, rising, like low swells of
a purple sea, stretched the sage. Out of the grove of cottonwoods, a green patch
on the purple, gleamed the dull red of Jane Withersteen's old stone house. And
from there extended the wide green of the village gardens and orchards marked
by the graceful poplars; and farther down shone the deep, dark richness of the
alfalfa fields. Numberless red and black and white dots speckled the sage, and
these were cattle and horses.
So, watching and waiting, Venters let the time wear away. At length he saw
a horse rise above a ridge, and he knew it to be Lassiter's black. Climbing to the
highest rock, so that he would show against the sky-line, he stood and waved his
hat. The almost instant turning of Lassiter's horse attested to the quickness of
that rider's eye. Then Venters climbed down, saddled his horse, tied on his pack,
and, with a word to his dogs, was about to ride out to meet Lassiter, when he
concluded to wait for him there, on higher ground, where the outlook was
commanding.
It had been long since Venters had experienced friendly greeting from a
man. Lassiter's warmed in him something that had grown cold from neglect. And
when he had returned it, with a strong grip of the iron hand that held his, and
met the gray eyes, he knew that Lassiter and he were to be friends.
“Venters, let's talk awhile before we go down there,” said Lassiter, slipping
his bridle. “I ain't in no hurry. Them's sure fine dogs you've got.” With a rider's
eye he took in the points of Venter's horse, but did not speak his thought. “Well,
did anythin' come off after I left you last night?”
Venters told him about the rustlers.
“I was snug hid in the sage,” replied Lassiter, “an' didn't see or hear no one.
Oldrin's got a high hand here, I reckon. It's no news up in Utah how he holes in
canyons an' leaves no track.” Lassiter was silent a moment. “Me an' Oldrin' wasn't
exactly strangers some years back when he drove cattle into Bostil's Ford, at the
22
www.obooko.com
head of the Rio Virgin. But he got harassed there an' now he drives some place
else.”
“Lassiter, you knew him? Tell me, is he Mormon or Gentile?”
“I can't say. I've knowed Mormons who pretended to be Gentiles.”
“No Mormon ever pretended that unless he was a rustler,” declared
Venters.
“Mebbe so.”
“It's a hard country for any one, but hardest for Gentiles. Did you ever
know or hear of a Gentile prospering in a Mormon community?”
“I never did.”
“Well, I want to get out of Utah. I've a mother living in Illinois. I want to go
home. It's eight years now.”
The older man's sympathy moved Venters to tell his story. He had left
Quincy, run off to seek his fortune in the gold fields had never gotten any farther
than Salt Lake City, wandered here and there as helper, teamster, shepherd, and
drifted southward over the divide and across the barrens and up the rugged
plateau through the passes to the last border settlements. Here he became a rider
of the sage, had stock of his own, and for a time prospered, until chance threw
him in the employ of Jane Withersteen.
“Lassiter, I needn't tell you the rest.”
“Well, it'd be no news to me. I know Mormons. I've seen their women's
strange love en' patience en' sacrifice an' silence en' whet I call madness for their
idea of God. An' over against that I've seen the tricks of men. They work hand in
hand, all together, an' in the dark. No man can hold out against them, unless he
takes to packin' guns. For Mormons are slow to kill. That's the only good I ever
seen in their religion. Venters, take this from me, these Mormons ain't just right
in their minds. Else could a Mormon marry one woman when he already has a
wife, an' call it duty?”
“Lassiter, you think as I think,” returned Venters.
“How'd it come then that you never throwed a gun on Tull or some of
them?” inquired the rider, curiously.
“Jane pleaded with me, begged me to be patient, to overlook. She even took
my guns from me. I lost all before I knew it,” replied Venters, with the red color in
his face. “But, Lassiter, listen. Out of the wreck I saved a Winchester, two Colts,
and plenty of shells. I packed these down into Deception Pass. There, almost
every day for six months, I have practiced with my rifle till the barrel burnt my
hands. Practised the draw—the firing of a Colt, hour after hour!”
23
“Now that's interestin' to me,” said Lassiter, with a quick uplift of his head
and a concentration of his gray gaze on Venters. “Could you throw a gun before
you began that practisin'?”
“Yes. And now...” Venters made a lightning-swift movement.
Lassiter smiled, and then his bronzed eyelids narrowed till his eyes
seemed mere gray slits. “You'll kill Tull!” He did not question; he affirmed.
“I promised Jane Withersteen I'd try to avoid Tull. I'll keep my word. But
sooner or later Tull and I will meet. As I feel now, if he even looks at me I'll
draw!”
“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.
24
www.obooko.com
“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.
25
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.”
The 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.
26
www.obooko.com
“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.
27
“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.
28
www.obooko.com
“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.
29
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
30
www.obooko.com
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
31
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.
32
www.obooko.com
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
33
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.
He reined Wrangle to a walk, halted now and then to listen, and then
proceeded cautiously with shifting and alert gaze. The canyon assumed
proportions that dwarfed those of its first ten miles. Venters rode on and on, not
losing in the interest of his wide surroundings any of his caution or keen search
for tracks or sight of living thing. If there ever had been a trail here, he could not
find it. He rode through sage and clumps of pinon trees and grassy plots where
long-petaled purple lilies bloomed. He rode through a dark constriction of the
pass no wider than the lane in the grove at Cottonwoods. And he came out into a
great amphitheater into which jutted huge towering corners of a confluence of
intersecting canyons.
Venters sat his horse, and, with a rider's eye, studied this wild cross-cut of
huge stone gullies. Then he went on, guided by the course of running water. If it
had not been for the main stream of water flowing north he would never have
been able to tell which of those many openings was a continuation of the pass. In
crossing this amphitheater he went by the mouths of five canyons, fording little
streams that flowed into the larger one. Gaining the outlet which he took to be
the pass, he rode on again under over hanging walls. One side was dark in shade,
the other light in sun. This narrow passageway turned and twisted and opened
into a valley that amazed Venters.
Here again was a sweep of purple sage, richer than upon the higher levels.
The valley was miles long, several wide, and inclosed by unscalable walls. But it
was the background of this valley that so forcibly struck him. Across the sage-flat
rose a strange up-flinging of yellow rocks. He could not tell which were close and
which were distant. Scrawled mounds of stone, like mountain waves, seemed to
roll up to steep bare slopes and towers.
In this plain of sage Venters flushed birds and rabbits, and when he had
proceeded about a mile he caught sight of the bobbing white tails of a herd of
running antelope. He rode along the edge of the stream which wound toward the
western end of the slowly looming mounds of stone. The high slope retreated out
of sight behind the nearer protection. To Venters the valley appeared to have
been filled in by a mountain of melted stone that had hardened in strange shapes
34
www.obooko.com
of rounded outline. He followed the stream till he lost it in a deep cut. Therefore
Venters quit the dark slit which baffled further search in that direction, and rode
out along the curved edge of stone where it met the sage. It was not long before
he came to a low place, and here Wrangle readily climbed up.
All about him was ridgy roll of wind-smoothed, rain-washed rock. Not a
tuft of grass or a bunch of sage colored the dull rust-yellow. He saw where, to the
right, this uneven flow of stone ended in a blunt wall. Leftward, from the hollow
that lay at his feet, mounted a gradual slow-swelling slope to a great height
topped by leaning, cracked, and ruined crags. Not for some time did he grasp the
wonder of that acclivity. It was no less than a mountain-side, glistening in the sun
like polished granite, with cedar-trees springing as if by magic out of the denuded
surface. Winds had swept it clear of weathered shale, and rains had washed it
free of dust. Far up the curved slope its beautiful lines broke to meet the vertical
rim-wall, to lose its grace in a different order and color of rock, a stained yellow
cliff of cracks and caves and seamed crags. And straight before Venters was a
scene less striking but more significant to his keen survey. For beyond a mile of
the bare, hummocky rock began the valley of sage, and the mouths of canyons,
one of which surely was another gateway into the pass.
He got off his horse, and, giving the bridle to Ring to hold, he commenced a
search for the cleft where the stream ran. He was not successful and concluded
the water dropped into an underground passage. Then he returned to where he
had left Wrangle, and led him down off the stone to the sage. It was a short ride
to the opening canyons. There was no reason for a choice of which one to enter.
The one he rode into was a clear, sharp shaft in yellow stone a thousand feet
deep, with wonderful wind-worn caves low down and high above buttressed and
turreted ramparts. Farther on Venters came into a region where deep
indentations marked the line of canyon walls. These were huge, cove-like blind
pockets extending back to a sharp corner with a dense growth of underbrush and
trees.
Venters penetrated into one of these offshoots, and, as he had hoped, he
found abundant grass. He had to bend the oak saplings to get his horse through.
Deciding to make this a hiding-place if he could find water, he worked back to the
limit of the shelving walls. In a little cluster of silver spruces he found a spring.
This inclosed nook seemed an ideal place to leave his horse and to camp at night,
and from which to make stealthy trips on foot. The thick grass hid his trail; the
dense growth of oaks in the opening would serve as a barrier to keep Wrangle in,
if, indeed, the luxuriant browse would not suffice for that. So Venters, leaving
Whitie with the horse, called Ring to his side, and, rifle in hand, worked his way
35
out to the open. A careful photographing in mind of the formation of the bold
outlines of rimrock assured him he would be able to return to his retreat even in
the dark.
Bunches of scattered sage covered the center of the canyon, and among
these Venters threaded his way with the step of an Indian. At intervals he put his
hand on the dog and stopped to listen. There was a drowsy hum of insects, but no
other sound disturbed the warm midday stillness. Venters saw ahead a turn,
more abrupt than any yet. Warily he rounded this corner, once again to halt
bewildered.
The canyon opened fan-shaped into a great oval of green and gray
growths. It was the hub of an oblong wheel, and from it, at regular distances, like
spokes, ran the outgoing canyons. Here a dull red color predominated over the
fading yellow. The corners of wall bluntly rose, scarred and scrawled, to taper
into towers and serrated peaks and pinnacled domes.
Venters pushed on more heedfully than ever. Toward the center of this
circle the sage-brush grew smaller and farther apart He was about to sheer off to
the right, where thickets and jumbles of fallen rock would afford him cover, when
he ran right upon a broad cattle trail. Like a road it was, more than a trail, and the
cattle tracks were fresh. What surprised him more, they were wet! He pondered
over this feature. It had not rained. The only solution to this puzzle was that the
cattle had been driven through water, and water deep enough to wet their legs.
Suddenly Ring growled low. Venters rose cautiously and looked over the
sage. A band of straggling horsemen were riding across the oval. He sank down,
startled and trembling. “Rustlers!” he muttered. Hurriedly he glanced about for a
place to hide. Near at hand there was nothing but sage-brush. He dared not risk
crossing the open patches to reach the rocks. Again he peeped over the sage. The
rustlers—four—five—seven—eight in all, were approaching, but not directly in
line with him. That was relief for a cold deadness which seemed to be creeping
inward along his veins. He crouched down with bated breath and held the
bristling dog.
He heard the click of iron-shod hoofs on stone, the coarse laughter of men,
and then voices gradually dying away. Long moments passed. Then he rose. The
rustlers were riding into a canyon. Their horses were tired, and they had several
pack animals; evidently they had traveled far. Venters doubted that they were
the rustlers who had driven the red herd. Olding's band had split. Venters
watched these horsemen disappear under a bold canyon wall.
The rustlers had come from the northwest side of the oval. Venters kept a
steady gaze in that direction, hoping, if there were more, to see from what
36
www.obooko.com
canyon they rode. A quarter of an hour went by. Reward for his vigilance came
when he descried three more mounted men, far over to the north. But out of
what canyon they had ridden it was too late to tell. He watched the three ride
across the oval and round the jutting red corner where the others had gone.
“Up that canyon!” exclaimed Venters. “Oldring's den! I've found it!”
A knotty point for Venters was the fact that the cattle tracks all pointed
west. The broad trail came from the direction of the canyon into which the
rustlers had ridden, and undoubtedly the cattle had been driven out of it across
the oval. There were no tracks pointing the other way. It had been in his mind
that Oldring had driven the red herd toward the rendezvous, and not from it.
Where did that broad trail come down into the pass, and where did it lead?
Venters knew he wasted time in pondering the question, but it held a fascination
not easily dispelled. For many years Oldring's mysterious entrance and exit to
Deception Pass had been all-absorbing topics to sage-riders.
All at once the dog put an end to Venters's pondering. Ring sniffed the air,
turned slowly in his tracks with a whine, and then growled. Venters wheeled.
Two horsemen were within a hundred yards, coming straight at him. One, lagging
behind the other, was Oldring's Masked Rider.
Venters cunningly sank, slowly trying to merge into sage-brush. But,
guarded as his action was, the first horse detected it. He stopped short, snorted,
and shot up his ears. The rustler bent forward, as if keenly peering ahead. Then,
with a swift sweep, he jerked a gun from its sheath and fired.
The bullet zipped through the sage-brush. Flying bits of wood struck
Venters, and the hot, stinging pain seemed to lift him in one leap. Like a flash the
blue barrel of his rifle gleamed level and he shot once—twice.
The foremost rustler dropped his weapon and toppled from his saddle, to
fall with his foot catching in a stirrup. The horse snorted wildly and plunged
away, dragging the rustler through the sage.
The Masked Rider huddled over his pommel slowly swaying to one side,
and then, with a faint, strange cry, slipped out of the saddle.
37
CHAPTER V. THE MASKED RIDER
Venters looked quickly from the fallen rustlers to the canyon where the
others had disappeared. He calculated on the time needed for running horses to
return to the open, if their riders heard shots. He waited breathlessly. But the
estimated time dragged by and no riders appeared. Venters began presently to
believe that the rifle reports had not penetrated into the recesses of the canyon,
and felt safe for the immediate present.
He hurried to the spot where the first rustler had been dragged by his
horse. The man lay in deep grass, dead, jaw fallen, eyes protruding—a sight that
sickened Venters. The first man at whom he had ever aimed a weapon he had
shot through the heart. With the clammy sweat oozing from every pore Venters
dragged the rustler in among some boulders and covered him with slabs of rock.
Then he smoothed out the crushed trail in grass and sage. The rustler's horse had
stopped a quarter of a mile off and was grazing.
When Venters rapidly strode toward the Masked Rider not even the cold
nausea that gripped him could wholly banish curiosity. For he had shot Oldring's
infamous lieutenant, whose face had never been seen. Venters experienced a
grim pride in the feat. What would Tull say to this achievement of the outcast
who rode too often to Deception Pass?
Venters's curious eagerness and expectation had not prepared him for the
shock he received when he stood over a slight, dark figure. The rustler wore the
black mask that had given him his name, but he had no weapons. Venters glanced
at the drooping horse, there were no gun-sheaths on the saddle.
“A rustler who didn't pack guns!” muttered Venters. “He wears no belt. He
couldn't pack guns in that rig.... Strange!”
A low, gasping intake of breath and a sudden twitching of body told
Venters the rider still lived.
“He's alive!... I've got to stand here and watch him die. And I shot an
unarmed man.”
Shrinkingly Venters removed the rider's wide sombrero and the black
cloth mask. This action disclosed bright chestnut hair, inclined to curl, and a
white, youthful face. Along the lower line of cheek and jaw was a clear
demarcation, where the brown of tanned skin met the white that had been
hidden from the sun.
“Oh, he's only a boy!... What! Can he be Oldring's Masked Rider?”
The boy showed signs of returning consciousness. He stirred; his lips
moved; a small brown hand clenched in his blouse.
38
www.obooko.com
Venters knelt with a gathering horror of his deed. His bullet had entered
the rider's right breast, high up to the shoulder. With hands that shook, Venters
untied a black scarf and ripped open the blood-wet blouse.
First he saw a gaping hole, dark red against a whiteness of skin, from
which welled a slender red stream. Then the graceful, beautiful swell of a
woman's breast!
“A woman!” he cried. “A girl!... I've killed a girl!”
She suddenly opened eyes that transfixed Venters. They were fathomless
blue. Consciousness of death was there, a blended terror and pain, but no
consciousness of sight. She did not see Venters. She stared into the unknown.
Then came a spasm of vitality. She writhed in a torture of reviving
strength, and in her convulsions she almost tore from Ventner's grasp. Slowly she
relaxed and sank partly back. The ungloved hand sought the wound, and pressed
so hard that her wrist half buried itself in her bosom. Blood trickled between her
spread fingers. And she looked at Venters with eyes that saw him.
He cursed himself and the unerring aim of which he had been so proud. He
had seen that look in the eyes of a crippled antelope which he was about to finish
with his knife. But in her it had infinitely more—a revelation of mortal spirit. The
instinctive bringing to life was there, and the divining helplessness and the
terrible accusation of the stricken.
“Forgive me! I didn't know!” burst out Venters.
“You shot me—you've killed me!” she whispered, in panting gasps. Upon
her lips appeared a fluttering, bloody froth. By that Venters knew the air in her
lungs was mixing with blood. “Oh, I knew—it would—come—some day!... Oh, the
burn!... Hold me—I'm sinking—it's all dark.... Ah, God!... Mercy—”
Her rigidity loosened in one long quiver and she lay back limp, still, white
as snow, with closed eyes.
Venters thought then that she died. But the faint pulsation of her breast
assured him that life yet lingered. Death seemed only a matter of moments, for
the bullet had gone clear through her. Nevertheless, he tore sageleaves from a
bush, and, pressing them tightly over her wounds, he bound the black scarf
round her shoulder, tying it securely under her arm. Then he closed the blouse,
hiding from his sight that blood-stained, accusing breast.
“What—now?” he questioned, with flying mind. “I must get out of here.
She's dying—but I can't leave her.”
He rapidly surveyed the sage to the north and made out no animate object.
Then he picked up the girl's sombrero and the mask. This time the mask gave
him as great a shock as when he first removed it from her face. For in the woman
39
he had forgotten the rustler, and this black strip of felt-cloth established the
identity of Oldring's Masked Rider. Venters had solved the mystery. He slipped
his rifle under her, and, lifting her carefully upon it, he began to retrace his steps.
The dog trailed in his shadow. And the horse, that had stood drooping by,
followed without a call. Venters chose the deepest tufts of grass and clumps of
sage on his return. From time to time he glanced over his shoulder. He did not
rest. His concern was to avoid jarring the girl and to hide his trail. Gaining the
narrow canyon, he turned and held close to the wall till he reached his hiding-
place. When he entered the dense thicket of oaks he was hard put to it to force a
way through. But he held his burden almost upright, and by slipping side wise
and bending the saplings he got in. Through sage and grass he hurried to the
grove of silver spruces.
He laid the girl down, almost fearing to look at her. Though marble pale
and cold, she was living. Venters then appreciated the tax that long carry had
been to his strength. He sat down to rest. Whitie sniffed at the pale girl and
whined and crept to Venters's feet. Ring lapped the water in the runway of the
spring.
Presently Venters went out to the opening, caught the horse and, leading
him through the thicket, unsaddled him and tied him with a long halter. Wrangle
left his browsing long enough to whinny and toss his head. Venters felt that he
could not rest easily till he had secured the other rustler's horse; so, taking his
rifle and calling for Ring, he set out. Swiftly yet watchfully he made his way
through the canyon to the oval and out to the cattle trail. What few tracks might
have betrayed him he obliterated, so only an expert tracker could have trailed
him. Then, with many a wary backward glance across the sage, he started to
round up the rustler's horse. This was unexpectedly easy. He led the horse to
lower ground, out of sight from the opposite side of the oval along the shadowy
western wall, and so on into his canyon and secluded camp.
The girl's eyes were open; a feverish spot burned in her cheeks she
moaned something unintelligible to Venters, but he took the movement of her
lips to mean that she wanted water. Lifting her head, he tipped the canteen to her
lips. After that she again lapsed into unconsciousness or a weakness which was
its counterpart. Venters noted, however, that the burning flush had faded into the
former pallor.
The sun set behind the high canyon rim, and a cool shade darkened the
walls. Venters fed the dogs and put a halter on the dead rustlers horse. He
allowed Wrangle to browse free. This done, he cut spruce boughs and made a
lean-to for the girl. Then, gently lifting her upon a blanket, he folded the sides
40
www.obooko.com
over her. The other blanket he wrapped about his shoulders and found a
comfortable seat against a spruce-tree that upheld the little shack. Ring and
Whitie lay near at hand, one asleep, the other watchful.
Venters dreaded the night's vigil. At night his mind was active, and this
time he had to watch and think and feel beside a dying girl whom he had all but
murdered. A thousand excuses he invented for himself, yet not one made any
difference in his act or his self-reproach.
It seemed to him that when night fell black he could see her white face so
much more plainly.
“She'll go, presently,” he said, “and be out of agony—thank God!”
Every little while certainty of her death came to him with a shock; and
then he would bend over and lay his ear on her breast. Her heart still beat.
The early night blackness cleared to the cold starlight. The horses were not
moving, and no sound disturbed the deathly silence of the canyon.
“I'll bury her here,” thought Venters, “and let her grave be as much a
mystery as her life was.”
For the girl's few words, the look of her eyes, the prayer, had strangely
touched Venters.
“She was only a girl,” he soliloquized. “What was she to Oldring? Rustlers
don't have wives nor sisters nor daughters. She was bad—that's all. But
somehow... well, she may not have willingly become the companion of rustlers.
That prayer of hers to God for mercy!... Life is strange and cruel. I wonder if other
members of Oldring's gang are women? Likely enough. But what was his game?
Oldring's Mask Rider! A name to make villagers hide and lock their doors. A name
credited with a dozen murders, a hundred forays, and a thousand stealings of
cattle. What part did the girl have in this? It may have served Oldring to create
mystery.”
Hours passed. The white stars moved across the narrow strip of dark-blue
sky above. The silence awoke to the low hum of insects. Venters watched the
immovable white face, and as he watched, hour by hour waiting for death, the
infamy of her passed from his mind. He thought only of the sadness, the truth of
the moment. Whoever she was—whatever she had done—she was young and
she was dying.
The after-part of the night wore on interminably. The starlight failed and
the gloom blackened to the darkest hour. “She'll die at the gray of dawn,”
muttered Venters, remembering some old woman's fancy. The blackness paled to
gray, and the gray lightened and day peeped over the eastern rim. Venters
listened at the breast of the girl. She still lived. Did he only imagine that her heart
41
beat stronger, ever so slightly, but stronger? He pressed his ear closer to her
breast. And he rose with his own pulse quickening.
“If she doesn't die soon—she's got a chance—the barest chance to live,” he
said.
He wondered if the internal bleeding had ceased. There was no more film
of blood upon her lips. But no corpse could have been whiter. Opening her
blouse, he untied the scarf, and carefully picked away the sage leaves from the
wound in her shoulder. It had closed. Lifting her lightly, he ascertained that the
same was true of the hole where the bullet had come out. He reflected on the fact
that clean wounds closed quickly in the healing upland air. He recalled instances
of riders who had been cut and shot apparently to fatal issues; yet the blood had
clotted, the wounds closed, and they had recovered. He had no way to tell if
internal hemorrhage still went on, but he believed that it had stopped. Otherwise
she would surely not have lived so long. He marked the entrance of the bullet,
and concluded that it had just touched the upper lobe of her lung. Perhaps the
wound in the lung had also closed. As he began to wash the blood stains from her
breast and carefully rebandage the wound, he was vaguely conscious of a
strange, grave happiness in the thought that she might live.
Broad daylight and a hint of sunshine high on the cliff-rim to the west
brought him to consideration of what he had better do. And while busy with his
few camp tasks he revolved the thing in his mind. It would not be wise for him to
remain long in his present hiding-place. And if he intended to follow the cattle
trail and try to find the rustlers he had better make a move at once. For he knew
that rustlers, being riders, would not make much of a day's or night's absence
from camp for one or two of their number; but when the missing ones failed to
show up in reasonable time there would be a search. And Venters was afraid of
that.
“A good tracker could trail me,” he muttered. “And I'd be cornered here.
Let's see. Rustlers are a lazy set when they're not on the ride. I'll risk it. Then I'll
change my hiding-place.”
He carefully cleaned and reloaded his guns. When he rose to go he bent a
long glance down upon the unconscious girl. Then ordering Whitie and Ring to
keep guard, he left the camp.
The safest cover lay close under the wall of the canyon, and here through
the dense thickets Venters made his slow, listening advance toward the oval.
Upon gaining the wide opening he decided to cross it and follow the left wall till
he came to the cattle trail. He scanned the oval as keenly as if hunting for
antelope. Then, stooping, he stole from one cover to another, taking advantage of
42
www.obooko.com
rocks and bunches of sage, until he had reached the thickets under the opposite
wall. Once there, he exercised extreme caution in his surveys of the ground
ahead, but increased his speed when moving. Dodging from bush to bush, he
passed the mouths of two canyons, and in the entrance of a third canyon he
crossed a wash of swift clear water, to come abruptly upon the cattle trail.
It followed the low bank of the wash, and, keeping it in sight, Venters
hugged the line of sage and thicket. Like the curves of a serpent the canyon
wound for a mile or more and then opened into a valley. Patches of red showed
clear against the purple of sage, and farther out on the level dotted strings of red
led away to the wall of rock.
“Ha, the red herd!” exclaimed Venters.
Then dots of white and black told him there were cattle of other colors in
this inclosed valley. Oldring, the rustler, was also a rancher. Venters's calculating
eye took count of stock that outnumbered the red herd.
“What a range!” went on Venters. “Water and grass enough for fifty
thousand head, and no riders needed!”
After his first burst of surprise and rapid calculation Venters lost no time
there, but slunk again into the sage on his back trail. With the discovery of
Oldring's hidden cattle-range had come enlightenment on several problems. Here
the rustler kept his stock, here was Jane Withersteen's red herd; here were the
few cattle that had disappeared from the Cottonwoods slopes during the last two
years. Until Oldring had driven the red herd his thefts of cattle for that time had
not been more than enough to supply meat for his men. Of late no drives had
been reported from Sterling or the villages north. And Venters knew that the
riders had wondered at Oldring's inactivity in that particular field. He and his
band had been active enough in their visits to Glaze and Cottonwoods; they
always had gold; but of late the amount gambled away and drunk and thrown
away in the villages had given rise to much conjecture. Oldring's more frequent
visits had resulted in new saloons, and where there had formerly been one raid
or shooting fray in the little hamlets there were now many. Perhaps Oldring had
another range farther on up the pass, and from there drove the cattle to distant
Utah towns where he was little known But Venters came finally to doubt this.
And, from what he had learned in the last few days, a belief began to form in
Venters's mind that Oldring's intimidations of the villages and the mystery of the
Masked Rider, with his alleged evil deeds, and the fierce resistance offered any
trailing riders, and the rustling of cattle—these things were only the craft of the
rustler-chief to conceal his real life and purpose and work in Deception Pass.
43
And like a scouting Indian Venters crawled through the sage of the oval
valley, crossed trail after trail on the north side, and at last entered the canyon
out of which headed the cattle trail, and into which he had watched the rustlers
disappear.
If he had used caution before, now he strained every nerve to force himself
to creeping stealth and to sensitiveness of ear. He crawled along so hidden that
he could not use his eyes except to aid himself in the toilsome progress through
the brakes and ruins of cliff-wall. Yet from time to time, as he rested, he saw the
massive red walls growing higher and wilder, more looming and broken. He
made note of the fact that he was turning and climbing. The sage and thickets of
oak and brakes of alder gave place to pinyon pine growing out of rocky soil.
Suddenly a low, dull murmur assailed his ears. At first he thought it was thunder,
then the slipping of a weathered slope of rock. But it was incessant, and as he
progressed it filled out deeper and from a murmur changed into a soft roar.
“Falling water,” he said. “There's volume to that. I wonder if it's the stream
I lost.”
The roar bothered him, for he could hear nothing else. Likewise, however,
no rustlers could hear him. Emboldened by this and sure that nothing but a bird
could see him, he arose from his hands and knees to hurry on. An opening in the
pinyons warned him that he was nearing the height of slope.
He gained it, and dropped low with a burst of astonishment. Before him
stretched a short canyon with rounded stone floor bare of grass or sage or tree,
and with curved, shelving walls. A broad rippling stream flowed toward him, and
at the back of the canyon waterfall burst from a wide rent in the cliff, and,
bounding down in two green steps, spread into a long white sheet.
If Venters had not been indubitably certain that he had entered the right
canyon his astonishment would not have been so great. There had been no
breaks in the walls, no side canyons entering this one where the rustlers' tracks
and the cattle trail had guided him, and, therefore, he could not be wrong. But
here the canyon ended, and presumably the trails also.
“That cattle trail headed out of here,” Venters kept saying to himself. “It
headed out. Now what I want to know is how on earth did cattle ever get in
here?”
If he could be sure of anything it was of the careful scrutiny he had given
that cattle track, every hoofmark of which headed straight west. He was now
looking east at an immense round boxed corner of canyon down which tumbled a
thin, white veil of water, scarcely twenty yards wide. Somehow, somewhere, his
calculations had gone wrong. For the first time in years he found himself
44
www.obooko.com
doubting his rider's skill in finding tracks, and his memory of what he had
actually seen. In his anxiety to keep under cover he must have lost himself in this
offshoot of Deception Pass, and thereby in some unaccountable manner, missed
the canyon with the trails. There was nothing else for him to think. Rustlers could
not fly, nor cattle jump down thousand-foot precipices. He was only proving what
the sage-riders had long said of this labyrinthine system of deceitful canyons and
valleys—trails led down into Deception Pass, but no rider had ever followed
them.
On a sudden he heard above the soft roar of the waterfall an unusual
sound that he could not define. He dropped flat behind a stone and listened. From
the direction he had come swelled something that resembled a strange muffled
pounding and splashing and ringing. Despite his nerve the chill sweat began to
dampen his forehead. What might not be possible in this stonewalled maze of
mystery? The unnatural sound passed beyond him as he lay gripping his rifle and
fighting for coolness. Then from the open came the sound, now distinct and
different. Venters recognized a hobble-bell of a horse, and the cracking of iron on
submerged stones, and the hollow splash of hoofs in water.
Relief surged over him. His mind caught again at realities, and curiosity
prompted him to peep from behind the rock.
In the middle of the stream waded a long string of packed burros driven by
three superbly mounted men. Had Venters met these dark-clothed, dark-visaged,
heavily armed men anywhere in Utah, let alone in this robbers' retreat, he would
have recognized them as rustlers. The discerning eye of a rider saw the signs of a
long, arduous trip. These men were packing in supplies from one of the northern
villages. They were tired, and their horses were almost played out, and the
burros plodded on, after the manner of their kind when exhausted, faithful and
patient, but as if every weary, splashing, slipping step would be their last.
All this Venters noted in one glance. After that he watched with a thrilling
eagerness. Straight at the waterfall the rustlers drove the burros, and straight
through the middle, where the water spread into a fleecy, thin film like dissolving
smoke. Following closely, the rustlers rode into this white mist, showing in bold
black relief for an instant, and then they vanished.
Venters drew a full breath that rushed out in brief and sudden utterance.
“Good Heaven! Of all the holes for a rustler!... There's a cavern under that
waterfall, and a passageway leading out to a canyon beyond. Oldring hides in
there. He needs only to guard a trail leading down from the sage-flat above. Little
danger of this outlet to the pass being discovered. I stumbled on it by luck, after I
45
had given up. And now I know the truth of what puzzled me most—why that
cattle trail was wet!”
He wheeled and ran down the slope, and out to the level of the sage-brush.
Returning, he had no time to spare, only now and then, between dashes, a
moment when he stopped to cast sharp eyes ahead. The abundant grass left no
trace of his trail. Short work he made of the distance to the circle of canyons. He
doubted that he would ever see it again; he knew he never wanted to; yet he
looked at the red corners and towers with the eyes of a rider picturing landmarks
never to be forgotten.
Here he spent a panting moment in a slow-circling gaze of the sage-oval
and the gaps between the bluffs. Nothing stirred except the gentle wave of the
tips of the brush. Then he pressed on past the mouths of several canyons and
over ground new to him, now close under the eastern wall. This latter part
proved to be easy traveling, well screened from possible observation from the
north and west, and he soon covered it and felt safer in the deepening shade of
his own canyon. Then the huge, notched bulge of red rim loomed over him, a
mark by which he knew again the deep cove where his camp lay hidden. As he
penetrated the thicket, safe again for the present, his thoughts reverted to the girl
he had left there. The afternoon had far advanced. How would he find her? He ran
into camp, frightening the dogs.
The girl lay with wide-open, dark eyes, and they dilated when he knelt
beside her. The flush of fever shone in her cheeks. He lifted her and held water to
her dry lips, and felt an inexplicable sense of lightness as he saw her swallow in a
slow, choking gulp. Gently he laid her back.
“Who—are—you?” she whispered, haltingly.
“I'm the man who shot you,” he replied.
“You'll—not—kill me—now?”
“No, no.”
“What—will—you—do—with me?”
“When you get better—strong enough—I'll take you back to the canyon
where the rustlers ride through the waterfall.”
As with a faint shadow from a flitting wing overhead, the marble
whiteness of her face seemed to change.
“Don't—take—me—back—there!”
46
www.obooko.com
CHAPTER VI. THE MILL-WHEEL OF STEERS
Meantime, at the ranch, when Judkins's news had sent Venters on the trail
of the rustlers, Jane Withersteen led the injured man to her house and with
skilled fingers dressed the gunshot wound in his arm.
“Judkins, what do you think happened to my riders?”
“I—I d rather not say,” he replied.
“Tell me. Whatever you'll tell me I'll keep to myself. I'm beginning to worry
about more than the loss of a herd of cattle. Venters hinted of—but tell me,
Judkins.”
“Well, Miss Withersteen, I think as Venters thinks—your riders have been
called in.”
“Judkins!... By whom?”
“You know who handles the reins of your Mormon riders.”
“Do you dare insinuate that my churchmen have ordered in my riders?”
“I ain't insinuatin' nothin', Miss Withersteen,” answered Judkins, with
spirit. “I know what I'm talking about. I didn't want to tell you.”
“Oh, I can't believe that! I'll not believe it! Would Tull leave my herds at the
mercy of rustlers and wolves just because—because—? No, no! It's
unbelievable.”
“Yes, thet particular thing's onheard of around Cottonwoods But, beggin'
pardon, Miss Withersteen, there never was any other rich Mormon woman here
on the border, let alone one thet's taken the bit between her teeth.”
That was a bold thing for the reserved Judkins to say, but it did not anger
her. This rider's crude hint of her spirit gave her a glimpse of what others might
think. Humility and obedience had been hers always. But had she taken the bit
between her teeth? Still she wavered. And then, with quick spurt of warm blood
along her veins, she thought of Black Star when he got the bit fast between his
iron jaws and ran wild in the sage. If she ever started to run! Jane smothered the
glow and burn within her, ashamed of a passion for freedom that opposed her
duty.
“Judkins, go to the village,” she said, “and when you have learned anything
definite about my riders please come to me at once.”
When he had gone Jane resolutely applied her mind to a number of tasks
that of late had been neglected. Her father had trained her in the management of
a hundred employees and the working of gardens and fields; and to keep record
of the movements of cattle and riders. And beside the many duties she had added
to this work was one of extreme delicacy, such as required all her tact and
47
ingenuity. It was an unobtrusive, almost secret aid which she rendered to the
Gentile families of the village. Though Jane Withersteen never admitted so to
herself, it amounted to no less than a system of charity. But for her invention of
numberless kinds of employment, for which there was no actual need, these
families of Gentiles, who had failed in a Mormon community, would have starved.
In aiding these poor people Jane thought she deceived her keen
churchmen, but it was a kind of deceit for which she did not pray to be forgiven.
Equally as difficult was the task of deceiving the Gentiles, for they were as proud
as they were poor. It had been a great grief to her to discover how these people
hated her people; and it had been a source of great joy that through her they had
come to soften in hatred. At any time this work called for a clearness of mind that
precluded anxiety and worry; but under the present circumstances it required all
her vigor and obstinate tenacity to pin her attention upon her task.
Sunset came, bringing with the end of her labor a patient calmness and
power to wait that had not been hers earlier in the day. She expected Judkins, but
he did not appear. Her house was always quiet; to-night, however, it seemed
unusually so. At supper her women served her with a silent assiduity; it spoke
what their sealed lips could not utter—the sympathy of Mormon women. Jerd
came to her with the key of the great door of the stone stable, and to make his
daily report about the horses. One of his daily duties was to give Black Star and
Night and the other racers a ten-mile run. This day it had been omitted, and the
boy grew confused in explanations that she had not asked for. She did inquire if
he would return on the morrow, and Jerd, in mingled surprise and relief, assured
her he would always work for her. Jane missed the rattle and trot, canter and
gallop of the incoming riders on the hard trails. Dusk shaded the grove where she
walked; the birds ceased singing; the wind sighed through the leaves of the
cottonwoods, and the running water murmured down its stone-bedded channel.
The glimmering of the first star was like the peace and beauty of the night. Her
faith welled up in her heart and said that all would soon be right in her little
world. She pictured Venters about his lonely camp-fire sitting between his
faithful dogs. She prayed for his safety, for the success of his undertaking.
Early the next morning one of Jane's women brought in word that Judkins
wished to speak to her. She hurried out, and in her surprise to see him armed
with rifle and revolver, she forgot her intention to inquire about his wound.
“Judkins! Those guns? You never carried guns.”
“It's high time, Miss Withersteen,” he replied. “Will you come into the
grove? It ain't jest exactly safe for me to be seen here.”
She walked with him into the shade of the cottonwoods.
48
www.obooko.com
“What do you mean?”

“Miss Withersteen, I went to my mother's house last night. While there,
some one knocked, an' a man asked for me. I went to the door. He wore a mask.
He said I'd better not ride any more for Jane Withersteen. His voice was hoarse
an' strange, disguised I reckon, like his face. He said no more, an' ran off in the
dark.”
“Did you know who he was?” asked Jane, in a low voice.
“Yes.”
Jane did not ask to know; she did not want to know; she feared to know.
All her calmness fled at a single thought.
“Thet's why I'm packin' guns,” went on Judkins. “For I'll never quit ridin'
for you, Miss Withersteen, till you let me go.”
“Judkins, do you want to leave me?”
“Do I look thet way? Give me a hoss—a fast hoss, an' send me out on the
sage.”
“Oh, thank you, Judkins! You're more faithful than my own people. I ought
not accept your loyalty—you might suffer more through it. But what in the world
can I do? My head whirls. The wrong to Venters—the stolen herd—these masks,
threats, this coil in the dark! I can't understand! But I feel something dark and
terrible closing in around me.”
“Miss Withersteen, it's all simple enough,” said Judkins, earnestly. “Now
please listen—an' beggin' your pardon—jest turn thet deaf Mormon ear aside,
an' let me talk clear an' plain in the other. I went around to the saloons an' the
stores an' the loafin' places yesterday. All your riders are in. There's talk of a
vigilance band organized to hunt down rustlers. They call themselves 'The
Riders.' Thet's the report—thet's the reason given for your riders leavin' you.
Strange thet only a few riders of other ranchers joined the band! An' Tull's man,
Jerry Card—he's the leader. I seen him en' his hoss. He 'ain't been to Glaze. I'm
not easy to fool on the looks of a hoss thet's traveled the sage. Tull an' Jerry didn't
ride to Glaze!... Well, I met Blake en' Dorn, both good friends of mine, usually, as
far as their Mormon lights will let 'em go. But these fellers couldn't fool me, an'
they didn't try very hard. I asked them, straight out like a man, why they left you
like thet. I didn't forget to mention how you nursed Blake's poor old mother
when she was sick, an' how good you was to Dorn's kids. They looked ashamed,
Miss Withersteen. An' they jest froze up—thet dark set look thet makes them
strange an' different to me. But I could tell the difference between thet first
natural twinge of conscience an' the later look of some secret thing. An' the
difference I caught was thet they couldn't help themselves. They hadn't no say in
49
the matter. They looked as if their bein' unfaithful to you was bein' faithful to a
higher duty. An' there's the secret. Why it's as plain as—as sight of my gun here.”
“Plain!... My herds to wander in the sage—to be stolen! Jane Withersteen a
poor woman! Her head to be brought low and her spirit broken!... Why, Judkins,
it's plain enough.”
“Miss Withersteen, let me get what boys I can gather, an' hold the white
herd. It's on the slope now, not ten miles out—three thousand head, an' all steers.
They're wild, an' likely to stampede at the pop of a jack-rabbit's ears. We'll camp
right with them, en' try to hold them.”
“Judkins, I'll reward you some day for your service, unless all is taken from
me. Get the boys and tell Jerd to give you pick of my horses, except Black Star and
Night. But—do not shed blood for my cattle nor heedlessly risk your lives.”
Jane Withersteen rushed to the silence and seclusion of her room, and
there could not longer hold back the bursting of her wrath. She went stone-blind
in the fury of a passion that had never before showed its power. Lying upon her
bed, sightless, voiceless, she was a writhing, living flame. And she tossed there
while her fury burned and burned, and finally burned itself out.
Then, weak and spent, she lay thinking, not of the oppression that would
break her, but of this new revelation of self. Until the last few days there had
been little in her life to rouse passions. Her forefathers had been Vikings, savage
chieftains who bore no cross and brooked no hindrance to their will. Her father
had inherited that temper; and at times, like antelope fleeing before fire on the
slope, his people fled from his red rages. Jane Withersteen realized that the spirit
of wrath and war had lain dormant in her. She shrank from black depths hitherto
unsuspected. The one thing in man or woman that she scorned above all scorn,
and which she could not forgive, was hate. Hate headed a flaming pathway
straight to hell. All in a flash, beyond her control there had been in her a birth of
fiery hate. And the man who had dragged her peaceful and loving spirit to this
degradation was a minister of God's word, an Elder of her church, the counselor
of her beloved Bishop.
The loss of herds and ranges, even of Amber Spring and the Old Stone
House, no longer concerned Jane Withersteen, she faced the foremost thought of
her life, what she now considered the mightiest problem—the salvation of her
soul.
She knelt by her bedside and prayed; she prayed as she had never prayed
in all her life—prayed to be forgiven for her sin to be immune from that dark, hot
hate; to love Tull as her minister, though she could not love him as a man; to do
50
www.obooko.com
her duty by her church and people and those dependent upon her bounty; to hold
reverence of God and womanhood inviolate.
When Jane Withersteen rose from that storm of wrath and prayer for help
she was serene, calm, sure—a changed woman. She would do her duty as she saw
it, live her life as her own truth guided her. She might never be able to marry a
man of her choice, but she certainly never would become the wife of Tull. Her
churchmen might take her cattle and horses, ranges and fields, her corrals and
stables, the house of Withersteen and the water that nourished the village of
Cottonwoods; but they could not force her to marry Tull, they could not change
her decision or break her spirit. Once resigned to further loss, and sure of herself,
Jane Withersteen attained a peace of mind that had not been hers for a year. She
forgave Tull, and felt a melancholy regret over what she knew he considered
duty, irrespective of his personal feeling for her. First of all, Tull, as he was a man,
wanted her for himself; and secondly, he hoped to save her and her riches for his
church. She did not believe that Tull had been actuated solely by his minister's
zeal to save her soul. She doubted her interpretation of one of his dark sayings—
that if she were lost to him she might as well be lost to heaven. Jane
Withersteen's common sense took arms against the binding limits of her religion;
and she doubted that her Bishop, whom she had been taught had direct
communication with God—would damn her soul for refusing to marry a
Mormon. As for Tull and his churchmen, when they had harassed her, perhaps
made her poor, they would find her unchangeable, and then she would get back
most of what she had lost. So she reasoned, true at last to her faith in all men, and
in their ultimate goodness.
The clank of iron hoofs upon the stone courtyard drew her hurriedly from
her retirement. There, beside his horse, stood Lassiter, his dark apparel and the
great black gun-sheaths contrasting singularly with his gentle smile. Jane's active
mind took up her interest in him and her half-determined desire to use what
charm she had to foil his evident design in visiting Cottonwoods. If she could
mitigate his hatred of Mormons, or at least keep him from killing more of them,
not only would she be saving her people, but also be leading back this
bloodspiller to some semblance of the human.
“Mornin', ma'am,” he said, black sombrero in hand.
“Lassiter I'm not an old woman, or even a madam,” she replied, with her
bright smile. “If you can't say Miss Withersteen—call me Jane.”
“I reckon Jane would be easier. First names are always handy for me.”
“Well, use mine, then. Lassiter, I'm glad to see you. I'm in trouble.”
51
Then she told him of Judkins's return, of the driving of the red herd, of
Venters's departure on Wrangle, and the calling-in of her riders.
“'Pears to me you're some smilin' an' pretty for a woman with so much
trouble,” he remarked.
“Lassiter! Are you paying me compliments? But, seriously I've made up my
mind not to be miserable. I've lost much, and I'll lose more. Nevertheless, I won't
be sour, and I hope I'll never be unhappy—again.”
Lassiter twisted his hat round and round, as was his way, and took his time
in replying.
“Women are strange to me. I got to back-trailin' myself from them long
ago. But I'd like a game woman. Might I ask, seein' as how you take this trouble, if
you're goin' to fight?”
“Fight! How? Even if I would, I haven't a friend except that boy who
doesn't dare stay in the village.”
“I make bold to say, ma'am—Jane—that there's another, if you want him.”
“Lassiter!... Thank you. But how can I accept you as a friend? Think! Why,
you'd ride down into the village with those terrible guns and kill my enemies—
who are also my churchmen.”
“I reckon I might be riled up to jest about that,” he replied, dryly.
She held out both hands to him.
“Lassiter! I'll accept your friendship—be proud of it—return it—if I may
keep you from killing another Mormon.”
“I'll tell you one thing,” he said, bluntly, as the gray lightning formed in his
eyes. “You're too good a woman to be sacrificed as you're goin' to be.... No, I
reckon you an' me can't be friends on such terms.”
In her earnestness she stepped closer to him, repelled yet fascinated by
the sudden transition of his moods. That he would fight for her was at once
horrible and wonderful.
“You came here to kill a man—the man whom Milly Erne—”
“The man who dragged Milly Erne to hell—put it that way!... Jane
Withersteen, yes, that's why I came here. I'd tell so much to no other livin' soul....
There're things such a woman as you'd never dream of—so don't mention her
again. Not till you tell me the name of the man!”
“Tell you! I? Never!”
“I reckon you will. An' I'll never ask you. I'm a man of strange beliefs an'
ways of thinkin', an' I seem to see into the future an' feel things hard to explain.
The trail I've been followin' for so many years was twisted en' tangled, but it's
straightenin' out now. An', Jane Withersteen, you crossed it long ago to ease poor
52
www.obooko.com
Milly's agony. That, whether you want or not, makes Lassiter your friend. But you
cross it now strangely to mean somethin to me—God knows what!—unless by
your noble blindness to incite me to greater hatred of Mormon men.”
Jane felt swayed by a strength that far exceeded her own. In a clash of wills
with this man she would go to the wall. If she were to influence him it must be
wholly through womanly allurement. There was that about Lassiter which
commanded her respect. She had abhorred his name; face to face with him, she
found she feared only his deeds. His mystic suggestion, his foreshadowing of
something that she was to mean to him, pierced deep into her mind. She believed
fate had thrown in her way the lover or husband of Milly Erne. She believed that
through her an evil man might be reclaimed. His allusion to what he called her
blindness terrified her. Such a mistaken idea of his might unleash the bitter, fatal
mood she sensed in him. At any cost she must placate this man; she knew the die
was cast, and that if Lassiter did not soften to a woman's grace and beauty and
wiles, then it would be because she could not make him.
“I reckon you'll hear no more such talk from me,” Lassiter went on,
presently. “Now, Miss Jane, I rode in to tell you that your herd of white steers is
down on the slope behind them big ridges. An' I seen somethin' goin' on that'd be
mighty interestin' to you, if you could see it. Have you a field-glass?”
“Yes, I have two glasses. I'll get them and ride out with you. Wait, Lassiter,
please,” she said, and hurried within. Sending word to Jerd to saddle Black Star
and fetch him to the court, she then went to her room and changed to the riding-
clothes she always donned when going into the sage. In this male attire her
mirror showed her a jaunty, handsome rider. If she expected some little need of
admiration from Lassiter, she had no cause for disappointment. The gentle smile
that she liked, which made of him another person, slowly overspread his face.
“If I didn't take you for a boy!” he exclaimed. “It's powerful queer what
difference clothes make. Now I've been some scared of your dignity, like when
the other night you was all in white but in this rig—”
Black Star came pounding into the court, dragging Jerd half off his feet, and
he whistled at Lassiter's black. But at sight of Jane all his defiant lines seemed to
soften, and with tosses of his beautiful head he whipped his bridle.
“Down, Black Star, down,” said Jane.
He dropped his head, and, slowly lengthening, he bent one foreleg, then
the other, and sank to his knees. Jane slipped her left foot in the stirrup, swung
lightly into the saddle, and Black Star rose with a ringing stamp. It was not easy
for Jane to hold him to a canter through the grove, and like the wind he broke
when he saw the sage. Jane let him have a couple of miles of free running on the
53
open trail, and then she coaxed him in and waited for her companion. Lassiter
was not long in catching up, and presently they were riding side by side. It
reminded her how she used to ride with Venters. Where was he now? She gazed
far down the slope to the curved purple lines of Deception Pass and involuntarily
shut her eyes with a trembling stir of nameless fear.
“We'll turn off here,” Lassiter said, “en' take to the sage a mile or so. The
white herd is behind them big ridges.”
“What are you going to show me?” asked Jane. “I'm prepared—don't be
afraid.”
He smiled as if he meant that bad news came swiftly enough without being
presaged by speech.
When they reached the lee of a rolling ridge Lassiter dismounted,
motioning to her to do likewise. They left the horses standing, bridles down.
Then Lassiter, carrying the field-glasses began to lead the way up the slow rise of
ground. Upon nearing the summit he halted her with a gesture.
“I reckon we'd see more if we didn't show ourselves against the sky,” he
said. “I was here less than an hour ago. Then the herd was seven or eight miles
south, an' if they ain't bolted yet—”
“Lassiter!... Bolted?”
“That's what I said. Now let's see.”
Jane climbed a few more paces behind him and then peeped over the ridge.
Just beyond began a shallow swale that deepened and widened into a valley and
then swung to the left. Following the undulating sweep of sage, Jane saw the
straggling lines and then the great body of the white herd. She knew enough
about steers, even at a distance of four or five miles, to realize that something
was in the wind. Bringing her field-glass into use, she moved it slowly from left to
right, which action swept the whole herd into range. The stragglers were
restless; the more compactly massed steers were browsing. Jane brought the
glass back to the big sentinels of the herd, and she saw them trot with quick
steps, stop short and toss wide horns, look everywhere, and then trot in another
direction.
“Judkins hasn't been able to get his boys together yet,” said Jane. “But he'll
be there soon. I hope not too late. Lassiter, what's frightening those big leaders?”
“Nothin' jest on the minute,” replied Lassiter. “Them steers are quietin'
down. They've been scared, but not bad yet. I reckon the whole herd has moved a
few miles this way since I was here.”
“They didn't browse that distance—not in less than an hour. Cattle aren't
sheep.”
54
www.obooko.com
“No, they jest run it, en' that looks bad.”

“Lassiter, what frightened them?” repeated Jane, impatiently.
“Put down your glass. You'll see at first better with a naked eye. Now look
along them ridges on the other side of the herd, the ridges where the sun shines
bright on the sage.... That's right. Now look en' look hard en' wait.”
Long-drawn moments of straining sight rewarded Jane with nothing save
the low, purple rim of ridge and the shimmering sage.
“It's begun again!” whispered Lassiter, and he gripped her arm. “Watch....
There, did you see that?”
“No, no. Tell me what to look for?”
“A white flash—a kind of pin-point of quick light—a gleam as from sun
shinin' on somethin' white.”
Suddenly Jane's concentrated gaze caught a fleeting glint. Quickly she
brought her glass to bear on the spot. Again the purple sage, magnified in color
and size and wave, for long moments irritated her with its monotony. Then from
out of the sage on the ridge flew up a broad, white object, flashed in the sunlight
and vanished. Like magic it was, and bewildered Jane.
“What on earth is that?”
“I reckon there's some one behind that ridge throwin' up a sheet or a white
blanket to reflect the sunshine.”
“Why?” queried Jane, more bewildered than ever.
“To stampede the herd,” replied Lassiter, and his teeth clicked.
“Ah!” She made a fierce, passionate movement, clutched the glass tightly,
shook as with the passing of a spasm, and then dropped her head. Presently she
raised it to greet Lassiter with something like a smile. “My righteous brethren are
at work again,” she said, in scorn. She had stifled the leap of her wrath, but for
perhaps the first time in her life a bitter derision curled her lips. Lassiter's cool
gray eyes seemed to pierce her. “I said I was prepared for anything; but that was
hardly true. But why would they—anybody stampede my cattle?”
“That's a Mormon's godly way of bringin' a woman to her knees.”
“Lassiter, I'll die before I ever bend my knees. I might be led I won't be
driven. Do you expect the herd to bolt?”
“I don't like the looks of them big steers. But you can never tell. Cattle
sometimes stampede as easily as buffalo. Any little flash or move will start them.
A rider gettin' down an' walkin' toward them sometimes will make them jump
an' fly. Then again nothin' seems to scare them. But I reckon that white flare will
do the biz. It's a new one on me, an' I've seen some ridin' an' rustlin'. It jest takes
one of them God-fearin' Mormons to think of devilish tricks.”
55
“Lassiter, might not this trick be done by Oldring's men?” asked Jane, ever
grasping at straws.
“It might be, but it ain't,” replied Lassiter. “Oldring's an honest thief. He
don't skulk behind ridges to scatter your cattle to the four winds. He rides down
on you, an' if you don't like it you can throw a gun.”
Jane bit her tongue to refrain from championing men who at the very
moment were proving to her that they were little and mean compared even with
rustlers.
“Look!... Jane, them leadin' steers have bolted. They're drawin' the
stragglers, an' that'll pull the whole herd.”
Jane was not quick enough to catch the details called out by Lassiter, but
she saw the line of cattle lengthening. Then, like a stream of white bees pouring
from a huge swarm, the steers stretched out from the main body. In a few
moments, with astonishing rapidity, the whole herd got into motion. A faint roar
of trampling hoofs came to Jane's ears, and gradually swelled; low, rolling clouds
of dust began to rise above the sage.
“It's a stampede, an' a hummer,” said Lassiter.
“Oh, Lassiter! The herd's running with the valley! It leads into the canyon!
There's a straight jump-off!”
“I reckon they'll run into it, too. But that's a good many miles yet. An', Jane,
this valley swings round almost north before it goes east. That stampede will
pass within a mile of us.”
The long, white, bobbing line of steers streaked swiftly through the sage,
and a funnel-shaped dust-cloud arose at a low angle. A dull rumbling filled Jane's
ears.
“I'm thinkin' of millin' that herd,” said Lassiter. His gray glance swept up
the slope to the west. “There's some specks an' dust way off toward the village.
Mebbe that's Judkins an' his boys. It ain't likely he'll get here in time to help.
You'd better hold Black Star here on this high ridge.”
He ran to his horse and, throwing off saddle-bags and tightening the
cinches, he leaped astride and galloped straight down across the valley.
Jane went for Black Star and, leading him to the summit of the ridge, she
mounted and faced the valley with excitement and expectancy. She had heard of
milling stampeded cattle, and knew it was a feat accomplished by only the most
daring riders.
The white herd was now strung out in a line two miles long. The dull
rumble of thousands of hoofs deepened into continuous low thunder, and as the
steers swept swiftly closer the thunder became a heavy roll. Lassiter crossed in a
56
www.obooko.com
few moments the level of the valley to the eastern rise of ground and there
waited the coming of the herd. Presently, as the head of the white line reached a
point opposite to where Jane stood, Lassiter spurred his black into a run.
Jane saw him take a position on the off side of the leaders of the stampede,
and there he rode. It was like a race. They swept on down the valley, and when
the end of the white line neared Lassiter's first stand the head had begun to
swing round to the west. It swung slowly and stubbornly, yet surely, and
gradually assumed a long, beautiful curve of moving white. To Jane's amaze she
saw the leaders swinging, turning till they headed back toward her and up the
valley. Out to the right of these wild plunging steers ran Lassiter's black, and
Jane's keen eye appreciated the fleet stride and sure-footedness of the blind
horse. Then it seemed that the herd moved in a great curve, a huge half-moon
with the points of head and tail almost opposite, and a mile apart But Lassiter
relentlessly crowded the leaders, sheering them to the left, turning them little by
little. And the dust-blinded wild followers plunged on madly in the tracks of their
leaders. This ever-moving, ever-changing curve of steers rolled toward Jane and
when below her, scarce half a mile, it began to narrow and close into a circle.
Lassiter had ridden parallel with her position, turned toward her, then aside, and
now he was riding directly away from her, all the time pushing the head of that
bobbing line inward.
It was then that Jane, suddenly understanding Lassiter's feat stared and
gasped at the riding of this intrepid man. His horse was fleet and tireless, but
blind. He had pushed the leaders around and around till they were about to turn
in on the inner side of the end of that line of steers. The leaders were already
running in a circle; the end of the herd was still running almost straight. But soon
they would be wheeling. Then, when Lassiter had the circle formed, how would
he escape? With Jane Withersteen prayer was as ready as praise; and she prayed
for this man's safety. A circle of dust began to collect. Dimly, as through a yellow
veil, Jane saw Lassiter press the leaders inward to close the gap in the sage. She
lost sight of him in the dust, again she thought she saw the black, riderless now,
rear and drag himself and fall. Lassiter had been thrown—lost! Then he
reappeared running out of the dust into the sage. He had escaped, and she
breathed again.
Spellbound, Jane Withersteen watched this stupendous millwheel of
steers. Here was the milling of the herd. The white running circle closed in upon
the open space of sage. And the dust circles closed above into a pall. The ground
quaked and the incessant thunder of pounding hoofs rolled on. Jane felt
deafened, yet she thrilled to a new sound. As the circle of sage lessened the steers
57
began to bawl, and when it closed entirely there came a great upheaval in the
center, and a terrible thumping of heads and clicking of horns. Bawling, climbing,
goring, the great mass of steers on the inside wrestled in a crashing din, heaved
and groaned under the pressure. Then came a deadlock. The inner strife ceased,
and the hideous roar and crash. Movement went on in the outer circle, and that,
too, gradually stilled. The white herd had come to a stop, and the pall of yellow
dust began to drift away on the wind.
Jane Withersteen waited on the ridge with full and grateful heart. Lassiter
appeared, making his weary way toward her through the sage. And up on the
slope Judkins rode into sight with his troop of boys. For the present, at least, the
white herd would be looked after.
When Lassiter reached her and laid his hand on Black Star's mane, Jane
could not find speech.
“Killed—my—hoss,” he panted.
“Oh! I'm sorry,” cried Jane. “Lassiter! I know you can't replace him, but I'll
give you any one of my racers—Bells, or Night, even Black Star.”
“I'll take a fast hoss, Jane, but not one of your favorites,” he replied.
“Only—will you let me have Black Star now an' ride him over there an' head off
them fellers who stampeded the herd?”
He pointed to several moving specks of black and puffs of dust in the
purple sage.
“I can head them off with this hoss, an' then—”
“Then, Lassiter?”
“They'll never stampede no more cattle.”
“Oh! No! No!... Lassiter, I won't let you go!”
But a flush of fire flamed in her cheeks, and her trembling hands shook
Black Star's bridle, and her eyes fell before Lassiter's.
CHAPTER VII. THE DAUGHTER OF WITHERSTEEN
“Lassiter, will you be my rider?” Jane had asked him.

“I reckon so,” he had replied.
Few as the words were, Jane knew how infinitely much they implied. She
wanted him to take charge of her cattle and horse and ranges, and save them if
that were possible. Yet, though she could not have spoken aloud all she meant,
58
www.obooko.com
she was perfectly honest with herself. Whatever the price to be paid, she must
keep Lassiter close to her; she must shield from him the man who had led Milly
Erne to Cottonwoods. In her fear she so controlled her mind that she did not
whisper this Mormon's name to her own soul, she did not even think it. Besides,
beyond this thing she regarded as a sacred obligation thrust upon her, was the
need of a helper, of a friend, of a champion in this critical time. If she could rule
this gun-man, as Venters had called him, if she could even keep him from
shedding blood, what strategy to play his flame and his presence against the
game of oppression her churchmen were waging against her? Never would she
forget the effect on Tull and his men when Venters shouted Lassiter's name. If
she could not wholly control Lassiter, then what she could do might put off the
fatal day.
One of her safe racers was a dark bay, and she called him Bells because of
the way he struck his iron shoes on the stones. When Jerd led out this slender,
beautifully built horse Lassiter suddenly became all eyes. A rider's love of a
thoroughbred shone in them. Round and round Bells he walked, plainly
weakening all the time in his determination not to take one of Jane's favorite
racers.
“Lassiter, you're half horse, and Bells sees it already,” said Jane, laughing.
“Look at his eyes. He likes you. He'll love you, too. How can you resist him? Oh,
Lassiter, but Bells can run! It's nip and tuck between him and Wrangle, and only
Black Star can beat him. He's too spirited a horse for a woman. Take him. He's
yours.”
“I jest am weak where a hoss's concerned,” said Lassiter. “I'll take him, an'
I'll take your orders, ma'am.”
“Well, I'm glad, but never mind the ma'am. Let it still be Jane.”
From that hour, it seemed, Lassiter was always in the saddle, riding early
and late, and coincident with his part in Jane's affairs the days assumed their old
tranquillity. Her intelligence told her this was only the lull before the storm, but
her faith would not have it so.
She resumed her visits to the village, and upon one of these she
encountered Tull. He greeted her as he had before any trouble came between
them, and she, responsive to peace if not quick to forget, met him halfway with
manner almost cheerful. He regretted the loss of her cattle; he assured her that
the vigilantes which had been organized would soon rout the rustlers; when that
had been accomplished her riders would likely return to her.
“You've done a headstrong thing to hire this man Lassiter,” Tull went on,
severely. “He came to Cottonwoods with evil intent.”
59
“I had to have somebody. And perhaps making him my rider may turn out
best in the end for the Mormons of Cottonwoods.”
“You mean to stay his hand?”
“I do—if I can.”
“A woman like you can do anything with a man. That would be well, and
would atone in some measure for the errors you have made.”
He bowed and passed on. Jane resumed her walk with conflicting thoughts.
She resented Elder Tull's cold, impassive manner that looked down upon her as
one who had incurred his just displeasure. Otherwise he would have been the
same calm, dark-browed, impenetrable man she had known for ten years. In fact,
except when he had revealed his passion in the matter of the seizing of Venters,
she had never dreamed he could be other than the grave, reproving preacher. He
stood out now a strange, secretive man. She would have thought better of him if
he had picked up the threads of their quarrel where they had parted. Was Tull
what he appeared to be? The question flung itself in-voluntarily over Jane
Withersteen's inhibitive habit of faith without question. And she refused to
answer it. Tull could not fight in the open. Venters had said, Lassiter had said,
that her Elder shirked fight and worked in the dark. Just now in this meeting Tull
had ignored the fact that he had sued, exhorted, demanded that she marry him.
He made no mention of Venters. His manner was that of the minister who had
been outraged, but who overlooked the frailties of a woman. Beyond question he
seemed unutterably aloof from all knowledge of pressure being brought to bear
upon her, absolutely guiltless of any connection with secret power over riders,
with night journeys, with rustlers and stampedes of cattle. And that convinced
her again of unjust suspicions. But it was convincement through an obstinate
faith. She shuddered as she accepted it, and that shudder was the nucleus of a
terrible revolt.
Jane turned into one of the wide lanes leading from the main street and
entered a huge, shady yard. Here were sweet-smelling clover, alfalfa, flowers, and
vegetables, all growing in happy confusion. And like these fresh green things
were the dozens of babies, tots, toddlers, noisy urchins, laughing girls, a whole
multitude of children of one family. For Collier Brandt, the father of all this
numerous progeny, was a Mormon with four wives.
The big house where they lived was old, solid, picturesque the lower part
built of logs, the upper of rough clapboards, with vines growing up the outside
stone chimneys. There were many wooden-shuttered windows, and one
pretentious window of glass proudly curtained in white. As this house had four
60
www.obooko.com
mistresses, it likewise had four separate sections, not one of which

communicated with another, and all had to be entered from the outside.
In the shade of a wide, low, vine-roofed porch Jane found Brandt's wives
entertaining Bishop Dyer. They were motherly women, of comparatively similar
ages, and plain-featured, and just at this moment anything but grave. The Bishop
was rather tall, of stout build, with iron-gray hair and beard, and eyes of light
blue. They were merry now; but Jane had seen them when they were not, and
then she feared him as she had feared her father.
The women flocked around her in welcome.
“Daughter of Withersteen,” said the Bishop, gaily, as he took her hand, “you
have not been prodigal of your gracious self of late. A Sabbath without you at
service! I shall reprove Elder Tull.”
“Bishop, the guilt is mine. I'll come to you and confess,” Jane replied,
lightly; but she felt the undercurrent of her words.
“Mormon love-making!” exclaimed the Bishop, rubbing his hands. “Tull
keeps you all to himself.”
“No. He is not courting me.”
“What? The laggard! If he does not make haste I'll go a-courting myself up
to Withersteen House.”
There was laughter and further bantering by the Bishop, and then mild
talk of village affairs, after which he took his leave, and Jane was left with her
friend, Mary Brandt.
“Jane, you're not yourself. Are you sad about the rustling of the cattle? But
you have so many, you are so rich.”
Then Jane confided in her, telling much, yet holding back her doubts of
fear.
“Oh, why don't you marry Tull and be one of us?
“But, Mary, I don't love Tull,” said Jane, stubbornly.
“I don't blame you for that. But, Jane Withersteen, you've got to choose
between the love of man and love of God. Often we Mormon women have to do
that. It's not easy. The kind of happiness you want I wanted once. I never got it,
nor will you, unless you throw away your soul. We've all watched your affair with
Venters in fear and trembling. Some dreadful thing will come of it. You don't
want him hanged or shot—or treated worse, as that Gentile boy was treated in
Glaze for fooling round a Mormon woman. Marry Tull. It's your duty as a
Mormon. You'll feel no rapture as his wife—but think of Heaven! Mormon
women don't marry for what they expect on earth. Take up the cross, Jane.
61
Remember your father found Amber Spring, built these old houses, brought
Mormons here, and fathered them. You are the daughter of Withersteen!”
Jane left Mary Brandt and went to call upon other friends. They received
her with the same glad welcome as had Mary, lavished upon her the pent-up
affection of Mormon women, and let her go with her ears ringing of Tull, Venters,
Lassiter, of duty to God and glory in Heaven.
“Verily,” murmured Jane, “I don't know myself when, through all this, I
remain unchanged—nay, more fixed of purpose.”
She returned to the main street and bent her thoughtful steps toward the
center of the village. A string of wagons drawn by oxen was lumbering along.
These “sage-freighters,” as they were called, hauled grain and flour and
merchandise from Sterling, and Jane laughed suddenly in the midst of her
humility at the thought that they were her property, as was one of the three
stores for which they freighted goods. The water that flowed along the path at
her feet, and turned into each cottage-yard to nourish garden and orchard, also
was hers, no less her private property because she chose to give it free. Yet in this
village of Cottonwoods, which her father had founded and which she maintained
she was not her own mistress; she was not able to abide by her own choice of a
husband. She was the daughter of Withersteen. Suppose she proved it,
imperiously! But she quelled that proud temptation at its birth.
Nothing could have replaced the affection which the village people had for
her; no power could have made her happy as the pleasure her presence gave. As
she went on down the street past the stores with their rude platform entrances,
and the saloons where tired horses stood with bridles dragging, she was again
assured of what was the bread and wine of life to her—that she was loved. Dirty
boys playing in the ditch, clerks, teamsters, riders, loungers on the corners,
ranchers on dusty horses, little girls running errands, and women hurrying to the
stores all looked up at her coming with glad eyes.
Jane's various calls and wandering steps at length led her to the Gentile
quarter of the village. This was at the extreme southern end, and here some
thirty Gentile families lived in huts and shacks and log-cabins and several
dilapidated cottages. The fortunes of these inhabitants of Cottonwoods could be
read in their abodes. Water they had in abundance, and therefore grass and fruit-
trees and patches of alfalfa and vegetable gardens. Some of the men and boys had
a few stray cattle, others obtained such intermittent employment as the
Mormons reluctantly tendered them. But none of the families was prosperous,
many were very poor, and some lived only by Jane Withersteen's beneficence.
62
www.obooko.com
As it made Jane happy to go among her own people, so it saddened her to

come in contact with these Gentiles. Yet that was not because she was
unwelcome; here she was gratefully received by the women, passionately by the
children. But poverty and idleness, with their attendant wretchedness and
sorrow, always hurt her. That she could alleviate this distress more now than
ever before proved the adage that it was an ill wind that blew nobody good.
While her Mormon riders were in her employ she had found few Gentiles who
would stay with her, and now she was able to find employment for all the men
and boys. No little shock was it to have man after man tell her that he dare not
accept her kind offer.
“It won't do,” said one Carson, an intelligent man who had seen better
days. “We've had our warning. Plain and to the point! Now there's Judkins, he
packs guns, and he can use them, and so can the daredevil boys he's hired. But
they've little responsibility. Can we risk having our homes burned in our
absence?”
Jane felt the stretching and chilling of the skin of her face as the blood left
it.
“Carson, you and the others rent these houses?” she asked.
“You ought to know, Miss Withersteen. Some of them are yours.”
“I know?... Carson, I never in my life took a day's labor for rent or a
yearling calf or a bunch of grass, let alone gold.”
“Bivens, your store-keeper, sees to that.”
“Look here, Carson,” went on Jane, hurriedly, and now her cheeks were
burning. “You and Black and Willet pack your goods and move your families up to
my cabins in the grove. They're far more comfortable than these. Then go to
work for me. And if aught happens to you there I'll give you money—gold enough
to leave Utah!”
The man choked and stammered, and then, as tears welled into his eyes, he
found the use of his tongue and cursed. No gentle speech could ever have equaled
that curse in eloquent expression of what he felt for Jane Withersteen. How
strangely his look and tone reminded her of Lassiter!
“No, it won't do,” he said, when he had somewhat recovered himself. “Miss
Withersteen, there are things that you don't know, and there's not a soul among
us who can tell you.”
“I seem to be learning many things, Carson. Well, then, will you let me aid
you—say till better times?”
63
“Yes, I will,” he replied, with his face lighting up. “I see what it means to
you, and you know what it means to me. Thank you! And if better times ever
come, I'll be only too happy to work for you.”
“Better times will come. I trust God and have faith in man. Good day,
Carson.”
The lane opened out upon the sage-inclosed alfalfa fields, and the last
habitation, at the end of that lane of hovels, was the meanest. Formerly it had
been a shed; now it was a home. The broad leaves of a wide-spreading
cottonwood sheltered the sunken roof of weathered boards. Like an Indian hut, it
had one floor. Round about it were a few scanty rows of vegetables, such as the
hand of a weak woman had time and strength to cultivate. This little dwelling-
place was just outside the village limits, and the widow who lived there had to
carry her water from the nearest irrigation ditch. As Jane Withersteen entered
the unfenced yard a child saw her, shrieked with joy, and came tearing toward
her with curls flying. This child was a little girl of four called Fay. Her name suited
her, for she was an elf, a sprite, a creature so fairy-like and beautiful that she
seemed unearthly.
“Muvver sended for oo,” cried Fay, as Jane kissed her, “an' oo never tome.”
“I didn't know, Fay; but I've come now.”
Fay was a child of outdoors, of the garden and ditch and field, and she was
dirty and ragged. But rags and dirt did not hide her beauty. The one thin little
bedraggled garment she wore half covered her fine, slim body. Red as cherries
were her cheeks and lips; her eyes were violet blue, and the crown of her childish
loveliness was the curling golden hair. All the children of Cottonwoods were Jane
Withersteen's friends, she loved them all. But Fay was dearest to her. Fay had few
playmates, for among the Gentile children there were none near her age, and the
Mormon children were forbidden to play with her. So she was a shy, wild, lonely
child.
“Muvver's sick,” said Fay, leading Jane toward the door of the hut.
Jane went in. There was only one room, rather dark and bare, but it was
clean and neat. A woman lay upon a bed.
“Mrs. Larkin, how are you?” asked Jane, anxiously.
“I've been pretty bad for a week, but I'm better now.”
“You haven't been here all alone—with no one to wait on you?”
“Oh no! My women neighbors are kind. They take turns coming in.”
“Did you send for me?”
“Yes, several times.”
“But I had no word—no messages ever got to me.”
64
www.obooko.com
“I sent the boys, and they left word with your women that I was ill and
would you please come.”
A sudden deadly sickness seized Jane. She fought the weakness, as she
fought to be above suspicious thoughts, and it passed, leaving her conscious of
her utter impotence. That, too, passed as her spirit rebounded. But she had again
caught a glimpse of dark underhand domination, running its secret lines this time
into her own household. Like a spider in the blackness of night an unseen hand
had begun to run these dark lines, to turn and twist them about her life, to plait
and weave a web. Jane Withersteen knew it now, and in the realization further
coolness and sureness came to her, and the fighting courage of her ancestors.
“Mrs. Larkin, you're better, and I'm so glad,” said Jane. “But may I not do
something for you—a turn at nursing, or send you things, or take care of Fay?”
“You're so good. Since my husband's been gone what would have become
of Fay and me but for you? It was about Fay that I wanted to speak to you. This
time I thought surely I'd die, and I was worried about Fay. Well, I'll be around all
right shortly, but my strength's gone and I won't live long. So I may as well speak
now. You remember you've been asking me to let you take Fay and bring her up
as your daughter?”
“Indeed yes, I remember. I'll be happy to have her. But I hope the day—”
“Never mind that. The day'll come—sooner or later. I refused your offer,
and now I'll tell you why.”
“I know why,” interposed Jane. “It's because you don't want her brought up
as a Mormon.”
“No, it wasn't altogether that.” Mrs. Larkin raised her thin hand and laid it
appealingly on Jane's. “I don't like to tell you. But—it's this: I told all my friends
what you wanted. They know you, care for you, and they said for me to trust Fay
to you. Women will talk, you know. It got to the ears of Mormons—gossip of your
love for Fay and your wanting her. And it came straight back to me, in jealousy,
perhaps, that you wouldn't take Fay as much for love of her as because of your
religious duty to bring up another girl for some Mormon to marry.”
“That's a damnable lie!” cried Jane Withersteen.
“It was what made me hesitate,” went on Mrs. Larkin, “but I never believed
it at heart. And now I guess I'll let you—”
“Wait! Mrs. Larkin, I may have told little white lies in my life, but never a
lie that mattered, that hurt any one. Now believe me. I love little Fay. If I had her
near me I'd grow to worship her. When I asked for her I thought only of that
love.... Let me prove this. You and Fay come to live with me. I've such a big house,
and I'm so lonely. I'll help nurse you, take care of you. When you're better you
65
can work for me. I'll keep little Fay and bring her up—without Mormon teaching.
When she's grown, if she should want to leave me, I'll send her, and not empty-
handed, back to Illinois where you came from. I promise you.”
“I knew it was a lie,” replied the mother, and she sank back upon her
pillow with something of peace in her white, worn face. “Jane Withersteen, may
Heaven bless you! I've been deeply grateful to you. But because you're a Mormon
I never felt close to you till now. I don't know much about religion as religion, but
your God and my God are the same.”
CHAPTER VIII. SURPRISE VALLEY
Back in that strange canyon, which Venters had found indeed a valley of
surprises, the wounded girl's whispered appeal, almost a prayer, not to take her
back to the rustlers crowned the events of the last few days with a confounding
climax. That she should not want to return to them staggered Venters. Presently,
as logical thought returned, her appeal confirmed his first impression—that she
was more unfortunate than bad—and he experienced a sensation of gladness. If
he had known before that Oldring's Masked Rider was a woman his opinion
would have been formed and he would have considered her abandoned. But his
first knowledge had come when he lifted a white face quivering in a convulsion of
agony; he had heard God's name whispered by blood-stained lips; through her
solemn and awful eyes he had caught a glimpse of her soul. And just now had
come the entreaty to him, “Don't—take—me—back—there!”
Once for all Venters's quick mind formed a permanent conception of this
poor girl. He based it, not upon what the chances of life had made her, but upon
the revelation of dark eyes that pierced the infinite, upon a few pitiful, halting
words that betrayed failure and wrong and misery, yet breathed the truth of a
tragic fate rather than a natural leaning to evil.
“What's your name?” he inquired.
“Bess,” she answered.
“Bess what?”
“That's enough—just Bess.”
The red that deepened in her cheeks was not all the flush of fever. Venters
marveled anew, and this time at the tint of shame in her face, at the momentary
66
www.obooko.com
drooping of long lashes. She might be a rustler's girl, but she was still capable of
shame, she might be dying, but she still clung to some little remnant of honor.
“Very well, Bess. It doesn't matter,” he said. “But this matters—what shall I
do with you?”
“Are—you—a rider?” she whispered.
“Not now. I was once. I drove the Withersteen herds. But I lost my place—
lost all I owned—and now I'm—I'm a sort of outcast. My name's Bern Venters.”
“You won't—take me—to Cottonwoods—or Glaze? I'd be—hanged.”
“No, indeed. But I must do something with you. For it's not safe for me
here. I shot that rustler who was with you. Sooner or later he'll be found, and
then my tracks. I must find a safer hiding-place where I can't be trailed.”
“Leave me—here.”
“Alone—to die!”
“Yes.”
“I will not.” Venters spoke shortly with a kind of ring in his voice.
“What—do you want—to do—with me?” Her whispering grew difficult, so
low and faint that Venters had to stoop to hear her.
“Why, let's see,” he replied, slowly. “I'd like to take you some place where I
could watch by you, nurse you, till you're all right.”
“And—then?”
“Well, it'll be time to think of that when you're cured of your wound. It's a
bad one. And—Bess, if you don't want to live—if you don't fight for life—you'll
never—”
“Oh! I want—to live! I'm afraid—to die. But I'd rather—die—than go
back—to—to—”
“To Oldring?” asked Venters, interrupting her in turn.
Her lips moved in an affirmative.
“I promise not to take you back to him or to Cottonwoods or to Glaze.”
The mournful earnestness of her gaze suddenly shone with unutterable
gratitude and wonder. And as suddenly Venters found her eyes beautiful as he
had never seen or felt beauty. They were as dark blue as the sky at night. Then
the flashing changed to a long, thoughtful look, in which there was a wistful,
unconscious searching of his face, a look that trembled on the verge of hope and
trust.
“I'll try—to live,” she said. The broken whisper just reached his ears. “Do
what—you want—with me.”
“Rest then—don't worry—sleep,” he replied.
67
Abruptly he arose, as if words had been decision for him, and with a sharp
command to the dogs he strode from the camp. Venters was conscious of an
indefinite conflict of change within him. It seemed to be a vague passing of old
moods, a dim coalescing of new forces, a moment of inexplicable transition. He
was both cast down and uplifted. He wanted to think and think of the meaning,
but he resolutely dispelled emotion. His imperative need at present was to find a
safe retreat, and this called for action.
So he set out. It still wanted several hours before dark. This trip he turned
to the left and wended his skulking way southward a mile or more to the opening
of the valley, where lay the strange scrawled rocks. He did not, however, venture
boldly out into the open sage, but clung to the right-hand wall and went along
that till its perpendicular line broke into the long incline of bare stone.
Before proceeding farther he halted, studying the strange character of this
slope and realizing that a moving black object could be seen far against such
background. Before him ascended a gradual swell of smooth stone. It was hard,
polished, and full of pockets worn by centuries of eddying rain-water. A hundred
yards up began a line of grotesque cedar-trees, and they extended along the slope
clear to its most southerly end. Beyond that end Venters wanted to get, and he
concluded the cedars, few as they were, would afford some cover.
Therefore he climbed swiftly. The trees were farther up than he had
estimated, though he had from long habit made allowance for the deceiving
nature of distances in that country. When he gained the cover of cedars he
paused to rest and look, and it was then he saw how the trees sprang from holes
in the bare rock. Ages of rain had run down the slope, circling, eddying in
depressions, wearing deep round holes. There had been dry seasons,
accumulations of dust, wind-blown seeds, and cedars rose wonderfully out of
solid rock. But these were not beautiful cedars. They were gnarled, twisted into
weird contortions, as if growth were torture, dead at the tops, shrunken, gray,
and old. Theirs had been a bitter fight, and Venters felt a strange sympathy for
them. This country was hard on trees—and men.
He slipped from cedar to cedar, keeping them between him and the open
valley. As he progressed, the belt of trees widened and he kept to its upper
margin. He passed shady pockets half full of water, and, as he marked the
location for possible future need, he reflected that there had been no rain since
the winter snows. From one of these shady holes a rabbit hopped out and
squatted down, laying its ears flat.
Venters wanted fresh meat now more than when he had only himself to
think of. But it would not do to fire his rifle there. So he broke off a cedar branch
68
www.obooko.com
and threw it. He crippled the rabbit, which started to flounder up the slope.
Venters did not wish to lose the meat, and he never allowed crippled game to
escape, to die lingeringly in some covert. So after a careful glance below, and back
toward the canyon, he began to chase the rabbit.
The fact that rabbits generally ran uphill was not new to him. But it
presently seemed singular why this rabbit, that might have escaped downward,
chose to ascend the slope. Venters knew then that it had a burrow higher up.
More than once he jerked over to seize it, only in vain, for the rabbit by renewed
effort eluded his grasp. Thus the chase continued on up the bare slope. The
farther Venters climbed the more determined he grew to catch his quarry. At last,
panting and sweating, he captured the rabbit at the foot of a steeper grade.
Laying his rifle on the bulge of rising stone, he killed the animal and slung it from
his belt.
Before starting down he waited to catch his breath. He had climbed far up
that wonderful smooth slope, and had almost reached the base of yellow cliff that
rose skyward, a huge scarred and cracked bulk. It frowned down upon him as if
to forbid further ascent. Venters bent over for his rifle, and, as he picked it up
from where it leaned against the steeper grade, he saw several little nicks cut in
the solid stone.
They were only a few inches deep and about a foot apart. Venters began to
count them—one—two—three—four—on up to sixteen. That number carried
his glance to the top of his first bulging bench of cliff-base. Above, after a more
level offset, was still steeper slope, and the line of nicks kept on, to wind round a
projecting corner of wall.
A casual glance would have passed by these little dents; if Venters had not
known what they signified he would never have bestowed upon them the second
glance. But he knew they had been cut there by hand, and, though age-worn, he
recognized them as steps cut in the rock by the cliff-dwellers. With a pulse
beginning to beat and hammer away his calmness, he eyed that indistinct line of
steps, up to where the buttress of wall hid further sight of them. He knew that
behind the corner of stone would be a cave or a crack which could never be
suspected from below. Chance, that had sported with him of late, now directed
him to a probable hiding-place. Again he laid aside his rifle, and, removing boots
and belt, he began to walk up the steps. Like a mountain goat, he was agile, sure-
footed, and he mounted the first bench without bending to use his hands. The
next ascent took grip of fingers as well as toes, but he climbed steadily, swiftly, to
reach the projecting corner, and slipped around it. Here he faced a notch in the
69
cliff. At the apex he turned abruptly into a ragged vent that split the ponderous
wall clear to the top, showing a narrow streak of blue sky.
At the base this vent was dark, cool, and smelled of dry, musty dust. It
zigzagged so that he could not see ahead more than a few yards at a time. He
noticed tracks of wildcats and rabbits in the dusty floor. At every turn he
expected to come upon a huge cavern full of little square stone houses, each with
a small aperture like a staring dark eye. The passage lightened and widened, and
opened at the foot of a narrow, steep, ascending chute.
Venters had a moment's notice of the rock, which was of the same
smoothness and hardness as the slope below, before his gaze went irresistibly
upward to the precipitous walls of this wide ladder of granite. These were ruined
walls of yellow sandstone, and so split and splintered, so overhanging with great
sections of balancing rim, so impending with tremendous crumbling crags, that
Venters caught his breath sharply, and, appalled, he instinctively recoiled as if a
step upward might jar the ponderous cliffs from their foundation. Indeed, it
seemed that these ruined cliffs were but awaiting a breath of wind to collapse
and come tumbling down. Venters hesitated. It would be a foolhardy man who
risked his life under the leaning, waiting avalanches of rock in that gigantic split.
Yet how many years had they leaned there without falling! At the bottom of the
incline was an immense heap of weathered sandstone all crumbling to dust, but
there were no huge rocks as large as houses, such as rested so lightly and
frightfully above, waiting patiently and inevitably to crash down. Slowly split
from the parent rock by the weathering process, and carved and sculptured by
ages of wind and rain, they waited their moment. Venters felt how foolish it was
for him to fear these broken walls; to fear that, after they had endured for
thousands of years, the moment of his passing should be the one for them to slip.
Yet he feared it.
“What a place to hide!” muttered Venters. “I'll climb—I'll see where this
thing goes. If only I can find water!”
With teeth tight shut he essayed the incline. And as he climbed he bent his
eyes downward. This, however, after a little grew impossible; he had to look to
obey his eager, curious mind. He raised his glance and saw light between row on
row of shafts and pinnacles and crags that stood out from the main wall. Some
leaned against the cliff, others against each other; many stood sheer and alone;
all were crumbling, cracked, rotten. It was a place of yellow, ragged ruin. The
passage narrowed as he went up; it became a slant, hard for him to stick on; it
was smooth as marble. Finally he surmounted it, surprised to find the walls still
several hundred feet high, and a narrow gorge leading down on the other side.
70
www.obooko.com
This was a divide between two inclines, about twenty yards wide. At one side
stood an enormous rock. Venters gave it a second glance, because it rested on a
pedestal. It attracted closer attention. It was like a colossal pear of stone standing
on its stem. Around the bottom were thousands of little nicks just distinguishable
to the eye. They were marks of stone hatchets. The cliff-dwellers had chipped and
chipped away at this boulder till it rested its tremendous bulk upon a mere pin-
point of its surface. Venters pondered. Why had the little stone-men hacked away
at that big boulder? It bore no semblance to a statue or an idol or a godhead or a
sphinx. Instinctively he put his hands on it and pushed; then his shoulder and
heaved. The stone seemed to groan, to stir, to grate, and then to move. It tipped a
little downward and hung balancing for a long instant, slowly returned, rocked
slightly, groaned, and settled back to its former position.
Venters divined its significance. It had been meant for defense. The cliff-
dwellers, driven by dreaded enemies to this last stand, had cunningly cut the
rock until it balanced perfectly, ready to be dislodged by strong hands. Just below
it leaned a tottering crag that would have toppled, starting an avalanche on an
acclivity where no sliding mass could stop. Crags and pinnacles, splintered cliffs,
and leaning shafts and monuments, would have thundered down to block forever
the outlet to Deception Pass.
“That was a narrow shave for me,” said Venters, soberly. “A balancing
rock! The cliff-dwellers never had to roll it. They died, vanished, and here the
rock stands, probably little changed.... But it might serve another lonely dweller
of the cliffs. I'll hide up here somewhere, if I can only find water.”
He descended the gorge on the other side. The slope was gradual, the
space narrow, the course straight for many rods. A gloom hung between the up-
sweeping walls. In a turn the passage narrowed to scarce a dozen feet, and here
was darkness of night. But light shone ahead; another abrupt turn brought day
again, and then wide open space.
Above Venters loomed a wonderful arch of stone bridging the canyon rims,
and through the enormous round portal gleamed and glistened a beautiful valley
shining under sunset gold reflected by surrounding cliffs. He gave a start of
surprise. The valley was a cove a mile long, half that wide, and its enclosing walls
were smooth and stained, and curved inward, forming great caves. He decided
that its floor was far higher than the level of Deception Pass and the intersecting
canyons. No purple sage colored this valley floor. Instead there were the white of
aspens, streaks of branch and slender trunk glistening from the green of leaves,
and the darker green of oaks, and through the middle of this forest, from wall to
71
wall, ran a winding line of brilliant green which marked the course of
cottonwoods and willows.
“There's water here—and this is the place for me,” said Venters. “Only
birds can peep over those walls, I've gone Oldring one better.”
Venters waited no longer, and turned swiftly to retrace his steps. He
named the canyon Surprise Valley and the huge boulder that guarded the outlet
Balancing Rock. Going down he did not find himself attended by such fears as had
beset him in the climb; still, he was not easy in mind and could not occupy
himself with plans of moving the girl and his outfit until he had descended to the
notch. There he rested a moment and looked about him. The pass was darkening
with the approach of night. At the corner of the wall, where the stone steps
turned, he saw a spur of rock that would serve to hold the noose of a lasso. He
needed no more aid to scale that place. As he intended to make the move under
cover of darkness, he wanted most to be able to tell where to climb up. So, taking
several small stones with him, he stepped and slid down to the edge of the slope
where he had left his rifle and boots. He placed the stones some yards apart. He
left the rabbit lying upon the bench where the steps began. Then he addressed a
keen-sighted, remembering gaze to the rim-wall above. It was serrated, and
between two spears of rock, directly in line with his position, showed a zigzag
crack that at night would let through the gleam of sky. This settled, he put on his
belt and boots and prepared to descend. Some consideration was necessary to
decide whether or not to leave his rifle there. On the return, carrying the girl and
a pack, it would be added encumbrance; and after debating the matter he left the
rifle leaning against the bench. As he went straight down the slope he halted
every few rods to look up at his mark on the rim. It changed, but he fixed each
change in his memory. When he reached the first cedar-tree, he tied his scarf
upon a dead branch, and then hurried toward camp, having no more concern
about finding his trail upon the return trip.
Darkness soon emboldened and lent him greater speed. It occurred to him,
as he glided into the grassy glade near camp and head the whinny of a horse, that
he had forgotten Wrangle. The big sorrel could not be gotten into Surprise Valley.
He would have to be left here.
Venters determined at once to lead the other horses out through the
thicket and turn them loose. The farther they wandered from this canyon the
better it would suit him. He easily descried Wrangle through the gloom, but the
others were not in sight. Venters whistled low for the dogs, and when they came
trotting to him he sent them out to search for the horses, and followed. It soon
developed that they were not in the glade nor the thicket. Venters grew cold and
72
www.obooko.com
rigid at the thought of rustlers having entered his retreat. But the thought passed,
for the demeanor of Ring and Whitie reassured him. The horses had wandered
away.
Under the clump of silver spruces a denser mantle of darkness, yet not so
thick that Venter's night-practiced eyes could not catch the white oval of a still
face. He bent over it with a slight suspension of breath that was both caution lest
he frighten her and chill uncertainty of feeling lest he find her dead. But she slept,
and he arose to renewed activity.
He packed his saddle-bags. The dogs were hungry, they whined about him
and nosed his busy hands; but he took no time to feed them nor to satisfy his own
hunger. He slung the saddlebags over his shoulders and made them secure with
his lasso. Then he wrapped the blankets closer about the girl and lifted her in his
arms. Wrangle whinnied and thumped the ground as Venters passed him with
the dogs. The sorrel knew he was being left behind, and was not sure whether he
liked it or not. Venters went on and entered the thicket. Here he had to feel his
way in pitch blackness and to wedge his progress between the close saplings.
Time meant little to him now that he had started, and he edged along with slow
side movement till he got clear of the thicket. Ring and Whitie stood waiting for
him. Taking to the open aisles and patches of the sage, he walked guardedly,
careful not to stumble or step in dust or strike against spreading sage-branches.
If he were burdened he did not feel it. From time to time, when he passed
out of the black lines of shade into the wan starlight, he glanced at the white face
of the girl lying in his arms. She had not awakened from her sleep or stupor. He
did not rest until he cleared the black gate of the canyon. Then he leaned against
a stone breast-high to him and gently released the girl from his hold. His brow
and hair and the palms of his hands were wet, and there was a kind of nervous
contraction of his muscles. They seemed to ripple and string tense. He had a
desire to hurry and no sense of fatigue. A wind blew the scent of sage in his face.
The first early blackness of night passed with the brightening of the stars.
Somewhere back on his trail a coyote yelped, splitting the dead silence. Venters's
faculties seemed singularly acute.
He lifted the girl again and pressed on. The valley better traveling than the
canyon. It was lighter, freer of sage, and there were no rocks. Soon, out of the pale
gloom shone a still paler thing, and that was the low swell of slope. Venters
mounted it and his dogs walked beside him. Once upon the stone he slowed to
snail pace, straining his sight to avoid the pockets and holes. Foot by foot he went
up. The weird cedars, like great demons and witches chained to the rock and
writhing in silent anguish, loomed up with wide and twisting naked arms.
73
Venters crossed this belt of cedars, skirted the upper border, and recognized the
tree he had marked, even before he saw his waving scarf.
Here he knelt and deposited the girl gently, feet first and slowly laid her
out full length. What he feared was to reopen one of her wounds. If he gave her a
violent jar, or slipped and fell! But the supreme confidence so strangely felt that
night admitted no such blunders.
The slope before him seemed to swell into obscurity to lose its definite
outline in a misty, opaque cloud that shaded into the over-shadowing wall. He
scanned the rim where the serrated points speared the sky, and he found the
zigzag crack. It was dim, only a shade lighter than the dark ramparts, but he
distinguished it, and that served.
Lifting the girl, he stepped upward, closely attending to the nature of the
path under his feet. After a few steps he stopped to mark his line with the crack
in the rim. The dogs clung closer to him. While chasing the rabbit this slope had
appeared interminable to him; now, burdened as he was, he did not think of
length or height or toil. He remembered only to avoid a misstep and to keep his
direction. He climbed on, with frequent stops to watch the rim, and before he
dreamed of gaining the bench he bumped his knees into it, and saw, in the dim
gray light, his rifle and the rabbit. He had come straight up without mishap or
swerving off his course, and his shut teeth unlocked.
As he laid the girl down in the shallow hollow of the little ridge with her
white face upturned, she opened her eyes. Wide, staring black, at once like both
the night and the stars, they made her face seem still whiter.
“Is—it—you?” she asked, faintly.
“Yes,” replied Venters.
“Oh! Where—are we?”
“I'm taking you to a safe place where no one will ever find you. I must
climb a little here and call the dogs. Don't be afraid. I'll soon come for you.”
She said no more. Her eyes watched him steadily for a moment and then
closed. Venters pulled off his boots and then felt for the little steps in the rock.
The shade of the cliff above obscured the point he wanted to gain, but he could
see dimly a few feet before him. What he had attempted with care he now went
at with surpassing lightness. Buoyant, rapid, sure, he attained the corner of wall
and slipped around it. Here he could not see a hand before his face, so he groped
along, found a little flat space, and there removed the saddle-bags. The lasso he
took back with him to the corner and looped the noose over the spur of rock.
“Ring—Whitie—come,” he called, softly.
Low whines came up from below.
74
www.obooko.com
“Here! Come, Whitie—Ring,” he repeated, this time sharply.

Then followed scraping of claws and pattering of feet; and out of the gray
gloom below him swiftly climbed the dogs to reach his side and pass beyond.
Venters descended, holding to the lasso. He tested its strength by throwing
all his weight upon it. Then he gathered the girl up, and, holding her securely in
his left arm, he began to climb, at every few steps jerking his right hand upward
along the lasso. It sagged at each forward movement he made, but he balanced
himself lightly during the interval when he lacked the support of a taut rope. He
climbed as if he had wings, the strength of a giant, and knew not the sense of fear.
The sharp corner of cliff seemed to cut out of the darkness. He reached it and the
protruding shelf, and then, entering the black shade of the notch, he moved
blindly but surely to the place where he had left the saddle-bags. He heard the
dogs, though he could not see them. Once more he carefully placed the girl at his
feet. Then, on hands and knees, he went over the little flat space, feeling for
stones. He removed a number, and, scraping the deep dust into a heap, he
unfolded the outer blanket from around the girl and laid her upon this bed. Then
he went down the slope again for his boots, rifle, and the rabbit, and, bringing
also his lasso with him, he made short work of that trip.
“Are—you—there?” The girl's voice came low from the blackness.
“Yes,” he replied, and was conscious that his laboring breast made speech
difficult.
“Are we—in a cave?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, listen!... The waterfall!... I hear it! You've brought me back!”
Venters heard a murmuring moan that one moment swelled to a pitch
almost softly shrill and the next lulled to a low, almost inaudible sigh.
“That's—wind blowing—in the—cliffs,” he panted. “You're far from
Oldring's—canyon.”
The effort it cost him to speak made him conscious of extreme lassitude
following upon great exertion. It seemed that when he lay down and drew his
blanket over him the action was the last before utter prostration. He stretched
inert, wet, hot, his body one great strife of throbbing, stinging nerves and
bursting veins. And there he lay for a long while before he felt that he had begun
to rest.
Rest came to him that night, but no sleep. Sleep he did not want. The hours
of strained effort were now as if they had never been, and he wanted to think.
Earlier in the day he had dismissed an inexplicable feeling of change; but now,
when there was no longer demand on his cunning and strength and he had time
75
to think, he could not catch the illusive thing that had sadly perplexed as well as
elevated his spirit.
Above him, through a V-shaped cleft in the dark rim of the cliff, shone the
lustrous stars that had been his lonely accusers for a long, long year. To-night
they were different. He studied them. Larger, whiter, more radiant they seemed;
but that was not the difference he meant. Gradually it came to him that the
distinction was not one he saw, but one he felt. In this he divined as much of the
baffling change as he thought would be revealed to him then. And as he lay there,
with the singing of the cliff-winds in his ears, the white stars above the dark, bold
vent, the difference which he felt was that he was no longer alone.
CHAPTER IX. SILVER SPRUCE AND ASPENS
The rest of that night seemed to Venters only a few moments of starlight, a
dark overcasting of sky, an hour or so of gray gloom, and then the lighting of
dawn.
When he had bestirred himself, feeding the hungry dogs and breaking his
long fast, and had repacked his saddle-bags, it was clear daylight, though the sun
had not tipped the yellow wall in the east. He concluded to make the climb and
descent into Surprise Valley in one trip. To that end he tied his blanket upon Ring
and gave Whitie the extra lasso and the rabbit to carry. Then, with the rifle and
saddle-bags slung upon his back, he took up the girl. She did not awaken from
heavy slumber.
That climb up under the rugged, menacing brows of the broken cliffs, in
the face of a grim, leaning boulder that seemed to be weary of its age-long
wavering, was a tax on strength and nerve that Venters felt equally with
something sweet and strangely exulting in its accomplishment. He did not pause
until he gained the narrow divide and there he rested. Balancing Rock loomed
huge, cold in the gray light of dawn, a thing without life, yet it spoke silently to
Venters: “I am waiting to plunge down, to shatter and crash, roar and boom, to
bury your trail, and close forever the outlet to Deception Pass!”
On the descent of the other side Venters had easy going, but was
somewhat concerned because Whitie appeared to have succumbed to
temptation, and while carrying the rabbit was also chewing on it. And Ring
evidently regarded this as an injury to himself, especially as he had carried the
76
www.obooko.com
heavier load. Presently he snapped at one end of the rabbit and refused to let go.
But his action prevented Whitie from further misdoing, and then the two dogs
pattered down, carrying the rabbit between them.
Venters turned out of the gorge, and suddenly paused stock-still,
astounded at the scene before him. The curve of the great stone bridge had
caught the sunrise, and through the magnificent arch burst a glorious stream of
gold that shone with a long slant down into the center of Surprise Valley. Only
through the arch did any sunlight pass, so that all the rest of the valley lay still
asleep, dark green, mysterious, shadowy, merging its level into walls as misty
and soft as morning clouds.
Venters then descended, passing through the arch, looking up at its
tremendous height and sweep. It spanned the opening to Surprise Valley,
stretching in almost perfect curve from rim to rim. Even in his hurry and concern
Venters could not but feel its majesty, and the thought came to him that the cliff-
dwellers must have regarded it as an object of worship.
Down, down, down Venters strode, more and more feeling the weight of
his burden as he descended, and still the valley lay below him. As all other
canyons and coves and valleys had deceived him, so had this deep, nestling oval.
At length he passed beyond the slope of weathered stone that spread fan-shape
from the arch, and encountered a grassy terrace running to the right and about
on a level with the tips of the oaks and cottonwoods below. Scattered here and
there upon this shelf were clumps of aspens, and he walked through them into a
glade that surpassed in beauty and adaptability for a wild home, any place he had
ever seen. Silver spruces bordered the base of a precipitous wall that rose loftily.
Caves indented its surface, and there were no detached ledges or weathered
sections that might dislodge a stone. The level ground, beyond the spruces,
dropped down into a little ravine. This was one dense line of slender aspens from
which came the low splashing of water. And the terrace, lying open to the west,
afforded unobstructed view of the valley of green treetops.
For his camp Venters chose a shady, grassy plot between the silver spruces
and the cliff. Here, in the stone wall, had been wonderfully carved by wind or
washed by water several deep caves above the level of the terrace. They were
clean, dry, roomy.
He cut spruce boughs and made a bed in the largest cave and laid the girl
there. The first intimation that he had of her being aroused from sleep or
lethargy was a low call for water.
He hurried down into the ravine with his canteen. It was a shallow, grass-
green place with aspens growing up everywhere. To his delight he found a tiny
77
brook of swift-running water. Its faint tinge of amber reminded him of the spring
at Cottonwoods, and the thought gave him a little shock. The water was so cold it
made his fingers tingle as he dipped the canteen. Having returned to the cave, he
was glad to see the girl drink thirstily. This time he noted that she could raise her
head slightly without his help.
“You were thirsty,” he said. “It's good water. I've found a fine place. Tell
me—how do you feel?”
“There's pain—here,” she replied, and moved her hand to her left side.
“Why, that's strange! Your wounds are on your right side. I believe you're
hungry. Is the pain a kind of dull ache—a gnawing?”
“It's like—that.”
“Then it's hunger.” Venters laughed, and suddenly caught himself with a
quick breath and felt again the little shock. When had he laughed? “It's hunger,”
he went on. “I've had that gnaw many a time. I've got it now. But you mustn't eat.
You can have all the water you want, but no food just yet.”
“Won't I—starve?”
“No, people don't starve easily. I've discovered that. You must lie perfectly
still and rest and sleep—for days.”
“My hands—are dirty; my face feels—so hot and sticky; my boots hurt.” It
was her longest speech as yet, and it trailed off in a whisper.
“Well, I'm a fine nurse!”
It annoyed him that he had never thought of these things. But then,
awaiting her death and thinking of her comfort were vastly different matters. He
unwrapped the blanket which covered her. What a slender girl she was! No
wonder he had been able to carry her miles and pack her up that slippery ladder
of stone. Her boots were of soft, fine leather, reaching clear to her knees. He
recognized the make as one of a boot-maker in Sterling. Her spurs, that he had
stupidly neglected to remove, consisted of silver frames and gold chains, and the
rowels, large as silver dollars, were fancifully engraved. The boots slipped off
rather hard. She wore heavy woollen rider's stockings, half length, and these
were pulled up over the ends of her short trousers. Venters took off the stockings
to note her little feet were red and swollen. He bathed them. Then he removed
his scarf and bathed her face and hands.
“I must see your wounds now,” he said, gently.
She made no reply, but watched him steadily as he opened her blouse and
untied the bandage. His strong fingers trembled a little as he removed it. If the
wounds had reopened! A chill struck him as he saw the angry red bullet-mark,
and a tiny stream of blood winding from it down her white breast. Very carefully
78
www.obooko.com
he lifted her to see that the wound in her back had closed perfectly. Then he
washed the blood from her breast, bathed the wound, and left it unbandaged,
open to the air.
Her eyes thanked him.
“Listen,” he said, earnestly. “I've had some wounds, and I've seen many. I
know a little about them. The hole in your back has closed. If you lie still three
days the one in your breast will close and you'll be safe. The danger from
hemorrhage will be over.”
He had spoken with earnest sincerity, almost eagerness.
“Why—do you—want me—to get well?” she asked, wonderingly.
The simple question seemed unanswerable except on grounds of
humanity. But the circumstances under which he had shot this strange girl, the
shock and realization, the waiting for death, the hope, had resulted in a condition
of mind wherein Venters wanted her to live more than he had ever wanted
anything. Yet he could not tell why. He believed the killing of the rustler and the
subsequent excitement had disturbed him. For how else could he explain the
throbbing of his brain, the heat of his blood, the undefined sense of full hours,
charged, vibrant with pulsating mystery where once they had dragged in
loneliness?
“I shot you,” he said, slowly, “and I want you to get well so I shall not have
killed a woman. But—for your own sake, too—”
A terrible bitterness darkened her eyes, and her lips quivered.
“Hush,” said Venters. “You've talked too much already.”
In her unutterable bitterness he saw a darkness of mood that could not
have been caused by her present weak and feverish state. She hated the life she
had led, that she probably had been compelled to lead. She had suffered some
unforgivable wrong at the hands of Oldring. With that conviction Venters felt a
shame throughout his body, and it marked the rekindling of fierce anger and
ruthlessness. In the past long year he had nursed resentment. He had hated the
wilderness—the loneliness of the uplands. He had waited for something to come
to pass. It had come. Like an Indian stealing horses he had skulked into the
recesses of the canyons. He had found Oldring's retreat; he had killed a rustler;
he had shot an unfortunate girl, then had saved her from this unwitting act, and
he meant to save her from the consequent wasting of blood, from fever and
weakness. Starvation he had to fight for her and for himself. Where he had been
sick at the letting of blood, now he remembered it in grim, cold calm. And as he
lost that softness of nature, so he lost his fear of men. He would watch for
79
Oldring, biding his time, and he would kill this great black-bearded rustler who
had held a girl in bondage, who had used her to his infamous ends.
Venters surmised this much of the change in him—idleness had passed;
keen, fierce vigor flooded his mind and body; all that had happened to him at
Cottonwoods seemed remote and hard to recall; the difficulties and perils of the
present absorbed him, held him in a kind of spell.
First, then, he fitted up the little cave adjoining the girl's room for his own
comfort and use. His next work was to build a fireplace of stones and to gather a
store of wood. That done, he spilled the contents of his saddle-bags upon the
grass and took stock. His outfit consisted of a small-handled axe, a hunting-knife,
a large number of cartridges for rifle or revolver, a tin plate, a cup, and a fork and
spoon, a quantity of dried beef and dried fruits, and small canvas bags containing
tea, sugar, salt, and pepper. For him alone this supply would have been bountiful
to begin a sojourn in the wilderness, but he was no longer alone. Starvation in the
uplands was not an unheard-of thing; he did not, however, worry at all on that
score, and feared only his possible inability to supply the needs of a woman in a
weakened and extremely delicate condition.
If there was no game in the valley—a contingency he doubted—it would
not be a great task for him to go by night to Oldring's herd and pack out a calf.
The exigency of the moment was to ascertain if there were game in Surprise
Valley. Whitie still guarded the dilapidated rabbit, and Ring slept near by under a
spruce. Venters called Ring and went to the edge of the terrace, and there halted
to survey the valley.
He was prepared to find it larger than his unstudied glances had made it
appear; for more than a casual idea of dimensions and a hasty conception of oval
shape and singular beauty he had not had time. Again the felicity of the name he
had given the valley struck him forcibly. Around the red perpendicular walls,
except under the great arc of stone, ran a terrace fringed at the cliff-base by silver
spruces; below that first terrace sloped another wider one densely overgrown
with aspens, and the center of the valley was a level circle of oaks and alders,
with the glittering green line of willows and cottonwood dividing it in half.
Venters saw a number and variety of birds flitting among the trees. To his left,
facing the stone bridge, an enormous cavern opened in the wall; and low down,
just above the tree-tops, he made out a long shelf of cliff-dwellings, with little
black, staring windows or doors. Like eyes they were, and seemed to watch him.
The few cliff-dwellings he had seen—all ruins—had left him with haunting
memory of age and solitude and of something past. He had come, in a way, to be a
cliff-dweller himself, and those silent eyes would look down upon him, as if in
80
www.obooko.com
surprise that after thousands of years a man had invaded the valley. Venters felt
sure that he was the only white man who had ever walked under the shadow of
the wonderful stone bridge, down into that wonderful valley with its circle of
caves and its terraced rings of silver spruce and aspens.
The dog growled below and rushed into the forest. Venters ran down the
declivity to enter a zone of light shade streaked with sunshine. The oak-trees
were slender, none more than half a foot thick, and they grew close together,
intermingling their branches. Ring came running back with a rabbit in his mouth.
Venters took the rabbit and, holding the dog near him, stole softly on. There were
fluttering of wings among the branches and quick bird-notes, and rustling of
dead leaves and rapid patterings. Venters crossed well-worn trails marked with
fresh tracks; and when he had stolen on a little farther he saw many birds and
running quail, and more rabbits than he could count. He had not penetrated the
forest of oaks for a hundred yards, had not approached anywhere near the line of
willows and cottonwoods which he knew grew along a stream. But he had seen
enough to know that Surprise Valley was the home of many wild creatures.
Venters returned to camp. He skinned the rabbits, and gave the dogs the
one they had quarreled over, and the skin of this he dressed and hung up to dry,
feeling that he would like to keep it. It was a particularly rich, furry pelt with a
beautiful white tail. Venters remembered that but for the bobbing of that white
tail catching his eye he would not have espied the rabbit, and he would never
have discovered Surprise Valley. Little incidents of chance like this had turned
him here and there in Deception Pass; and now they had assumed to him the
significance and direction of destiny.
His good fortune in the matter of game at hand brought to his mind the
necessity of keeping it in the valley. Therefore he took the axe and cut bundles of
aspens and willows, and packed them up under the bridge to the narrow outlet of
the gorge. Here he began fashioning a fence, by driving aspens into the ground
and lacing them fast with willows. Trip after trip he made down for more
building material, and the afternoon had passed when he finished the work to his
satisfaction. Wildcats might scale the fence, but no coyote could come in to search
for prey, and no rabbits or other small game could escape from the valley.
Upon returning to camp he set about getting his supper at ease, around a
fine fire, without hurry or fear of discovery. After hard work that had definite
purpose, this freedom and comfort gave him peculiar satisfaction. He caught
himself often, as he kept busy round the camp-fire, stopping to glance at the quiet
form in the cave, and at the dogs stretched cozily near him, and then out across
the beautiful valley. The present was not yet real to him.
81
While he ate, the sun set beyond a dip in the rim of the curved wall. As the
morning sun burst wondrously through a grand arch into this valley, in a golden,
slanting shaft, so the evening sun, at the moment of setting, shone through a gap
of cliffs, sending down a broad red burst to brighten the oval with a blaze of fire.
To Venters both sunrise and sunset were unreal.
A cool wind blew across the oval, waving the tips of oaks, and while the
light lasted, fluttering the aspen leaves into millions of facets of red, and
sweeping the graceful spruces. Then with the wind soon came a shade and a
darkening, and suddenly the valley was gray. Night came there quickly after the
sinking of the sun. Venters went softly to look at the girl. She slept, and her
breathing was quiet and slow. He lifted Ring into the cave, with stern whisper for
him to stay there on guard. Then he drew the blanket carefully over her and
returned to the camp-fire.
Though exceedingly tired, he was yet loath to yield to lassitude, but this
night it was not from listening, watchful vigilance; it was from a desire to realize
his position. The details of his wild environment seemed the only substance of a
strange dream. He saw the darkening rims, the gray oval turning black, the
undulating surface of forest, like a rippling lake, and the spear-pointed spruces.
He heard the flutter of aspen leaves and the soft, continuous splash of falling
water. The melancholy note of a canyon bird broke clear and lonely from the high
cliffs. Venters had no name for this night singer, and he had never seen one, but
the few notes, always pealing out just at darkness, were as familiar to him as the
canyon silence. Then they ceased, and the rustle of leaves and the murmur of
water hushed in a growing sound that Venters fancied was not of earth. Neither
had he a name for this, only it was inexpressibly wild and sweet. The thought
came that it might be a moan of the girl in her last outcry of life, and he felt a
tremor shake him. But no! This sound was not human, though it was like despair.
He began to doubt his sensitive perceptions, to believe that he half-dreamed
what he thought he heard. Then the sound swelled with the strengthening of the
breeze, and he realized it was the singing of the wind in the cliffs.
By and by a drowsiness overcame him, and Venters began to nod, half
asleep, with his back against a spruce. Rousing himself and calling Whitie, he
went to the cave. The girl lay barely visible in the dimness. Ring crouched beside
her, and the patting of his tail on the stone assured Venters that the dog was
awake and faithful to his duty. Venters sought his own bed of fragrant boughs;
and as he lay back, somehow grateful for the comfort and safety, the night
seemed to steal away from him and he sank softly into intangible space and rest
and slumber.
82
www.obooko.com
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
83
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
84
www.obooko.com
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!”
85
“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
86
www.obooko.com
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 not 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?”
87
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
88
www.obooko.com
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
89
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?”
90
www.obooko.com
“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?”
91
“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
92
www.obooko.com
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.
“Bess, tell me one more thing,” he said. “Haven't you known any women—
any young people?”
“Sometimes there were women with the men; but Oldring never let me
know them. And all the young people I ever saw in my life was when I rode fast
through the villages.”
Perhaps that was the most puzzling and thought-provoking thing she had
yet said to Venters. He pondered, more curious the more he learned, but he
curbed his inquisitive desires, for he saw her shrinking on the verge of that
shame, the causing of which had occasioned him such self-reproach. He would
ask no more. Still he had to think, and he found it difficult to think clearly. This
sad-eyed girl was so utterly different from what it would have been reason to
believe such a remarkable life would have made her. On this day he had found
her simple and frank, as natural as any girl he had ever known. About her there
was something sweet. Her voice was low and well modulated. He could not look
into her face, meet her steady, unabashed, yet wistful eyes, and think of her as the
woman she had confessed herself. Oldring's Masked Rider sat before him, a girl
dressed as a man. She had been made to ride at the head of infamous forays and
drives. She had been imprisoned for many months of her life in an obscure cabin.
At times the most vicious of men had been her companions; and the vilest of
women, if they had not been permitted to approach her, had, at least, cast their
shadows over her. But—but in spite of all this—there thundered at Venters some
truth that lifted its voice higher than the clamoring facts of dishonor, some truth
that was the very life of her beautiful eyes; and it was innocence.
In the days that followed, Venters balanced perpetually in mind this
haunting conception of innocence over against the cold and sickening fact of an
unintentional yet actual gift. How could it be possible for the two things to be
true? He believed the latter to be true, and he would not relinquish his conviction
of the former; and these conflicting thoughts augmented the mystery that
appeared to be a part of Bess. In those ensuing days, however, it became clear as
clearest light that Bess was rapidly regaining strength; that, unless reminded of
93
her long association with Oldring, she seemed to have forgotten it; that, like an
Indian who lives solely from moment to moment, she was utterly absorbed in the
present.
Day by day Venters watched the white of her face slowly change to brown,
and the wasted cheeks fill out by imperceptible degrees. There came a time when
he could just trace the line of demarcation between the part of her face once
hidden by a mask and that left exposed to wind and sun. When that line
disappeared in clear bronze tan it was as if she had been washed clean of the
stigma of Oldring's Masked Rider. The suggestion of the mask always made
Venters remember; now that it was gone he seldom thought of her past.
Occasionally he tried to piece together the several stages of strange experience
and to make a whole. He had shot a masked outlaw the very sight of whom had
been ill omen to riders; he had carried off a wounded woman whose bloody lips
quivered in prayer; he had nursed what seemed a frail, shrunken boy; and now
he watched a girl whose face had become strangely sweet, whose dark-blue eyes
were ever upon him without boldness, without shyness, but with a steady, grave,
and growing light. Many times Venters found the clear gaze embarrassing to him,
yet, like wine, it had an exhilarating effect. What did she think when she looked at
him so? Almost he believed she had no thought at all. All about her and the
present there in Surprise Valley, and the dim yet subtly impending future,
fascinated Venters and made him thoughtful as all his lonely vigils in the sage had
not.
Chiefly it was the present that he wished to dwell upon; but it was the call
of the future which stirred him to action. No idea had he of what that future had
in store for Bess and him. He began to think of improving Surprise Valley as a
place to live in, for there was no telling how long they would be compelled to stay
there. Venters stubbornly resisted the entering into his mind of an insistent
thought that, clearly realized, might have made it plain to him that he did not
want to leave Surprise Valley at all. But it was imperative that he consider
practical matters; and whether or not he was destined to stay long there, he felt
the immediate need of a change of diet. It would be necessary for him to go
farther afield for a variety of meat, and also that he soon visit Cottonwoods for a
supply of food.
It occurred again to Venters that he could go to the canyon where Oldring
kept his cattle, and at little risk he could pack out some beef. He wished to do this,
however, without letting Bess know of it till after he had made the trip. Presently
he hit upon the plan of going while she was asleep.
94
www.obooko.com
That very night he stole out of camp, climbed up under the stone bridge,
and entered the outlet to the Pass. The gorge was full of luminous gloom.
Balancing Rock loomed dark and leaned over the pale descent. Transformed in
the shadowy light, it took shape and dimensions of a spectral god waiting—
waiting for the moment to hurl himself down upon the tottering walls and close
forever the outlet to Deception Pass. At night more than by day Venters felt
something fearful and fateful in that rock, and that it had leaned and waited
through a thousand years to have somehow to deal with his destiny.
“Old man, if you must roll, wait till I get back to the girl, and then roll!” he
said, aloud, as if the stones were indeed a god.
And those spoken words, in their grim note to his ear, as well as contents
to his mind, told Venters that he was all but drifting on a current which he had
not power nor wish to stem.
Venters exercised his usual care in the matter of hiding tracks from the
outlet, yet it took him scarcely an hour to reach Oldring's cattle. Here sight of
many calves changed his original intention, and instead of packing out meat he
decided to take a calf out alive. He roped one, securely tied its feet, and swung it
over his shoulder. Here was an exceedingly heavy burden, but Venters was
powerful—he could take up a sack of grain and with ease pitch it over a pack-
saddle—and he made long distance without resting. The hardest work came in
the climb up to the outlet and on through to the valley. When he had
accomplished it, he became fired with another idea that again changed his
intention. He would not kill the calf, but keep it alive. He would go back to
Oldring's herd and pack out more calves. Thereupon he secured the calf in the
best available spot for the moment and turned to make a second trip.
When Venters got back to the valley with another calf, it was close upon
daybreak. He crawled into his cave and slept late. Bess had no inkling that he had
been absent from camp nearly all night, and only remarked solicitously that he
appeared to be more tired than usual, and more in the need of sleep. In the
afternoon Venters built a gate across a small ravine near camp, and here
corralled the calves; and he succeeded in completing his task without Bess being
any the wiser.
That night he made two more trips to Oldring's range, and again on the
following night, and yet another on the next. With eight calves in his corral, he
concluded that he had enough; but it dawned upon him then that he did not want
to kill one. “I've rustled Oldring's cattle,” he said, and laughed. He noted then that
all the calves were red. “Red!” he exclaimed. “From the red herd. I've stolen Jane
Withersteen's cattle!... That's about the strangest thing yet.”
95
One more trip he undertook to Oldring's valley, and this time he roped a
yearling steer and killed it and cut out a small quarter of beef. The howling of
coyotes told him he need have no apprehension that the work of his knife would
be discovered. He packed the beef back to camp and hung it upon a spruce-tree.
Then he sought his bed.
On the morrow he was up bright and early, glad that he had a surprise for
Bess. He could hardly wait for her to come out. Presently she appeared and
walked under the spruce. Then she approached the camp-fire. There was a tinge
of healthy red in the bronze of her cheeks, and her slender form had begun to
round out in graceful lines.
“Bess, didn't you say you were tired of rabbit?” inquired Venters. “And
quail and beaver?”
“Indeed I did.”
“What would you like?”
“I'm tired of meat, but if we have to live on it I'd like some beef.”
“Well, how does that strike you?” Venters pointed to the quarter hanging
from the spruce-tree. “We'll have fresh beef for a few days, then we'll cut the rest
into strips and dry it.”
“Where did you get that?” asked Bess, slowly.
“I stole that from Oldring.”
“You went back to the canyon—you risked—” While she hesitated the
tinge of bloom faded out of her cheeks.
“It wasn't any risk, but it was hard work.”
“I'm sorry I said I was tired of rabbit. Why! How—When did you get that
beef?”
“Last night.”
“While I was asleep?”
“Yes.”
“I woke last night sometime—but I didn't know.”
Her eyes were widening, darkening with thought, and whenever they did
so the steady, watchful, seeing gaze gave place to the wistful light. In the former
she saw as the primitive woman without thought; in the latter she looked inward,
and her gaze was the reflection of a troubled mind. For long Venters had not seen
that dark change, that deepening of blue, which he thought was beautiful and sad.
But now he wanted to make her think.
“I've done more than pack in that beef,” he said. “For five nights I've been
working while you slept. I've got eight calves corralled near a ravine. Eight calves,
all alive and doing fine!”
96
www.obooko.com
“You went five nights!”

All that Venters could make of the dilation of her eyes, her slow pallor, and
her exclamation, was fear—fear for herself or for him.
“Yes. I didn't tell you, because I knew you were afraid to be left alone.”
“Alone?” She echoed his word, but the meaning of it was nothing to her.
She had not even thought of being left alone. It was not, then, fear for herself, but
for him. This girl, always slow of speech and action, now seemed almost stupid.
She put forth a hand that might have indicated the groping of her mind. Suddenly
she stepped swiftly to him, with a look and touch that drove from him any doubt
of her quick intelligence or feeling.
“Oldring has men watch the herds—they would kill you. You must never
go again!”
When she had spoken, the strength and the blaze of her died, and she
swayed toward Venters.
“Bess, I'll not go again,” he said, catching her.
She leaned against him, and her body was limp and vibrated to a long,
wavering tremble. Her face was upturned to his. Woman's face, woman's eyes,
woman's lips—all acutely and blindly and sweetly and terribly truthful in their
betrayal! But as her fear was instinctive, so was her clinging to this one and only
friend.
Venters gently put her from him and steadied her upon her feet; and all the
while his blood raced wild, and a thrilling tingle unsteadied his nerve, and
something—that he had seen and felt in her—that he could not understand—
seemed very close to him, warm and rich as a fragrant breath, sweet as nothing
had ever before been sweet to him.
With all his will Venters strove for calmness and thought and judgment
unbiased by pity, and reality unswayed by sentiment. Bess's eyes were still fixed
upon him with all her soul bright in that wistful light. Swiftly, resolutely he put
out of mind all of her life except what had been spent with him. He scorned
himself for the intelligence that made him still doubt. He meant to judge her as
she had judged him. He was face to face with the inevitableness of life itself. He
saw destiny in the dark, straight path of her wonderful eyes. Here was the
simplicity, the sweetness of a girl contending with new and strange and
enthralling emotions here the living truth of innocence; here the blind terror of a
woman confronted with the thought of death to her savior and protector. All this
Venters saw, but, besides, there was in Bess's eyes a slow-dawning consciousness
that seemed about to break out in glorious radiance.
“Bess, are you thinking?” he asked.
97
“Yes—oh yes!”
“Do you realize we are here alone—man and woman?”
“Yes.”
“Have you thought that we may make our way out to civilization, or we
may have to stay here—alone—hidden from the world all our lives?”
“I never thought—till now.”
“Well, what's your choice—to go—or to stay here—alone with me?”
“Stay!” New-born thought of self, ringing vibrantly in her voice, gave her
answer singular power.
Venters trembled, and then swiftly turned his gaze from her face—from
her eyes. He knew what she had only half divined—that she loved him.
CHAPTER XI. FAITH AND UNFAITH
At Jane Withersteen's home the promise made to Mrs. Larkin to care for
little Fay had begun to be fulfilled. Like a gleam of sunlight through the
cottonwoods was the coming of the child to the gloomy house of Withersteen.
The big, silent halls echoed with childish laughter. In the shady court, where Jane
spent many of the hot July days, Fay's tiny feet pattered over the stone flags and
splashed in the amber stream. She prattled incessantly. What difference, Jane
thought, a child made in her home! It had never been a real home, she
discovered. Even the tidiness and neatness she had so observed, and upon which
she had insisted to her women, became, in the light of Fay's smile, habits that
now lost their importance. Fay littered the court with Jane's books and papers,
and other toys her fancy improvised, and many a strange craft went floating
down the little brook.
And it was owing to Fay's presence that Jane Withersteen came to see
more of Lassiter. The rider had for the most part kept to the sage. He rode for
her, but he did not seek her except on business; and Jane had to acknowledge in
pique that her overtures had been made in vain. Fay, however, captured Lassiter
the moment he first laid eyes on her.
Jane was present at the meeting, and there was something about it which
dimmed her sight and softened her toward this foe of her people. The rider had
clanked into the court, a tired yet wary man, always looking for the attack upon
him that was inevitable and might come from any quarter; and he had walked
98
www.obooko.com
right upon little Fay. The child had been beautiful even in her rags and amid the
surroundings of the hovel in the sage, but now, in a pretty white dress, with her
shining curls brushed and her face clean and rosy, she was lovely. She left her
play and looked up at Lassiter.
If there was not an instinct for all three of them in that meeting, an
unreasoning tendency toward a closer intimacy, then Jane Withersteen believed
she had been subject to a queer fancy. She imagined any child would have feared
Lassiter. And Fay Larkin had been a lonely, a solitary elf of the sage, not at all an
ordinary child, and exquisitely shy with strangers. She watched Lassiter with
great, round, grave eyes, but showed no fear. The rider gave Jane a favorable
report of cattle and horses; and as he took the seat to which she invited him, little
Fay edged as much as half an inch nearer. Jane replied to his look of inquiry and
told Fay's story. The rider's gray, earnest gaze troubled her. Then he turned to
Fay and smiled in a way that made Jane doubt her sense of the true relation of
things. How could Lassiter smile so at a child when he had made so many
children fatherless? But he did smile, and to the gentleness she had seen a few
times he added something that was infinitely sad and sweet. Jane's intuition told
her that Lassiter had never been a father, but if life ever so blessed him he would
be a good one. Fay, also, must have found that smile singularly winning. For she
edged closer and closer, and then, by way of feminine capitulation, went to Jane,
from whose side she bent a beautiful glance upon the rider.
Lassiter only smiled at her.
Jane watched them, and realized that now was the moment she should
seize, if she was ever to win this man from his hatred. But the step was not easy
to take. The more she saw of Lassiter the more she respected him, and the
greater her respect the harder it became to lend herself to mere coquetry. Yet as
she thought of her great motive, of Tull, and of that other whose name she had
schooled herself never to think of in connection with Milly Erne's avenger, she
suddenly found she had no choice. And her creed gave her boldness far beyond
the limit to which vanity would have led her.
“Lassiter, I see so little of you now,” she said, and was conscious of heat in
her cheeks.
“I've been riding hard,” he replied.
“But you can't live in the saddle. You come in sometimes. Won't you come
here to see me—oftener?”
“Is that an order?”
“Nonsense! I simply ask you to come to see me when you find time.”
“Why?”
99
The query once heard was not so embarrassing to Jane as she might have
imagined. Moreover, it established in her mind a fact that there existed actually
other than selfish reasons for her wanting to see him. And as she had been bold,
so she determined to be both honest and brave.
“I've reasons—only one of which I need mention,” she answered. “If it's
possible I want to change you toward my people. And on the moment I can
conceive of little I wouldn't do to gain that end.”
How much better and freer Jane felt after that confession! She meant to
show him that there was one Mormon who could play a game or wage a fight in
the open.
“I reckon,” said Lassiter, and he laughed.
It was the best in her, if the most irritating, that Lassiter always aroused.
“Will you come?” She looked into his eyes, and for the life of her could not
quite subdue an imperiousness that rose with her spirit. “I never asked so much
of any man—except Bern Venters.”
“'Pears to me that you'd run no risk, or Venters, either. But mebbe that
doesn't hold good for me.”
“You mean it wouldn't be safe for you to be often here? You look for
ambush in the cottonwoods?”
“Not that so much.”
At this juncture little Fay sidled over to Lassiter.
“Has oo a little dirl?” she inquired.
“No, lassie,” replied the rider.
Whatever Fay seemed to be searching for in Lassiter's sun-reddened face
and quiet eyes she evidently found. “Oo tan tom to see me,” she added, and with
that, shyness gave place to friendly curiosity. First his sombrero with its leather
band and silver ornaments commanded her attention; next his quirt, and then
the clinking, silver spurs. These held her for some time, but presently, true to
childish fickleness, she left off playing with them to look for something else. She
laughed in glee as she ran her little hands down the slippery, shiny surface of
Lassiter's leather chaps. Soon she discovered one of the hanging gun—sheaths,
and she dragged it up and began tugging at the huge black handle of the gun. Jane
Withersteen repressed an exclamation. What significance there was to her in the
little girl's efforts to dislodge that heavy weapon! Jane Withersteen saw Fay's
play and her beauty and her love as most powerful allies to her own woman's
part in a game that suddenly had acquired a strange zest and a hint of danger.
And as for the rider, he appeared to have forgotten Jane in the wonder of this
lovely child playing about him. At first he was much the shyer of the two.
100
www.obooko.com
Gradually her confidence overcame his backwardness, and he had the temerity to
stroke her golden curls with a great hand. Fay rewarded his boldness with a
smile, and when he had gone to the extreme of closing that great hand over her
little brown one, she said, simply, “I like oo!”
Sight of his face then made Jane oblivious for the time to his character as a
hater of Mormons. Out of the mother longing that swelled her breast she divined
the child hunger in Lassiter.
He returned the next day, and the next; and upon the following he came
both at morning and at night. Upon the evening of this fourth day Jane seemed to
feel the breaking of a brooding struggle in Lassiter. During all these visits he had
scarcely a word to say, though he watched her and played absent-mindedly with
Fay. Jane had contented herself with silence. Soon little Fay substituted for the
expression of regard, “I like oo,” a warmer and more generous one, “I love oo.”
Thereafter Lassiter came oftener to see Jane and her little protegee. Daily
he grew more gentle and kind, and gradually developed a quaintly merry mood.
In the morning he lifted Fay upon his horse and let her ride as he walked beside
her to the edge of the sage. In the evening he played with the child at an infinite
variety of games she invented, and then, oftener than not, he accepted Jane's
invitation to supper. No other visitor came to Withersteen House during those
days. So that in spite of watchfulness he never forgot, Lassiter began to show he
felt at home there. After the meal they walked into the grove of cottonwoods or
up by the lakes, and little Fay held Lassiter's hand as much as she held Jane's.
Thus a strange relationship was established, and Jane liked it. At twilight they
always returned to the house, where Fay kissed them and went in to her mother.
Lassiter and Jane were left alone.
Then, if there were anything that a good woman could do to win a man and
still preserve her self-respect, it was something which escaped the natural
subtlety of a woman determined to allure. Jane's vanity, that after all was not
great, was soon satisfied with Lassiter's silent admiration. And her honest desire
to lead him from his dark, blood-stained path would never have blinded her to
what she owed herself. But the driving passion of her religion, and its call to save
Mormons' lives, one life in particular, bore Jane Withersteen close to an
infringement of her womanhood. In the beginning she had reasoned that her
appeal to Lassiter must be through the senses. With whatever means she
possessed in the way of adornment she enhanced her beauty. And she stooped to
artifices that she knew were unworthy of her, but which she deliberately chose to
employ. She made of herself a girl in every variable mood wherein a girl might be
desirable. In those moods she was not above the methods of an inexperienced
101
though natural flirt. She kept close to him whenever opportunity afforded; and
she was forever playfully, yet passionately underneath the surface, fighting him
for possession of the great black guns. These he would never yield to her. And so
in that manner their hands were often and long in contact. The more of simplicity
that she sensed in him the greater the advantage she took.
She had a trick of changing—and it was not altogether voluntary—from
this gay, thoughtless, girlish coquettishness to the silence and the brooding,
burning mystery of a woman's mood. The strength and passion and fire of her
were in her eyes, and she so used them that Lassiter had to see this depth in her,
this haunting promise more fitted to her years than to the flaunting guise of a
wilful girl.
The July days flew by. Jane reasoned that if it were possible for her to be
happy during such a time, then she was happy. Little Fay completely filled a long
aching void in her heart. In fettering the hands of this Lassiter she was
accomplishing the greatest good of her life, and to do good even in a small way
rendered happiness to Jane Withersteen. She had attended the regular Sunday
services of her church; otherwise she had not gone to the village for weeks. It was
unusual that none of her churchmen or friends had called upon her of late; but it
was neglect for which she was glad. Judkins and his boy riders had experienced
no difficulty in driving the white herd. So these warm July days were free of
worry, and soon Jane hoped she had passed the crisis; and for her to hope was
presently to trust, and then to believe. She thought often of Venters, but in a
dreamy, abstract way. She spent hours teaching and playing with little Fay. And
the activity of her mind centered around Lassiter. The direction she had given
her will seemed to blunt any branching off of thought from that straight line. The
mood came to obsess her.
In the end, when her awakening came, she learned that she had builded
better than she knew. Lassiter, though kinder and gentler than ever, had parted
with his quaint humor and his coldness and his tranquillity to become a restless
and unhappy man. Whatever the power of his deadly intent toward Mormons,
that passion now had a rival, the one equally burning and consuming. Jane
Withersteen had one moment of exultation before the dawn of a strange
uneasiness. What if she had made of herself a lure, at tremendous cost to him and
to her, and all in vain!
That night in the moonlit grove she summoned all her courage and,
turning suddenly in the path, she faced Lassiter and leaned close to him, so that
she touched him and her eyes looked up to his.
“Lassiter!... Will you do anything for me?”
102
www.obooko.com
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 she 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
103
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.
104
www.obooko.com
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
105
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.
“For 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!”
106
www.obooko.com
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
107
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!”
108
www.obooko.com
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—”
109
“But you're not free. Not free of Mormonism. An' in playin' this game with
me you've been unfaithful.”
“Un-faithful!” 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?”
110
www.obooko.com
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 coils 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
111
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
112
www.obooko.com
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.
“Hester,” said Jane, sternly, “you may go home, and you need not come
back.”
Jane shut the door and returned to Lassiter. Standing unsteadily, she put
her hand on his arm. She let him see that doubt had gone, and how this stab of
disloyalty pained her.
“Spies! My own women!... Oh, miserable!” she cried, with flashing, tearful
eyes.
“I hate to tell you,” he replied. By that she knew he had long spared her.
“It's begun again—that work in the dark.”
“Nay, Lassiter—it never stopped!”
So bitter certainty claimed her at last, and trust fled Withersteen House
and fled forever. The women who owed much to Jane Withersteen changed not in
love for her, nor in devotion to their household work, but they poisoned both by
a thousand acts of stealth and cunning and duplicity. Jane broke out once and
caught them in strange, stone-faced, unhesitating falsehood. Thereafter she
broke out no more. She forgave them because they were driven. Poor, fettered,
and sealed Hagars, how she pitied them! What terrible thing bound them and
locked their lips, when they showed neither consciousness of guilt toward their
benefactress nor distress at the slow wearing apart of long-established and dear
ties?
“The blindness again!” cried Jane Withersteen. “In my sisters as in me!... O
God!”
There came a time when no words passed between Jane and her women.
Silently they went about their household duties, and secretly they went about the
underhand work to which they had been bidden. The gloom of the house and the
113
gloom of its mistress, which darkened even the bright spirit of little Fay, did not
pervade these women. Happiness was not among them, but they were aloof from
gloom. They spied and listened; they received and sent secret messengers; and
they stole Jane's books and records, and finally the papers that were deeds of her
possessions. Through it all they were silent, rapt in a kind of trance. Then one by
one, without leave or explanation or farewell, they left Withersteen House, and
never returned.
Coincident with this disappearance Jane's gardeners and workers in the
alfalfa fields and stable men quit her, not even asking for their wages. Of all her
Mormon employees about the great ranch only Jerd remained. He went on with
his duty, but talked no more of the change than if it had never occurred.
“Jerd,” said Jane, “what stock you can't take care of turn out in the sage. Let
your first thought be for Black Star and Night. Keep them in perfect condition.
Run them every day and watch them always.”
Though Jane Withersteen gave them such liberality, she loved her
possessions. She loved the rich, green stretches of alfalfa, and the farms, and the
grove, and the old stone house, and the beautiful, ever-faithful amber spring, and
every one of a myriad of horses and colts and burros and fowls down to the
smallest rabbit that nipped her vegetables; but she loved best her noble Arabian
steeds. In common with all riders of the upland sage Jane cherished two material
things—the cold, sweet, brown water that made life possible in the wilderness
and the horses which were a part of that life. When Lassiter asked her what
Lassiter would be without his guns he was assuming that his horse was part of
himself. So Jane loved Black Star and Night because it was her nature to love all
beautiful creatures—perhaps all living things; and then she loved them because
she herself was of the sage and in her had been born and bred the rider's instinct
to rely on his four-footed brother. And when Jane gave Jerd the order to keep her
favorites trained down to the day it was a half-conscious admission that presaged
a time when she would need her fleet horses.
Jane had now, however, no leisure to brood over the coils that were
closing round her. Mrs. Larkin grew weaker as the August days began; she
required constant care; there was little Fay to look after; and such household
work as was imperative. Lassiter put Bells in the stable with the other racers, and
directed his efforts to a closer attendance upon Jane. She welcomed the change.
He was always at hand to help, and it was her fortune to learn that his boast of
being awkward around women had its root in humility and was not true.
His great, brown hands were skilled in a multiplicity of ways which a
woman might have envied. He shared Jane's work, and was of especial help to her
114
www.obooko.com
in nursing Mrs. Larkin. The woman suffered most at night, and this often broke
Jane's rest. So it came about that Lassiter would stay by Mrs. Larkin during the
day, when she needed care, and Jane would make up the sleep she lost in night-
watches. Mrs. Larkin at once took kindly to the gentle Lassiter, and, without ever
asking who or what he was, praised him to Jane. “He's a good man and loves
children,” she said. How sad to hear this truth spoken of a man whom Jane
thought lost beyond all redemption! Yet ever and ever Lassiter towered above
her, and behind or through his black, sinister figure shone something luminous
that strangely affected Jane. Good and evil began to seem incomprehensibly
blended in her judgment. It was her belief that evil could not come forth from
good; yet here was a murderer who dwarfed in gentleness, patience, and love any
man she had ever known.
She had almost lost track of her more outside concerns when early one
morning Judkins presented himself before her in the courtyard.
Thin, hard, burnt, bearded, with the dust and sage thick on him, with his
leather wrist-bands shining from use, and his boots worn through on the stirrup
side, he looked the rider of riders. He wore two guns and carried a Winchester.
Jane greeted him with surprise and warmth, set meat and bread and drink
before him; and called Lassiter out to see him. The men exchanged glances, and
the meaning of Lassiter's keen inquiry and Judkins's bold reply, both unspoken,
was not lost upon Jane.
“Where's your hoss?” asked Lassiter, aloud.
“Left him down the slope,” answered Judkins. “I footed it in a ways, an'
slept last night in the sage. I went to the place you told me you 'moss always
slept, but didn't strike you.”
“I moved up some, near the spring, an' now I go there nights.”
“Judkins—the white herd?” queried Jane, hurriedly.
“Miss Withersteen, I make proud to say I've not lost a steer. Fer a good
while after thet stampede Lassiter milled we hed no trouble. Why, even the sage
dogs left us. But it's begun agin—thet flashin' of lights over ridge tips, an' queer
puffin' of smoke, en' then at night strange whistles en' noises. But the herd's
acted magnificent. An' my boys, say, Miss Withersteen, they're only kids, but I ask
no better riders. I got the laugh in the village fer takin' them out. They're a wild
lot, an' you know boys hev more nerve than grown men, because they don't know
what danger is. I'm not denyin' there's danger. But they glory in it, an' mebbe I
like it myself—anyway, we'll stick. We're goin' to drive the herd on the far side of
the first break of Deception Pass. There's a great round valley over there, an' no
ridges or piles of rocks to aid these stampeders. The rains are due. We'll hev
115
plenty of water fer a while. An' we can hold thet herd from anybody except
Oldrin'. I come in fer supplies. I'll pack a couple of burros an' drive out after dark
to-night.”
“Judkins, take what you want from the store-room. Lassiter will help you.
I—I can't thank you enough... but—wait.”
Jane went to the room that had once been her father's, and from a secret
chamber in the thick stone wall she took a bag of gold, and, carrying it back to the
court, she gave it to the rider.
“There, Judkins, and understand that I regard it as little for your loyalty.
Give what is fair to your boys, and keep the rest. Hide it. Perhaps that would be
wisest.”
“Oh... Miss Withersteen!” ejaculated the rider. “I couldn't earn so much
in—in ten years. It's not right—I oughtn't take it.”
“Judkins, you know I'm a rich woman. I tell you I've few faithful friends.
I've fallen upon evil days. God only knows what will become of me and mine! So
take the gold.”
She smiled in understanding of his speechless gratitude, and left him with
Lassiter. Presently she heard him speaking low at first, then in louder accents
emphasized by the thumping of his rifle on the stones. “As infernal a job as even
you, Lassiter, ever heerd of.”
“Why, son,” was Lassiter's reply, “this breakin' of Miss Withersteen may
seem bad to you, but it ain't bad—yet. Some of these wall-eyed fellers who look
jest as if they was walkin' in the shadow of Christ himself, right down the sunny
road, now they can think of things en' do things that are really hell-bent.”
Jane covered her ears and ran to her own room, and there like caged
lioness she paced to and fro till the coming of little Fay reversed her dark
thoughts.
The following day, a warm and muggy one threatening rain awhile Jane
was resting in the court, a horseman clattered through the grove and up to the
hitching-rack. He leaped off and approached Jane with the manner of a man
determined to execute difficult mission, yet fearful of its reception. In the gaunt,
wiry figure and the lean, brown face Jane recognized one of her Mormon riders,
Blake. It was he of whom Judkins had long since spoken. Of all the riders ever in
her employ Blake owed her the most, and as he stepped before her, removing his
hat and making manly efforts to subdue his emotion, he showed that he
remembered.
“Miss Withersteen, mother's dead,” he said.
“Oh—Blake!” exclaimed Jane, and she could say no more.
116
www.obooko.com
“She died free from pain in the end, and she's buried—resting at last, thank
God!... I've come to ride for you again, if you'll have me. Don't think I mentioned
mother to get your sympathy. When she was living and your riders quit, I had to
also. I was afraid of what might be done—said to her.... Miss Withersteen, we
can't talk of—of what's going on now—”
“Blake, do you know?”
“I know a great deal. You understand, my lips are shut. But without
explanation or excuse I offer my services. I'm a Mormon—I hope a good one.
But—there are some things!... It's no use, Miss Withersteen, I can't say any
more—what I'd like to. But will you take me back?”
“Blake!... You know what it means?”
“I don't care. I'm sick of—of—I'll show you a Mormon who'll be true to
you!”
“But, Blake—how terribly you might suffer for that!”
“Maybe. Aren't you suffering now?”
“God knows indeed I am!”
“Miss Withersteen, it's a liberty on my part to speak so, but I know you
pretty well—know you'll never give in. I wouldn't if I were you. And I—I must—
Something makes me tell you the worst is yet to come. That's all. I absolutely
can't say more. Will you take me back—let me ride for you—show everybody
what I mean?”
“Blake, it makes me happy to hear you. How my riders hurt me when they
quit!” Jane felt the hot tears well to her eyes and splash down upon her hands. “I
thought so much of them—tried so hard to be good to them. And not one was
true. You've made it easy to forgive. Perhaps many of them really feel as you do,
but dare not return to me. Still, Blake, I hesitate to take you back. Yet I want you
so much.”
“Do it, then. If you're going to make your life a lesson to Mormon women,
let me make mine a lesson to the men. Right is right. I believe in you, and here's
my life to prove it.”
“You hint it may mean your life!” said Jane, breathless and low.
“We won't speak of that. I want to come back. I want to do what every
rider aches in his secret heart to do for you.... Miss Withersteen, I hoped it'd not
be necessary to tell you that my mother on her deathbed told me to have courage.
She knew how the thing galled me—she told me to come back.... Will you take
me?”
“God bless you, Blake! Yes, I'll take you back. And will you—will you accept
gold from me?”
117
“Miss Withersteen!”
“I just gave Judkins a bag of gold. I'll give you one. If you will not take it you
must not come back. You might ride for me a few months—weeks—days till the
storm breaks. Then you'd have nothing, and be in disgrace with your people.
We'll forearm you against poverty, and me against endless regret. I'll give you
gold which you can hide—till some future time.”
“Well, if it pleases you,” replied Blake. “But you know I never thought of
pay. Now, Miss Withersteen, one thing more. I want to see this man Lassiter. Is he
here?”
“Yes, but, Blake—what—Need you see him? Why?” asked Jane, instantly
worried. “I can speak to him—tell him about you.”
“That won't do. I want to—I've got to tell him myself. Where is he?”
“Lassiter is with Mrs. Larkin. She is ill. I'll call him,” answered Jane, and
going to the door she softly called for the rider. A faint, musical jingle preceded
his step—then his tall form crossed the threshold.
“Lassiter, here's Blake, an old rider of mine. He has come back to me and
he wishes to speak to you.”
Blake's brown face turned exceedingly pale.
“Yes, I had to speak to you,” he said, swiftly. “My name's Blake. I'm a
Mormon and a rider. Lately I quit Miss Withersteen. I've come to beg her to take
me back. Now I don't know you; but I know—what you are. So I've this to say to
your face. It would never occur to this woman to imagine—let alone suspect me
to be a spy. She couldn't think it might just be a low plot to come here and shoot
you in the back. Jane Withersteen hasn't that kind of a mind.... Well, I've not come
for that. I want to help her—to pull a bridle along with Judkins and—and you.
The thing is—do you believe me?”
“I reckon I do,” replied Lassiter. How this slow, cool speech contrasted
with Blake's hot, impulsive words! “You might have saved some of your breath.
See here, Blake, cinch this in your mind. Lassiter has met some square Mormons!
An' mebbe—”
“Blake,” interrupted Jane, nervously anxious to terminate a colloquy that
she perceived was an ordeal for him. “Go at once and fetch me a report of my
horses.”
“Miss Withersteen!... You mean the big drove—down in the sage-cleared
fields?”
“Of course,” replied Jane. “My horses are all there, except the blooded stock
I keep here.”
“Haven't you heard—then?”
118
www.obooko.com
“Heard? No! What's happened to them?”

“They're gone, Miss Withersteen, gone these ten days past. Dorn told me,
and I rode down to see for myself.”
“Lassiter—did you know?” asked Jane, whirling to him.
“I reckon so.... But what was the use to tell you?”
It was Lassiter turning away his face and Blake studying the stone flags at
his feet that brought Jane to the understanding of what she betrayed. She strove
desperately, but she could not rise immediately from such a blow.
“My horses! My horses! What's become of them?”
“Dorn said the riders report another drive by Oldring.... And I trailed the
horses miles down the slope toward Deception Pass.”
“My red herd's gone! My horses gone! The white herd will go next. I can
stand that. But if I lost Black Star and Night, it would be like parting with my own
flesh and blood. Lassiter—Blake—am I in danger of losing my racers?”
“A rustler—or—or anybody stealin' hosses of yours would most of all
want the blacks,” said Lassiter. His evasive reply was affirmative enough. The
other rider nodded gloomy acquiescence.
“Oh! Oh!” Jane Withersteen choked, with violent utterance.
“Let me take charge of the blacks?” asked Blake. “One more rider won't be
any great help to Judkins. But I might hold Black Star and Night, if you put such
store on their value.”
“Value! Blake, I love my racers. Besides, there's another reason why I
mustn't lose them. You go to the stables. Go with Jerd every day when he runs the
horses, and don't let them out of your sight. If you would please me—win my
gratitude, guard my black racers.”
When Blake had mounted and ridden out of the court Lassiter regarded
Jane with the smile that was becoming rarer as the days sped by.
“'Pears to me, as Blake says, you do put some store on them hosses. Now I
ain't gainsayin' that the Arabians are the handsomest hosses I ever seen. But
Bells can beat Night, an' run neck en' neck with Black Star.”
“Lassiter, don't tease me now. I'm miserable—sick. Bells is fast, but he
can't stay with the blacks, and you know it. Only Wrangle can do that.”
“I'll bet that big raw-boned brute can more'n show his heels to your black
racers. Jane, out there in the sage, on a long chase, Wrangle could kill your
favorites.”
“No, no,” replied Jane, impatiently. “Lassiter, why do you say that so often?
I know you've teased me at times, and I believe it's only kindness. You're always
119
trying to keep my mind off worry. But you mean more by this repeated mention
of my racers?”
“I reckon so.” Lassiter paused, and for the thousandth time in her presence
moved his black sombrero round and round, as if counting the silver pieces on
the band. “Well, Jane, I've sort of read a little that's passin' in your mind.”
“You think I might fly from my home—from Cottonwoods—from the Utah
border?”
“I reckon. An' if you ever do an' get away with the blacks I wouldn't like to
see Wrangle left here on the sage. Wrangle could catch you. I know Venters had
him. But you can never tell. Mebbe he hasn't got him now.... Besides—things are
happenin', an' somethin' of the same queer nature might have happened to
Venters.”
“God knows you're right!... Poor Bern, how long he's gone! In my trouble
I've been forgetting him. But, Lassiter, I've little fear for him. I've heard my riders
say he's as keen as a wolf.... As to your reading my thoughts—well, your
suggestion makes an actual thought of what was only one of my dreams. I believe
I dreamed of flying from this wild borderland, Lassiter. I've strange dreams. I'm
not always practical and thinking of my many duties, as you said once. For
instance—if I dared—if I dared I'd ask you to saddle the blacks and ride away
with me—and hide me.”
“Jane!”
The rider's sunburnt face turned white. A few times Jane had seen
Lassiter's cool calm broken—when he had met little Fay, when he had learned
how and why he had come to love both child and mistress, when he had stood
beside Milly Erne's grave. But one and all they could not be considered in the
light of his present agitation. Not only did Lassiter turn white—not only did he
grow tense, not only did he lose his coolness, but also he suddenly, violently,
hungrily took her into his arms and crushed her to his breast.
“Lassiter!” cried Jane, trembling. It was an action for which she took sole
blame. Instantly, as if dazed, weakened, he released her. “Forgive me!” went on
Jane. “I'm always forgetting your—your feelings. I thought of you as my faithful
friend. I'm always making you out more than human... only, let me say—I meant
that—about riding away. I'm wretched, sick of this—this—Oh, something bitter
and black grows on my heart!”
“Jane, the hell—of it,” he replied, with deep intake of breath, “is you can't
ride away. Mebbe realizin' it accounts for my grabbin' you—that way, as much as
the crazy boy's rapture your words gave me. I don't understand myself.... But the
hell of this game is—you can't ride away.”
120
www.obooko.com
“Lassiter!... What on earth do you mean? I'm an absolutely free woman.”

“You ain't absolutely anythin' of the kind.... I reckon I've got to tell you!”
“Tell me all. It's uncertainty that makes me a coward. It's faith and hope—
blind love, if you will, that makes me miserable. Every day I awake believing—
still believing. The day grows, and with it doubts, fears, and that black bat hate
that bites hotter and hotter into my heart. Then comes night—I pray—I pray for
all, and for myself—I sleep—and I awake free once more, trustful, faithful, to
believe—to hope! Then, O my God! I grow and live a thousand years till night
again!... But if you want to see me a woman, tell me why I can't ride away—tell
me what more I'm to lose—tell me the worst.”
“Jane, you're watched. There's no single move of yours, except when
you're hid in your house, that ain't seen by sharp eyes. The cottonwood grove's
full of creepin', crawlin' men. Like Indians in the grass. When you rode, which
wasn't often lately, the sage was full of sneakin' men. At night they crawl under
your windows into the court, an' I reckon into the house. Jane Withersteen, you
know, never locked a door! This here grove's a hummin' bee-hive of mysterious
happenin's. Jane, it ain't so much that these soles keep out of my way as me
keepin' out of theirs. They're goin' to try to kill me. That's plain. But mebbe I'm as
hard to shoot in the back as in the face. So far I've seen fit to watch only. This all
means, Jane, that you're a marked woman. You can't get away—not now. Mebbe
later, when you're broken, you might. But that's sure doubtful. Jane, you're to
lose the cattle that's left—your home an' ranch—an' Amber Spring. You can't
even hide a sack of gold! For it couldn't be slipped out of the house, day or night,
an' hid or buried, let alone be rid off with. You may lose all. I'm tellin' you, Jane,
hopin' to prepare you, if the worst does come. I told you once before about that
strange power I've got to feel things.”
“Lassiter, what can I do?”
“Nothin', I reckon, except know what's comin' an' wait an' be game. If
you'd let me make a call on Tull, an' a long-deferred call on—”
“Hush!... Hush!” she whispered.
“Well, even that wouldn't help you any in the end.”
“What does it mean? Oh, what does it mean? I am my father's daughter—a
Mormon, yet I can't see! I've not failed in religion—in duty. For years I've given
with a free and full heart. When my father died I was rich. If I'm still rich it's
because I couldn't find enough ways to become poor. What am I, what are my
possessions to set in motion such intensity of secret oppression?”
“Jane, the mind behind it all is an empire builder.”
121
“But, Lassiter, I would give freely—all I own to avert this—this wretched

thing. If I gave—that would leave me with faith still. Surely my—my churchmen
think of my soul? If I lose my trust in them—”
“Child, be still!” said Lassiter, with a dark dignity that had in it something
of pity. “You are a woman, fine en' big an' strong, an' your heart matches your
size. But in mind you're a child. I'll say a little more—then I'm done. I'll never
mention this again. Among many thousands of women you're one who has
bucked against your churchmen. They tried you out, an' failed of persuasion, an'
finally of threats. You meet now the cold steel of a will as far from Christlike as
the universe is wide. You're to be broken. Your body's to be held, given to some
man, made, if possible, to bring children into the world. But your soul?... What do
they care for your soul?”
CHAPTER XIII. SOLITUDE AND STORM
In his hidden valley Venters awakened from sleep, and his ears rang with
innumerable melodies from full-throated mockingbirds, and his eyes opened
wide upon the glorious golden shaft of sunlight shining through the great stone
bridge. The circle of cliffs surrounding Surprise Valley lay shrouded in morning
mist, a dim blue low down along the terraces, a creamy, moving cloud along the
ramparts. The oak forest in the center was a plumed and tufted oval of gold.
He saw Bess under the spruces. Upon her complete recovery of strength
she always rose with the dawn. At the moment she was feeding the quail she had
tamed. And she had begun to tame the mocking-birds. They fluttered among the
branches overhead and some left off their songs to flit down and shyly hop near
the twittering quail. Little gray and white rabbits crouched in the grass, now
nibbling, now laying long ears flat and watching the dogs.
Venters's swift glance took in the brightening valley, and Bess and her
pets, and Ring and Whitie. It swept over all to return again and rest upon the girl.
She had changed. To the dark trousers and blouse she had added moccasins of
her own make, but she no longer resembled a boy. No eye could have failed to
mark the rounded contours of a woman. The change had been to grace and
beauty. A glint of warm gold gleamed from her hair, and a tint of red shone in the
clear dark brown of cheeks. The haunting sweetness of her lips and eyes, that
earlier had been illusive, a promise, had become a living fact. She fitted
122
www.obooko.com
harmoniously into that wonderful setting; she was like Surprise Valley—wild and
beautiful.
Venters leaped out of his cave to begin the day.
He had postponed his journey to Cottonwoods until after the passing of
the summer rains. The rains were due soon. But until their arrival and the
necessity for his trip to the village he sequestered in a far corner of mind all
thought of peril, of his past life, and almost that of the present. It was enough to
live. He did not want to know what lay hidden in the dim and distant future.
Surprise Valley had enchanted him. In this home of the cliff-dwellers there were
peace and quiet and solitude, and another thing, wondrous as the golden
morning shaft of sunlight, that he dared not ponder over long enough to
understand.
The solitude he had hated when alone he had now come to love. He was
assimilating something from this valley of gleams and shadows. From this
strange girl he was assimilating more.
The day at hand resembled many days gone before. As Venters had no
tools with which to build, or to till the terraces, he remained idle. Beyond the
cooking of the simple fare there were no tasks. And as there were no tasks, there
was no system. He and Bess began one thing, to leave it; to begin another, to
leave that; and then do nothing but lie under the spruces and watch the great
cloud-sails majestically move along the ramparts, and dream and dream. The
valley was a golden, sunlit world. It was silent. The sighing wind and the
twittering quail and the singing birds, even the rare and seldom-occurring hollow
crack of a sliding weathered stone, only thickened and deepened that insulated
silence.
Venters and Bess had vagrant minds.
“Bess, did I tell you about my horse Wrangle?” inquired Venters.
“A hundred times,” she replied.
“Oh, have I? I'd forgotten. I want you to see him. He'll carry us both.”
“I'd like to ride him. Can he run?”
“Run? He's a demon. Swiftest horse on the sage! I hope he'll stay in that
canyon.
“He'll stay.”
They left camp to wander along the terraces, into the aspen ravines, under
the gleaming walls. Ring and Whitie wandered in the fore, often turning, often
trotting back, open-mouthed and solemn-eyed and happy. Venters lifted his gaze
to the grand archway over the entrance to the valley, and Bess lifted hers to
123
follow his, and both were silent. Sometimes the bridge held their attention for a
long time. To-day a soaring eagle attracted them.
“How he sails!” exclaimed Bess. “I wonder where his mate is?”
“She's at the nest. It's on the bridge in a crack near the top. I see her often.
She's almost white.”
They wandered on down the terrace, into the shady, sun-flecked forest. A
brown bird fluttered crying from a bush. Bess peeped into the leaves. “Look! A
nest and four little birds. They're not afraid of us. See how they open their
mouths. They're hungry.”
Rabbits rustled the dead brush and pattered away. The forest was full of a
drowsy hum of insects. Little darts of purple, that were running quail, crossed the
glades. And a plaintive, sweet peeping came from the coverts. Bess's soft step
disturbed a sleeping lizard that scampered away over the leaves. She gave chase
and caught it, a slim creature of nameless color but of exquisite beauty.
“Jewel eyes,” she said. “It's like a rabbit—afraid. We won't eat you. There—
go.”
Murmuring water drew their steps down into a shallow shaded ravine
where a brown brook brawled softly over mossy stones. Multitudes of strange,
gray frogs with white spots and black eyes lined the rocky bank and leaped only
at close approach. Then Venters's eye descried a very thin, very long green snake
coiled round a sapling. They drew closer and closer till they could have touched
it. The snake had no fear and watched them with scintillating eyes.
“It's pretty,” said Bess. “How tame! I thought snakes always ran.”
“No. Even the rabbits didn't run here till the dogs chased them.”
On and on they wandered to the wild jumble of massed and broken
fragments of cliff at the west end of the valley. The roar of the disappearing
stream dinned in their ears. Into this maze of rocks they threaded a tortuous way,
climbing, descending, halting to gather wild plums and great lavender lilies, and
going on at the will of fancy. Idle and keen perceptions guided them equally.
“Oh, let us climb there!” cried Bess, pointing upward to a small space of
terrace left green and shady between huge abutments of broken cliff. And they
climbed to the nook and rested and looked out across the valley to the curling
column of blue smoke from their campfire. But the cool shade and the rich grass
and the fine view were not what they had climbed for. They could not have told,
although whatever had drawn them was well-satisfying. Light, sure-footed as a
mountain goat, Bess pattered down at Venters's heels; and they went on, calling
the dogs, eyes dreamy and wide, listening to the wind and the bees and the
crickets and the birds.
124
www.obooko.com
Part of the time Ring and Whitie led the way, then Venters, then Bess; and
the direction was not an object. They left the sun-streaked shade of the oaks,
brushed the long grass of the meadows, entered the green and fragrant swaying
willows, to stop, at length, under the huge old cottonwoods where the beavers
were busy.
Here they rested and watched. A dam of brush and logs and mud and
stones backed the stream into a little lake. The round, rough beaver houses
projected from the water. Like the rabbits, the beavers had become shy.
Gradually, however, as Venters and Bess knelt low, holding the dogs, the beavers
emerged to swim with logs and gnaw at cottonwoods and pat mud walls with
their paddle-like tails, and, glossy and shiny in the sun, to go on with their
strange, persistent industry. They were the builders. The lake was a mud-hole,
and the immediate environment a scarred and dead region, but it was a
wonderful home of wonderful animals.
“Look at that one—he puddles in the mud,” said Bess. “And there! See him
dive! Hear them gnawing! I'd think they'd break their teeth. How's it they can
stay out of the water and under the water?”
And she laughed.
Then Venters and Bess wandered farther, and, perhaps not all
unconsciously this time, wended their slow steps to the cave of the cliff-dwellers,
where she liked best to go.
The tangled thicket and the long slant of dust and little chips of weathered
rock and the steep bench of stone and the worn steps all were arduous work for
Bess in the climbing. But she gained the shelf, gasping, hot of cheek, glad of eye,
with her hand in Venters's. Here they rested. The beautiful valley glittered below
with its millions of wind-turned leaves bright-faced in the sun, and the mighty
bridge towered heavenward, crowned with blue sky. Bess, however, never rested
for long. Soon she was exploring, and Venters followed; she dragged forth from
corners and shelves a multitude of crudely fashioned and painted pieces of
pottery, and he carried them. They peeped down into the dark holes of the kivas,
and Bess gleefully dropped a stone and waited for the long-coming hollow sound
to rise. They peeped into the little globular houses, like mud-wasp nests, and
wondered if these had been store-places for grain, or baby cribs, or what; and
they crawled into the larger houses and laughed when they bumped their heads
on the low roofs, and they dug in the dust of the floors. And they brought from
dust and darkness armloads of treasure which they carried to the light. Flints and
stones and strange curved sticks and pottery they found; and twisted grass rope
125
that crumbled in their hands, and bits of whitish stone which crushed to powder
at a touch and seemed to vanish in the air.
“That white stuff was bone,” said Venters, slowly. “Bones of a cliff-dweller.”
“No!” exclaimed Bess.
“Here's another piece. Look!... Whew! dry, powdery smoke! That's bone.”
Then it was that Venters's primitive, childlike mood, like a savage's, seeing,
yet unthinking, gave way to the encroachment of civilized thought. The world
had not been made for a single day's play or fancy or idle watching. The world
was old. Nowhere could be gotten a better idea of its age than in this gigantic
silent tomb. The gray ashes in Venters's hand had once been bone of a human
being like himself. The pale gloom of the cave had shadowed people long ago. He
saw that Bess had received the same shock—could not in moments such as this
escape her feeling living, thinking destiny.
“Bern, people have lived here,” she said, with wide, thoughtful eyes.
“Yes,” he replied.
“How long ago?”
“A thousand years and more.”
“What were they?”
“Cliff-dwellers. Men who had enemies and made their homes high out of
reach.”
“They had to fight?”
“Yes.”
“They fought for—what?”
“For life. For their homes, food, children, parents—for their women!”
“Has the world changed any in a thousand years?”
“I don't know—perhaps a little.”
“Have men?”
“I hope so—I think so.”
“Things crowd into my mind,” she went on, and the wistful light in her eyes
told Venters the truth of her thoughts. “I've ridden the border of Utah. I've seen
people—know how they live—but they must be few of all who are living. I had
my books and I studied them. But all that doesn't help me any more. I want to go
out into the big world and see it. Yet I want to stay here more. What's to become
of us? Are we cliff-dwellers? We're alone here. I'm happy when I don't think.
These—these bones that fly into dust—they make me sick and a little afraid. Did
the people who lived here once have the same feelings as we have? What was the
good of their living at all? They're gone! What's the meaning of it all—of us?”
126
www.obooko.com
“Bess, you ask more than I can tell. It's beyond me. Only there was laughter
here once—and now there's silence. There was life—and now there's death. Men
cut these little steps, made these arrow-heads and mealing-stones, plaited the
ropes we found, and left their bones to crumble in our fingers. As far as time is
concerned it might all have been yesterday. We're here to-day. Maybe we're
higher in the scale of human beings—in intelligence. But who knows? We can't be
any higher in the things for which life is lived at all.”
“What are they?”
“Why—I suppose relationship, friendship—love.”
“Love!”
“Yes. Love of man for woman—love of woman for man. That's the nature,
the meaning, the best of life itself.”
She said no more. Wistfulness of glance deepened into sadness.
“Come, let us go,” said Venters.
Action brightened her. Beside him, holding his hand she slipped down the
shelf, ran down the long, steep slant of sliding stones, out of the cloud of dust, and
likewise out of the pale gloom.
“We beat the slide,” she cried.
The miniature avalanche cracked and roared, and rattled itself into an
inert mass at the base of the incline. Yellow dust like the gloom of the cave, but
not so changeless, drifted away on the wind; the roar clapped in echo from the
cliff, returned, went back, and came again to die in the hollowness. Down on the
sunny terrace there was a different atmosphere. Ring and Whitie leaped around
Bess. Once more she was smiling, gay, and thoughtless, with the dream-mood in
the shadow of her eyes.
“Bess, I haven't seen that since last summer. Look!” said Venters, pointing
to the scalloped edge of rolling purple clouds that peeped over the western wall.
“We're in for a storm.”
“Oh, I hope not. I'm afraid of storms.”
“Are you? Why?”
“Have you ever been down in one of these walled-up pockets in a bad
storm?”
“No, now I think of it, I haven't.”
“Well, it's terrible. Every summer I get scared to death and hide
somewhere in the dark. Storms up on the sage are bad, but nothing to what they
are down here in the canyons. And in this little valley—why, echoes can rap back
and forth so quick they'll split our ears.”
“We're perfectly safe here, Bess.”
127
“I know. But that hasn't anything to do with it. The truth is I'm afraid of
lightning and thunder, and thunder-claps hurt my head. If we have a bad storm,
will you stay close to me?”
“Yes.”
When they got back to camp the afternoon was closing, and it was
exceedingly sultry. Not a breath of air stirred the aspen leaves, and when these
did not quiver the air was indeed still. The dark-purple clouds moved almost
imperceptibly out of the west.
“What have we for supper?” asked Bess.
“Rabbit.”
“Bern, can't you think of another new way to cook rabbit?” went on Bess,
with earnestness.
“What do you think I am—a magician?” retorted Venters.
“I wouldn't dare tell you. But, Bern, do you want me to turn into a rabbit?”
There was a dark-blue, merry flashing of eyes and a parting of lips; then
she laughed. In that moment she was naive and wholesome.
“Rabbit seems to agree with you,” replied Venters. “You are well and
strong—and growing very pretty.”
Anything in the nature of compliment he had never before said to her, and
just now he responded to a sudden curiosity to see its effect. Bess stared as if she
had not heard aright, slowly blushed, and completely lost her poise in happy
confusion.
“I'd better go right away,” he continued, “and fetch supplies from
Cottonwoods.”
A startlingly swift change in the nature of her agitation made him reproach
himself for his abruptness.
“No, no, don't go!” she said. “I didn't mean—that about the rabbit. I—I was
only trying to be—funny. Don't leave me all alone!”
“Bess, I must go sometime.”
“Wait then. Wait till after the storms.”
The purple cloud-bank darkened the lower edge of the setting sun, crept
up and up, obscuring its fiery red heart, and finally passed over the last ruddy
crescent of its upper rim.
The intense dead silence awakened to a long, low, rumbling roll of
thunder.
“Oh!” cried Bess, nervously.
128
www.obooko.com
“We've had big black clouds before this without rain,” said Venters. “But
there's no doubt about that thunder. The storms are coming. I'm glad. Every rider
on the sage will hear that thunder with glad ears.”
Venters and Bess finished their simple meal and the few tasks around the
camp, then faced the open terrace, the valley, and the west, to watch and await
the approaching storm.
It required keen vision to see any movement whatever in the purple
clouds. By infinitesimal degrees the dark cloud-line merged upward into the
golden-red haze of the afterglow of sunset. A shadow lengthened from under the
western wall across the valley. As straight and rigid as steel rose the delicate
spear-pointed silver spruces; the aspen leaves, by nature pendant and quivering,
hung limp and heavy; no slender blade of grass moved. A gentle splashing of
water came from the ravine. Then again from out of the west sounded the low,
dull, and rumbling roll of thunder.
A wave, a ripple of light, a trembling and turning of the aspen leaves, like
the approach of a breeze on the water, crossed the valley from the west; and the
lull and the deadly stillness and the sultry air passed away on a cool wind.
The night bird of the canyon, with clear and melancholy notes announced
the twilight. And from all along the cliffs rose the faint murmur and moan and
mourn of the wind singing in the caves. The bank of clouds now swept hugely out
of the western sky. Its front was purple and black, with gray between, a bulging,
mushrooming, vast thing instinct with storm. It had a dark, angry, threatening
aspect. As if all the power of the winds were pushing and piling behind, it rolled
ponderously across the sky. A red flare burned out instantaneously, flashed from
the west to east, and died. Then from the deepest black of the purple cloud burst
a boom. It was like the bowling of a huge boulder along the crags and ramparts,
and seemed to roll on and fall into the valley to bound and bang and boom from
cliff to cliff.
“Oh!” cried Bess, with her hands over her ears. “What did I tell you?”
“Why, Bess, be reasonable!” said Venters.
“I'm a coward.”
“Not quite that, I hope. It's strange you're afraid. I love a storm.”
“I tell you a storm down in these canyons is an awful thing. I know Oldring
hated storms. His men were afraid of them. There was one who went deaf in a
bad storm, and never could hear again.”
“Maybe I've lots to learn, Bess. I'll lose my guess if this storm isn't bad
enough. We're going to have heavy wind first, then lightning and thunder, then
the rain. Let's stay out as long as we can.”
129
The tips of the cottonwoods and the oaks waved to the east, and the rings
of aspens along the terraces twinkled their myriad of bright faces in fleet and
glancing gleam. A low roar rose from the leaves of the forest, and the spruces
swished in the rising wind. It came in gusts, with light breezes between. As it
increased in strength the lulls shortened in length till there was a strong and
steady blow all the time, and violent puffs at intervals, and sudden whirling
currents. The clouds spread over the valley, rolling swiftly and low, and twilight
faded into a sweeping darkness. Then the singing of the wind in the caves
drowned the swift roar of rustling leaves; then the song swelled to a mourning,
moaning wail; then with the gathering power of the wind the wail changed to a
shriek. Steadily the wind strengthened and constantly the strange sound
changed.
The last bit of blue sky yielded to the on-sweep of clouds. Like angry surf
the pale gleams of gray, amid the purple of that scudding front, swept beyond the
eastern rampart of the valley. The purple deepened to black. Broad sheets of
lightning flared over the western wall. There were not yet any ropes or zigzag
streaks darting down through the gathering darkness. The storm center was still
beyond Surprise Valley.
“Listen!... Listen!” cried Bess, with her lips close to Venters's ear. “You'll
hear Oldring's knell!”
“What's that?”
“Oldring's knell. When the wind blows a gale in the caves it makes what
the rustlers call Oldring's knell. They believe it bodes his death. I think he
believes so, too. It's not like any sound on earth.... It's beginning. Listen!”
The gale swooped down with a hollow unearthly howl. It yelled and pealed
and shrilled and shrieked. It was made up of a thousand piercing cries. It was a
rising and a moving sound. Beginning at the western break of the valley, it rushed
along each gigantic cliff, whistling into the caves and cracks, to mount in power,
to bellow a blast through the great stone bridge. Gone, as into an engulfing roar
of surging waters, it seemed to shoot back and begin all over again.
It was only wind, thought Venters. Here sped and shrieked the sculptor
that carved out the wonderful caves in the cliffs. It was only a gale, but as Venters
listened, as his ears became accustomed to the fury and strife, out of it all or
through it or above it pealed low and perfectly clear and persistently uniform a
strange sound that had no counterpart in all the sounds of the elements. It was
not of earth or of life. It was the grief and agony of the gale. A knell of all upon
which it blew!
130
www.obooko.com
Black night enfolded the valley. Venters could not see his companion, and
knew of her presence only through the tightening hold of her hand on his arm. He
felt the dogs huddle closer to him. Suddenly the dense, black vault overhead split
asunder to a blue-white, dazzling streak of lightning. The whole valley lay vividly
clear and luminously bright in his sight. Upreared, vast and magnificent, the
stone bridge glimmered like some grand god of storm in the lightning's fire. Then
all flashed black again—blacker than pitch—a thick, impenetrable coal-
blackness. And there came a ripping, crashing report. Instantly an echo
resounded with clapping crash. The initial report was nothing to the echo. It was
a terrible, living, reverberating, detonating crash. The wall threw the sound
across, and could have made no greater roar if it had slipped in avalanche. From
cliff to cliff the echo went in crashing retort and banged in lessening power, and
boomed in thinner volume, and clapped weaker and weaker till a final clap could
not reach across the waiting cliff.
In the pitchy darkness Venters led Bess, and, groping his way, by feel of
hand found the entrance to her cave and lifted her up. On the instant a blinding
flash of lightning illumined the cave and all about him. He saw Bess's face white
now with dark, frightened eyes. He saw the dogs leap up, and he followed suit.
The golden glare vanished; all was black; then came the splitting crack and the
infernal din of echoes.
Bess shrank closer to him and closer, found his hands, and pressed them
tightly over her ears, and dropped her face upon his shoulder, and hid her eyes.
Then the storm burst with a succession of ropes and streaks and shafts of
lightning, playing continuously, filling the valley with a broken radiance; and the
cracking shots followed each other swiftly till the echoes blended in one fearful,
deafening crash.
Venters looked out upon the beautiful valley—beautiful now as never
before—mystic in its transparent, luminous gloom, weird in the quivering,
golden haze of lightning. The dark spruces were tipped with glimmering lights;
the aspens bent low in the winds, as waves in a tempest at sea; the forest of oaks
tossed wildly and shone with gleams of fire. Across the valley the huge cavern of
the cliff-dwellers yawned in the glare, every little black window as clear as at
noonday; but the night and the storm added to their tragedy. Flung arching to the
black clouds, the great stone bridge seemed to bear the brunt of the storm. It
caught the full fury of the rushing wind. It lifted its noble crown to meet the
lightnings. Venters thought of the eagles and their lofty nest in a niche under the
arch. A driving pall of rain, black as the clouds, came sweeping on to obscure the
bridge and the gleaming walls and the shining valley. The lightning played
131
incessantly, streaking down through opaque darkness of rain. The roar of the
wind, with its strange knell and the re-crashing echoes, mingled with the roar of
the flooding rain, and all seemingly were deadened and drowned in a world of
sound.
In the dimming pale light Venters looked down upon the girl. She had sunk
into his arms, upon his breast, burying her face. She clung to him. He felt the
softness of her, and the warmth, and the quick heave of her breast. He saw the
dark, slender, graceful outline of her form. A woman lay in his arms! And he held
her closer. He who had been alone in the sad, silent watches of the night was not
now and never must be again alone. He who had yearned for the touch of a hand
felt the long tremble and the heart-beat of a woman. By what strange chance had
she come to love him! By what change—by what marvel had she grown into a
treasure!
No more did he listen to the rush and roar of the thunder-storm. For with
the touch of clinging hands and the throbbing bosom he grew conscious of an
inward storm—the tingling of new chords of thought, strange music of unheard,
joyous bells sad dreams dawning to wakeful delight, dissolving doubt, resurging
hope, force, fire, and freedom, unutterable sweetness of desire. A storm in his
breast—a storm of real love.
CHAPTER XIV. WEST WIND
When the storm abated Venters sought his own cave, and late in the night,
as his blood cooled and the stir and throb and thrill subsided, he fell asleep.
With the breaking of dawn his eyes unclosed. The valley lay drenched and
bathed, a burnished oval of glittering green. The rain-washed walls glistened in
the morning light. Waterfalls of many forms poured over the rims. One, a broad,
lacy sheet, thin as smoke, slid over the western notch and struck a ledge in its
downward fall, to bound into broader leap, to burst far below into white and gold
and rosy mist.
Venters prepared for the day, knowing himself a different man.
“It's a glorious morning,” said Bess, in greeting.
“Yes. After the storm the west wind,” he replied.
“Last night was I—very much of a baby?” she asked, watching him.
“Pretty much.”
132
www.obooko.com
“Oh, I couldn't help it!”

“I'm glad you were afraid.”
“Why?” she asked, in slow surprise.
“I'll tell you some day,” he answered, soberly. Then around the camp-fire
and through the morning meal he was silent; afterward he strolled thoughtfully
off alone along the terrace. He climbed a great yellow rock raising its crest among
the spruces, and there he sat down to face the valley and the west.
“I love her!”
Aloud he spoke—unburdened his heart—confessed his secret. For an
instant the golden valley swam before his eyes, and the walls waved, and all
about him whirled with tumult within.
“I love her!... I understand now.”
Reviving memory of Jane Withersteen and thought of the complications of
the present amazed him with proof of how far he had drifted from his old life. He
discovered that he hated to take up the broken threads, to delve into dark
problems and difficulties. In this beautiful valley he had been living a beautiful
dream. Tranquillity had come to him, and the joy of solitude, and interest in all
the wild creatures and crannies of this incomparable valley—and love. Under the
shadow of the great stone bridge God had revealed Himself to Venters.
“The world seems very far away,” he muttered, “but it's there—and I'm not
yet done with it. Perhaps I never shall be.... Only—how glorious it would be to
live here always and never think again!”
Whereupon the resurging reality of the present, as if in irony of his wish,
steeped him instantly in contending thought. Out of it all he presently evolved
these things: he must go to Cottonwoods; he must bring supplies back to Surprise
Valley; he must cultivate the soil and raise corn and stock, and, most imperative
of all, he must decide the future of the girl who loved him and whom he loved.
The first of these things required tremendous effort, the last one, concerning
Bess, seemed simply and naturally easy of accomplishment. He would marry her.
Suddenly, as from roots of poisonous fire, flamed up the forgotten truth
concerning her. It seemed to wither and shrivel up all his joy on its hot, tearing
way to his heart. She had been Oldring's Masked Rider. To Venters's question,
“What were you to Oldring?” she had answered with scarlet shame and drooping
head.
“What do I care who she is or what she was!” he cried, passionately. And
he knew it was not his old self speaking. It was this softer, gentler man who had
awakened to new thoughts in the quiet valley. Tenderness, masterful in him now,
matched the absence of joy and blunted the knife-edge of entering jealousy.
133
Strong and passionate effort of will, surprising to him, held back the poison from
piercing his soul.
“Wait!... Wait!” he cried, as if calling. His hand pressed his breast, and he
might have called to the pang there. “Wait! It's all so strange—so wonderful.
Anything can happen. Who am I to judge her? I'll glory in my love for her. But I
can't tell it—can't give up to it.”
Certainly he could not then decide her future. Marrying her was
impossible in Surprise Valley and in any village south of Sterling. Even without
the mask she had once worn she would easily have been recognized as Oldring's
Rider. No man who had ever seen her would forget her, regardless of his
ignorance as to her sex. Then more poignant than all other argument was the fact
that he did not want to take her away from Surprise Valley. He resisted all
thought of that. He had brought her to the most beautiful and wildest place of the
uplands; he had saved her, nursed her back to strength, watched her bloom as
one of the valley lilies; he knew her life there to be pure and sweet—she
belonged to him, and he loved her. Still these were not all the reasons why he did
not want to take her away. Where could they go? He feared the rustlers—he
feared the riders—he feared the Mormons. And if he should ever succeed in
getting Bess safely away from these immediate perils, he feared the sharp eyes of
women and their tongues, the big outside world with its problems of existence.
He must wait to decide her future, which, after all, was deciding his own. But
between her future and his something hung impending. Like Balancing Rock,
which waited darkly over the steep gorge, ready to close forever the outlet to
Deception Pass, that nameless thing, as certain yet intangible as fate, must fall
and close forever all doubts and fears of the future.
“I've dreamed,” muttered Venters, as he rose. “Well, why not?... To dream
is happiness! But let me just once see this clearly wholly; then I can go on
dreaming till the thing falls. I've got to tell Jane Withersteen. I've dangerous trips
to take. I've work here to make comfort for this girl. She's mine. I'll fight to keep
her safe from that old life. I've already seen her forget it. I love her. And if a beast
ever rises in me I'll burn my hand off before I lay it on her with shameful intent.
And, by God! sooner or later I'll kill the man who hid her and kept her in
Deception Pass!”
As he spoke the west wind softly blew in his face. It seemed to soothe his
passion. That west wind was fresh, cool, fragrant, and it carried a sweet, strange
burden of far-off things—tidings of life in other climes, of sunshine asleep on
other walls—of other places where reigned peace. It carried, too, sad truth of
human hearts and mystery—of promise and hope unquenchable. Surprise Valley
134
www.obooko.com
was only a little niche in the wide world whence blew that burdened wind. Bess
was only one of millions at the mercy of unknown motive in nature and life.
Content had come to Venters in the valley; happiness had breathed in the slow,
warm air; love as bright as light had hovered over the walls and descended to
him; and now on the west wind came a whisper of the eternal triumph of faith
over doubt.
“How much better I am for what has come to me!” he exclaimed. “I'll let the
future take care of itself. Whatever falls, I'll be ready.”
Venters retraced his steps along the terrace back to camp, and found Bess
in the old familiar seat, waiting and watching for his return.
“I went off by myself to think a little,” he explained.
“You never looked that way before. What—what is it? Won't you tell me?”
“Well, Bess, the fact is I've been dreaming a lot. This valley makes a fellow
dream. So I forced myself to think. We can't live this way much longer. Soon I'll
simply have to go to Cottonwoods. We need a whole pack train of supplies. I can
get—”
“Can you go safely?” she interrupted.
“Why, I'm sure of it. I'll ride through the Pass at night. I haven't any fear
that Wrangle isn't where I left him. And once on him—Bess, just wait till you see
that horse!”
“Oh, I want to see him—to ride him. But—but, Bern, this is what troubles
me,” she said. “Will—will you come back?”
“Give me four days. If I'm not back in four days you'll know I'm dead. For
that only shall keep me.”
“Oh!”
“Bess, I'll come back. There's danger—I wouldn't lie to you—but I can take
care of myself.”
“Bern, I'm sure—oh, I'm sure of it! All my life I've watched hunted men. I
can tell what's in them. And I believe you can ride and shoot and see with any
rider of the sage. It's not—not that I—fear.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
“Why—why—why should you come back at all?”
“I couldn't leave you here alone.”
“You might change your mind when you get to the village—among old
friends—”
“I won't change my mind. As for old friends—” He uttered a short,
expressive laugh.
135
“Then—there—there must be a—a woman!” Dark red mantled the clear

tan of temple and cheek and neck. Her eyes were eyes of shame, upheld a long
moment by intense, straining search for the verification of her fear. Suddenly
they drooped, her head fell to her knees, her hands flew to her hot cheeks.
“Bess—look here,” said Venters, with a sharpness due to the violence with
which he checked his quick, surging emotion.
As if compelled against her will—answering to an irresistible voice—Bess
raised her head, looked at him with sad, dark eyes, and tried to whisper with
tremulous lips.
“There's no woman,” went on Venters, deliberately holding her glance with
his. “Nothing on earth, barring the chances of life, can keep me away.”
Her face flashed and flushed with the glow of a leaping joy; but like the
vanishing of a gleam it disappeared to leave her as he had never beheld her.
“I am nothing—I am lost—I am nameless!”
“Do you want me to come back?” he asked, with sudden stern coldness.
“Maybe you want to go back to Oldring!”
That brought her erect, trembling and ashy pale, with dark, proud eyes and
mute lips refuting his insinuation.
“Bess, I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that. But you angered me. I
intend to work—to make a home for you here—to be a—a brother to you as long
as ever you need me. And you must forget what you are—were—I mean, and be
happy. When you remember that old life you are bitter, and it hurts me.”
“I was happy—I shall be very happy. Oh, you're so good that—that it kills
me! If I think, I can't believe it. I grow sick with wondering why. I'm only a let me
say it—only a lost, nameless—girl of the rustlers. Oldring's Girl, they called me.
That you should save me—be so good and kind—want to make me happy—why,
it's beyond belief. No wonder I'm wretched at the thought of your leaving me. But
I'll be wretched and bitter no more. I promise you. If only I could repay you even
a little—”
“You've repaid me a hundredfold. Will you believe me?”
“Believe you! I couldn't do else.”
“Then listen!... Saving you, I saved myself. Living here in this valley with
you, I've found myself. I've learned to think while I was dreaming. I never
troubled myself about God. But God, or some wonderful spirit, has whispered to
me here. I absolutely deny the truth of what you say about yourself. I can't
explain it. There are things too deep to tell. Whatever the terrible wrongs you've
suffered, God holds you blameless. I see that—feel that in you every moment you
136
www.obooko.com
are near me. I've a mother and a sister 'way back in Illinois. If I could I'd take you
to them—to-morrow.”
“If it were true! Oh, I might—I might lift my head!” she cried.
“Lift it then—you child. For I swear it's true.”
She did lift her head with the singular wild grace always a part of her
actions, with that old unconscious intimation of innocence which always tortured
Venters, but now with something more—a spirit rising from the depths that
linked itself to his brave words.
“I've been thinking—too,” she cried, with quivering smile and swelling
breast. “I've discovered myself—too. I'm young—I'm alive—I'm so full—oh! I'm a
woman!”
“Bess, I believe I can claim credit of that last discovery—before you,”
Venters said, and laughed.
“Oh, there's more—there's something I must tell you.”
“Tell it, then.”
“When will you go to Cottonwoods?”
“As soon as the storms are past, or the worst of them.”
“I'll tell you before you go. I can't now. I don't know how I shall then. But it
must be told. I'd never let you leave me without knowing. For in spite of what you
say there's a chance you mightn't come back.”
Day after day the west wind blew across the valley. Day after day the
clouds clustered gray and purple and black. The cliffs sang and the caves rang
with Oldring's knell, and the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, the echoes
crashed and crashed, and the rains flooded the valley. Wild flowers sprang up
everywhere, swaying with the lengthening grass on the terraces, smiling wanly
from shady nooks, peeping wondrously from year-dry crevices of the walls. The
valley bloomed into a paradise. Every single moment, from the breaking of the
gold bar through the bridge at dawn on to the reddening of rays over the western
wall, was one of colorful change. The valley swam in thick, transparent haze,
golden at dawn, warm and white at noon, purple in the twilight. At the end of
every storm a rainbow curved down into the leaf-bright forest to shine and fade
and leave lingeringly some faint essence of its rosy iris in the air.
Venters walked with Bess, once more in a dream, and watched the lights
change on the walls, and faced the wind from out of the west.
Always it brought softly to him strange, sweet tidings of far-off things. It
blew from a place that was old and whispered of youth. It blew down the grooves
of time. It brought a story of the passing hours. It breathed low of fighting men
and praying women. It sang clearly the song of love. That ever was the burden of
137
its tidings—youth in the shady woods, waders through the wet meadows, boy
and girl at the hedgerow stile, bathers in the booming surf, sweet, idle hours on
grassy, windy hills, long strolls down moonlit lanes—everywhere in far-off lands,
fingers locked and bursting hearts and longing lips—from all the world tidings of
unquenchable love.
Often, in these hours of dreams he watched the girl, and asked himself of
what was she dreaming? For the changing light of the valley reflected its gleam
and its color and its meaning in the changing light of her eyes. He saw in them
infinitely more than he saw in his dreams. He saw thought and soul and nature—
strong vision of life. All tidings the west wind blew from distance and age he
found deep in those dark-blue depths, and found them mysteries solved. Under
their wistful shadow he softened, and in the softening felt himself grow a sadder,
a wiser, and a better man.
While the west wind blew its tidings, filling his heart full, teaching him a
man's part, the days passed, the purple clouds changed to white, and the storms
were over for that summer.
“I must go now,” he said.
“When?” she asked.
“At once—to-night.”
“I'm glad the time has come. It dragged at me. Go—for you'll come back the
sooner.”
Late in the afternoon, as the ruddy sun split its last flame in the ragged
notch of the western wall, Bess walked with Venters along the eastern terrace, up
the long, weathered slope, under the great stone bridge. They entered the narrow
gorge to climb around the fence long before built there by Venters. Farther than
this she had never been. Twilight had already fallen in the gorge. It brightened to
waning shadow in the wider ascent. He showed her Balancing Rock, of which he
had often told her, and explained its sinister leaning over the outlet. Shuddering,
she looked down the long, pale incline with its closed-in, toppling walls.
“What an awful trail! Did you carry me up here?”
“I did, surely,” replied he.
“It frightens me, somehow. Yet I never was afraid of trails. I'd ride
anywhere a horse could go, and climb where he couldn't. But there's something
fearful here. I feel as—as if the place was watching me.”
“Look at this rock. It's balanced here—balanced perfectly. You know I told
you the cliff-dwellers cut the rock, and why. But they're gone and the rock waits.
Can't you see—feel how it waits here? I moved it once, and I'll never dare again.
138
www.obooko.com
A strong heave would start it. Then it would fall and bang, and smash that crag,
and jar the walls, and close forever the outlet to Deception Pass!”
“Ah! When you come back I'll steal up here and push and push with all my
might to roll the rock and close forever the outlet to the Pass!” She said it lightly,
but in the undercurrent of her voice was a heavier note, a ring deeper than any
ever given mere play of words.
“Bess!... You can't dare me! Wait till I come back with supplies—then roll
the stone.”
“I—was—in—fun.” Her voice now throbbed low. “Always you must be free
to go when you will. Go now... this place presses on me—stifles me.”
“I'm going—but you had something to tell me?”
“Yes.... Will you—come back?”
“I'll come if I live.”
“But—but you mightn't come?”
“That's possible, of course. It'll take a good deal to kill me. A man couldn't
have a faster horse or keener dog. And, Bess, I've guns, and I'll use them if I'm
pushed. But don't worry.”
“I've faith in you. I'll not worry until after four days. Only—because you
mightn't come—I must tell you—”
She lost her voice. Her pale face, her great, glowing, earnest eyes, seemed
to stand alone out of the gloom of the gorge. The dog whined, breaking the
silence.
“I must tell you—because you mightn't come back,” she whispered. “You
must know what—what I think of your goodness—of you. Always I've been
tongue-tied. I seemed not to be grateful. It was deep in my heart. Even now—if I
were other than I am—I couldn't tell you. But I'm nothing—only a rustler's girl—
nameless—infamous. You've saved me—and I'm—I'm yours to do with as you
like.... With all my heart and soul—I love you!”
CHAPTER XV. SHADOWS ON THE SAGE-SLOPE
In the cloudy, threatening, waning summer days shadows lengthened

down the sage-slope, and Jane Withersteen likened them to the shadows
gathering and closing in around her life.
139
Mrs. Larkin died, and little Fay was left an orphan with no known relative.
Jane's love redoubled. It was the saving brightness of a darkening hour. Fay
turned now to Jane in childish worship. And Jane at last found full expression for
the mother-longing in her heart. Upon Lassiter, too, Mrs. Larkin's death had some
subtle reaction. Before, he had often, without explanation, advised Jane to send
Fay back to any Gentile family that would take her in. Passionately and
reproachfully and wonderingly Jane had refused even to entertain such an idea.
And now Lassiter never advised it again, grew sadder and quieter in his
contemplation of the child, and infinitely more gentle and loving. Sometimes Jane
had a cold, inexplicable sensation of dread when she saw Lassiter watching Fay.
What did the rider see in the future? Why did he, day by day, grow more silent,
calmer, cooler, yet sadder in prophetic assurance of something to be?
No doubt, Jane thought, the rider, in his almost superhuman power of
foresight, saw behind the horizon the dark, lengthening shadows that were soon
to crowd and gloom over him and her and little Fay. Jane Withersteen awaited
the long-deferred breaking of the storm with a courage and embittered calm that
had come to her in her extremity. Hope had not died. Doubt and fear, subservient
to her will, no longer gave her sleepless nights and tortured days. Love remained.
All that she had loved she now loved the more. She seemed to feel that she was
defiantly flinging the wealth of her love in the face of misfortune and of hate. No
day passed but she prayed for all—and most fervently for her enemies. It
troubled her that she had lost, or had never gained, the whole control of her
mind. In some measure reason and wisdom and decision were locked in a
chamber of her brain, awaiting a key. Power to think of some things was taken
from her. Meanwhile, abiding a day of judgment, she fought ceaselessly to deny
the bitter drops in her cup, to tear back the slow, the intangibly slow growth of a
hot, corrosive lichen eating into her heart.
On the morning of August 10th, Jane, while waiting in the court for
Lassiter, heard a clear, ringing report of a rifle. It came from the grove,
somewhere toward the corrals. Jane glanced out in alarm. The day was dull,
windless, soundless. The leaves of the cottonwoods drooped, as if they had
foretold the doom of Withersteen House and were now ready to die and drop and
decay. Never had Jane seen such shade. She pondered on the meaning of the
report. Revolver shots had of late cracked from different parts of the grove—
spies taking snap-shots at Lassiter from a cowardly distance! But a rifle report
meant more. Riders seldom used rifles. Judkins and Venters were the exceptions
she called to mind. Had the men who hounded her hidden in her grove, taken to
the rifle to rid her of Lassiter, her last friend? It was probable—it was likely. And
140
www.obooko.com
she did not share his cool assumption that his death would never come at the
hands of a Mormon. Long had she expected it. His constancy to her, his singular
reluctance to use the fatal skill for which he was famed—both now plain to all
Mormons—laid him open to inevitable assassination. Yet what charm against
ambush and aim and enemy he seemed to bear about him! No, Jane reflected, it
was not charm; only a wonderful training of eye and ear, and sense of impending
peril. Nevertheless that could not forever avail against secret attack.
That moment a rustling of leaves attracted her attention; then the familiar
clinking accompaniment of a slow, soft, measured step, and Lassiter walked into
the court.
“Jane, there's a fellow out there with a long gun,” he said, and, removing his
sombrero, showed his head bound in a bloody scarf.
“I heard the shot; I knew it was meant for you. Let me see—you can't be
badly injured?”
“I reckon not. But mebbe it wasn't a close call!... I'll sit here in this corner
where nobody can see me from the grove.” He untied the scarf and removed it to
show a long, bleeding furrow above his left temple.
“It's only a cut,” said Jane. “But how it bleeds! Hold your scarf over it just a
moment till I come back.”
She ran into the house and returned with bandages; and while she bathed
and dressed the wound Lassiter talked.
“That fellow had a good chance to get me. But he must have flinched when
he pulled the trigger. As I dodged down I saw him run through the trees. He had a
rifle. I've been expectin' that kind of gun play. I reckon now I'll have to keep a
little closer hid myself. These fellers all seem to get chilly or shaky when they
draw a bead on me, but one of them might jest happen to hit me.”
“Won't you go away—leave Cottonwoods as I've begged you to—before
some one does happen to hit you?” she appealed to him.
“I reckon I'll stay.”
“But, oh, Lassiter—your blood will be on my hands!”
“See here, lady, look at your hands now, right now. Aren't they fine, firm,
white hands? Aren't they bloody now? Lassiter's blood! That's a queer thing to
stain your beautiful hands. But if you could only see deeper you'd find a redder
color of blood. Heart color, Jane!”
“Oh!... My friend!”
“No, Jane, I'm not one to quit when the game grows hot, no more than you.
This game, though, is new to me, an' I don't know the moves yet, else I wouldn't
have stepped in front of that bullet.”
141
“Have you no desire to hunt the man who fired at you—to find him—
and—and kill him?”
“Well, I reckon I haven't any great hankerin' for that.”
“Oh, the wonder of it!... I knew—I prayed—I trusted. Lassiter, I almost
gave—all myself to soften you to Mormons. Thank God, and thank you, my
friend.... But, selfish woman that I am, this is no great test. What's the life of one
of those sneaking cowards to such a man as you? I think of your great hate
toward him who—I think of your life's implacable purpose. Can it be—”
“Wait!... Listen!” he whispered. “I hear a hoss.”
He rose noiselessly, with his ear to the breeze. Suddenly he pulled his
sombrero down over his bandaged head and, swinging his gun-sheaths round in
front, he stepped into the alcove.
“It's a hoss—comin' fast,” he added.
Jane's listening ear soon caught a faint, rapid, rhythmic beat of hoofs. It
came from the sage. It gave her a thrill that she was at a loss to understand. The
sound rose stronger, louder. Then came a clear, sharp difference when the horse
passed from the sage trail to the hard-packed ground of the grove. It became a
ringing run—swift in its bell-like clatterings, yet singular in longer pause than
usual between the hoofbeats of a horse.
“It's Wrangle!... It's Wrangle!” cried Jane Withersteen. “I'd know him from a
million horses!”
Excitement and thrilling expectancy flooded out all Jane Withersteen's
calm. A tight band closed round her breast as she saw the giant sorrel flit in
reddish-brown flashes across the openings in the green. Then he was pounding
down the lane—thundering into the court—crashing his great iron-shod hoofs
on the stone flags. Wrangle it was surely, but shaggy and wild-eyed, and sage-
streaked, with dust-caked lather staining his flanks. He reared and crashed down
and plunged. The rider leaped off, threw the bridle, and held hard on a lasso
looped round Wrangle's head and neck. Janet's heart sank as she tried to
recognize Venters in the rider. Something familiar struck her in the lofty stature
in the sweep of powerful shoulders. But this bearded, longhaired, unkempt man,
who wore ragged clothes patched with pieces of skin, and boots that showed
bare legs and feet—this dusty, dark, and wild rider could not possibly be Venters.
“Whoa, Wrangle, old boy! Come down. Easy now. So—so—so. You're
home, old boy, and presently you can have a drink of water you'll remember.”
In the voice Jane knew the rider to be Venters. He tied Wrangle to the
hitching-rack and turned to the court.
“Oh, Bern!... You wild man!” she exclaimed.
142
www.obooko.com
“Jane—Jane, it's good to see you! Hello, Lassiter! Yes, it's Venters.”
Like rough iron his hard hand crushed Jane's. In it she felt the difference
she saw in him. Wild, rugged, unshorn—yet how splendid! He had gone away a
boy—he had returned a man. He appeared taller, wider of shoulder, deeper-
chested, more powerfully built. But was that only her fancy—he had always been
a young giant—was the change one of spirit? He might have been absent for
years, proven by fire and steel, grown like Lassiter, strong and cool and sure. His
eyes—were they keener, more flashing than before?—met hers with clear, frank,
warm regard, in which perplexity was not, nor discontent, nor pain.
“Look at me long as you like,” he said, with a laugh. “I'm not much to look
at. And, Jane, neither you nor Lassiter, can brag. You're paler than I ever saw you.
Lassiter, here, he wears a bloody bandage under his hat. That reminds me. Some
one took a flying shot at me down in the sage. It made Wrangle run some.... Well,
perhaps you've more to tell me than I've got to tell you.”
Briefly, in few words, Jane outlined the circumstances of her undoing in
the weeks of his absence.
Under his beard and bronze she saw his face whiten in terrible wrath.
“Lassiter—what held you back?”
No time in the long period of fiery moments and sudden shocks had Jane
Withersteen ever beheld Lassiter as calm and serene and cool as then.
“Jane had gloom enough without my addin' to it by shootin' up the village,”
he said.
As strange as Lassiter's coolness was Venters's curious, intent scrutiny of
them both, and under it Jane felt a flaming tide wave from bosom to temples.
“Well—you're right,” he said, with slow pause. “It surprises me a little,
that's all.”
Jane sensed then a slight alteration in Venters, and what it was, in her own
confusion, she could not tell. It had always been her intention to acquaint him
with the deceit she had fallen to in her zeal to move Lassiter. She did not mean to
spare herself. Yet now, at the moment, before these riders, it was an impossibility
to explain.
Venters was speaking somewhat haltingly, without his former frankness. “I
found Oldring's hiding-place and your red herd. I learned—I know—I'm sure
there was a deal between Tull and Oldring.” He paused and shifted his position
and his gaze. He looked as if he wanted to say something that he found beyond
him. Sorrow and pity and shame seemed to contend for mastery over him. Then
he raised himself and spoke with effort. “Jane I've cost you too much. You've
almost ruined yourself for me. It was wrong, for I'm not worth it. I never
143
deserved such friendship. Well, maybe it's not too late. You must give me up.
Mind, I haven't changed. I am just the same as ever. I'll see Tull while I'm here,
and tell him to his face.”
“Bern, it's too late,” said Jane.
“I'll make him believe!” cried Venters, violently.
“You ask me to break our friendship?”
“Yes. If you don't, I shall.”
“Forever?”
“Forever!”
Jane sighed. Another shadow had lengthened down the sage slope to cast
further darkness upon her. A melancholy sweetness pervaded her resignation.
The boy who had left her had returned a man, nobler, stronger, one in whom she
divined something unbending as steel. There might come a moment later when
she would wonder why she had not fought against his will, but just now she
yielded to it. She liked him as well—nay, more, she thought, only her emotions
were deadened by the long, menacing wait for the bursting storm.
Once before she had held out her hand to him—when she gave it; now she
stretched it tremblingly forth in acceptance of the decree circumstance had laid
upon them. Venters bowed over it kissed it, pressed it hard, and half stifled a
sound very like a sob. Certain it was that when he raised his head tears glistened
in his eyes.
“Some—women—have a hard lot,” he said, huskily. Then he shook his
powerful form, and his rags lashed about him. “I'll say a few things to Tull—when
I meet him.”
“Bern—you'll not draw on Tull? Oh, that must not be! Promise me—”
“I promise you this,” he interrupted, in stern passion that thrilled while it
terrorized her. “If you say one more word for that plotter I'll kill him as I would a
mad coyote!”
Jane clasped her hands. Was this fire-eyed man the one whom she had
once made as wax to her touch? Had Venters become Lassiter and Lassiter
Venters?
“I'll—say no more,” she faltered.
“Jane, Lassiter once called you blind,” said Venters. “It must be true. But I
won't upbraid you. Only don't rouse the devil in me by praying for Tull! I'll try to
keep cool when I meet him. That's all. Now there's one more thing I want to ask
of you—the last. I've found a valley down in the Pass. It's a wonderful place. I
intend to stay there. It's so hidden I believe no one can find it. There's good
144
www.obooko.com
water, and browse, and game. I want to raise corn and stock. I need to take in
supplies. Will you give them to me?”
“Assuredly. The more you take the better you'll please me—and perhaps
the less my—my enemies will get.”
“Venters, I reckon you'll have trouble packin' anythin' away,” put in
Lassiter.
“I'll go at night.”
“Mebbe that wouldn't be best. You'd sure be stopped. You'd better go early
in the mornin'—say, just after dawn. That's the safest time to move round here.”
“Lassiter, I'll be hard to stop,” returned Venters, darkly.
“I reckon so.”
“Bern,” said Jane, “go first to the riders' quarters and get yourself a
complete outfit. You're a—a sight. Then help yourself to whatever else you
need—burros, packs, grain, dried fruits, and meat. You must take coffee and
sugar and flour—all kinds of supplies. Don't forget corn and seeds. I remember
how you used to starve. Please—please take all you can pack away from here. I'll
make a bundle for you, which you mustn't open till you're in your valley. How I'd
like to see it! To judge by you and Wrangle, how wild it must be!”
Jane walked down into the outer court and approached the sorrel.
Upstarting, he laid back his ears and eyed her.
“Wrangle—dear old Wrangle,” she said, and put a caressing hand on his
matted mane. “Oh, he's wild, but he knows me! Bern, can he run as fast as ever?”
“Run? Jane, he's done sixty miles since last night at dark, and I could make
him kill Black Star right now in a ten-mile race.”
“He never could,” protested Jane. “He couldn't even if he was fresh.”
“I reckon mebbe the best hoss'll prove himself yet,” said Lassiter, “an',
Jane, if it ever comes to that race I'd like you to be on Wrangle.”
“I'd like that, too,” rejoined Venters. “But, Jane, maybe Lassiter's hint is
extreme. Bad as your prospects are, you'll surely never come to the running
point.”
“Who knows!” she replied, with mournful smile.
“No, no, Jane, it can't be so bad as all that. Soon as I see Tull there'll be a
change in your fortunes. I'll hurry down to the village.... Now don't worry.”
Jane retired to the seclusion of her room. Lassiter's subtle forecasting of
disaster, Venters's forced optimism, neither remained in mind. Material loss
weighed nothing in the balance with other losses she was sustaining. She
wondered dully at her sitting there, hands folded listlessly, with a kind of numb
deadness to the passing of time and the passing of her riches. She thought of
145
Venters's friendship. She had not lost that, but she had lost him. Lassiter's
friendship—that was more than love—it would endure, but soon he, too, would
be gone. Little Fay slept dreamlessly upon the bed, her golden curls streaming
over the pillow. Jane had the child's worship. Would she lose that, too? And if she
did, what then would be left? Conscience thundered at her that there was left her
religion. Conscience thundered that she should be grateful on her knees for this
baptism of fire; that through misfortune, sacrifice, and suffering her soul might
be fused pure gold. But the old, spontaneous, rapturous spirit no more exalted
her. She wanted to be a woman—not a martyr. Like the saint of old who
mortified his flesh, Jane Withersteen had in her the temper for heroic
martyrdom, if by sacrificing herself she could save the souls of others. But here
the damnable verdict blistered her that the more she sacrificed herself the
blacker grew the souls of her churchmen. There was something terribly wrong
with her soul, something terribly wrong with her churchmen and her religion. In
the whirling gulf of her thought there was yet one shining light to guide her, to
sustain her in her hope; and it was that, despite her errors and her frailties and
her blindness, she had one absolute and unfaltering hold on ultimate and
supreme justice. That was love. “Love your enemies as yourself!” was a divine
word, entirely free from any church or creed.
Jane's meditations were disturbed by Lassiter's soft, tinkling step in the
court. Always he wore the clinking spurs. Always he was in readiness to ride. She
passed out and called him into the huge, dim hall.
“I think you'll be safer here. The court is too open,” she said.
“I reckon,” replied Lassiter. “An' it's cooler here. The day's sure muggy.
Well, I went down to the village with Venters.”
“Already! Where is he?” queried Jane, in quick amaze.
“He's at the corrals. Blake's helpin' him get the burros an' packs ready.
That Blake is a good fellow.”
“Did—did Bern meet Tull?”
“I guess he did,” answered Lassiter, and he laughed dryly.
“Tell me! Oh, you exasperate me! You're so cool, so calm! For Heaven's
sake, tell me what happened!”
“First time I've been in the village for weeks,” went on Lassiter, mildly. “I
reckon there 'ain't been more of a show for a long time. Me an' Venters walkin'
down the road! It was funny. I ain't sayin' anybody was particular glad to see us.
I'm not much thought of hereabouts, an' Venters he sure looks like what you
called him, a wild man. Well, there was some runnin' of folks before we got to the
stores. Then everybody vamoosed except some surprised rustlers in front of a
146
www.obooko.com
saloon. Venters went right in the stores an' saloons, an' of course I went along. I
don't know which tickled me the most—the actions of many fellers we met, or
Venters's nerve. Jane, I was downright glad to be along. You see that sort of thing
is my element, an' I've been away from it for a spell. But we didn't find Tull in one
of them places. Some Gentile feller at last told Venters he'd find Tull in that long
buildin' next to Parsons's store. It's a kind of meetin'-room; and sure enough,
when we peeped in, it was half full of men.
“Venters yelled: 'Don't anybody pull guns! We ain't come for that!' Then he
tramped in, an' I was some put to keep alongside him. There was a hard, scrapin'
sound of feet, a loud cry, an' then some whisperin', an' after that stillness you
could cut with a knife. Tull was there, an' that fat party who once tried to throw a
gun on me, an' other important-lookin' men, en' that little frog-legged feller who
was with Tull the day I rode in here. I wish you could have seen their faces,
'specially Tull's an' the fat party's. But there ain't no use of me tryin' to tell you
how they looked.
“Well, Venters an' I stood there in the middle of the room with that batch
of men all in front of us, en' not a blamed one of them winked an eyelash or
moved a finger. It was natural, of course, for me to notice many of them packed
guns. That's a way of mine, first noticin' them things. Venters spoke up, an' his
voice sort of chilled an' cut, en' he told Tull he had a few things to say.”
Here Lassiter paused while he turned his sombrero round and round, in
his familiar habit, and his eyes had the look of a man seeing over again some
thrilling spectacle, and under his red bronze there was strange animation.
“Like a shot, then, Venters told Tull that the friendship between you an'
him was all over, an' he was leaving your place. He said you'd both of you broken
off in the hope of propitiatin' your people, but you hadn't changed your mind
otherwise, an' never would.
“Next he spoke up for you. I ain't goin' to tell you what he said. Only—no
other woman who ever lived ever had such tribute! You had a champion, Jane, an'
never fear that those thick-skulled men don't know you now. It couldn't be
otherwise. He spoke the ringin', lightnin' truth.... Then he accused Tull of the
underhand, miserable robbery of a helpless woman. He told Tull where the red
herd was, of a deal made with Oldrin', that Jerry Card had made the deal. I
thought Tull was goin' to drop, an' that little frog-legged cuss, he looked some
limp an' white. But Venters's voice would have kept anybody's legs from bucklin'.
I was stiff myself. He went on an' called Tull—called him every bad name ever
known to a rider, an' then some. He cursed Tull. I never hear a man get such a
cursin'. He laughed in scorn at the idea of Tull bein' a minister. He said Tull an' a
147
few more dogs of hell builded their empire out of the hearts of such innocent an'
God-fearin' women as Jane Withersteen. He called Tull a binder of women, a
callous beast who hid behind a mock mantle of righteousness—an' the last an'
lowest coward on the face of the earth. To prey on weak women through their
religion—that was the last unspeakable crime!
“Then he finished, an' by this time he'd almost lost his voice. But his
whisper was enough. 'Tull,' he said, 'she begged me not to draw on you to-day.
She would pray for you if you burned her at the stake.... But listen!... I swear if you
and I ever come face to face again, I'll kill you!'
“We backed out of the door then, an' up the road. But nobody follered us.”
Jane found herself weeping passionately. She had not been conscious of it
till Lassiter ended his story, and she experienced exquisite pain and relief in
shedding tears. Long had her eyes been dry, her grief deep; long had her
emotions been dumb. Lassiter's story put her on the rack; the appalling nature of
Venters's act and speech had no parallel as an outrage; it was worse than
bloodshed. Men like Tull had been shot, but had one ever been so terribly
denounced in public? Over-mounting her horror, an uncontrollable, quivering
passion shook her very soul. It was sheer human glory in the deed of a fearless
man. It was hot, primitive instinct to live—to fight. It was a kind of mad joy in
Venters's chivalry. It was close to the wrath that had first shaken her in the
beginning of this war waged upon her.
“Well, well, Jane, don't take it that way,” said Lassiter, in evident distress. “I
had to tell you. There's some things a feller jest can't keep. It's strange you give
up on hearin' that, when all this long time you've been the gamest woman I ever
seen. But I don't know women. Mebbe there's reason for you to cry. I know this—
nothin' ever rang in my soul an' so filled it as what Venters did. I'd like to have
done it, but—I'm only good for throwin' a gun, en' it seems you hate that.... Well,
I'll be goin' now.”
“Where?”
“Venters took Wrangle to the stable. The sorrel's shy a shoe, an' I've got to
help hold the big devil an' put on another.”
“Tell Bern to come for the pack I want to give him—and—and to say good-
by,” called Jane, as Lassiter went out.
Jane passed the rest of that day in a vain endeavor to decide what and
what not to put in the pack for Venters. This task was the last she would ever
perform for him, and the gifts were the last she would ever make him. So she
picked and chose and rejected, and chose again, and often paused in sad revery,
and began again, till at length she filled the pack.
148
www.obooko.com
It was about sunset, and she and Fay had finished supper and were sitting
in the court, when Venters's quick steps rang on the stones. She scarcely knew
him, for he had changed the tattered garments, and she missed the dark beard
and long hair. Still he was not the Venters of old. As he came up the steps she felt
herself pointing to the pack, and heard herself speaking words that were
meaningless to her. He said good-by; he kissed her, released her, and turned
away. His tall figure blurred in her sight, grew dim through dark, streaked vision,
and then he vanished.
Twilight fell around Withersteen House, and dusk and night. Little Fay
slept; but Jane lay with strained, aching eyes. She heard the wind moaning in the
cottonwoods and mice squeaking in the walls. The night was interminably long,
yet she prayed to hold back the dawn. What would another day bring forth? The
blackness of her room seemed blacker for the sad, entering gray of morning light.
She heard the chirp of awakening birds, and fancied she caught a faint clatter of
hoofs. Then low, dull distant, throbbed a heavy gunshot. She had expected it, was
waiting for it; nevertheless, an electric shock checked her heart, froze the very
living fiber of her bones. That vise-like hold on her faculties apparently did not
relax for a long time, and it was a voice under her window that released her.
“Jane!... Jane!” softly called Lassiter.
She answered somehow.
“It's all right. Venters got away. I thought mebbe you'd heard that shot, en'
I was worried some.”
“What was it—who fired?”
“Well—some fool feller tried to stop Venters out there in the sage—an' he
only stopped lead!... I think it'll be all right. I haven't seen or heard of any other
fellers round. Venters'll go through safe. An', Jane, I've got Bells saddled, an' I'm
going to trail Venters. Mind, I won't show myself unless he falls foul of somebody
an' needs me. I want to see if this place where he's goin' is safe for him. He says
nobody can track him there. I never seen the place yet I couldn't track a man to.
Now, Jane, you stay indoors while I'm gone, an' keep close watch on Fay. Will
you?”
“Yes! Oh yes!”
“An' another thing, Jane,” he continued, then paused for long—“another
thing—if you ain't here when I come back—if you're gone—don't fear, I'll trail
you—I'll find you out.”
“My dear Lassiter, where could I be gone—as you put it?” asked Jane, in
curious surprise.
149
“I reckon you might be somewhere. Mebbe tied in an old barn—or

corralled in some gulch—or chained in a cave! Milly Erne was—till she give in!
Mebbe that's news to you.... Well, if you're gone I'll hunt for you.”
“No, Lassiter,” she replied, sadly and low. “If I'm gone just forget the
unhappy woman whose blinded selfish deceit you repaid with kindness and
love.”
She heard a deep, muttering curse, under his breath, and then the silvery
tinkling of his spurs as he moved away.
Jane entered upon the duties of that day with a settled, gloomy calm.
Disaster hung in the dark clouds, in the shade, in the humid west wind. Blake,
when he reported, appeared without his usual cheer; and Jerd wore a harassed
look of a worn and worried man. And when Judkins put in appearance, riding a
lame horse, and dismounted with the cramp of a rider, his dust-covered figure
and his darkly grim, almost dazed expression told Jane of dire calamity. She had
no need of words.
“Miss Withersteen, I have to report—loss of the—white herd,” said
Judkins, hoarsely.
“Come, sit down, you look played out,” replied Jane, solicitously. She
brought him brandy and food, and while he partook of refreshments, of which he
appeared badly in need, she asked no questions.
“No one rider—could hev done more—Miss Withersteen,” he went on,
presently.
“Judkins, don't be distressed. You've done more than any other rider. I've
long expected to lose the white herd. It's no surprise. It's in line with other things
that are happening. I'm grateful for your service.”
“Miss Withersteen, I knew how you'd take it. But if anythin', that makes it
harder to tell. You see, a feller wants to do so much fer you, an' I'd got fond of my
job. We led the herd a ways off to the north of the break in the valley. There was a
big level an' pools of water an' tip-top browse. But the cattle was in a high
nervous condition. Wild—as wild as antelope! You see, they'd been so scared
they never slept. I ain't a-goin' to tell you of the many tricks that were pulled off
out there in the sage. But there wasn't a day for weeks thet the herd didn't get
started to run. We allus managed to ride 'em close an' drive 'em back an' keep
'em bunched. Honest, Miss Withersteen, them steers was thin. They was thin
when water and grass was everywhere. Thin at this season—thet'll tell you how
your steers was pestered. Fer instance, one night a strange runnin' streak of fire
run right through the herd. That streak was a coyote—with an oiled an' blazin'
tail! Fer I shot it an' found out. We had hell with the herd that night, an' if the sage
150
www.obooko.com
an' grass hadn't been wet—we, hosses, steers, an' all would hev burned up. But I
said I wasn't goin' to tell you any of the tricks.... Strange now, Miss Withersteen,
when the stampede did come it was from natural cause—jest a whirlin' devil of
dust. You've seen the like often. An' this wasn't no big whirl, fer the dust was
mostly settled. It had dried out in a little swale, an' ordinarily no steer would ever
hev run fer it. But the herd was nervous en' wild. An' jest as Lassiter said, when
that bunch of white steers got to movin' they was as bad as buffalo. I've seen
some buffalo stampedes back in Nebraska, an' this bolt of the steers was the
same kind.
“I tried to mill the herd jest as Lassiter did. But I wasn't equal to it, Miss
Withersteen. I don't believe the rider lives who could hev turned thet herd. We
kept along of the herd fer miles, an' more 'n one of my boys tried to get the steers
a-millin'. It wasn't no use. We got off level ground, goin' down, an' then the steers
ran somethin' fierce. We left the little gullies an' washes level-full of dead steers.
Finally I saw the herd was makin' to pass a kind of low pocket between ridges.
There was a hog-back—as we used to call 'em—a pile of rocks stickin' up, and I
saw the herd was goin' to split round it, or swing out to the left. An' I wanted 'em
to go to the right so mebbe we'd be able to drive 'em into the pocket. So, with all
my boys except three, I rode hard to turn the herd a little to the right. We
couldn't budge 'em. They went on en' split round the rocks, en' the most of 'em
was turned sharp to the left by a deep wash we hedn't seen—hed no chance to
see.
“The other three boys—Jimmy Vail, Joe Willis, an' thet little Cairns boy—a
nervy kid! they, with Cairns leadin', tried to buck thet herd round to the pocket. It
was a wild, fool idee. I couldn't do nothin'. The boys got hemmed in between the
steers an' the wash—thet they hedn't no chance to see, either. Vail an' Willis was
run down right before our eyes. An' Cairns, who rode a fine hoss, he did some
ridin'. I never seen equaled, en' would hev beat the steers if there'd been any
room to run in. I was high up an' could see how the steers kept spillin' by twos
an' threes over into the wash. Cairns put his hoss to a place thet was too wide fer
any hoss, an' broke his neck an' the hoss's too. We found that out after, an' as fer
Vail an' Willis—two thousand steers ran over the poor boys. There wasn't much
left to pack home fer burying!... An', Miss Withersteen, thet all happened
yesterday, en' I believe, if the white herd didn't run over the wall of the Pass, it's
runnin' yet.”
On the morning of the second day after Judkins's recital, during which time
Jane remained indoors a prey to regret and sorrow for the boy riders, and a new
and now strangely insistent fear for her own person, she again heard what she
151
had missed more than she dared honestly confess—the soft, jingling step of
Lassiter. Almost overwhelming relief surged through her, a feeling as akin to joy
as any she could have been capable of in those gloomy hours of shadow, and one
that suddenly stunned her with the significance of what Lassiter had come to
mean to her. She had begged him, for his own sake, to leave Cottonwoods. She
might yet beg that, if her weakening courage permitted her to dare absolute
loneliness and helplessness, but she realized now that if she were left alone her
life would become one long, hideous nightmare.
When his soft steps clinked into the hall, in answer to her greeting, and his
tall, black-garbed form filled the door, she felt an inexpressible sense of
immediate safety. In his presence she lost her fear of the dim passageways of
Withersteen House and of every sound. Always it had been that, when he entered
the court or the hall, she had experienced a distinctly sickening but gradually
lessening shock at sight of the huge black guns swinging at his sides. This time
the sickening shock again visited her, it was, however, because a revealing flash
of thought told her that it was not alone Lassiter who was thrillingly welcome,
but also his fatal weapons. They meant so much. How she had fallen—how
broken and spiritless must she be—to have still the same old horror of Lassiter's
guns and his name, yet feel somehow a cold, shrinking protection in their law and
might and use.
“Did you trail Venters—find his wonderful valley?” she asked, eagerly.
“Yes, an' I reckon it's sure a wonderful place.”
“Is he safe there?”
“That's been botherin' me some. I tracked him an' part of the trail was the
hardest I ever tackled. Mebbe there's a rustler or somebody in this country who's
as good at trackin' as I am. If that's so Venters ain't safe.”
“Well—tell me all about Bern and his valley.”
To Jane's surprise Lassiter showed disinclination for further talk about his
trip. He appeared to be extremely fatigued. Jane reflected that one hundred and
twenty miles, with probably a great deal of climbing on foot, all in three days, was
enough to tire any rider. Moreover, it presently developed that Lassiter had
returned in a mood of singular sadness and preoccupation. She put it down to a
moodiness over the loss of her white herd and the now precarious condition of
her fortune.
Several days passed, and as nothing happened, Jane's spirits began to
brighten. Once in her musings she thought that this tendency of hers to rebound
was as sad as it was futile. Meanwhile, she had resumed her walks through the
grove with little Fay.
152
www.obooko.com
One morning she went as far as the sage. She had not seen the slope since
the beginning of the rains, and now it bloomed a rich deep purple. There was a
high wind blowing, and the sage tossed and waved and colored beautifully from
light to dark. Clouds scudded across the sky and their shadows sailed darkly
down the sunny slope.
Upon her return toward the house she went by the lane to the stables, and
she had scarcely entered the great open space with its corrals and sheds when
she saw Lassiter hurriedly approaching. Fay broke from her and, running to a
corral fence, began to pat and pull the long, hanging ears of a drowsy burro.
One look at Lassiter armed her for a blow.
Without a word he led her across the wide yard to the rise of the ground
upon which the stable stood.
“Jane—look!” he said, and pointed to the ground.
Jane glanced down, and again, and upon steadier vision made out
splotches of blood on the stones, and broad, smooth marks in the dust, leading
out toward the sage.
“What made these?” she asked.
“I reckon somebody has dragged dead or wounded men out to where there
was hosses in the sage.”
“Dead—or—wounded—men!”
“I reckon—Jane, are you strong? Can you bear up?”
His hands were gently holding hers, and his eyes—suddenly she could no
longer look into them. “Strong?” she echoed, trembling. “I—I will be.”
Up on the stone-flag drive, nicked with the marks made by the iron-shod
hoofs of her racers, Lassiter led her, his grasp ever growing firmer.
“Where's Blake—and—and Jerb?” she asked, haltingly.
“I don't know where Jerb is. Bolted, most likely,” replied Lassiter, as he
took her through the stone door. “But Blake—poor Blake! He's gone forever!... Be
prepared, Jane.”
With a cold prickling of her skin, with a queer thrumming in her ears, with
fixed and staring eyes, Jane saw a gun lying at her feet with chamber swung and
empty, and discharged shells scattered near.
Outstretched upon the stable floor lay Blake, ghastly white—dead—one
hand clutching a gun and the other twisted in his bloody blouse.
“Whoever the thieves were, whether your people or rustlers—Blake killed
some of them!” said Lassiter.
“Thieves?” whispered Jane.
“I reckon. Hoss-thieves!... Look!” Lassiter waved his hand toward the stalls.
153
The first stall—Bells's stall—was empty. All the stalls were empty. No
racer whinnied and stamped greeting to her. Night was gone! Black Star was
gone!
CHAPTER XVI. GOLD
As Lassiter had reported to Jane, Venters “went through” safely, and after a
toilsome journey reached the peaceful shelter of Surprise Valley. When finally he
lay wearily down under the silver spruces, resting from the strain of dragging
packs and burros up the slope and through the entrance to Surprise Valley, he
had leisure to think, and a great deal of the time went in regretting that he had
not been frank with his loyal friend, Jane Withersteen.
But, he kept continually recalling, when he had stood once more face to
face with her and had been shocked at the change in her and had heard the
details of her adversity, he had not had the heart to tell her of the closer interest
which had entered his life. He had not lied; yet he had kept silence.
Bess was in transports over the stores of supplies and the outfit he had
packed from Cottonwoods. He had certainly brought a hundred times more than
he had gone for; enough, surely, for years, perhaps to make permanent home in
the valley. He saw no reason why he need ever leave there again.
After a day of rest he recovered his strength and shared Bess's pleasure in
rummaging over the endless packs, and began to plan for the future. And in this
planning, his trip to Cottonwoods, with its revived hate of Tull and consequent
unleashing of fierce passions, soon faded out of mind. By slower degrees his
friendship for Jane Withersteen and his contrition drifted from the active
preoccupation of his present thought to a place in memory, with more and more
infrequent recalls.
And as far as the state of his mind was concerned, upon the second day
after his return, the valley, with its golden hues and purple shades, the speaking
west wind and the cool, silent night, and Bess's watching eyes with their
wonderful light, so wrought upon Venters that he might never have left them at
all.
That very afternoon he set to work. Only one thing hindered him upon
beginning, though it in no wise checked his delight, and that in the multiplicity of
tasks planned to make a paradise out of the valley he could not choose the one
154
www.obooko.com
with which to begin. He had to grow into the habit of passing from one dreamy
pleasure to another, like a bee going from flower to flower in the valley, and he
found this wandering habit likely to extend to his labors. Nevertheless, he made a
start.
At the outset he discovered Bess to be both a considerable help in some
ways and a very great hindrance in others. Her excitement and joy were spurs,
inspirations; but she was utterly impracticable in her ideas, and she flitted from
one plan to another with bewildering vacillation. Moreover, he fancied that she
grew more eager, youthful, and sweet; and he marked that it was far easier to
watch her and listen to her than it was to work. Therefore he gave her tasks that
necessitated her going often to the cave where he had stored his packs.
Upon the last of these trips, when he was some distance down the terrace
and out of sight of camp, he heard a scream, and then the sharp barking of the
dogs.
For an instant he straightened up, amazed. Danger for her had been
absolutely out of his mind. She had seen a rattlesnake—or a wildcat. Still she
would not have been likely to scream at sight of either; and the barking of the
dogs was ominous. Dropping his work, he dashed back along the terrace. Upon
breaking through a clump of aspens he saw the dark form of a man in the camp.
Cold, then hot, Venters burst into frenzied speed to reach his guns. He was
cursing himself for a thoughtless fool when the man's tall form became familiar
and he recognized Lassiter. Then the reversal of emotions changed his run to a
walk; he tried to call out, but his voice refused to carry; when he reached camp
there was Lassiter staring at the white-faced girl. By that time Ring and Whitie
had recognized him.
“Hello, Venters! I'm makin' you a visit,” said Lassiter, slowly. “An' I'm some
surprised to see you've a—a young feller for company.”
One glance had sufficed for the keen rider to read Bess's real sex, and for
once his cool calm had deserted him. He stared till the white of Bess's cheeks
flared into crimson. That, if it were needed, was the concluding evidence of her
femininity, for it went fittingly with her sun-tinted hair and darkened, dilated
eyes, the sweetness of her mouth, and the striking symmetry of her slender
shape.
“Heavens! Lassiter!” panted Venters, when he caught his breath. “What
relief—it's only you! How—in the name of all that's wonderful—did you ever get
here?”
“I trailed you. We—I wanted to know where you was, if you had a safe
place. So I trailed you.”
155
“Trailed me,” cried Venters, bluntly.

“I reckon. It was some of a job after I got to them smooth rocks. I was all
day trackin' you up to them little cut steps in the rock. The rest was easy.”
“Where's your hoss? I hope you hid him.”
“I tied him in them queer cedars down on the slope. He can't be seen from
the valley.”
“That's good. Well, well! I'm completely dumfounded. It was my idea that
no man could track me in here.”
“I reckon. But if there's a tracker in these uplands as good as me he can
find you.”
“That's bad. That'll worry me. But, Lassiter, now you're here I'm glad to see
you. And—and my companion here is not a young fellow!... Bess, this is a friend of
mine. He saved my life once.”
The embarrassment of the moment did not extend to Lassiter. Almost at
once his manner, as he shook hands with Bess, relieved Venters and put the girl
at ease. After Venters's words and one quick look at Lassiter, her agitation stilled,
and, though she was shy, if she were conscious of anything out of the ordinary in
the situation, certainly she did not show it.
“I reckon I'll only stay a little while,” Lassiter was saying. “An' if you don't
mind troublin', I'm hungry. I fetched some biscuits along, but they're gone.
Venters, this place is sure the wonderfullest ever seen. Them cut steps on the
slope! That outlet into the gorge! An' it's like climbin' up through hell into heaven
to climb through that gorge into this valley! There's a queer-lookin' rock at the
top of the passage. I didn't have time to stop. I'm wonderin' how you ever found
this place. It's sure interestin'.”
During the preparation and eating of dinner Lassiter listened mostly, as
was his wont, and occasionally he spoke in his quaint and dry way. Venters
noted, however, that the rider showed an increasing interest in Bess. He asked
her no questions, and only directed his attention to her while she was occupied
and had no opportunity to observe his scrutiny. It seemed to Venters that
Lassiter grew more and more absorbed in his study of Bess, and that he lost his
coolness in some strange, softening sympathy. Then, quite abruptly, he arose and
announced the necessity for his early departure. He said good-by to Bess in a
voice gentle and somewhat broken, and turned hurriedly away. Venters
accompanied him, and they had traversed the terrace, climbed the weathered
slope, and passed under the stone bridge before either spoke again.
Then Lassiter put a great hand on Venters's shoulder and wheeled him to
meet a smoldering fire of gray eyes.
156
www.obooko.com
“Lassiter, I couldn't tell Jane! I couldn't,” burst out Venters, reading his
friend's mind. “I tried. But I couldn't. She wouldn't understand, and she has
troubles enough. And I love the girl!”
“Venters, I reckon this beats me. I've seen some queer things in my time,
too. This girl—who is she?”
“I don't know.”
“Don't know! What is she, then?”
“I don't know that, either. Oh, it's the strangest story you ever heard. I
must tell you. But you'll never believe.”
“Venters, women were always puzzles to me. But for all that, if this girl
ain't a child, an' as innocent, I'm no fit person to think of virtue an' goodness in
anybody. Are you goin' to be square with her?”
“I am—so help me God!”
“I reckoned so. Mebbe my temper oughtn't led me to make sure. But, man,
she's a woman in all but years. She's sweeter 'n the sage.”
“Lassiter, I know, I know. And the hell of it is that in spite of her innocence
and charm she's—she's not what she seems!”
“I wouldn't want to—of course, I couldn't call you a liar, Venters,” said the
older man.
“What's more, she was Oldring's Masked Rider!”
Venters expected to floor his friend with that statement, but he was not in
any way prepared for the shock his words gave. For an instant he was astounded
to see Lassiter stunned; then his own passionate eagerness to unbosom himself,
to tell the wonderful story, precluded any other thought.
“Son, tell me all about this,” presently said Lassiter as he seated himself on
a stone and wiped his moist brow.
Thereupon Venters began his narrative at the point where he had shot the
rustler and Oldring's Masked Rider, and he rushed through it, telling all, not
holding back even Bess's unreserved avowal of her love or his deepest emotions.
“That's the story,” he said, concluding. “I love her, though I've never told
her. If I did tell her I'd be ready to marry her, and that seems impossible in this
country. I'd be afraid to risk taking her anywhere. So I intend to do the best I can
for her here.”
“The longer I live the stranger life is,” mused Lassiter, with downcast eyes.
“I'm reminded of somethin' you once said to Jane about hands in her game of life.
There's that unseen hand of power, an' Tull's black hand, an' my red one, an' your
indifferent one, an' the girl's little brown, helpless one. An', Venters there's
another one that's all-wise an' all-wonderful. That's the hand guidin' Jane
157
Withersteen's game of life!... Your story's one to daze a far clearer head than
mine. I can't offer no advice, even if you asked for it. Mebbe I can help you.
Anyway, I'll hold Oldrin' up when he comes to the village an' find out about this
girl. I knew the rustler years ago. He'll remember me.”
“Lassiter, if I ever meet Oldring I'll kill him!” cried Venters, with sudden
intensity.
“I reckon that'd be perfectly natural,” replied the rider.
“Make him think Bess is dead—as she is to him and that old life.”
“Sure, sure, son. Cool down now. If you're goin' to begin pullin' guns on
Tull an' Oldrin' you want to be cool. I reckon, though, you'd better keep hid here.
Well, I must be leavin'.”
“One thing, Lassiter. You'll not tell Jane about Bess? Please don't!”
“I reckon not. But I wouldn't be afraid to bet that after she'd got over anger
at your secrecy—Venters, she'd be furious once in her life!—she'd think more of
you. I don't mind sayin' for myself that I think you're a good deal of a man.”
In the further ascent Venters halted several times with the intention of
saying good-by, yet he changed his mind and kept on climbing till they reached
Balancing Rock. Lassiter examined the huge rock, listened to Venters's idea of its
position and suggestion, and curiously placed a strong hand upon it.
“Hold on!” cried Venters. “I heaved at it once and have never gotten over
my scare.”
“Well, you do seem uncommon nervous,” replied Lassiter, much amused.
“Now, as for me, why I always had the funniest notion to roll stones! When I was
a kid I did it, an' the bigger I got the bigger stones I'd roll. Ain't that funny?
Honest—even now I often get off my hoss just to tumble a big stone over a
precipice, en' watch it drop, en' listen to it bang an' boom. I've started some slides
in my time, an' don't you forget it. I never seen a rock I wanted to roll as bad as
this one! Wouldn't there jest be roarin', crashin' hell down that trail?”
“You'd close the outlet forever!” exclaimed Venters. “Well, good-by,
Lassiter. Keep my secret and don't forget me. And be mighty careful how you get
out of the valley below. The rustlers' canyon isn't more than three miles up the
Pass. Now you've tracked me here, I'll never feel safe again.”
In his descent to the valley, Venters's emotion, roused to stirring pitch by
the recital of his love story, quieted gradually, and in its place came a sober,
thoughtful mood. All at once he saw that he was serious, because he would never
more regain his sense of security while in the valley. What Lassiter could do
another skilful tracker might duplicate. Among the many riders with whom
Venters had ridden he recalled no one who could have taken his trail at
158
www.obooko.com
Cottonwoods and have followed it to the edge of the bare slope in the pass, let
alone up that glistening smooth stone. Lassiter, however, was not an ordinary
rider. Instead of hunting cattle tracks he had likely spent a goodly portion of his
life tracking men. It was not improbable that among Oldring's rustlers there was
one who shared Lassiter's gift for trailing. And the more Venters dwelt on this
possibility the more perturbed he grew.
Lassiter's visit, moreover, had a disquieting effect upon Bess, and Venters
fancied that she entertained the same thought as to future seclusion. The
breaking of their solitude, though by a well-meaning friend, had not only
dispelled all its dream and much of its charm, but had instilled a canker of fear.
Both had seen the footprint in the sand.
Venters did no more work that day. Sunset and twilight gave way to night,
and the canyon bird whistled its melancholy notes, and the wind sang softly in
the cliffs, and the camp-fire blazed and burned down to red embers. To Venters a
subtle difference was apparent in all of these, or else the shadowy change had
been in him. He hoped that on the morrow this slight depression would have
passed away.
In that measure, however, he was doomed to disappointment.
Furthermore, Bess reverted to a wistful sadness that he had not observed in her
since her recovery. His attempt to cheer her out of it resulted in dismal failure,
and consequently in a darkening of his own mood. Hard work relieved him; still,
when the day had passed, his unrest returned. Then he set to deliberate thinking,
and there came to him the startling conviction that he must leave Surprise Valley
and take Bess with him. As a rider he had taken many chances, and as an
adventurer in Deception Pass he had unhesitatingly risked his life, but now he
would run no preventable hazard of Bess's safety and happiness, and he was too
keen not to see that hazard. It gave him a pang to think of leaving the beautiful
valley just when he had the means to establish a permanent and delightful home
there. One flashing thought tore in hot temptation through his mind—why not
climb up into the gorge, roll Balancing Rock down the trail, and close forever the
outlet to Deception Pass? “That was the beast in me—showing his teeth!”
muttered Venters, scornfully. “I'll just kill him good and quick! I'll be fair to this
girl, if it's the last thing I do on earth!”
Another day went by, in which he worked less and pondered more and all
the time covertly watched Bess. Her wistfulness had deepened into downright
unhappiness, and that made his task to tell her all the harder. He kept the secret
another day, hoping by some chance she might grow less moody, and to his
exceeding anxiety she fell into far deeper gloom. Out of his own secret and the
159
torment of it he divined that she, too, had a secret and the keeping of it was
torturing her. As yet he had no plan thought out in regard to how or when to
leave the valley, but he decided to tell her the necessity of it and to persuade her
to go. Furthermore, he hoped his speaking out would induce her to unburden her
own mind.
“Bess, what's wrong with you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she answered, with averted face.
Venters took hold of her gently, though masterfully, forced her to meet his
eyes.
“You can't look at me and lie,” he said. “Now—what's wrong with you?
You're keeping something from me. Well, I've got a secret, too, and I intend to tell
it presently.”
“Oh—I have a secret. I was crazy to tell you when you came back. That's
why I was so silly about everything. I kept holding my secret back—gloating over
it. But when Lassiter came I got an idea—that changed my mind. Then I hated to
tell you.”
“Are you going to now?”
“Yes—yes. I was coming to it. I tried yesterday, but you were so cold. I was
afraid. I couldn't keep it much longer.”
“Very well, most mysterious lady, tell your wonderful secret.”
“You needn't laugh,” she retorted, with a first glimpse of reviving spirit. “I
can take the laugh out of you in one second.”
“It's a go.”
She ran through the spruces to the cave, and returned carrying something
which was manifestly heavy. Upon nearer view he saw that whatever she held
with such evident importance had been bound up in a black scarf he well
remembered. That alone was sufficient to make him tingle with curiosity.
“Have you any idea what I did in your absence?” she asked.
“I imagine you lounged about, waiting and watching for me,” he replied,
smiling. “I've my share of conceit, you know.”
“You're wrong. I worked. Look at my hands.” She dropped on her knees
close to where he sat, and, carefully depositing the black bundle, she held out her
hands. The palms and inside of her fingers were white, puckered, and worn.
“Why, Bess, you've been fooling in the water,” he said.
“Fooling? Look here!” With deft fingers she spread open the black scarf,
and the bright sun shone upon a dull, glittering heap of gold.
“Gold!” he ejaculated.
160
www.obooko.com
“Yes, gold! See, pounds of gold! I found it—washed it out of the stream—
picked it out grain by grain, nugget by nugget!”
“Gold!” he cried.
“Yes. Now—now laugh at my secret!”
For a long minute Venters gazed. Then he stretched forth a hand to feel if
the gold was real.
“Gold!” he almost shouted. “Bess, there are hundreds—thousands of
dollars' worth here!”
He leaned over to her, and put his hand, strong and clenching now, on
hers.
“Is there more where this came from?” he whispered.
“Plenty of it, all the way up the stream to the cliff. You know I've often
washed for gold. Then I've heard the men talk. I think there's no great quantity of
gold here, but enough for—for a fortune for you.”
“That—was—your—secret!”
“Yes. I hate gold. For it makes men mad. I've seen them drunk with joy and
dance and fling themselves around. I've seen them curse and rave. I've seen them
fight like dogs and roll in the dust. I've seen them kill each other for gold.”
“Is that why you hated to tell me?”
“Not—not altogether.” Bess lowered her head. “It was because I knew
you'd never stay here long after you found gold.”
“You were afraid I'd leave you?”
“Yes.
“Listen!... You great, simple child! Listen... You sweet, wonderful, wild,
blue-eyed girl! I was tortured by my secret. It was that I knew we—we must
leave the valley. We can't stay here much longer. I couldn't think how we'd get
away—out of the country—or how we'd live, if we ever got out. I'm a beggar.
That's why I kept my secret. I'm poor. It takes money to make way beyond
Sterling. We couldn't ride horses or burros or walk forever. So while I knew we
must go, I was distracted over how to go and what to do. Now! We've gold! Once
beyond Sterling, we'll be safe from rustlers. We've no others to fear.
“Oh! Listen! Bess!” Venters now heard his voice ringing high and sweet,
and he felt Bess's cold hands in his crushing grasp as she leaned toward him pale,
breathless. “This is how much I'd leave you! You made me live again! I'll take you
away—far away from this wild country. You'll begin a new life. You'll be happy.
You shall see cities, ships, people. You shall have anything your heart craves. All
the shame and sorrow of your life shall be forgotten—as if they had never been.
This is how much I'd leave you here alone—you sad-eyed girl. I love you! Didn't
161
you know it? How could you fail to know it? I love you! I'm free! I'm a man—a
man you've made—no more a beggar!... Kiss me! This is how much I'd leave you
here alone—you beautiful, strange, unhappy girl. But I'll make you happy.
What—what do I care for—your past! I love you! I'll take you home to Illinois—
to my mother. Then I'll take you to far places. I'll make up all you've lost. Oh, I
know you love me—knew it before you told me. And it changed my life. And
you'll go with me, not as my companion as you are here, nor my sister, but, Bess,
darling!... As my wife!”
CHAPTER XVII. WRANGLE'S RACE RUN
The plan eventually decided upon by the lovers was for Venters to go to
the village, secure a horse and some kind of a disguise for Bess, or at least less
striking apparel than her present garb, and to return post-haste to the valley.
Meanwhile, she would add to their store of gold. Then they would strike the long
and perilous trail to ride out of Utah. In the event of his inability to fetch back a
horse for her, they intended to make the giant sorrel carry double. The gold, a
little food, saddle blankets, and Venters's guns were to compose the light outfit
with which they would make the start.
“I love this beautiful place,” said Bess. “It's hard to think of leaving it.”
“Hard! Well, I should think so,” replied Venters. “Maybe—in years—” But
he did not complete in words his thought that might be possible to return after
many years of absence and change.
Once again Bess bade Venters farewell under the shadow of Balancing
Rock, and this time it was with whispered hope and tenderness and passionate
trust. Long after he had left her, all down through the outlet to the Pass, the
clinging clasp of her arms, the sweetness of her lips, and the sense of a new and
exquisite birth of character in her remained hauntingly and thrillingly in his
mind. The girl who had sadly called herself nameless and nothing had been
marvelously transformed in the moment of his avowal of love. It was something
to think over, something to warm his heart, but for the present it had absolutely
to be forgotten so that all his mind could be addressed to the trip so fraught with
danger.
He carried only his rifle, revolver, and a small quantity of bread and meat,
and thus lightly burdened, he made swift progress down the slope and out into
162
www.obooko.com
the valley. Darkness was coming on, and he welcomed it. Stars were blinking
when he reached his old hiding-place in the split of canyon wall, and by their aid
he slipped through the dense thickets to the grassy enclosure. Wrangle stood in
the center of it with his head up, and he appeared black and of gigantic
proportions in the dim light. Venters whistled softly, began a slow approach, and
then called. The horse snorted and, plunging away with dull, heavy sound of
hoofs, he disappeared in the gloom. “Wilder than ever!” muttered Venters. He
followed the sorrel into the narrowing split between the walls, and presently had
to desist because he could not see a foot in advance. As he went back toward the
open Wrangle jumped out of an ebony shadow of cliff and like a thunderbolt shot
huge and black past him down into the starlit glade. Deciding that all attempts to
catch Wrangle at night would be useless, Venters repaired to the shelving rock
where he had hidden saddle and blanket, and there went to sleep.
The first peep of day found him stirring, and as soon as it was light enough
to distinguish objects, he took his lasso off his saddle and went out to rope the
sorrel. He espied Wrangle at the lower end of the cove and approached him in a
perfectly natural manner. When he got near enough, Wrangle evidently
recognized him, but was too wild to stand. He ran up the glade and on into the
narrow lane between the walls. This favored Venters's speedy capture of the
horse, so, coiling his noose ready to throw, he hurried on. Wrangle let Venters get
to within a hundred feet and then he broke. But as he plunged by, rapidly getting
into his stride, Venters made a perfect throw with the rope. He had time to brace
himself for the shock; nevertheless, Wrangle threw him and dragged him several
yards before halting.
“You wild devil,” said Venters, as he slowly pulled Wrangle up. “Don't you
know me? Come now—old fellow—so—so—”
Wrangle yielded to the lasso and then to Venters's strong hand. He was as
straggly and wild-looking as a horse left to roam free in the sage. He dropped his
long ears and stood readily to be saddled and bridled. But he was exceedingly
sensitive, and quivered at every touch and sound. Venters led him to the thicket,
and, bending the close saplings to let him squeeze through, at length reached the
open. Sharp survey in each direction assured him of the usual lonely nature of
the canyon, then he was in the saddle, riding south.
Wrangle's long, swinging canter was a wonderful ground-gainer. His stride
was almost twice that of an ordinary horse; and his endurance was equally
remarkable. Venters pulled him in occasionally, and walked him up the stretches
of rising ground and along the soft washes. Wrangle had never yet shown any
indication of distress while Venters rode him. Nevertheless, there was now
163
reason to save the horse, therefore Venters did not resort to the hurry that had
characterized his former trip. He camped at the last water in the Pass. What
distance that was to Cottonwoods he did not know; he calculated, however, that
it was in the neighborhood of fifty miles.
Early in the morning he proceeded on his way, and about the middle of the
forenoon reached the constricted gap that marked the southerly end of the Pass,
and through which led the trail up to the sage-level. He spied out Lassiter's tracks
in the dust, but no others, and dismounting, he straightened out Wrangle's bridle
and began to lead him up the trail. The short climb, more severe on beast than on
man, necessitated a rest on the level above, and during this he scanned the wide
purple reaches of slope.
Wrangle whistled his pleasure at the smell of the sage. Remounting,
Venters headed up the white trail with the fragrant wind in his face. He had
proceeded for perhaps a couple of miles when Wrangle stopped with a
suddenness that threw Venters heavily against the pommel.
“What's wrong, old boy?” called Venters, looking down for a loose shoe or
a snake or a foot lamed by a picked-up stone. Unrewarded, he raised himself
from his scrutiny. Wrangle stood stiff head high, with his long ears erect. Thus
guided, Venters swiftly gazed ahead to make out a dust-clouded, dark group of
horsemen riding down the slope. If they had seen him, it apparently made no
difference in their speed or direction.
“Wonder who they are!” exclaimed Venters. He was not disposed to run.
His cool mood tightened under grip of excitement as he reflected that, whoever
the approaching riders were, they could not be friends. He slipped out of the
saddle and led Wrangle behind the tallest sage-brush. It might serve to conceal
them until the riders were close enough for him to see who they were; after that
he would be indifferent to how soon they discovered him.
After looking to his rifle and ascertaining that it was in working order, he
watched, and as he watched, slowly the force of a bitter fierceness, long dormant,
gathered ready to flame into life. If those riders were not rustlers he had
forgotten how rustlers looked and rode. On they came, a small group, so compact
and dark that he could not tell their number. How unusual that their horses did
not see Wrangle! But such failure, Venters decided, was owing to the speed with
which they were traveling. They moved at a swift canter affected more by
rustlers than by riders. Venters grew concerned over the possibility that these
horsemen would actually ride down on him before he had a chance to tell what to
expect. When they were within three hundred yards he deliberately led Wrangle
out into the trail.
164
www.obooko.com
Then he heard shouts, and the hard scrape of sliding hoofs, and saw horses
rear and plunge back with up-flung heads and flying manes. Several little white
puffs of smoke appeared sharply against the black background of riders and
horses, and shots rang out. Bullets struck far in front of Venters, and whipped up
the dust and then hummed low into the sage. The range was great for revolvers,
but whether the shots were meant to kill or merely to check advance, they were
enough to fire that waiting ferocity in Venters. Slipping his arm through the
bridle, so that Wrangle could not get away, Venters lifted his rifle and pulled the
trigger twice.
He saw the first horseman lean sideways and fall. He saw another lurch in
his saddle and heard a cry of pain. Then Wrangle, plunging in fright, lifted
Venters and nearly threw him. He jerked the horse down with a powerful hand
and leaped into the saddle. Wrangle plunged again, dragging his bridle, that
Venters had not had time to throw in place. Bending over with a swift movement,
he secured it and dropped the loop over the pommel. Then, with grinding teeth,
he looked to see what the issue would be.
The band had scattered so as not to afford such a broad mark for bullets.
The riders faced Venters, some with red-belching guns. He heard a sharper
report, and just as Wrangle plunged again he caught the whim of a leaden missile
that would have hit him but for Wrangle's sudden jump. A swift, hot wave,
turning cold, passed over Venters. Deliberately he picked out the one rider with a
carbine, and killed him. Wrangle snorted shrilly and bolted into the sage. Venters
let him run a few rods, then with iron arm checked him.
Five riders, surely rustlers, were left. One leaped out of the saddle to
secure his fallen comrade's carbine. A shot from Venters, which missed the man
but sent the dust flying over him made him run back to his horse. Then they
separated. The crippled rider went one way; the one frustrated in his attempt to
get the carbine rode another, Venters thought he made out a third rider, carrying
a strange-appearing bundle and disappearing in the sage. But in the rapidity of
action and vision he could not discern what it was. Two riders with three horses
swung out to the right. Afraid of the long rifle—a burdensome weapon seldom
carried by rustlers or riders—they had been put to rout.
Suddenly Venters discovered that one of the two men last noted was riding
Jane Withersteen's horse Bells—the beautiful bay racer she had given to Lassiter.
Venters uttered a savage outcry. Then the small, wiry, frog-like shape of the
second rider, and the ease and grace of his seat in the saddle—things so
strikingly incongruous—grew more and more familiar in Venters's sight.
“Jerry Card!” cried Venters.
165
It was indeed Tull's right-hand man. Such a white hot wrath inflamed
Venters that he fought himself to see with clearer gaze.
“It's Jerry Card!” he exclaimed, instantly. “And he's riding Black Star and
leading Night!”
The long-kindling, stormy fire in Venters's heart burst into flame. He
spurred Wrangle, and as the horse lengthened his stride Venters slipped
cartridges into the magazine of his rifle till it was once again full. Card and his
companion were now half a mile or more in advance, riding easily down the
slope. Venters marked the smooth gait, and understood it when Wrangle
galloped out of the sage into the broad cattle trail, down which Venters had once
tracked Jane Withersteen's red herd. This hard-packed trail, from years of use,
was as clean and smooth as a road. Venters saw Jerry Card look back over his
shoulder, the other rider did likewise. Then the three racers lengthened their
stride to the point where the swinging canter was ready to break into a gallop.
“Wrangle, the race's on,” said Venters, grimly. “We'll canter with them and
gallop with them and run with them. We'll let them set the pace.”
Venters knew he bestrode the strongest, swiftest, most tireless horse ever
ridden by any rider across the Utah uplands. Recalling Jane Withersteen's
devoted assurance that Night could run neck and neck with Wrangle, and Black
Star could show his heels to him, Venters wished that Jane were there to see the
race to recover her blacks and in the unqualified superiority of the giant sorrel.
Then Venters found himself thankful that she was absent, for he meant that race
to end in Jerry Card's death. The first flush, the raging of Venters's wrath, passed,
to leave him in sullen, almost cold possession of his will. It was a deadly mood,
utterly foreign to his nature, engendered, fostered, and released by the wild
passions of wild men in a wild country. The strength in him then—the thing rife
in him that was not hate, but something as remorseless—might have been the
fiery fruition of a whole lifetime of vengeful quest. Nothing could have stopped
him.
Venters thought out the race shrewdly. The rider on Bells would probably
drop behind and take to the sage. What he did was of little moment to Venters. To
stop Jerry Card, his evil hidden career as well as his present flight, and then to
catch the blacks—that was all that concerned Venters. The cattle trail wound for
miles and miles down the slope. Venters saw with a rider's keen vision ten,
fifteen, twenty miles of clear purple sage. There were no on-coming riders or
rustlers to aid Card. His only chance to escape lay in abandoning the stolen
horses and creeping away in the sage to hide. In ten miles Wrangle could run
Black Star and Night off their feet, and in fifteen he could kill them outright. So
166
www.obooko.com
Venters held the sorrel in, letting Card make the running. It was a long race that
would save the blacks.
In a few miles of that swinging canter Wrangle had crept appreciably
closer to the three horses. Jerry Card turned again, and when he saw how the
sorrel had gained, he put Black Star to a gallop. Night and Bells, on either side of
him, swept into his stride.
Venters loosened the rein on Wrangle and let him break into a gallop. The
sorrel saw the horses ahead and wanted to run. But Venters restrained him. And
in the gallop he gained more than in the canter. Bells was fast in that gait, but
Black Star and Night had been trained to run. Slowly Wrangle closed the gap
down to a quarter of a mile, and crept closer and closer.
Jerry Card wheeled once more. Venters distinctly saw the red flash of his
red face. This time he looked long. Venters laughed. He knew what passed in
Card's mind. The rider was trying to make out what horse it happened to be that
thus gained on Jane Withersteen's peerless racers. Wrangle had so long been
away from the village that not improbably Jerry had forgotten. Besides, whatever
Jerry's qualifications for his fame as the greatest rider of the sage, certain it was
that his best point was not far-sightedness. He had not recognized Wrangle. After
what must have been a searching gaze he got his comrade to face about. This
action gave Venters amusement. It spoke so surely of the facts that neither Card
nor the rustler actually knew their danger. Yet if they kept to the trail—and the
last thing such men would do would be to leave it—they were both doomed.
This comrade of Card's whirled far around in his saddle, and he even
shaded his eyes from the sun. He, too, looked long. Then, all at once, he faced
ahead again and, bending lower in the saddle, began to fling his right arm up and
down. That flinging Venters knew to be the lashing of Bells. Jerry also became
active. And the three racers lengthened out into a run.
“Now, Wrangle!” cried Venters. “Run, you big devil! Run!”
Venters laid the reins on Wrangle's neck and dropped the loop over the
pommel. The sorrel needed no guiding on that smooth trail. He was surer-footed
in a run than at any other fast gait, and his running gave the impression of
something devilish. He might now have been actuated by Venters's spirit;
undoubtedly his savage running fitted the mood of his rider. Venters bent
forward swinging with the horse, and gripped his rifle. His eye measured the
distance between him and Jerry Card.
In less than two miles of running Bells began to drop behind the blacks,
and Wrangle began to overhaul him. Venters anticipated that the rustler would
soon take to the sage. Yet he did not. Not improbably he reasoned that the
167
powerful sorrel could more easily overtake Bells in the heavier going outside of
the trail. Soon only a few hundred yards lay between Bells and Wrangle. Turning
in his saddle, the rustler began to shoot, and the bullets beat up little whiffs of
dust. Venters raised his rifle, ready to take snap shots, and waited for favorable
opportunity when Bells was out of line with the forward horses. Venters had it in
him to kill these men as if they were skunk-bitten coyotes, but also he had
restraint enough to keep from shooting one of Jane's beloved Arabians.
No great distance was covered, however, before Bells swerved to the left,
out of line with Black Star and Night. Then Venters, aiming high and waiting for
the pause between Wrangle's great strides, began to take snap shots at the
rustler. The fleeing rider presented a broad target for a rifle, but he was moving
swiftly forward and bobbing up and down. Moreover, shooting from Wrangle's
back was shooting from a thunderbolt. And added to that was the danger of a
low-placed bullet taking effect on Bells. Yet, despite these considerations, making
the shot exceedingly difficult, Venters's confidence, like his implacability, saw a
speedy and fatal termination of that rustler's race. On the sixth shot the rustler
threw up his arms and took a flying tumble off his horse. He rolled over and over,
hunched himself to a half-erect position, fell, and then dragged himself into the
sage. As Venters went thundering by he peered keenly into the sage, but caught
no sign of the man. Bells ran a few hundred yards, slowed up, and had stopped
when Wrangle passed him.
Again Venters began slipping fresh cartridges into the magazine of his rifle,
and his hand was so sure and steady that he did not drop a single cartridge. With
the eye of a rider and the judgment of a marksman he once more measured the
distance between him and Jerry Card. Wrangle had gained, bringing him into rifle
range. Venters was hard put to it now not to shoot, but thought it better to
withhold his fire. Jerry, who, in anticipation of a running fusillade, had huddled
himself into a little twisted ball on Black Star's neck, now surmising that this
pursuer would make sure of not wounding one of the blacks, rose to his natural
seat in the saddle.
In his mind perhaps, as certainly as in Venters's, this moment was the
beginning of the real race.
Venters leaned forward to put his hand on Wrangle's neck, then backward
to put it on his flank. Under the shaggy, dusty hair trembled and vibrated and
rippled a wonderful muscular activity. But Wrangle's flesh was still cold. What a
cold-blooded brute thought Venters, and felt in him a love for the horse he had
never given to any other. It would not have been humanly possible for any rider,
even though clutched by hate or revenge or a passion to save a loved one or fear
168
www.obooko.com
of his own life, to be astride the sorrel to swing with his swing, to see his
magnificent stride and hear the rapid thunder of his hoofs, to ride him in that
race and not glory in the ride.
So, with his passion to kill still keen and unabated, Venters lived out that
ride, and drank a rider's sage-sweet cup of wildness to the dregs.
When Wrangle's long mane, lashing in the wind, stung Venters in the
cheek, the sting added a beat to his flying pulse. He bent a downward glance to
try to see Wrangle's actual stride, and saw only twinkling, darting streaks and the
white rush of the trail. He watched the sorrel's savage head, pointed level, his
mouth still closed and dry, but his nostrils distended as if he were snorting
unseen fire. Wrangle was the horse for a race with death. Upon each side Venters
saw the sage merged into a sailing, colorless wall. In front sloped the lay of
ground with its purple breadth split by the white trail. The wind, blowing with
heavy, steady blast into his face, sickened him with enduring, sweet odor, and
filled his ears with a hollow, rushing roar.
Then for the hundredth time he measured the width of space separating
him from Jerry Card. Wrangle had ceased to gain. The blacks were proving their
fleetness. Venters watched Jerry Card, admiring the little rider's horsemanship.
He had the incomparable seat of the upland rider, born in the saddle. It struck
Venters that Card had changed his position, or the position of the horses.
Presently Venters remembered positively that Jerry had been leading Night on
the right-hand side of the trail. The racer was now on the side to the left. No—it
was Black Star. But, Venters argued in amaze, Jerry had been mounted on Black
Star. Another clearer, keener gaze assured Venters that Black Star was really
riderless. Night now carried Jerry Card.
“He's changed from one to the other!” ejaculated Venters, realizing the
astounding feat with unstinted admiration. “Changed at full speed! Jerry Card,
that's what you've done unless I'm drunk on the smell of sage. But I've got to see
the trick before I believe it.”
Thenceforth, while Wrangle sped on, Venters glued his eyes to the little
rider. Jerry Card rode as only he could ride. Of all the daring horsemen of the
uplands, Jerry was the one rider fitted to bring out the greatness of the blacks in
that long race. He had them on a dead run, but not yet at the last strained and
killing pace. From time to time he glanced backward, as a wise general in retreat
calculating his chances and the power and speed of pursuers, and the moment for
the last desperate burst. No doubt, Card, with his life at stake, gloried in that race,
perhaps more wildly than Venters. For he had been born to the sage and the
saddle and the wild. He was more than half horse. Not until the last call—the
169
sudden up-flashing instinct of self-preservation—would he lose his skill and

judgment and nerve and the spirit of that race. Venters seemed to read Jerry's
mind. That little crime-stained rider was actually thinking of his horses,
husbanding their speed, handling them with knowledge of years, glorying in their
beautiful, swift, racing stride, and wanting them to win the race when his own life
hung suspended in quivering balance. Again Jerry whirled in his saddle and the
sun flashed red on his face. Turning, he drew Black Star closer and closer toward
Night, till they ran side by side, as one horse. Then Card raised himself in the
saddle, slipped out of the stirrups, and, somehow twisting himself, leaped upon
Black Star. He did not even lose the swing of the horse. Like a leech he was there
in the other saddle, and as the horses separated, his right foot, that had been
apparently doubled under him, shot down to catch the stirrup. The grace and
dexterity and daring of that rider's act won something more than admiration
from Venters.
For the distance of a mile Jerry rode Black Star and then changed back to
Night. But all Jerry's skill and the running of the blacks could avail little more
against the sorrel.
Venters peered far ahead, studying the lay of the land. Straightaway for
five miles the trail stretched, and then it disappeared in hummocky ground. To
the right, some few rods, Venters saw a break in the sage, and this was the rim of
Deception Pass. Across the dark cleft gleamed the red of the opposite wall.
Venters imagined that the trail went down into the Pass somewhere north of
those ridges. And he realized that he must and would overtake Jerry Card in this
straight course of five miles.
Cruelly he struck his spurs into Wrangle's flanks. A light touch of spur was
sufficient to make Wrangle plunge. And now, with a ringing, wild snort, he
seemed to double up in muscular convulsions and to shoot forward with an
impetus that almost unseated Venters. The sage blurred by, the trail flashed by,
and the wind robbed him of breath and hearing. Jerry Card turned once more.
And the way he shifted to Black Star showed he had to make his last desperate
running. Venters aimed to the side of the trail and sent a bullet puffing the dust
beyond Jerry. Venters hoped to frighten the rider and get him to take to the sage.
But Jerry returned the shot, and his ball struck dangerously close in the dust at
Wrangle's flying feet. Venters held his fire then, while the rider emptied his
revolver. For a mile, with Black Star leaving Night behind and doing his utmost,
Wrangle did not gain; for another mile he gained little, if at all. In the third he
caught up with the now galloping Night and began to gain rapidly on the other
black.
170
www.obooko.com
Only a hundred yards now stretched between Black Star and Wrangle. The
giant sorrel thundered on—and on—and on. In every yard he gained a foot. He
was whistling through his nostrils, wringing wet, flying lather, and as hot as fire.
Savage as ever, strong as ever, fast as ever, but each tremendous stride jarred
Venters out of the saddle! Wrangle's power and spirit and momentum had begun
to run him off his legs. Wrangle's great race was nearly won—and run. Venters
seemed to see the expanse before him as a vast, sheeted, purple plain sliding
under him. Black Star moved in it as a blur. The rider, Jerry Card, appeared a
mere dot bobbing dimly. Wrangle thundered on—on—on! Venters felt the
increase in quivering, straining shock after every leap. Flecks of foam flew into
Venters's eyes, burning him, making him see all the sage as red. But in that red
haze he saw, or seemed to see, Black Star suddenly riderless and with broken
gait. Wrangle thundered on to change his pace with a violent break. Then Venters
pulled him hard. From run to gallop, gallop to canter, canter to trot, trot to walk,
and walk to stop, the great sorrel ended his race.
Venters looked back. Black Star stood riderless in the trail. Jerry Card had
taken to the sage. Far up the white trail Night came trotting faithfully down.
Venters leaped off, still half blind, reeling dizzily. In a moment he had recovered
sufficiently to have a care for Wrangle. Rapidly he took off the saddle and bridle.
The sorrel was reeking, heaving, whistling, shaking. But he had still the strength
to stand, and for him Venters had no fears.
As Venters ran back to Black Star he saw the horse stagger on shaking legs
into the sage and go down in a heap. Upon reaching him Venters removed the
saddle and bridle. Black Star had been killed on his legs, Venters thought. He had
no hope for the stricken horse. Black Star lay flat, covered with bloody froth,
mouth wide, tongue hanging, eyes glaring, and all his beautiful body in
convulsions.
Unable to stay there to see Jane's favorite racer die, Venters hurried up the
trail to meet the other black. On the way he kept a sharp lookout for Jerry Card.
Venters imagined the rider would keep well out of range of the rifle, but, as he
would be lost on the sage without a horse, not improbably he would linger in the
vicinity on the chance of getting back one of the blacks. Night soon came trotting
up, hot and wet and run out. Venters led him down near the others, and
unsaddling him, let him loose to rest. Night wearily lay down in the dust and
rolled, proving himself not yet spent.
Then Venters sat down to rest and think. Whatever the risk, he was
compelled to stay where he was, or comparatively near, for the night. The horses
must rest and drink. He must find water. He was now seventy miles from
171
Cottonwoods, and, he believed, close to the canyon where the cattle trail must
surely turn off and go down into the Pass. After a while he rose to survey the
valley.
He was very near to the ragged edge of a deep canyon into which the trail
turned. The ground lay in uneven ridges divided by washes, and these sloped into
the canyon. Following the canyon line, he saw where its rim was broken by other
intersecting canyons, and farther down red walls and yellow cliffs leading toward
a deep blue cleft that he made sure was Deception Pass. Walking out a few rods
to a promontory, he found where the trail went down. The descent was gradual,
along a stone-walled trail, and Venters felt sure that this was the place where
Oldring drove cattle into the Pass. There was, however, no indication at all that
he ever had driven cattle out at this point. Oldring had many holes to his burrow.
In searching round in the little hollows Venters, much to his relief, found
water. He composed himself to rest and eat some bread and meat, while he
waited for a sufficient time to elapse so that he could safely give the horses a
drink. He judged the hour to be somewhere around noon. Wrangle lay down to
rest and Night followed suit. So long as they were down Venters intended to
make no move. The longer they rested the better, and the safer it would be to
give them water. By and by he forced himself to go over to where Black Star lay,
expecting to find him dead. Instead he found the racer partially if not wholly
recovered. There was recognition, even fire, in his big black eyes. Venters was
overjoyed. He sat by the black for a long time. Black Star presently labored to his
feet with a heave and a groan, shook himself, and snorted for water. Venters
repaired to the little pool he had found, filled his sombrero, and gave the racer a
drink. Black Star gulped it at one draught, as if it were but a drop, and pushed his
nose into the hat and snorted for more. Venters now led Night down to drink, and
after a further time Black Star also. Then the blacks began to graze.
The sorrel had wandered off down the sage between the trail and the
canyon. Once or twice he disappeared in little swales. Finally Venters concluded
Wrangle had grazed far enough, and, taking his lasso, he went to fetch him back.
In crossing from one ridge to another he saw where the horse had made muddy a
pool of water. It occurred to Venters then that Wrangle had drunk his fill, and did
not seem the worse for it, and might be anything but easy to catch. And, true
enough, he could not come within roping reach of the sorrel. He tried for an hour,
and gave up in disgust. Wrangle did not seem so wild as simply perverse. In a
quandary Venters returned to the other horses, hoping much, yet doubting more,
that when Wrangle had grazed to suit himself he might be caught.
172
www.obooko.com
As the afternoon wore away Venters's concern diminished, yet he kept

close watch on the blacks and the trail and the sage. There was no telling of what
Jerry Card might be capable. Venters sullenly acquiesced to the idea that the rider
had been too quick and too shrewd for him. Strangely and doggedly, however,
Venters clung to his foreboding of Card's downfall.
The wind died away; the red sun topped the far distant western rise of
slope; and the long, creeping purple shadows lengthened. The rims of the
canyons gleamed crimson and the deep clefts appeared to belch forth blue
smoke. Silence enfolded the scene.
It was broken by a horrid, long-drawn scream of a horse and the thudding
of heavy hoofs. Venters sprang erect and wheeled south. Along the canyon rim,
near the edge, came Wrangle, once more in thundering flight.
Venters gasped in amazement. Had the wild sorrel gone mad? His head
was high and twisted, in a most singular position for a running horse. Suddenly
Venters descried a frog-like shape clinging to Wrangle's neck. Jerry Card!
Somehow he had straddled Wrangle and now stuck like a huge burr. But it was
his strange position and the sorrel's wild scream that shook Venters's nerves.
Wrangle was pounding toward the turn where the trail went down. He plunged
onward like a blind horse. More than one of his leaps took him to the very edge of
the precipice.
Jerry Card was bent forward with his teeth fast in the front of Wrangle's
nose! Venters saw it, and there flashed over him a memory of this trick of a few
desperate riders. He even thought of one rider who had worn off his teeth in this
terrible hold to break or control desperate horses. Wrangle had indeed gone
mad. The marvel was what guided him. Was it the half-brute, the more than half-
horse instinct of Jerry Card? Whatever the mystery, it was true. And in a few
more rods Jerry would have the sorrel turning into the trail leading down into
the canyon.
“No—Jerry!” whispered Venters, stepping forward and throwing up the
rifle. He tried to catch the little humped, frog-like shape over the sights. It was
moving too fast; it was too small. Yet Venters shot once... twice... the third time...
four times... five! all wasted shots and precious seconds!
With a deep-muttered curse Venters caught Wrangle through the sights
and pulled the trigger. Plainly he heard the bullet thud. Wrangle uttered a
horrible strangling sound. In swift death action he whirled, and with one last
splendid leap he cleared the canyon rim. And he whirled downward with the
little frog-like shape clinging to his neck!
173
There was a pause which seemed never ending, a shock, and an instant's
silence.
Then up rolled a heavy crash, a long roar of sliding rocks dying away in
distant echo, then silence unbroken.
Wrangle's race was run.
CHAPTER XVIII. OLDRING'S KNELL
Some forty hours or more later Venters created a commotion in

Cottonwoods by riding down the main street on Black Star and leading Bells and
Night. He had come upon Bells grazing near the body of a dead rustler, the only
incident of his quick ride into the village.
Nothing was farther from Venters's mind than bravado. No thought came
to him of the defiance and boldness of riding Jane Withersteen's racers straight
into the arch-plotter's stronghold. He wanted men to see the famous Arabians; he
wanted men to see them dirty and dusty, bearing all the signs of having been
driven to their limit; he wanted men to see and to know that the thieves who had
ridden them out into the sage had not ridden them back. Venters had come for
that and for more—he wanted to meet Tull face to face; if not Tull, then Dyer; if
not Dyer, then anyone in the secret of these master conspirators. Such was
Venters's passion. The meeting with the rustlers, the unprovoked attack upon
him, the spilling of blood, the recognition of Jerry Card and the horses, the race,
and that last plunge of mad Wrangle—all these things, fuel on fuel to the
smoldering fire, had kindled and swelled and leaped into living flame. He could
have shot Dyer in the midst of his religious services at the altar; he could have
killed Tull in front of wives and babes.
He walked the three racers down the broad, green-bordered village road.
He heard the murmur of running water from Amber Spring. Bitter waters for
Jane Withersteen! Men and women stopped to gaze at him and the horses. All
knew him; all knew the blacks and the bay. As well as if it had been spoken,
Venters read in the faces of men the intelligence that Jane Withersteen's Arabians
had been known to have been stolen. Venters reined in and halted before Dyer's
residence. It was a low, long, stone structure resembling Withersteen House. The
spacious front yard was green and luxuriant with grass and flowers; gravel walks
led to the huge porch; a well-trimmed hedge of purple sage separated the yard
174
www.obooko.com
from the church grounds; birds sang in the trees; water flowed musically along
the walks; and there were glad, careless shouts of children. For Venters the
beauty of this home, and the serenity and its apparent happiness, all turned red
and black. For Venters a shade overspread the lawn, the flowers, the old vine-
clad stone house. In the music of the singing birds, in the murmur of the running
water, he heard an ominous sound. Quiet beauty—sweet music—innocent
laughter! By what monstrous abortion of fate did these abide in the shadow of
Dyer?
Venters rode on and stopped before Tull's cottage. Women stared at him
with white faces and then flew from the porch. Tull himself appeared at the door,
bent low, craning his neck. His dark face flashed out of sight; the door banged; a
heavy bar dropped with a hollow sound.
Then Venters shook Black Star's bridle, and, sharply trotting, led the other
horses to the center of the village. Here at the intersecting streets and in front of
the stores he halted once more. The usual lounging atmosphere of that
prominent corner was not now in evidence. Riders and ranchers and villagers
broke up what must have been absorbing conversation. There was a rush of
many feet, and then the walk was lined with faces.
Venters's glance swept down the line of silent stone-faced men. He
recognized many riders and villagers, but none of those he had hoped to meet.
There was no expression in the faces turned toward him. All of them knew him,
most were inimical, but there were few who were not burning with curiosity and
wonder in regard to the return of Jane Withersteen's racers. Yet all were silent.
Here were the familiar characteristics—masked feeling—strange
secretiveness—expressionless expression of mystery and hidden power.
“Has anybody here seen Jerry Card?” queried Venters, in a loud voice.
In reply there came not a word, not a nod or shake of head, not so much as
dropping eye or twitching lip—nothing but a quiet, stony stare.
“Been under the knife? You've a fine knife-wielder here—one Tull, I
believe!... Maybe you've all had your tongues cut out?”
This passionate sarcasm of Venters brought no response, and the stony
calm was as oil on the fire within him.
“I see some of you pack guns, too!” he added, in biting scorn. In the long,
tense pause, strung keenly as a tight wire, he sat motionless on Black Star. “All
right,” he went on. “Then let some of you take this message to Tull. Tell him I've
seen Jerry Card! ... Tell him Jerry Card will never return!”
175
Thereupon, in the same dead calm, Venters backed Black Star away from
the curb, into the street, and out of range. He was ready now to ride up to
Withersteen House and turn the racers over to Jane.
“Hello, Venters!” a familiar voice cried, hoarsely, and he saw a man running
toward him. It was the rider Judkins who came up and gripped Venters's hand.
“Venters, I could hev dropped when I seen them hosses. But thet sight ain't a
marker to the looks of you. What's wrong? Hev you gone crazy? You must be
crazy to ride in here this way—with them hosses—talkie' thet way about Tull en'
Jerry Card.”
“Jud, I'm not crazy—only mad clean through,” replied Venters.
“Mad, now, Bern, I'm glad to hear some of your old self in your voice. Fer
when you come up you looked like the corpse of a dead rider with fire fer eyes.
You hed thet crowd too stiff fer throwin' guns. Come, we've got to hev a talk. Let's
go up the lane. We ain't much safe here.”
Judkins mounted Bells and rode with Venters up to the cottonwood grove.
Here they dismounted and went among the trees.
“Let's hear from you first,” said Judkins. “You fetched back them hosses.
Thet is the trick. An', of course, you got Jerry the same as you got Horne.”
“Horne!”
“Sure. He was found dead yesterday all chewed by coyotes, en' he'd been
shot plumb center.”
“Where was he found?”
“At the split down the trail—you know where Oldring's cattle trail runs off
north from the trail to the pass.”
“That's where I met Jerry and the rustlers. What was Horne doing with
them? I thought Horne was an honest cattle-man.”
“Lord—Bern, don't ask me thet! I'm all muddled now tryin' to figure
things.”
Venters told of the fight and the race with Jerry Card and its tragic
conclusion.
“I knowed it! I knowed all along that Wrangle was the best hoss!”
exclaimed Judkins, with his lean face working and his eyes lighting. “Thet was a
race! Lord, I'd like to hev seen Wrangle jump the cliff with Jerry. An' thet was
good-by to the grandest hoss an' rider ever on the sage!... But, Bern, after you got
the hosses why'd you want to bolt right in Tull's face?”
“I want him to know. An' if I can get to him I'll—”
“You can't get near Tull,” interrupted Judkins. “Thet vigilante bunch hev
taken to bein' bodyguard for Tull an' Dyer, too.”
176
www.obooko.com
“Hasn't Lassiter made a break yet?” inquired Venters, curiously.

“Naw!” replied Judkins, scornfully. “Jane turned his head. He's mad in love
over her—follers her like a dog. He ain't no more Lassiter! He's lost his nerve, he
doesn't look like the same feller. It's village talk. Everybody knows it. He hasn't
thrown a gun, an' he won't!”
“Jud, I'll bet he does,” replied Venters, earnestly. “Remember what I say.
This Lassiter is something more than a gun-man. Jud, he's big—he's great!... I feel
that in him. God help Tull and Dyer when Lassiter does go after them. For horses
and riders and stone walls won't save them.”
“Wal, hev it your way, Bern. I hope you're right. Nat'rully I've been some
sore on Lassiter fer gittin' soft. But I ain't denyin' his nerve, or whatever's great
in him thet sort of paralyzes people. No later 'n this mornin' I seen him saunterin'
down the lane, quiet an' slow. An' like his guns he comes black—black, thet's
Lassiter. Wal, the crowd on the corner never batted an eye, en' I'll gamble my
hoss thet there wasn't one who hed a heartbeat till Lassiter got by. He went in
Snell's saloon, an' as there wasn't no gun play I had to go in, too. An' there, darn
my pictures, if Lassiter wasn't standin' to the bar, drinking en' talkin' with
Oldrin'.”
“Oldring!” whispered Venters. His voice, as all fire and pulse within him,
seemed to freeze.
“Let go my arm!” exclaimed Judkins. “Thet's my bad arm. Sure it was
Oldrin'. What the hell's wrong with you, anyway? Venters, I tell you somethin's
wrong. You're whiter 'n a sheet. You can't be scared of the rustler. I don't believe
you've got a scare in you. Wal, now, jest let me talk. You know I like to talk, an' if
I'm slow I allus git there sometime. As I said, Lassiter was talkie' chummy with
Oldrin'. There wasn't no hard feelin's. An' the gang wasn't payin' no pertic'lar
attention. But like a cat watchin' a mouse I hed my eyes on them two fellers. It
was strange to me, thet confab. I'm gittin' to think a lot, fer a feller who doesn't
know much. There's been some queer deals lately an' this seemed to me the
queerest. These men stood to the bar alone, an' so close their big gun-hilts butted
together. I seen Oldrin' was some surprised at first, an' Lassiter was cool as ice.
They talked, an' presently at somethin' Lassiter said the rustler bawled out a
curse, an' then he jest fell up against the bar, an' sagged there. The gang in the
saloon looked around an' laughed, an' thet's about all. Finally Oldrin' turned, and
it was easy to see somethin' hed shook him. Yes, sir, thet big rustler—you know
he's as broad as he is long, an' the powerfulest build of a man—yes, sir, the nerve
had been taken out of him. Then, after a little, he began to talk an' said a lot to
Lassiter, an' by an' by it didn't take much of an eye to see thet Lassiter was gittin'
177
hit hard. I never seen him anyway but cooler 'n ice—till then. He seemed to be hit
harder 'n Oldrin', only he didn't roar out thet way. He jest kind of sunk in, an'
looked an' looked, an' he didn't see a livin' soul in thet saloon. Then he sort of
come to, an' shakin' hands—mind you, shakin' hands with Oldrin'—he went out. I
couldn't help thinkin' how easy even a boy could hev dropped the great gun-man
then!... Wal, the rustler stood at the bar fer a long time, en' he was seein' things
far off, too; then he come to an' roared fer whisky, an' gulped a drink thet was big
enough to drown me.”
“Is Oldring here now?” whispered Venters. He could not speak above a
whisper. Judkins's story had been meaningless to him.
“He's at Snell's yet. Bern, I hevn't told you yet thet the rustlers hev been
raisin' hell. They shot up Stone Bridge an' Glaze, an' fer three days they've been
here drinkin' an' gamblin' an' throwin' of gold. These rustlers hev a pile of gold. If
it was gold dust or nugget gold I'd hev reason to think, but it's new coin gold, as if
it had jest come from the United States treasury. An' the coin's genuine. Thet's all
been proved. The truth is Oldrin's on a rampage. A while back he lost his Masked
Rider, an' they say he's wild about thet. I'm wonderin' if Lassiter could hev told
the rustler anythin' about thet little masked, hard-ridin' devil. Ride! He was most
as good as Jerry Card. An', Bern, I've been wonderin' if you know—”
“Judkins, you're a good fellow,” interrupted Venters. “Some day I'll tell you
a story. I've no time now. Take the horses to Jane.”
Judkins stared, and then, muttering to himself, he mounted Bells, and
stared again at Venters, and then, leading the other horses, he rode into the grove
and disappeared.
Once, long before, on the night Venters had carried Bess through the
canyon and up into Surprise Valley, he had experienced the strangeness of
faculties singularly, tinglingly acute. And now the same sensation recurred. But it
was different in that he felt cold, frozen, mechanical incapable of free thought,
and all about him seemed unreal, aloof, remote. He hid his rifle in the sage,
marking its exact location with extreme care. Then he faced down the lane and
strode toward the center of the village. Perceptions flashed upon him, the faint,
cold touch of the breeze, a cold, silvery tinkle of flowing water, a cold sun shining
out of a cold sky, song of birds and laugh of children, coldly distant. Cold and
intangible were all things in earth and heaven. Colder and tighter stretched the
skin over his face; colder and harder grew the polished butts of his guns; colder
and steadier became his hands as he wiped the clammy sweat from his face or
reached low to his gun-sheaths. Men meeting him in the walk gave him wide
berth. In front of Bevin's store a crowd melted apart for his passage, and their
178
www.obooko.com
faces and whispers were faces and whispers of a dream. He turned a corner to
meet Tull face to face, eye to eye. As once before he had seen this man pale to a
ghastly, livid white so again he saw the change. Tull stopped in his tracks, with
right hand raised and shaking. Suddenly it dropped, and he seemed to glide aside,
to pass out of Venters's sight. Next he saw many horses with bridles down—all
clean-limbed, dark bays or blacks—rustlers' horses! Loud voices and boisterous
laughter, rattle of dice and scrape of chair and clink of gold, burst in mingled din
from an open doorway. He stepped inside.
With the sight of smoke-hazed room and drinking, cursing, gambling, dark-
visaged men, reality once more dawned upon Venters.
His entrance had been unnoticed, and he bent his gaze upon the drinkers
at the bar. Dark-clothed, dark-faced men they all were, burned by the sun, bow-
legged as were most riders of the sage, but neither lean nor gaunt. Then Venters's
gaze passed to the tables, and swiftly it swept over the hard-featured gamesters,
to alight upon the huge, shaggy, black head of the rustler chief.
“Oldring!” he cried, and to him his voice seemed to split a bell in his ears.
It stilled the din.
That silence suddenly broke to the scrape and crash of Oldring's chair as
he rose; and then, while he passed, a great gloomy figure, again the thronged
room stilled in silence yet deeper.
“Oldring, a word with you!” continued Venters.
“Ho! What's this?” boomed Oldring, in frowning scrutiny.
“Come outside, alone. A word for you—from your Masked Rider!”
Oldring kicked a chair out of his way and lunged forward with a stamp of
heavy boot that jarred the floor. He waved down his muttering, rising men.
Venters backed out of the door and waited, hearing, as no sound had ever
before struck into his soul, the rapid, heavy steps of the rustler.
Oldring appeared, and Venters had one glimpse of his great breadth and
bulk, his gold-buckled belt with hanging guns, his high-top boots with gold spurs.
In that moment Venters had a strange, unintelligible curiosity to see Oldring
alive. The rustler's broad brow, his large black eyes, his sweeping beard, as dark
as the wing of a raven, his enormous width of shoulder and depth of chest, his
whole splendid presence so wonderfully charged with vitality and force and
strength, seemed to afford Venters an unutterable fiendish joy because for that
magnificent manhood and life he meant cold and sudden death.
“Oldring, Bess is alive! But she's dead to you—dead to the life you made
her lead—dead as you will be in one second!”
179
Swift as lightning Venters's glance dropped from Oldring's rolling eyes to

his hands. One of them, the right, swept out, then toward his gun—and Venters
shot him through the heart.
Slowly Oldring sank to his knees, and the hand, dragging at the gun, fell
away. Venters's strangely acute faculties grasped the meaning of that limp arm,
of the swaying hulk, of the gasp and heave, of the quivering beard. But was that
awful spirit in the black eyes only one of vitality?
“Man—why—didn't—you—wait? Bess—was—” Oldring's whisper died
under his beard, and with a heavy lurch he fell forward.
Bounding swiftly away, Venters fled around the corner, across the street,
and, leaping a hedge, he ran through yard, orchard, and garden to the sage. Here,
under cover of the tall brush, he turned west and ran on to the place where he
had hidden his rifle. Securing that, he again set out into a run, and, circling
through the sage, came up behind Jane Withersteen's stable and corrals. With
laboring, dripping chest, and pain as of a knife thrust in his side, he stopped to
regain his breath, and while resting his eyes roved around in search of a horse.
Doors and windows of the stable were open wide and had a deserted look. One
dejected, lonely burro stood in the near corral. Strange indeed was the silence
brooding over the once happy, noisy home of Jane Withersteen's pets.
He went into the corral, exercising care to leave no tracks, and led the
burro to the watering-trough. Venters, though not thirsty, drank till he could
drink no more. Then, leading the burro over hard ground, he struck into the sage
and down the slope.
He strode swiftly, turning from time to time to scan the slope for riders.
His head just topped the level of sage-brush, and the burro could not have been
seen at all. Slowly the green of Cottonwoods sank behind the slope, and at last a
wavering line of purple sage met the blue of sky.
To avoid being seen, to get away, to hide his trail—these were the sole
ideas in his mind as he headed for Deception Pass, and he directed all his
acuteness of eye and ear, and the keenness of a rider's judgment for distance and
ground, to stern accomplishment of the task. He kept to the sage far to the left of
the trail leading into the Pass. He walked ten miles and looked back a thousand
times. Always the graceful, purple wave of sage remained wide and lonely, a
clear, undotted waste. Coming to a stretch of rocky ground, he took advantage of
it to cross the trail and then continued down on the right. At length he persuaded
himself that he would be able to see riders mounted on horses before they could
see him on the little burro, and he rode bareback.
180
www.obooko.com
Hour by hour the tireless burro kept to his faithful, steady trot. The sun
sank and the long shadows lengthened down the slope. Moving veils of purple
twilight crept out of the hollows and, mustering and forming on the levels, soon
merged and shaded into night. Venters guided the burro nearer to the trail, so
that he could see its white line from the ridges, and rode on through the hours.
Once down in the Pass without leaving a trail, he would hold himself safe
for the time being. When late in the night he reached the break in the sage, he
sent the burro down ahead of him, and started an avalanche that all but buried
the animal at the bottom of the trail. Bruised and battered as he was, he had a
moment's elation, for he had hidden his tracks. Once more he mounted the burro
and rode on. The hour was the blackest of the night when he made the thicket
which inclosed his old camp. Here he turned the burro loose in the grass near the
spring, and then lay down on his old bed of leaves.
He felt only vaguely, as outside things, the ache and burn and throb of the
muscles of his body. But a dammed-up torrent of emotion at last burst its bounds,
and the hour that saw his release from immediate action was one that
confounded him in the reaction of his spirit. He suffered without understanding
why. He caught glimpses into himself, into unlit darkness of soul. The fire that
had blistered him and the cold which had frozen him now united in one torturing
possession of his mind and heart, and like a fiery steed with ice-shod feet, ranged
his being, ran rioting through his blood, trampling the resurging good, dragging
ever at the evil.
Out of the subsiding chaos came a clear question. What had happened? He
had left the valley to go to Cottonwoods. Why? It seemed that he had gone to kill
a man—Oldring! The name riveted his consciousness upon the one man of all
men upon earth whom he had wanted to meet. He had met the rustler. Venters
recalled the smoky haze of the saloon, the dark-visaged men, the huge Oldring.
He saw him step out of the door, a splendid specimen of manhood, a handsome
giant with purple-black and sweeping beard. He remembered inquisitive gaze of
falcon eyes. He heard himself repeating: “OLDRING, BESS IS ALIVE! BUT SHE'S
DEAD TO YOU,” and he felt himself jerk, and his ears throbbed to the thunder of a
gun, and he saw the giant sink slowly to his knees. Was that only the vitality of
him—that awful light in the eyes—only the hard-dying life of a tremendously
powerful brute? A broken whisper, strange as death: “MAN—WHY—DIDN'T—
YOU WAIT! BESS—WAS—” And Oldring plunged face forward, dead.
“I killed him,” cried Venters, in remembering shock. “But it wasn't THAT.
Ah, the look in his eyes and his whisper!”
181
Herein lay the secret that had clamored to him through all the tumult and
stress of his emotions. What a look in the eyes of a man shot through the heart! It
had been neither hate nor ferocity nor fear of men nor fear of death. It had been
no passionate glinting spirit of a fearless foe, willing shot for shot, life for life, but
lacking physical power. Distinctly recalled now, never to be forgotten, Venters
saw in Oldring's magnificent eyes the rolling of great, glad surprise—softness—
love! Then came a shadow and the terrible superhuman striving of his spirit to
speak. Oldring shot through the heart, had fought and forced back death, not for a
moment in which to shoot or curse, but to whisper strange words.
What words for a dying man to whisper! Why had not Venters waited? For
what? That was no plea for life. It was regret that there was not a moment of life
left in which to speak. Bess was—Herein lay renewed torture for Venters. What
had Bess been to Oldring? The old question, like a specter, stalked from its grave
to haunt him. He had overlooked, he had forgiven, he had loved and he had
forgotten; and now, out of the mystery of a dying man's whisper rose again that
perverse, unsatisfied, jealous uncertainty. Bess had loved that splendid, black-
crowned giant—by her own confession she had loved him; and in Venters's soul
again flamed up the jealous hell. Then into the clamoring hell burst the shot that
had killed Oldring, and it rang in a wild fiendish gladness, a hateful, vengeful joy.
That passed to the memory of the love and light in Oldring's eyes and the
mystery in his whisper. So the changing, swaying emotions fluctuated in
Venters's heart.
This was the climax of his year of suffering and the crucial struggle of his
life. And when the gray dawn came he rose, a gloomy, almost heartbroken man,
but victor over evil passions. He could not change the past; and, even if he had
not loved Bess with all his soul, he had grown into a man who would not change
the future he had planned for her. Only, and once for all, he must know the truth,
know the worst, stifle all these insistent doubts and subtle hopes and jealous
fancies, and kill the past by knowing truly what Bess had been to Oldring. For
that matter he knew—he had always known, but he must hear it spoken. Then,
when they had safely gotten out of that wild country to take up a new and an
absorbing life, she would forget, she would be happy, and through that, in the
years to come, he could not but find life worth living.
All day he rode slowly and cautiously up the Pass, taking time to peer
around corners, to pick out hard ground and grassy patches, and to make sure
there was no one in pursuit. In the night sometime he came to the smooth,
scrawled rocks dividing the valley, and here set the burro at liberty. He walked
182
www.obooko.com
beyond, climbed the slope and the dim, starlit gorge. Then, weary to the point of
exhaustion, he crept into a shallow cave and fell asleep.
In the morning, when he descended the trail, he found the sun was pouring
a golden stream of light through the arch of the great stone bridge. Surprise
Valley, like a valley of dreams, lay mystically soft and beautiful, awakening to the
golden flood which was rolling away its slumberous bands of mist, brightening
its walled faces.
While yet far off he discerned Bess moving under the silver spruces, and
soon the barking of the dogs told him that they had seen him. He heard the
mocking-birds singing in the trees, and then the twittering of the quail. Ring and
Whitie came bounding toward him, and behind them ran Bess, her hands
outstretched.
“Bern! You're back! You're back!” she cried, in joy that rang of her
loneliness.
“Yes, I'm back,” he said, as she rushed to meet him.
She had reached out for him when suddenly, as she saw him closely,
something checked her, and as quickly all her joy fled, and with it her color,
leaving her pale and trembling.
“Oh! What's happened?”
“A good deal has happened, Bess. I don't need to tell you what. And I'm
played out. Worn out in mind more than body.”
“Dear—you look strange to me!” faltered Bess.
“Never mind that. I'm all right. There's nothing for you to be scared about.
Things are going to turn out just as we have planned. As soon as I'm rested we'll
make a break to get out of the country. Only now, right now, I must know the
truth about you.”
“Truth about me?” echoed Bess, shrinkingly. She seemed to be casting back
into her mind for a forgotten key. Venters himself, as he saw her, received a pang.
“Yes—the truth. Bess, don't misunderstand. I haven't changed that way. I
love you still. I'll love you more afterward. Life will be just as sweet—sweeter to
us. We'll be—be married as soon as ever we can. We'll be happy—but there's a
devil in me. A perverse, jealous devil! Then I've queer fancies. I forgot for a long
time. Now all those fiendish little whispers of doubt and faith and fear and hope
come torturing me again. I've got to kill them with the truth.”
“I'll tell you anything you want to know,” she replied, frankly.
“Then by Heaven! we'll have it over and done with!... Bess—did Oldring
love you?”
“Certainly he did.”
183
“Did—did you love him?”

“Of course. I told you so.”
“How can you tell it so lightly?” cried Venters, passionately. “Haven't you
any sense of—of—” He choked back speech. He felt the rush of pain and passion.
He seized her in rude, strong hands and drew her close. He looked straight into
her dark-blue eyes. They were shadowing with the old wistful light, but they
were as clear as the limpid water of the spring. They were earnest, solemn in
unutterable love and faith and abnegation. Venters shivered. He knew he was
looking into her soul. He knew she could not lie in that moment; but that she
might tell the truth, looking at him with those eyes, almost killed his belief in
purity.
“What are—what were you to—to Oldring?” he panted, fiercely.
“I am his daughter,” she replied, instantly.
Venters slowly let go of her. There was a violent break in the force of his
feeling—then creeping blankness.
“What—was it—you said?” he asked, in a kind of dull wonder.
“I am his daughter.”
“Oldring's daughter?” queried Venters, with life gathering in his voice.
“Yes.”
With a passionately awakening start he grasped her hands and drew her
close.
“All the time—you've been Oldring's daughter?”
“Yes, of course all the time—always.”
“But Bess, you told me—you let me think—I made out you were—a—so—
so ashamed.”
“It is my shame,” she said, with voice deep and full, and now the scarlet
fired her cheek. “I told you—I'm nothing—nameless—just Bess, Oldring's girl!”
“I know—I remember. But I never thought—” he went on, hurriedly,
huskily. “That time—when you lay dying—you prayed—you—somehow I got the
idea you were bad.”
“Bad?” she asked, with a little laugh.
She looked up with a faint smile of bewilderment and the absolute
unconsciousness of a child. Venters gasped in the gathering might of the truth.
She did not understand his meaning.
“Bess! Bess!” He clasped her in his arms, hiding her eyes against his breast.
She must not see his face in that moment. And he held her while he looked out
across the valley. In his dim and blinded sight, in the blur of golden light and
moving mist, he saw Oldring. She was the rustler's nameless daughter. Oldring
184
www.obooko.com
had loved her. He had so guarded her, so kept her from women and men and
knowledge of life that her mind was as a child's. That was part of the secret—part
of the mystery. That was the wonderful truth. Not only was she not bad, but good,
pure, innocent above all innocence in the world—the innocence of lonely
girlhood.
He saw Oldring's magnificent eyes, inquisitive, searching, softening. He
saw them flare in amaze, in gladness, with love, then suddenly strain in terrible
effort of will. He heard Oldring whisper and saw him sway like a log and fall.
Then a million bellowing, thundering voices—gunshots of conscience,
thunderbolts of remorse—dinned horribly in his ears. He had killed Bess's father.
Then a rushing wind filled his ears like a moan of wind in the cliffs, a knell
indeed—Oldring's knell.
He dropped to his knees and hid his face against Bess, and grasped her
with the hands of a drowning man.
“My God!... My God!... Oh, Bess!... Forgive me! Never mind what I've done—
what I've thought. But forgive me. I'll give you my life. I'll live for you. I'll love
you. Oh, I do love you as no man ever loved a woman. I want you to know—to
remember that I fought a fight for you—however blind I was. I thought—I
thought—never mind what I thought—but I loved you—I asked you to marry me.
Let that—let me have that to hug to my heart. Oh, Bess, I was driven! And I might
have known! I could not rest nor sleep till I had this mystery solved. God! how
things work out!”
“Bern, you're weak—trembling—you talk wildly,” cried Bess. “You've
overdone your strength. There's nothing to forgive. There's no mystery except
your love for me. You have come back to me!”
And she clasped his head tenderly in her arms and pressed it closely to her
throbbing breast.
CHAPTER XIX. FAY
At the home of Jane Withersteen Little Fay was climbing Lassiter's knee.
“Does oo love me?” she asked.
Lassiter, who was as serious with Fay as he was gentle and loving, assured
her in earnest and elaborate speech that he was her devoted subject. Fay looked
185
thoughtful and appeared to be debating the duplicity of men or searching for a

supreme test to prove this cavalier.
“Does oo love my new muvver?” she asked, with bewildering suddenness.
Jane Withersteen laughed, and for the first time in many a day she felt a
stir of her pulse and warmth in her cheek.
It was a still drowsy summer of afternoon, and the three were sitting in the
shade of the wooded knoll that faced the sage-slope. Little Fay's brief spell of
unhappy longing for her mother—the childish, mystic gloom—had passed, and
now where Fay was there were prattle and laughter and glee. She had emerged
from sorrow to be the incarnation of joy and loveliness. She had grown
supernaturally sweet and beautiful. For Jane Withersteen the child was an
answer to prayer, a blessing, a possession infinitely more precious than all she
had lost. For Lassiter, Jane divined that little Fay had become a religion.
“Does oo love my new muvver?” repeated Fay.
Lassiter's answer to this was a modest and sincere affirmative.
“Why don't oo marry my new muvver an' be my favver?”
Of the thousands of questions put by little Fay to Lassiter this was the first
he had been unable to answer.
“Fay—Fay, don't ask questions like that,” said Jane.
“Why?”
“Because,” replied Jane. And she found it strangely embarrassing to meet
the child's gaze. It seemed to her that Fay's violet eyes looked through her with
piercing wisdom.
“Oo love him, don't oo?”
“Dear child—run and play,” said Jane, “but don't go too far. Don't go from
this little hill.”
Fay pranced off wildly, joyous over freedom that had not been granted her
for weeks.
“Jane, why are children more sincere than grown-up persons?” asked
Lassiter.
“Are they?”
“I reckon so. Little Fay there—she sees things as they appear on the face.
An Indian does that. So does a dog. An' an Indian an' a dog are most of the time
right in what they see. Mebbe a child is always right.”
“Well, what does Fay see?” asked Jane.
“I reckon you know. I wonder what goes on in Fay's mind when she sees
part of the truth with the wise eyes of a child, an' wantin' to know more, meets
with strange falseness from you? Wait! You are false in a way, though you're the
186
www.obooko.com
best woman I ever knew. What I want to say is this. Fay has taken you're
pretendin' to—to care for me for the thing it looks on the face. An' her little
formin' mind asks questions. An' the answers she gets are different from the
looks of things. So she'll grow up gradually takin' on that falseness, an' be like the
rest of the women, an' men, too. An' the truth of this falseness to life is proved by
your appearin' to love me when you don't. Things aren't what they seem.”
“Lassiter, you're right. A child should be told the absolute truth. But—is
that possible? I haven't been able to do it, and all my life I've loved the truth, and
I've prided myself upon being truthful. Maybe that was only egotism. I'm learning
much, my friend. Some of those blinding scales have fallen from my eyes. And—
and as to caring for you, I think I care a great deal. How much, how little, I
couldn't say. My heart is almost broken, Lassiter. So now is not a good time to
judge of affection. I can still play and be merry with Fay. I can still dream. But
when I attempt serious thought I'm dazed. I don't think. I don't care any more. I
don't pray!... Think of that, my friend! But in spite of my numb feeling I believe I'll
rise out of all this dark agony a better woman, with greater love of man and God.
I'm on the rack now; I'm senseless to all but pain, and growing dead to that.
Sooner or later I shall rise out of this stupor. I'm waiting the hour.”
“It'll soon come, Jane,” replied Lassiter, soberly. “Then I'm afraid for you.
Years are terrible things, an' for years you've been bound. Habit of years is strong
as life itself. Somehow, though, I believe as you—that you'll come out of it all a
finer woman. I'm waitin', too. An' I'm wonderin'—I reckon, Jane, that marriage
between us is out of all human reason?”
“Lassiter!... My dear friend!... It's impossible for us to marry!”
“Why—as Fay says?” inquired Lassiter, with gentle persistence.
“Why! I never thought why. But it's not possible. I am Jane, daughter of
Withersteen. My father would rise out of his grave. I'm of Mormon birth. I'm
being broken. But I'm still a Mormon woman. And you—you are Lassiter!”
“Mebbe I'm not so much Lassiter as I used to be.”
“What was it you said? Habit of years is strong as life itself! You can't
change the one habit—the purpose of your life. For you still pack those black
guns! You still nurse your passion for blood.”
A smile, like a shadow, flickered across his face.
“No.”
“Lassiter, I lied to you. But I beg of you—don't you lie to me. I've great
respect for you. I believe you're softened toward most, perhaps all, my people
except—But when I speak of your purpose, your hate, your guns, I have only him
in mind. I don't believe you've changed.”
187
For answer he unbuckled the heavy cartridge-belt, and laid it with the
heavy, swing gun-sheaths in her lap.
“Lassiter!” Jane whispered, as she gazed from him to the black, cold guns.
Without them he appeared shorn of strength, defenseless, a smaller man. Was
she Delilah? Swiftly, conscious of only one motive—refusal to see this man called
craven by his enemies—she rose, and with blundering fingers buckled the belt
round his waist where it belonged.
“Lassiter, I am a coward.”
“Come with me out of Utah—where I can put away my guns an' be a man,”
he said. “I reckon I'll prove it to you then! Come! You've got Black Star back, an'
Night an' Bells. Let's take the racers an' little Fay, en' race out of Utah. The hosses
an' the child are all you have left. Come!”
“No, no, Lassiter. I'll never leave Utah. What would I do in the world with
my broken fortunes and my broken heart? I'll never leave these purple slopes I
love so well.”
“I reckon I ought to 've knowed that. Presently you'll be livin' down here in
a hovel, en' presently Jane Withersteen will be a memory. I only wanted to have a
chance to show you how a man—any man—can be better 'n he was. If we left
Utah I could prove—I reckon I could prove this thing you call love. It's strange,
an' hell an' heaven at once, Jane Withersteen. 'Pears to me that you've thrown
away your big heart on love—love of religion an' duty an' churchmen, an' riders
an' poor families an' poor children! Yet you can't see what love is—how it
changes a person!... Listen, an' in tellin' you Milly Erne's story I'll show you how
love changed her.
“Milly an' me was children when our family moved from Missouri to Texas,
an' we growed up in Texas ways same as if we'd been born there. We had been
poor, an' there we prospered. In time the little village where we went became a
town, an' strangers an' new families kept movin' in. Milly was the belle them
days. I can see her now, a little girl no bigger 'n a bird, an' as pretty. She had the
finest eyes, dark blue-black when she was excited, an' beautiful all the time. You
remember Milly's eyes! An' she had light-brown hair with streaks of gold, an' a
mouth that every feller wanted to kiss.
“An' about the time Milly was the prettiest an' the sweetest, along came a
young minister who began to ride some of a race with the other fellers for Milly.
An' he won. Milly had always been strong on religion, an' when she met Frank
Erne she went in heart an' soul for the salvation of souls. Fact was, Milly, through
study of the Bible an' attendin' church an' revivals, went a little out of her head. It
didn't worry the old folks none, an' the only worry to me was Milly's everlastin'
188
www.obooko.com
prayin' an' workin' to save my soul. She never converted me, but we was the best
of comrades, an' I reckon no brother an' sister ever loved each other better. Well,
Frank Erne an me hit up a great friendship. He was a strappin' feller, good to look
at, an' had the most pleasin' ways. His religion never bothered me, for he could
hunt an' fish an' ride an' be a good feller. After buffalo once, he come pretty near
to savin' my life. We got to be thick as brothers, an' he was the only man I ever
seen who I thought was good enough for Milly. An' the day they were married I
got drunk for the only time in my life.
“Soon after that I left home—it seems Milly was the only one who could
keep me home—an' I went to the bad, as to prosperin' I saw some pretty hard life
in the Pan Handle, an' then I went North. In them days Kansas an' Nebraska was
as bad, come to think of it, as these days right here on the border of Utah. I got to
be pretty handy with guns. An' there wasn't many riders as could beat me ridin'.
An' I can say all modest-like that I never seen the white man who could track a
hoss or a steer or a man with me. Afore I knowed it two years slipped by, an' all
at once I got homesick, en' purled a bridle south.
“Things at home had changed. I never got over that homecomin'. Mother
was dead an' in her grave. Father was a silent, broken man, killed already on his
feet. Frank Erne was a ghost of his old self, through with workin', through with
preachin', almost through with livin', an' Milly was gone!... It was a long time
before I got the story. Father had no mind left, an' Frank Erne was afraid to talk.
So I had to pick up whet 'd happened from different people.
“It 'pears that soon after I left home another preacher come to the little
town. An' he an' Frank become rivals. This feller was different from Frank. He
preached some other kind of religion, and he was quick an' passionate, where
Frank was slow an' mild. He went after people, women specially. In looks he
couldn't compare to Frank Erne, but he had power over women. He had a voice,
an' he talked an' talked an' preached an' preached. Milly fell under his influence.
She became mightily interested in his religion. Frank had patience with her, as
was his way, an' let her be as interested as she liked. All religions were devoted
to one God, he said, an' it wouldn't hurt Milly none to study a different point of
view. So the new preacher often called on Milly, an' sometimes in Frank's
absence. Frank was a cattle-man between Sundays.
“Along about this time an incident come off that I couldn't get much light
on. A stranger come to town, an' was seen with the preacher. This stranger was a
big man with an eye like blue ice, an' a beard of gold. He had money, an' he
'peered a man of mystery, an' the town went to buzzin' when he disappeared
about the same time as a young woman known to be mightily interested in the
189
new preacher's religion. Then, presently, along comes a man from somewheres in
Illinois, en' he up an' spots this preacher as a famous Mormon proselyter. That
riled Frank Erne as nothin' ever before, an' from rivals they come to be bitter
enemies. An' it ended in Frank goin' to the meetin'-house where Milly was
listenin', en' before her en' everybody else he called that preacher—called him,
well, almost as hard as Venters called Tull here sometime back. An' Frank
followed up that call with a hosswhippin', en' he drove the proselyter out of
town.
“People noticed, so 'twas said, that Milly's sweet disposition changed.
Some said it was because she would soon become a mother, en' others said she
was pinin' after the new religion. An' there was women who said right out that
she was pinin' after the Mormon. Anyway, one mornin' Frank rode in from one of
his trips, to find Milly gone. He had no real near neighbors—livin' a little out of
town—but those who was nearest said a wagon had gone by in the night, an' they
thought it stopped at her door. Well, tracks always tell, an' there was the wagon
tracks an' hoss tracks an' man tracks. The news spread like wildfire that Milly
had run off from her husband. Everybody but Frank believed it an' wasn't slow in
tellin' why she run off. Mother had always hated that strange streak of Milly's,
takin' up with the new religion as she had, an' she believed Milly ran off with the
Mormon. That hastened mother's death, an' she died unforgivin'. Father wasn't
the kind to bow down under disgrace or misfortune but he had surpassin' love
for Milly, an' the loss of her broke him.
“From the minute I heard of Milly's disappearance I never believed she
went off of her own free will. I knew Milly, an' I knew she couldn't have done that.
I stayed at home awhile, tryin' to make Frank Erne talk. But if he knowed
anythin' then he wouldn't tell it. So I set out to find Milly. An' I tried to get on the
trail of that proselyter. I knew if I ever struck a town he'd visited that I'd get a
trail. I knew, too, that nothin' short of hell would stop his proselytin'. An' I rode
from town to town. I had a blind faith that somethin' was guidin' me. An' as the
weeks an' months went by I growed into a strange sort of a man, I guess. Anyway,
people were afraid of me. Two years after that, way over in a corner of Texas, I
struck a town where my man had been. He'd jest left. People said he came to that
town without a woman. I back-trailed my man through Arkansas an' Mississippi,
an' the old trail got hot again in Texas. I found the town where he first went after
leavin' home. An' here I got track of Milly. I found a cabin where she had given
birth to her baby. There was no way to tell whether she'd been kept a prisoner or
not. The feller who owned the place was a mean, silent sort of a skunk, an' as I
was leavin' I jest took a chance an' left my mark on him. Then I went home again.
190
www.obooko.com
“It was to find I hadn't any home, no more. Father had been dead a year.
Frank Erne still lived in the house where Milly had left him. I stayed with him
awhile, an' I grew old watchin' him. His farm had gone to weed, his cattle had
strayed or been rustled, his house weathered till it wouldn't keep out rain nor
wind. An' Frank set on the porch and whittled sticks, an' day by day wasted away.
There was times when he ranted about like a crazy man, but mostly he was
always sittin' an' starin' with eyes that made a man curse. I figured Frank had a
secret fear that I needed to know. An' when I told him I'd trailed Milly for near
three years an' had got trace of her, an' saw where she'd had her baby, I thought
he would drop dead at my feet. An' when he'd come round more natural-like he
begged me to give up the trail. But he wouldn't explain. So I let him alone, an'
watched him day en' night.
“An' I found there was one thing still precious to him, an' it was a little
drawer where he kept his papers. This was in the room where he slept. An' it
'peered he seldom slept. But after bein' patient I got the contents of that drawer
an' found two letters from Milly. One was a long letter written a few months after
her disappearance. She had been bound an' gagged an' dragged away from her
home by three men, an' she named them—Hurd, Metzger, Slack. They was
strangers to her. She was taken to the little town where I found trace of her two
years after. But she didn't send the letter from that town. There she was penned
in. 'Peared that the proselytes, who had, of course, come on the scene, was not
runnin' any risks of losin' her. She went on to say that for a time she was out of
her head, an' when she got right again all that kept her alive was the baby. It was
a beautiful baby, she said, an' all she thought an' dreamed of was somehow to get
baby back to its father, an' then she'd thankfully lay down and die. An' the letter
ended abrupt, in the middle of a sentence, en' it wasn't signed.
“The second letter was written more than two years after the first. It was
from Salt Lake City. It simply said that Milly had heard her brother was on her
trail. She asked Frank to tell her brother to give up the search because if he didn't
she would suffer in a way too horrible to tell. She didn't beg. She just stated a fact
an' made the simple request. An' she ended that letter by sayin' she would soon
leave Salt Lake City with the man she had come to love, en' would never be heard
of again.
“I recognized Milly's handwritin', an' I recognized her way of puttin'
things. But that second letter told me of some great change in her. Ponderin' over
it, I felt at last she'd either come to love that feller an' his religion, or some
terrible fear made her lie an' say so. I couldn't be sure which. But, of course, I
meant to find out. I'll say here, if I'd known Mormons then as I do now I'd left
191
Milly to her fate. For mebbe she was right about what she'd suffer if I kept on her
trail. But I was young an' wild them days. First I went to the town where she'd
first been taken, an' I went to the place where she'd been kept. I got that skunk
who owned the place, an' took him out in the woods, an' made him tell all he
knowed. That wasn't much as to length, but it was pure hell's-fire in substance.
This time I left him some incapacitated for any more skunk work short of hell.
Then I hit the trail for Utah.
“That was fourteen years ago. I saw the incomin' of most of the Mormons.
It was a wild country an' a wild time. I rode from town to town, village to village,
ranch to ranch, camp to camp. I never stayed long in one place. I never had but
one idea. I never rested. Four years went by, an' I knowed every trail in northern
Utah. I kept on an' as time went by, an' I'd begun to grow old in my search, I had
firmer, blinder faith in whatever was guidin' me. Once I read about a feller who
sailed the seven seas an' traveled the world, an' he had a story to tell, an'
whenever he seen the man to whom he must tell that story he knowed him on
sight. I was like that, only I had a question to ask. An' always I knew the man of
whom I must ask. So I never really lost the trail, though for many years it was the
dimmest trail ever followed by any man.
“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
192
www.obooko.com
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 lyin' 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
193
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
194
www.obooko.com
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
195
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?
“Yes.”
“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!”
196
www.obooko.com
“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!”
“No.”
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.
197
“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
198
www.obooko.com
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.”
“Wal, 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?”
“Wal, 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
199
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.
200
www.obooko.com
“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
201
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.”
Jane Withersteen offered up no prayer for Dyer's soul.
Lassiter's step sounded in the hall—the familiar soft, silver-clinking step—
and she heard it with thrilling new emotions in which was a vague joy in her very
fear of him. The door opened, and she saw him, the old Lassiter, slow, easy,
gentle, cool, yet not exactly the same Lassiter. She rose, and for a moment her
eyes blurred and swam in tears.
“Are you—all—all right?” she asked, tremulously.
“I reckon.”
“Lassiter, I'll ride away with you. Hide me till danger is past—till we are
forgotten—then take me where you will. Your people shall be my people, and
your God my God!”
202
www.obooko.com
He kissed her hand with the quaint grace and courtesy that came to him in
rare moments.
“Black Star an' Night are ready,” he said, simply.
His quiet mention of the black racers spurred Jane to action. Hurrying to
her room, she changed to her rider's suit, packed her jewelry, and the gold that
was left, and all the woman's apparel for which there was space in the saddle-
bags, and then returned to the hall. Black Star stamped his iron-shod hoofs and
tossed his beautiful head, and eyed her with knowing eyes.
“Judkins, I give Bells to you,” said Jane. “I hope you will always keep him
and be good to him.”
Judkins mumbled thanks that he could not speak fluently, and his eyes
flashed.
Lassiter strapped Jane's saddle-bags upon Black Star, and led the racers
out into the court.
“Judkins, you ride with Jane out into the sage. If you see any riders comin'
shout quick twice. An', Jane, don't look back! I'll catch up soon. We'll get to the
break into the Pass before midnight, an' then wait until mornin' to go down.”
Black Star bent his graceful neck and bowed his noble head, and his broad
shoulders yielded as he knelt for Jane to mount.
She rode out of the court beside Judkins, through the grove, across the
wide lane into the sage, and she realized that she was leaving Withersteen House
forever, and she did not look back. A strange, dreamy, calm peace pervaded her
soul. Her doom had fallen upon her, but, instead of finding life no longer worth
living she found it doubly significant, full of sweetness as the western breeze,
beautiful and unknown as the sage-slope stretching its purple sunset shadows
before her. She became aware of Judkins's hand touching hers; she heard him
speak a husky good-by; then into the place of Bells shot the dead-black, keen,
racy nose of Night, and she knew Lassiter rode beside her.
“Don't—look—back!” he said, and his voice, too, was not clear.
Facing straight ahead, seeing only the waving, shadowy sage, Jane held out
her gauntleted hand, to feel it enclosed in strong clasp. So she rode on without a
backward glance at the beautiful grove of Cottonwoods. She did not seem to
think of the past of what she left forever, but of the color and mystery and
wildness of the sage-slope leading down to Deception Pass, and of the future. She
watched the shadows lengthen down the slope; she felt the cool west wind
sweeping by from the rear; and she wondered at low, yellow clouds sailing
swiftly over her and beyond.
“Don't look—back!” said Lassiter.
203
Thick-driving belts of smoke traveled by on the wind, and with it came a

strong, pungent odor of burning wood.
Lassiter had fired Withersteen House! But Jane did not look back.
A misty veil obscured the clear, searching gaze she had kept steadfastly
upon the purple slope and the dim lines of canyons. It passed, as passed the
rolling clouds of smoke, and she saw the valley deepening into the shades of
twilight. Night came on, swift as the fleet racers, and stars peeped out to brighten
and grow, and the huge, windy, eastern heave of sage-level paled under a rising
moon and turned to silver. Blanched in moonlight, the sage yet seemed to hold its
hue of purple and was infinitely more wild and lonely. So the night hours wore
on, and Jane Withersteen never once looked back.
CHAPTER XXI. BLACK STAR AND NIGHT
The time had come for Venters and Bess to leave their retreat. They were
at great pains to choose the few things they would be able to carry with them on
the journey out of Utah.
“Bern, whatever kind of a pack's this, anyhow?” questioned Bess, rising
from her work with reddened face.
Venters, absorbed in his own task, did not look up at all, and in reply said
he had brought so much from Cottonwoods that he did not recollect the half of it.
“A woman packed this!” Bess exclaimed.
He scarcely caught her meaning, but the peculiar tone of her voice caused
him instantly to rise, and he saw Bess on her knees before an open pack which he
recognized as the one given him by Jane.
“By George!” he ejaculated, guiltily, and then at sight of Bess's face he
laughed outright.
“A woman packed this,” she repeated, fixing woeful, tragic eyes on him.
“Well, is that a crime?'
“There—there is a woman, after all!”
“Now Bess—”
“You've lied to me!”
Then and there Venters found it imperative to postpone work for the
present. All her life Bess had been isolated, but she had inherited certain
elements of the eternal feminine.
204
www.obooko.com
“But there was a woman and you did lie to me,” she kept repeating, after
he had explained.
“What of that? Bess, I'll get angry at you in a moment. Remember you've
been pent up all your life. I venture to say that if you'd been out in the world
you'd have had a dozen sweethearts and have told many a lie before this.”
“I wouldn't anything of the kind,” declared Bess, indignantly.
“Well—perhaps not lie. But you'd have had the sweethearts—You couldn't
have helped that—being so pretty.”
This remark appeared to be a very clever and fortunate one; and the work
of selecting and then of stowing all the packs in the cave went on without further
interruption.
Venters closed up the opening of the cave with a thatch of willows and
aspens, so that not even a bird or a rat could get in to the sacks of grain. And this
work was in order with the precaution habitually observed by him. He might not
be able to get out of Utah, and have to return to the valley. But he owed it to Bess
to make the attempt, and in case they were compelled to turn back he wanted to
find that fine store of food and grain intact. The outfit of implements and utensils
he packed away in another cave.
“Bess, we have enough to live here all our lives,” he said once, dreamily.
“Shall I go roll Balancing Rock?” she asked, in light speech, but with deep-
blue fire in her eyes.
“No—no.”
“Ah, you don't forget the gold and the world,” she sighed.
“Child, you forget the beautiful dresses and the travel—and everything.”
“Oh, I want to go. But I want to stay!”
“I feel the same way.”
They let the eight calves out of the corral, and kept only two of the burros
Venters had brought from Cottonwoods. These they intended to ride. Bess freed
all her pets—the quail and rabbits and foxes.
The last sunset and twilight and night were both the sweetest and saddest
they had ever spent in Surprise Valley. Morning brought keen exhilaration and
excitement. When Venters had saddled the two burros, strapped on the light
packs and the two canteens, the sunlight was dispersing the lazy shadows from
the valley. Taking a last look at the caves and the silver spruces, Venters and Bess
made a reluctant start, leading the burros. Ring and Whitie looked keen and
knowing. Something seemed to drag at Venters's feet and he noticed Bess lagged
behind. Never had the climb from terrace to bridge appeared so long.
205
Not till they reached the opening of the gorge did they stop to rest and take
one last look at the valley. The tremendous arch of stone curved clear and sharp
in outline against the morning sky. And through it streaked the golden shaft. The
valley seemed an enchanted circle of glorious veils of gold and wraiths of white
and silver haze and dim, blue, moving shade—beautiful and wild and unreal as a
dream.
“We—we can—th—think of it—always—re—remember,” sobbed Bess.
“Hush! Don't cry. Our valley has only fitted us for a better life somewhere.
Come!”
They entered the gorge and he closed the willow gate. From rosy, golden
morning light they passed into cool, dense gloom. The burros pattered up the
trail with little hollow-cracking steps. And the gorge widened to narrow outlet
and the gloom lightened to gray. At the divide they halted for another rest.
Venters's keen, remembering gaze searched Balancing Rock, and the long incline,
and the cracked toppling walls, but failed to note the slightest change.
The dogs led the descent; then came Bess leading her burro; then Venters
leading his. Bess kept her eyes bent downward. Venters, however, had an
irresistible desire to look upward at Balancing Rock. It had always haunted him,
and now he wondered if he were really to get through the outlet before the huge
stone thundered down. He fancied that would be a miracle. Every few steps he
answered to the strange, nervous fear and turned to make sure the rock still
stood like a giant statue. And, as he descended, it grew dimmer in his sight. It
changed form; it swayed it nodded darkly; and at last, in his heightened fancy, he
saw it heave and roll. As in a dream when he felt himself falling yet knew he
would never fall, so he saw this long-standing thunderbolt of the little stone-men
plunge down to close forever the outlet to Deception Pass.
And while he was giving way to unaccountable dread imaginations the
descent was accomplished without mishap.
“I'm glad that's over,” he said, breathing more freely. “I hope I'm by that
hanging rock for good and all. Since almost the moment I first saw it I've had an
idea that it was waiting for me. Now, when it does fall, if I'm thousands of miles
away, I'll hear it.”
With the first glimpses of the smooth slope leading down to the grotesque
cedars and out to the Pass, Venters's cool nerve returned. One long survey to the
left, then one to the right, satisfied his caution. Leading the burros down to the
spur of rock, he halted at the steep incline.
“Bess, here's the bad place, the place I told you about, with the cut steps.
You start down, leading your burro. Take your time and hold on to him if you slip.
206
www.obooko.com
I've got a rope on him and a half-hitch on this point of rock, so I can let him down
safely. Coming up here was a killing job. But it'll be easy going down.”
Both burros passed down the difficult stairs cut by the cliff-dwellers, and
did it without a misstep. After that the descent down the slope and over the mile
of scrawled, ripped, and ridged rock required only careful guidance, and Venters
got the burros to level ground in a condition that caused him to congratulate
himself.
“Oh, if we only had Wrangle!” exclaimed Venters. “But we're lucky. That's
the worst of our trail passed. We've only men to fear now. If we get up in the sage
we can hide and slip along like coyotes.”
They mounted and rode west through the valley and entered the canyon.
From time to time Venters walked, leading his burro. When they got by all the
canyons and gullies opening into the Pass they went faster and with fewer halts.
Venters did not confide in Bess the alarming fact that he had seen horses and
smoke less than a mile up one of the intersecting canyons. He did not talk at all.
And long after he had passed this canyon and felt secure once more in the
certainty that they had been unobserved he never relaxed his watchfulness. But
he did not walk any more, and he kept the burros at a steady trot. Night fell
before they reached the last water in the Pass and they made camp by starlight.
Venters did not want the burros to stray, so he tied them with long halters in the
grass near the spring. Bess, tired out and silent, laid her head in a saddle and
went to sleep between the two dogs. Venters did not close his eyes. The canyon
silence appeared full of the low, continuous hum of insects. He listened until the
hum grew into a roar, and then, breaking the spell, once more he heard it low and
clear. He watched the stars and the moving shadows, and always his glance
returned to the girl's dimly pale face. And he remembered how white and still it
had once looked in the starlight. And again stern thought fought his strange
fancies. Would all his labor and his love be for naught? Would he lose her, after
all? What did the dark shadow around her portend? Did calamity lurk on that
long upland trail through the sage? Why should his heart swell and throb with
nameless fear? He listened to the silence and told himself that in the broad light
of day he could dispel this leaden-weighted dread.
At the first hint of gray over the eastern rim he awoke Bess, saddled the
burros, and began the day's travel. He wanted to get out of the Pass before there
was any chance of riders coming down. They gained the break as the first red
rays of the rising sun colored the rim.
207
For once, so eager was he to get up to level ground, he did not send Ring or
Whitie in advance. Encouraging Bess to hurry pulling at his patient, plodding
burro, he climbed the soft, steep trail.
Brighter and brighter grew the light. He mounted the last broken edge of
rim to have the sun-fired, purple sage-slope burst upon him as a glory. Bess
panted up to his side, tugging on the halter of her burro.
“We're up!” he cried, joyously. “There's not a dot on the sage. We're safe.
We'll not be seen! Oh, Bess—”
Ring growled and sniffed the keen air and bristled. Venters clutched at his
rifle. Whitie sometimes made a mistake, but Ring never. The dull thud of hoofs
almost deprived Venters of power to turn and see from where disaster
threatened. He felt his eyes dilate as he stared at Lassiter leading Black Star and
Night out of the sage, with Jane Withersteen, in rider's costume, close beside
them.
For an instant Venters felt himself whirl dizzily in the center of vast circles
of sage. He recovered partially, enough to see Lassiter standing with a glad smile
and Jane riveted in astonishment.
“Why, Bern!” she exclaimed. “How good it is to see you! We're riding away,
you see. The storm burst—and I'm a ruined woman!... I thought you were alone.”
Venters, unable to speak for consternation, and bewildered out of all sense
of what he ought or ought not to do, simply stared at Jane.
“Son, where are you bound for?” asked Lassiter.
“Not safe—where I was. I'm—we're going out of Utah—back East,” he
found tongue to say.
“I reckon this meetin's the luckiest thing that ever happened to you an' to
me—an' to Jane—an' to Bess,” said Lassiter, coolly.
“Bess!” cried Jane, with a sudden leap of blood to her pale cheek.
It was entirely beyond Venters to see any luck in that meeting.
Jane Withersteen took one flashing, woman's glance at Bess's scarlet face,
at her slender, shapely form.
“Venters! is this a girl—a woman?” she questioned, in a voice that stung.
“Yes.”
“Did you have her in that wonderful valley?”
“Yes, but Jane—”
“All the time you were gone?”
“Yes, but I couldn't tell—”
“Was it for her you asked me to give you supplies? Was it for her that you
wanted to make your valley a paradise?”
208
www.obooko.com
“Oh—Jane—”
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, you liar!” And with these passionate words Jane Withersteen
succumbed to fury. For the second time in her life she fell into the ungovernable
rage that had been her father's weakness. And it was worse than his, for she was
a jealous woman—jealous even of her friends.
As best he could, he bore the brunt of her anger. It was not only his deceit
to her that she visited upon him, but her betrayal by religion, by life itself.
Her passion, like fire at white heat, consumed itself in little time. Her
physical strength failed, and still her spirit attempted to go on in magnificent
denunciation of those who had wronged her. Like a tree cut deep into its roots,
she began to quiver and shake, and her anger weakened into despair. And her
ringing voice sank into a broken, husky whisper. Then, spent and pitiable, upheld
by Lassiter's arm, she turned and hid her face in Black Star's mane.
Numb as Venters was when at length Jane Withersteen lifted her head and
looked at him, he yet suffered a pang.
“Jane, the girl is innocent!” he cried.
“Can you expect me to believe that?” she asked, with weary, bitter eyes.
“I'm not that kind of a liar. And you know it. If I lied—if I kept silent when
honor should have made me speak, it was to spare you. I came to Cottonwoods to
tell you. But I couldn't add to your pain. I intended to tell you I had come to love
this girl. But, Jane I hadn't forgotten how good you were to me. I haven't changed
at all toward you. I prize your friendship as I always have. But, however it may
look to you—don't be unjust. The girl is innocent. Ask Lassiter.”
“Jane, she's jest as sweet an' innocent as little Fay,” said Lassiter. There
was a faint smile upon his face and a beautiful light.
Venters saw, and knew that Lassiter saw, how Jane Withersteen's tortured
soul wrestled with hate and threw it—with scorn doubt, suspicion, and overcame
all.
“Bern, if in my misery I accused you unjustly, I crave forgiveness,” she said.
“I'm not what I once was. Tell me—who is this girl?”
“Jane, she is Oldring's daughter, and his Masked Rider. Lassiter will tell you
how I shot her for a rustler, saved her life—all the story. It's a strange story, Jane,
as wild as the sage. But it's true—true as her innocence. That you must believe.”
“Oldring's Masked Rider! Oldring's daughter!” exclaimed Jane “And she's
innocent! You ask me to believe much. If this girl is—is what you say, how could
she be going away with the man who killed her father?”
209
“Why did you tell that?” cried Venters, passionately.

Jane's question had roused Bess out of stupefaction. Her eyes suddenly
darkened and dilated. She stepped toward Venters and held up both hands as if
to ward off a blow.
“Did—did you kill Oldring?”
“I did, Bess, and I hate myself for it. But you know I never dreamed he was
your father. I thought he'd wronged you. I killed him when I was madly jealous.”
For a moment Bess was shocked into silence.
“But he was my father!” she broke out, at last. “And now I must go back—I
can't go with you. It's all over—that beautiful dream. Oh, I knew it couldn't come
true. You can't take me now.”
“If you forgive me, Bess, it'll all come right in the end!” implored Venters.
“It can't be right. I'll go back. After all, I loved him. He was good to me. I
can't forget that.”
“If you go back to Oldring's men I'll follow you, and then they'll kill me,”
said Venters, hoarsely.
“Oh no, Bern, you'll not come. Let me go. It's best for you to forget me. I've
brought you only pain and dishonor.”
She did not weep. But the sweet bloom and life died out of her face. She
looked haggard and sad, all at once stunted; and her hands dropped listlessly;
and her head drooped in slow, final acceptance of a hopeless fate.
“Jane, look there!” cried Venters, in despairing grief. “Need you have told
her? Where was all your kindness of heart? This girl has had a wretched, lonely
life. And I'd found a way to make her happy. You've killed it. You've killed
something sweet and pure and hopeful, just as sure as you breathe.”
“Oh, Bern! It was a slip. I never thought—I never thought!” replied Jane.
“How could I tell she didn't know?”
Lassiter suddenly moved forward, and with the beautiful light on his face
now strangely luminous, he looked at Jane and Venters and then let his soft,
bright gaze rest on Bess.
“Well, I reckon you've all had your say, an' now it's Lassiter's turn. Why, I
was jest praying for this meetin'. Bess, jest look here.”
Gently he touched her arm and turned her to face the others, and then
outspread his great hand to disclose a shiny, battered gold locket.
“Open it,” he said, with a singularly rich voice.
Bess complied, but listlessly.
“Jane—Venters—come closer,” went on Lassiter. “Take a look at the
picture. Don't you know the woman?”
210
www.obooko.com
Jane, after one glance, drew back.

“Milly Erne!” she cried, wonderingly.
Venters, with tingling pulse, with something growing on him, recognized in
the faded miniature portrait the eyes of Milly Erne.
“Yes, that's Milly,” said Lassiter, softly. “Bess, did you ever see her face—
look hard—with all your heart an' soul?”
“The eyes seem to haunt me,” whispered Bess. “Oh, I can't remember—
they're eyes of my dreams—but—but—”
Lassiter's strong arm went round her and he bent his head.
“Child, I thought you'd remember her eyes. They're the same beautiful
eyes you'd see if you looked in a mirror or a clear spring. They're your mother's
eyes. You are Milly Erne's child. Your name is Elizabeth Erne. You're not Oldring's
daughter. You're the daughter of Frank Erne, a man once my best friend. Look!
Here's his picture beside Milly's. He was handsome, an' as fine an' gallant a
Southern gentleman as I ever seen. Frank came of an old family. You come of the
best of blood, lass, and blood tells.”
Bess slipped through his arm to her knees and hugged the locket to her
bosom, and lifted wonderful, yearning eyes.
“It—can't—be—true!”
“Thank God, lass, it is true,” replied Lassiter. “Jane an' Bern here—they
both recognize Milly. They see Milly in you. They're so knocked out they can't tell
you, that's all.”
“Who are you?” whispered Bess.
“I reckon I'm Milly's brother an' your uncle!... Uncle Jim! Ain't that fine?”
“Oh, I can't believe—Don't raise me! Bern, let me kneel. I see truth in your
face—in Miss Withersteen's. But let me hear it all—all on my knees. Tell me how
it's true!”
“Well, Elizabeth, listen,” said Lassiter. “Before you was born your father
made a mortal enemy of a Mormon named Dyer. They was both ministers an'
come to be rivals. Dyer stole your mother away from her home. She gave birth to
you in Texas eighteen years ago. Then she was taken to Utah, from place to place,
an' finally to the last border settlement—Cottonwoods. You was about three
years old when you was taken away from Milly. She never knew what had
become of you. But she lived a good while hopin' and prayin' to have you again.
Then she gave up an' died. An' I may as well put in here your father died ten
years ago. Well, I spent my time tracin' Milly, an' some months back I landed in
Cottonwoods. An' jest lately I learned all about you. I had a talk with Oldrin' an'
told him you was dead, an' he told me what I had so long been wantin' to know. It
211
was Dyer, of course, who stole you from Milly. Part reason he was sore because
Milly refused to give you Mormon teachin', but mostly he still hated Frank Erne
so infernally that he made a deal with Oldrin' to take you an' bring you up as an
infamous rustler an' rustler's girl. The idea was to break Frank Erne's heart if he
ever came to Utah—to show him his daughter with a band of low rustlers. Well—
Oldrin' took you, brought you up from childhood, an' then made you his Masked
Rider. He made you infamous. He kept that part of the contract, but he learned to
love you as a daughter an' never let any but his own men know you was a girl. I
heard him say that with my own ears, an' I saw his big eyes grow dim. He told me
how he had guarded you always, kept you locked up in his absence, was always
at your side or near you on those rides that made you famous on the sage. He said
he an' an old rustler whom he trusted had taught you how to read an' write. They
selected the books for you. Dyer had wanted you brought up the vilest of the vile!
An' Oldrin' brought you up the innocentest of the innocent. He said you didn't
know what vileness was. I can hear his big voice tremble now as he said it. He
told me how the men—rustlers an' outlaws—who from time to time tried to
approach you familiarly—he told me how he shot them dead. I'm tellin' you this
'specially because you've showed such shame—sayin' you was nameless an' all
that. Nothin' on earth can be wronger than that idea of yours. An' the truth of it is
here. Oldrin' swore to me that if Dyer died, releasin' the contract, he intended to
hunt up your father an' give you back to him. It seems Oldrin' wasn't all bad, en'
he sure loved you.”
Venters leaned forward in passionate remorse.
“Oh, Bess! I know Lassiter speaks the truth. For when I shot Oldring he
dropped to his knees and fought with unearthly power to speak. And he said:
'Man—why—didn't—you—wait? Bess was—' Then he fell dead. And I've been
haunted by his look and words. Oh, Bess, what a strange, splendid thing for
Oldring to do! It all seems impossible. But, dear, you really are not what you
thought.”
“Elizabeth Erne!” cried Jane Withersteen. “I loved your mother and I see
her in you!”
What had been incredible from the lips of men became, in the tone, look,
and gesture of a woman, a wonderful truth for Bess. With little tremblings of all
her slender body she rocked to and fro on her knees. The yearning wistfulness of
her eyes changed to solemn splendor of joy. She believed. She was realizing
happiness. And as the process of thought was slow, so were the variations of her
expression. Her eyes reflected the transformation of her soul. Dark, brooding,
hopeless belief—clouds of gloom—drifted, paled, vanished in glorious light. An
212
www.obooko.com
exquisite rose flush—a glow—shone from her face as she slowly began to rise
from her knees. A spirit uplifted her. All that she had held as base dropped from
her.
Venters watched her in joy too deep for words. By it he divined something
of what Lassiter's revelation meant to Bess, but he knew he could only faintly
understand. That moment when she seemed to be lifted by some spiritual
transfiguration was the most beautiful moment of his life. She stood with parted,
quivering lips, with hands tightly clasping the locket to her heaving breast. A new
conscious pride of worth dignified the old wild, free grace and poise.
“Uncle Jim!” she said, tremulously, with a different smile from any Venters
had ever seen on her face.
Lassiter took her into his arms.
“I reckon. It's powerful fine to hear that,” replied Lassiter, unsteadily.
Venters, feeling his eyes grow hot and wet, turned away, and found himself
looking at Jane Withersteen. He had almost forgotten her presence. Tenderness
and sympathy were fast hiding traces of her agitation. Venters read her mind—
felt the reaction of her noble heart—saw the joy she was beginning to feel at the
happiness of others. And suddenly blinded, choked by his emotions, he turned
from her also. He knew what she would do presently; she would make some
magnificent amend for her anger; she would give some manifestation of her love;
probably all in a moment, as she had loved Milly Erne, so would she love
Elizabeth Erne.
“'Pears to me, folks, that we'd better talk a little serious now,” remarked
Lassiter, at length. “Time flies.”
“You're right,” replied Venters, instantly. “I'd forgotten time—place—
danger. Lassiter, you're riding away. Jane's leaving Withersteen House?”
“Forever,” replied Jane.
“I fired Withersteen House,” said Lassiter.
“Dyer?” questioned Venters, sharply.
“I reckon where Dyer's gone there won't be any kidnappin' of girls.”
“Ah! I knew it. I told Judkins—And Tull?” went on Venters, passionately.
“Tull wasn't around when I broke loose. By now he's likely on our trail
with his riders.”
“Lassiter, you're going into the Pass to hide till all this storm blows over?”
“I reckon that's Jane's idea. I'm thinkin' the storm'll be a powerful long
time blowin' over. I was comin' to join you in Surprise Valley. You'll go back now
with me?”
213
“No. I want to take Bess out of Utah. Lassiter, Bess found gold in the valley.
We've a saddle-bag full of gold. If we can reach Sterling—”
“Man! how're you ever goin' to do that? Sterlin' is a hundred miles.”
“My plan is to ride on, keeping sharp lookout. Somewhere up the trail we'll
take to the sage and go round Cottonwoods and then hit the trail again.”
“It's a bad plan. You'll kill the burros in two days.”
“Then we'll walk.”
“That's more bad an' worse. Better go back down the Pass with me.”
“Lassiter, this girl has been hidden all her life in that lonely place,” went on
Venters. “Oldring's men are hunting me. We'd not be safe there any longer. Even
if we would be I'd take this chance to get her out. I want to marry her. She shall
have some of the pleasures of life—see cities and people. We've gold—we'll be
rich. Why, life opens sweet for both of us. And, by Heaven! I'll get her out or lose
my life in the attempt!”
“I reckon if you go on with them burros you'll lose your life all right. Tull
will have riders all over this sage. You can't get out on them burros. It's a fool
idea. That's not doin' best by the girl. Come with me en' take chances on the
rustlers.”
Lassiter's cool argument made Venters waver, not in determination to go,
but in hope of success.
“Bess, I want you to know. Lassiter says the trip's almost useless now. I'm
afraid he's right. We've got about one chance in a hundred to go through. Shall we
take it? Shall we go on?”
“We'll go on,” replied Bess.
“That settles it, Lassiter.”
Lassiter spread wide his hands, as if to signify he could do no more, and his
face clouded.
Venters felt a touch on his elbow. Jane stood beside him with a hand on his
arm. She was smiling. Something radiated from her, and like an electric current
accelerated the motion of his blood.
“Bern, you'd be right to die rather than not take Elizabeth out of Utah—out
of this wild country. You must do it. You'll show her the great world, with all its
wonders. Think how little she has seen! Think what delight is in store for her!
You have gold, You will be free; you will make her happy. What a glorious
prospect! I share it with you. I'll think of you—dream of you—pray for you.”
“Thank you, Jane,” replied Venters, trying to steady his voice. “It does look
bright. Oh, if we were only across that wide, open waste of sage!”
214
www.obooko.com
“Bern, the trip's as good as made. It'll be safe—easy. It'll be a glorious

ride,” she said, softly.
Venters stared. Had Jane's troubles made her insane? Lassiter, too, acted
queerly, all at once beginning to turn his sombrero round in hands that actually
shook.
“You are a rider. She is a rider. This will be the ride of your lives,” added
Jane, in that same soft undertone, almost as if she were musing to herself.
“Jane!” he cried.
“I give you Black Star and Night!”
“Black Star and Night!” he echoed.
“It's done. Lassiter, put our saddle-bags on the burros.”
Only when Lassiter moved swiftly to execute her bidding did Venters's
clogged brain grasp at literal meanings. He leaped to catch Lassiter's busy hands.
“No, no! What are you doing?” he demanded, in a kind of fury. “I won't take
her racers. What do you think I am? It'd be monstrous. Lassiter! stop it, I say!...
You've got her to save. You've miles and miles to go. Tull is trailing you. There are
rustlers in the Pass. Give me back that saddle-bag!”
“Son—cool down,” returned Lassiter, in a voice he might have used to a
child. But the grip with which he tore away Venters's grasping hands was that of
a giant. “Listen—you fool boy! Jane's sized up the situation. The burros'll do for
us. We'll sneak along an' hide. I'll take your dogs an' your rifle. Why, it's the trick.
The blacks are yours, an' sure as I can throw a gun you're goin' to ride safe out of
the sage.”
“Jane—stop him—please stop him,” gasped Venters. “I've lost my strength.
I can't do—anything. This is hell for me! Can't you see that? I've ruined you—it
was through me you lost all. You've only Black Star and Night left. You love these
horses. Oh! I know how you must love them now! And—you're trying to give
them to me. To help me out of Utah! To save the girl I love!”
“That will be my glory.”
Then in the white, rapt face, in the unfathomable eyes, Venters saw Jane
Withersteen in a supreme moment. This moment was one wherein she reached
up to the height for which her noble soul had ever yearned. He, after disrupting
the calm tenor of her peace, after bringing down on her head the implacable
hostility of her churchmen, after teaching her a bitter lesson of life—he was to be
her salvation. And he turned away again, this time shaken to the core of his soul.
Jane Withersteen was the incarnation of selflessness. He experienced wonder
and terror, exquisite pain and rapture. What were all the shocks life had dealt
him compared to the thought of such loyal and generous friendship?
215
And instantly, as if by some divine insight, he knew himself in the

remaking—tried, found wanting; but stronger, better, surer—and he wheeled to
Jane Withersteen, eager, joyous, passionate, wild, exalted. He bent to her; he left
tears and kisses on her hands.
“Jane, I—I can't find words—now,” he said. “I'm beyond words. Only—I
understand. And I'll take the blacks.”
“Don't be losin' no more time,” cut in Lassiter. “I ain't certain, but I think I
seen a speck up the sage-slope. Mebbe I was mistaken. But, anyway, we must all
be movin'. I've shortened the stirrups on Black Star. Put Bess on him.”
Jane Withersteen held out her arms.
“Elizabeth Erne!” she cried, and Bess flew to her.
How inconceivably strange and beautiful it was for Venters to see Bess
clasped to Jane Withersteen's breast!
Then he leaped astride Night.
“Venters, ride straight on up the slope,” Lassiter was saying, “'an if you
don't meet any riders keep on till you're a few miles from the village, then cut off
in the sage an' go round to the trail. But you'll most likely meet riders with Tull.
Jest keep right on till you're jest out of gunshot an' then make your cut-off into
the sage. They'll ride after you, but it won't be no use. You can ride, an' Bess can
ride. When you're out of reach turn on round to the west, an' hit the trail
somewhere. Save the hosses all you can, but don't be afraid. Black Star and Night
are good for a hundred miles before sundown, if you have to push them. You can
get to Sterlin' by night if you want. But better make it along about to-morrow
mornin'. When you get through the notch on the Glaze trail, swing to the right.
You'll be able to see both Glaze an' Stone Bridge. Keep away from them villages.
You won't run no risk of meetin' any of Oldrin's rustlers from Sterlin' on. You'll
find water in them deep hollows north of the Notch. There's an old trail there, not
much used, en' it leads to Sterlin'. That's your trail. An' one thing more. If Tull
pushes you—or keeps on persistent-like, for a few miles—jest let the blacks out
an' lose him an' his riders.”
“Lassiter, may we meet again!” said Venters, in a deep voice.
“Son, it ain't likely—it ain't likely. Well, Bess Oldrin'—Masked Rider—
Elizabeth Erne—now you climb on Black Star. I've heard you could ride. Well,
every rider loves a good horse. An', lass, there never was but one that could beat
Black Star.”
“Ah, Lassiter, there never was any horse that could beat Black Star,” said
Jane, with the old pride.
216
www.obooko.com
“I often wondered—mebbe Venters rode out that race when he brought

back the blacks. Son, was Wrangle the best hoss?”
“No, Lassiter,” replied Venters. For this lie he had his reward in Jane's
quick smile.
“Well, well, my hoss-sense ain't always right. An' here I'm talkin' a lot,
wastin' time. It ain't so easy to find an' lose a pretty niece all in one hour!
Elizabeth—good-by!”
“Oh, Uncle Jim!... Good-by!”
“Elizabeth Erne, be happy! Good-by,” said Jane.
“Good-by—oh—good-by!” In lithe, supple action Bess swung up to Black
Star's saddle.
“Jane Withersteen!... Good-by!” called Venters hoarsely.
“Bern—Bess—riders of the purple sage—good-by!”
CHAPTER XXII. RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
Black Star and Night, answering to spur, swept swiftly westward along the
white, slow-rising, sage-bordered trail. Venters heard a mournful howl from
Ring, but Whitie was silent. The blacks settled into their fleet, long-striding
gallop. The wind sweetly fanned Venters's hot face. From the summit of the first
low-swelling ridge he looked back. Lassiter waved his hand; Jane waved her
scarf. Venters replied by standing in his stirrups and holding high his sombrero.
Then the dip of the ridge hid them. From the height of the next he turned once
more. Lassiter, Jane, and the burros had disappeared. They had gone down into
the Pass. Venters felt a sensation of irreparable loss.
“Bern—look!” called Bess, pointing up the long slope.
A small, dark, moving dot split the line where purple sage met blue sky.
That dot was a band of riders.
“Pull the black, Bess.”
They slowed from gallop to canter, then to trot. The fresh and eager horses
did not like the check.
“Bern, Black Star has great eyesight.”
“I wonder if they're Tull's riders. They might be rustlers. But it's all the
same to us.”
217
The black dot grew to a dark patch moving under low dust clouds. It grew
all the time, though very slowly. There were long periods when it was in plain
sight, and intervals when it dropped behind the sage. The blacks trotted for half
an hour, for another half-hour, and still the moving patch appeared to stay on the
horizon line. Gradually, however, as time passed, it began to enlarge, to creep
down the slope, to encroach upon the intervening distance.
“Bess, what do you make them out?” asked Venters. “I don't think they're
rustlers.”
“They're sage-riders,” replied Bess. “I see a white horse and several grays.
Rustlers seldom ride any horses but bays and blacks.”
“That white horse is Tull's. Pull the black, Bess. I'll get down and cinch up.
We're in for some riding. Are you afraid?”
“Not now,” answered the girl, smiling.
“You needn't be. Bess, you don't weigh enough to make Black Star know
you're on him. I won't be able to stay with you. You'll leave Tull and his riders as
if they were standing still.”
“How about you?”
“Never fear. If I can't stay with you I can still laugh at Tull.”
“Look, Bern! They've stopped on that ridge. They see us.”
“Yes. But we're too far yet for them to make out who we are. They'll
recognize the blacks first. We've passed most of the ridges and the thickest sage.
Now, when I give the word, let Black Star go and ride!”
Venters calculated that a mile or more still intervened between them and
the riders. They were approaching at a swift canter. Soon Venters recognized
Tull's white horse, and concluded that the riders had likewise recognized Black
Star and Night. But it would be impossible for Tull yet to see that the blacks were
not ridden by Lassiter and Jane. Venters noted that Tull and the line of horsemen,
perhaps ten or twelve in number, stopped several times and evidently looked
hard down the slope. It must have been a puzzling circumstance for Tull. Venters
laughed grimly at the thought of what Tull's rage would be when he finally
discovered the trick. Venters meant to sheer out into the sage before Tull could
possibly be sure who rode the blacks.
The gap closed to a distance of half a mile. Tull halted. His riders came up
and formed a dark group around him. Venters thought he saw him wave his arms
and was certain of it when the riders dashed into the sage, to right and left of the
trail. Tull had anticipated just the move held in mind by Venters.
“Now Bess!” shouted Venters. “Strike north. Go round those riders and
turn west.”
218
www.obooko.com
Black Star sailed over the low sage, and in a few leaps got into his stride
and was running. Venters spurred Night after him. It was hard going in the sage.
The horses could run as well there, but keen eyesight and judgment must
constantly be used by the riders in choosing ground. And continuous swerving
from aisle to aisle between the brush, and leaping little washes and mounds of
the pack-rats, and breaking through sage, made rough riding. When Venters had
turned into a long aisle he had time to look up at Tull's riders. They were now
strung out into an extended line riding northeast. And, as Venters and Bess were
holding due north, this meant, if the horses of Tull and his riders had the speed
and the staying power, they would head the blacks and turn them back down the
slope. Tull's men were not saving their mounts; they were driving them
desperately. Venters feared only an accident to Black Star or Night, and skilful
riding would mitigate possibility of that. One glance ahead served to show him
that Bess could pick a course through the sage as well as he. She looked neither
back nor at the running riders, and bent forward over Black Star's neck and
studied the ground ahead.
It struck Venters, presently, after he had glanced up from time to time, that
Bess was drawing away from him as he had expected. He had, however, only
thought of the light weight Black Star was carrying and of his superior speed; he
saw now that the black was being ridden as never before, except when Jerry Card
lost the race to Wrangle. How easily, gracefully, naturally, Bess sat her saddle!
She could ride! Suddenly Venters remembered she had said she could ride. But
he had not dreamed she was capable of such superb horsemanship. Then all at
once, flashing over him, thrilling him, came the recollection that Bess was
Oldring's Masked Rider.
He forgot Tull—the running riders—the race. He let Night have a free rein
and felt him lengthen out to suit himself, knowing he would keep to Black Star's
course, knowing that he had been chosen by the best rider now on the upland
sage. For Jerry Card was dead. And fame had rivaled him with only one rider, and
that was the slender girl who now swung so easily with Black Star's stride.
Venters had abhorred her notoriety, but now he took passionate pride in her
skill, her daring, her power over a horse. And he delved into his memory,
recalling famous rides which he had heard related in the villages and round the
camp-fires. Oldring's Masked Rider! Many times this strange rider, at once well
known and unknown, had escaped pursuers by matchless riding. He had to run
the gantlet of vigilantes down the main street of Stone Bridge, leaving dead
horses and dead rustlers behind. He had jumped his horse over the Gerber Wash,
a deep, wide ravine separating the fields of Glaze from the wild sage. He had been
219
surrounded north of Sterling; and he had broken through the line. How often had
been told the story of day stampedes, of night raids, of pursuit, and then how the
Masked Rider, swift as the wind, was gone in the sage! A fleet, dark horse—a
slender, dark form—a black mask—a driving run down the slope—a dot on the
purple sage—a shadowy, muffled steed disappearing in the night!
And this Masked Rider of the uplands had been Elizabeth Erne!
The sweet sage wind rushed in Venters's face and sang a song in his ears.
He heard the dull, rapid beat of Night's hoofs; he saw Black Star drawing away,
farther and farther. He realized both horses were swinging to the west. Then
gunshots in the rear reminded him of Tull. Venters looked back. Far to the side,
dropping behind, trooped the riders. They were shooting. Venters saw no puffs
or dust, heard no whistling bullets. He was out of range. When he looked back
again Tull's riders had given up pursuit. The best they could do, no doubt, had
been to get near enough to recognize who really rode the blacks. Venters saw
Tull drooping in his saddle.
Then Venters pulled Night out of his running stride. Those few miles had
scarcely warmed the black, but Venters wished to save him. Bess turned, and,
though she was far away, Venters caught the white glint of her waving hand. He
held Night to a trot and rode on, seeing Bess and Black Star, and the sloping
upward stretch of sage, and from time to time the receding black riders behind.
Soon they disappeared behind a ridge, and he turned no more. They would go
back to Lassiter's trail and follow it, and follow in vain. So Venters rode on, with
the wind growing sweeter to taste and smell, and the purple sage richer and the
sky bluer in his sight; and the song in his ears ringing. By and by Bess halted to
wait for him, and he knew she had come to the trail. When he reached her it was
to smile at sight of her standing with arms round Black Star's neck.
“Oh, Bern! I love him!” she cried. “He's beautiful; he knows; and how he can
run! I've had fast horses. But Black Star!... Wrangle never beat him!”
“I'm wondering if I didn't dream that. Bess, the blacks are grand. What it
must have cost Jane—ah!—well, when we get out of this wild country with Star
and Night, back to my old home in Illinois, we'll buy a beautiful farm with
meadows and springs and cool shade. There we'll turn the horses free—free to
roam and browse and drink—never to feel a spur again—never to be ridden!”
“I would like that,” said Bess.
They rested. Then, mounting, they rode side by side up the white trail. The
sun rose higher behind them. Far to the left a low line of green marked the site of
Cottonwoods. Venters looked once and looked no more. Bess gazed only straight
ahead. They put the blacks to the long, swinging rider's canter, and at times
220
www.obooko.com
pulled them to a trot, and occasionally to a walk. The hours passed, the miles
slipped behind, and the wall of rock loomed in the fore. The Notch opened wide.
It was a rugged, stony pass, but with level and open trail, and Venters and Bess
ran the blacks through it. An old trail led off to the right, taking the line of the
wall, and this Venters knew to be the trail mentioned by Lassiter.
The little hamlet, Glaze, a white and green patch in the vast waste of
purple, lay miles down a slope much like the Cottonwoods slope, only this
descended to the west. And miles farther west a faint green spot marked the
location of Stone Bridge. All the rest of that world was seemingly smooth,
undulating sage, with no ragged lines of canyons to accentuate its wildness.
“Bess, we're safe—we're free!” said Venters. “We're alone on the sage.
We're half way to Sterling.”
“Ah! I wonder how it is with Lassiter and Miss Withersteen.”
“Never fear, Bess. He'll outwit Tull. He'll get away and hide her safely. He
might climb into Surprise Valley, but I don't think he'll go so far.”
“Bern, will we ever find any place like our beautiful valley?”
“No. But, dear, listen. Well go back some day, after years—ten years. Then
we'll be forgotten. And our valley will be just as we left it.”
“What if Balancing Rock falls and closes the outlet to the Pass?”
“I've thought of that. I'll pack in ropes and ropes. And if the outlet's closed
we'll climb up the cliffs and over them to the valley and go down on rope ladders.
It could be done. I know just where to make the climb, and I'll never forget.”
“Oh yes, let us go back!”
“It's something sweet to look forward to. Bess, it's like all the future looks
to me.”
“Call me—Elizabeth,” she said, shyly.
“Elizabeth Erne! It's a beautiful name. But I'll never forget Bess. Do you
know—have you thought that very soon—by this time to-morrow—you will be
Elizabeth Venters?”
So they rode on down the old trail. And the sun sloped to the west, and a
golden sheen lay on the sage. The hours sped now; the afternoon waned. Often
they rested the horses. The glisten of a pool of water in a hollow caught Venters's
eye, and here he unsaddled the blacks and let them roll and drink and browse.
When he and Bess rode up out of the hollow the sun was low, a crimson ball, and
the valley seemed veiled in purple fire and smoke. It was that short time when
the sun appeared to rest before setting, and silence, like a cloak of invisible life,
lay heavy on all that shimmering world of sage.
They watched the sun begin to bury its red curve under the dark horizon.
221
“We'll ride on till late,” he said. “Then you can sleep a little, while I watch
and graze the horses. And we'll ride into Sterling early to-morrow. We'll be
married!... We'll be in time to catch the stage. We'll tie Black Star and Night
behind—and then—for a country not wild and terrible like this!”
“Oh, Bern!... But look! The sun is setting on the sage—the last time for us
till we dare come again to the Utah border. Ten years! Oh, Bern, look, so you will
never forget!”
Slumbering, fading purple fire burned over the undulating sage ridges.
Long streaks and bars and shafts and spears fringed the far western slope.
Drifting, golden veils mingled with low, purple shadows. Colors and shades
changed in slow, wondrous transformation.
Suddenly Venters was startled by a low, rumbling roar—so low that it was
like the roar in a sea-shell.
“Bess, did you hear anything?” he whispered.
“No.”
“Listen!... Maybe I only imagined—Ah!”
Out of the east or north from remote distance, breathed an infinitely low,
continuously long sound—deep, weird, detonating, thundering, deadening—
dying.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE FALL OF BALANCING ROCK
Through tear-blurred sight Jane Withersteen watched Venters and

Elizabeth Erne and the black racers disappear over the ridge of sage.
“They're gone!” said Lassiter. “An' they're safe now. An' there'll never be a
day of their comin' happy lives but what they'll remember Jane Withersteen
an'—an' Uncle Jim!... I reckon, Jane, we'd better be on our way.”
The burros obediently wheeled and started down the break with little
cautious steps, but Lassiter had to leash the whining dogs and lead them. Jane felt
herself bound in a feeling that was neither listlessness nor indifference, yet which
rendered her incapable of interest. She was still strong in body, but emotionally
tired. That hour at the entrance to Deception Pass had been the climax of her
suffering—the flood of her wrath—the last of her sacrifice—the supremity of her
love—and the attainment of peace. She thought that if she had little Fay she
would not ask any more of life.
222
www.obooko.com
Like an automaton she followed Lassiter down the steep trail of dust and
bits of weathered stone; and when the little slides moved with her or piled
around her knees she experienced no alarm. Vague relief came to her in the sense
of being enclosed between dark stone walls, deep hidden from the glare of sun,
from the glistening sage. Lassiter lengthened the stirrup straps on one of the
burros and bade her mount and ride close to him. She was to keep the burro from
cracking his little hard hoofs on stones. Then she was riding on between dark,
gleaming walls. There were quiet and rest and coolness in this canyon. She noted
indifferently that they passed close under shady, bulging shelves of cliff, through
patches of grass and sage and thicket and groves of slender trees, and over white,
pebbly washes, and around masses of broken rock. The burros trotted tirelessly;
the dogs, once more free, pattered tirelessly; and Lassiter led on with never a
stop, and at every open place he looked back. The shade under the walls gave
place to sunlight. And presently they came to a dense thicket of slender trees,
through which they passed to rich, green grass and water. Here Lassiter rested
the burros for a little while, but he was restless, uneasy, silent, always listening,
peering under the trees. She dully reflected that enemies were behind them—
before them; still the thought awakened no dread or concern or interest.
At his bidding she mounted and rode on close to the heels of his burro. The
canyon narrowed; the walls lifted their rugged rims higher; and the sun shone
down hot from the center of the blue stream of sky above. Lassiter traveled
slower, with more exceeding care as to the ground he chose, and he kept
speaking low to the dogs. They were now hunting-dogs—keen, alert, suspicious,
sniffing the warm breeze. The monotony of the yellow walls broke in change of
color and smooth surface, and the rugged outline of rims grew craggy. Splits
appeared in deep breaks, and gorges running at right angles, and then the Pass
opened wide at a junction of intersecting canyons.
Lassiter dismounted, led his burro, called the dogs close, and proceeded at
snail pace through dark masses of rock and dense thickets under the left wall.
Long he watched and listened before venturing to cross the mouths of side
canyons. At length he halted, fled his burro, lifted a warning hand to Jane, and
then slipped away among the boulders, and, followed by the stealthy dogs,
disappeared from sight. The time he remained absent was neither short nor long
to Jane Withersteen.
When he reached her side again he was pale, and his lips were set in a hard
line, and his gray eyes glittered coldly. Bidding her dismount, he led the burros
into a covert of stones and cedars, and tied them.
223
“Jane, I've run into the fellers I've been lookin' for, an' I'm goin' after
them,” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
“I reckon I won't take time to tell you.”
“Couldn't we slip by without being seen?”
“Likely enough. But that ain't my game. An' I'd like to know, in case I don't
come back, what you'll do.”
“What can I do?”
“I reckon you can go back to Tull. Or stay in the Pass an' be taken off by
rustlers. Which'll you do?”
“I don't know. I can't think very well. But I believe I'd rather be taken off by
rustlers.”
Lassiter sat down, put his head in his hands, and remained for a few
moments in what appeared to be deep and painful thought. When he lifted his
face it was haggard, lined, cold as sculptured marble.
“I'll go. I only mentioned that chance of my not comin' back. I'm pretty sure
to come.”
“Need you risk so much? Must you fight more? Haven't you shed enough
blood?”
“I'd like to tell you why I'm goin',” he continued, in coldness he had seldom
used to her. She remarked it, but it was the same to her as if he had spoken with
his old gentle warmth. “But I reckon I won't. Only, I'll say that mercy an'
goodness, such as is in you, though they're the grand things in human nature,
can't be lived up to on this Utah border. Life's hell out here. You think—or you
used to think—that your religion made this life heaven. Mebbe them scales on
your eyes has dropped now. Jane, I wouldn't have you no different, an' that's why
I'm going to try to hide you somewhere in this Pass. I'd like to hide many more
women, for I've come to see there are more like you among your people. An' I'd
like you to see jest how hard an' cruel this border life is. It's bloody. You'd think
churches an' churchmen would make it better. They make it worse. You give
names to things—bishops, elders, ministers, Mormonism, duty, faith, glory. You
dream—or you're driven mad. I'm a man, an' I know. I name fanatics, followers,
blind women, oppressors, thieves, ranchers, rustlers, riders. An' we have—what
you've lived through these last months. It can't be helped. But it can't last always.
An' remember this—some day the border'll be better, cleaner, for the ways of
men like Lassiter!”
She saw him shake his tall form erect, look at her strangely and steadfastly,
and then, noiselessly, stealthily slip away amid the rocks and trees. Ring and
224
www.obooko.com
Whitie, not being bidden to follow, remained with Jane. She felt extreme
weariness, yet somehow it did not seem to be of her body. And she sat down in
the shade and tried to think. She saw a creeping lizard, cactus flowers, the
drooping burros, the resting dogs, an eagle high over a yellow crag. Once the
meanest flower, a color, the flight of the bee, or any living thing had given her
deepest joy. Lassiter had gone off, yielding to his incurable blood lust, probably to
his own death; and she was sorry, but there was no feeling in her sorrow.
Suddenly from the mouth of the canyon just beyond her rang out a clear,
sharp report of a rifle. Echoes clapped. Then followed a piercingly high yell of
anguish, quickly breaking. Again echoes clapped, in grim imitation. Dull revolver
shots—hoarse yells—pound of hoofs—shrill neighs of horses—commingling of
echoes—and again silence! Lassiter must be busily engaged, thought Jane, and no
chill trembled over her, no blanching tightened her skin. Yes, the border was a
bloody place. But life had always been bloody. Men were blood-spillers. Phases of
the history of the world flashed through her mind—Greek and Roman wars, dark,
mediaeval times, the crimes in the name of religion. On sea, on land,
everywhere—shooting, stabbing, cursing, clashing, fighting men! Greed, power,
oppression, fanaticism, love, hate, revenge, justice, freedom—for these, men
killed one another.
She lay there under the cedars, gazing up through the delicate lacelike
foliage at the blue sky, and she thought and wondered and did not care.
More rattling shots disturbed the noonday quiet. She heard a sliding of
weathered rock, a hoarse shout of warning, a yell of alarm, again the clear, sharp
crack of the rifle, and another cry that was a cry of death. Then rifle reports
pierced a dull volley of revolver shots. Bullets whizzed over Jane's hiding-place;
one struck a stone and whined away in the air. After that, for a time, succeeded
desultory shots; and then they ceased under long, thundering fire from heavier
guns.
Sooner or later, then, Jane heard the cracking of horses' hoofs on the
stones, and the sound came nearer and nearer. Silence intervened until Lassiter's
soft, jingling step assured her of his approach. When he appeared he was covered
with blood.
“All right, Jane,” he said. “I come back. An' don't worry.”
With water from a canteen he washed the blood from his face and hands.
“Jane, hurry now. Tear my scarf in two, en' tie up these places. That hole
through my hand is some inconvenient, worse 'n this at over my ear. There—
you're doin' fine! Not a bit nervous—no tremblin'. I reckon I ain't done your
courage justice. I'm glad you're brave jest now—you'll need to be. Well, I was hid
225
pretty good, enough to keep them from shootin' me deep, but they was slingin'
lead close all the time. I used up all the rifle shells, an' en I went after them.
Mebbe you heard. It was then I got hit. Had to use up every shell in my own gun,
an' they did, too, as I seen. Rustlers an' Mormons, Jane! An' now I'm packin' five
bullet holes in my carcass, an' guns without shells. Hurry, now.”
He unstrapped the saddle-bags from the burros, slipped the saddles and
let them lie, turned the burros loose, and, calling the dogs, led the way through
stones and cedars to an open where two horses stood.
“Jane, are you strong?” he asked.
“I think so. I'm not tired,” Jane replied.
“I don't mean that way. Can you bear up?”
“I think I can bear anything.”
“I reckon you look a little cold an' thick. So I'm preparin' you.”
“For what?”
“I didn't tell you why I jest had to go after them fellers. I couldn't tell you. I
believe you'd have died. But I can tell you now—if you'll bear up under a shock?”
“Go on, my friend.”
“I've got little Fay! Alive—bad hurt—but she'll live!”
Jane Withersteen's dead-locked feeling, rent by Lassiter's deep, quivering
voice, leaped into an agony of sensitive life.
“Here,” he added, and showed her where little Fay lay on the grass.
Unable to speak, unable to stand, Jane dropped on her knees. By that long,
beautiful golden hair Jane recognized the beloved Fay. But Fay's loveliness was
gone. Her face was drawn and looked old with grief. But she was not dead—her
heart beat—and Jane Withersteen gathered strength and lived again.
“You see I jest had to go after Fay,” Lassiter was saying, as he knelt to bathe
her little pale face. “But I reckon I don't want no more choices like the one I had
to make. There was a crippled feller in that bunch, Jane. Mebbe Venters crippled
him. Anyway, that's why they were holding up here. I seen little Fay first thing,
en' was hard put to it to figure out a way to get her. An' I wanted hosses, too. I
had to take chances. So I crawled close to their camp. One feller jumped a hoss
with little Fay, an' when I shot him, of course she dropped. She's stunned an'
bruised—she fell right on her head. Jane, she's comin' to! She ain't bad hurt!”
Fay's long lashes fluttered; her eyes opened. At first they seemed glazed
over. They looked dazed by pain. Then they quickened, darkened, to shine with
intelligence—bewilderment—memory—and sudden wonderful joy.
“Muvver—Jane!” she whispered.
“Oh, little Fay, little Fay!” cried Jane, lifting, clasping the child to her.
226
www.obooko.com
“Now, we've got to rustle!” said Lassiter, in grim coolness. “Jane, look down
the Pass!”
Across the mounds of rock and sage Jane caught sight of a band of riders
filing out of the narrow neck of the Pass; and in the lead was a white horse,
which, even at a distance of a mile or more, she knew.
“Tull!” she almost screamed.
“I reckon. But, Jane, we've still got the game in our hands. They're ridin'
tired hosses. Venters likely give them a chase. He wouldn't forget that. An' we've
fresh hosses.”
Hurriedly he strapped on the saddle-bags, gave quick glance to girths and
cinches and stirrups, then leaped astride.
“Lift little Fay up,” he said.
With shaking arms Jane complied.
“Get back your nerve, woman! This's life or death now. Mind that. Climb
up! Keep your wits. Stick close to me. Watch where your hoss's goin' en' ride!”
Somehow Jane mounted; somehow found strength to hold the reins, to
spur, to cling on, to ride. A horrible quaking, craven fear possessed her soul.
Lassiter led the swift flight across the wide space, over washes, through sage, into
a narrow canyon where the rapid clatter of hoofs rapped sharply from the walls.
The wind roared in her ears; the gleaming cliffs swept by; trail and sage and
grass moved under her. Lassiter's bandaged, blood-stained face turned to her; he
shouted encouragement; he looked back down the Pass; he spurred his horse.
Jane clung on, spurring likewise. And the horses settled from hard, furious gallop
into a long-striding, driving run. She had never ridden at anything like that pace;
desperately she tried to get the swing of the horse, to be of some help to him in
that race, to see the best of the ground and guide him into it. But she failed of
everything except to keep her seat the saddle, and to spur and spur. At times she
closed her eyes unable to bear sight of Fay's golden curls streaming in the wind.
She could not pray; she could not rail; she no longer cared for herself. All of life,
of good, of use in the world, of hope in heaven entered in Lassiter's ride with
little Fay to safety. She would have tried to turn the iron-jawed brute she rode,
she would have given herself to that relentless, dark-browed Tull. But she knew
Lassiter would turn with her, so she rode on and on.
Whether that run was of moments or hours Jane Withersteen could not
tell. Lassiter's horse covered her with froth that blew back in white streams. Both
horses ran their limit, were allowed slow down in time to save them, and went on
dripping, heaving, staggering.
“Oh, Lassiter, we must run—we must run!”
227
He looked back, saying nothing. The bandage had blown from his head,
and blood trickled down his face. He was bowing under the strain of injuries, of
the ride, of his burden. Yet how cool and gay he looked—how intrepid!
The horses walked, trotted, galloped, ran, to fall again to walk. Hours sped
or dragged. Time was an instant—an eternity. Jane Withersteen felt hell pursuing
her, and dared not look back for fear she would fall from her horse.
“Oh, Lassiter! Is he coming?”
The grim rider looked over his shoulder, but said no word. Fay's golden
hair floated on the breeze. The sun shone; the walls gleamed; the sage glistened.
And then it seemed the sun vanished, the walls shaded, the sage paled. The
horses walked—trotted—galloped—ran—to fall again to walk. Shadows
gathered under shelving cliffs. The canyon turned, brightened, opened into a
long, wide, wall-enclosed valley. Again the sun, lowering in the west, reddened
the sage. Far ahead round, scrawled stone appeared to block the Pass.
“Bear up, Jane, bear up!” called Lassiter. “It's our game, if you don't
weaken.”
“Lassiter! Go on—alone! Save little Fay!”
“Only with you!”
“Oh!—I'm a coward—a miserable coward! I can't fight or think or hope or
pray! I'm lost! Oh, Lassiter, look back! Is he coming? I'll not—hold out—”
“Keep your breath, woman, an' ride not for yourself or for me, but for Fay!”
A last breaking run across the sage brought Lassiter's horse to a walk.
“He's done,” said the rider.
“Oh, no—no!” moaned Jane.
“Look back, Jane, look back. Three—four miles we've come across this
valley, en' no Tull yet in sight. Only a few more miles!”
Jane looked back over the long stretch of sage, and found the narrow gap
in the wall, out of which came a file of dark horses with a white horse in the lead.
Sight of the riders acted upon Jane as a stimulant. The weight of cold, horrible
terror lessened. And, gazing forward at the dogs, at Lassiter's limping horse, at
the blood on his face, at the rocks growing nearer, last at Fay's golden hair, the
ice left her veins, and slowly, strangely, she gained hold of strength that she
believed would see her to the safety Lassiter promised. And, as she gazed,
Lassiter's horse stumbled and fell.
He swung his leg and slipped from the saddle.
“Jane, take the child,” he said, and lifted Fay up. Jane clasped her arms
suddenly strong. “They're gainin',” went on Lassiter, as he watched the pursuing
riders. “But we'll beat 'em yet.”
228
www.obooko.com
Turning with Jane's bridle in his hand, he was about to start when he saw
the saddle-bag on the fallen horse.
“I've jest about got time,” he muttered, and with swift fingers that did not
blunder or fumble he loosened the bag and threw it over his shoulder. Then he
started to run, leading Jane's horse, and he ran, and trotted, and walked, and ran
again. Close ahead now Jane saw a rise of bare rock. Lassiter reached it, searched
along the base, and, finding a low place, dragged the weary horse up and over
round, smooth stone. Looking backward, Jane saw Tull's white horse not a mile
distant, with riders strung out in a long line behind him. Looking forward, she
saw more valley to the right, and to the left a towering cliff. Lassiter pulled the
horse and kept on.
Little Fay lay in her arms with wide-open eyes—eyes which were still
shadowed by pain, but no longer fixed, glazed in terror. The golden curls blew
across Jane's lips; the little hands feebly clasped her arm; a ghost of a troubled,
trustful smile hovered round the sweet lips. And Jane Withersteen awoke to the
spirit of a lioness.
Lassiter was leading the horse up a smooth slope toward cedar trees of
twisted and bleached appearance. Among these he halted.
“Jane, give me the girl en' get down,” he said. As if it wrenched him he
unbuckled the empty black guns with a strange air of finality. He then received
Fay in his arms and stood a moment looking backward. Tull's white horse
mounted the ridge of round stone, and several bays or blacks followed. “I wonder
what he'll think when he sees them empty guns. Jane, bring your saddle-bag and
climb after me.”
A glistening, wonderful bare slope, with little holes, swelled up and up to
lose itself in a frowning yellow cliff. Jane closely watched her steps and climbed
behind Lassiter. He moved slowly. Perhaps he was only husbanding his strength.
But she saw drops of blood on the stone, and then she knew. They climbed and
climbed without looking back. Her breast labored; she began to feel as if little
points of fiery steel were penetrating her side into her lungs. She heard the
panting of Lassiter and the quicker panting of the dogs.
“Wait—here,” he said.
Before her rose a bulge of stone, nicked with little cut steps, and above that
a corner of yellow wall, and overhanging that a vast, ponderous cliff.
The dogs pattered up, disappeared round the corner. Lassiter mounted the
steps with Fay, and he swayed like a drunken man, and he too disappeared. But
instantly he returned alone, and half ran, half slipped down to her.
229
Then from below pealed up hoarse shouts of angry men. Tull and several
of his riders had reached the spot where Lassiter had parted with his guns.
“You'll need that breath—mebbe!” said Lassiter, facing downward, with
glittering eyes.
“Now, Jane, the last pull,” he went on. “Walk up them little steps. I'll follow
an' steady you. Don't think. Jest go. Little Fay's above. Her eyes are open. She jest
said to me, 'Where's muvver Jane?'”
Without a fear or a tremor or a slip or a touch of Lassiter's hand Jane
Withersteen walked up that ladder of cut steps.
He pushed her round the corner of the wall. Fay lay, with wide staring
eyes, in the shade of a gloomy wall. The dogs waited. Lassiter picked up the child
and turned into a dark cleft. It zigzagged. It widened. It opened. Jane was amazed
at a wonderfully smooth and steep incline leading up between ruined, splintered,
toppling walls. A red haze from the setting sun filled this passage. Lassiter
climbed with slow, measured steps, and blood dripped from him to make
splotches on the white stone. Jane tried not to step in his blood, but was
compelled, for she found no other footing. The saddle-bag began to drag her
down; she gasped for breath, she thought her heart was bursting. Slower, slower
yet the rider climbed, whistling as he breathed. The incline widened. Huge
pinnacles and monuments of stone stood alone, leaning fearfully. Red sunset haze
shone through cracks where the wall had split. Jane did not look high, but she felt
the overshadowing of broken rims above. She felt that it was a fearful, menacing
place. And she climbed on in heartrending effort. And she fell beside Lassiter and
Fay at the top of the incline in a narrow, smooth divide.
He staggered to his feet—staggered to a huge, leaning rock that rested on a
small pedestal. He put his hand on it—the hand that had been shot through—and
Jane saw blood drip from the ragged hole. Then he fell.
“Jane—I—can't—do—it!” he whispered.
“What?”
“Roll the—stone!... All my—life I've loved—to roll stones—en' now I—
can't!”
“What of it? You talk strangely. Why roll that stone?”
“I planned to—fetch you here—to roll this stone. See! It'll smash the
crags—loosen the walls—close the outlet!”
As Jane Withersteen gazed down that long incline, walled in by crumbling
cliffs, awaiting only the slightest jar to make them fall asunder, she saw Tull
appear at the bottom and begin to climb. A rider followed him—another—and
another.
230
www.obooko.com
“See! Tull! The riders!”

“Yes—they'll get us—now.”
“Why? Haven't you strength left to roll the stone?”
“Jane—it ain't that—I've lost my nerve!”
“You!... Lassiter!”
“I wanted to roll it—meant to—but I—can't. Venters's valley is down
behind here. We could—live there. But if I roll the stone—we're shut in for
always. I don't dare. I'm thinkin' of you!”
“Lassiter! Roll the stone!” she cried.
He arose, tottering, but with set face, and again he placed the bloody hand
on the Balancing Rock. Jane Withersteen gazed from him down the passageway.
Tull was climbing. Almost, she thought, she saw his dark, relentless face. Behind
him more riders climbed. What did they mean for Fay—for Lassiter—for herself?
“Roll the stone!... Lassiter, I love you!”
Under all his deathly pallor, and the blood, and the iron of seared cheek
and lined brow, worked a great change. He placed both hands on the rock and
then leaned his shoulder there and braced his powerful body.
ROLL THE STONE!
It stirred, it groaned, it grated, it moved, and with a slow grinding, as of
wrathful relief, began to lean. It had waited ages to fall, and now was slow in
starting. Then, as if suddenly instinct with life, it leaped hurtlingly down to alight
on the steep incline, to bound more swiftly into the air, to gather momentum, to
plunge into the lofty leaning crag below. The crag thundered into atoms. A wave
of air—a splitting shock! Dust shrouded the sunset red of shaking rims; dust
shrouded Tull as he fell on his knees with uplifted arms. Shafts and monuments
and sections of wall fell majestically.
From the depths there rose a long-drawn rumbling roar. The outlet to
Deception Pass closed forever.
The End.
For more free Western novels head over to obooko.com
231

Riders of The Purple Sage

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Riders of The Purple Sage

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Riders of The Purple Sage

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

This edition published by Obooko Publishing with immense respect and

“A gun-man!” whispered another. “Fellers, careful now about movin' your

CHAPTER II. COTTONWOODS

“Jane, I only heard things, rumors, stories, most of which I disbelieved. At

“Jane, I've thought of that. I'll try.”

CHAPTER III. AMBER SPRING

“The man!” he exclaimed, presently, in husky accents.

CHAPTER IV. DECEPTION PASS

“Now I wonder,” returned Judkins. “They wanted me bad. An' it ain't

CHAPTER V. THE MASKED RIDER

CHAPTER VI. THE MILL-WHEEL OF STEERS

“What do you mean?”

“No, they jest run it, en' that looks bad.”

CHAPTER VII. THE DAUGHTER OF WITHERSTEEN

“Lassiter, will you be my rider?” Jane had asked him.

mistresses, it likewise had four separate sections, not one of which

As it made Jane happy to go among her own people, so it saddened her to

CHAPTER VIII. SURPRISE VALLEY

“Here! Come, Whitie—Ring,” he repeated, this time sharply.

CHAPTER IX. SILVER SPRUCE AND ASPENS

“You went five nights!”

CHAPTER XI. FAITH AND UNFAITH

Jane's passionate, unheeding zeal began to loom darkly.

CHAPTER XII. THE INVISIBLE HAND

“Heard? No! What's happened to them?”

“Lassiter!... What on earth do you mean? I'm an absolutely free woman.”

“But, Lassiter, I would give freely—all I own to avert this—this wretched

CHAPTER XIII. SOLITUDE AND STORM

CHAPTER XIV. WEST WIND

“Oh, I couldn't help it!”

“Then—there—there must be a—a woman!” Dark red mantled the clear

CHAPTER XV. SHADOWS ON THE SAGE-SLOPE

In the cloudy, threatening, waning summer days shadows lengthened

“I reckon you might be somewhere. Mebbe tied in an old barn—or

CHAPTER XVI. GOLD

“Trailed me,” cried Venters, bluntly.

CHAPTER XVII. WRANGLE'S RACE RUN

sudden up-flashing instinct of self-preservation—would he lose his skill and

As the afternoon wore away Venters's concern diminished, yet he kept

CHAPTER XVIII. OLDRING'S KNELL

Some forty hours or more later Venters created a commotion in

“Hasn't Lassiter made a break yet?” inquired Venters, curiously.

Swift as lightning Venters's glance dropped from Oldring's rolling eyes to

“Did—did you love him?”

CHAPTER XIX. FAY

thoughtful and appeared to be debating the duplicity of men or searching for a

CHAPTER XX. LASSITER'S WAY

Footprints told the story of little Fay's abduction. In anguish Jane

“Kiss me!” she whispered, blindly.

Thick-driving belts of smoke traveled by on the wind, and with it came a

CHAPTER XXI. BLACK STAR AND NIGHT

“Why did you tell that?” cried Venters, passionately.

Jane, after one glance, drew back.

“Bern, the trip's as good as made. It'll be safe—easy. It'll be a glorious

And instantly, as if by some divine insight, he knew himself in the

“I often wondered—mebbe Venters rode out that race when he brought

CHAPTER XXII. RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE