Riders of the Purple Sage (Leisure Historical Fiction) Read online

Tull's men appeared under the cottonwoods and led a young man out into the line. 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 really loved 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 tersely.

  "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 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 to gray.

  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 and 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 that 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 that 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 depth of himself, an engulfing abyss. As his religious mood was fanatical and inexorable, so would his physical hate be merciless.

  "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 in ward 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 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 anyone 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 ag'in' them black chaps."

  "A gunman," 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 riders'-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 1 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," said Jane Withersteen with a throb in her voice.

  She felt the drawing power of his eyes, and th
en 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' cutthroats 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 on 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 jest 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 outgrown that yet."

  Tull fumed between amazement and anger. "Meddler, we have a law here something different from a 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, 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 quivering, 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 coldly on the Mormons, with the restive bit-champing of the horses, with Jane's failing to repress her mounting agitation, 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 lovesick 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?"

  "He stays."

  "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 sincerity, beyond any shadow of doubt, breathed in the rider's low voice.

  "Who are you? We are seven here."

  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 around to the fore.

  "Lassiter!" It was Venters's wondering, thrilling battle 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.

  Venters appeared too deeply moved to speak the gratitude his face expressed. 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 today?"

  "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-hot 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, 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 around and around 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 a 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, a welcome contrast to sage-tired eyes. Twittering qua
il 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. The massive blocks of stone and heavy timbers and solid doors and shutters showed the hand of a man who had built against pillage and time, and the flowers and mosses lining the stone-bedded stream, the bright colors of rugs and blankets on the court floor, and the cozy corner with hammock and books and the clean linen tablecloth 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-ceilinged 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 self-conscious smile, for she was thinking of more than the desire to be fair in her own eyes, but 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.