Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey [best classic novels TXT] 📗

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?”

“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 arrowheads 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 today. 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.”

“I know. But that hasn’t anything to do with it. The truth is I’m afraid of lightning and thunder, and thunderclaps 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.

“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