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

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 gunman. 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 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 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 deathbed, 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