Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey [best books to read now TXT] 📗

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.

“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 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 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 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 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,