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Riders of the Purple Sage

by Zane Grey · English · Gutenberg #1300 · 599,507 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Riders of the Purple Sage

Author: Zane Grey


        
Release date: May 1, 1998 [eBook #1300]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1300

Credits: Bill Brewer, Rick Fane and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE ***

[Illustration]




RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

By Zane Grey




CONTENTS


 CHAPTER I. LASSITER
 CHAPTER II. COTTONWOODS
 CHAPTER III. AMBER SPRING
 CHAPTER IV. DECEPTION PASS
 CHAPTER V. THE MASKED RIDER
 CHAPTER VI. THE MILL-WHEEL OF STEERS
 CHAPTER VII. THE DAUGHTER OF WITHERSTEEN
 CHAPTER VIII. SURPRISE VALLEY
 CHAPTER IX. SILVER SPRUCE AND ASPENS
 CHAPTER X. LOVE
 CHAPTER XI. FAITH AND UNFAITH
 CHAPTER XII. THE INVISIBLE HAND
 CHAPTER XIII. SOLITUDE AND STORM
 CHAPTER XIV. WEST WIND
 CHAPTER XV. SHADOWS ON THE SAGE-SLOPE
 CHAPTER XVI. GOLD
 CHAPTER XVII. WRANGLE’S RACE RUN
 CHAPTER XVIII. OLDRING’S KNELL
 CHAPTER XIX. FAY
 CHAPTER XX. LASSITER’S WAY
 CHAPTER XXI. BLACK STAR AND NIGHT
 CHAPTER XXII. RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
 CHAPTER XXIII. THE FALL OF BALANCING ROCK




ILLUSTRATIONS

 “He has brought you far to-day?”
 Like a flash the blue barrel of his rifle gleamed level and he shot once—twice.
 “Oh, he’s only a boy!... What! Can he be Oldring’s Masked Rider?”
 “What on earth is that?”
 He did not pause until he gained the narrow divide
 “Bess, I’ll not go again”
 It was Jane’s gaze riveted upon the rider that made Bishop Dyer turn.
 Venters and Bess finished their simple meal—then faced the open terrace, to watch and await the approaching storm.
 just as Wrangle plunged again he caught the whizz of a leaden missile
 and Venters shot him through the heart
 “Don’t—look—back!”
 When he and Bess rode up out of the hollow the sun was low.




CHAPTER I.
LASSITER


A sharp clip-clop 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, 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 cañons 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.”

“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 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 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.

“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.”

“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.

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, 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.”

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?”


[Illustration: “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, 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 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 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.

“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 cañons. Jane had
not spoken since Venters had shocked her with his first harsh 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 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 cañon? 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 cañon. 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?”

“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 cañons, 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.”

“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 circumstance 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 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 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 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 cañons 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 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!”

“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.

“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.

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.

“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 cañons 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.

“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.

“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.

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 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-cañoned 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 cañon 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 shading of brightness about him, and he saw a
kind of cold purple bloom creep ahead of him to cross the cañon, 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
cañon. 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 cañons 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.

Piñon 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 cañon. 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.

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 cañons, 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 cañon. 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 cañon, with Ring and Whitie trotting behind. An
old grass-grown trail followed the course of a shallow wash where
flowed a thin stream of water. The cañon was a hundred rods wide, its
yellow walls were perpendicular; it had abundant sage and a scant
growth of oak and piñon. 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 piñon-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 cañons.

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 cañons, 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 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
cañons, 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 cañons. 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 cañon 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 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 cañon, 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 cañon 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 cañons. 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 cañon. 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon!” 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 cañon 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.


[Illustration: 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.




CHAPTER V.
THE MASKED RIDER


Venters looked quickly from the fallen rustlers to the cañon 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 cañon, 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?”


[Illustration: “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.

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 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 cañon, 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 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
cañon.

“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 Masked 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 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 cañon, 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 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 cañons, and in the entrance of a third cañon
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
cañon 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.

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 cañon 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 piñon 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 piñons 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon his astonishment would not have been so great. There had
been no breaks in the walls, no side cañons entering this one where the
rustlers’ tracks and the cattle trail had guided him, and, therefore,
he could not be wrong. But here the cañon 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 cañon 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 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 cañon 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 cañons 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 cañon 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 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 cañons. 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
cañons 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 cañon. 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 cañon
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!”




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 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.

“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 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 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.”

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 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 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.”

“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?”


[Illustration: “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.”

“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
cañon! 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 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 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, 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.”

“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 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. 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.

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?”

“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.”

“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 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 cañon, 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 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.

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 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 cañon, 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
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. 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 cañon 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 cañons. 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 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 cañon 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 cañon
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 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 cañon. 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 afforded better
traveling than the cañon. 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. 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.

“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—cañon.”

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 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!”


[Illustration: He did not pause until he gained the narrow divide]


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 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 cañons 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 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 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
cañons. 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 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 sto

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