by Zane Grey
For long the gray ran even with his red pursuer. Then, by imperceptible degrees, Wildfire began to gain. He was a desert stallion, born with the desert’s ferocity of strife, the desert’s imperious will; he never had love for any horse; it was in him to rule and to kill. Lamar felt Wildfire grow wet and hot, felt the marvelous ease of the horse’s action gradually wearing to strain.
Another mile, and the trail turned among ridges of rock, along deep washes, at length to enter the broken country of crags and canyons. Cordts bent round in the saddle to shoot at Lamar. The bullet whistled perilously close; but Lamar withheld his fire. He had one shell left in his rifle; he would not risk that till he was sure.
He watched for a break in the King’s stride, for the plunge that meant that the gray was finished. Still the race went on and on. And in the lather that flew back to wet Lamar’s lips he tasted the hot blood of his horse. If it had been his own blood, the last drops spilled from his heart, he could not have felt more agony.
At last Sage King broke strangely, slowed in a few jumps, and, plunging down, threw Cordts over his head. The rustler leaped up and began to run, seeking cover.
Wildfire thundered on beyond the prostrate King. Then, with terrible muscular convulsion, as of internal collapse, he, too, broke and pounded slow, slower—to a stop.
Lamar slipped down and lifted Lucy from the saddle. Wildfire was white except where he was red, and that red was not now his glossy, flaming skin. He groaned and began to sag. On one knee and then the other he knelt, gave a long heave, and lay at length.
Lamar darted back in pursuit of Cordts. He descried the rustler running along the edge of a canyon. Lamar realized that he must be quick; but the rifle wavered because of his terrible eagerness. He was shaken by the intensity of the moment. With tragic earnestness he fought for coolness, for control.
Cordts reached a corner of cliff where he had to go slowly, to cling to the rock. It was then that Lamar felt himself again chilled through and through with that strange, grim power. He pulled trigger. Cordts paused as if to rest. He leaned against the face of the cliff, his hands up, and he kept that posture for a long moment. Then his hands began to slip. Slowly he swayed out over the canyon. His dark face flashed. Headlong he fell, to vanish below the rim.
Lamar hurriedly ran back and saw that the King was a beaten, broken horse, but he would live to run another race. Up the trail Lucy was kneeling beside Wildfire, and before Lamar got there he heard her sobbing. As if he were being dragged to execution, the rider went on, and then he was looking down upon his horse and crying:
“Wildfire! Wildfire!”
Choked, blinded, killed on his feet, Wildfire heard the voice of his master.
Jim! Oh, Jim!” moaned Lucy.
“He beat the King! And he carried double!” whispered Lamar,
While they knelt there, the crippled Nagger came limping up the trail, followed by Dusty Ben and Plume.
Again the rider called to his horse, with a cry now piercing, thrilling; but this time Wildfire did not respond.
V
The westering sun glanced brightly over the rippling sage, which rolled away from the Ford like a gray sea. Bostil sat on his porch, a stricken man. He faced the blue haze of the West, where, some hours before, all that he loved had vanished. His riders were grouped near him, silent, awed by his face, awaiting orders that did not come.
From behind a ridge puffed up a thin cloud of dust. Bostil saw it, and gave a start. Above the sage appeared a bobbing black dot—the head of a horse.
“Sarch!” exclaimed Bostil.
With spurs clinking”, his riders ran and trooped behind him.
“There’s Bullet!” cried one.
“An’ Two-Face!” added another.
“Saddled an’ riderless!”
Then all were tensely quiet, watching the racers come trotting in single file down the ridge. Sarchedon’s shrill neigh, like a whistle-blast, pealed in from the sage. From fields and corrals clamored the answer, attended by the clattering of hundreds of hoofs.
Sarchedon and his followers broke from trot to canter—canter to gallop—and soon were cracking their iron shoes on the stony road. Then, like a swarm of bees, the riders surrounded the racers and led them up to Bostil.
On Sarchedon’s neck showed a dry, dust-caked stain of reddish tinge. Bostil’s right-hand man, the hawk-eyed rider, gray as the sage from long service, carefully examined the stain.
“Wall, the rustler thet was up on Sarch got plugged, an’ in failin’ forrard he spilled some blood on the hoss’s neck.”
“Who shot him?” demanded Bostil.
“I reckon there’s only one rider on the sage thet could ever have got close enough to shoot a rustler up on Sarch.”
Bostil wheeled to face west. His brow was lowering; his hands were clenched. Riders led away the tired racers and returned to engage with the others in whispered speculation.
The afternoon wore on; the sun lost its brightness, and burned low and red. Again dust-clouds, now like reddened smoke, puffed over the ridge. Four horses, two carrying riders, appeared above the sage.
“Is that—a gray horse—or am I blind?” asked Bostil unsteadily.
The old rider shaded the hawk-eyes with his hand.
“Gray he is—gray as the sage, Bostil—an’ so help me if he ain’t the King!”
Bostil stared, rubbed his eyes as if his sight was dimmed, and stared again.
“Do I see Lucy?”
“Shore—shore!” replied the old rider.
“I seen her long ago. Why, sir, I can see thet gold hair of hers a mile across the sage. She’s up on Ben.”
The light of joy on Bostil’s face slowly shaded, and the change was one that silenced his riders. Abruptly he left them, to enter the house.
When he came forth again, brought out by the stamp of hoofs on the stones, his riders were escorting Lucy and Lamar into the courtyard. A wan smile flitted across Lucy’s haggard face as she saw her father, and she held out one arm to him. The other was bound in a bloody scarf.
Cursing deep, like the muttering of thunder, Bostil ran out.
“Lucy! For Heaven’s sake! You’re not bad hurt?”
“Only a little, Dad,” she said, and slipped down into his arms.
He kissed her pale face, and, carrying her to the door, roared for the women of his household.
When he reappeared, the crowd of riders scattered from around Lamar. Bostil looked at the King. The horse was caked with dusty lather, scratched and disheveled, weary and broken, yet somehow he was still beautiful. He raised his drooping head, and reached for his master with a look as soft and dark and eloquent as a woman’s.
No rider there but felt Bostil’s grief. He loved the King. He believed the King had been beaten; and his rider’s glory and pride were battling with love. Mighty as that was in Bostil, it did not at once overcome his hatred of defeat.
Slowly the gaze of the rancher, moved from the King to tired Ben and Plume, over the bleeding Nagger, at last to rest on the white-faced Lamar. But Bostil was not looking for Lamar. His hard eyes veered to and fro. Among those horses there was not the horse he sought.
“Where’s the red stallion?” he asked. Lamar raised eyes dark with pain, yet they flashed as he looked straight into Bostil’s face.
“Wildfire’s dead.”
“Shot?”
“No.”
“What killed him?” Bostil’s voice had a vibrating ring.
“The King, sir; killed him on his feet.”
Bostil’s lean jaw bulged and quivered. His hand shook a little as he laid it on the King’s tangled mane.
“Jim—what the—” he said brokenly, with voice strangely softened.
“Mr. Bostil, we’ve had some fighting and running. Lucy was hit—so was Nagger. And the King killed Wildfire on his feet. But I got Cordts and three of his men—maybe four. I’ve no more to say, sir.”
Bostil put his arm round the young man’s shoulder.
“Lamar, you’ve said enough. If I don’t know how you feel about the loss of that grand horse, no rider on earth knows. But let me say I reckon I never knew your real worth. You can lead my riders. You can have the girl—God bless you both! And you can have anything else on this ranch—except the King!”
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE (1912) [Part 1]
CHAPTER I
LASSITER
A sharp clip-crop 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 canyons from which rose an up-hinging 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 someone 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.
Jane impulsively stepped forwa
rd. “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.