by Zane Grey
“Things at home had changed. I never got over that homecomin’. Mother was dead an’ in her grave. Father was a silent, broken man, killed already on his feet. Frank Erne was a ghost of his old self, through with workin’, through with preachin’, almost through with livin’, an’ Milly was gone!… It was a long time before I got the story. Father had no mind left, an’ Frank Erne was afraid to talk. So I had to pick up whet ’d happened from different people.
“It ’pears that soon after I left home another preacher come to the little town. An’ he an’ Frank become rivals. This feller was different from Frank. He preached some other kind of religion, and he was quick an’ passionate, where Frank was slow an’ mild. He went after people, women specially. In looks he couldn’t compare to Frank Erne, but he had power over women. He had a voice, an’ he talked an’ talked an’ preached an’ preached. Milly fell under his influence. She became mightily interested in his religion. Frank had patience with her, as was his way, an’ let her be as interested as she liked. All religions were devoted to one God, he said, an’ it wouldn’t hurt Milly none to study a different point of view. So the new preacher often called on Milly, an’ sometimes in Frank’s absence. Frank was a cattle-man between Sundays.
“Along about this time an incident come off that I couldn’t get much light on. A stranger come to town, an’ was seen with the preacher. This stranger was a big man with an eye like blue ice, an’ a beard of gold. He had money, an’ he ’peared a man of mystery, an’ the town went to buzzin’ when he disappeared about the same time as a young woman known to be mightily interested in the new preacher’s religion. Then, presently, along comes a man from somewheres in Illinois, en’ he up an’ spots this preacher as a famous Mormon proselyter. That riled Frank Erne as nothin’ ever before, an’ from rivals they come to be bitter enemies. An’ it ended in Frank goin’ to the meetin’-house where Milly was listenin’, en’ before her en’ everybody else he called that preacher—called him, well, almost as hard as Venters called Tull here sometime back. An’ Frank followed up that call with a hosswhippin’, en’ he drove the proselyter out of town.
“People noticed, so ’twas said, that Milly’s sweet disposition changed. Some said it was because she would soon become a mother, en’ others said she was pinin’ after the new religion. An’ there was women who said right out that she was pinin’ after the Mormon. Anyway, one mornin’ Frank rode in from one of his trips, to find Milly gone. He had no real near neighbors—livin’ a little out of town—but those who was nearest said a wagon had gone by in the night, an’ they though it stopped at her door. Well, tracks always tell, an’ there was the wagon tracks an’ hoss tracks an’ man tracks. The news spread like wildfire that Milly had run off from her husband. Everybody but Frank believed it an’ wasn’t slow in tellin’ why she run off. Mother had always hated that strange streak of Milly’s, takin’ up with the new religion as she had, an’ she believed Milly ran off with the Mormon. That hastened mother’s death, an’ she died unforgivin’. Father wasn’t the kind to bow down under disgrace or misfortune but he had surpassin’ love for Milly, an’ the loss of her broke him.
“From the minute I heard of Milly’s disappearance I never believed she went off of her own free will. I knew Milly, an’ I knew she couldn’t have done that. I stayed at home awhile, tryin’ to make Frank Erne talk. But if he knowed anythin’ then he wouldn’t tell it. So I set out to find Milly. An’ I tried to get on the trail of that proselyter. I knew if I ever struck a town he’d visited that I’d get a trail. I knew, too, that nothin’ short of hell would stop his proselytin’. An’ I rode from town to town. I had a blind faith that somethin’ was guidin’ me. An’ as the weeks an’ months went by I growed into a strange sort of a man, I guess. Anyway, people were afraid of me. Two years after that, way over in a corner of Texas, I struck a town where my man had been. He’d jest left. People said he came to that town without a woman. I back-trailed my man through Arkansas an’ Mississippi, an’ the old trail got hot again in Texas. I found the town where he first went after leavin’ home. An’ here I got track of Milly. I found a cabin where she had given birth to her baby. There was no way to tell whether she’d been kept a prisoner or not. The feller who owned the place was a mean, silent sort of a skunk, an’ as I was leavin’ I jest took a chance an’ left my mark on him. Then I went home again.
“It was to find I hadn’t any home, no more. Father had been dead a year. Frank Erne still lived in the house where Milly had left him. I stayed with him awhile, an’ I grew old watchin’ him. His farm had gone to weed, his cattle had strayed or been rustled, his house weathered till it wouldn’t keep out rain nor wind. An’ Frank set on the porch and whittled sticks, an’ day by day wasted away. There was times when he ranted about like a crazy man, but mostly he was always sittin’ an’ starin’ with eyes that made a man curse. I figured Frank had a secret fear that I needed to know. An’ when I told him I’d trailed Milly for near three years an’ had got trace of her, an’ saw where she’d had her baby, I thought he would drop dead at my feet. An’ when he’d come round more natural-like he begged me to give up the trail. But he wouldn’t explain. So I let him alone, an’ watched him day en’ night.
“An’ I found there was one thing still precious to him, an’ it was a little drawer where he kept his papers. This was in the room where he slept. An’ it ’peared he seldom slept. But after bein’ patient I got the contents of that drawer an’ found two letters from Milly. One was a long letter written a few months after her disappearance. She had been bound an’ gagged an’ dragged away from her home by three men, an’ she named them—Hurd, Metzger, Slack. They was strangers to her. She was taken to the little town where I found trace of her two years after. But she didn’t send the letter from that town. There she was penned in. ’Peared that the proselytes, who had, of course, come on the scene, was not runnin’ any risks of losin’ her. She went on to say that for a time she was out of her head, an’ when she got right again all that kept her alive was the baby. It was a beautiful baby, she said, an’ all she thought an’ dreamed of was somehow to get baby back to its father, an’ then she’d thankfully lay down and die. An’ the letter ended abrupt, in the middle of a sentence, en’ it wasn’t signed.
“The second letter was written more than two years after the first. It was from Salt Lake City. It simply said that Milly had heard her brother was on her trail. She asked Frank to tell her brother to give up the search because if he didn’t she would suffer in a way too horrible to tell. She didn’t beg. She just stated a fact an’ made the simple request. An’ she ended that letter by sayin’ she would soon leave Salt Lake City with the man she had come to love, en’ would never be heard of again.
“I recognized Milly’s handwritin’, an’ I recognized her way of puttin’ things. But that second letter told me of some great change in her. Ponderin’ over it, I felt at last she’d either come to love that feller an’ his religion, or some terrible fear made her lie an’ say so. I couldn’t be sure which. But, of course, I meant to find out. I’ll say here, if I’d known Mormons then as I do now I’d left Milly to her fate. For mebbe she was right about what she’d suffer if I kept on her trail. But I was young an’ wild them days. First I went to the town where she’d first been taken, an’ I went to the place where she’d been kept. I got that skunk who owned the place, an’ took him out in the woods, an’ made him tell all he knowed. That wasn’t much as to length, but it was pure hell’s-fire in substance. This time I left him some incapacitated for any more skunk work short of hell. Then I hit the trail for Utah.
“That was fourteen years ago. I saw the incomin’ of most of the Mormons. It was a wild country an’ a wild time. I rode from town to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, camp to camp. I never stayed long in one place. I never had but one idea. I never rested. Four years went by, an’ I knowed every trail in northern Utah. I kept on an’ as time went by, an’ I’d begun to grow old in my search, I had firmer, blinder faith
in whatever was guidin’ me. Once I read about a feller who sailed the seven seas an’ traveled the world, an’ he had a story to tell, an’ whenever he seen the man to whom he must tell that story he knowed him on sight. I was like that, only I had a question to ask. An’ always I knew the man of whom I must ask. So I never really lost the trail, though for many years it was the dimmest trail ever followed by any man.
“Then come a change in my luck. Along in Central Utah I rounded up Hurd, an’ I whispered somethin’ in his ear, an’ watched his face, an’ then throwed a gun against his bowels. An’ he died with his teeth so tight shut I couldn’t have pried them open with a knife. Slack an’ Metzger that same year both heard me whisper the same question, an’ neither would they speak a word when they lay dyin’. Long before I’d learned no man of this breed or class—or God knows what—would give up any secrets! I had to see in a man’s fear of death the connections with Milly Erne’s fate. An’ as the years passed at long intervals I would find such a man.
“So as I drifted on the long trail down into southern Utah my name preceded me, an’ I had to meet a people prepared for me, an’ ready with guns. They made me a gun-man. An’ that suited me. In all this time signs of the proselyter an’ the giant with the blue-ice eyes an’ the gold beard seemed to fade dimmer out of the trail. Only twice in ten years did I find a trace of that mysterious man who had visited the proselyter at my home village. What he had to do with Milly’s fate was beyond all hope for me to learn, unless my guidin’ spirit led me to him! As for the other man, I knew, as sure as I breathed en’ the stars shone en’ the wind blew, that I’d meet him some day.
“Eighteen years I’ve been on the trail. An’ it led me to the last lonely villages of the Utah border. Eighteen years!… I feel pretty old now. I was only twenty when I hit that trail. Well, as I told you, back here a ways a Gentile said Jane Withersteen could tell me about Milly Erne an’ show me her grave!”
The low voice ceased, and Lassiter slowly turned his sombrero round and round, and appeared to be counting the silver ornaments on the band. Jane, leaning toward him, sat as if petrified, listening intently, waiting to hear more. She could have shrieked, but power of tongue and lips were denied her. She saw only this sad, gray, passion-worn man, and she heard only the faint rustling of the leaves.
“Well, I came to Cottonwoods,” went on Lassiter, “an’ you showed me Milly’s grave. An’ though your teeth have been shut tighter ’n them of all the dead men lyin’ back along that trail, jest the same you told me the secret I’ve lived these eighteen years to hear! Jane, I said you’d tell me without ever me askin’. I didn’t need to ask my question here. The day, you remember, when that fat party throwed a gun on me in your court, an’—”
“Oh! Hush!” whispered Jane, blindly holding up her hands.
“I seen in your face that Dyer, now a bishop, was the proselyter who ruined Milly Erne.”
For an instant Jane Withersteen’s brain was a whirling chaos and she recovered to find herself grasping at Lassiter like one drowning. And as if by a lightning stroke she sprang from her dull apathy into exquisite torture.
“It’s a lie! Lassiter! No, no!” she moaned. “I swear—you’re wrong!”
“Stop! You’d perjure yourself! But I’ll spare you that. You poor woman! Still blind! Still faithful!… Listen. I know. Let that settle it. An’ I give up my purpose!”
“What is it—you say?”
“I give up my purpose. I’ve come to see an’ feel differently. I can’t help poor Milly. An’ I’ve outgrowed revenge. I’ve come to see I can be no judge for men. I can’t kill a man jest for hate. Hate ain’t the same with me since I loved you and little Fay.”
“Lassiter! You mean you won’t kill him?” Jane whispered.
“No.”
“For my sake?”
“I reckon. I can’t understand, but I’ll respect your feelin’s.”
“Because you—oh, because you love me?… Eighteen years! You were that terrible Lassiter! And now—because you love me?”
“That’s it, Jane.”
“Oh, you’ll make me love you! How can I help but love you? My heart must be stone. But—oh, Lassiter, wait, wait! Give me time. I’m not what I was. Once it was so easy to love. Now it’s easy to hate. Wait! My faith in God—some God—still lives. By it I see happier times for you, poor passion-swayed wanderer! For me—a miserable, broken woman. I loved your sister Milly. I will love you. I can’t have fallen so low—I can’t be so abandoned by God—that I’ve no love left to give you. Wait! Let us forget Milly’s sad life. Ah, I knew it as no one else on earth! There’s one thing I shall tell you—if you are at my death-bed, but I can’t speak now.”
“I reckon I don’t want to hear no more,” said Lassiter.
Jane leaned against him, as if some pent-up force had rent its way out, she fell into a paroxysm of weeping. Lassiter held her in silent sympathy. By degrees she regained composure, and she was rising, sensible of being relieved of a weighty burden, when a sudden start on Lassiter’s part alarmed her.
“I heard hosses—hosses with muffled hoofs!” he said; and he got up guardedly.
“Where’s Fay?” asked Jane, hurriedly glancing round the shady knoll. The bright-haired child, who had appeared to be close all the time, was not in sight.
“Fay!” called Jane.
No answering shout of glee. No patter of flying feet. Jane saw Lassiter stiffen.
“Fay—oh—Fay!” Jane almost screamed.
The leaves quivered and rustled; a lonesome cricket chirped in the grass, a bee hummed by. The silence of the waning afternoon breathed hateful portent. It terrified Jane. When had silence been so infernal?
“She’s—only—strayed—out—of earshot,” faltered Jane, looking at Lassiter.
Pale, rigid as a statue, the rider stood, not in listening, searching posture, but in one of doomed certainty. Suddenly he grasped Jane with an iron hand, and, turning his face from her gaze, he strode with her from the knoll.
“See—Fay played here last—a house of stones an’ sticks.… An’ here’s a corral of pebbles with leaves for hosses,” said Lassiter, stridently, and pointed to the ground. “Back an’ forth she trailed here.… See, she’s buried somethin’—a dead grasshopper—there’s a tombstone… here she went, chasin’ a lizard—see the tiny streaked trail… she pulled bark off this cottonwood… look in the dust of the path—the letters you taught her—she’s drawn pictures of birds en’ hosses an’ people.… Look, a cross! Oh, Jane, your cross!”
Lassiter dragged Jane on, and as if from a book read the meaning of little Fay’s trail. All the way down the knoll, through the shrubbery, round and round a cottonwood, Fay’s vagrant fancy left records of her sweet musings and innocent play. Long had she lingered round a bird-nest to leave therein the gaudy wing of a butterfly. Long had she played beside the running stream sending adrift vessels freighted with pebbly cargo. Then she had wandered through the deep grass, her tiny feet scarcely turning a fragile blade, and she had dreamed beside some old faded flowers. Thus her steps led her into the broad lane. The little dimpled imprints of her bare feet showed clean-cut in the dust they went a little way down the lane; and then, at a point where they stopped, the great tracks of a man led out from the shrubbery and returned.
CHAPTER XX
LASSITER’S WAY
Footprints told the story of little Fay’s abduction. In anguish Jane Withersteen turned speechlessly to Lassiter, and, confirming her fears, she saw him gray-faced, aged all in a moment, stricken as if by a mortal blow.
Then all her life seemed to fall about her in wreck and ruin.
“It’s all over,” she heard her voice whisper. “It’s ended. I’m going—I’m going—”
“Where?” demanded Lassiter, suddenly looming darkly over her.
“To—to those cruel men—”
“Speak names!” thundered Lassiter.
“To Bishop Dyer—to Tull,” went on Jane, shocked into obedience.
“Well—what for?”
“I want little Fay. I can’t live without her. They’ve stolen her as they stole Milly Erne’s child. I must have little Fay. I want only her. I give up. I’ll go and tell Bishop Dyer—I’m broken. I’ll tell him I’m ready for the yoke—only give me back Fay—and—and I’ll marry Tull!”
“Never!” hissed Lassiter.
His long arm leaped at her. Almost running, he dragged her under the cottonwoods, across the court, into the huge hall of Withersteen House, and he shut the door with a force that jarred the heavy walls. Black Star and Night and Bells, since their return, had been locked in this hall, and now they stamped on the stone floor.
Lassiter released Jane and like a dizzy man swayed from her with a hoarse cry and leaned shaking against a table where he kept his rider’s accoutrements. He began to fumble in his saddlebags. His action brought a clinking, metallic sound—the rattling of gun-cartridges. His fingers trembled as he slipped cartridges into an extra belt. But as he buckled it over the one he habitually wore his hands became steady. This second belt contained two guns, smaller than the black ones swinging low, and he slipped them round so that his coat hid them. Then he fell to swift action. Jane Withersteen watched him, fascinated but uncomprehending and she saw him rapidly saddle Black Star and Night. Then he drew her into the light of the huge windows, standing over her, gripping her arm with fingers like cold steel.
“Yes, Jane, it’s ended—but you’re not goin’ to Dyer!… I’m goin’ instead!”
Looking at him—he was so terrible of aspect—she could not comprehend his words. Who was this man with the face gray as death, with eyes that would have made her shriek had she the strength, with the strange, ruthlessly bitter lips? Where was the gentle Lassiter? What was this presence in the hall, about him, about her—this cold, invisible presence?
“Yes, it’s ended, Jane,” he was saying, so awfully quiet and cool and implacable, “an’ I’m goin’ to make a little call. I’ll lock you in here, an’ when I get back have the saddle-bags full of meat an bread. An’ be ready to ride!”