Riders of the Purple Sage (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by Zane Grey

  Bunches of scattered sage covered the center of the canon, 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 canon 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 canons. 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 sagebrush 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 struggling horsemen were riding across the oval. He sank down, startled and trembling. "Rustlers," he muttered. Hurriedly he glanced about for a place to hide. He dared not risk crossing the open patches to reach the rocks. Again he peeped over the sage. The rustlers-four-fiveseven-eight in all-were approaching, but not directly in line with him. That was relief for a cold deadness that 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 canon. 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. Oldring's band had split. Venters watched these horsemen disappear under a bold canon 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 canon 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 canon they had ridden it was too late to tell. He watched the three ride across the oval and around the jutting red corner where the others had gone.

  "Up that canon!" 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 canon 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 allabsorbing 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 100 yards, coming straight at him. One, lagging behind the other, was Oldring's Masked Rider.

  Venters cunningly sank, slowly trying to merge into sagebrush. 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 sagebrush. 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.

  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.

  Venters looked quickly from the fallen rustler to the canon 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 canon 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. 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 weapon. 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?"

  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 toward 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 Venters'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. Now 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 that he was about to finish with his knife. But in her it held infinitely more-a revelation of mortal spirit. The instinctive clinging 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... someday. 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 limply, 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 sage leaves from a bush, and, pressing them tightly over her wounds, he bound the black scarf around 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. The horse that had stood by, drooping, 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 canon, 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 sidewise 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. Although marble pale and cold, she was living. Venters then appreciated the tax that long carrying 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 Masked Rider's 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 canon 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 into his canon 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 that was its counterpart. Venters noted, however, that the burning flush had faded into the former pallor.

  The sun set behind the high canon rim, and a cool shade darkened the walls. Venters fed the dogs and put halters on the other horses. He allowed Wrangle to browse freely. 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 who 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 cold starlight. The horses were not moving, and no sound disturbed the deathly silence of the canon. I'll bury her here, thought Venters, and let her grave be as much a mystery as her life was. 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 or sisters or 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 memhers 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 bloodstains from her breast and carefully re-bandage 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. 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. If he intended to follow the cattle trail and try to find the rustlers, he had better make a move at once. 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. 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 closely under the wall of the canon, 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 canons, and in the entrance of a third canon 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 canon wound for a mile or more and then opened into a valley. Patches of red showed clearly 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 enclosed 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!"