Riders of the Purple Sage

by Zane Grey

  CHAPTER XI. FAITH AND UNFAITH

  At Jane Withersteen's home the promise made to Mrs. Larkin to care forlittle Fay had begun to be fulfilled. Like a gleam of sunlight throughthe cottonwoods was the coming of the child to the gloomy house ofWithersteen. The big, silent halls echoed with childish laughter. In theshady court, where Jane spent many of the hot July days, Fay's tinyfeet pattered over the stone flags and splashed in the amber stream. Sheprattled incessantly. What difference, Jane thought, a child made in herhome! It had never been a real home, she discovered. Even the tidinessand neatness she had so observed, and upon which she had insisted to herwomen, became, in the light of Fay's smile, habits that now lost theirimportance. Fay littered the court with Jane's books and papers, andother toys her fancy improvised, and many a strange craft went floatingdown the little brook.

  And it was owing to Fay's presence that Jane Withersteen came to seemore of Lassiter. The rider had for the most part kept to the sage. Herode for her, but he did not seek her except on business; and Jane hadto acknowledge in pique that her overtures had been made in vain. Fay,however, captured Lassiter the moment he first laid eyes on her.

  Jane was present at the meeting, and there was something about it whichdimmed her sight and softened her toward this foe of her people. Therider had clanked into the court, a tired yet wary man, always lookingfor the attack upon him that was inevitable and might come from anyquarter; and he had walked right upon little Fay. The child had beenbeautiful even in her rags and amid the surroundings of the hovel in thesage, but now, in a pretty white dress, with her shining curls brushedand her face clean and rosy, she was lovely. She left her play andlooked up at Lassiter.

  If there was not an instinct for all three of them in that meeting, anunreasoning tendency toward a closer intimacy, then Jane Withersteenbelieved she had been subject to a queer fancy. She imagined any childwould have feared Lassiter. And Fay Larkin had been a lonely, a solitaryelf of the sage, not at all an ordinary child, and exquisitely shywith strangers. She watched Lassiter with great, round, grave eyes, butshowed no fear. The rider gave Jane a favorable report of cattle andhorses; and as he took the seat to which she invited him, little Fayedged as much as half an inch nearer. Jane replied to his look ofinquiry and told Fay's story. The rider's gray, earnest gaze troubledher. Then he turned to Fay and smiled in a way that made Jane doubt hersense of the true relation of things. How could Lassiter smile so at achild when he had made so many children fatherless? But he did smile,and to the gentleness she had seen a few times he added something thatwas infinitely sad and sweet. Jane's intuition told her that Lassiterhad never been a father, but if life ever so blessed him he would be agood one. Fay, also, must have found that smile singularly winning. Forshe edged closer and closer, and then, by way of feminine capitulation,went to Jane, from whose side she bent a beautiful glance upon therider.

  Lassiter only smiled at her.

  Jane watched them, and realized that now was the moment she shouldseize, if she was ever to win this man from his hatred. But the step wasnot easy to take. The more she saw of Lassiter the more she respectedhim, and the greater her respect the harder it became to lend herself tomere coquetry. Yet as she thought of her great motive, of Tull, andof that other whose name she had schooled herself never to think ofin connection with Milly Erne's avenger, she suddenly found she had nochoice. And her creed gave her boldness far beyond the limit to whichvanity would have led her.

  "Lassiter, I see so little of you now," she said, and was conscious ofheat in her cheeks.

  "I've been riding hard," he replied.

  "But you can't live in the saddle. You come in sometimes. Won't you comehere to see me--oftener?"

  "Is that an order?"

  "Nonsense! I simply ask you to come to see me when you find time."

  "Why?"

  The query once heard was not so embarrassing to Jane as she might haveimagined. Moreover, it established in her mind a fact that there existedactually other than selfish reasons for her wanting to see him. And asshe had been bold, so she determined to be both honest and brave.

  "I've reasons--only one of which I need mention," she answered. "If it'spossible I want to change you toward my people. And on the moment I canconceive of little I wouldn't do to gain that end."

  How much better and freer Jane felt after that confession! She meant toshow him that there was one Mormon who could play a game or wage a fightin the open.

  "I reckon," said Lassiter, and he laughed.

  It was the best in her, if the most irritating, that Lassiter alwaysaroused.

  "Will you come?" She looked into his eyes, and for the life of her couldnot quite subdue an imperiousness that rose with her spirit. "I neverasked so much of any man--except Bern Venters."

  "'Pears to me that you'd run no risk, or Venters, either. But mebbe thatdoesn't hold good for me."

  "You mean it wouldn't be safe for you to be often here? You look forambush in the cottonwoods?"

  "Not that so much."

  At this juncture little Fay sidled over to Lassiter.

  "Has oo a little dirl?" she inquired.

  "No, lassie," replied the rider.

  Whatever Fay seemed to be searching for in Lassiter's sun-reddened faceand quiet eyes she evidently found. "Oo tan tom to see me," she added,and with that, shyness gave place to friendly curiosity. First hissombrero with its leather band and silver ornaments commanded herattention; next his quirt, and then the clinking, silver spurs. Theseheld her for some time, but presently, true to childish fickleness, sheleft off playing with them to look for something else. She laughed inglee as she ran her little hands down the slippery, shiny surfaceof Lassiter's leather chaps. Soon she discovered one of the hanginggun--sheaths, and she dragged it up and began tugging at the huge blackhandle of the gun. Jane Withersteen repressed an exclamation. Whatsignificance there was to her in the little girl's efforts to dislodgethat heavy weapon! Jane Withersteen saw Fay's play and her beauty andher love as most powerful allies to her own woman's part in a game thatsuddenly had acquired a strange zest and a hint of danger. And as forthe rider, he appeared to have forgotten Jane in the wonder of thislovely child playing about him. At first he was much the shyer of thetwo. Gradually her confidence overcame his backwardness, and he had thetemerity to stroke her golden curls with a great hand. Fay rewarded hisboldness with a smile, and when he had gone to the extreme of closingthat great hand over her little brown one, she said, simply, "I likeoo!"

  Sight of his face then made Jane oblivious for the time to his characteras a hater of Mormons. Out of the mother longing that swelled her breastshe divined the child hunger in Lassiter.

  He returned the next day, and the next; and upon the following he cameboth at morning and at night. Upon the evening of this fourth day Janeseemed to feel the breaking of a brooding struggle in Lassiter. Duringall these visits he had scarcely a word to say, though he watched herand played absent-mindedly with Fay. Jane had contented herself withsilence. Soon little Fay substituted for the expression of regard, "Ilike oo," a warmer and more generous one, "I love oo."

  Thereafter Lassiter came oftener to see Jane and her little protegee.Daily he grew more gentle and kind, and gradually developed a quaintlymerry mood. In the morning he lifted Fay upon his horse and let herride as he walked beside her to the edge of the sage. In the evening heplayed with the child at an infinite variety of games she invented,and then, oftener than not, he accepted Jane's invitation to supper. Noother visitor came to Withersteen House during those days. So that inspite of watchfulness he never forgot, Lassiter began to show he felt athome there. After the meal they walked into the grove of cottonwoods orup by the lakes, and little Fay held Lassiter's hand as much as she heldJane's. Thus a strange relationship was established, and Jane liked it.At twilight they always returned to the house, where Fay kissed them andwent in to her mother. Lassiter and Jane were left alone.

  Then, if there were anything that a good woman could do to win a manand still preserve
her self-respect, it was something which escaped thenatural subtlety of a woman determined to allure. Jane's vanity, thatafter all was not great, was soon satisfied with Lassiter's silentadmiration. And her honest desire to lead him from his dark,blood-stained path would never have blinded her to what she owedherself. But the driving passion of her religion, and its call to saveMormons' lives, one life in particular, bore Jane Withersteen close toan infringement of her womanhood. In the beginning she had reasoned thather appeal to Lassiter must be through the senses. With whatever meansshe possessed in the way of adornment she enhanced her beauty. And shestooped to artifices that she knew were unworthy of her, but whichshe deliberately chose to employ. She made of herself a girl in everyvariable mood wherein a girl might be desirable. In those moods she wasnot above the methods of an inexperienced though natural flirt. Shekept close to him whenever opportunity afforded; and she was foreverplayfully, yet passionately underneath the surface, fighting him forpossession of the great black guns. These he would never yield to her.And so in that manner their hands were often and long in contact. Themore of simplicity that she sensed in him the greater the advantage shetook.

  She had a trick of changing--and it was not altogether voluntary--fromthis gay, thoughtless, girlish coquettishness to the silence and thebrooding, burning mystery of a woman's mood. The strength and passionand fire of her were in her eyes, and she so used them that Lassiter hadto see this depth in her, this haunting promise more fitted to her yearsthan to the flaunting guise of a wilful girl.

  The July days flew by. Jane reasoned that if it were possible for her tobe happy during such a time, then she was happy. Little Fay completelyfilled a long aching void in her heart. In fettering the hands of thisLassiter she was accomplishing the greatest good of her life, and to dogood even in a small way rendered happiness to Jane Withersteen. She hadattended the regular Sunday services of her church; otherwise she hadnot gone to the village for weeks. It was unusual that none of herchurchmen or friends had called upon her of late; but it was neglectfor which she was glad. Judkins and his boy riders had experienced nodifficulty in driving the white herd. So these warm July days were freeof worry, and soon Jane hoped she had passed the crisis; and for her tohope was presently to trust, and then to believe. She thought often ofVenters, but in a dreamy, abstract way. She spent hours teaching andplaying with little Fay. And the activity of her mind centered aroundLassiter. The direction she had given her will seemed to blunt anybranching off of thought from that straight line. The mood came toobsess her.

  In the end, when her awakening came, she learned that she had buildedbetter than she knew. Lassiter, though kinder and gentler than ever, hadparted with his quaint humor and his coldness and his tranquillity tobecome a restless and unhappy man. Whatever the power of his deadlyintent toward Mormons, that passion now had a rival, the one equallyburning and consuming. Jane Withersteen had one moment of exultationbefore the dawn of a strange uneasiness. What if she had made of herselfa lure, at tremendous cost to him and to her, and all in vain!

  That night in the moonlit grove she summoned all her courage and,turning suddenly in the path, she faced Lassiter and leaned close tohim, so that she touched him and her eyes looked up to his.

  "Lassiter!... Will you do anything for me?"

  In the moonlight she saw his dark, worn face change, and by that changeshe seemed to feel him immovable as a wall of stone.

  Jane slipped her hands down to the swinging gun-sheaths, and when shehad locked her fingers around the huge, cold handles of the guns, shetrembled as with a chilling ripple over all her body.

  "May I take your guns?"

  "Why?" he asked, and for the first time to her his voice carried a harshnote. Jane felt his hard, strong hands close round her wrists. It wasnot wholly with intent that she leaned toward him, for the look of hiseyes and the feel of his hands made her weak.

  "It's no trifle--no woman's whim--it's deep--as my heart. Let me takethem?"

  "Why?"

  "I want to keep you from killing more men--Mormons. You must let me saveyou from more wickedness--more wanton bloodshed--" Then the truth forceditself falteringly from her lips. "You must--let--help me to keep my vowto Milly Erne. I swore to her--as she lay dying--that if ever any onecame here to avenge her--I swore I would stay his hand. Perhaps I--Ialone can save the--the man who--who--Oh, Lassiter!... I feel that Ican't change you--then soon you'll be out to kill--and you'll killby instinct--and among the Mormons you kill will be theone--who... Lassiter, if you care a little for me--let me--for mysake--let me take your guns!"

  As if her hands had been those of a child, he unclasped their clinginggrip from the handles of his guns, and, pushing her away, he turned hisgray face to her in one look of terrible realization and then strode offinto the shadows of the cottonwoods.

  When the first shock of her futile appeal to Lassiter had passed, Janetook his cold, silent condemnation and abrupt departure not so much as arefusal to her entreaty as a hurt and stunned bitterness for herattempt at his betrayal. Upon further thought and slow consideration ofLassiter's past actions, she believed he would return and forgive her.The man could not be hard to a woman, and she doubted that he couldstay away from her. But at the point where she had hoped to find himvulnerable she now began to fear he was proof against all persuasion.The iron and stone quality that she had early suspected in him hadactually cropped out as an impregnable barrier. Nevertheless, ifLassiter remained in Cottonwoods she would never give up her hope anddesire to change him. She would change him if she had to sacrificeeverything dear to her except hope of heaven. Passionately devoted asshe was to her religion, she had yet refused to marry a Mormon. But asituation had developed wherein self paled in the great white light ofreligious duty of the highest order. That was the leading motive,the divinely spiritual one; but there were other motives, which, liketentacles, aided in drawing her will to the acceptance of a possibleabnegation. And through the watches of that sleepless night JaneWithersteen, in fear and sorrow and doubt, came finally to believe thatif she must throw herself into Lassiter's arms to make him abide by"Thou shalt not kill!" she would yet do well.

  In the morning she expected Lassiter at the usual hour, but she was notable to go at once to the court, so she sent little Fay. Mrs. Larkin wasill and required attention. It appeared that the mother, from the timeof her arrival at Withersteen House, had relaxed and was slowlylosing her hold on life. Jane had believed that absence of worry andresponsibility coupled with good nursing and comfort would mend Mrs.Larkin's broken health. Such, however, was not the case.

  When Jane did get out to the court, Fay was there alone, and at themoment embarking on a dubious voyage down the stone-lined amber streamupon a craft of two brooms and a pillow. Fay was as delightfully wet asshe could possibly wish to get.

  Clatter of hoofs distracted Fay and interrupted the scolding she wasgleefully receiving from Jane. The sound was not the light-spirited trotthat Bells made when Lassiter rode him into the outer court. This wasslower and heavier, and Jane did not recognize in it any of her otherhorses. The appearance of Bishop Dyer startled Jane. He dismounted withhis rapid, jerky motion flung the bridle, and, as he turned toward theinner court and stalked up on the stone flags, his boots rang. In hisauthoritative front, and in the red anger unmistakably flaming in hisface, he reminded Jane of her father.

  "Is that the Larkin pauper?" he asked, bruskly, without any greeting toJane.

  "It's Mrs. Larkin's little girl," replied Jane, slowly.

  "I hear you intend to raise the child?"

  "Yes."

  "Of course you mean to give her Mormon bringing-up?"

  "No."

  His questions had been swift. She was amazed at a feeling that some oneelse was replying for her.

  "I've come to say a few things to you." He stopped to measure her withstern, speculative eye.

  Jane Withersteen loved this man. From earliest childhood she had beentaught to revere and love bishops of her church. And for ten yearsBisho
p Dyer had been the closest friend and counselor of her father,and for the greater part of that period her own friend and Scripturalteacher. Her interpretation of her creed and her religious activity infidelity to it, her acceptance of mysterious and holy Mormon truths,were all invested in this Bishop. Bishop Dyer as an entity was nextto God. He was God's mouthpiece to the little Mormon community atCottonwoods. God revealed himself in secret to this mortal.

  And Jane Withersteen suddenly suffered a paralyzing affront to herconsciousness of reverence by some strange, irresistible twist ofthought wherein she saw this Bishop as a man. And the train of thoughthurdled the rising, crying protests of that other self whose poise shehad lost. It was not her Bishop who eyed her in curious measurement. Itwas a man who tramped into her presence without removing his hat, whohad no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks,as in action, he made her think of a bull stamping cross-grained into acorral. She had heard of Bishop Dyer forgetting the minister in the furyof a common man, and now she was to feel it. The glance by which shemeasured him in turn momentarily veiled the divine in the ordinary.He looked a rancher; he was booted, spurred, and covered with dust; hecarried a gun at his hip, and she remembered that he had been knownto use it. But during the long moment while he watched her there wasnothing commonplace in the slow-gathering might of his wrath.

  "Brother Tull has talked to me," he began. "It was your father's wishthat you marry Tull, and my order. You refused him?"

  "Yes."

  "You would not give up your friendship with that tramp Venters?"

  "No."

  "But you'll do as _I_ order!" he thundered. "Why, Jane Withersteen, youare in danger of becoming a heretic! You can thank your Gentile friendsfor that. You face the damning of your soul to perdition."

  In the flux and reflux of the whirling torture of Jane's mind, that new,daring spirit of hers vanished in the old habitual order of her life.She was a Mormon, and the Bishop regained ascendance.

  "It's well I got you in time, Jane Withersteen. What would your fatherhave said to these goings-on of yours? He would have put you in astone cage on bread and water. He would have taught you something aboutMormonism. Remember, you're a born Mormon. There have been Mormons whoturned heretic--damn their souls!--but no born Mormon ever left us yet.Ah, I see your shame. Your faith is not shaken. You are only a wildgirl." The Bishop's tone softened. "Well, it's enough that I got to youin time.... Now tell me about this Lassiter. I hear strange things."

  "What do you wish to know?" queried Jane.

  "About this man. You hired him?"

  "Yes, he's riding for me. When my riders left me I had to have any one Icould get."

  "Is it true what I hear--that he's a gun-man, a Mormon-hater, steeped inblood?"

  "True--terribly true, I fear."

  "But what's he doing here in Cottonwoods? This place isn't notoriousenough for such a man. Sterling and the villages north, where there'suniversal gun-packing and fights every day--where there are more menlike him, it seems to me they would attract him most. We're only a wild,lonely border settlement. It's only recently that the rustlers have madekillings here. Nor have there been saloons till lately, nor the driftingin of outcasts. Has not this gun-man some special mission here?"

  Jane maintained silence.

  "Tell me," ordered Bishop Dyer, sharply.

  "Yes," she replied.

  "Do you know what it is?"

  "Yes."

  "Tell me that."

  "Bishop Dyer, I don't want to tell."

  He waved his hand in an imperative gesture of command. The red once moreleaped to his face, and in his steel-blue eyes glinted a pin-point ofcuriosity.

  "That first day," whispered Jane, "Lassiter said he came here tofind--Milly Erne's grave!"

  With downcast eyes Jane watched the swift flow of the amber water. Shesaw it and tried to think of it, of the stones, of the ferns; but, likeher body, her mind was in a leaden vise. Only the Bishop's voice couldrelease her. Seemingly there was silence of longer duration than all herformer life.

  "For what--else?" When Bishop Dyer's voice did cleave the silence it washigh, curiously shrill, and on the point of breaking. It released Jane'stongue, but she could not lift her eyes.

  "To kill the man who persuaded Milly Erne to abandon her home and herhusband--and her God!"

  With wonderful distinctness Jane Withersteen heard her own clear voice.She heard the water murmur at her feet and flow on to the sea; she heardthe rushing of all the waters in the world. They filled her ears withlow, unreal murmurings--these sounds that deadened her brain andyet could not break the long and terrible silence. Then, fromsomewhere--from an immeasurable distance--came a slow, guarded,clinking, clanking step. Into her it shot electrifying life. It releasedthe weight upon her numbed eyelids. Lifting her eyes she saw--ashen,shaken, stricken--not the Bishop but the man! And beyond him, fromround the corner came that soft, silvery step. A long black boot with agleaming spur swept into sight--and then Lassiter! Bishop Dyer did notsee, did not hear: he stared at Jane in the throes of sudden revelation.

  "Ah, I understand!" he cried, in hoarse accents. "That's why you madelove to this Lassiter--to bind his hands!"

  It was Jane's gaze riveted upon the rider that made Bishop Dyer turn.Then clear sight failed her. Dizzily, in a blur, she saw the Bishop'shand jerk to his hip. She saw gleam of blue and spout of red. In herears burst a thundering report. The court floated in darkening circlesaround her, and she fell into utter blackness.

  The darkness lightened, turned to slow-drifting haze, and lifted.Through a thin film of blue smoke she saw the rough-hewn timbers ofthe court roof. A cool, damp touch moved across her brow. She smelledpowder, and it was that which galvanized her suspended thought. Shemoved, to see that she lay prone upon the stone flags with her head onLassiter's knee, and he was bathing her brow with water from the stream.The same swift glance, shifting low, brought into range of her sight asmoking gun and splashes of blood.

  "Ah-h!" she moaned, and was drifting, sinking again into darkness, whenLassiter's voice arrested her.

  "It's all right, Jane. It's all right."

  "Did--you--kill--him?" she whispered.

  "Who? That fat party who was here? No. I didn't kill him."

  "Oh!... Lassiter!"

  "Say! It was queer for you to faint. I thought you were such a strongwoman, not faintish like that. You're all right now--only some pale.I thought you'd never come to. But I'm awkward round women folks. Icouldn't think of anythin'."

  "Lassiter!... the gun there!... the blood!"

  "So that's troublin' you. I reckon it needn't. You see it was this way.I come round the house an' seen that fat party an' heard him talkin'loud. Then he seen me, an' very impolite goes straight for his gun. Heoughtn't have tried to throw a gun on me--whatever his reason was. Forthat's meetin' me on my own grounds. I've seen runnin' molasses thatwas quicker 'n him. Now I didn't know who he was, visitor or friendor relation of yours, though I seen he was a Mormon all over, an' Icouldn't get serious about shootin'. So I winged him--put a bulletthrough his arm as he was pullin' at his gun. An' he dropped thegun there, an' a little blood. I told him he'd introduced himselfsufficient, an' to please move out of my vicinity. An' he went."

  Lassiter spoke with slow, cool, soothing voice, in which there was ahint of levity, and his touch, as he continued to bathe her brow, wasgentle and steady. His impassive face, and the kind gray eyes, furtherstilled her agitation.

  "He drew on you first, and you deliberately shot to cripple him--youwouldn't kill him--you--Lassiter?"

  "That's about the size of it."

  Jane kissed his hand.

  All that was calm and cool about Lassiter instantly vanished.

  "Don't do that! I won't stand it! An' I don't care a damn who that fatparty was."

  He helped Jane to her feet and to a chair. Then with the wet scarf hehad used to bathe her face he wiped the blood from the stone flags and,picking up the gun, he threw it upon a couch. Wit
h that he began topace the court, and his silver spurs jangled musically, and the greatgun-sheaths softly brushed against his leather chaps.

  "So--it's true--what I heard him say?" Lassiter asked, presently haltingbefore her. "You made love to me--to bind my hands?"

  "Yes," confessed Jane. It took all her woman's courage to meet the graystorm of his glance.

  "All these days that you've been so friendly an' like a pardner--allthese evenin's that have been so bewilderin' to me--yourbeauty--an'--an' the way you looked an' came close to me--they werewoman's tricks to bind my hands?"

  "Yes."

  "An' your sweetness that seemed so natural, an' your throwin' little Fayan' me so much together--to make me love the child--all that was for thesame reason?"

  "Yes."

  Lassiter flung his arms--a strange gesture for him.

  "Mebbe it wasn't much in your Mormon thinkin', for you to play thatgame. But to ring the child in--that was hellish!"

  Jane's passionate, unheeding zeal began to loom darkly.

  "Lassiter, whatever my intention in the beginning, Fay loves youdearly--and I--I've grown to--to like you."

  "That's powerful kind of you, now," he said. Sarcasm and scorn made hisvoice that of a stranger. "An' you sit there an' look me straight in theeyes! You're a wonderful strange woman, Jane Withersteen."

  "I'm not ashamed, Lassiter. I told you I'd try to change you."

  "Would you mind tellin' me just what you tried?"

  "I tried to make you see beauty in me and be softened by it. I wantedyou to care for me so that I could influence you. It wasn't easy. Atfirst you were stone-blind. Then I hoped you'd love little Fay, andthrough that come to feel the horror of making children fatherless."

  "Jane Withersteen, either you're a fool or noble beyond myunderstandin'. Mebbe you're both. I know you're blind. What you meant isone thing--what you did was to make me love you."

  "Lassiter!"

  "I reckon I'm a human bein', though I never loved any one but my sister,Milly Erne. That was long--"

  "Oh, are you Milly's brother?"

  "Yes, I was, an' I loved her. There never was any one but her in my lifetill now. Didn't I tell you that long ago I back-trailed myself fromwomen? I was a Texas ranger till--till Milly left home, an' then Ibecame somethin' else--Lassiter! For years I've been a lonely man set onone thing. I came here an' met you. An' now I'm not the man I was. Thechange was gradual, an' I took no notice of it. I understand now thatnever-satisfied longin' to see you, listen to you, watch you, feel younear me. It's plain now why you were never out of my thoughts. I've hadno thoughts but of you. I've lived an' breathed for you. An' now when Iknow what it means--what you've done--I'm burnin' up with hell's fire!"

  "Oh, Lassiter--no--no--you don't love me that way!" Jane cased.

  "If that's what love is, then I do."

  "Forgive me! I didn't mean to make you love me like that. Oh, what atangle of our lives! You--Milly Erne's brother! And I--heedless, mad tomelt your heart toward Mormons. Lassiter, I may be wicked but not wickedenough to hate. If I couldn't hate Tull, could I hate you?"

  "After all, Jane, mebbe you're only blind--Mormon blind. That only canexplain what's close to selfishness--"

  "I'm not selfish. I despise the very word. If I were free--"

  "But you're not free. Not free of Mormonism. An' in playin' this gamewith me you've been unfaithful."

  "Un-faithful!" faltered Jane.

  "Yes, I said unfaithful. You're faithful to your Bishop an' unfaithfulto yourself. You're false to your womanhood an' true to yourreligion. But for a savin' innocence you'd have made yourself low an'vile--betrayin' yourself, betrayin' me--all to bind my hands an' keep mefrom snuffin' out Mormon life. It's your damned Mormon blindness."

  "Is it vile--is it blind--is it only Mormonism to save human life? No,Lassiter, that's God's law, divine, universal for all Christians."

  "The blindness I mean is blindness that keeps you from seein' the truth.I've known many good Mormons. But some are blacker than hell. You won'tsee that even when you know it. Else, why all this blind passion to savethe life of that--that...."

  Jane shut out the light, and the hands she held over her eyes trembledand quivered against her face.

  "Blind--yes, en' let me make it clear en' simple to you," Lassiter wenton, his voice losing its tone of anger. "Take, for instance, that ideaof yours last night when you wanted my guns. It was good an' beautiful,an' showed your heart--but--why, Jane, it was crazy. Mind I'm assumin'that life to me is as sweet as to any other man. An' to preserve thatlife is each man's first an' closest thought. Where would any man be onthis border without guns? Where, especially, would Lassiter be? Well,I'd be under the sage with thousands of other men now livin' an' surebetter men than me. Gun-packin' in the West since the Civil War hasgrowed into a kind of moral law. An' out here on this border it's thedifference between a man an' somethin' not a man. Look what your takin'Venters's guns from him all but made him! Why, your churchmen carryguns. Tull has killed a man an' drawed on others. Your Bishop has shota half dozen men, an' it wasn't through prayers of his that theyrecovered. An' to-day he'd have shot me if he'd been quick enough on thedraw. Could I walk or ride down into Cottonwoods without my guns?This is a wild time, Jane Withersteen, this year of our Lord eighteenseventy-one."

  "No time--for a woman!" exclaimed Jane, brokenly. "Oh, Lassiter, I feelhelpless--lost--and don't know where to turn. If I am blind--then--Ineed some one--a friend--you, Lassiter--more than ever!"

  "Well, I didn't say nothin' about goin' back on you, did I?"