Riders of the Purple Sage

“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!”

“Lassiter!” cried Jane.

Desperately she tried to meet his gray eyes, in vain, desperately she tried again, fought herself as feeling and thought resurged in torment, and she succeeded, and then she knew.

“No – no – no!” she wailed. “You said you’d foregone your vengeance. You promised not to kill Bishop Dyer.”

“If you want to talk to me about him – leave off the Bishop. I don’t understand that name, or its use.”

“Oh, hadn’t you foregone your vengeance on – on Dyer? But – your actions – your words – your guns – your terrible looks! … They don’t seem foregoing vengeance?”

“Jane, now it’s justice.”

“You’ll – kill him?”

“If God lets me live another hour! If not God – then the devil who drives me!”

“You’ll kill him – for yourself – for your vengeful hate?”

“No!”

“For Milly Erne’s sake?”

“No.”

“For little Fay’s?”

“No!”

“Oh – for whose?”

“For yours!”

“His blood on my soul!” whispered Jane, and she fell to her knees. This was the long-pending hour of fruition. And the habit of years – the religious passion of her life – leaped from lethargy, and the long months of gradual drifting to doubt were as if they had never been. “If you spill his blood it’ll be on my soul – and on my father’s. Listen.” And she clasped his knees, and clung there as he tried to raise her. “Listen. Am I nothing to you?”

“Woman – don’t trifle at words! I love you! An’ I’ll soon prove it.”

“I’ll give myself to you – I’ll ride away with you – marry you, if only you’ll spare him?”

His answer was a cold, ringing, terrible laugh.

“Lassiter – I’ll love you. Spare him!”

She sprang up in despairing, breaking spirit, and encircled his neck with her arms, and held him in an embrace that he strove vainly to loosen. “Lassiter, would you kill me? I’m fighting my last fight for the principles of my youth – love of religion, love of father. You don’t know – you can’t guess the truth, and I can’t speak ill. I’m losing all. I’m changing. All I’ve gone through is nothing to this hour. Pity me – help me in my weakness. You’re strong again – oh, so cruelly, coldly strong! You’re killing me. I see you – feel you as some other Lassiter! My master, be merciful – spare him!”

His answer was a ruthless smile.

She clung the closer to him, and leaned her panting breast on him, and lifted her face to his. “Lassiter, I do love you! It’s leaped out of my agony. It comes suddenly with a terrible blow of truth. You are a man! I never knew it till now. Some wonderful change came to me when you buckled on these guns and showed that gray, awful face. I loved you then. All my life I’ve loved, but never as now. No woman can love like a broken woman. If it were not for one thing – just one thing – and yet! I can’t speak it – I’d glory in your manhood – the lion in you that means to slay for me. Believe me – and spare Dyer. Be merciful – great as it’s in you to be great… Oh, listen and believe – I have nothing, but I’m a woman – a beautiful woman, Lassiter – a passionate, loving woman – and I love you! Take me – hide me in some wild place – and love me and mend my broken heart. Spare him and take me away.”

She lifted her face closer and closer to his, until their lips nearly touched, and she hung upon his neck, and with strength almost spent pressed and still pressed her palpitating body to his.

“Kiss me!” she whispered, blindly.

“No – not at your price!” he answered. His voice had changed or she had lost clearness of hearing.

“Kiss me! … Are you a man? Kiss me and save me!”

“Jane, you never played fair with me. But now you’re blisterin’ your lips – blackenin’ your soul with lies!”

“By the memory of my mother – by my Bible – no! No, I have no Bible! But by my hope of heaven I swear I love you!”

Lassiter’s gray lips formed soundless words that meant even her love could not avail to bend his will. As if the hold of her arms was that of a child’s he loosened it and stepped away.

“Wait! Don’t go! Oh, hear a last word! … May a more just and merciful God than the God I was taught to worship judge me – forgive me – save me! For I can no longer keep silent! … Lassiter, in pleading for Dyer I’ve been pleading more for my father. My father was a Mormon master, close to the leaders of the church. It was my father who sent Dyer out to proselyte. It was my father who had the blue-ice eye and the beard of gold. It was my father you got trace of in the past years. Truly, Dyer ruined Milly Erne – dragged her from her home – to Utah – to Cottonwoods. But it was for my father! If Milly Erne was ever wife of a Mormon that Mormon was my father! I never knew – never will know whether or not she was a wife. Blind I may be, Lassiter – fanatically faithful to a false religion I may have been but I know justice, and my father is beyond human justice. Surely he is meeting just punishment – somewhere. Always it has appalled me – the thought of your killing Dyer for my father’s sins. So I have prayed!”

“Jane, the past is dead. In my love for you I forgot the past. This thing I’m about to do ain’t for myself or Milly or Fay. It s not because of anythin’ that ever happened in the past, but for what is happenin’ right now. It’s for you! … An’ listen. Since I was a boy I’ve never thanked God for anythin’. If there is a God – an’ I’ve come to believe it – I thank Him now for the years that made me Lassiter! … I can reach down an’ feel these big guns, an’ know what I can do with them. An’, Jane, only one of the miracles Dyer professes to believe in can save him!”

Again for Jane Withersteen came the spinning of her brain in darkness, and as she whirled in endless chaos she seemed to be falling at the feet of a luminous figure – a man – Lassiter – who had saved her from herself, who could not be changed, who would slay rightfully. Then she slipped into utter blackness.

When she recovered from her faint she became aware that she was lying on a couch near the window in her sitting-room. Her brow felt damp and cold and wet, some one was chafing her hands; she recognized Judkins, and then saw that his lean, hard face wore the hue and look of excessive agitation.

“Judkins!” Her voice broke weakly.

“Aw, Miss Withersteen, you’re comin’ round fine. Now jest lay still a little. You’re all right; everythin’s all right.”

“Where is – he?”

“Who?”