Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (best novels in english txt) š
- Author: Zane Grey
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āIndeed yes, I remember. Iāll be happy to have her. But I hope the dayāā
āNever mind that. The dayāll comeāsooner or later. I refused your offer, and now Iāll tell you why.ā
āI know why,ā interposed Jane. āItās because you donāt want her brought up as a Mormon.ā
āNo, it wasnāt altogether that.ā Mrs. Larkin raised her thin hand and laid it appealingly on Janeās. āI donāt like to tell you. Butāitās this: I told all my friends what you wanted. They know you, care for you, and they said for me to trust Fay to you. Women will talk, you know. It got to the ears of Mormonsāgossip of your love for Fay and your wanting her. And it came straight back to me, in jealousy, perhaps, that you wouldnāt take Fay as much for love of her as because of your religious duty to bring up another girl for some Mormon to marry.ā
āThatās a damnable lie!ā cried Jane Withersteen.
āIt was what made me hesitate,ā went on Mrs. Larkin, ābut I never believed it at heart. And now I guess Iāll let youāā
āWait! Mrs. Larkin, I may have told little white lies in my life, but never a lie that mattered, that hurt any one. Now believe me. I love little Fay. If I had her near me Iād grow to worship her. When I asked for her I thought only of that love.... Let me prove this. You and Fay come to live with me. Iāve such a big house, and Iām so lonely. Iāll help nurse you, take care of you. When youāre better you can work for me. Iāll keep little Fay and bring her upāwithout Mormon teaching. When sheās grown, if she should want to leave me, Iāll send her, and not empty-handed, back to Illinois where you came from. I promise you.ā
āI knew it was a lie,ā replied the mother, and she sank back upon her pillow with something of peace in her white, worn face. āJane Withersteen, may Heaven bless you! Iāve been deeply grateful to you. But because youāre a Mormon I never felt close to you till now. I donāt know much about religion as religion, but your God and my God are the same.ā
SURPRISE VALLEY
Back in that strange caƱon, which Venters had found indeed a valley of surprises, the wounded girlās whispered appeal, almost a prayer, not to take her back to the rustlers crowned the events of the last few days with a confounding climax. That she should not want to return to them staggered Venters. Presently, as logical thought returned, her appeal confirmed his first impressionāthat she was more unfortunate than badāand he experienced a sensation of gladness. If he had known before that Oldringās Masked Rider was a woman his opinion would have been formed and he would have considered her abandoned. But his first knowledge had come when he lifted a white face quivering in a convulsion of agony; he had heard Godās name whispered by blood-stained lips; through her solemn and awful eyes he had caught a glimpse of her soul. And just now had come the entreaty to him, āDonātātakeāmeābackāthere!ā
Once for all Ventersās quick mind formed a permanent conception of this poor girl. He based it, not upon what the chances of life had made her, but upon the revelation of dark eyes that pierced the infinite, upon a few pitiful, halting words that betrayed failure and wrong and misery, yet breathed the truth of a tragic fate rather than a natural leaning to evil.
āWhatās your name?ā he inquired.
āBess,ā she answered.
āBess what?ā
āThatās enoughājust Bess.ā
The red that deepened in her cheeks was not all the flush of fever. Venters marveled anew, and this time at the tint of shame in her face, at the momentary drooping of long lashes. She might be a rustlerās girl, but she was still capable of shame, she might be dying, but she still clung to some little remnant of honor.
āVery well, Bess. It doesnāt matter,ā he said. āBut this mattersāwhat shall I do with you?ā
āAreāyouāa rider?ā she whispered.
āNot now. I was once. I drove the Withersteen herds. But I lost my placeālost all I ownedāand now IāmāIām a sort of outcast. My nameās Bern Venters.ā
āYou wonātātake meāto Cottonwoodsāor Glaze? Iād beāhanged.ā
āNo, indeed. But I must do something with you. For itās not safe for me here. I shot that rustler who was with you. Sooner or later heāll be found, and then my tracks. I must find a safer hiding-place where I canāt be trailed.ā
āLeave meāhere.ā
āAloneāto die!ā
āYes.ā
āI will not.ā Venters spoke shortly with a kind of ring in his voice.
āWhatādo you wantāto doāwith me?ā Her whispering grew difficult, so low and faint that Venters had to stoop to hear her.
āWhy, letās see,ā he replied, slowly. āIād like to take you some place where I could watch by you, nurse you, till youāre all right.ā
āAndāthen?ā
āWell, itāll be time to think of that when youāre cured of your wound. Itās a bad one. AndāBess, if you donāt want to liveāif you donāt fight for lifeāyouāll neverāā
āOh! I wantāto live! Iām afraidāto die. But Iād ratherādieāthan go backātoātoāā
āTo Oldring?ā asked Venters, interrupting her in turn.
Her lips moved in an affirmative.
āI promise not to take you back to him or to Cottonwoods or to Glaze.ā
The mournful earnestness of her gaze suddenly shone with unutterable gratitude and wonder. And as suddenly Venters found her eyes beautiful as he had never seen or felt beauty. They were as dark blue as the sky at night. Then the flashing changed to a long, thoughtful look, in which there was a wistful, unconscious searching of his face, a look that trembled on the verge of hope and trust.
āIāll tryāto live,ā she said. The broken whisper just reached his ears. āDo whatāyou wantāwith me.ā
āRest thenādonāt worryāsleep,ā he replied.
Abruptly he arose, as if words had been decision for him, and with a sharp command to the dogs he strode from the camp. Venters was conscious of an indefinite conflict of change within him. It seemed to be a vague passing of old moods, a dim coalescing of new forces, a moment of inexplicable transition. He was both cast down and uplifted. He wanted to think and think of the meaning, but he resolutely dispelled emotion. His imperative need at present was to find a safe retreat, and this called for action.
So he set out. It still wanted several hours before dark. This trip he turned to the left and wended his skulking way southward a mile or more to the opening of the valley, where lay the strange scrawled rocks. He did not, however, venture boldly out into the open sage, but clung to the right-hand wall and went along that till its perpendicular line broke into the long incline of bare stone.
Before proceeding farther he halted, studying the strange character of this slope and realizing that a moving black object could be seen far against such background. Before him ascended a gradual swell of smooth stone. It was hard, polished, and full of pockets worn by centuries of eddying rain-water. A hundred yards up began a line of grotesque cedar-trees, and they extended along the slope clear to its most southerly end. Beyond that end Venters wanted to get, and he concluded the cedars, few as they were, would afford some cover.
Therefore he climbed swiftly. The trees were farther up than he had estimated, though he had from long habit made allowance for the deceiving nature of distances in that country. When he gained the cover of cedars he paused to rest and look, and it was then he saw how the trees sprang from holes in the bare rock. Ages of rain had run down the slope, circling, eddying in depressions, wearing deep round holes. There had been dry seasons, accumulations of dust, wind-blown seeds, and cedars rose wonderfully out of solid rock. But these were not beautiful cedars. They were gnarled, twisted into weird contortions, as if growth were torture, dead at the tops, shrunken, gray, and old. Theirs had been a bitter fight, and Venters felt a strange sympathy for them. This country was hard on treesāand men.
He slipped from cedar to cedar, keeping them between him and the open valley. As he progressed, the belt of trees widened and he kept to its upper margin. He passed shady pockets half full of water, and, as he marked the location for possible future need, he reflected that there had been no rain since the winter snows. From one of these shady holes a rabbit hopped out and squatted down, laying its ears flat.
Venters wanted fresh meat now more than when he had only himself to think of. But it would not do to fire his rifle there. So he broke off a cedar branch and threw it. He crippled the rabbit, which started to flounder up the slope. Venters did not wish to lose the meat, and he never allowed crippled game to escape, to die lingeringly in some covert. So after a careful glance below, and back toward the caƱon, he began to chase the rabbit.
The fact that rabbits generally ran uphill was not new to him. But it presently seemed singular why this rabbit, that might have escaped downward, chose to ascend the slope. Venters knew then that it had a burrow higher up. More than once he jerked over to seize it, only in vain, for the rabbit by renewed effort eluded his grasp. Thus the chase continued on up the bare slope. The farther Venters climbed the more determined he grew to catch his quarry. At last, panting and sweating, he captured the rabbit at the foot of a steeper grade. Laying his rifle on the bulge of rising stone, he killed the animal and slung it from his belt.
Before starting down he waited to catch his breath. He had climbed far up that wonderful smooth slope, and had almost reached the base of yellow cliff that rose skyward, a huge scarred and cracked bulk. It frowned down upon him as if to forbid further ascent. Venters bent over for his rifle, and, as he picked it up from where it leaned against the steeper grade, he saw several little nicks cut in the solid stone.
They were only a few inches deep and about a foot apart. Venters began to count themāoneātwoāthreeāfourāon up to sixteen. That number carried his glance to the top of his first bulging bench of cliff-base. Above, after a more level offset, was still steeper slope, and the line of nicks kept on, to wind round a projecting corner of wall.
A casual glance would have passed by these little dents; if Venters had not known what they signified he would never have bestowed upon them the second glance. But he knew they had been cut there by hand, and, though age-worn, he recognized them as steps cut in the rock by the cliff-dwellers. With a pulse beginning to beat and hammer away his calmness, he eyed that indistinct line of steps, up to where the buttress of wall hid further sight of them. He knew that behind the corner of stone would be a cave or a crack which could never be suspected from below. Chance, that had sported with him of late, now directed him to a probable hiding-place. Again he laid aside his rifle, and, removing boots and belt, he began to walk up the steps. Like a mountain goat, he was agile, sure-footed, and he mounted the first bench without bending to use his hands. The next ascent took grip of fingers as well as toes, but he climbed steadily, swiftly, to reach the projecting corner, and slipped around it. Here he faced a notch in the cliff. At the apex he turned abruptly into a ragged vent that split the ponderous wall clear to the top, showing a narrow streak of blue sky.
At the base this vent was dark, cool, and smelled of dry, musty dust. It zigzagged so that he could not see ahead more than a few yards at a time. He noticed tracks of wildcats and rabbits in the dusty floor. At every turn he expected to come upon a huge cavern full of little square stone houses, each with a small aperture like a staring dark eye. The passage lightened and widened, and opened at the foot of a narrow, steep, ascending chute.
Venters had a momentās notice of the rock, which was of the same smoothness and hardness as the slope below, before his gaze went irresistibly upward to the precipitous walls of this wide ladder of granite. These were ruined walls of yellow sandstone, and so split and splintered, so overhanging with great sections of balancing rim, so impending with tremendous
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