Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (best novels in english txt) 📗

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 strong woman, 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. I couldn’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. He oughtn’t have tried to throw a gun on me—whatever his reason was. For that’s meetin’ me on my own grounds. I’ve seen runnin’ molasses that was quicker’n him. Now I didn’t know who he was, visitor or friend or relation of yours, though I seen he was a Mormon all over, an’ I couldn’t get serious about shootin’. So I winged him—put a bullet through his arm as he was pullin’ at his gun. An’ he dropped the gun there, an’ a little blood. I told him he’d introduced himself sufficient, an’ to please move out of my vicinity. An’ he went.”

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

“He drew on you first, and you deliberately shot to cripple him—you wouldn’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 fat party was.”

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

“So—it’s true—what I heard him say?” Lassiter asked, presently halting before her. “You made love to me—to bind my hands?”

“Yes,” confessed Jane. It took all her woman’s courage to meet the gray storm of his glance.

“All these days that you’ve been so friendly an’ like a pardner—all these evenin’s that have been so bewilderin’ to me—your beauty—an’—an’ the way you looked an’ came close to me—they were woman’s tricks to bind my hands?”

“Yes.”

“An’ your sweetness that seemed so natural, an’ your throwin’ little Fay an’ me so much together—to make me love the child—all that was for the same reason?”

“Yes.”

Lassiter flung his arms—a strange gesture for him.

“Mebbe it wasn’t much in your Mormon thinkin’, for you to play that game. 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 you dearly—and I—I’ve grown to—to like you.”

“That’s powerful kind of you, now,” he said. Sarcasm and scorn made his voice that of a stranger. “An’ you sit there an’ look me straight in the eyes! 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 wanted you to care for me so that I could influence you. It wasn’t easy. At first you were stone-blind. Then I hoped you’d love little Fay, and through that come to feel the horror of making children fatherless.”

“Jane Withersteen, either you’re a fool or noble beyond my understandin’. Mebbe you’re both. I know you’re blind. What you meant is one 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 life till now. Didn’t I tell you that long ago I back-trailed myself from women? I was a Texas ranger till—till Milly left home, an’ then I became somethin’ else—Lassiter! For years I’ve been a lonely man set on one thing. I came here an’ met you. An’ now I’m not the man I was. The change was gradual, an’ I took no notice of it. I understand now that never-satisfied longin’ to see you, listen to you, watch you, feel you near me. It’s plain now why you were never out of my thoughts. I’ve had no thoughts but of you. I’ve lived an’ breathed for you. An’ now when I know 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 a tangle of our lives! You—Milly Erne’s brother! And I—heedless, mad to melt your heart toward Mormons. Lassiter, I may be wicked but not wicked enough to hate. If I couldn’t hate Tull, could I hate you?”

“After all, Jane, mebbe you’re only blind—Mormon blind. That only can explain 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 game with me you’ve been unfaithful.”

“Un-faithful!” faltered Jane.

“Yes, I said unfaithful. You’re faithful to your Bishop an’ unfaithful to yourself. You’re false to your womanhood an’ true to your religion. But for a savin’ innocence you’d have made yourself low an’ vile—betrayin’ yourself, betrayin’ me—all to bind my hands an’ keep me from 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’t see that even when you know it. Else, why all this blind passion to save the life of that—that....”

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

“Blind—yes, en’ let me make it clear en’ simple to you,” Lassiter went on, his voice losing its tone of anger. “Take, for instance, that idea of 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 that life is each man’s first an’ closest thought. Where would any man be on this border without guns? Where, especially, would Lassiter be? Well, I’d be under the sage with thousands of other men now livin’ an’ sure better men than me. Gun-packin’ in the West since the Civil War has growed into a kind of moral law. An’ out here on this border it’s the difference between a man an’ somethin’ not a man. Look what your takin’ Venters’s guns from him all but made him! Why, your churchmen carry guns. Tull has killed a man an’ drawed on others. Your Bishop has shot a half dozen men, an’ it wasn’t through prayers of his that they recovered. An’ to-day he’d have shot me if he’d been quick enough on the draw. Could I walk or ride down into Cottonwoods without my guns? This is a wild time, Jane Withersteen, this year of our Lord eighteen seventy-one.”

“No time—for a woman!” exclaimed Jane, brokenly. “Oh, Lassiter, I feel helpless—lost—and don’t know where to turn. If I am blind—then—I need some one—a friend—you, Lassiter—more than ever!”

“Well, I didn’t say nothin’ about goin’ back on you, did I?”