“I’ll give you anything you—”
“Listen, please. When I say loss I don’t mean what you think. I mean loss of good-will, good name – that which would have enabled me to stand up in this village without bitterness. Well, it’s too late…Now, as to the future, I think you’d do best to give me up. Tull is implacable. You ought to see from his intention todaythat – But you can’t see. Your blindness – your damned religion! … Jane, forgive me – I’m sore within and something rankles. Well, I fear that invisible hand will turn its hidden work to your ruin.”
“Invisible hand? Bern!”
“I mean your Bishop.” Venters said it deliberately and would not release her as she started back. “He’s the law. The edict went forth to ruin me. Well, look at me! It’ll now go forth to compel you to the will of the Church.”
“You wrong Bishop Dyer. Tull is hard, I know. But then he has been in love with me for years.”
“Oh, your faith and your excuses! You can’t see what I know – and if you did see it you’d not admit it to save your life. That’s the Mormon of you. These elders and bishops will do absolutely any deed to go on building up the power and wealth of their church, their empire. Think of what they’ve done to the Gentiles here, to me – think of Milly Erne’s fate!”
“What do you know of her story?”
“I know enough – all, perhaps, except the name of the Mormon who brought her here. But I must stop this kind of talk.”
She pressed his hand in response. He helped her to a seat beside him on the bench. And he respected a silence that he divined was full of woman’s deep emotion beyond his understanding.
It was the moment when the last ruddy rays of the sunset brightened momentarily before yielding to twilight. And for Venters the outlook before him was in some sense similar to a feeling of his future, and with searching eyes he studied the beautiful purple, barren waste of sage. Here was the unknown and the perilous. The whole scene impressed Venters as a wild, austere, and mighty manifestation of nature. And as it somehow reminded him of his prospect in life, so it suddenly resembled the woman near him, only in her there were greater beauty and peril, a mystery more unsolvable, and something nameless that numbed his heart and dimmed his eye.
“Look! A rider!” exclaimed Jane, breaking the silence. “Can that be Lassiter?”
Venters moved his glance once more to the west. A horseman showed dark on the sky-line, then merged into the color of the sage.
“It might be. But I think not – that fellow was coming in. One of your riders, more likely. Yes, I see him clearly now. And there’s another.”
“I see them, too.”
“Jane, your riders seem as many as the bunches of sage. I ran into five yesterday ’way down near the trail to Deception Pass. They were with the white herd.”
“You still go to that canyon? Bern, I wish you wouldn’t. Oldring and his rustlers live somewhere down there.”
“Well, what of that?”
“Tull has already hinted to your frequent trips into Deception Pass.”
“I know.” Venters uttered a short laugh. “He’ll make a rustler of me next. But, Jane, there’s no water for fifty miles after I leave here, and the nearest is in the canyon. I must drink and water my horse. There! I see more riders. They are going out.”
“The red herd is on the slope, toward the Pass.”
Twilight was fast falling. A group of horsemen crossed the dark line of low ground to become more distinct as they climbed the slope. The silence broke to a clear call from an incoming rider, and, almost like the peal of a hunting-horn, floated back the answer. The outgoing riders moved swiftly, came sharply into sight as they topped a ridge to show wild and black above the horizon, and then passed down, dimming into the purple of the sage.
“I hope they don’t meet Lassiter,” said Jane.
“So do I,” replied Venters. “By this time the riders of the night shift know what happened today. But Lassiter will likely keep out of their way.”
“Bern, who is Lassiter? He’s only a name to me – a terrible name.”
“Who is he? I don’t know, Jane. Nobody I ever met knows him. He talks a little like a Texan, like Milly Erne. Did you note that?”
“Yes. How strange of him to know of her! And she lived here ten years and has been dead two. Bern, what do you know of Lassiter? Tell me what he has done – why you spoke of him to Tull – threatening to become another Lassiter yourself?”
“Jane, I only heard things, rumors, stories, most of which I disbelieved. At Glaze his name was known, but none of the riders or ranchers I knew there ever met him. At Stone Bridge I never heard him mentioned. But at Sterling and villages north of there he was spoken of often. I’ve never been in a village which he had been known to visit. There were many conflicting stories about him and his doings. Some said he had shot up this and that Mormon village, and others denied it. I’m inclined to believe he has, and you know how Mormons hide the truth. But there was one feature about Lassiter upon which all agree – that he was what riders in this country call a gun-man. He’s a man with a marvelous quickness and accuracy in the use of a Colt. And now that I’ve seen him I know more. Lassiter was born without fear. I watched him with eyes which saw him my friend. I’ll never forget the moment I recognized him from what had been told me of his crouch before the draw. It was then I yelled his name. I believe that yell saved Tull’s life. At any rate, I know this, between Tull and death then there was not the breadth of the littlest hair. If he or any of his men had moved a finger downward – ”
Venters left his meaning unspoken, but at the suggestion Jane shuddered.
The pale afterglow in the west darkened with the merging of twilight into night. The sage now spread out black and gloomy. One dim star glimmered in the southwest sky. The sound of trotting horses had ceased, and there was silence broken only by a faint, dry pattering of cottonwood leaves in the soft night wind.
Into this peace and calm suddenly broke the high-keyed yelp of a coyote, and from far off in the darkness came the faint answering note of a trailing mate.
“Hello! the sage-dogs are barking,” said Venters.
“I don’t like to hear them,” replied Jane. “At night, sometimes when I lie awake, listening to the long mourn or breaking bark or wild howl, I think of you asleep somewhere in the sage, and my heart aches.”
“Jane, you couldn’t listen to sweeter music, nor could I have a better bed.”
“Just think! Men like Lassiter and you have no home, no comfort, no rest, no place to lay your weary heads. Well! … Let us be patient. Tull’s anger may cool, and time may help us. You might do some service to the village – who can tell? Suppose you discovered the long-unknown hiding-place of Oldring and his band, and told it to my riders? That would disarm Tull’s ugly hints and put you in favor. For years my riders have trailed the tracks of stolen cattle. You know as well as I how dearly we’ve paid for our ranges in this wild country. Oldring drives our cattle down into the network of deceiving canyons, and somewhere far to the north or east he drives them up and out to Utah markets. If you will spend time in Deception Pass try to find the trails.”
“Jane, I’ve thought of that. I’ll try.”
“I must go now. And it hurts, for now I’ll never be sure of seeing you again. But tomorrow, Bern?”
“Tomorrow surely. I’ll watch for Lassiter and ride in with him.”
“Good night.”
Then she left him and moved away, a white, gliding shape that soon vanished in the shadows.
Venters waited until the faint slam of a door assured him she had reached the house, and then, taking up his rifle, he noiselessly slipped through the bushes, down the knoll, and on under the dark trees to the edge of the grove. The sky was now turning from gray to blue; stars had begun to lighten the earlier blackness; and from the wide flat sweep before him blew a cool wind, fragrant with the breath of sage. Keeping close to the edge of the cottonwoods, he went swiftly and silently westward. The grove was long, and he had not reached the end when he heard something that brought him to a halt. Low padded thuds told him horses were coming this way. He sank down in the gloom, waiting, listening. Much before he had expected, judging from sound, to his amazement he descried horsemen near at hand. They were riding along the border of the sage, and instantly he knew the hoofs of the horses were muffled. Then the pale starlight afforded him indistinct sight of the riders. But his eyes were keen and used to the dark, and by peering closely he recognized the huge bulk and black-bearded visage of Oldring and the lithe, supple form of the rustler’s lieutenant, a masked rider. They passed on; the darkness swallowed them. Then, farther out on the sage, a dark, compact body of horsemen went by, almost without sound, almost like specters, and they, too, melted into the night.