Zane Grey - Riders of the Purple Sage

“Oh! Hush!” whispered Jane, blindly holding up her hands.

“I seen in your face that Dyer, now a bishop, was the proselyter who ruined Milly Erne!”

For an instant Jane Withersteen’s brain was a whirling chaos and she recovered to find herself grasping at Lassiter like one drowning. And as if by a lightning stroke she sprang from her dull apathy into exquisite torture.

“It’s a lie! Lassiter! No, no!” she moaned. “I swear – you’re wrong!”

“Stop! You’d perjure yourself! But I’ll spare you that. You poor woman! Still blind! Still faithful! … Listen. I know. Let that settle it. An’ I give up my purpose!”

“What is it – you say?”

“I give up my purpose. I’ve come to see an’ feel differently. I can’t help poor Milly. An’ I’ve outgrowed revenge. I’ve come to see I can be no judge for men. I can’t kill a man jest for hate. Hate ain’t the same with me since I loved you and little Fay.”

“Lassiter! You mean you won’t kill him?” Jane whispered.

“No.”

“For my sake?”

“I reckon. I can’t understand, but I’ll respect your feelin’s.”

“Because you – oh, because you love me? … Eighteen years! You were that terrible Lassiter! And now – because you love me?”

“That’s it, Jane.”

“Oh, you’ll make me love you! How can I help but love you? My heart must be stone. But – oh, Lassiter, wait, wait! Give me time. I’m not what I was. Once it was so easy to love. Now it’s easy to hate. Wait! My faith in God – some God – still lives. By it I see happier times for you, poor passion-swayed wanderer! For me – a miserable, broken woman. I loved your sister Milly. I will love you. I can’t have fallen so low – I can’t be so abandoned by God – that I’ve no love left to give you. Wait! Let us forget Milly’s sad life. Ah, I knew it as no one else on earth! There’s one thing I shall tell you – if you are at my death-bed, but I can’t speak now.”

“I reckon I don’t want to hear no more,” said Lassiter.

Jane leaned against him, as if some pent-up force had rent its way out, she fell into a paroxysm of weeping. Lassiter held her in silent sympathy. By degrees she regained composure, and she was rising, sensible of being relieved of a weighty burden, when a sudden start on Lassiter’s part alarmed her.

“I heard hosses – hosses with muffled hoofs!” he said; and he got up guardedly.

“Where’s Fay?” asked Jane, hurriedly glancing round the shady knoll. The bright-haired child, who had appeared to be close all the time, was not in sight.

“Fay!” called Jane.

No answering shout of glee. No patter of flying feet. Jane saw Lassiter stiffen.

“Fay – oh – Fay!” Jane almost screamed.

The leaves quivered and rustled; a lonesome cricket chirped in the grass, a bee hummed by. The silence of the waning afternoon breathed hateful portent. It terrified Jane. When had silence been so infernal?

“She’s – only – strayed – out – of earshot,” faltered Jane, looking at Lassiter.

Pale, rigid as a statue, the rider stood, not in listening, searching posture, but in one of doomed certainty. Suddenly he grasped Jane with an iron hand, and, turning his face from her gaze, he strode with her from the knoll.

“See – Fay played here last – a house of stones an’ sticks… An’ here’s a corral of pebbles with leaves for hosses,” said Lassiter, stridently, and pointed to the ground. “Back an’ forth she trailed here. … See, she’s buried somethin’ – a dead grasshopper – there’s a tombstone … here she went, chasin’ a lizard – see the tiny streaked trail … she pulled bark off this cottonwood … look in the dust of the path – the letters you taught her – she’s drawn pictures of birds an’ hosses an’ people… Look, a cross! Oh, Jane, your cross!”

Lassiter dragged Jane on, and as if from a book read the meaning of little Fay’s trail. All the way down the knoll, through the shrubbery, round and round a cottonwood, Fay’s vagrant fancy left records of her sweet musings and innocent play. Long had she lingered round a bird-nest to leave therein the gaudy wing of a butterfly. Long had she played beside the running stream sending adrift vessels freighted with pebbly cargo. Then she had wandered through the deep grass, her tiny feet scarcely turning a fragile blade, and she had dreamed beside some old faded flowers. Thus her steps led her into the broad lane. The little dimpled imprints of her bare feet showed clean-cut in the dust they went a little way down the lane; and then, at a point where they stopped, the great tracks of a man led out from the shrubbery and returned.

Chapter 20

Lassiter's Way

Footprints told the story of little Fay’s abduction. In anguish Jane Withersteen turned speechlessly to Lassiter, and, confirming her fears, she saw him gray-faced, aged all in a moment, stricken as if by a mortal blow.

Then all her life seemed to fall about her in wreck and ruin.

“It’s all over,” she heard her voice whisper. “It’s ended. I’m going – I’m going—”

“Where?” demanded Lassiter, suddenly looming darkly over her.

“To – to those cruel men—”

“Speak names!” thundered Lassiter.

“To Bishop Dyer – to Tull,” went on Jane, shocked into obedience.

“Well – what for?”

“I want little Fay. I can’t live without her. They’ve stolen her as they stole Milly Erne’s child. I must have little Fay. I want only her. I give up. I’ll go and tell Bishop Dyer – I’m broken. I’ll tell him I’m ready for the yoke – only give me back Fay – and – and I’ll marry Tull!”

“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.