Zane Grey - Riders of the Purple Sage

“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?”

“Lassiter!”

“You needn’t worry none about him.”

“Where is he? Tell me – instantly.”

“Wal, he’s in the other room patchin’ up a few triflin’ bullet holes.”

“Ah! … Bishop Dyer?”

“When I seen him last – a matter of half an hour ago, he was on his knees. He was some busy, but he wasn’t prayin’!”

“How strangely you talk! I’ll sit up. I’m – well, strong again. Tell me. Dyer on his knees! What was he doing?”

“Wal, beggin’ your pardon fer blunt talk, Miss Withersteen, Dyer was on his knees an’ not prayin’. You remember his big, broad hands? You’ve seen ’em raised in blessin’ over old gray men an’ little curly-headed children like – like Fay Larkin! Come to think of thet, I disremember ever hearin’ of his liftin’ his big hands in blessin’ over a woman. Wal, when I seen him last – jest a little while ago – he was on his knees, not prayin’, as I remarked – an’ he was pressin’ his big hands over some bigger wounds.”

“Man, you drive me mad! Did Lassiter kill Dyer?”

“Yes.”

“Did he kill Tull?”

“No. Tull’s out of the village with most of his riders. He’s expected back before evenin’. Lassiter will hev to git away before Tull an’ his riders come in. It’s sure death fer him here. An’ wuss fer you, too, Miss Withersteen. There’ll be some of an uprisin’ when Tull gits back.”