Riders of the Purple Sage quotes

“But I’m sick of seeing this fellow Venters hang around you. I’m going to put a stop to it. You’ve so much love to throw away on these beggars of Gentiles that I’ve an idea you might love Venters.”

Tull spoke with the arrogance of a Mormon whose power could not be brooked and with the passion of a man in whom jealousy had kindled a consuming fire.

“Maybe I do love him,” said Jane. She felt both fear and anger stir her heart. “I’d never thought of that. Poor fellow! He certainly needs someone to love him.”

Like a steel bar it was stiffening all that had been soft and weak in her. She felt a birth in her of something new and unintelligible. Once more her strained gaze sought the sage-slopes.

Jane Withersteen loved that wild and purple wilderness. In times of sorrow it had been her strength, in happiness its beauty was her continual delight.

In her extremity she found herself murmuring, “Whence cometh my help!”

“

Where I was raised a woman’s word was law. I ain’t quite outgrowed that yet.

”

“

To hell with your Mormon law!

”

“

No. I believe Mormon women are the best and noblest, the most long-sufferin’, and the blindest, unhappiest women on earth.

”

He drank from a canteen. There was nothing else in his outfit; he had grown used to a scant fire. Then he sat over the fire, palms outspread, and waited.

Waiting had been his chief occupation for months, and he scarcely knew what he waited for unless it was the passing of the hours.

But now he sensed action in the immediate present; the day promised another meeting with Lassiter and Jane, perhaps news of the rustlers; on the morrow he meant to take the trail to Deception Pass.

An’ over against that I’ve seen the tricks of men. They work hand in hand, all together, an’ in the dark. No man can hold out against them, unless he takes to packin’ guns.

For Mormons are slow to kill. That’s the only good I ever seen in their religion.

Venters, take this from me, these Mormons ain’t just right in their minds. Else could a Mormon marry one woman when he already has a wife, an’ call it duty?”

Milly was not known openly in Cottonwoods as a Mormon wife. That she really was a Mormon wife I have no doubt. Perhaps the Mormon’s other wife or wives would not acknowledge Milly. Such things happen in these villages.

Mormon wives wear yokes, but they get jealous.

Well, whatever had brought Milly to this country—love or madness of religion—she repented of it. She gave up teaching the village school. She quit the church. And she began to fight Mormon upbringing for her baby girl.

It was a magnificent outburst of clear, amber water pouring from a dark, stone-lined hole. Lassiter knelt and drank, lingered there to drink again. He made no comment, but Venters did not need words.

Next to his horse a rider of the sage loved a spring.

And this spring was the most beautiful and remarkable known to the upland riders of southern Utah.

“Take care, Lassiter, I might think that a proposal,” she replied, gaily. “

It’s dangerous to propose elopement to a Mormon woman.

Well, I was expecting you. Now will be a good hour to show you Milly Erne’s grave. The day-riders have gone, and the nightriders haven’t come in. Bern, what do you make of that? Need I worry?

as an outcast, now when the full silence set in, and the deep darkness, and trains of radiant stars shone cold and calm, he lay with an ache in his heart.

For a year he had lived as a black fox, driven from his kind.

He longed for the sound of a voice, the touch of a hand.

Then, weak and spent, she lay thinking, not of the oppression that would break her, but of this new revelation of self. Until the last few days there had been little in her life to rouse passions.

Her forefathers had been Vikings, savage chieftains who bore no cross and brooked no hindrance to their will.

Her father had inherited that temper; and at times, like antelope fleeing before fire on the slope, his people fled from his red rages. Jane Withersteen realized that the spirit of wrath and war had lain dormant in her.

Jane Withersteen realized that the spirit of wrath and war had lain dormant in her. She shrank from black depths hitherto unsuspected. The one thing in man or woman that she scorned above all scorn, and which she could not forgive, was hate.

Hate headed a flaming pathway straight to hell.

All in a flash, beyond her control there had been in her a birth of fiery hate.

“

Women are strange to me. I got to back-trailin’ myself from them long ago. But I’d like a game woman.

Might I ask, seein’ as how you take this trouble, if you’re goin’ to fight?”

“I reckon you will. An’ I’ll never ask you.

I’m a man of strange beliefs an’ ways of thinkin’, an’ I seem to see into the future an’ feel things hard to explain.

The trail I’ve been followin’ for so many years was twisted en’ tangled, but it’s straightenin’ out now. An’, Jane Withersteen, you crossed it long ago to ease poor Milly’s agony. That, whether you want or not, makes Lassiter your friend.

“

That’s a Mormon’s godly way of bringin’ a woman to her knees.

”

“

Lassiter, I’ll die before I ever bend my knees. I might be led; I won’t be driven.

Do you expect the herd to bolt?”

A rider gettin’ down an’ walkin’ toward them sometimes will make them jump an’ fly. Then again nothin’ seems to scare them. But I reckon that white flare will do the biz. It’s a new one on me, an’ I’ve seen some ridin’ an’ rustlin’.

It jest takes one of them God-fearin’ Mormons to think of devilish tricks.

”

“It might be, but it ain’t,” replied Lassiter. “

Oldring’s an honest thief. He don’t skulk behind ridges to scatter your cattle to the four winds. He rides down on you, an’ if you don’t like it you can throw a gun.

”

“I don’t blame you for that. But,

Jane Withersteen, you’ve got to choose between the love of man and love of God. Often we Mormon women have to do that.

It’s not easy. The kind of happiness you want I wanted once. I never got it, nor will you, unless you throw away your soul. We’ve all watched your affair with Venters in fear and trembling. Some dreadful thing will come of it.

she was not able to abide by her own choice of a husband. She was the daughter of Withersteen. Suppose she proved it, imperiously! But she quelled that proud temptation at its birth.

Nothing could have replaced the affection which the village people had for her; no power could have made her happy as the pleasure her presence gave.

As she went on down the street past the stores with their rude platform entrances, and the saloons where tired horses stood with bridles dragging, she was again assured of what was the bread and wine of life to her—that she was loved.

The man choked and stammered, and then, as tears welled into his eyes, he found the use of his tongue and cursed.

No gentle speech could ever have equaled that curse in eloquent expression of what he felt for Jane Withersteen.

How strangely his look and tone reminded her of Lassiter!

That, too, passed as her spirit rebounded. But she had again caught a glimpse of dark underhand domination, running its secret lines this time into her own household.

Like a spider in the blackness of night an unseen hand had begun to run these dark lines, to turn and twist them about her life, to plait and weave a web.

Jane Withersteen knew it now, and in the realization further coolness and sureness came to her, and the fighting courage of her ancestors.

“Jane Withersteen, may Heaven bless you! I’ve been deeply grateful to you. But because you’re a Mormon I never felt close to you till now.

I don’t know much about religion as religion, but your God and my God are the same.

”

It sagged at each forward movement he made, but he balanced himself lightly during the interval when he lacked the support of a taut rope.

He climbed as if he had wings, the strength of a giant, and knew not the sense of fear.

The sharp corner of cliff seemed to cut out of the darkness. He reached it and the protruding shelf, and then, entering the black shade of the notch, he moved blindly but surely to the place where he had left the saddlebags.

… cliff-dwellings before, and they had been in ruins, and of no great character or size but this place was of proportions that stunned him, and it had not been desecrated by the hand of man, nor had it been crumbled by the hand of time.

It was a stupendous tomb. It had been a city.

It was just as it had been left by its builders. The little houses were there, the smoke-blackened stains of fires, the pieces of pottery scattered about cold hearths, the stone hatchets;

and stone pestles and mealing-stones lay beside round holes polished by years of grinding maize—lay there as if they had been carelessly dropped yesterday. But the cliff-dwellers were gone!

Dust! They were dust on the floor or at the foot of the shelf, and their habitations and utensils endured.

Venters felt the sublimity of that marvelous vaulted arch, and it seemed to gleam with a glory of something that was gone. How many years had passed since the cliff-dwellers gazed out across the beautiful valley as he was gazing now?

At night more than by day Venters felt something fearful and fateful in that rock, and that it had leaned and waited through a thousand years to have somehow to deal with his destiny.

“Old man, if you must roll, wait till I get back to the girl, and then roll!”

he said, aloud, as if the stones were indeed a god.

“I reckon,” said Lassiter, and he laughed.

It was the best in her, if the most irritating, that Lassiter always aroused.

“Will you come?” She looked into his eyes, and for the life of her could not quite subdue an imperiousness that rose with her spirit. “I never asked so much of any man—except Bern Venters.”

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’.

“

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.”

“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.”

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.

“

Jane, the mind behind it all is an empire builder.

”

“Child, be still!” said Lassiter, with a dark dignity that had in it something of pity. “

You are a woman, fine en’ big an’ strong, an’ your heart matches your size. But in mind you’re a child.

I’ll say a little more—then I’m done. I’ll never mention this again. Among many thousands of women you’re one who has bucked against your churchmen. They tried you out, an’ failed of persuasion, an’ finally of threats.

Surprise Valley had enchanted him. In this home of the cliff-dwellers there were peace and quiet and solitude, and another thing, wondrous as the golden morning shaft of sunlight, that he dared not ponder over long enough to understand.

The solitude he had hated when alone he had now come to love.

He was assimilating something from this valley of gleams and shadows. From this strange girl he was assimilating more.

“I wouldn’t dare tell you.

But, Bern, do you want me to turn into a rabbit?

”

In this beautiful valley he had been living a beautiful dream. Tranquillity had come to him, and the joy of solitude, and interest in all the wild creatures and crannies of this incomparable valley—and love.

Under the shadow of the great stone bridge God had revealed Himself to Venters.

“The world seems very far away,” he muttered, “but it’s there—and I’m not yet done with it. Perhaps I never shall be … Only—how glorious it would be to live here always and never think again!”

Always it brought softly to him strange, sweet tidings of far-off things.

It blew from a place that was old and whispered of youth. It blew down the grooves of time.

It brought a story of the passing hours. It breathed low of fighting men and praying women. It sang clearly the song of love.

and it was that, despite her errors and her frailties and her blindness, she had one absolute and unfaltering hold on ultimate and supreme justice. That was love.

“Love your enemies as yourself!” was a divine word, entirely free from any church or creed.

Jane’s meditations were disturbed by Lassiter’s soft, tinkling step in the court. Always he wore the clinking spurs. Always he was in readiness to ride. She passed out and called him into the huge, dim hall.

“I reckoned so. Mebbe my temper oughtn’t led me to make sure.

But, man, she’s a woman in all but years. She’s sweeter’n the sage.

”

“Yes.

I hate gold. For it makes men mad.

I’ve seen them drunk with joy and dance and fling themselves around. I’ve seen them curse and rave. I’ve seen them fight like dogs and roll in the dust. I’ve seen them kill each other for gold.”

He watched the sorrel’s savage head, pointed level, his mouth still closed and dry, but his nostrils distended as if he were snorting unseen fire.

Wrangle was the horse for a race with death.

Upon each side Venters saw the sage merged into a sailing, colorless wall. In front sloped the lay of ground with its purple breadth split by the white trail.

The descent was gradual, along a stonewalled trail, and Venters felt sure that this was the place where Oldring drove cattle into the Pass. There was, however, no indication at all that he ever had driven cattle out at this point.

Oldring had many holes to his burrow.

In searching round in the little hollows Venters, much to his relief, found water. He composed himself to rest and eat some bread and meat, while he waited for a sufficient time to elapse so that he could safely give the horses a drink.

Perceptions flashed upon him, the faint, cold touch of the breeze, a cold, silvery tinkle of flowing water, a cold sun shining out of a cold sky, song of birds and laugh of children, coldly distant.

Cold and intangible were all things in earth and heaven.

Colder and tighter stretched the skin over his face; colder and harder grew the polished butts of his guns; colder and steadier became his hands as he wiped the clammy sweat from his face or reached low to his gun-sheaths.

I don’t think. I don’t care any more. I don’t pray! … Think of that, my friend! But in spite of my numb feeling I believe I’ll rise out of all this dark agony a better woman, with greater love of man and God.

I’m on the rack now; I’m senseless to all but pain, and growing dead to that.

Sooner or later I shall rise out of this stupor. I’m waiting the hour.”

“It’ll soon come, Jane,” replied Lassiter, soberly. “Then I’m afraid for you.

Years are terrible things, an’ for years you’ve been bound. Habit of years is strong as life itself.

Somehow, though, I believe as you—that you’ll come out of it all a finer woman. I’m waitin’, too. An’ I’m wonderin’—I reckon, Jane, that marriage between us is out of all human reason?”

“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.

”

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.

An’ he looked up at Lassiter. An’ then he stared horrible at somethin’ thet wasn’t Lassiter, nor anyone there, nor the room, nor the branches of purple sage peepin’ into the winder.

Whatever he seen, it was with the look of a man who discovers somethin’ too late. Thet’s a terrible look!

… An’ with a horrible understandin’ cry he slid forrard on his face.”

He was bleedin’ from three gunshots, none of them much to bother him. An’ we come right up here. I found you layin’ in the hall, an’ I hed to work some over you.”

Jane Withersteen offered up no prayer for Dyer’s soul.

Lassiter’s step sounded in the hall—the familiar soft, silver-clinking step—and she heard it with thrilling new emotions in which was a vague joy in her very fear of him.

“Judkins, you ride with Jane out into the sage. If you see any riders comin’ shout quick twice. An’, Jane, don’t look back! I’ll catch up soon. We’ll get to the break into the Pass before midnight, an’ then wait until mornin’ to go down.”

Black Star bent his graceful neck and bowed his noble head, and his broad shoulders yielded as he knelt for Jane to mount.

She rode out of the court beside Judkins, through the grove, across the wide lane into the sage, and she realized that she was leaving Withersteen House forever, and she did not look back. A strange, dreamy, calm peace pervaded her soul.

Thick-driving belts of smoke traveled by on the wind, and with it came a strong, pungent odor of burning wood.

Lassiter had fired Withersteen House! But Jane did not look back.

A misty veil obscured the clear, searching gaze she had kept steadfastly upon the purple slope and the dim lines of canyons. It passed, as passed the rolling clouds of smoke, and she saw the valley deepening into the shades of twilight.

Night came on, swift as the fleet racers, and stars peeped out to brighten and grow, and the huge, windy, eastern heave of sage-level paled under a rising moon and turned to silver.

Blanched in moonlight, the sage yet seemed to hold its hue of purple and was infinitely more wild and lonely.

So the night hours wore on, and Jane Withersteen never once looked back.

Her passion, like fire at white heat, consumed itself in little time. Her physical strength failed, and still her spirit attempted to go on in magnificent denunciation of those who had wronged her.

Like a tree cut deep into its roots, she began to quiver and shake, and her anger weakened into despair.

And her ringing voice sank into a broken, husky whisper. Then, spent and pitiable, upheld by Lassiter’s arm, she turned and hid her face in Black Star’s mane.

“Well, well, my hoss-sense ain’t always right. An’ here I’m talkin’ a lot, wastin’ time.

It ain’t so easy to find an’ lose a pretty niece all in one hour!

Elizabeth—goodbye!”