pattered a few yards to the rise of ground and there crouched on
guard. And in that wild
covert Venters shut his eyes under the
great white stars and
intense vaulted blue,
bitterly comparing
their
loneliness to his own, and fell asleep.
When he awoke, day had dawned and all about him was bright
steel-gray. The air had a cold tang. Arising, he greeted the
fawning dogs and stretched his cramped body, and then, gathering
together bunches of dead sage sticks, he lighted a fire. Strips
of dried beef held to the blaze for a moment served him and the
dogs. 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 Lane, perhaps news of the rustlers; on the
morrow he
meant to take the trail to Deception Pass.
And while he waited he talked to his dogs. He called them Ring
and Whitie; they were sheep-dogs, half
collie, half deerhound,
superb in build,
perfectly trained. It seemed that in his fallen
fortunes these dogs understood the nature of their value to him,
and governed their
affection and faithfulness
accordingly. Whitie
watched him with
somber eyes of love, and Ring, crouched on the
little rise of ground above, kept
tireless guard. When the sun
rose, the white dog took the place of the other, and Ring went to
sleep at his master's feet.
By and by Venters rolled up his blankets and tied them and his
meager pack together, then climbed out to look for his horse. He
saw him,
presently, a little way off in the sage, and went to
fetch him. In that country, where every rider boasted of a fine
mount and was eager for a race, where thoroughbreds dotted the
wonderful grazing ranges, Venters rode a horse that was sad proof
of his misfortunes.
Then, with his back against a stone, Venters faced the east, and,
stick in hand and idle blade, he waited. The
glorious sunlight
filled the
valley with
purple fire. Before him, to left, to
right, waving, rolling, sinking, rising, like low swells of a
purple sea, stretched the sage. Out of the grove of cottonwoods,
a green patch on the
purple, gleamed the dull red of Jane
Withersteen's old stone house. And from there
extended the wide
green of the village gardens and orchards marked by the graceful
poplars; and farther down shone the deep, dark
richness of the
alfalfa fields. Numberless red and black and white dots speckled
the sage, and these were cattle and horses.
So, watching and
waiting, Venters let the time wear away. At
length he saw a horse rise above a ridge, and he knew it to be
Lassiter's black. Climbing to the highest rock, so that he would
show against the sky-line, he stood and waved his hat. The almost
instant turning of Lassiter's horse attested to the quickness of
that rider's eye. Then Venters climbed down, saddled his horse,
tied on his pack, and, with a word to his dogs, was about to ride
out to meet Lassiter, when he concluded to wait for him there, on
higher ground, where the
outlook was commanding.
It had been long since Venters had
experienced friendly greeting
from a man. Lassiter's warmed in him something that had grown
cold from
neglect. And when he had returned it, with a strong
grip of the iron hand that held his, and met the gray eyes, he
knew that Lassiter and he were to be friends.
"Venters, let's talk
awhile before we go down there," said
Lassiter, slipping his
bridle. "I ain't in no hurry. Them's sure
fine dogs you've got." With a rider's eye he took in the points
of Venter's horse, but did not speak his thought. "Well, did
anythin' come off after I left you last night?"
Venters told him about the rustlers.
"I was snug hid in the sage," replied Lassiter, "an' didn't see
or hear no one. Oldrin's got a high hand here, I
reckon. It's no
news up in Utah how he holes in canyons an' leaves no track."
Lassiter was silent a moment. "Me an' Oldrin' wasn't exactly
strangers some years back when he drove cattle into Bostil's
Ford, at the head of the Rio Virgin. But he got harassed there
an' now he drives some place else."
"Lassiter, you knew him? Tell me, is he Mormon or Gentile?"
"I can't say. I've knowed Mormons who pretended to be Gentiles."
"No Mormon ever pretended that unless he was a rustler" declared
Venters.
"Mebbe so."
"It's a hard country for any one, but hardest for Gentiles. Did
you ever know or hear of a Gentile prospering in a Mormon
community?"
"I never did."
"Well, I want to get out of Utah. I've a mother living in
Illinois. I want to go home. It's eight years now."
The older man's
sympathy moved Venters to tell his story. He had
left Quincy, run off to seek his fortune in the gold fields had
never
gotten any farther than Salt Lake City, wandered here and
there as
helper, teamster,
shepherd, and drifted
southward over
the divide and across the barrens and up the
rugged plateau
through the passes to the last border settlements. Here he became
a rider of the sage, had stock of his own, and for a time
prospered, until chance threw him in the employ of Jane
Withersteen.
"Lassiter, I needn't tell you the rest."
"Well, it'd be no news to me. I know Mormons. I've seen their
women's strange love en'
patience en' sacrifice an' silence en'
whet I call
madness for their idea of God. 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?"
"Lassiter, you think as I think," returned Venters.
"How'd it come then that you never throwed a gun on Tull or some
of them?" inquired the rider, curiously.
"Jane pleaded with me, begged me to be patient, to
overlook. She
even took my guns from me. I lost all before I knew it," replied
Venters, with the red color in his face. "But, Lassiter,
listen.
"Out of the wreck I saved a Winchester, two Colts, and plenty of
shells. I packed these down into Deception Pass. There, almost
every day for six months, I have
practiced with my rifle till the
barrel burnt my hands. Practised the draw--the firing of a Colt,
hour after hour!"
"Now that's interestin' to me," said Lassiter, with a quick
uplift of his head and a
concentration of his gray gaze on
Venters. "Could you throw a gun before you began that
practisin'?"
"Yes. And now..." Venters made a lightning-swift movement.
Lassiter smiled, and then his bronzed eyelids narrowed till his
eyes seemed mere gray slits. "You'll kill Tull!" He did not
question; he affirmed.
"I promised Jane Withersteen I'd try to avoid Tull. I'll keep my
word. But sooner or later Tull and I will meet. As I feel now, if
he even looks at me I'll draw!"
"I
reckon so. There'll be hell down there,
presently." He paused
a moment and flicked a sage-brush with his quirt. "Venters,
seein' as you're
considerable worked up, tell me Milly Erne's
story."
Venters's
agitation stilled to the trace of suppressed eagerness
in Lassiter's query.
"Milly Erne's story? Well, Lassiter, I'll tell you what I know.
Milly Erne had been in Cottonwoods years when I first arrived
there, and most of what I tell you happened before my
arrival. I
got to know her pretty well. She was a slip of a woman, and crazy
on religion. I conceived an idea that I never mentioned--I
thought she was at heart more Gentile than Mormon. But she passed
as a Mormon, and certainly she had the Mormon woman's locked
lips. You know, in every Mormon village there are women who seem
mysterious to us, but about Milly there was more than the
ordinary
mystery. When she came to Cottonwoods she had a
beautiful little girl whom she loved
passionately. 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. Then the Mormons put on the
screws-- slowly, as is their way. At last the child disappeared.
'Lost' was the report. The child was
stolen, I know that. So do
you. That wrecked Milly Erne. But she lived on in hope. She
became a slave. She worked her heart and soul and life out to get
back her child. She never heard of it again. Then she sank....I
can see her now, a frail thing, so
transparent you could almost
look through her--white like ashes--and her eyes!...Her eyes have
always
haunted me. She had one real friend--Jane Withersteen. But
Jane couldn't mend a broken heart, and Milly died."
For moments Lassiter did not speak, or turn his head.
"The man!" he exclaimed,
presently, in husky accents.
"I haven't the slightest idea who the Mormon was," replied
Venters; "nor has any Gentile in Cottonwoods."
"Does Jane Withersteen know?"
"Yes. But a red-hot running-iron couldn't burn that name out of
her!"
Without further speech Lassiter started off, walking his horse
and Venters followed with his dogs. Half a mile down the slope
they entered a
luxuriant growth of willows, and soon came into an
open space carpeted with grass like deep green
velvet. The
rushing of water and singing of birds filled their ears. Venters
led his comrade to a shady bower and showed him Amber Spring. It
was a
magnificentoutburst 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. It was the spring that made old
Withersteen a
feudal lord and now enabled his daughter to return
the toll which her father had exacted from the toilers of the
sage.
The spring gushed forth in a swirling
torrent, and leaped down
joyously to make its swift way along a willow-skirted channel.
Moss and ferns and lilies overhung its green banks. Except for
the rough-hewn stones that held and directed the water, this
willow
thicket and glade had been left as nature had made it.
Below were
artificial lakes, three in number, one above the other
in banks of raised earth, and round about them rose the lofty
green-foliaged shafts of
poplar trees. Ducks dotted the glassy
surface of the lakes; a blue heron stood
motionless on a
water-gate; kingfishers darted with shrieking
flight along the
shady banks; a white hawk sailed above; and from the trees and
shrubs came the song of robins and cat-birds. It was all in
strange
contrast to the endless slopes of
lonely sage and the
wild rock environs beyond. Venters thought of the woman who loved
the birds and the green of the leaves and the murmur of the
water.
Next on the slope, just below the third and largest lake, were
corrals and a wide stone barn and open sheds and coops and pens.
Here were clouds of dust, and cracking sounds of hoofs, and
romping colts and heehawing burros. Neighing horses trampled to