章节正文
there are more men like him, it seems to me they would attract
him most. We're only a wild, lonely border settlement. It's only
recently that the rustlers have made killings here. Nor have
there been saloons till lately, nor the drifting in of outcasts.
Has not this gun-man some special mission here?"
Jane maintained silence.
"Tell me," ordered Bishop Dyer, sharply.
"Yes," she replied.
"Do you know what it is?"
"Yes."
"Tell me that."
"Bishop Dyer, I don't want to tell."
He waved his hand in an imperativegesture of command. The red
once more leaped to his face, and in his steel-blue eyes glinted
a pin-point of curiosity.
"That first day," whispered Jane, "Lassiter said he came here to
find-- Milly Erne's grave!"
With downcast eyes Jane watched the swift flow of the amber
water. She saw it and tried to think of it, of the stones, of the
ferns; but, like her body, her mind was in a leaden vise. Only
the Bishop's voice could release her. Seemingly there was silence
of longer duration than all her former life.
"Tor what--else?" When Bishop Dyer's voice did cleave the silence
it was high, curiouslyshrill, and on the point of breaking. It
released Jane's tongue, but she could not lift her eyes.
"To kill the man who persuaded Milly Erne to abandon her home and
her husband--and her God!"
With wonderful distinctness Jane Withersteen heard her own clear
voice. She heard the water murmur at her feet and flow on to the
sea; she heard the rushing of all the waters in the world. They
filled her ears with low, unreal murmurings--these sounds that
deadened her brain and yet could not break the long and terrible
silence. Then, from somewhere-- from an immeasurable
distance--came a slow, guarded, clinking, clanking step. Into her
it shot electrifying life. It released the weight upon her numbed
eyelids. Lifting her eyes she saw--ashen, shaken, stricken-- not
the Bishop but the man! And beyond him, from round the corner
came that soft, silvery step. A long black boot with a gleaming
spur swept into sight--and then Lassiter! Bishop Dyer did not
see, did not hear: he stared at Jane in the throes of sudden
revelation.
"Ah, I understand!" he cried, in hoarse accents. "That's why you
made love to this Lassiter--to bind his hands!"
It was Jane's gaze riveted upon the rider that made Bishop Dyer
turn. Then clear sight failed her. Dizzily, in a blur, she saw
the Bishop's hand jerk to his hip. She saw gleam of blue and
spout of red. In her ears burst a thundering report. The court
floated in darkening circles around her, and she fell into utter
blackness.
The darkness lightened, turned to slow-drifting haze, and lifted.
Through a thin film of blue smoke she saw the rough-hewn timbers
of the court roof. A cool, damp touch moved across her brow. She
smelled powder, and it was that which galvanized her suspended
thought. She moved, to see that she lay prone upon the stone
flags with her head on Lassiter's knee, and he was bathing her
brow with water from the stream. The same swift glance, shifting
low, brought into range of her sight a smoking gun and splashes
of blood.
"Ah-h!" she moaned, and was drifting, sinking again into
darkness, when Lassiter's voice arrested her.
"It's all right, Jane. It's all right."
"Did--you--kill--him?" she whispered.
"Who? That fat party who was here? No. I didn't kill
him."
"Oh!...Lassiter!"
"Say! It was queer for you to faint. I thought you were such a
strong woman, not faintish like that. You're all right now--only
some pale. I thought you'd never come to. But I'm awkward round
women folks. I couldn't think of anythin'."
"Lassiter!...the gun there!...the blood!"
"So that's troublin' you. I reckon it needn't. You see it was
this way. I come round the house an' seen that fat party an'
heard him talkin' loud. 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'. So I winged him--put a bullet through his
arm as he was pullin' at his gun. An' he dropped the gun there,
an' a little blood. I told him he'd introduced himself
sufficient, an' to please move out of my vicinity. An' he
went."
Lassiter spoke with slow, cool, soothing voice, in which there
was a hint of levity, and his touch, as he continued to bathe her
brow, was gentle and steady. His impassive face, and the kind
gray eyes, further stilled her agitation.
"He drew on you first, and you deliberately shot to cripple
him--you wouldn't kill him--you--Lassiter?"'
"That's about the size of it."
Jane kissed his hand.
All that was calm and cool about Lassiter instantly vanished.
"Don't do that! I won't stand it! An' I don't care a damn who
that fat party was."
He helped Jane to her feet and to a chair. Then with the wet
scarf he had used to bathe her face he wiped the blood from the
stone flags and, picking up the gun, he threw it upon a couch.
With that he began to pace the court, and his silver spurs
jangled musically, and the great gun-sheaths softly brushed
against his leather chaps.
"So--it's true--what I heard him say?" Lassiter asked, presently
halting before her. "You made love to me--to bind my hands?"
"Yes," confessed Jane. It took all her woman's courage to meet
the gray storm of his glance.
"All these days that you've been so friendly an' like a
pardner--all these evenin's that have been so bewilderin' to
me--your beauty--an'--an' the way you looked an' came close to
me--they were woman's tricks to bind my hands?"
"Yes."
"An' your sweetness that seemed so natural, an' your throwin'
little Fay an' me so much together--to make me love the
child--all that was for the same reason?"
"Yes."
Lassiter flung his arms--a strange gesture for him.
"Mebbe it wasn't much in your Mormon thinkin', for you to play
that game. But to ring the child in--that was hellish!"
Jane's passionate" target="_blank" title="a.易动情的；易怒的">passionate, unheeding zeal began to loom darkly.
"Lassiter, whatever my intention in the beginning, Fay loves you
dearly-- and I--I've grown to--to like you."
"That's powerful kind of you, now," he said. Sarcasm and scorn
made his voice that of a stranger. "An' you sit there an' look me
straight in the eyes! You're a wonderful strange woman, Jane
Withersteen."
"I'm not ashamed, Lassiter. I told you I'd try to change you."
"Would you mind tellin' me just what you tried?"
"I tried to make you see beauty in me and be softened by it. I
wanted you to care for me so that I could influence you. It
wasn't easy. At first you were stone-blind. Then I hoped you'd
love little Fay, and through that come to feel the horror of
making children fatherless."
"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."
"Lassiter!"
"I reckon I'm a human bein', though I never loved any one but my
sister, Milly Erne. That was long--"
"Oh, are you Milly's brother?"
"Yes, I was, an' I loved her. There never was any one but her in
my life till now. Didn't I tell you that long ago I back-trailed
myself from women? I was a Texas ranger till--till Milly left
home, an' then I became somethin' else--Lassiter! For years I've
been a lonely man set on one thing. I came here an' met you. An'
now I'm not the man I was. The change was gradual, an' I took no
notice of it. I understand now that never-satisfied longin' to
see you, listen to you, watch you, feel you near me. It's plain
now why you were never out of my thoughts. I've had no thoughts
but of you. I've lived an' breathed for you. An' now when I know
what it means--what you've done--I'm burnin' up with hell's
fire!"
"Oh, Lassiter--no--no--you don't love me that way!" Jane cased.
"If that's what love is, then I do."
"Forgive me! I didn't mean to make you love me like that. Oh,
what a tangle of our lives! You--Milly Erne's brother! And
I--heedless, mad to melt your heart toward Mormons. Lassiter, I
may be wicked but not wicked enough to hate. If I couldn't hate
Tull, could I hate you?"
"After all, Jane, mebbe you're only blind--Mormon blind. That
only can explain what's close to selfishness--"
"I'm not selfish. I despise the very word. If I were free--"
"But you're not free. Not free of Mormonism. An' in playin' this
game with me you've been unfaithful."
"Unfaithful!" faltered Jane.
"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."
"Is it vile--is it blind--is it only Mormonism to save human
life? No, Lassiter, that's God's law, divine, universal for all
Christians."
"The blindness I mean is blindness that keeps you from seein' the
truth. I've known many good Mormons. But some are blacker than
hell. You won't see that even when you know it. Else, why all
this blind passion to save the life of that--that...."
Jane shut out the light, and the hands she held over her eyes
trembled and quivered against her face.
"Blind--yes, en' let me make it clear en' simple to you,"
Lassiter went on, his voice losing its tone of anger. "Take, for
instance, that idea of yours last night when you wanted my guns.
It was good an' beautiful, an' showed your heart--but--why, Jane,
it was crazy. Mind I'm assumin' that life to me is as sweet as to
any other man. An' to preserve that life is each man's first an'
closest thought. 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.
Your Bishop has shot a half dozen men, an' it wasn't through
prayers of his that they recovered. An' to-day he'd have shot me
if he'd been quick enough on the draw. Could I walk or ride down
into Cottonwoods without my guns? This is a wild time, Jane
Withersteen, this year of our Lord eighteen seventy- one."
"No time--for a woman!" exclaimed Jane, brokenly. "Oh, Lassiter,
I feel helpless--lost--and don't know where to turn. If I am
blind--then--I need some one--a friend--you, Lassiter--more than
ever!"
"Well, I didn't say nothin' about goin' back on you, did I?"
him most. We're only a wild, lonely border settlement. It's only
recently that the rustlers have made killings here. Nor have
there been saloons till lately, nor the drifting in of outcasts.
Has not this gun-man some special mission here?"
Jane maintained silence.
"Tell me," ordered Bishop Dyer, sharply.
"Yes," she replied.
"Do you know what it is?"
"Yes."
"Tell me that."
"Bishop Dyer, I don't want to tell."
He waved his hand in an imperativegesture of command. The red
once more leaped to his face, and in his steel-blue eyes glinted
a pin-point of curiosity.
"That first day," whispered Jane, "Lassiter said he came here to
find-- Milly Erne's grave!"
With downcast eyes Jane watched the swift flow of the amber
water. She saw it and tried to think of it, of the stones, of the
ferns; but, like her body, her mind was in a leaden vise. Only
the Bishop's voice could release her. Seemingly there was silence
of longer duration than all her former life.
"Tor what--else?" When Bishop Dyer's voice did cleave the silence
it was high, curiouslyshrill, and on the point of breaking. It
released Jane's tongue, but she could not lift her eyes.
"To kill the man who persuaded Milly Erne to abandon her home and
her husband--and her God!"
With wonderful distinctness Jane Withersteen heard her own clear
voice. She heard the water murmur at her feet and flow on to the
sea; she heard the rushing of all the waters in the world. They
filled her ears with low, unreal murmurings--these sounds that
deadened her brain and yet could not break the long and terrible
silence. Then, from somewhere-- from an immeasurable
distance--came a slow, guarded, clinking, clanking step. Into her
it shot electrifying life. It released the weight upon her numbed
eyelids. Lifting her eyes she saw--ashen, shaken, stricken-- not
the Bishop but the man! And beyond him, from round the corner
came that soft, silvery step. A long black boot with a gleaming
spur swept into sight--and then Lassiter! Bishop Dyer did not
see, did not hear: he stared at Jane in the throes of sudden
revelation.
"Ah, I understand!" he cried, in hoarse accents. "That's why you
made love to this Lassiter--to bind his hands!"
It was Jane's gaze riveted upon the rider that made Bishop Dyer
turn. Then clear sight failed her. Dizzily, in a blur, she saw
the Bishop's hand jerk to his hip. She saw gleam of blue and
spout of red. In her ears burst a thundering report. The court
floated in darkening circles around her, and she fell into utter
blackness.
The darkness lightened, turned to slow-drifting haze, and lifted.
Through a thin film of blue smoke she saw the rough-hewn timbers
of the court roof. A cool, damp touch moved across her brow. She
smelled powder, and it was that which galvanized her suspended
thought. She moved, to see that she lay prone upon the stone
flags with her head on Lassiter's knee, and he was bathing her
brow with water from the stream. The same swift glance, shifting
low, brought into range of her sight a smoking gun and splashes
of blood.
"Ah-h!" she moaned, and was drifting, sinking again into
darkness, when Lassiter's voice arrested her.
"It's all right, Jane. It's all right."
"Did--you--kill--him?" she whispered.
"Who? That fat party who was here? No. I didn't kill
him."
"Oh!...Lassiter!"
"Say! It was queer for you to faint. I thought you were such a
strong woman, not faintish like that. You're all right now--only
some pale. I thought you'd never come to. But I'm awkward round
women folks. I couldn't think of anythin'."
"Lassiter!...the gun there!...the blood!"
"So that's troublin' you. I reckon it needn't. You see it was
this way. I come round the house an' seen that fat party an'
heard him talkin' loud. 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'. So I winged him--put a bullet through his
arm as he was pullin' at his gun. An' he dropped the gun there,
an' a little blood. I told him he'd introduced himself
sufficient, an' to please move out of my vicinity. An' he
went."
Lassiter spoke with slow, cool, soothing voice, in which there
was a hint of levity, and his touch, as he continued to bathe her
brow, was gentle and steady. His impassive face, and the kind
gray eyes, further stilled her agitation.
"He drew on you first, and you deliberately shot to cripple
him--you wouldn't kill him--you--Lassiter?"'
"That's about the size of it."
Jane kissed his hand.
All that was calm and cool about Lassiter instantly vanished.
"Don't do that! I won't stand it! An' I don't care a damn who
that fat party was."
He helped Jane to her feet and to a chair. Then with the wet
scarf he had used to bathe her face he wiped the blood from the
stone flags and, picking up the gun, he threw it upon a couch.
With that he began to pace the court, and his silver spurs
jangled musically, and the great gun-sheaths softly brushed
against his leather chaps.
"So--it's true--what I heard him say?" Lassiter asked, presently
halting before her. "You made love to me--to bind my hands?"
"Yes," confessed Jane. It took all her woman's courage to meet
the gray storm of his glance.
"All these days that you've been so friendly an' like a
pardner--all these evenin's that have been so bewilderin' to
me--your beauty--an'--an' the way you looked an' came close to
me--they were woman's tricks to bind my hands?"
"Yes."
"An' your sweetness that seemed so natural, an' your throwin'
little Fay an' me so much together--to make me love the
child--all that was for the same reason?"
"Yes."
Lassiter flung his arms--a strange gesture for him.
"Mebbe it wasn't much in your Mormon thinkin', for you to play
that game. But to ring the child in--that was hellish!"
Jane's passionate" target="_blank" title="a.易动情的；易怒的">passionate, unheeding zeal began to loom darkly.
"Lassiter, whatever my intention in the beginning, Fay loves you
dearly-- and I--I've grown to--to like you."
"That's powerful kind of you, now," he said. Sarcasm and scorn
made his voice that of a stranger. "An' you sit there an' look me
straight in the eyes! You're a wonderful strange woman, Jane
Withersteen."
"I'm not ashamed, Lassiter. I told you I'd try to change you."
"Would you mind tellin' me just what you tried?"
"I tried to make you see beauty in me and be softened by it. I
wanted you to care for me so that I could influence you. It
wasn't easy. At first you were stone-blind. Then I hoped you'd
love little Fay, and through that come to feel the horror of
making children fatherless."
"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."
"Lassiter!"
"I reckon I'm a human bein', though I never loved any one but my
sister, Milly Erne. That was long--"
"Oh, are you Milly's brother?"
"Yes, I was, an' I loved her. There never was any one but her in
my life till now. Didn't I tell you that long ago I back-trailed
myself from women? I was a Texas ranger till--till Milly left
home, an' then I became somethin' else--Lassiter! For years I've
been a lonely man set on one thing. I came here an' met you. An'
now I'm not the man I was. The change was gradual, an' I took no
notice of it. I understand now that never-satisfied longin' to
see you, listen to you, watch you, feel you near me. It's plain
now why you were never out of my thoughts. I've had no thoughts
but of you. I've lived an' breathed for you. An' now when I know
what it means--what you've done--I'm burnin' up with hell's
fire!"
"Oh, Lassiter--no--no--you don't love me that way!" Jane cased.
"If that's what love is, then I do."
"Forgive me! I didn't mean to make you love me like that. Oh,
what a tangle of our lives! You--Milly Erne's brother! And
I--heedless, mad to melt your heart toward Mormons. Lassiter, I
may be wicked but not wicked enough to hate. If I couldn't hate
Tull, could I hate you?"
"After all, Jane, mebbe you're only blind--Mormon blind. That
only can explain what's close to selfishness--"
"I'm not selfish. I despise the very word. If I were free--"
"But you're not free. Not free of Mormonism. An' in playin' this
game with me you've been unfaithful."
"Unfaithful!" faltered Jane.
"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."
"Is it vile--is it blind--is it only Mormonism to save human
life? No, Lassiter, that's God's law, divine, universal for all
Christians."
"The blindness I mean is blindness that keeps you from seein' the
truth. I've known many good Mormons. But some are blacker than
hell. You won't see that even when you know it. Else, why all
this blind passion to save the life of that--that...."
Jane shut out the light, and the hands she held over her eyes
trembled and quivered against her face.
"Blind--yes, en' let me make it clear en' simple to you,"
Lassiter went on, his voice losing its tone of anger. "Take, for
instance, that idea of yours last night when you wanted my guns.
It was good an' beautiful, an' showed your heart--but--why, Jane,
it was crazy. Mind I'm assumin' that life to me is as sweet as to
any other man. An' to preserve that life is each man's first an'
closest thought. 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.
Your Bishop has shot a half dozen men, an' it wasn't through
prayers of his that they recovered. An' to-day he'd have shot me
if he'd been quick enough on the draw. Could I walk or ride down
into Cottonwoods without my guns? This is a wild time, Jane
Withersteen, this year of our Lord eighteen seventy- one."
"No time--for a woman!" exclaimed Jane, brokenly. "Oh, Lassiter,
I feel helpless--lost--and don't know where to turn. If I am
blind--then--I need some one--a friend--you, Lassiter--more than
ever!"
"Well, I didn't say nothin' about goin' back on you, did I?"
- lonely [´ləunli]
a.孤独的；无人烟的 (初中英语单词) - lately [´leitli] ad.近来，不久前 (初中英语单词)
- mission [´miʃən] n.代表团；使馆vt.派遣 (初中英语单词)
- bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- gesture [´dʒestʃə] n.手势 v.打手势 (初中英语单词)
- release [ri´li:s] vt&n.释放；放松；赦免 (初中英语单词)
- curiously [´kjuəriəsli] ad.好奇地；稀奇古怪地 (初中英语单词)
- abandon [ə´bændən] vt.抛弃，放弃，离弃 (初中英语单词)
- shaken [´ʃeikən] shake的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- reckon [´rekən] v.计算；认为；估计 (初中英语单词)
- visitor [´vizitə] n.访问者；来宾；参观者 (初中英语单词)
- winged [´wiŋd] a.有翼的 (初中英语单词)
- bullet [´bulit] n.子弹 (初中英语单词)
- instantly [´instəntli] ad.立即，立刻 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- intention [in´tenʃən] n.意图；打算；意义 (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- wicked [´wikid] a.邪恶的；不道德的 (初中英语单词)
- selfish [´selfiʃ] a.自私的，利己的 (初中英语单词)
- despise [di´spaiz] vt.轻视，藐视 (初中英语单词)
- faithful [´feiθfəl] a.忠实的；可靠的 (初中英语单词)
- divine [di´vain] a.神圣的 v.预言 (初中英语单词)
- universal [,ju:ni´və:səl] a.宇宙的；普遍的 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- preserve [pri´zə:v] v.保藏 n.保藏物 (初中英语单词)
- shrill [ʃril] a.(声音)尖锐的 (高中英语单词)
- awkward [´ɔ:kwəd] a.笨拙的；为难的 (高中英语单词)
- deliberately [di´libərətli] ad.故意地；慎重地 (高中英语单词)
- sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
- passionate [´pæʃənit] a.易动情的；易怒的 (高中英语单词)
- gradual [´grædʒuəl] a.逐渐的 (高中英语单词)
- tangle [´tæŋgəl] n.&vt.(使)缠结；纠纷 (高中英语单词)
- innocence [´inəsəns] n.无罪；天真 (高中英语单词)
- damned [dæmd] a.该死的 ad.非常，极 (高中英语单词)
- imperative [im´perətiv] a.紧急的 n.命令式 (英语四级单词)
- seemingly [´si:miŋli] ad.表面上；似乎 (英语四级单词)
- cleave [kli:v] v.劈(开) vi.粘住；依恋 (英语四级单词)
- silvery [´silvəri] a.银一般的 (英语四级单词)
- hoarse [hɔ:s] a.嘶哑的；嗓门粗哑的 (英语四级单词)
- molasses [mə´læsiz] n.糖浆，糖蜜 (英语四级单词)
- vicinity [vi´siniti] n.邻近，附近，接近 (英语四级单词)
- blindness [´blaindnis] n.失明；愚味，文盲 (英语四级单词)
- downcast [´daunkɑ:st] a.沮丧的；向下看的 (英语六级单词)
- duration [djuə´reiʃən] n.持久；持续期间 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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