章节正文
a beautiful baby, she said, an' all she thought an' dreamed of
was somehow to get baby back to its father, an' then she'd
thankfully lay down and die. An' the letter ended abrupt, in the
middle of a sentence, en' it wasn't signed.
"The second letter was written more than two years after the
first. It was from Salt Lake City. It simply said that Milly had
heard her brother was on her trail. She asked Frank to tell her
brother to give up the search because if he didn't she would
suffer in a way too horrible to tell. She didn't beg. She just
stated a fact an' made the simple request. An' she ended that
letter by sayin' she would soon leave Salt Lake City with the man
she had come to love, en' would never be heard of again.
"I recognized Milly's handwritin', an' I recognized her way of
puttin' things. But that second letter told me of some great
change in her. Ponderin' over it, I felt at last she'd either
come to love that feller an' his religion, or some terrible fear
made her lie an' say so. I couldn't be sure which. But, of
course, I meant to find out. I'll say here, if I'd known Mormons
then as I do now I'd left Milly to her fate. For mebbe she was
right about what she'd suffer if I kept on her trail. But I was
young an' wild them days. First I went to the town where she'd
first been taken, an' I went to the place where she'd been kept.
I got that skunk who owned the place, an' took him out in the
woods, an' made him tell all he knowed. That wasn't much as to
length, but it was pure hell's-fire in substance. This time I
left him some incapacitated for any more skunk work short of
hell. Then I hit the trail for Utah.
"That was fourteen years ago. I saw the incomin' of most of the
Mormons. It was a wild country an' a wild time. I rode from town
to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, camp to camp. I
never stayed long in one place. I never had but one idea. I never
rested. Four years went by, an' I knowed every trail in northern
Utah. I kept on an' as time went by, an' I'd begun to grow old in
my search, I had firmer, blinder faith in whatever was guidin'
me. Once I read about a feller who sailed the seven seas an'
traveled the world, an' he had a story to tell, an' whenever he
seen the man to whom he must tell that story he knowed him on
sight. I was like that, only I had a question to ask. An' always
I knew the man of whom I must ask. So I never really lost the
trail, though for many years it was the dimmest trail ever
followed by any man.
"Then come a change in my luck. Along in Central Utah I rounded
up Hurd, an' I whispered somethin' in his ear, an' watched his
face, an' then throwed a gun against his bowels. An' he died with
his teeth so tight shut I couldn't have pried them open with a
knife. Slack an' Metzger that same year both heard me whisper the
same question, an' neither would they speak a word when they lay
dyin'. Long before I'd learned no man of this breed or class--or
God knows what--would give up any secrets! I had to see in a
man's fear of death the connections with Milly Erne's fate. An'
as the years passed at long intervals I would find such a man.
"So as I drifted on the long trail down into southern Utah my
name preceded me, an' I had to meet a people prepared for me, an'
ready with guns. They made me a gun-man. An' that suited me. In
all this time signs of the proselyter an' the giant with the
blue-ice eyes an' the gold beard seemed to fade dimmer out of the
trail. Only twice in ten years did I find a trace of that
mysterious man who had visited the proselyter at my home village.
What he had to do with Milly's fate was beyond all hope for me to
learn, unless my guidin' spirit led me to him! As for the other
man, I knew, as sure as I breathed en' the stars shone en' the
wind blew, that I'd meet him some day.
"Eighteen years I've been on the trail. An' it led me to the last
lonely villages of the Utah border. Eighteen years!...I feel
pretty old now. I was only twenty when I hit that trail. Well, as
I told you, back here a ways a Gentile said Jane Withersteen
could tell me about Milly Erne an' show me her grave!"
The low voice ceased, and Lassiter slowly turned his sombrero
round and round, and appeared to be counting the silver ornaments
on the band. Jane, leaning toward him, sat as if petrified,
listening intently, waiting to hear more. She could have
shrieked, but power of tongue and lips were denied her. She saw
only this sad, gray, passion-worn man, and she heard only the
faint rustling of the leaves.
"Well, I came to Cottonwoods," went on Lassiter, "an' you showed
me Milly's grave. An' though your teeth have been shut tighter 'n
them of all the dead men Iyin' back along that trail, jest the
same you told me the secret I've lived these eighteen years to
hear! Jane, I said you'd tell me without ever me askin'. I didn't
need to ask my question here. The day, you remember, when that
fat party throwed a gun on me in your court, an'--"
"Oh! Hush!" whispered Jane, blindlyholding 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 lonesomecricket 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 en' 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 runningstream 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 XX. 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
was somehow to get baby back to its father, an' then she'd
thankfully lay down and die. An' the letter ended abrupt, in the
middle of a sentence, en' it wasn't signed.
"The second letter was written more than two years after the
first. It was from Salt Lake City. It simply said that Milly had
heard her brother was on her trail. She asked Frank to tell her
brother to give up the search because if he didn't she would
suffer in a way too horrible to tell. She didn't beg. She just
stated a fact an' made the simple request. An' she ended that
letter by sayin' she would soon leave Salt Lake City with the man
she had come to love, en' would never be heard of again.
"I recognized Milly's handwritin', an' I recognized her way of
puttin' things. But that second letter told me of some great
change in her. Ponderin' over it, I felt at last she'd either
come to love that feller an' his religion, or some terrible fear
made her lie an' say so. I couldn't be sure which. But, of
course, I meant to find out. I'll say here, if I'd known Mormons
then as I do now I'd left Milly to her fate. For mebbe she was
right about what she'd suffer if I kept on her trail. But I was
young an' wild them days. First I went to the town where she'd
first been taken, an' I went to the place where she'd been kept.
I got that skunk who owned the place, an' took him out in the
woods, an' made him tell all he knowed. That wasn't much as to
length, but it was pure hell's-fire in substance. This time I
left him some incapacitated for any more skunk work short of
hell. Then I hit the trail for Utah.
"That was fourteen years ago. I saw the incomin' of most of the
Mormons. It was a wild country an' a wild time. I rode from town
to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, camp to camp. I
never stayed long in one place. I never had but one idea. I never
rested. Four years went by, an' I knowed every trail in northern
Utah. I kept on an' as time went by, an' I'd begun to grow old in
my search, I had firmer, blinder faith in whatever was guidin'
me. Once I read about a feller who sailed the seven seas an'
traveled the world, an' he had a story to tell, an' whenever he
seen the man to whom he must tell that story he knowed him on
sight. I was like that, only I had a question to ask. An' always
I knew the man of whom I must ask. So I never really lost the
trail, though for many years it was the dimmest trail ever
followed by any man.
"Then come a change in my luck. Along in Central Utah I rounded
up Hurd, an' I whispered somethin' in his ear, an' watched his
face, an' then throwed a gun against his bowels. An' he died with
his teeth so tight shut I couldn't have pried them open with a
knife. Slack an' Metzger that same year both heard me whisper the
same question, an' neither would they speak a word when they lay
dyin'. Long before I'd learned no man of this breed or class--or
God knows what--would give up any secrets! I had to see in a
man's fear of death the connections with Milly Erne's fate. An'
as the years passed at long intervals I would find such a man.
"So as I drifted on the long trail down into southern Utah my
name preceded me, an' I had to meet a people prepared for me, an'
ready with guns. They made me a gun-man. An' that suited me. In
all this time signs of the proselyter an' the giant with the
blue-ice eyes an' the gold beard seemed to fade dimmer out of the
trail. Only twice in ten years did I find a trace of that
mysterious man who had visited the proselyter at my home village.
What he had to do with Milly's fate was beyond all hope for me to
learn, unless my guidin' spirit led me to him! As for the other
man, I knew, as sure as I breathed en' the stars shone en' the
wind blew, that I'd meet him some day.
"Eighteen years I've been on the trail. An' it led me to the last
lonely villages of the Utah border. Eighteen years!...I feel
pretty old now. I was only twenty when I hit that trail. Well, as
I told you, back here a ways a Gentile said Jane Withersteen
could tell me about Milly Erne an' show me her grave!"
The low voice ceased, and Lassiter slowly turned his sombrero
round and round, and appeared to be counting the silver ornaments
on the band. Jane, leaning toward him, sat as if petrified,
listening intently, waiting to hear more. She could have
shrieked, but power of tongue and lips were denied her. She saw
only this sad, gray, passion-worn man, and she heard only the
faint rustling of the leaves.
"Well, I came to Cottonwoods," went on Lassiter, "an' you showed
me Milly's grave. An' though your teeth have been shut tighter 'n
them of all the dead men Iyin' back along that trail, jest the
same you told me the secret I've lived these eighteen years to
hear! Jane, I said you'd tell me without ever me askin'. I didn't
need to ask my question here. The day, you remember, when that
fat party throwed a gun on me in your court, an'--"
"Oh! Hush!" whispered Jane, blindlyholding 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 lonesomecricket 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 en' 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 runningstream 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 XX. 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
- sentence [´sentəns]
n.判决 vt.宣判；处刑 (初中英语单词) - horrible [´hɔrəbəl] a.可怕的；恐怖的 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- whisper [´wispə] v.耳语 n.低语；沙沙声 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- lightning [´laitniŋ] n.闪电 a.突然的 (初中英语单词)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- revenge [ri´vendʒ] vt.报复 n.报仇；报复 (初中英语单词)
- reckon [´rekən] v.计算；认为；估计 (初中英语单词)
- sympathy [´simpəθi] n.同情，怜悯 (初中英语单词)
- sensible [´sensəbəl] a.感觉得到的 (初中英语单词)
- statue [´stætʃu:] n.塑像，雕像 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- innocent [´inəsənt] a.无罪的；单纯的 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- stolen [´stəulən] steal 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- abrupt [ə´brʌpt] a.突然的；粗鲁的 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- exquisite [ik´skwizit] a.精巧的；敏锐的 (高中英语单词)
- differently [´difrentli] ad.不同地，有差别地 (高中英语单词)
- lonesome [´ləunsəm] a.孤独的；冷清清的 (高中英语单词)
- cricket [´krikit] n.蟋蟀；板球 (高中英语单词)
- certainty [´sə:tənti] n.确实(性)；确信 (高中英语单词)
- strode [strəud] stride的过去式 (高中英语单词)
- therein [ðeə´rin] ad.在那里，在其中 (高中英语单词)
- mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
- metallic [mi´tælik] a.金属(性)的 (高中英语单词)
- intently [in´tentli] ad.专心地 (英语四级单词)
- blindly [blaindli] ad.盲目地；没头脑地 (英语四级单词)
- composure [kəm´pəuʒə] n.镇静，沉着 (英语四级单词)
- hurriedly [´hʌridli] ad.仓促地，忙乱地 (英语四级单词)
- patter [´pætə] n.行话 v.喋喋不休 (英语四级单词)
- hateful [´heitfəl] a.可恨的，可憎的 (英语四级单词)
- hoarse [hɔ:s] a.嘶哑的；嗓门粗哑的 (英语四级单词)
- fumble [´fʌmbəl] v.&n.摸索；接漏球 (英语四级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- apathy [´æpəθi] n.缺乏感情；冷淡 (英语六级单词)
- abandoned [ə´bændənd] a.被抛弃的；无约束的 (英语六级单词)
- weeping [´wi:piŋ] a.&n.哭泣(的) (英语六级单词)
- posture [´pɔstʃə] n.姿势 v.故作姿态 (英语六级单词)
- vagrant [´veigrənt] n.流浪者 a.流浪的 (英语六级单词)
- darkly [´dɑ:kli] adv.暗，黑；暗中 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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