AMBER SPRING
No unusual circumstance was it for Oldring and some of his men to visit
Cottonwoods in the broad light of day, but for him to prowl about in
the dark with the hoofs of his horses muffled meant that mischief was
brewing. Moreover, to Venters the presence of the masked rider with
Oldring seemed especially ominous. For about this man there was
mystery, he seldom rode through the village, and when he did ride
through it was swiftly; riders seldom met by day on the sage, but
wherever he rode there always followed deeds as dark and mysterious as
the mask he wore. Oldring’s band did not confine themselves to the
rustling of cattle.
Venters lay low in the shade of the cottonwoods, pondering this chance
meeting, and not for many moments did he consider it safe to move on.
Then, with sudden impulse, he turned the other way and went back along
the grove. When he reached the path leading to Jane’s home he decided
to go down to the village. So he hurried onward, with quick soft steps.
Once beyond the grove he entered the one and only street. It was wide,
lined with tall poplars, and under each row of trees, inside the
foot-path, were ditches where ran the water from Jane Withersteen’s
spring.
Between the trees twinkled lights of cottage candles, and far down
flared bright windows of the village stores. When Venters got closer to
these he saw knots of men standing together in earnest conversation.
The usual lounging on the corners and benches and steps was not in
evidence. Keeping in the shadow Venters went closer and closer until he
could hear voices. But he could not distinguish what was said. He
recognized many Mormons, and looked hard for Tull and his men, but
looked in vain. Venters concluded that the rustlers had not passed
along the village street. No doubt these earnest men were discussing
Lassiter’s coming. But Venters felt positive that Tull’s intention
toward himself that day had not been and would not be revealed.
So Venters, seeing there was little for him to learn, began retracing
his steps. The church was dark, Bishop Dyer’s home next to it was also
dark, and likewise Tull’s cottage. Upon almost any night at this hour
there would be lights here, and Venters marked the unusual omission.
As he was about to pass out of the street to skirt the grove, he once
more slunk down at the sound of trotting horses. Presently he descried
two mounted men riding toward him. He hugged the shadow of a tree.
Again the starlight, brighter now, aided him, and he made out Tull’s
stalwart figure, and beside him the short, froglike shape of the rider
Jerry. They were silent, and they rode on to disappear.
Venters went his way with busy, gloomy mind, revolving events of the
day, trying to reckon those brooding in the night. His thoughts
overwhelmed him. Up in that dark grove dwelt a woman who had been his
friend. And he skulked about her home, gripping a gun stealthily as an
Indian, a man without place or people or purpose. Above her hovered the
shadow of grim, hidden, secret power. No queen could have given more
royally out of a bounteous store than Jane Withersteen gave her people,
and likewise to those unfortunates whom her people hated. She asked
only the divine right of all women—freedom; to love and to live as her
heart willed. And yet prayer and her hope were vain.
“For years I’ve seen a storm clouding over her and the village of
Cottonwoods,” muttered Venters, as he strode on. “Soon it’ll burst. I
don’t like the prospects.” That night the villagers whispered in the
street—and night-riding rustlers muffled horses—and Tull was at work in
secret—and out there in the sage hid a man who meant something
terrible—Lassiter!
Venters passed the black cottonwoods, and, entering the sage, climbed
the gradual slope. He kept his direction in line with a western star.
From time to time he stopped to listen and heard only the usual
familiar bark of coyote and sweep of wind and rustle of sage. Presently
a low jumble of rocks loomed up darkly somewhat to his right, and,
turning that way, he whistled softly. Out of the rocks glided a dog
that leaped and whined about him. He climbed over rough, broken rock,
picking his way carefully, and then went down. Here it was darker, and
sheltered from the wind. A white object guided him. It was another dog,
and this one was asleep, curled up between a saddle and a pack. The
animal awoke and thumped his tail in greeting. Venters placed the
saddle for a pillow, rolled in his blankets, with his face upward to
the stars. The white dog snuggled close to him. The other whined and
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 Jane, 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 cañons 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 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. 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 the corral fences. And on
the little windows of the barn projected bobbing heads of bays and
blacks and sorrels. When the two men entered the immense barnyard, from
all around the din increased. This welcome, however, was not seconded
by the several men and boys who vanished on sight.
Venters and Lassiter were turning toward the house when Jane appeared
in the lane leading a horse. In riding-skirt and blouse she seemed to
have lost some of her statuesque proportions, and looked more like a
girl rider than the mistress of Withersteen. She was brightly smiling,
and her greeting was warmly cordial.
“Good news,” she announced. “I’ve been to the village. All is quiet. I
expected—I don’t know what. But there’s no excitement. And Tull has
ridden out on his way to Glaze.”
“Tull gone?” inquired Venters, with surprise. He was wondering what
could have taken Tull away. Was it to avoid another meeting with
Lassiter that he went? Could it have any connection with the probable
nearness of Oldring and his gang?
“Gone, yes, thank goodness,” replied Jane. “Now I’ll have peace for a
while. Lassiter, I want you to see my horses. You are a rider, and you
must be a judge of horseflesh. Some of mine have Arabian blood. My
father got his best strain in Nevada from Indians who claimed their
horses were bred down from the original stock left by the Spaniards.”
“Well, ma’am, the one you’ve been ridin’ takes my eye,” said Lassiter,
as he walked round the racy, clean-limbed, and fine-pointed roan.
“Where are the boys?” she asked, looking about. “Jerd, Paul, where are
you? Here, bring out the horses.”
The sound of dropping bars inside the barn was the signal for the
horses to jerk their heads in the windows, to snort and stamp. Then
they came pounding out of the door, a file of thoroughbreds, to plunge
about the barnyard, heads and tails up, manes flying. They halted afar
off, squared away to look, came slowly forward with whinnies for their
mistress, and doubtful snorts for the strangers and their horses.
“Come—come—come,” called Jane, holding out her hands. “Why,
Bells—Wrangle, where are your manners? Come, Black Star—come, Night.
Ah, you beauties! My racers of the sage!”
Only two came up to her; those she called Night and Black Star. Venters
never looked at them without delight. The first was soft dead black,
the other glittering black, and they were perfectly matched in size,
both being high and long-bodied, wide through the shoulders, with
lithe, powerful legs. That they were a woman’s pets showed in the gloss
of skin, the fineness of mane. It showed, too, in the light of big eyes
and the gentle reach of eagerness.
“I never seen their like,” was Lassiter’s encomium, “an’ in my day I’ve
seen a sight of horses. Now, ma’am, if you was wantin’ to make a long
an’ fast ride across the sage—say to elope—”
Lassiter ended there with dry humor, yet behind that was meaning. Jane
blushed and made arch eyes at him.
“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 night-riders haven’t come in.
Bern, what do you make of that? Need I worry? You know I have to be
made to worry.”
“Well, it’s not usual for the night shift to ride in so late,” replied
Venters, slowly, and his glance sought Lassiter’s. “Cattle are usually
quiet after dark. Still, I’ve known even a coyote to stampede your
white herd.”
“I refuse to borrow trouble. Come,” said Jane.
They mounted, and, with Jane in the lead, rode down the lane, and,
turning off into a cattle trail, proceeded westward. Venters’s dogs
trotted behind them. On this side of the ranch the outlook was
different from that on the other; the immediate foreground was rough
and the sage more rugged and less colorful; there were no dark-blue
lines of cañons to hold the eye, nor any uprearing rock walls. It was a
long roll and slope into gray obscurity. Soon Jane left the trail and
rode into the sage, and presently she dismounted and threw her bridle.
The men did likewise. Then, on foot, they followed her, coming out at
length on the rim of a low escarpment. She passed by several little
ridges of earth to halt before a faintly defined mound. It lay in the
shade of a sweeping sage-brush close to the edge of the promontory; and
a rider could have jumped his horse over it without recognizing a
grave.
“Here!”
She looked sad as she spoke, but she offered no explanation for the
neglect of an unmarked, uncared-for grave. There was a little bunch of
pale, sweet lavender daisies, doubtless planted there by Jane.
“I only come here to remember and to pray,” she said. “But I leave no
trail!”
A grave in the sage! How lonely this resting-place of Milly Erne! The
cottonwoods or the alfalfa fields were not in sight, nor was there any
rock or ridge or cedar to lend contrast to the monotony. Gray slopes,
tinging the purple, barren and wild, with the wind waving the sage,
swept away to the dim horizon.
Lassiter looked at the grave and then out into space. At that moment he
seemed a figure of bronze.
Jane touched Venters’s arm and led him back to the horses.
“Bern!” cried Jane, when they were out of hearing. “Suppose Lassiter
were Milly’s husband—the father of that little girl lost so long ago!”
“It might be, Jane. Let us ride on. If he wants to see us again he’ll
come.”
So they mounted and rode out to the cattle trail and began to climb.
From the height of the ridge, where they had started down, Venters
looked back. He did not see Lassiter, but his glance, drawn
irresistibly farther out on the gradual slope, caught sight of a moving
cloud of dust.
“Hello, a rider!”
“Yes, I see,” said Jane.
“That fellow’s riding hard. Jane, there’s something wrong.”
“Oh yes, there must be.... How he rides!”
The horse disappeared in the sage, and then puffs of dust marked his
course.
“He’s short-cut on us—he’s making straight for the corrals.”
Venters and Jane galloped their steeds and reined in at the turning of
the lane. This lane led down to the right of the grove. Suddenly into
its lower entrance flashed a bay horse. Then Venters caught the fast
rhythmic beat of pounding hoofs. Soon his keen eye recognized the swing
of the rider in his saddle.
“It’s Judkins, your Gentile rider!” he cried. “Jane, when Judkins rides
like that it means hell!”