FAITH AND UNFAITH
At Jane Withersteen’s home the promise made to Mrs. Larkin to care for
little Fay had begun to be fulfilled. Like a gleam of sunlight through
the cottonwoods was the coming of the child to the gloomy house of
Withersteen. The big, silent halls echoed with childish laughter. In
the shady court, where Jane spent many of the hot July days, Fay’s tiny
feet pattered over the stone flags and splashed in the amber stream.
She prattled incessantly. What difference, Jane thought, a child made
in her home! It had never been a real home, she discovered. Even the
tidiness and neatness she had so observed, and upon which she had
insisted to her women, became, in the light of Fay’s smile, habits that
now lost their importance. Fay littered the court with Jane’s books and
papers, and other toys her fancy improvised, and many a strange craft
went floating down the little brook.
And it was owing to Fay’s presence that Jane Withersteen came to see
more of Lassiter. The rider had for the most part kept to the sage. He
rode for her, but he did not seek her except on business; and Jane had
to acknowledge in pique that her overtures had been made in vain. Fay,
however, captured Lassiter the moment he first laid eyes on her.
Jane was present at the meeting, and there was something about it which
dimmed her sight and softened her toward this foe of her people. The
rider had clanked into the court, a tired yet wary man, always looking
for the attack upon him that was inevitable and might come from any
quarter; and he had walked right upon little Fay. The child had been
beautiful even in her rags and amid the surroundings of the hovel in
the sage, but now, in a pretty white dress, with her shining curls
brushed and her face clean and rosy, she was lovely. She left her play
and looked up at Lassiter.
If there was not an instinct for all three of them in that meeting, an
unreasoning tendency toward a closer intimacy, then Jane Withersteen
believed she had been subject to a queer fancy. She imagined any child
would have feared Lassiter. And Fay Larkin had been a lonely, a
solitary elf of the sage, not at all an ordinary child, and exquisitely
shy with strangers. She watched Lassiter with great, round, grave eyes,
but showed no fear. The rider gave Jane a favorable report of cattle
and horses; and as he took the seat to which she invited him, little
Fay edged as much as half an inch nearer. Jane replied to his look of
inquiry and told Fay’s story. The rider’s gray, earnest gaze troubled
her. Then he turned to Fay and smiled in a way that made Jane doubt her
sense of the true relation of things. How could Lassiter smile so at a
child when he had made so many children fatherless? But he did smile,
and to the gentleness she had seen a few times he added something that
was infinitely sad and sweet. Jane’s intuition told her that Lassiter
had never been a father, but if life ever so blessed him he would be a
good one. Fay, also, must have found that smile singularly winning. For
she edged closer and closer, and then, by way of feminine capitulation,
went to Jane, from whose side she bent a beautiful glance upon the
rider.
Lassiter only smiled at her.
Jane watched them, and realized that now was the moment she should
seize, if she was ever to win this man from his hatred. But the step
was not easy to take. The more she saw of Lassiter the more she
respected him, and the greater her respect the harder it became to lend
herself to mere coquetry. Yet as she thought of her great motive, of
Tull, and of that other whose name she had schooled herself never to
think of in connection with Milly Erne’s avenger, she suddenly found
she had no choice. And her creed gave her boldness far beyond the limit
to which vanity would have led her.
“Lassiter, I see so little of you now,” she said, and was conscious of
heat in her cheeks.
“I’ve been riding hard,” he replied.
“But you can’t live in the saddle. You come in sometimes. Won’t you
come here to see me—oftener?”
“Is that an order?”
“Nonsense! I simply ask you to come to see me when you find time.”
“Why?”
The query once heard was not so embarrassing to Jane as she might have
imagined. Moreover, it established in her mind a fact that there
existed actually other than selfish reasons for her wanting to see him.
And as she had been bold, so she determined to be both honest and
brave.
“I’ve reasons—only one of which I need mention,” she answered. “If it’s
possible I want to change you toward my people. And on the moment I can
conceive of little I wouldn’t do to gain that end.”
How much better and freer Jane felt after that confession! She meant to
show him that there was one Mormon who could play a game or wage a
fight in the open.
“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.”
“’Pears to me that you’d run no risk, or Venters, either. But mebbe
that doesn’t hold good for me.”
“You mean it wouldn’t be safe for you to be often here? You look for
ambush in the cottonwoods?”
“Not that so much.”
At this juncture little Fay sidled over to Lassiter.
“Has oo a little dirl?” she inquired.
“No, lassie,” replied the rider.
Whatever Fay seemed to be searching for in Lassiter’s sun-reddened face
and quiet eyes she evidently found. “Oo tan tom to see me,” she added,
and with that, shyness gave place to friendly curiosity. First his
sombrero with its leather band and silver ornaments commanded her
attention; next his quirt, and then the clinking, silver spurs. These
held her for some time, but presently, true to childish fickleness, she
left off playing with them to look for something else. She laughed in
glee as she ran her little hands down the slippery, shiny surface of
Lassiter’s leather chaps. Soon she discovered one of the hanging
gun—sheaths, and she dragged it up and began tugging at the huge black
handle of the gun. Jane Withersteen repressed an exclamation. What
significance there was to her in the little girl’s efforts to dislodge
that heavy weapon! Jane Withersteen saw Fay’s play and her beauty and
her love as most powerful allies to her own woman’s part in a game that
suddenly had acquired a strange zest and a hint of danger. And as for
the rider, he appeared to have forgotten Jane in the wonder of this
lovely child playing about him. At first he was much the shyer of the
two. Gradually her confidence overcame his backwardness, and he had the
temerity to stroke her golden curls with a great hand. Fay rewarded his
boldness with a smile, and when he had gone to the extreme of closing
that great hand over her little brown one, she said, simply, “I like
oo!”
Sight of his face then made Jane oblivious for the time to his
character as a hater of Mormons. Out of the mother longing that swelled
her breast she divined the child hunger in Lassiter.
He returned the next day, and the next; and upon the following he came
both at morning and at night. Upon the evening of this fourth day Jane
seemed to feel the breaking of a brooding struggle in Lassiter. During
all these visits he had scarcely a word to say, though he watched her
and played absent-mindedly with Fay. Jane had contented herself with
silence. Soon little Fay substituted for the expression of regard, “I
like oo,” a warmer and more generous one, “I love oo.”
Thereafter Lassiter came oftener to see Jane and her little protégée.
Daily he grew more gentle and kind, and gradually developed a quaintly
merry mood. In the morning he lifted Fay upon his horse and let her
ride as he walked beside her to the edge of the sage. In the evening he
played with the child at an infinite variety of games she invented, and
then, oftener than not, he accepted Jane’s invitation to supper. No
other visitor came to Withersteen House during those days. So that in
spite of watchfulness he never forgot, Lassiter began to show he felt
at home there. After the meal they walked into the grove of cottonwoods
or up by the lakes, and little Fay held Lassiter’s hand as much as she
held Jane’s. Thus a strange relationship was established, and Jane
liked it. At twilight they always returned to the house, where Fay
kissed them and went in to her mother. Lassiter and Jane were left
alone.
Then, if there were anything that a good woman could do to win a man
and still preserve her self-respect, it was something which escaped the
natural subtlety of a woman determined to allure. Jane’s vanity, that
after all was not great, was soon satisfied with Lassiter’s silent
admiration. And her honest desire to lead him from his dark,
blood-stained path would never have blinded her to what she owed
herself. But the driving passion of her religion, and its call to save
Mormons’ lives, one life in particular, bore Jane Withersteen close to
an infringement of her womanhood. In the beginning she had reasoned
that her appeal to Lassiter must be through the senses. With whatever
means she possessed in the way of adornment she enhanced her beauty.
And she stooped to artifices that she knew were unworthy of her, but
which she deliberately chose to employ. She made of herself a girl in
every variable mood wherein a girl might be desirable. In those moods
she was not above the methods of an inexperienced though natural flirt.
She kept close to him whenever opportunity afforded; and she was
forever playfully, yet passionately underneath the surface, fighting
him for possession of the great black guns. These he would never yield
to her. And so in that manner their hands were often and long in
contact. The more of simplicity that she sensed in him the greater the
advantage she took.
She had a trick of changing—and it was not altogether voluntary—from
this gay, thoughtless, girlish coquettishness to the silence and the
brooding, burning mystery of a woman’s mood. The strength and passion
and fire of her were in her eyes, and she so used them that Lassiter
had to see this depth in her, this haunting promise more fitted to her
years than to the flaunting guise of a wilful girl.
The July days flew by. Jane reasoned that if it were possible for her
to be happy during such a time, then she was happy. Little Fay
completely filled a long aching void in her heart. In fettering the
hands of this Lassiter she was accomplishing the greatest good of her
life, and to do good even in a small way rendered happiness to Jane
Withersteen. She had attended the regular Sunday services of her
church; otherwise she had not gone to the village for weeks. It was
unusual that none of her churchmen or friends had called upon her of
late; but it was neglect for which she was glad. Judkins and his boy
riders had experienced no difficulty in driving the white herd. So
these warm July days were free of worry, and soon Jane hoped she had
passed the crisis; and for her to hope was presently to trust, and then
to believe. She thought often of Venters, but in a dreamy, abstract
way. She spent hours teaching and playing with little Fay. And the
activity of her mind centered around Lassiter. The direction she had
given her will seemed to blunt any branching off of thought from that
straight line. The mood came to obsess her.
In the end, when her awakening came, she learned that she had builded
better than she knew. Lassiter, though kinder and gentler than ever,
had parted with his quaint humor and his coldness and his tranquillity
to become a restless and unhappy man. Whatever the power of his deadly
intent toward Mormons, that passion now had a rival, the one equally
burning and consuming. Jane Withersteen had one moment of exultation
before the dawn of a strange uneasiness. What if she had made of
herself a lure, at tremendous cost to him and to her, and all in vain!
That night in the moonlit grove she summoned all her courage and,
turning suddenly in the path, she faced Lassiter and leaned close to
him, so that she touched him and her eyes looked up to his.
“Lassiter!... Will you do anything for me?”
In the moonlight she saw his dark, worn face change, and by that change
she seemed to feel him immovable as a wall of stone.
Jane slipped her hands down to the swinging gun-sheaths, and when she
had locked her fingers around the huge, cold handles of the guns, she
trembled as with a chilling ripple over all her body.
“May I take your guns?”
“Why?” he asked, and for the first time to her his voice carried a
harsh note. Jane felt his hard, strong hands close round her wrists. It
was not wholly with intent that she leaned toward him, for the look of
his eyes and the feel of his hands made her weak.
“It’s no trifle—no woman’s whim—it’s deep—as my heart. Let me take
them?”
“Why?”
“I want to keep you from killing more men—Mormons. You must let me save
you from more wickedness—more wanton bloodshed—” Then the truth forced
itself falteringly from her lips. “You must—let—help me to keep my vow
to Milly Erne. I swore to her—as she lay dying—that if ever any one
came here to avenge her—I swore I would stay his hand. Perhaps I—I
alone can save the—the man who—who—Oh, Lassiter!... I feel that I can’t
change you—then soon you’ll be out to kill—and you’ll kill by
instinct—and among the Mormons you kill will be the one—who...
Lassiter, if you care a little for me—let me—for my sake—let me take
your guns!”
As if her hands had been those of a child, he unclasped their clinging
grip from the handles of his guns, and, pushing her away, he turned his
gray face to her in one look of terrible realization and then strode
off into the shadows of the cottonwoods.
When the first shock of her futile appeal to Lassiter had passed, Jane
took his cold, silent condemnation and abrupt departure not so much as
a refusal to her entreaty as a hurt and stunned bitterness for her
attempt at his betrayal. Upon further thought and slow consideration of
Lassiter’s past actions, she believed he would return and forgive her.
The man could not be hard to a woman, and she doubted that he could
stay away from her. But at the point where she had hoped to find him
vulnerable she now began to fear he was proof against all persuasion.
The iron and stone quality that she had early suspected in him had
actually cropped out as an impregnable barrier. Nevertheless, if
Lassiter remained in Cottonwoods she would never give up her hope and
desire to change him. She would change him if she had to sacrifice
everything dear to her except hope of heaven. Passionately devoted as
she was to her religion, she had yet refused to marry a Mormon. But a
situation had developed wherein self paled in the great white light of
religious duty of the highest order. That was the leading motive, the
divinely spiritual one; but there were other motives, which, like
tentacles, aided in drawing her will to the acceptance of a possible
abnegation. And through the watches of that sleepless night Jane
Withersteen, in fear and sorrow and doubt, came finally to believe that
if she must throw herself into Lassiter’s arms to make him abide by
“Thou shalt not kill!” she would yet do well.
In the morning she expected Lassiter at the usual hour, but she was not
able to go at once to the court, so she sent little Fay. Mrs. Larkin
was ill and required attention. It appeared that the mother, from the
time of her arrival at Withersteen House, had relaxed and was slowly
losing her hold on life. Jane had believed that absence of worry and
responsibility coupled with good nursing and comfort would mend Mrs.
Larkin’s broken health. Such, however, was not the case.
When Jane did get out to the court, Fay was there alone, and at the
moment embarking on a dubious voyage down the stone-lined amber stream
upon a craft of two brooms and a pillow. Fay was as delightfully wet as
she could possibly wish to get.
Clatter of hoofs distracted Fay and interrupted the scolding she was
gleefully receiving from Jane. The sound was not the light-spirited
trot that Bells made when Lassiter rode him into the outer court. This
was slower and heavier, and Jane did not recognize in it any of her
other horses. The appearance of Bishop Dyer startled Jane. He
dismounted with his rapid, jerky motion flung the bridle, and, as he
turned toward the inner court and stalked up on the stone flags, his
boots rang. In his authoritative front, and in the red anger
unmistakably flaming in his face, he reminded Jane of her father.
“Is that the Larkin pauper?” he asked, bruskly, without any greeting to
Jane.
“It’s Mrs. Larkin’s little girl,” replied Jane, slowly.
“I hear you intend to raise the child?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you mean to give her Mormon bringing-up?”
“No.”
His questions had been swift. She was amazed at a feeling that some one
else was replying for her.
“I’ve come to say a few things to you.” He stopped to measure her with
stern, speculative eye.
Jane Withersteen loved this man. From earliest childhood she had been
taught to revere and love bishops of her church. And for ten years
Bishop Dyer had been the closest friend and counselor of her father,
and for the greater part of that period her own friend and Scriptural
teacher. Her interpretation of her creed and her religious activity in
fidelity to it, her acceptance of mysterious and holy Mormon truths,
were all invested in this Bishop. Bishop Dyer as an entity was next to
God. He was God’s mouthpiece to the little Mormon community at
Cottonwoods. God revealed himself in secret to this mortal.
And Jane Withersteen suddenly suffered a paralyzing affront to her
consciousness of reverence by some strange, irresistible twist of
thought wherein she saw this Bishop as a man. And the train of thought
hurdled the rising, crying protests of that other self whose poise she
had lost. It was not her Bishop who eyed her in curious measurement. It
was a man who tramped into her presence without removing his hat, who
had no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks, as
in action, he made her think of a bull stamping cross-grained into a
corral. She had heard of Bishop Dyer forgetting the minister in the
fury of a common man, and now she was to feel it. The glance by which
she measured him in turn momentarily veiled the divine in the ordinary.
He looked a rancher; he was booted, spurred, and covered with dust; he
carried a gun at his hip, and she remembered that he had been known to
use it. But during the long moment while he watched her there was
nothing commonplace in the slow-gathering might of his wrath.
“Brother Tull has talked to me,” he began. “It was your father’s wish
that you marry Tull, and my order. You refused him?”
“Yes.”
“You would not give up your friendship with that tramp Venters?”
“No.”
“But you’ll do as _I_ order!” he thundered. “Why, Jane Withersteen, you
are in danger of becoming a heretic! You can thank your Gentile friends
for that. You face the damning of your soul to perdition.”
In the flux and reflux of the whirling torture of Jane’s mind, that
new, daring spirit of hers vanished in the old habitual order of her
life. She was a Mormon, and the Bishop regained ascendance.
“It’s well I got you in time, Jane Withersteen. What would your father
have said to these goings-on of yours? He would have put you in a stone
cage on bread and water. He would have taught you something about
Mormonism. Remember, you’re a _born_ Mormon. There have been Mormons
who turned heretic—damn their souls!—but no born Mormon ever left us
yet. Ah, I see your shame. Your faith is not shaken. You are only a
wild girl.” The Bishop’s tone softened. “Well, it’s enough that I got
to you in time.... Now tell me about this Lassiter. I hear strange
things.”
“What do you wish to know?” queried Jane.
“About this man. You hired him?”
“Yes, he’s riding for me. When my riders left me I had to have any one
I could get.”
“Is it true what I hear—that he’s a gun-man, a Mormon-hater, steeped in
blood?”
“True—terribly true, I fear.”
“But what’s he doing here in Cottonwoods? This place isn’t notorious
enough for such a man. Sterling and the villages north, where there’s
universal gun-packing and fights every day—where 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 imperative gesture 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.
“For what—else?” When Bishop Dyer’s voice did cleave the silence it was
high, curiously shrill, 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.
[Illustration: It was Jane’s gaze riveted upon the rider that made
Bishop Dyer turn.]
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, 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.”
“Un-faithful!” 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?”