SHADOWS ON THE SAGE-SLOPE
In the cloudy, threatening, waning summer days shadows lengthened down
the sage-slope, and Jane Withersteen likened them to the shadows
gathering and closing in around her life.
Mrs. Larkin died, and little Fay was left an orphan with no known
relative. Jane’s love redoubled. It was the saving brightness of a
darkening hour. Fay turned now to Jane in childish worship. And Jane at
last found full expression for the mother-longing in her heart. Upon
Lassiter, too, Mrs. Larkin’s death had some subtle reaction. Before, he
had often, without explanation, advised Jane to send Fay back to any
Gentile family that would take her in. Passionately and reproachfully
and wonderingly Jane had refused even to entertain such an idea. And
now Lassiter never advised it again, grew sadder and quieter in his
contemplation of the child, and infinitely more gentle and loving.
Sometimes Jane had a cold, inexplicable sensation of dread when she saw
Lassiter watching Fay. What did the rider see in the future? Why did
he, day by day, grow more silent, calmer, cooler, yet sadder in
prophetic assurance of something to be?
No doubt, Jane thought, the rider, in his almost superhuman power of
foresight, saw behind the horizon the dark, lengthening shadows that
were soon to crowd and gloom over him and her and little Fay. Jane
Withersteen awaited the long-deferred breaking of the storm with a
courage and embittered calm that had come to her in her extremity. Hope
had not died. Doubt and fear, subservient to her will, no longer gave
her sleepless nights and tortured days. Love remained. All that she had
loved she now loved the more. She seemed to feel that she was defiantly
flinging the wealth of her love in the face of misfortune and of hate.
No day passed but she prayed for all—and most fervently for her
enemies. It troubled her that she had lost, or had never gained, the
whole control of her mind. In some measure reason and wisdom and
decision were locked in a chamber of her brain, awaiting a key. Power
to think of some things was taken from her. Meanwhile, abiding a day of
judgment, she fought ceaselessly to deny the bitter drops in her cup,
to tear back the slow, the intangibly slow growth of a hot, corrosive
lichen eating into her heart.
On the morning of August 10th, Jane, while waiting in the court for
Lassiter, heard a clear, ringing report of a rifle. It came from the
grove, somewhere toward the corrals. Jane glanced out in alarm. The day
was dull, windless, soundless. The leaves of the cottonwoods drooped,
as if they had foretold the doom of Withersteen House and were now
ready to die and drop and decay. Never had Jane seen such shade. She
pondered on the meaning of the report. Revolver shots had of late
cracked from different parts of the grove—spies taking snap-shots at
Lassiter from a cowardly distance! But a rifle report meant more.
Riders seldom used rifles. Judkins and Venters were the exceptions she
called to mind. Had the men who hounded her hidden in her grove, taken
to the rifle to rid her of Lassiter, her last friend? It was
probable—it was likely. And she did not share his cool assumption that
his death would never come at the hands of a Mormon. Long had she
expected it. His constancy to her, his singular reluctance to use the
fatal skill for which he was famed—both now plain to all Mormons—laid
him open to inevitable assassination. Yet what charm against ambush and
aim and enemy he seemed to bear about him! No, Jane reflected, it was
not charm; only a wonderful training of eye and ear, and sense of
impending peril. Nevertheless that could not forever avail against
secret attack.
That moment a rustling of leaves attracted her attention; then the
familiar clinking accompaniment of a slow, soft, measured step, and
Lassiter walked into the court.
“Jane, there’s a fellow out there with a long gun,” he said, and,
removing his sombrero, showed his head bound in a bloody scarf.
“I heard the shot; I knew it was meant for you. Let me see—you can’t be
badly injured?”
“I reckon not. But mebbe it wasn’t a close call!... I’ll sit here in
this corner where nobody can see me from the grove.” He untied the
scarf and removed it to show a long, bleeding furrow above his left
temple.
“It’s only a cut,” said Jane. “But how it bleeds! Hold your scarf over
it just a moment till I come back.”
She ran into the house and returned with bandages; and while she bathed
and dressed the wound Lassiter talked.
“That fellow had a good chance to get me. But he must have flinched
when he pulled the trigger. As I dodged down I saw him run through the
trees. He had a rifle. I’ve been expectin’ that kind of gun play. I
reckon now I’ll have to keep a little closer hid myself. These fellers
all seem to get chilly or shaky when they draw a bead on me, but one of
them might jest happen to hit me.”
“Won’t you go away—leave Cottonwoods as I’ve begged you to—before some
one does happen to hit you?” she appealed to him.
“I reckon I’ll stay.”
“But, oh, Lassiter—your blood will be on my hands!”
“See here, lady, look at your hands now, right now. Aren’t they fine,
firm, white hands? Aren’t they bloody now? Lassiter’s blood! That’s a
queer thing to stain your beautiful hands. But if you could only see
deeper you’d find a redder color of blood. Heart color, Jane!”
“Oh!... My friend!”
“No, Jane, I’m not one to quit when the game grows hot, no more than
you. This game, though, is new to me, an’ I don’t know the moves yet,
else I wouldn’t have stepped in front of that bullet.”
“Have you no desire to hunt the man who fired at you—to find
him—and—and kill him?”
“Well, I reckon I haven’t any great hankerin’ for that.”
“Oh, the wonder of it!... I knew—I prayed—I trusted. Lassiter, I almost
gave—all myself to soften you to Mormons. Thank God, and thank you, my
friend.... But, selfish woman that I am, this is no great test. What’s
the life of one of those sneaking cowards to such a man as you? I think
of your great hate toward him who—I think of your life’s implacable
purpose. Can it be—”
“Wait!... Listen!” he whispered. “I hear a hoss.”
He rose noiselessly, with his ear to the breeze. Suddenly he pulled his
sombrero down over his bandaged head and, swinging his gun-sheaths
round in front, he stepped into the alcove.
“It’s a hoss—comin’ fast,” he added.
Jane’s listening ear soon caught a faint, rapid, rhythmic beat of
hoofs. It came from the sage. It gave her a thrill that she was at a
loss to understand. The sound rose stronger, louder. Then came a clear,
sharp difference when the horse passed from the sage trail to the
hard-packed ground of the grove. It became a ringing run—swift in its
bell-like clatterings, yet singular in longer pause than usual between
the hoofbeats of a horse.
“It’s Wrangle!... It’s Wrangle!” cried Jane Withersteen. “I’d know him
from a million horses!”
Excitement and thrilling expectancy flooded out all Jane Withersteen’s
calm. A tight band closed round her breast as she saw the giant sorrel
flit in reddish-brown flashes across the openings in the green. Then he
was pounding down the lane—thundering into the court—crashing his great
iron-shod hoofs on the stone flags. Wrangle it was surely, but shaggy
and wild-eyed, and sage-streaked, with dust-caked lather staining his
flanks. He reared and crashed down and plunged. The rider leaped off,
threw the bridle, and held hard on a lasso looped round Wrangle’s head
and neck. Janet’s heart sank as she tried to recognize Venters in the
rider. Something familiar struck her in the lofty stature in the sweep
of powerful shoulders. But this bearded, longhaired, unkempt man, who
wore ragged clothes patched with pieces of skin, and boots that showed
bare legs and feet—this dusty, dark, and wild rider could not possibly
be Venters.
“Whoa, Wrangle, old boy! Come down. Easy now. So—so—so. You’re home,
old boy, and presently you can have a drink of water you’ll remember.”
In the voice Jane knew the rider to be Venters. He tied Wrangle to the
hitching-rack and turned to the court.
“Oh, Bern!... You wild man!” she exclaimed.
“Jane—Jane, it’s good to see you! Hello, Lassiter! Yes, it’s Venters.”
Like rough iron his hard hand crushed Jane’s. In it she felt the
difference she saw in him. Wild, rugged, unshorn—yet how splendid! He
had gone away a boy—he had returned a man. He appeared taller, wider of
shoulder, deeper-chested, more powerfully built. But was that only her
fancy—he had always been a young giant—was the change one of spirit? He
might have been absent for years, proven by fire and steel, grown like
Lassiter, strong and cool and sure. His eyes—were they keener, more
flashing than before?—met hers with clear, frank, warm regard, in which
perplexity was not, nor discontent, nor pain.
“Look at me long as you like,” he said, with a laugh. “I’m not much to
look at. And, Jane, neither you nor Lassiter, can brag. You’re paler
than I ever saw you. Lassiter, here, he wears a bloody bandage under
his hat. That reminds me. Some one took a flying shot at me down in the
sage. It made Wrangle run some.... Well, perhaps you’ve more to tell me
than I’ve got to tell you.”
Briefly, in few words, Jane outlined the circumstances of her undoing
in the weeks of his absence.
Under his beard and bronze she saw his face whiten in terrible wrath.
“Lassiter—what held you back?”
No time in the long period of fiery moments and sudden shocks had Jane
Withersteen ever beheld Lassiter as calm and serene and cool as then.
“Jane had gloom enough without my addin’ to it by shootin’ up the
village,” he said.
As strange as Lassiter’s coolness was Venters’s curious, intent
scrutiny of them both, and under it Jane felt a flaming tide wave from
bosom to temples.
“Well—you’re right,” he said, with slow pause. “It surprises me a
little, that’s all.”
Jane sensed then a slight alteration in Venters, and what it was, in
her own confusion, she could not tell. It had always been her intention
to acquaint him with the deceit she had fallen to in her zeal to move
Lassiter. She did not mean to spare herself. Yet now, at the moment,
before these riders, it was an impossibility to explain.
Venters was speaking somewhat haltingly, without his former frankness.
“I found Oldring’s hiding-place and your red herd. I learned—I know—I’m
sure there was a deal between Tull and Oldring.” He paused and shifted
his position and his gaze. He looked as if he wanted to say something
that he found beyond him. Sorrow and pity and shame seemed to contend
for mastery over him. Then he raised himself and spoke with effort.
“Jane I’ve cost you too much. You’ve almost ruined yourself for me. It
was wrong, for I’m not worth it. I never deserved such friendship.
Well, maybe it’s not too late. You must give me up. Mind, I haven’t
changed. I am just the same as ever. I’ll see Tull while I’m here, and
tell him to his face.”
“Bern, it’s too late,” said Jane.
“I’ll _make_ him believe!” cried Venters, violently.
“You ask me to break our friendship?”
“Yes. If you don’t, I shall.”
“Forever?”
“Forever!”
Jane sighed. Another shadow had lengthened down the sage slope to cast
further darkness upon her. A melancholy sweetness pervaded her
resignation. The boy who had left her had returned a man, nobler,
stronger, one in whom she divined something unbending as steel. There
might come a moment later when she would wonder why she had not fought
against his will, but just now she yielded to it. She liked him as
well—nay, more, she thought, only her emotions were deadened by the
long, menacing wait for the bursting storm.
Once before she had held out her hand to him—when she gave it; now she
stretched it tremblingly forth in acceptance of the decree circumstance
had laid upon them. Venters bowed over it kissed it, pressed it hard,
and half stifled a sound very like a sob. Certain it was that when he
raised his head tears glistened in his eyes.
“Some—women—have a hard lot,” he said, huskily. Then he shook his
powerful form, and his rags lashed about him. “I’ll say a few things to
Tull—when I meet him.”
“Bern—you’ll not draw on Tull? Oh, that must not be! Promise me—”
“I promise you this,” he interrupted, in stern passion that thrilled
while it terrorized her. “If you say one more word for that plotter
I’ll kill him as I would a mad coyote!”
Jane clasped her hands. Was this fire-eyed man the one whom she had
once made as wax to her touch? Had Venters become Lassiter and Lassiter
Venters?
“I’ll—say no more,” she faltered.
“Jane, Lassiter once called you blind,” said Venters. “It must be true.
But I won’t upbraid you. Only don’t rouse the devil in me by praying
for Tull! I’ll try to keep cool when I meet him. That’s all. Now
there’s one more thing I want to ask of you—the last. I’ve found a
valley down in the Pass. It’s a wonderful place. I intend to stay
there. It’s so hidden I believe no one can find it. There’s good water,
and browse, and game. I want to raise corn and stock. I need to take in
supplies. Will you give them to me?”
“Assuredly. The more you take the better you’ll please me—and perhaps
the less my—my enemies will get.”
“Venters, I reckon you’ll have trouble packin’ anythin’ away,” put in
Lassiter.
“I’ll go at night.”
“Mebbe that wouldn’t be best. You’d sure be stopped. You’d better go
early in the mornin’—say, just after dawn. That’s the safest time to
move round here.”
“Lassiter, I’ll be hard to stop,” returned Venters, darkly.
“I reckon so.”
“Bern,” said Jane, “go first to the riders’ quarters and get yourself a
complete outfit. You’re a—a sight. Then help yourself to whatever else
you need—burros, packs, grain, dried fruits, and meat. You must take
coffee and sugar and flour—all kinds of supplies. Don’t forget corn and
seeds. I remember how you used to starve. Please—please take all you
can pack away from here. I’ll make a bundle for you, which you mustn’t
open till you’re in your valley. How I’d like to see it! To judge by
you and Wrangle, how wild it must be!”
Jane walked down into the outer court and approached the sorrel.
Upstarting, he laid back his ears and eyed her.
“Wrangle—dear old Wrangle,” she said, and put a caressing hand on his
matted mane. “Oh, he’s wild, but he knows me! Bern, can he run as fast
as ever?”
“Run? Jane, he’s done sixty miles since last night at dark, and I could
make him kill Black Star right now in a ten-mile race.”
“He never could,” protested Jane. “He couldn’t even if he was fresh.”
“I reckon mebbe the best hoss’ll prove himself yet,” said Lassiter,
“an’, Jane, if it ever comes to that race I’d like you to be on
Wrangle.”
“I’d like that, too,” rejoined Venters. “But, Jane, maybe Lassiter’s
hint is extreme. Bad as your prospects are, you’ll surely never come to
the running point.”
“Who knows!” she replied, with mournful smile.
“No, no, Jane, it can’t be so bad as all that. Soon as I see Tull
there’ll be a change in your fortunes. I’ll hurry down to the
village.... Now don’t worry.”
Jane retired to the seclusion of her room. Lassiter’s subtle
forecasting of disaster, Venters’s forced optimism, neither remained in
mind. Material loss weighed nothing in the balance with other losses
she was sustaining. She wondered dully at her sitting there, hands
folded listlessly, with a kind of numb deadness to the passing of time
and the passing of her riches. She thought of Venters’s friendship. She
had not lost that, but she had lost him. Lassiter’s friendship—that was
more than love—it would endure, but soon he, too, would be gone. Little
Fay slept dreamlessly upon the bed, her golden curls streaming over the
pillow. Jane had the child’s worship. Would she lose that, too? And if
she did, what then would be left? Conscience thundered at her that
there was left her religion. Conscience thundered that she should be
grateful on her knees for this baptism of fire; that through
misfortune, sacrifice, and suffering her soul might be fused pure gold.
But the old, spontaneous, rapturous spirit no more exalted her. She
wanted to be a woman—not a martyr. Like the saint of old who mortified
his flesh, Jane Withersteen had in her the temper for heroic martyrdom,
if by sacrificing herself she could save the souls of others. But here
the damnable verdict blistered her that the more she sacrificed herself
the blacker grew the souls of her churchmen. There was something
terribly wrong with her soul, something terribly wrong with her
churchmen and her religion. In the whirling gulf of her thought there
was yet one shining light to guide her, to sustain her in her hope; and
it was that, despite her errors and her frailties and her blindness,
she had one absolute and unfaltering hold on ultimate and supreme
justice. That was love. “Love your enemies as yourself!” was a divine
word, entirely free from any church or creed.
Jane’s meditations were disturbed by Lassiter’s soft, tinkling step in
the court. Always he wore the clinking spurs. Always he was in
readiness to ride. She passed out and called him into the huge, dim
hall.
“I think you’ll be safer here. The court is too open,” she said.
“I reckon,” replied Lassiter. “An’ it’s cooler here. The day’s sure
muggy. Well, I went down to the village with Venters.”
“Already! Where is he?” queried Jane, in quick amaze.
“He’s at the corrals. Blake’s helpin’ him get the burros an’ packs
ready. That Blake is a good fellow.”
“Did—did Bern meet Tull?”
“I guess he did,” answered Lassiter, and he laughed dryly.
“Tell me! Oh, you exasperate me! You’re so cool, so calm! For Heaven’s
sake, tell me what happened!”
“First time I’ve been in the village for weeks,” went on Lassiter,
mildly. “I reckon there ain’t been more of a show for a long time. Me
an’ Venters walkin’ down the road! It was funny. I ain’t sayin’ anybody
was particular glad to see us. I’m not much thought of hereabouts, an’
Venters he sure looks like what you called him, a wild man. Well, there
was some runnin’ of folks before we got to the stores. Then everybody
vamoosed except some surprised rustlers in front of a saloon. Venters
went right in the stores an’ saloons, an’ of course I went along. I
don’t know which tickled me the most—the actions of many fellers we
met, or Venters’s nerve. Jane, I was downright glad to be along. You
see _that_ sort of thing is my element, an’ I’ve been away from it for
a spell. But we didn’t find Tull in one of them places. Some Gentile
feller at last told Venters he’d find Tull in that long buildin’ next
to Parsons’s store. It’s a kind of meetin’-room; and sure enough, when
we peeped in, it was half full of men.
“Venters yelled: ‘Don’t anybody pull guns! We ain’t come for that!’
Then he tramped in, an’ I was some put to keep alongside him. There was
a hard, scrapin’ sound of feet, a loud cry, an’ then some whisperin’,
an’ after that stillness you could cut with a knife. Tull was there,
an’ that fat party who once tried to throw a gun on me, an’ other
important-lookin’ men, en’ that little frog-legged feller who was with
Tull the day I rode in here. I wish you could have seen their faces,
’specially Tull’s an’ the fat party’s. But there ain’t no use of me
tryin’ to tell you how they looked.
“Well, Venters an’ I stood there in the middle of the room with that
batch of men all in front of us, en’ not a blamed one of them winked an
eyelash or moved a finger. It was natural, of course, for me to notice
many of them packed guns. That’s a way of mine, first noticin’ them
things. Venters spoke up, an’ his voice sort of chilled an’ cut, en’ he
told Tull he had a few things to say.”
Here Lassiter paused while he turned his sombrero round and round, in
his familiar habit, and his eyes had the look of a man seeing over
again some thrilling spectacle, and under his red bronze there was
strange animation.
“Like a shot, then, Venters told Tull that the friendship between you
an’ him was all over, an’ he was leaving your place. He said you’d both
of you broken off in the hope of propitiatin’ your people, but you
hadn’t changed your mind otherwise, an’ never would.
“Next he spoke up for you. I ain’t goin’ to tell you what he said.
Only—no other woman who ever lived ever had such tribute! You had a
champion, Jane, an’ never fear that those thick-skulled men don’t know
you now. It couldn’t be otherwise. He spoke the ringin’, lightnin’
truth.... Then he accused Tull of the underhand, miserable robbery of a
helpless woman. He told Tull where the red herd was, of a deal made
with Oldrin’, that Jerry Card had made the deal. I thought Tull was
goin’ to drop, an’ that little frog-legged cuss, he looked some limp
an’ white. But Venters’s voice would have kept anybody’s legs from
bucklin’. I was stiff myself. He went on an’ called Tull—called him
every bad name ever known to a rider, an’ then some. He cursed Tull. I
never hear a man get such a cursin’. He laughed in scorn at the idea of
Tull bein’ a minister. He said Tull an’ a few more dogs of hell builded
their empire out of the hearts of such innocent an’ God-fearin’ women
as Jane Withersteen. He called Tull a binder of women, a callous beast
who hid behind a mock mantle of righteousness—an’ the last an’ lowest
coward on the face of the earth. To prey on weak women through their
religion—that was the last unspeakable crime!
“Then he finished, an’ by this time he’d almost lost his voice. But his
whisper was enough. ‘Tull,’ he said, ‘_she_ begged me not to draw on
you to-day. _She_ would pray for you if you burned her at the stake....
But listen!... I swear if you and I ever come face to face again, I’ll
kill you!’
“We backed out of the door then, an’ up the road. But nobody follered
us.”
Jane found herself weeping passionately. She had not been conscious of
it till Lassiter ended his story, and she experienced exquisite pain
and relief in shedding tears. Long had her eyes been dry, her grief
deep; long had her emotions been dumb. Lassiter’s story put her on the
rack; the appalling nature of Venters’s act and speech had no parallel
as an outrage; it was worse than bloodshed. Men like Tull had been
shot, but had one ever been so terribly denounced in public?
Over-mounting her horror, an uncontrollable, quivering passion shook
her very soul. It was sheer human glory in the deed of a fearless man.
It was hot, primitive instinct to live—to fight. It was a kind of mad
joy in Venters’s chivalry. It was close to the wrath that had first
shaken her in the beginning of this war waged upon her.
“Well, well, Jane, don’t take it that way,” said Lassiter, in evident
distress. “I had to tell you. There’s some things a feller jest can’t
keep. It’s strange you give up on hearin’ that, when all this long time
you’ve been the gamest woman I ever seen. But I don’t know women. Mebbe
there’s reason for you to cry. I know this—nothin’ ever rang in my soul
an’ so filled it as what Venters did. I’d like to have done it, but—I’m
only good for throwin’ a gun, en’ it seems you hate that.... Well, I’ll
be goin’ now.”
“Where?”
“Venters took Wrangle to the stable. The sorrel’s shy a shoe, an’ I’ve
got to help hold the big devil an’ put on another.”
“Tell Bern to come for the pack I want to give him—and—and to say
good-by,” called Jane, as Lassiter went out.
Jane passed the rest of that day in a vain endeavor to decide what and
what not to put in the pack for Venters. This task was the last she
would ever perform for him, and the gifts were the last she would ever
make him. So she picked and chose and rejected, and chose again, and
often paused in sad revery, and began again, till at length she filled
the pack.
It was about sunset, and she and Fay had finished supper and were
sitting in the court, when Venters’s quick steps rang on the stones.
She scarcely knew him, for he had changed the tattered garments, and
she missed the dark beard and long hair. Still he was not the Venters
of old. As he came up the steps she felt herself pointing to the pack,
and heard herself speaking words that were meaningless to her. He said
good-by; he kissed her, released her, and turned away. His tall figure
blurred in her sight, grew dim through dark, streaked vision, and then
he vanished.
Twilight fell around Withersteen House, and dusk and night. Little Fay
slept; but Jane lay with strained, aching eyes. She heard the wind
moaning in the cottonwoods and mice squeaking in the walls. The night
was interminably long, yet she prayed to hold back the dawn. What would
another day bring forth? The blackness of her room seemed blacker for
the sad, entering gray of morning light. She heard the chirp of
awakening birds, and fancied she caught a faint clatter of hoofs. Then
low, dull distant, throbbed a heavy gunshot. She had expected it, was
waiting for it; nevertheless, an electric shock checked her heart,
froze the very living fiber of her bones. That vise-like hold on her
faculties apparently did not relax for a long time, and it was a voice
under her window that released her.
“Jane!... Jane!” softly called Lassiter.
She answered somehow.
“It’s all right. Venters got away. I thought mebbe you’d heard that
shot, en’ I was worried some.”
“What was it—who fired?”
“Well—some fool feller tried to stop Venters out there in the sage—an’
he only stopped lead!... I think it’ll be all right. I haven’t seen or
heard of any other fellers round. Venters’ll go through safe. An’,
Jane, I’ve got Bells saddled, an’ I’m going to trail Venters. Mind, I
won’t show myself unless he falls foul of somebody an’ needs me. I want
to see if this place where he’s goin’ is safe for him. He says nobody
can track him there. I never seen the place yet I couldn’t track a man
to. Now, Jane, you stay indoors while I’m gone, an’ keep close watch on
Fay. Will you?”
“Yes! Oh yes!”
“An’ another thing, Jane,” he continued, then paused for long—“another
thing—if you ain’t here when I come back—if you’re _gone_—don’t fear,
I’ll trail you—I’ll find you out.”
“My dear Lassiter, where could I be gone—as you put it?” asked Jane, in
curious surprise.
“I reckon you might be somewhere. Mebbe tied in an old barn—or
corralled in some gulch—or chained in a cave! _Milly Erne was_—till she
give in! Mebbe that’s news to you.... Well, if you’re gone I’ll hunt
for you.”
“No, Lassiter,” she replied, sadly and low. “If I’m gone just forget
the unhappy woman whose blinded selfish deceit you repaid with kindness
and love.”
She heard a deep, muttering curse, under his breath, and then the
silvery tinkling of his spurs as he moved away.
Jane entered upon the duties of that day with a settled, gloomy calm.
Disaster hung in the dark clouds, in the shade, in the humid west wind.
Blake, when he reported, appeared without his usual cheer; and Jerd
wore a harassed look of a worn and worried man. And when Judkins put in
appearance, riding a lame horse, and dismounted with the cramp of a
rider, his dust-covered figure and his darkly grim, almost dazed
expression told Jane of dire calamity. She had no need of words.
“Miss Withersteen, I have to report—loss of the—white herd,” said
Judkins, hoarsely.
“Come, sit down, you look played out,” replied Jane, solicitously. She
brought him brandy and food, and while he partook of refreshments, of
which he appeared badly in need, she asked no questions.
“No one rider—could hev done more—Miss Withersteen,” he went on,
presently.
“Judkins, don’t be distressed. You’ve done more than any other rider.
I’ve long expected to lose the white herd. It’s no surprise. It’s in
line with other things that are happening. I’m grateful for your
service.”
“Miss Withersteen, I knew how you’d take it. But if anythin’, that
makes it harder to tell. You see, a feller wants to do so much fer you,
an’ I’d got fond of my job. We led the herd a ways off to the north of
the break in the valley. There was a big level an’ pools of water an’
tip-top browse. But the cattle was in a high nervous condition. Wild—as
wild as antelope! You see, they’d been so scared they never slept. I
ain’t a-goin’ to tell you of the many tricks that were pulled off out
there in the sage. But there wasn’t a day for weeks thet the herd
didn’t get started to run. We allus managed to ride ’em close an’ drive
’em back an’ keep ’em bunched. Honest, Miss Withersteen, them steers
was _thin_. They was _thin_ when water and grass was everywhere. _Thin_
at this season—thet’ll tell you how your steers was pestered. Fer
instance, one night a strange runnin’ streak of fire run right through
the herd. That streak was a coyote—_with an oiled an’ blazin’ tail!_
Fer I shot it an’ found out. We had hell with the herd that night, an’
if the sage an’ grass hadn’t been wet—we, hosses, steers, an’ all would
hev burned up. But I said I wasn’t goin’ to tell you any of the
tricks.... Strange now, Miss Withersteen, when the stampede did come it
was from natural cause—jest a whirlin’ devil of dust. You’ve seen the
like often. An’ this wasn’t no big whirl, fer the dust was mostly
settled. It had dried out in a little swale, an’ ordinarily no steer
would ever hev run fer it. But the herd was nervous en’ wild. An’ jest
as Lassiter said, when that bunch of white steers got to movin’ they
was as bad as buffalo. I’ve seen some buffalo stampedes back in
Nebraska, an’ this bolt of the steers was the same kind.
“I tried to mill the herd jest as Lassiter did. But I wasn’t equal to
it, Miss Withersteen. I don’t believe the rider lives who could hev
turned thet herd. We kept along of the herd fer miles, an’ more’n one
of my boys tried to get the steers a-millin’. It wasn’t no use. We got
off level ground, goin’ down, an’ then the steers ran somethin’ fierce.
We left the little gullies an’ washes level-full of dead steers.
Finally I saw the herd was makin’ to pass a kind of low pocket between
ridges. There was a hog-back—as we used to call ’em—a pile of rocks
stickin’ up, and I saw the herd was goin’ to split round it, or swing
out to the left. An’ I wanted ’em to go to the right so mebbe we’d be
able to drive ’em into the pocket. So, with all my boys except three, I
rode hard to turn the herd a little to the right. We couldn’t budge
’em. They went on en’ split round the rocks, en’ the most of ’em was
turned sharp to the left by a deep wash we hedn’t seen—hed no chance to
see.
“The other three boys—Jimmy Vail, Joe Willis, an’ thet little Cairns
boy—a nervy kid! they, with Cairns leadin’, tried to buck thet herd
round to the pocket. It was a wild, fool idee. I couldn’t do nothin’.
The boys got hemmed in between the steers an’ the wash—thet they hedn’t
no chance to see, either. Vail an’ Willis was run down right before our
eyes. An’ Cairns, who rode a fine hoss, he did some ridin’. I never
seen equaled, en’ would hev beat the steers if there’d been any room to
run in. I was high up an’ could see how the steers kept spillin’ by
twos an’ threes over into the wash. Cairns put his hoss to a place thet
was too wide fer any hoss, an’ broke his neck an’ the hoss’s too. We
found that out after, an’ as fer Vail an’ Willis—two thousand steers
ran over the poor boys. There wasn’t much left to pack home fer
burying!... An’, Miss Withersteen, thet all happened yesterday, en’ I
believe, if the white herd didn’t run over the wall of the Pass, it’s
runnin’ yet.”
On the morning of the second day after Judkins’s recital, during which
time Jane remained indoors a prey to regret and sorrow for the boy
riders, and a new and now strangely insistent fear for her own person,
she again heard what she had missed more than she dared honestly
confess—the soft, jingling step of Lassiter. Almost overwhelming relief
surged through her, a feeling as akin to joy as any she could have been
capable of in those gloomy hours of shadow, and one that suddenly
stunned her with the significance of what Lassiter had come to mean to
her. She had begged him, for his own sake, to leave Cottonwoods. She
might yet beg that, if her weakening courage permitted her to dare
absolute loneliness and helplessness, but she realized now that if she
were left alone her life would become one long, hideous nightmare.
When his soft steps clinked into the hall, in answer to her greeting,
and his tall, black-garbed form filled the door, she felt an
inexpressible sense of immediate safety. In his presence she lost her
fear of the dim passageways of Withersteen House and of every sound.
Always it had been that, when he entered the court or the hall, she had
experienced a distinctly sickening but gradually lessening shock at
sight of the huge black guns swinging at his sides. This time the
sickening shock again visited her, it was, however, because a revealing
flash of thought told her that it was not alone Lassiter who was
thrillingly welcome, but also his fatal weapons. They meant so much.
How she had fallen—how broken and spiritless must she be—to have still
the same old horror of Lassiter’s guns and his name, yet feel somehow a
cold, shrinking protection in their law and might and use.
“Did you trail Venters—find his wonderful valley?” she asked, eagerly.
“Yes, an’ I reckon it’s sure a wonderful place.”
“Is he safe there?”
“That’s been botherin’ me some. I tracked him an’ part of the trail was
the hardest I ever tackled. Mebbe there’s a rustler or somebody in this
country who’s as good at trackin’ as I am. If that’s so Venters ain’t
safe.”
“Well—tell me all about Bern and his valley.”
To Jane’s surprise Lassiter showed disinclination for further talk
about his trip. He appeared to be extremely fatigued. Jane reflected
that one hundred and twenty miles, with probably a great deal of
climbing on foot, all in three days, was enough to tire any rider.
Moreover, it presently developed that Lassiter had returned in a mood
of singular sadness and preoccupation. She put it down to a moodiness
over the loss of her white herd and the now precarious condition of her
fortune.
Several days passed, and as nothing happened, Jane’s spirits began to
brighten. Once in her musings she thought that this tendency of hers to
rebound was as sad as it was futile. Meanwhile, she had resumed her
walks through the grove with little Fay.
One morning she went as far as the sage. She had not seen the slope
since the beginning of the rains, and now it bloomed a rich deep
purple. There was a high wind blowing, and the sage tossed and waved
and colored beautifully from light to dark. Clouds scudded across the
sky and their shadows sailed darkly down the sunny slope.
Upon her return toward the house she went by the lane to the stables,
and she had scarcely entered the great open space with its corrals and
sheds when she saw Lassiter hurriedly approaching. Fay broke from her
and, running to a corral fence, began to pat and pull the long, hanging
ears of a drowsy burro.
One look at Lassiter armed her for a blow.
Without a word he led her across the wide yard to the rise of the
ground upon which the stable stood.
“Jane—look!” he said, and pointed to the ground.
Jane glanced down, and again, and upon steadier vision made out
splotches of blood on the stones, and broad, smooth marks in the dust,
leading out toward the sage.
“What made these?” she asked.
“I reckon somebody has dragged dead or wounded men out to where there
was hosses in the sage.”
“Dead—or—wounded—men!”
“I reckon—Jane, are you strong? Can you bear up?”
His hands were gently holding hers, and his eyes—suddenly she could no
longer look into them. “Strong?” she echoed, trembling. “I—I will be.”
Up on the stone-flag drive, nicked with the marks made by the iron-shod
hoofs of her racers, Lassiter led her, his grasp ever growing firmer.
“Where’s Blake—and—and Jerb?” she asked, haltingly.
“I don’t know where Jerb is. Bolted, most likely,” replied Lassiter, as
he took her through the stone door. “But Blake—poor Blake! He’s gone
forever!... Be prepared, Jane.”
With a cold prickling of her skin, with a queer thrumming in her ears,
with fixed and staring eyes, Jane saw a gun lying at her feet with
chamber swung and empty, and discharged shells scattered near.
Outstretched upon the stable floor lay Blake, ghastly white—dead—one
hand clutching a gun and the other twisted in his bloody blouse.
“Whoever the thieves were, whether your people or rustlers—Blake killed
some of them!” said Lassiter.
“Thieves?” whispered Jane.
“I reckon. Hoss-thieves!... Look!” Lassiter waved his hand toward the
stalls.
The first stall—Bells’s stall—was empty. All the stalls were empty. No
racer whinnied and stamped greeting to her. Night was gone! Black Star
was gone!