Zane Grey by Riders of the Purple Sage Page A

cottonwoods shadows were obscuring the lanes. Venters drew Jane off from one of these into a shrub-lined trail, just wide enough for the two to walk abreast, and in a roundabout way led her far from the house to a knoll on the edge of the grove. Here in a secluded nook was a bench from which, through an opening in the tree-tops, could be seen the sage-slope and the wall of rock and the dim lines of cañons. Jane had not spoken since Venters had shocked her with his first harsh speech; but all the way she had clung to his arm, and now, as he stopped and laid his rifle against the bench, she still clung to him.
    â€œJane, I’m afraid I must leave you.”
    â€œBern!” she cried.
    â€œYes, it looks that way. My position is not a happy one—I can’t feel right—I’ve lost all—”
    â€œI’ll give you anything you—”
    â€œListen, please. When I say loss I don’t mean what you think. I mean loss of good-will, good name—that which would have enabled me to stand up in this village without bitterness. Well, it’s too late. . . . Now, as to the future, I think you’d do best to give me up. Tull is implacable. You ought to see from his intention today that—but you can’t see. Your blindness—your damned religion! . . . Jane, forgive me—I’m sore within and something rankles. Well, I fear that invisible hand will turn its hidden work to your ruin.”
    â€œInvisible hand? Bern!”
    â€œI mean your Bishop.” Venters said it deliberately and would not release her as she started back. “He’s the law. The edict went forth to ruin me. Well, look at me! It’ll now go forth to compel you to the will of the Church.”
    â€œYou wrong Bishop Dyer. Tull is hard, I know. But then he has been in love with me for years.”
    â€œOh, your faith and your excuses! You can’t see what I know—and if you did see it you’d not admit it to save your life. That’s the Mormon of you. These elders and bishops will do absolutely any deed to go on building up the power and wealth of their church, their empire. 7 Think of what they’ve done to the Gentiles here, to me—think of Milly Erne’s fate!”
    â€œWhat do you know of her story?”
    â€œI know enough—all, perhaps, except the name of the Mormon who brought her here. But I must stop this kind of talk.”
    She pressed his hand in response. He helped her to a seat beside him on the bench. And he respected a silence that he divined was full of woman’s deep emotion, beyond his understanding.
    It was the moment when the last ruddy rays of the sunset brightened momentarily before yielding to twilight. And for Venters the outlook before him was in some sense similar to a feeling of his future, and with searching eyes he studied the beautiful purple, barren waste of sage. Here was the unknown and the perilous. The whole scene impressed Venters as a wild, austere, and mighty manifestation of nature. And as it somehow reminded him of his prospect in life, so it suddenly resembled the woman near him; only in her there were greater beauty and peril, a mystery more unsolvable, and something nameless that numbed his heart and dimmed his eye.
    â€œLook! A rider!” exclaimed Jane, breaking the silence. “Can that be Lassiter?”
    Venters moved his glance once more to the west. A horseman showed dark on the sky-line, then merged into the color of the sage.
    â€œIt might be. But I think not—that fellow was coming in. One of your riders, more likely. Yes, I see him clearly now. And there’s another.”
    â€œI see them, too.”
    â€œJane, your riders seem as many as the bunches of sage. I ran into five yesterday way down near the trail to Deception Pass. They were with the white herd.”
    â€œYou still go to that cañon? Bern, I wish you wouldn’t. Oldring and his rustlers live somewhere down