Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
Etext prepared by Bill Brewer, billbrewer@ttu.edu
Corrections by Rick Fane, rfane@earthlink.net
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
ZANE GREY
CHAPTER I. LASSITER
A sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and
clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over
the sage.
Jane Withersteen gazed down the wide purple slope with dreamy and
troubled eyes. A rider had just left her and it was his message
that held her thoughtful and almost sad, awaiting the churchmen
who were coming to resent and attack her right to befriend a
Gentile.
She wondered if the unrest and strife that had lately come to the
little village of Cottonwoods was to involve her. And then she
sighed, remembering that her father had founded this remotest
border settlement of southern Utah and that he had left it to
her. She owned all the ground and many of the cottages.
Withersteen House was hers, and the great ranch, with its
thousands of cattle, and the swiftest horses of the sage. To her
belonged Amber Spring, the water which gave verdure and beauty to
the village and made living possible on that wild purple upland
waste. She could not escape being involved by whatever befell
Cottonwoods.
That year, 1871, had marked a change which had been gradually
coming in the lives of the peace-loving Mormons of the border.
Glaze--Stone Bridge--Sterling, villages to the north, had risen
against the invasion of Gentile settlers and the forays of
rustlers. There had been opposition to the one and fighting with
the other. And now Cottonwoods had begun to wake and bestir
itself and grown hard.
Jane prayed that the tranquillity and sweetness of her life would
not be permanently disrupted. She meant to do so much more for
her people than she had done. She wanted the sleepy quiet
pastoral days to last always. Trouble between the Mormons and the
Gentiles of the community would make her unhappy. She was
Mormon-born, and she was a friend to poor and unfortunate
Gentiles. She wished only to go on doing good and being happy.
And she thought of what that great ranch meant to her. She loved
it all--the grove of cottonwoods, the old stone house, the
amber-tinted water, and the droves of shaggy, dusty horses and
mustangs, the sleek, clean-limbed, blooded racers, and the
browsing herds of cattle and the lean, sun-browned riders of the
