RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
"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.
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