Riders of the Purple Sage. Zane Grey

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      RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

      By

      ZANE GREY

      This edition published by Dreamscape Media LLC, 2018

      www.dreamscapeab.com * [email protected]

      1417 Timberwolf Drive, Holland, OH 43528

      877.983.7326

       About Zane Grey:

      Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author who wrote more than ninety popular adventure novels and stories associated with the western genre in literature and the arts. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), his best-selling book, became one of the most successful westerns of all time. In addition to the commercial success of his printed works, some had second lives and continuing influence when adapted as films and television productions. His novels and short stories have been adapted into 112 films and several television series (including The Lone Ranger, Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, and Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater).

      Source: Wikipedia

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

       CHAPTER I. LASSITER

       CHAPTER II. COTTONWOODS

       CHAPTER III. AMBER SPRING

       CHAPTER IV. DECEPTION PASS

       CHAPTER V. THE MASKED RIDER

       CHAPTER VI. THE MILL-WHEEL OF STEERS

       CHAPTER VII. THE DAUGHTER OF WITHERSTEEN

       CHAPTER VIII. SURPRISE VALLEY

       CHAPTER IX. SILVER SPRUCE AND ASPENS

       CHAPTER X. LOVE

       CHAPTER XI. FAITH AND UNFAITH

       CHAPTER XII. THE INVISIBLE HAND

       CHAPTER XIII. SOLITUDE AND STORM

       CHAPTER XIV. WEST WIND

       CHAPTER XV. SHADOWS ON THE SAGE-SLOPE

       CHAPTER XVI. GOLD

       CHAPTER XVII. WRANGLE’S RACE RUN

       CHAPTER XVIII. OLDRING’S KNELL

       CHAPTER XIX. FAY

       CHAPTER XX. LASSITER’S WAY

       CHAPTER XXI. BLACK STAR AND NIGHT

       CHAPTER XXII. RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

       CHAPTER XXIII. THE FALL OF BALANCING ROCK

      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 sage.

      While she waited there she forgot the prospect of untoward change. The bray of a lazy burro broke the afternoon quiet, and it was comfortingly suggestive of the drowsy farmyard, and the open corrals, and the green alfalfa fields. Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it rolled before her. Low swells of prairie-like ground sloped up to the west. Dark, lonely cedar-trees, few and far between, stood out strikingly, and at long distances ruins of red rocks. Farther on, up the gradual slope, rose a broken wall, a huge monument, looming dark purple and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that faded in the north. Here to the westward was the light and color and beauty. Northward the slope descended to a dim line of canyons