It now required deliberation on Venters's part to persist in his unconcern and to keep at work. He wanted to look at her, to volley questions at her.
"As long as you can remember--you've lived in Deception Pass?" he went on.
"I've a dim memory of some other place, and women and children; but I can't make anything of it. Sometimes I think till I'm weary."
"Then you can read--you have books?"
"Oh yes, I can read, and write, too, pretty well. Oldring is educated. He taught me, and years ago an old rustler lived with us, and he had been something different once. He was always teaching me."
"So Oldring takes long trips," mused Venters. "Do you know where he goes?"
"No. Every year he drives cattle north of Sterling--then does not return for months. I heard him accused once of living two lives--and he killed the man. That was at Stone Bridge."
Venters dropped his apparent task and looked up with an eagerness he no longer strove to hide.
"Bess," he said, using her name for the first time, "I suspected Oldring was something besides a rustler. Tell me, what's his purpose here in the Pass? I believe much that he has done was to hide his real work here."
"You're right. He's more than a rustler. In fact, as the men say, his rustling cattle is now only a bluff. There's gold in the canyons!"
"Ah!"
"Yes, there's gold, not in great quantities, but gold enough for him and his men. They wash for gold week in and week out. Then they drive a few cattle and go into the villages to drink and shoot and kill--to bluff the riders."
"Drive a few cattle! But, Bess, the Withersteen herd, the red herd-- twenty-five hundred head! That's not a few. And I tracked them into a valley near here."
"Oldring never stole the red herd. He made a deal with Mormons.
The riders were to be called in, and Oldring was to drive the herd and keep it till a certain time--I won't know when--then drive it back to the range. What his share was I didn't hear."
"Did you hear why that deal was made?" queried Venters.
"No. But it was a trick of Mormons. They're full of tricks. I've heard Oldring's men tell about Mormons. Maybe the Withersteen woman wasn't minding her halter! I saw the man who made the deal.
He was a little, queer-shaped man, all humped up. He sat his horse well. I heard one of our men say afterward there was no better rider on the sage than this fellow. What was the name? I forget."
"Jerry Card?" suggested Venters.
"That's it. I remember--it's a name easy to remember--and Jerry Card appeared to be on fair terms with Oldring's men."
"I shouldn't wonder," replied Venters, thoughtfully. Verification of his suspicions in regard to Tull's underhand work--for the deal with Oldring made by Jerry Card assuredly had its inception in the Mormon Elder's brain, and had been accomplished through his orders--revived in Venters a memory of hatred that had been smothered by press of other emotions. Only a few days had elapsed since the hour of his encounter with Tull, yet they had been forgotten and now seemed far off, and the interval one that now appeared large and profound with incalculable change in his feelings. Hatred of Tull still existed in his heart, but it had lost its white heat. His affection for Jane Withersteen had not changed in the least; nevertheless, he seemed to view it from another angle and see it as another thing--what, he could not exactly define. The recalling of these two feelings was to Venters like getting glimpses into a self that was gone; and the wonder of them--perhaps the change which was too illusive for him--was the fact that a strange irritation accompanied the memory and a desire to dismiss it from mind. And straightway he did dismiss it, to return to thoughts of his significant present.
"Bess, tell me one more thing," he said. "Haven't you known any women-- any young people?"
"Sometimes there were women with the men; but Oldring never let me know them. And all the young people I ever saw in my life was when I rode fast through the villages."
Perhaps that was the most puzzling and thought-provoking thing she had yet said to Venters. He pondered, more curious the more he learned, but he curbed his inquisitive desires, for he saw her shrinking on the verge of that shame, the causing of which had occasioned him such self-reproach. He would ask no more. Still he had to think, and he found it difficult to think clearly. This sad-eyed girl was so utterly different from what it would have been reason to believe such a remarkable life would have made her. On this day he had found her ****** and frank, as natural as any girl he had ever known. About her there was something sweet.
Her voice was low and well modulated. He could not look into her face, meet her steady, unabashed, yet wistful eyes, and think of her as the woman she had confessed herself. Oldring's Masked Rider sat before him, a girl dressed as a man. She had been made to ride at the head of infamous forays and drives. She had been imprisoned for many months of her life in an obscure cabin. At times the most vicious of men had been her companions; and the vilest of women, if they had not been permitted to approach her, had, at least, cast their shadows over her. But--but in spite of all this--there thundered at Venters some truth that lifted its voice higher than the clamoring facts of dishonor, some truth that was the very life of her beautiful eyes; and it was innocence.