On the outskirts of a little town in Illinois there was a farm of rolling pasture-land. And here a beautiful meadow, green and red in clover, merged upon an orchard in the midst of which a brown-tiled roof showed above the trees.
One afternoon in May a group of people, strangely agitated, walked down a shady lane toward the meadow.
“Wal, Jane, I always knew we'd get a look at them hosses again--I shore knew,” Lassiter was saying in the same old, cool, careless drawl. But his clawlike hands shook a little.
“Oh! will they know me?” asked Jane Withersteen, turning to a stalwart man--no other than the dark-faced Venters, her rider of other days.
“Know you? I'll bet they will,” replied Venters. “What do you say, Bess?”
The shadow brightened in Bess's somber blue eyes, as if his words had recalled her from a sad and memorable past.
“Black Star will know her, surely,” replied Bess. “Sometimes he points his nose toward the west and watches as if he saw the purple slopes and smelt the sage of Utah! He has never forgotten. But Night has grown deaf and partly blind of late. I doubt if he'd remember.”
Shefford and Fay walked arm in arm in the background.
Out in the meadow two horses were grazing. They were sleek, shiny, long-maned, long-tailed, black as coal, and, though old, still splendid in every line.
“Do you remember them?” whispered Shefford.
“Oh, I only needed to see Black Star,” murmured Fay, her voice quivering. “I can remember being lifted on his back.... How strange! It seems so long ago.... Look! Mother Jane is going out to them.”
Jane Withersteen advanced alone through the clover, and it was with unsteady steps. Presently she halted. What glorious and bitter memories were expressed in her strange, poignant call!
Black Star started and swept up his noble head and looked. But Night went on calmly grazing. Then Jane called again--the same strange call, only louder, and this time broken. Black Star raised his head higher and he whistled a piercing blast. He saw Jane; he knew her as he had remembered the call; and he came pounding toward her. She met him, encircled his neck with her arms, and buried her face in his mane.
“Shore I reckon I'd better never say any more about Wrangle runnin' the blacks off their legs thet time,” muttered Lassiter, as if to himself.
“Lassiter, you only dreamed that race,” replied Venters, with a smile.
“Oh, Bern, isn't it good that Black Star remembered her--that she'll have him--something left of her old home?” asked Bess, wistfully.
“Indeed it is good. But, Bess, Jane Withersteen will find a new spirit and new happiness here.”
Jane came toward them, leading both horses. “Dear friends, I am happy. To-day I bury all regrets. Of the past I shall remember only--my riders of the purple sage.”
Venters smiled his gladness. “And you--Lassiter--what shall you remember?” he queried.
The old gun-man looked at Jane and then at his clawlike hands and then at Fay. His eyes lost their shadow and began to twinkle.
“Wal, I rolled a stone once, but I reckon now thet time Wrangle--”
“Lassiter, I said you dreamed that race. Wrangle never beat the blacks,” interrupted Venters.... “And you, Fay, what shall you remember?”
“Surprise Valley,” replied Fay, dreamily.
“And you--Shefford?”
Shefford shook his head. For him there could never be one memory only. In his heart there would never change or die memories of the wild uplands, of the great towers and walls, of the golden sunsets on the cañon ramparts, of the silent, fragrant valleys where the cedars and the sago-lilies grew, of those starlit nights when his love and faith awoke, of grand and lonely Nonnezoshe, of that red, sullen, thundering, mysterious Colorado River, of a wonderful Indian and a noble Mormon--of all that was embodied for him in the meaning of the rainbow trail.
