Above all, Zane Grey created a world of sunshine, a world that readers can enter and look about with endless pleasure.

x

c o n t e n t s

introduction

v

i. lassiter

1

II. cottonwoods

16

iii. amber spring

32

iv. deception pass

49

v. the masked rider

67

vi. the mill-wheel of steers

85

vii. the daughter of withersteen

108

viii. surprise valley

122

ix. silver spruce and aspens

142

x. love

163

contents

xi. faith and unfaith

185

xii. the invisible hand

208

xiii. solitude and storm

230

xiv. west wind

249

xv. shadows on the sage-slope

263

xvi. gold

290

xvii. wrangler’s race run

305

xviii. oldring’s knell

328

xix. fay

350

xx. lassiter’s way

369

xxi. black star and night

386

xxii. riders of the purple sage

410

xxiii. the fall of balancing rock

420

suggested reading

439

xii

i l l u s t r at i o n s

“don’t look back!”

frontispiece

“a woman! a girl! i’ve killed a girl!”

69

“bess, i’ll not go again”

182

“roll the stone!”

433

r i d e r s o f

t h e p u r p l e s a g e

c h a p t e r i

l a s s i t e r

A sharp clip-clop 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.