![]() He loomed up now in different guise, not as a jealous suitor, but embodying the mysterious despotism she had known from childhood-the power of her creed. Tull always blunted her spirit, and she grew conscious that she had feigned a boldness which she did not possess. “Oh! Don’t whip him! It would be dastardly!” implored Jane, with slow certainty of her failing courage. He’s going to be whipped, and he’s got to leave Utah!” Now, once for all, you can’t have any further friendship with Venters. We’ve let you have your fling, which is more than I ever saw granted to a Mormon woman. ![]() You haven’t yet come to see the place of Mormon women. ![]() Jane Withersteen, your father left you wealth and power. Understand, you’ll not be allowed to hold this boy to a friendship that’s offensive to your Bishop. Venters’s agitated face grew coldly set and the bronze changed to gray. And if you ever come back you’ll get worse.” “Then I’ll have you whipped within an inch of your life,” replied Tull, harshly. The Mormons withdraw muttering, to go off and devise clever plans of revenge and sabotage against uppish Jane, while she enjoys (for a while) the loving devotion of two passionate men. Just as Jane’s chief Gentile Rider, Venters, is about to be hauled off by a posse of Mormons, fate in the guise of black-clad, gun-slinging, Mormon-hating Lassiter arrives in the nick of time. So when rich Mormon rancher’s daughter Jane Withersteen spurns the advances of the man chosen for her by the local Mormon bishop and insists on carrying on with her charity to the impoverished Gentile (blanket term for anyone non-Mormon) families of the area and her hiring of Gentile riders to care for her seven thousand head of range cattle, events start to escalate. It’s 1871 in Utah, and the Mormons are well-established, top-dogging it marvellously well with their polygamous colonies headed by manly men wedded to legions of willing wives. The novelty of the plushly purple prose paled quickly, and despite the campy sense of irony I felt as I doggedly waded through the story it wasn’t enough to make it an acceptably good experience. (Meaning me.) Did I enjoy this book? Mostly, no. I’m not even going to touch the Important Book for Various Reasons argument, but am going to go instead to Pleasure of Reading for a Modern Reader. Oh, yeah, that whole “classic of American literature and mold-maker of the classic Western genre” thing. Just aim for my heart, and make it quick. Except maybe don’t shoot me in the arms first, as you did him, before blasting five more holes in his chest. Don’t just nick a lung, like your buddy Venters did to the virginally beautiful Bess as she trotted past his desperate hideout garbed in her Masked Rider’s disguise, but kill me outright, same as you did Mormon Bishop Dyer, despoiler of your late sister and destroyer of her happy marriage. ![]() Oh, Lassiter, you big black-clad gun-slinging hero of this desperately romantic book, if I ever find it within me to start to read this one again, please rise up off the printed page, leap off your amazing blind horse, unholster your big black pistol, and shoot me right away. This edition: Grosset & Dunlap, circa 1920s. Riders of the Purple Sageby Zane Grey ~ 1912.
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