Status Updates From Riders of the Purple Sage (...

“But these were not beautiful cedars. They were gnarled, twisted into weird contortions, as if growth were torture, dead at the tops, shrunken, gray, and old.”

But because you’re a mormon I never felt close to you till now. I don’t know much about religion as religion, but your God and my God are the same.

The loss of herds and ranges, even of Amber Spring and the Old Stone House, no longer concerned Jane Withersteen; she faced the foremost thought of her life, what she now considered the mightiest problem—the salvation of her soul.

“She went stone-blind in the fury of a passion that had never before showed its power. Lying upon her bed, sightless, voiceless, she tossed there while her fury burned and burned, and finally burned itself out.”

“Humility and obedience had been hers always. But had she taken the bit between her teeth? Still she wavered. And then, with a quick spurt of warm blood along her veins, she thought of Black Star when he got the bit fast between his iron jaws and ran wild in the sage. If she ever started to run! Jane smothered the glow and burn within her, ashamed of a passion for freedom that oppressed her duty.”