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.

    Withersteen House was hers,
           and the great ranch,
         with its thousands of cattle,
           and the swiftest horses
               of the sage.

    To her belonged Amber Spring,
           the water
              which gave verdure and beauty
                   to the village and made
                 living possible on
             that wild purple upland waste.

    She could not escape
        being involved by
         whatever befell Cottonwoods.

    That year,
           1871,
         had marked a change
              which had been gradually
                  coming in the lives
                       of the peace-loving Mormons
                     of the border.

    Glaze
         --Stone Bridge--
           Sterling,
         villages to the north,
         had risen
               against the invasion
                   of Gentile settlers
                 and the forays of rustlers.

    There had been opposition
           to the one and
          fighting with the other.

    And now Cottonwoods had
         begun to wake
               and bestir itself and
              grown hard.

    Jane prayed
         that the tranquillity
               and sweetness of her life
            would not be permanently disrupted.

    She meant
          to do so much more
               for her people than
         she had done.

    She wanted
           the sleepy quiet pastoral days
          to last always.

    Trouble between the Mormons
           and the Gentiles
               of the community
        would make her unhappy.

    She was Mormon-born,
           and she
            was a friend
                   to poor and unfortunate Gentiles.

    She wished only
          to go on
           doing good
        and being happy.

    And she thought of
         what that great ranch
              meant to her.

    She loved it all
          --the grove of cottonwoods,
           the old stone house,
         the amber-tinted water,
           and the droves of shaggy,
         dusty horses and mustangs,
           the sleek,
         clean-limbed,
           blooded racers,
         and the browsing herds
               of cattle
             and the lean,
           sun-browned riders of the sage.

    While she waited there
         she forgot the prospect
               of untoward change.

    The bray
           of a lazy burro
        broke the afternoon quiet,
           and it
            was comfortingly suggestive
                   of the drowsy farmyard,
         and the open corrals,
           and the green alfalfa fields.

    Her clear sight
          intensified the purple sage-slope
               as it
              rolled before her.

    Low swells of prairie-like ground
           sloped up to the west.

    Dark,
           lonely cedar-trees,
         few and far between,
           stood out strikingly,
         and at long distances
               ruins of red rocks.

    Farther on,
           up the gradual slope,
         rose a broken wall,
           a huge monument,
         looming dark purple and
              stretching its solitary,
           mystic way,
         a wavering line
             that faded in the north.

    Here to the westward
        was the light
               and color and beauty.

    Northward the slope
           descended to a dim
               line of canyons from
          which rose an up-Hinging
               of the earth,
           not mountainous,
         but a vast heave
               of purple uplands,
           with ribbed and fan-shaped walls,
         castle-crowned cliffs,
           and gray escarpments.

    Over it all
        crept the lengthening,
           waning afternoon shadows.

    The rapid beat of hoofs
           recalled Jane Withersteen
               to the question at hand.