Riders of the Purple Sage

"I sent word I'd give that rider Venters half an hour to come down to the village. He didn't come." "He knows nothing of it;" said Jane. "I didn't tell him. I've been waiting here for you."

Religious coercion, ranch defense, outlaw justice, and escape make a broad but steadily converging Western plot, so plot scores 88.

"Maybe I do love him," said Jane. She felt both fear and anger stir her heart. "I'd never thought of that. Poor fellow! he certainly needs somebody to look out for him."

Jane's moral resolve, Lassiter's withheld history, Venters, Bess, and Tull generate strong opposing loyalties, so cast scores 91.

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 mind.

Long scenic and emotional passages sit between vigorous threats, rides, and confrontations, so pace scores 88.

Her clear sight intensified the purple sage-slope as it rolled before her. Low swells of prairie-like ground sloped up to the wall of rock, looming dark purple and stretching its solitary, mystic way, a wavering line that faded in the north.

Elevated melodrama is offset by vivid desert color, motion, and physical danger, so prose scores 86.

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 her people.

Sage, canyon, rider culture, ranch labor, and Utah sectarian power are central forces rather than backdrop, so world scores 93.

"Elder Tull, what do you mean by this?" demanded Jane. "If you must arrest Venters you might have the courtesy to wait till he leaves my home. And if you do arrest him it will be adding insult to injury."

Tull's demand that Jane abandon Venters immediately frames power, faith, and personal risk, so hook scores 88.

Tull spoke with the arrogance of a Mormon whose power could not be brooked and with the passion of a man in whom jealousy had kindled a consuming fire.

A major popular Western that joins frontier action to a woman rancher's conflict with local religious authority, so innov scores 90.

From the depths there rose a long-drawn rumbling roar. The outlet to Deception Pass closed forever.

The desperate Pass flight supplies forceful closure, though its melodramatic resolution is highly engineered, so ending scores 85.