“Here stranger, this’s none of your mix,” began Tull. “Don’t try any interference. You’ve been asked to drink and eat. That’s more than you’d have got in any other village of the Utah border. Water your horse and be on your way.”
“Easy—easy—I ain’t interferin’ yet,” replied the rider. The tone of his voice had undergone a change. A different man had spoken. Where, in addressing Jane, he had been mild and gentle, now, with his first speech to Tull, he was dry, cool, biting. “I’ve jest stumbled onto a queer deal. Seven Mormons all packin’ guns, an’ a Gentile tied with a rope, an’ a woman who swears by his honesty! Queer, ain’t that?”
“Queer or not, it’s none of your business,” retorted Tull.
“Where I was raised a woman’s word was law. I ain’t quite outgrowed that yet.”
Tull fumed between amaze and anger.
“Meddler, we have a law here something different from woman’s whim—Mormon law!… Take care you don’t transgress it.”
“To hell with your Mormon law!”
-Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage
I am embarrassed to admit that I have never read Zane Grey. Are you reading this right now?
Yes. I’ve been on a steady diet of westerns for about a month and a half now. L’Amour mostly, but with others thrown in. I started Riders this morning on the bus. The Mormon villainy is absolutely hilarious to me, of course.
I wound up dropping Riders and going back to reading more L’Amour instead.