These elders and bishops will do absolutely any deed to go on building up the power and wealth of their church, their empire. “Oh, your faith and your excuses! You can’t see what I know-and if you did see it you’d not admit it to save your life. But then he has been in love with me for years.” Well, look at me! It’ll now go forth to compel you to the will of the Church.” “I mean your Bishop.” Venters said it deliberately and would not release her as she started back. Well, I fear that invisible hand will turn its hidden work to your ruin.” Your blindness-your damned religion!… Jane, forgive me-I’m sore within and something rankles.
You ought to see from his intention to-day that-But you can’t see. Now, as to the future, I think you’d do best to give me up. I mean loss of good-will, good name-that which would have enabled me to stand up in this village without bitterness. When I say loss I don’t mean what you think. My position is not a happy one-I can’t feel right-I’ve lost all-” Jane had not spoken since Venters had shocked her with his first harsh speech but all the way she had clung to his arm, and now, as he stopped and laid his rifle against the bench, she still clung to him. Here in a secluded nook was a bench from which, through an opening in the tree-tops, could be seen the sage-slope and the wall of rock and the dim lines of canyons. Venters drew Jane off from one of these into a shrub-lined trail, just wide enough for the two to walk abreast, and in a roundabout way led her far from the house to a knoll on the edge of the grove. It was still daylight in the open, but under the spreading cottonwoods shadows were obscuring the lanes. Both try to protect Jane from the Elders of the Mormon church. Some of them worked for her on her farm (Ventner) and the recently arrived gunman, Lassiter. One of those choices is to be kind to Gentiles. When he dies and leaves his land to Jane, she is left with more choices than quite a few widows of the time. Her father had been Patriarch Withersteen and a fairly wealthy man. Jane Withersteen’s was a Mormon woman of privilege. ( Romancing the West) In fact Zane Grey considered the plural wives of mormon polygamous marriages to be the unhappiest women on the earth. But when it came to their views on women and their practices with regard to polygamy he was not a fan. Zane Grey was generally positive to Mormons.
Whether they actually stole the wives of gentiles, I do not know. Sometimes they would even marry the wives of “lesser” men. Polygamy was common practice among the leaders. ( ZGWS) At this point in time Mormons had a bad reputation, and rightly so in many instances. Riders of the Purple Sage was set to Southern Utah around the time of 1871.
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