THE VIRGINIAN
A Horseman Of The Plains
By Owen Wister
CONTENTS
II. “WHEN YOU CALL ME THAT, SMILE!”
IX. THE SPINSTER MEETS THE UNKNOWN
XI. “YOU RE GOING TO LOVE ME BEFORE WE GET
THROUGH”XIII. THE GAME AND THE NATION—ACT FIRST
XV. THE GAME AND THE NATION—ACT SECOND
XVI. THE GAME AND THE NATION—LAST ACT
XVIII. “WOULD YOU BE A PARSON?”
XX. THE JUDGE IGNORES PARTICULARS
XXXIII. THE SPINSTER LOSES SOME SLEEP
To THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Some of these pages you have seen, some you have praised, one stands
new-written because you blamed it; and all, my dear critic, beg leave to
remind you of their author’s changeless admiration.
TO THE READER
Certain of the newspapers, when this book was first announced, made a
mistake most natural upon seeing the sub-title as it then stood, A TALE OF
SUNDRY ADVENTURES. “This sounds like a historical novel,” said one of
them, meaning (I take it) a colonial romance. As it now stands, the title
will scarce lead to such interpretation; yet none the less is this book
historical—quite as much so as any colonial romance. Indeed, when
you look at the root of the matter, it is a colonial romance. For Wyoming
between 1874 and 1890 was a colony as wild as was Virginia one hundred
years earlier. As wild, with a scantier population, and the same primitive
joys and dangers. There were, to be sure, not so many Chippendale settees.
We know quite well the common understanding of the term “historical
novel.” HUGH WYNNE exactly fits it. But SILAS LAPHAM is a novel as
perfectly historical as is Hugh Wynne, for it pictures an era and
personifies a type. It matters not that in the one we find George
Washington and in the other none save imaginary figures; else THE SCARLET
LETTER were not historical. Nor does it matter that Dr. Mitchell did not
live in the time of which he wrote, while Mr. Howells saw many Silas
Laphams with his own eyes; else UNCLE TOM’S CABIN were not historical. Any
narrative which presents faithfully a day and a generation is of necessity
historical; and this one presents Wyoming between 1874 and 1890. Had you
left New York or San Francisco at ten o’clock this morning, by noon the
day after to-morrow you could step out at Cheyenne. There you would stand
at the heart of the world that is the subject of my picture, yet you would
look around you in vain for the reality. It is a vanished world. No
journeys, save those which memory can take, will bring you to it now. The
mountains are there, far and shining, and the sunlight, and the infinite
earth, and the air that seems forever the true fountain of youth, but
where is the buffalo, and the wild antelope, and where the horseman with
his pasturing thousands? So like its old self does the sage-brush seem
when revisited, that you wait for the horseman to appear.
But he will never come again. He rides in his historic yesterday. You will
no more see him gallop out of the unchanging silence than you will see
Columbus on the unchanging sea come sailing from Palos with his caravels.
And yet the horseman is still so near our day that in some chapters of
this book, which were published separate at the close of the nineteenth
century, the present tense was used. It is true no longer. In those
chapters it has been changed, and verbs like “is” and “have” now read
“was” and “had.” Time has flowed faster than my ink.
What is become of the horseman, the cow-puncher, the last romantic figure
upon our soil? For he was romantic. Whatever he did, he did with his
might. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the wages that he
squandered were squandered hard,—half a year’s pay sometimes gone in
a night,—“blown in,” as he expressed it, or “blowed in,” to be
perfectly accurate. Well, he will be here among us always, invisible,
waiting his chance to live and play as he would like. His wild kind has
been among us always, since the beginning: a young man with his
temptations, a hero without wings.
The cow-puncher’s ungoverned hours did not unman him. If he gave his word,
he kept it; Wall Street would have found him behind the times. Nor did he
talk lewdly to women; Newport would have thought him old-fashioned. He and
his brief epoch make a complete picture, for in themselves they were as
complete as the pioneers of the land or the explorers of the sea. A
transition has followed the horseman of the plains; a shapeless state, a
condition of men and manners as unlovely as is that moment in the year
when winter is gone and spring not come, and the face of Nature is ugly. I
shall not dwell upon it here. Those who have seen it know well what I
mean. Such transition was inevitable. Let us give thanks that it is but a
transition, and not a finality.
Sometimes readers inquire, Did I know the Virginian? As well, I hope, as a
father should know his son. And sometimes it is asked, Was such and such a
thing true? Now to this I have the best answer in the world. Once a
cow-puncher listened patiently while I read him a manuscript. It concerned
an event upon an Indian reservation. “Was that the Crow reservation?” he
inquired at the finish. I told him that it was no real reservation and no
real event; and his face expressed displeasure. “Why,” he demanded, “do
you waste your time writing what never happened, when you know so many
things that did happen?”
And I could no more help telling him that this was the highest compliment
ever paid me than I have been able to help telling you about it here!
CHARLESTON, S.C., March 31st, 1902
THE VIRGINIAN
I. ENTER THE MAN
Some notable sight was drawing the passengers, both men and women, to the
window; and therefore I rose and crossed the car to see what it was. I saw
near the track an enclosure, and round it some laughing men, and inside it
some whirling dust, and amid the dust some horses, plunging, huddling, and
dodging. They were cow ponies in a corral, and one of them would not be
caught, no matter who threw the rope. We had plenty of time to watch this
sport, for our train had stopped that the engine might take water at the
tank before it pulled us up beside the station platform of Medicine Bow.
We were also six hours late, and starving for entertainment. The pony in
the corral was wise, and rapid of limb. Have you seen a skilful boxer
watch his antagonist with a quiet, incessant eye? Such an eye as this did
the pony keep upon whatever man took the rope. The man might pretend to
look at the weather, which was fine; or he might affect earnest
conversation with a bystander: it was bootless. The pony saw through it.
No feint hoodwinked him. This animal was thoroughly a man of the world.
His undistracted eye stayed fixed upon the dissembling foe, and the
gravity of his horse-expression made the matter one of high comedy. Then
the rope would sail out at him, but he was already elsewhere; and if
horses laugh, gayety must have abounded in that corral. Sometimes the pony
took a turn alone; next he had slid in a flash among his brothers, and the
whole of them like a school of playful fish whipped round the corral,
kicking up the fine dust, and (I take it) roaring with laughter. Through
the window-glass of our Pullman the thud of their mischievous hoofs
reached us, and the strong, humorous curses of the cow-boys. Then for the
first time I noticed a man who sat on the high gate of the corral, looking
on. For he now climbed down with the undulations of a tiger, smooth and
easy, as if his muscles flowed beneath his skin. The others had all
visibly whirled the rope, some of them even shoulder high. I did not see
his arm lift or move. He appeared to hold the rope down low, by his leg.
But like a sudden snake I saw the noose go out its length and fall true;
and the thing was done. As the captured pony walked in with a sweet,
church-door expression, our train moved slowly on to the station, and a
passenger remarked, “That man knows his business.”
But the passenger’s dissertation upon roping I was obliged to lose, for
Medicine Bow was my station. I bade my fellow-travellers good-by, and
descended, a stranger, into the great cattle land. And here in less than
ten minutes I learned news which made me feel a stranger indeed.
My baggage was lost; it had not come on my train; it was adrift somewhere
back in the two thousand miles that lay behind me. And by way of comfort,
the baggage-man remarked that passengers often got astray from their
trunks, but the trunks mostly found them after a while. Having offered me
this encouragement, he turned whistling to his affairs and left me planted
in the baggage-room at Medicine Bow. I stood deserted among crates and
boxes, blankly holding my check, hungry and forlorn. I stared out through
the door at the sky and the plains; but I did not see the antelope shining
among the sage-brush, nor the great sunset light of Wyoming. Annoyance
blinded my eyes to all things save my grievance: I saw only a lost trunk.
And I was muttering half-aloud, “What a forsaken hole this is!” when
suddenly from outside on the platform came a slow voice: “Off to get
married AGAIN? Oh, don’t!”
The voice was Southern and gentle and drawling; and a second voice came in
immediate answer, cracked and querulous. “It ain’t again. Who says it’s
again? Who told you, anyway?”
And the first voice responded caressingly: “Why, your Sunday clothes told
me, Uncle Hughey. They are speakin’ mighty loud o’ nuptials.”
“You don’t worry me!” snapped Uncle Hughey, with shrill heat.
And the other gently continued, “Ain’t them gloves the same yu’ wore to
your last weddin’?”
“You don’t worry me! You don’t worry me!” now screamed Uncle Hughey.
Already I had forgotten my trunk; care had left me; I was aware of the
sunset, and had no desire but for more of this conversation. For it
resembled none that I had heard in my life so far. I stepped to the door
and looked out upon the station platform.
Lounging there at ease against the wall was a slim young giant, more
beautiful than pictures. His broad, soft hat was pushed back; a
loose-knotted, dull-scarlet handkerchief sagged from his throat; and one
casual thumb was hooked in the cartridge-belt that slanted across his
hips. He had plainly come many miles from somewhere across the vast
horizon, as the dust upon him showed. His boots were white with it. His
overalls were gray with it. The weather-beaten bloom of his face shone
through it duskily, as the ripe peaches look upon their trees in a dry
season. But no dinginess of travel or shabbiness of attire could tarnish
the splendor that radiated from his youth and strength. The old man upon
whose temper his remarks were doing such deadly work was combed and
curried to a finish, a bridegroom swept and garnished; but alas for age!
Had I been the bride, I should have taken the giant, dust and all. He had
by no means done with the old man.
“Why, yu’ve hung weddin’ gyarments on every limb!” he now drawled, with
admiration. “Who is the lucky lady this trip?”
The old man seemed to vibrate. “Tell you there ain’t been no other! Call
me a Mormon, would you?”
“Why, that—”
“Call me a Mormon? Then name some of my wives. Name two. Name one. Dare
you!”
“—that Laramie wido’ promised you—’
“Shucks!”
“—only her doctor suddenly ordered Southern climate and—”
“Shucks! You’re a false alarm.”
“—so nothing but her lungs came between you. And next you’d most got
united with Cattle Kate, only—”
“Tell you you’re a false alarm!”
“—only she got hung.”
“Where’s the wives in all this? Show the wives! Come now!”
“That corn-fed biscuit-shooter at Rawlins yu’ gave the canary—”
“Never married her. Never did marry—”
“But yu’ come so near, uncle! She was the one left yu’ that letter
explaining how she’d got married to a young cyard-player the very day
before her ceremony with you was due, and—”
“Oh, you’re nothing; you’re a kid; you don’t amount to—”
“—and how she’d never, never forgot to feed the canary.”
“This country’s getting full of kids,” stated the old man, witheringly.
“It’s doomed.” This crushing assertion plainly satisfied him. And he
blinked his eyes with renewed anticipation. His tall tormentor continued
with a face of unchanging gravity, and a voice of gentle solicitude: “How
is the health of that unfortunate—”
“That’s right! Pour your insults! Pour ’em on a sick, afflicted woman!”
The eyes blinked with combative relish.
“Insults? Oh, no, Uncle Hughey!”
“That’s all right! Insults goes!”
“Why, I was mighty relieved when she began to recover her mem’ry. Las’
time I heard, they told me she’d got it pretty near all back. Remembered
her father, and her mother, and her sisters and brothers, and her friends,
and her happy childhood, and all her doin’s except only your face. The
boys was bettin’ she’d get that far too, give her time. But I reckon afteh
such a turrable sickness as she had, that would be expectin’ most too
much.”
At this Uncle Hughey jerked out a small parcel. “Shows how much you know!”
he cackled. “There! See that! That’s my ring she sent me back, being too
unstrung for marriage. So she don’t remember me, don’t she? Ha-ha! Always
said you were a false alarm.”
The Southerner put more anxiety into his tone. “And so you’re a-takin’ the
ring right on to the next one!” he exclaimed. “Oh, don’t go to get married
again, Uncle Hughey! What’s the use o’ being married?”
“What’s the use?” echoed the bridegroom, with scorn. “Hm! When you grow up
you’ll think different.”
“Course I expect to think different when my age is different. I’m havin’
the thoughts proper to twenty-four, and you’re havin’ the thoughts proper
to sixty.”
“Fifty!” shrieked Uncle Hughey, jumping in the air.
The Southerner took a tone of self-reproach. “Now, how could I forget you
was fifty,” he murmured, “when you have been telling it to the boys so
careful for the last ten years!”
Have you ever seen a cockatoo—the white kind with the top-knot—enraged
by insult? The bird erects every available feather upon its person. So did
Uncle Hughey seem to swell, clothes, mustache, and woolly white beard; and
without further speech he took himself on board the Eastbound train, which
now arrived from its siding in time to deliver him.
Yet this was not why he had not gone away before. At any time he could
have escaped into the baggage-room or withdrawn to a dignified distance
until his train should come up. But the old man had evidently got a sort
of joy from this teasing. He had reached that inevitable age when we are
tickled to be linked with affairs of gallantry, no matter how.
With him now the Eastbound departed slowly into that distance whence I had
come. I stared after it as it went its way to the far shores of
civilization. It grew small in the unending gulf of space, until all sign
of its presence was gone save a faint skein of smoke against the evening
sky. And now my lost trunk came back into my thoughts, and Medicine Bow
seemed a lonely spot. A sort of ship had left me marooned in a foreign
ocean; the Pullman was comfortably steaming home to port, while I—how
was I to find Judge Henry’s ranch? Where in this unfeatured wilderness was
Sunk Creek? No creek or any water at all flowed here that I could
perceive. My host had written he should meet me at the station and drive
me to his ranch. This was all that I knew. He was not here. The
baggage-man had not seen him lately. The ranch was almost certain to be
too far to walk to, to-night. My trunk—I discovered myself still
staring dolefully after the vanished East-bound; and at the same instant I
became aware that the tall man was looking gravely at me,—as gravely
as he had looked at Uncle Hughey throughout their remarkable conversation.
To see his eye thus fixing me and his thumb still hooked in his
cartridge-belt, certain tales of travellers from these parts forced
themselves disquietingly into my recollection. Now that Uncle Hughey was
gone, was I to take his place and be, for instance, invited to dance on
the platform to the music of shots nicely aimed?
“I reckon I am looking for you, seh,” the tall man now observed.
II. “WHEN YOU CALL ME THAT, SMILE!”
We cannot see ourselves as others see us, or I should know what appearance
I cut at hearing this from the tall man. I said nothing, feeling
uncertain.
“I reckon I am looking for you, seh,” he repeated politely.
“I am looking for Judge Henry,” I now replied.
He walked toward me, and I saw that in inches he was not a giant. He was
not more than six feet. It was Uncle Hughey that had made him seem to
tower. But in his eye, in his face, in his step, in the whole man, there
dominated a something potent to be felt, I should think, by man or woman.
“The Judge sent me afteh you, seh,” he now explained, in his civil
Southern voice; and he handed me a letter from my host. Had I not
witnessed his facetious performances with Uncle Hughey, I should have
judged him wholly ungifted with such powers. There was nothing external
about him but what seemed the signs of a nature as grave as you could
meet. But I had witnessed; and therefore supposing that I knew him in
spite of his appearance, that I was, so to speak, in his secret and could
give him a sort of wink, I adopted at once a method of easiness. It was so
pleasant to be easy with a large stranger, who instead of shooting at your
heels had very civilly handed you a letter.
“You’re from old Virginia, I take it?” I began.
He answered slowly, “Then you have taken it correct, seh.”
A slight chill passed over my easiness, but I went cheerily on with a
further inquiry. “Find many oddities out here like Uncle Hughey?”
“Yes, seh, there is a right smart of oddities around. They come in on
every train.”
At this point I dropped my method of easiness.
“I wish that trunks came on the train,” said I. And I told him my
predicament.
It was not to be expected that he would be greatly moved at my loss; but
he took it with no comment whatever. “We’ll wait in town for it,” said he,
always perfectly civil.
Now, what I had seen of “town” was, to my newly arrived eyes, altogether
horrible. If I could possibly sleep at the Judge’s ranch, I preferred to
do so.
“Is it too far to drive there to-night?” I inquired.
He looked at me in a puzzled manner.
“For this valise,” I explained, “contains all that I immediately need; in
fact, I could do without my trunk for a day or two, if it is not
convenient to send. So if we could arrive there not too late by starting
at once—” I paused.
“It’s two hundred and sixty-three miles,” said the Virginian.
To my loud ejaculation he made no answer, but surveyed me a moment longer,
and then said, “Supper will be about ready now.” He took my valise, and I
followed his steps toward the eating-house in silence. I was dazed.
As we went, I read my host’s letter—a brief hospitable message. He
was very sorry not to meet me himself. He had been getting ready to drive
over, when the surveyor appeared and detained him. Therefore in his stead
he was sending a trustworthy man to town, who would look after me and
drive me over. They were looking forward to my visit with much pleasure.
This was all.
Yes, I was dazed. How did they count distance in this country? You spoke
in a neighborly fashion about driving over to town, and it meant—I
did not know yet how many days. And what would be meant by the term
“dropping in,” I wondered. And how many miles would be considered really
far? I abstained from further questioning the “trustworthy man.” My
questions had not fared excessively well. He did not propose making me
dance, to be sure: that would scarcely be trustworthy. But neither did he
propose to have me familiar with him. Why was this? What had I done to
elicit that veiled and skilful sarcasm about oddities coming in on every
train? Having been sent to look after me, he would do so, would even carry
my valise; but I could not be jocular with him. This handsome,
ungrammatical son of the soil had set between us the bar of his cold and
perfect civility. No polished person could have done it better. What was
the matter? I looked at him, and suddenly it came to me. If he had tried
familiarity with me the first two minutes of our acquaintance, I should
have resented it; by what right, then, had I tried it with him? It smacked
of patronizing: on this occasion he had come off the better gentleman of
the two. Here in flesh and blood was a truth which I had long believed in
words, but never met before. The creature we call a GENTLEMAN lies deep in
the hearts of thousands that are born without chance to master the outward
graces of the type.
Between the station and the eating-house I did a deal of straight
thinking. But my thoughts were destined presently to be drowned in
amazement at the rare personage into whose society fate had thrown me.
Town, as they called it, pleased me the less, the longer I saw it. But
until our language stretches itself and takes in a new word of closer fit,
town will have to do for the name of such a place as was Medicine Bow. I
have seen and slept in many like it since. Scattered wide, they littered
the frontier from the Columbia to the Rio Grande, from the Missouri to the
Sierras. They lay stark, dotted over a planet of treeless dust, like
soiled packs of cards. Each was similar to the next, as one old five-spot
of clubs resembles another. Houses, empty bottles, and garbage, they were
forever of the same shapeless pattern. More forlorn they were than stale
bones. They seemed to have been strewn there by the wind and to be waiting
till the wind should come again and blow them away. Yet serene above their
foulness swam a pure and quiet light, such as the East never sees; they
might be bathing in the air of creation’s first morning. Beneath sun and
stars their days and nights were immaculate and wonderful.
Medicine Bow was my first, and I took its dimensions, twenty-nine
buildings in all,—one coal shute, one water tank, the station, one
store, two eating-houses, one billiard hall, two tool-houses, one feed
stable, and twelve others that for one reason and another I shall not
name. Yet this wretched husk of squalor spent thought upon appearances;
many houses in it wore a false front to seem as if they were two stories
high. There they stood, rearing their pitiful masquerade amid a fringe of
old tin cans, while at their very doors began a world of crystal light, a
land without end, a space across which Noah and Adam might come straight
from Genesis. Into that space went wandering a road, over a hill and down
out of sight, and up again smaller in the distance, and down once more,
and up once more, straining the eyes, and so away.
Then I heard a fellow greet my Virginian. He came rollicking out of a
door, and made a pass with his hand at the Virginian’s hat. The Southerner
dodged it, and I saw once more the tiger undulation of body, and knew my
escort was he of the rope and the corral.
“How are yu’ Steve?” he said to the rollicking man. And in his tone I
heard instantly old friendship speaking. With Steve he would take and give
familiarity.
Steve looked at me, and looked away—and that was all. But it was
enough. In no company had I ever felt so much an outsider. Yet I liked the
company, and wished that it would like me.
“Just come to town?” inquired Steve of the Virginian.
“Been here since noon. Been waiting for the train.”
“Going out to-night?”
“I reckon I’ll pull out to-morro’.”
“Beds are all took,” said Steve. This was for my benefit.
“Dear me,” said I.
“But I guess one of them drummers will let yu’ double up with him.” Steve
was enjoying himself, I think. He had his saddle and blankets, and beds
were nothing to him.
“Drummers, are they?” asked the Virginian.
“Two Jews handling cigars, one American with consumption killer, and a
Dutchman with jew’lry.”
The Virginian set down my valise, and seemed to meditate. “I did want a
bed to-night,” he murmured gently.
“Well,” Steve suggested, “the American looks like he washed the oftenest.”
“That’s of no consequence to me,” observed the Southerner.
“Guess it’ll be when yu’ see ’em.”
“Oh, I’m meaning something different. I wanted a bed to myself.”
“Then you’ll have to build one.”
“Bet yu’ I have the Dutchman’s.”
“Take a man that won’t scare. Bet yu’ drinks yu’ can’t have the
American’s.”
“Go yu’” said the Virginian. “I’ll have his bed without any fuss. Drinks
for the crowd.”
“I suppose you have me beat,” said Steve, grinning at him affectionately.
“You’re such a son-of-a—— when you get down to work. Well, so
long! I got to fix my horse’s hoofs.”
I had expected that the man would be struck down. He had used to the
Virginian a term of heaviest insult, I thought. I had marvelled to hear it
come so unheralded from Steve’s friendly lips. And now I marvelled still
more. Evidently he had meant no harm by it, and evidently no offence had
been taken. Used thus, this language was plainly complimentary. I had
stepped into a world new to me indeed, and novelties were occurring with
scarce any time to get breath between them. As to where I should sleep, I
had forgotten that problem altogether in my curiosity. What was the
Virginian going to do now? I began to know that the quiet of this man was
volcanic.
“Will you wash first, sir?”
We were at the door of the eating-house, and he set my valise inside. In
my tenderfoot innocence I was looking indoors for the washing
arrangements.
“It’s out hyeh, seh,” he informed me gravely, but with strong Southern
accent. Internal mirth seemed often to heighten the local flavor of his
speech. There were other times when it had scarce any special accent or
fault in grammar.
A trough was to my right, slippery with soapy water; and hanging from a
roller above one end of it was a rag of discouraging appearance. The
Virginian caught it, and it performed one whirling revolution on its
roller. Not a dry or clean inch could be found on it. He took off his hat,
and put his head in the door.
“Your towel, ma’am,” said he, “has been too popular.”
She came out, a pretty woman. Her eyes rested upon him for a moment, then
upon me with disfavor; then they returned to his black hair.
“The allowance is one a day,” said she, very quietly. “But when folks are
particular—” She completed her sentence by removing the old towel
and giving a clean one to us.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said the cow-puncher.
She looked once more at his black hair, and without any word returned to
her guests at supper.
A pail stood in the trough, almost empty; and this he filled for me from a
well. There was some soap sliding at large in the trough, but I got my
own. And then in a tin basin I removed as many of the stains of travel as
I was able. It was not much of a toilet that I made in this first
wash-trough of my experience, but it had to suffice, and I took my seat at
supper.
Canned stuff it was,—corned beef. And one of my table companions
said the truth about it. “When I slung my teeth over that,” he remarked,
“I thought I was chewing a hammock.” We had strange coffee, and condensed
milk; and I have never seen more flies. I made no attempt to talk, for no
one in this country seemed favorable to me. By reason of something,—my
clothes, my hat, my pronunciation, whatever it might be, I possessed the
secret of estranging people at sight. Yet I was doing better than I knew;
my strict silence and attention to the corned beef made me in the eyes of
the cow-boys at table compare well with the over-talkative commercial
travellers.
The Virginian’s entrance produced a slight silence. He had done wonders
with the wash-trough, and he had somehow brushed his clothes. With all the
roughness of his dress, he was now the neatest of us. He nodded to some of
the other cow-boys, and began his meal in quiet.
But silence is not the native element of the drummer. An average fish can
go a longer time out of water than this breed can live without talking.
One of them now looked across the table at the grave, flannel-shirted
Virginian; he inspected, and came to the imprudent conclusion that he
understood his man.
“Good evening,” he said briskly.
“Good evening,” said the Virginian.
“Just come to town?” pursued the drummer.
“Just come to town,” the Virginian suavely assented.
“Cattle business jumping along?” inquired the drummer.
“Oh, fair.” And the Virginian took some more corned beef.
“Gets a move on your appetite, anyway,” suggested the drummer.
The Virginian drank some coffee. Presently the pretty woman refilled his
cup without his asking her.
“Guess I’ve met you before,” the drummer stated next.
The Virginian glanced at him for a brief moment.
“Haven’t I, now? Ain’t I seen you somewhere? Look at me. You been in
Chicago, ain’t you? You look at me well. Remember Ikey’s, don’t you?”
“I don’t reckon I do.”
“See, now! I knowed you’d been in Chicago. Four or five years ago. Or
maybe it’s two years. Time’s nothing to me. But I never forget a face.
Yes, sir. Him and me’s met at Ikey’s, all right.” This important point the
drummer stated to all of us. We were called to witness how well he had
proved old acquaintanceship. “Ain’t the world small, though!” he exclaimed
complacently. “Meet a man once and you’re sure to run on to him again.
That’s straight. That’s no bar-room josh.” And the drummer’s eye included
us all in his confidence. I wondered if he had attained that high
perfection when a man believes his own lies.
The Virginian did not seem interested. He placidly attended to his food,
while our landlady moved between dining room and kitchen, and the drummer
expanded.
“Yes, sir! Ikey’s over by the stock-yards, patronized by all cattle-men
that know what’s what. That’s where. Maybe it’s three years. Time never
was nothing to me. But faces! Why, I can’t quit ’em. Adults or children,
male and female; onced I seen ’em I couldn’t lose one off my memory, not
if you were to pay me bounty, five dollars a face. White men, that is.
Can’t do nothing with niggers or Chinese. But you’re white, all right.”
The drummer suddenly returned to the Virginian with this high compliment.
The cow-puncher had taken out a pipe, and was slowly rubbing it. The
compliment seemed to escape his attention, and the drummer went on.
“I can tell a man when he’s white, put him at Ikey’s or out loose here in
the sage-brush.” And he rolled a cigar across to the Virginian’s plate.
“Selling them?” inquired the Virginian.
“Solid goods, my friend. Havana wrappers, the biggest tobacco proposition
for five cents got out yet. Take it, try it, light it, watch it burn.
Here.” And he held out a bunch of matches.
The Virginian tossed a five-cent piece over to him.
“Oh, no, my friend! Not from you! Not after Ikey’s. I don’t forget you.
See? I knowed your face right away. See? That’s straight. I seen you at
Chicago all right.”
“Maybe you did,” said the Virginian. “Sometimes I’m mighty careless what I
look at.”
“Well, py damn!” now exclaimed the Dutch drummer, hilariously. “I am ploom
disappointed. I vas hoping to sell him somedings myself.”
“Not the same here,” stated the American. “He’s too healthy for me. I gave
him up on sight.”
Now it was the American drummer whose bed the Virginian had in his eye.
This was a sensible man, and had talked less than his brothers in the
trade. I had little doubt who would end by sleeping in his bed; but how
the thing would be done interested me more deeply than ever.
The Virginian looked amiably at his intended victim, and made one or two
remarks regarding patent medicines. There must be a good deal of money in
them, he supposed, with a live man to manage them. The victim was
flattered. No other person at the table had been favored with so much of
the tall cow-puncher’s notice. He responded, and they had a pleasant talk.
I did not divine that the Virginian’s genius was even then at work, and
that all this was part of his satanic strategy. But Steve must have
divined it. For while a few of us still sat finishing our supper, that
facetious horseman returned from doctoring his horse’s hoofs, put his head
into the dining room, took in the way in which the Virginian was engaging
his victim in conversation, remarked aloud, “I’ve lost!” and closed the
door again.
“What’s he lost?” inquired the American drummer.
“Oh, you mustn’t mind him,” drawled the Virginian. “He’s one of those
box-head jokers goes around openin’ and shuttin’ doors that-a-way. We call
him harmless. Well,” he broke off, “I reckon I’ll go smoke. Not allowed in
hyeh?” This last he addressed to the landlady, with especial gentleness.
She shook her head, and her eyes followed him as he went out.
Left to myself I meditated for some time upon my lodging for the night,
and smoked a cigar for consolation as I walked about. It was not a hotel
that we had supped in. Hotel at Medicine Bow there appeared to be none.
But connected with the eating-house was that place where, according to
Steve, the beds were all taken, and there I went to see for myself. Steve
had spoken the truth. It was a single apartment containing four or five
beds, and nothing else whatever. And when I looked at these beds, my
sorrow that I could sleep in none of them grew less. To be alone in one
offered no temptation, and as for this courtesy of the country, this
doubling up—!
“Well, they have got ahead of us.” This was the Virginian standing at my
elbow.
I assented.
“They have staked out their claims,” he added.
In this public sleeping room they had done what one does to secure a seat
in a railroad train. Upon each bed, as notice of occupancy, lay some
article of travel or of dress. As we stood there, the two Jews came in and
opened and arranged their valises, and folded and refolded their linen
dusters. Then a railroad employee entered and began to go to bed at this
hour, before dusk had wholly darkened into night. For him, going to bed
meant removing his boots and placing his overalls and waistcoat beneath
his pillow. He had no coat. His work began at three in the morning; and
even as we still talked he began to snore.
“The man that keeps the store is a friend of mine,” said the Virginian;
“and you can be pretty near comfortable on his counter. Got any blankets?”
I had no blankets.
“Looking for a bed?” inquired the American drummer, now arriving.
“Yes, he’s looking for a bed,” answered the voice of Steve behind him.
“Seems a waste of time,” observed the Virginian. He looked thoughtfully
from one bed to another. “I didn’t know I’d have to lay over here. Well, I
have sat up before.”
“This one’s mine,” said the drummer, sitting down on it. “Half’s plenty
enough room for me.”
“You’re cert’nly mighty kind,” said the cow-puncher. “But I’d not think o’
disconveniencing yu’.”
“That’s nothing. The other half is yours. Turn in right now if you feel
like it.”
“No. I don’t reckon I’ll turn in right now. Better keep your bed to
yourself.”
“See here,” urged the drummer, “if I take you I’m safe from drawing some
party I might not care so much about. This here sleeping proposition is a
lottery.”
“Well,” said the Virginian (and his hesitation was truly masterly), “if
you put it that way—”
“I do put it that way. Why, you’re clean! You’ve had a shave right now.
You turn in when you feel inclined, old man! I ain’t retiring just yet.”
The drummer had struck a slightly false note in these last remarks. He
should not have said “old man.” Until this I had thought him merely an
amiable person who wished to do a favor. But “old man” came in wrong. It
had a hateful taint of his profession; the being too soon with everybody,
the celluloid good-fellowship that passes for ivory with nine in ten of
the city crowd. But not so with the sons of the sagebrush. They live
nearer nature, and they know better.
But the Virginian blandly accepted “old man” from his victim: he had a
game to play. “Well, I cert’nly thank yu’,” he said. “After a while I’ll
take advantage of your kind offer.”
I was surprised. Possession being nine points of the law, it seemed his
very chance to intrench himself in the bed. But the cow-puncher had
planned a campaign needing no intrenchments. Moreover, going to bed before
nine o’clock upon the first evening in many weeks that a town’s resources
were open to you, would be a dull proceeding. Our entire company, drummer
and all, now walked over to the store, and here my sleeping arrangements
were made easily. This store was the cleanest place and the best in
Medicine Bow, and would have been a good store anywhere, offering a
multitude of things for sale, and kept by a very civil proprietor. He bade
me make myself at home, and placed both of his counters at my disposal.
Upon the grocery side there stood a cheese too large and strong to sleep
near comfortably, and I therefore chose the dry-goods side. Here thick
quilts were unrolled for me, to make it soft; and no condition was placed
upon me, further than that I should remove my boots, because the quilts
were new, and clean, and for sale. So now my rest was assured. Not an
anxiety remained in my thoughts. These therefore turned themselves wholly
to the other man’s bed, and how he was going to lose it.
I think that Steve was more curious even than myself. Time was on the
wing. His bet must be decided, and the drinks enjoyed. He stood against
the grocery counter, contemplating the Virginian. But it was to me that he
spoke. The Virginian, however, listened to every word.
“Your first visit to this country?”
I told him yes.
“How do you like it?”
I expected to like it very much.
“How does the climate strike you?”
I thought the climate was fine.
“Makes a man thirsty though.”
This was the sub-current which the Virginian plainly looked for. But he,
like Steve, addressed himself to me.
“Yes,” he put in, “thirsty while a man’s soft yet. You’ll harden.”
“I guess you’ll find it a drier country than you were given to expect,”
said Steve.
“If your habits have been frequent that way,” said the Virginian.
“There’s parts of Wyoming,” pursued Steve, “where you’ll go hours and
hours before you’ll see a drop of wetness.”
“And if yu’ keep a-thinkin’ about it,” said the Virginian, “it’ll seem
like days and days.”
Steve, at this stroke, gave up, and clapped him on the shoulder with a
joyous chuckle. “You old son-of-a!” he cried affectionately.
“Drinks are due now,” said the Virginian. “My treat, Steve. But I reckon
your suspense will have to linger a while yet.”
Thus they dropped into direct talk from that speech of the fourth
dimension where they had been using me for their telephone.
“Any cyards going to-night?” inquired the Virginian.
“Stud and draw,” Steve told him. “Strangers playing.”
“I think I’d like to get into a game for a while,” said the Southerner.
“Strangers, yu’ say?”
And then, before quitting the store, he made his toilet for this little
hand at poker. It was a simple preparation. He took his pistol from its
holster, examined it, then shoved it between his overalls and his shirt in
front, and pulled his waistcoat over it. He might have been combing his
hair for all the attention any one paid to this, except myself. Then the
two friends went out, and I bethought me of that epithet which Steve again
had used to the Virginian as he clapped him on the shoulder. Clearly this
wild country spoke a language other than mine—the word here was a
term of endearment. Such was my conclusion.
The drummers had finished their dealings with the proprietor, and they
were gossiping together in a knot by the door as the Virginian passed out.
“See you later, old man!” This was the American drummer accosting his
prospective bed-fellow.
“Oh, yes,” returned the bed-fellow, and was gone.
The American drummer winked triumphantly at his brethren. “He’s all
right,” he observed, jerking a thumb after the Virginian. “He’s easy. You
got to know him to work him. That’s all.”
“Und vat is your point?” inquired the German drummer.
“Point is—he’ll not take any goods off you or me; but he’s going to
talk up the killer to any consumptive he runs across. I ain’t done with
him yet. Say,” (he now addressed the proprietor), “what’s her name?”
“Whose name?”
“Woman runs the eating-house.”
“Glen. Mrs. Glen.”
“Ain’t she new?”
“Been settled here about a month. Husband’s a freight conductor.”
“Thought I’d not seen her before. She’s a good-looker.”
“Hm! Yes. The kind of good looks I’d sooner see in another man’s wife than
mine.”
“So that’s the gait, is it?”
“Hm! well, it don’t seem to be. She come here with that reputation. But
there’s been general disappointment.”
“Then she ain’t lacked suitors any?”
“Lacked! Are you acquainted with cow-boys?”
“And she disappointed ’em? Maybe she likes her husband?”
“Hm! well, how are you to tell about them silent kind?”
“Talking of conductors,” began the drummer. And we listened to his
anecdote. It was successful with his audience; but when he launched
fluently upon a second I strolled out. There was not enough wit in this
narrator to relieve his indecency, and I felt shame at having been
surprised into laughing with him.
I left that company growing confidential over their leering stories, and I
sought the saloon. It was very quiet and orderly. Beer in quart bottles at
a dollar I had never met before; but saving its price, I found no
complaint to make of it. Through folding doors I passed from the bar
proper with its bottles and elk head back to the hall with its various
tables. I saw a man sliding cards from a case, and across the table from
him another man laying counters down. Near by was a second dealer pulling
cards from the bottom of a pack, and opposite him a solemn old rustic
piling and changing coins upon the cards which lay already exposed.
But now I heard a voice that drew my eyes to the far corner of the room.
“Why didn’t you stay in Arizona?”
Harmless looking words as I write them down here. Yet at the sound of them
I noticed the eyes of the others directed to that corner. What answer was
given to them I did not hear, nor did I see who spoke. Then came another
remark.
“Well, Arizona’s no place for amatures.”
This time the two card dealers that I stood near began to give a part of
their attention to the group that sat in the corner. There was in me a
desire to leave this room. So far my hours at Medicine Bow had seemed to
glide beneath a sunshine of merriment, of easy-going jocularity. This was
suddenly gone, like the wind changing to north in the middle of a warm
day. But I stayed, being ashamed to go.
Five or six players sat over in the corner at a round table where counters
were piled. Their eyes were close upon their cards, and one seemed to be
dealing a card at a time to each, with pauses and betting between. Steve
was there and the Virginian; the others were new faces.
“No place for amatures,” repeated the voice; and now I saw that it was the
dealer’s. There was in his countenance the same ugliness that his words
conveyed.
“Who’s that talkin’?” said one of the men near me, in a low voice.
“Trampas.”
“What’s he?”
“Cow-puncher, bronco-buster, tin-horn, most anything.”
“Who’s he talkin’ at?”
“Think it’s the black-headed guy he’s talking at.”
“That ain’t supposed to be safe, is it?”
“Guess we’re all goin’ to find out in a few minutes.”
“Been trouble between ’em?”
“They’ve not met before. Trampas don’t enjoy losin’ to a stranger.”
“Fello’s from Arizona, yu’ say?”
“No. Virginia. He’s recently back from havin’ a look at Arizona. Went down
there last year for a change. Works for the Sunk Creek outfit.” And then
the dealer lowered his voice still further and said something in the other
man’s ear, causing him to grin. After which both of them looked at me.
There had been silence over in the corner; but now the man Trampas spoke
again.
“AND ten,” said he, sliding out some chips from before him. Very strange
it was to hear him, how he contrived to make those words a personal taunt.
The Virginian was looking at his cards. He might have been deaf.
“AND twenty,” said the next player, easily.
The next threw his cards down.
It was now the Virginian’s turn to bet, or leave the game, and he did not
speak at once.
Therefore Trampas spoke. “Your bet, you son-of-a—.”
The Virginian’s pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it
unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost
like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there
was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the man
Trampas: “When you call me that, SMILE.” And he looked at Trampas across
the table.
Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it seemed as if somewhere the
bell of death was ringing; and silence, like a stroke, fell on the large
room. All men present, as if by some magnetic current, had become aware of
this crisis. In my ignorance, and the total stoppage of my thoughts, I
stood stock-still, and noticed various people crouching, or shifting their
positions.
“Sit quiet,” said the dealer, scornfully to the man near me. “Can’t you
see he don’t want to push trouble? He has handed Trampas the choice to
back down or draw his steel.”
Then, with equal suddenness and ease, the room came out of its
strangeness. Voices and cards, the click of chips, the puff of tobacco,
glasses lifted to drink,—this level of smooth relaxation hinted no
more plainly of what lay beneath than does the surface tell the depth of
the sea.
For Trampas had made his choice. And that choice was not to “draw his
steel.” If it was knowledge that he sought, he had found it, and no
mistake! We heard no further reference to what he had been pleased to
style “amatures.” In no company would the black-headed man who had visited
Arizona be rated a novice at the cool art of self-preservation.
One doubt remained: what kind of a man was Trampas? A public back-down is
an unfinished thing,—for some natures at least. I looked at his
face, and thought it sullen, but tricky rather than courageous.
Something had been added to my knowledge also. Once again I had heard
applied to the Virginian that epithet which Steve so freely used. The same
words, identical to the letter. But this time they had produced a pistol.
“When you call me that, SMILE!” So I perceived a new example of the old
truth, that the letter means nothing until the spirit gives it life.
III. STEVE TREATS
It was for several minutes, I suppose, that I stood drawing these silent
morals. No man occupied himself with me. Quiet voices, and games of
chance, and glasses lifted to drink, continued to be the peaceful order of
the night. And into my thoughts broke the voice of that card-dealer who
had already spoken so sagely. He also took his turn at moralizing.
“What did I tell you?” he remarked to the man for whom he continued to
deal, and who continued to lose money to him.
“Tell me when?”
“Didn’t I tell you he’d not shoot?” the dealer pursued with complacence.
“You got ready to dodge. You had no call to be concerned. He’s not the
kind a man need feel anxious about.”
The player looked over at the Virginian, doubtfully. “Well,” he said, “I
don’t know what you folks call a dangerous man.”
“Not him!” exclaimed the dealer with admiration. “He’s a brave man. That’s
different.”
The player seemed to follow this reasoning no better than I did.
“It’s not a brave man that’s dangerous,” continued the dealer. “It’s the
cowards that scare me.” He paused that this might sink home.
“Fello’ came in here las’ Toosday,” he went on. “He got into some
misunderstanding about the drinks. Well, sir, before we could put him out
of business, he’d hurt two perfectly innocent onlookers. They’d no more to
do with it than you have,” the dealer explained to me.
“Were they badly hurt?” I asked.
“One of ’em was. He’s died since.”
“What became of the man?”
“Why, we put him out of business, I told you. He died that night. But
there was no occasion for any of it; and that’s why I never like to be
around where there’s a coward. You can’t tell. He’ll always go to shooting
before it’s necessary, and there’s no security who he’ll hit. But a man
like that black-headed guy is (the dealer indicated the Virginian) need
never worry you. And there’s another point why there’s no need to worry
about him: IT’D BE TOO LATE.”
These good words ended the moralizing of the dealer. He had given us a
piece of his mind. He now gave the whole of it to dealing cards. I
loitered here and there, neither welcome nor unwelcome at present,
watching the cow-boys at their play. Saving Trampas, there was scarce a
face among them that had not in it something very likable. Here were lusty
horsemen ridden from the heat of the sun, and the wet of the storm, to
divert themselves awhile. Youth untamed sat here for an idle moment,
spending easily its hard-earned wages. City saloons rose into my vision,
and I instantly preferred this Rocky Mountain place. More of death it
undoubtedly saw, but less of vice, than did its New York equivalents.
And death is a thing much cleaner than vice. Moreover, it was by no means
vice that was written upon these wild and manly faces. Even where baseness
was visible, baseness was not uppermost. Daring, laughter, endurance—these
were what I saw upon the countenances of the cow-boys. And this very first
day of my knowledge of them marks a date with me. For something about
them, and the idea of them, smote my American heart, and I have never
forgotten it, nor ever shall, as long as I live. In their flesh our
natural passions ran tumultuous; but often in their spirit sat hidden a
true nobility, and often beneath its unexpected shining their figures took
on heroic stature.
The dealer had styled the Virginian “a black-headed guy.” This did well
enough as an unflattered portrait. Judge Henry’s trustworthy man, with
whom I was to drive two hundred and sixty-three miles, certainly had a
very black head of hair. It was the first thing to notice now, if one
glanced generally at the table where he sat at cards. But the eye came
back to him—drawn by that inexpressible something which had led the
dealer to speak so much at length about him.
Still, “black-headed guy” justly fits him and his next performance. He had
made his plan for this like a true and (I must say) inspired devil. And
now the highly appreciative town of Medicine Bow was to be treated to a
manifestation of genius.
He sat playing his stud-poker. After a decent period of losing and
winning, which gave Trampas all proper time for a change of luck and a
repairing of his fortunes, he looked at Steve and said amiably: “How does
bed strike you?”
I was beside their table, learning gradually that stud-poker has in it
more of what I will call red pepper than has our Eastern game. The
Virginian followed his own question: “Bed strikes me,” he stated.
Steve feigned indifference. He was far more deeply absorbed in his bet and
the American drummer than he was in this game; but he chose to take out a
fat, florid gold watch, consult it elaborately, and remark, “It’s only
eleven.”
“Yu’ forget I’m from the country,” said the black-headed guy. “The
chickens have been roostin’ a right smart while.”
His sunny Southern accent was again strong. In that brief passage with
Trampas it had been almost wholly absent. But different moods of the
spirit bring different qualities of utterance—where a man comes by
these naturally. The Virginian cashed in his checks.
“Awhile ago,” said Steve, “you had won three months’ salary.”
“I’m still twenty dollars to the good,” said the Virginian. “That’s better
than breaking a laig.”
Again, in some voiceless, masonic way, most people in that saloon had
become aware that something was in process of happening. Several left
their games and came to the front by the bar.
“If he ain’t in bed yet—” mused the Virginian.
“I’ll find out,” said I. And I hurried across to the dim sleeping room,
happy to have a part in this.
They were all in bed; and in some beds two were sleeping. How they could
do it—but in those days I was fastidious. The American had come in
recently and was still awake.
“Thought you were to sleep at the store?” said he.
So then I invented a little lie, and explained that I was in search of the
Virginian.
“Better search the dives,” said he. “These cow-boys don’t get to town
often.”
At this point I stumbled sharply over something.
“It’s my box of Consumption Killer,” explained the drummer; “Well, I hope
that man will stay out all night.”
“Bed narrow?” I inquired.
“For two it is. And the pillows are mean. Takes both before you feel
anything’s under your head.”
He yawned, and I wished him pleasant dreams.
At my news the Virginian left the bar at once; and crossed to the sleeping
room. Steve and I followed softly, and behind us several more strung out
in an expectant line. “What is this going to be?” they inquired curiously
of each other. And upon learning the great novelty of the event, they
clustered with silence intense outside the door where the Virginian had
gone in.
We heard the voice of the drummer, cautioning his bed-fellow. “Don’t trip
over the Killer,” he was saying. “The Prince of Wales barked his shin just
now.” It seemed my English clothes had earned me this title.
The boots of the Virginian were next heard to drop.
“Can yu’ make out what he’s at?” whispered Steve.
He was plainly undressing. The rip of swift unbuttoning told us that the
black-headed guy must now be removing his overalls.
“Why, thank yu’, no,” he was replying to a question of the drummer.
“Outside or in’s all one to me.”
“Then, if you’d just as soon take the wall—”
“Why, cert’nly.” There was a sound of bedclothes, and creaking. “This hyeh
pillo’ needs a Southern climate,” was the Virginian’s next observation.
Many listeners had now gathered at the door. The dealer and the player
were both here. The storekeeper was present, and I recognized the agent of
the Union Pacific Railroad among the crowd. We made a large company, and I
felt that trembling sensation which is common when the cap of a camera is
about to be removed upon a group.
“I should think,” said the drummer’s voice, “that you’d feel your knife
and gun clean through that pillow.”
“I do,” responded the Virginian.
“I should think you’d put them on a chair and be comfortable.”
“I’d be uncomfortable, then.”
“Used to the feel of them, I suppose?”
“That’s it. Used to the feel of them. I would miss them, and that would
make me wakeful.”
“Well, good night.”
“Good night. If I get to talkin’ and tossin’, or what not, you’ll
understand you’re to—”
“Yes, I’ll wake you.”
“No, don’t yu’, for God’s sake!”
“Not?”
“Don’t yu’ touch me.”
“What’ll I do?”
“Roll away quick to your side. It don’t last but a minute.” The Virginian
spoke with a reassuring drawl.
Upon this there fell a brief silence, and I heard the drummer clear his
throat once or twice.
“It’s merely the nightmare, I suppose?” he said after a throat clearing.
“Lord, yes. That’s all. And don’t happen twice a year. Was you thinkin’ it
was fits?”
“Oh, no! I just wanted to know. I’ve been told before that it was not safe
for a person to be waked suddenly that way out of a nightmare.”
“Yes, I have heard that too. But it never harms me any. I didn’t want you
to run risks.”
“Me?”
“Oh, it’ll be all right now that yu’ know how it is.” The Virginian’s
drawl was full of assurance.
There was a second pause, after which the drummer said:–
“Tell me again how it is.”
The Virginian answered very drowsily: “Oh, just don’t let your arm or your
laig touch me if I go to jumpin’ around. I’m dreamin’ of Indians when I do
that. And if anything touches me then, I’m liable to grab my knife right
in my sleep.”
“Oh, I understand,” said the drummer, clearing his throat. “Yes.”
Steve was whispering delighted oaths to himself, and in his joy applying
to the Virginian one unprintable name after another.
We listened again, but now no further words came. Listening very hard, I
could half make out the progress of a heavy breathing, and a restless
turning I could clearly detect. This was the wretched drummer. He was
waiting. But he did not wait long. Again there was a light creak, and
after it a light step. He was not even going to put his boots on in the
fatal neighborhood of the dreamer. By a happy thought Medicine Bow formed
into two lines, making an avenue from the door. And then the commercial
traveller forgot his Consumption Killer. He fell heavily over it.
Immediately from the bed the Virginian gave forth a dreadful howl.
And then everything happened at once; and how shall mere words narrate it?
The door burst open, and out flew the commercial traveller in his
stockings. One hand held a lump of coat and trousers with suspenders
dangling, his boots were clutched in the other. The sight of us stopped
his flight short. He gazed, the boots fell from his hand; and at his
profane explosion, Medicine Bow set up a united, unearthly noise and began
to play Virginia reel with him. The other occupants of the beds had
already sprung out of them, clothed chiefly with their pistols, and ready
for war. “What is it?” they demanded. “What is it?”
“Why, I reckon it’s drinks on Steve,” said the Virginian from his bed. And
he gave the first broad grin that I had seen from him.
“I’ll set ’em up all night!” Steve shouted, as the reel went on
regardless. The drummer was bawling to be allowed to put at least his
boots on. “This way, Pard,” was the answer; and another man whirled him
round. “This way, Beau!” they called to him; “This way, Budd!” and he was
passed like a shuttle-cock down the line. Suddenly the leaders bounded
into the sleeping-room. “Feed the machine!” they said. “Feed her!” And
seizing the German drummer who sold jewellery, they flung him into the
trough of the reel. I saw him go bouncing like an ear of corn to be
shelled, and the dance ingulfed him. I saw a Jew sent rattling after him;
and next they threw in the railroad employee, and the other Jew; and while
I stood mesmerized, my own feet left the earth. I shot from the room and
sped like a bobbing cork into this mill race, whirling my turn in the wake
of the others amid cries of, “Here comes the Prince of Wales!” There was
soon not much English left about my raiment.
They were now shouting for music. Medicine Bow swept in like a cloud of
dust to where a fiddler sat playing in a hall; and gathering up fiddler
and dancers, swept out again, a larger Medicine Bow, growing all the
while. Steve offered us the freedom of the house, everywhere. He implored
us to call for whatever pleased us, and as many times as we should please.
He ordered the town to be searched for more citizens to come and help him
pay his bet. But changing his mind, kegs and bottles were now carried
along with us. We had found three fiddlers, and these played busily for
us; and thus we set out to visit all cabins and houses where people might
still by some miracle be asleep. The first man put out his head to
decline. But such a possibility had been foreseen by the proprietor of the
store. This seemingly respectable man now came dragging some sort of
apparatus from his place, helped by the Virginian. The cow-boys cheered,
for they knew what this was. The man in his window likewise recognized it,
and uttering a groan, came immediately out and joined us. What it was, I
also learned in a few minutes. For we found a house where the people made
no sign at either our fiddlers or our knocking. And then the infernal
machine was set to work. Its parts seemed to be no more than an empty keg
and a plank. Some citizen informed me that I should soon have a new idea
of noise; and I nerved myself for something severe in the way of
gunpowder. But the Virginian and the proprietor now sat on the ground
holding the keg braced, and two others got down apparently to play see-saw
over the top of it with the plank. But the keg and plank had been rubbed
with rosin, and they drew the plank back and forth over the keg. Do you
know the sound made in a narrow street by a dray loaded with strips of
iron? That noise is a lullaby compared with the staggering, blinding
bellow which rose from the keg. If you were to try it in your native town,
you would not merely be arrested, you would be hanged, and everybody would
be glad, and the clergyman would not bury you. My head, my teeth, the
whole system of my bones leaped and chattered at the din, and out of the
house like drops squirted from a lemon came a man and his wife. No time
was given them. They were swept along with the rest; and having been
routed from their own bed, they now became most furious in assailing the
remaining homes of Medicine Bow. Everybody was to come out. Many were now
riding horses at top speed out into the plains and back, while the
procession of the plank and keg continued its work, and the fiddlers
played incessantly.
Suddenly there was a quiet. I did not see who brought the message; but the
word ran among us that there was a woman—the engineer’s woman down
by the water-tank—very sick. The doctor had been to see her from
Laramie. Everybody liked the engineer. Plank and keg were heard no more.
The horsemen found it out and restrained their gambols. Medicine Bow went
gradually home. I saw doors shutting, and lights go out; I saw a late few
reassemble at the card tables, and the drummers gathered themselves
together for sleep; the proprietor of the store (you could not see a more
respectable-looking person) hoped that I would be comfortable on the
quilts; and I heard Steve urging the Virginian to take one more glass.
“We’ve not met for so long,” he said.
But the Virginian, the black-headed guy who had set all this nonsense
going, said No to Steve. “I have got to stay responsible,” was his excuse
to his friend. And the friend looked at me. Therefore I surmised that the
Judge’s trustworthy man found me an embarrassment to his holiday. But if
he did, he never showed it to me. He had been sent to meet a stranger and
drive him to Sunk Creek in safety, and this charge he would allow no
temptation to imperil. He nodded good night to me. “If there’s anything I
can do for yu’, you’ll tell me.”
I thanked him. “What a pleasant evening!” I added.
“I’m glad yu’ found it so.”
Again his manner put a bar to my approaches. Even though I had seen him
wildly disporting himself, those were matters which he chose not to
discuss with me.
Medicine Bow was quiet as I went my way to my quilts. So still, that
through the air the deep whistles of the freight trains came from below
the horizon across great miles of silence. I passed cow-boys, whom half an
hour before I had seen prancing and roaring, now rolled in their blankets
beneath the open and shining night.
“What world am I in?” I said aloud. “Does this same planet hold Fifth
Avenue?”
And I went to sleep, pondering over my native land.
IV. DEEP INTO CATTLE LAND
Morning had been for some while astir in Medicine Bow before I left my
quilts. The new day and its doings began around me in the store, chiefly
at the grocery counter. Dry-goods were not in great request. The early
rising cow-boys were off again to their work; and those to whom their
night’s holiday had left any dollars were spending these for tobacco, or
cartridges, or canned provisions for the journey to their distant camps.
Sardines were called for, and potted chicken, and devilled ham: a
sophisticated nourishment, at first sight, for these sons of the
sage-brush. But portable ready-made food plays of necessity a great part
in the opening of a new country. These picnic pots and cans were the first
of her trophies that Civilization dropped upon Wyoming’s virgin soil. The
cow-boy is now gone to worlds invisible; the wind has blown away the white
ashes of his camp-fires; but the empty sardine box lies rusting over the
face of the Western earth.
So through my eyes half closed I watched the sale of these tins, and grew
familiar with the ham’s inevitable trademark—that label with the
devil and his horns and hoofs and tail very pronounced, all colored a
sultry prodigious scarlet. And when each horseman had made his purchase,
he would trail his spurs over the floor, and presently the sound of his
horse’s hoofs would be the last of him. Through my dozing attention came
various fragments of talk, and sometimes useful bits of knowledge. For
instance, I learned the true value of tomatoes in this country. One fellow
was buying two cans of them.
“Meadow Creek dry already?” commented the proprietor.
“Been dry ten days,” the young cow-boy informed him. And it appeared that
along the road he was going, water would not be reached much before
sundown, because this Meadow Creek had ceased to run. His tomatoes were
for drink. And thus they have refreshed me many times since.
“No beer?” suggested the proprietor.
The boy made a shuddering face. “Don’t say its name to me!” he exclaimed.
“I couldn’t hold my breakfast down.” He rang his silver money upon the
counter. “I’ve swore off for three months,” he stated. “I’m going to be as
pure as the snow!” And away he went jingling out of the door, to ride
seventy-five miles. Three more months of hard, unsheltered work, and he
would ride into town again, with his adolescent blood crying aloud for its
own.
“I’m obliged,” said a new voice, rousing me from a new doze. “She’s easier
this morning, since the medicine.” This was the engineer, whose sick wife
had brought a hush over Medicine Bow’s rioting. “I’ll give her them
flowers soon as she wakes,” he added.
“Flowers?” repeated the proprietor.
“You didn’t leave that bunch at our door?”
“Wish I’d thought to do it.”
“She likes to see flowers,” said the engineer. And he walked out slowly,
with his thanks unachieved. He returned at once with the Virginian; for in
the band of the Virginian’s hat were two or three blossoms.
“It don’t need mentioning,” the Southerner was saying, embarrassed by any
expression of thanks. “If we had knowed last night—”
“You didn’t disturb her any,” broke in the engineer. “She’s easier this
morning. I’ll tell her about them flowers.”
“Why, it don’t need mentioning,” the Virginian again protested, almost
crossly. “The little things looked kind o’ fresh, and I just picked them.”
His eye now fell upon me, where I lay upon the counter. “I reckon
breakfast will be getting through,” he remarked.
I was soon at the wash trough. It was only half-past six, but many had
been before me,—one glance at the roller-towel told me that. I was
afraid to ask the landlady for a clean one, and so I found a fresh
handkerchief, and accomplished a sparing toilet. In the midst of this the
drummers joined me, one by one, and they used the degraded towel without
hesitation. In a way they had the best of me; filth was nothing to them.
The latest risers in Medicine Bow, we sat at breakfast together; and they
essayed some light familiarities with the landlady. But these experiments
were failures. Her eyes did not see, nor did her ears hear them. She
brought the coffee and the bacon with a sedateness that propriety itself
could scarce have surpassed. Yet impropriety lurked noiselessly all over
her. You could not have specified how; it was interblended with her sum
total. Silence was her apparent habit and her weapon; but the American
drummer found that she could speak to the point when need came for this.
During the meal he had praised her golden hair. It was golden indeed, and
worth a high compliment; but his kind displeased her. She had let it pass,
however, with no more than a cool stare. But on taking his leave, when he
came to pay for the meal, he pushed it too far.
“Pity this must be our last,” he said; and as it brought no answer, “Ever
travel?” he inquired. “Where I go, there’s room for a pair of us.”
“Then you’d better find another jackass,” she replied quietly.
I was glad that I had not asked for a clean towel.
From the commercial travellers I now separated myself, and wandered alone
in pleasurable aimlessness. It was seven o’clock. Medicine Bow stood
voiceless and unpeopled. The cow-boys had melted away. The inhabitants
were indoors, pursuing the business or the idleness of the forenoon.
Visible motion there was none. No shell upon the dry sands could lie more
lifeless than Medicine Bow. Looking in at the store, I saw the proprietor
sitting with his pipe extinct. Looking in at the saloon, I saw the dealer
dealing dumbly to himself. Up in the sky there was not a cloud nor a bird,
and on the earth the lightest straw lay becalmed. Once I saw the Virginian
at an open door, where the golden-haired landlady stood talking with him.
Sometimes I strolled in the town, and sometimes out on the plain I lay
down with my day dreams in the sagebrush. Pale herds of antelope were in
the distance, and near by the demure prairie-dogs sat up and scrutinized
me. Steve, Trampas, the riot of horsemen, my lost trunk, Uncle Hughey,
with his abortive brides—all things merged in my thoughts in a huge,
delicious indifference. It was like swimming slowly at random in an ocean
that was smooth, and neither too cool nor too warm. And before I knew it,
five lazy imperceptible hours had gone thus. There was the Union Pacific
train, coming as if from shores forgotten.
Its approach was silent and long drawn out. I easily reached town and the
platform before it had finished watering at the tank. It moved up, made a
short halt, I saw my trunk come out of it, and then it moved away silently
as it had come, smoking and dwindling into distance unknown.
Beside my trunk was one other, tied extravagantly with white ribbon. The
fluttering bows caught my attention, and now I suddenly saw a perfectly
new sight. The Virginian was further down the platform, doubled up with
laughing. It was good to know that with sufficient cause he could laugh
like this; a smile had thus far been his limit of external mirth. Rice now
flew against my hat, and hissing gusts of rice spouted on the platform.
All the men left in Medicine Bow appeared like magic, and more rice choked
the atmosphere. Through the general clamor a cracked voice said, “Don’t
hit her in the eye, boys!” and Uncle Hughey rushed proudly by me with an
actual wife on his arm. She could easily have been his granddaughter. They
got at once into a vehicle. The trunk was lifted in behind. And amid
cheers, rice, shoes, and broad felicitations, the pair drove out of town,
Uncle Hughey shrieking to the horses and the bride waving unabashed
adieus.
The word had come over the wires from Laramie: “Uncle Hughey has made it
this time. Expect him on to-day’s number two.” And Medicine Bow had
expected him.
Many words arose on the departure of the new-married couple.
“Who’s she?”
“What’s he got for her?”
“Got a gold mine up Bear Creek.”
And after comment and prophecy, Medicine Bow returned to its dinner.
This meal was my last here for a long while. The Virginian’s
responsibility now returned; duty drove the Judge’s trustworthy man to
take care of me again. He had not once sought my society of his own
accord; his distaste for what he supposed me to be (I don’t exactly know
what this was) remained unshaken. I have thought that matters of dress and
speech should not carry with them so much mistrust in our democracy;
thieves are presumed innocent until proved guilty, but a starched collar
is condemned at once. Perfect civility and obligingness I certainly did
receive from the Virginian, only not a word of fellowship. He harnessed
the horses, got my trunk, and gave me some advice about taking provisions
for our journey, something more palatable than what food we should find
along the road. It was well thought of, and I bought quite a parcel of
dainties, feeling that he would despise both them and me. And thus I took
my seat beside him, wondering what we should manage to talk about for two
hundred and sixty-three miles.
Farewell in those days was not said in Cattle Land. Acquaintances watched
our departure with a nod or with nothing, and the nearest approach to
“Good-by” was the proprietor’s “So-long.” But I caught sight of one
farewell given without words.
As we drove by the eating-house, the shade of a side window was raised,
and the landlady looked her last upon the Virginian. Her lips were faintly
parted, and no woman’s eyes ever said more plainly, “I am one of your
possessions.” She had forgotten that it might be seen. Her glance caught
mine, and she backed into the dimness of the room. What look she may have
received from him, if he gave her any at this too public moment, I could
not tell. His eyes seemed to be upon the horses, and he drove with the
same mastering ease that had roped the wild pony yesterday. We passed the
ramparts of Medicine Bow,—thick heaps and fringes of tin cans, and
shelving mounds of bottles cast out of the saloons. The sun struck these
at a hundred glittering points. And in a moment we were in the clean
plains, with the prairie-dogs and the pale herds of antelope. The great,
still air bathed us, pure as water and strong as wine; the sunlight
flooded the world; and shining upon the breast of the Virginian’s flannel
shirt lay a long gold thread of hair! The noisy American drummer had met
defeat, but this silent free lance had been easily victorious.
It must have been five miles that we travelled in silence, losing and
seeing the horizon among the ceaseless waves of the earth. Then I looked
back, and there was Medicine Bow, seemingly a stone’s throw behind us. It
was a full half-hour before I looked back again, and there sure enough was
always Medicine Bow. A size or two smaller, I will admit, but visible in
every feature, like something seen through the wrong end of a field glass.
The East-bound express was approaching the town, and I noticed the white
steam from its whistle; but when the sound reached us, the train had
almost stopped. And in reply to my comment upon this, the Virginian
deigned to remark that it was more so in Arizona.
“A man come to Arizona,” he said, “with one of them telescopes to study
the heavenly bodies. He was a Yankee, seh, and a right smart one, too. And
one night we was watchin’ for some little old fallin’ stars that he said
was due, and I saw some lights movin’ along across the mesa pretty lively,
an’ I sang out. But he told me it was just the train. And I told him I
didn’t know yu’ could see the cyars that plain from his place, ‘Yu’ can
see them,’ he said to me, ‘but it is las’ night’s cyars you’re lookin’
at.’” At this point the Virginian spoke severely to one of the horses. “Of
course,” he then resumed to me, “that Yankee man did not mean quite all he
said.—You, Buck!” he again broke off suddenly to the horse. “But
Arizona, seh,” he continued, “it cert’nly has a mos’ deceivin’ atmospheah.
Another man told me he had seen a lady close one eye at him when he was
two minutes hard run from her.” This time the Virginian gave Buck the
whip.
“What effect,” I inquired with a gravity equal to his own, “does this
extraordinary foreshortening have upon a quart of whiskey?”
“When it’s outside yu’, seh, no distance looks too far to go to it.”
He glanced at me with an eye that held more confidence than hitherto he
had been able to feel in me. I had made one step in his approval. But I
had many yet to go. This day he preferred his own thoughts to my
conversation, and so he did all the days of this first journey; while I
should have greatly preferred his conversation to my thoughts. He
dismissed some attempts that I made upon the subject of Uncle Hughey so
that I had not the courage to touch upon Trampas, and that chill brief
collision which might have struck the spark of death. Trampas! I had
forgotten him till this silent drive I was beginning. I wondered if I
should ever see him, or Steve, or any of those people again. And this
wonder I expressed aloud.
“There’s no tellin’ in this country,” said the Virginian. “Folks come
easy, and they go easy. In settled places, like back in the States, even a
poor man mostly has a home. Don’t care if it’s only a barrel on a lot, the
fello’ will keep frequentin’ that lot, and if yu’ want him yu’ can find
him. But out hyeh in the sage-brush, a man’s home is apt to be his saddle
blanket. First thing yu’ know, he has moved it to Texas.”
“You have done some moving yourself,” I suggested.
But this word closed his mouth. “I have had a look at the country,” he
said, and we were silent again. Let me, however, tell you here that he had
set out for a “look at the country” at the age of fourteen; and that by
his present age of twenty-four he had seen Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Everywhere he
had taken care of himself, and survived; nor had his strong heart yet
waked up to any hunger for a home. Let me also tell you that he was one of
thousands drifting and living thus, but (as you shall learn) one in a
thousand.
Medicine Bow did not forever remain in sight. When next I thought of it
and looked behind, nothing was there but the road we had come; it lay like
a ship’s wake across the huge ground swell of the earth. We were swallowed
in a vast solitude. A little while before sunset, a cabin came in view;
and here we passed our first night. Two young men lived here, tending
their cattle. They were fond of animals. By the stable a chained coyote
rushed nervously in a circle, or sat on its haunches and snapped at gifts
of food ungraciously. A tame young elk walked in and out of the cabin
door, and during supper it tried to push me off my chair. A half-tame
mountain sheep practised jumping from the ground to the roof. The cabin
was papered with posters of a circus, and skins of bear and silver fox lay
upon the floor. Until nine o’clock one man talked to the Virginian, and
one played gayly upon a concertina; and then we all went to bed. The air
was like December, but in my blankets and a buffalo robe I kept warm, and
luxuriated in the Rocky Mountain silence. Going to wash before breakfast
at sunrise, I found needles of ice in a pail. Yet it was hard to remember
that this quiet, open, splendid wilderness (with not a peak in sight just
here) was six thousand feet high. And when breakfast was over there was no
December left; and by the time the Virginian and I were ten miles upon our
way, it was June. But always every breath that I breathed was pure as
water and strong as wine.
We never passed a human being this day. Some wild cattle rushed up to us
and away from us; antelope stared at us from a hundred yards; coyotes ran
skulking through the sage-brush to watch us from a hill; at our noon meal
we killed a rattlesnake and shot some young sage chickens, which were good
at supper, roasted at our camp-fire.
By half-past eight we were asleep beneath the stars, and by half-past four
I was drinking coffee and shivering. The horse, Buck, was hard to catch
this second morning. Whether some hills that we were now in had excited
him, or whether the better water up here had caused an effervescence in
his spirits, I cannot say. But I was as hot as July by the time we had him
safe in harness, or, rather, unsafe in harness. For Buck, in the
mysterious language of horses, now taught wickedness to his side partner,
and about eleven o’clock they laid their evil heads together and decided
to break our necks.
We were passing, I have said, through a range of demi-mountains. It was a
little country where trees grew, water ran, and the plains were shut out
for a while. The road had steep places in it, and places here and there
where you could fall off and go bounding to the bottom among stones. But
Buck, for some reason, did not think these opportunities good enough for
him. He selected a more theatrical moment. We emerged from a narrow canyon
suddenly upon five hundred cattle and some cow-boys branding calves by a
fire in a corral. It was a sight that Buck knew by heart. He instantly
treated it like an appalling phenomenon. I saw him kick seven ways; I saw
Muggins kick five ways; our furious motion snapped my spine like a whip. I
grasped the seat. Something gave a forlorn jingle. It was the brake.
“Don’t jump!” commanded the trustworthy man.
“No,” I said, as my hat flew off.
Help was too far away to do anything for us. We passed scatheless through
a part of the cattle, I saw their horns and backs go by. Some earth
crumbled, and we plunged downward into water rocking among stones, and
upward again through some more crumbling earth. I heard a crash, and saw
my trunk landing in the stream.
“She’s safer there,” said the trustworthy man.
“True,” I said.
“We’ll go back for her,” said he, with his eye on the horses and his foot
on the crippled brake. A dry gully was coming, and no room to turn. The
farther side of it was terraced with rock. We should simply fall backward,
if we did not fall forward first. He steered the horses straight over, and
just at the bottom swung them, with astonishing skill, to the right along
the hard-baked mud. They took us along the bed up to the head of the
gully, and through a thicket of quaking asps. The light trees bent beneath
our charge and bastinadoed the wagon as it went over them. But their
branches enmeshed the horses’ legs, and we came to a harmless standstill
among a bower of leaves.
I looked at the trustworthy man, and smiled vaguely. He considered me for
a moment.
“I reckon,” said he, “you’re feelin’ about halfway between ‘Oh, Lord!’ and
‘Thank God!’”
“That’s quite it,” said I, as he got down on the ground.
“Nothing’s broke,” said he, after a searching examination. And he indulged
in a true Virginian expletive. “Gentlemen, hush!” he murmured gently,
looking at me with his grave eyes; “one time I got pretty near scared.
You, Buck,” he continued, “some folks would beat you now till yu’d be
uncertain whether yu’ was a hawss or a railroad accident. I’d do it
myself, only it wouldn’t cure yu’.”
I now told him that I supposed he had saved both our lives. But he
detested words of direct praise. He made some grumbling rejoinder, and led
the horses out of the thicket. Buck, he explained to me, was a good horse,
and so was Muggins. Both of them generally meant well, and that was the
Judge’s reason for sending them to meet me. But these broncos had their
off days. Off days might not come very often; but when the humor seized a
bronco, he had to have his spree. Buck would now behave himself as a horse
should for probably two months. “They are just like humans,” the Virginian
concluded.
Several cow-boys arrived on a gallop to find how many pieces of us were
left. We returned down the hill; and when we reached my trunk, it was
surprising to see the distance that our runaway had covered. My hat was
also found, and we continued on our way.
Buck and Muggins were patterns of discretion through the rest of the
mountains. I thought when we camped this night that it was strange Buck
should be again allowed to graze at large, instead of being tied to a rope
while we slept. But this was my ignorance. With the hard work that he was
gallantly doing, the horse needed more pasture than a rope’s length would
permit him to find. Therefore he went free, and in the morning gave us but
little trouble in catching him.
We crossed a river in the forenoon, and far to the north of us we saw the
Bow Leg Mountains, pale in the bright sun. Sunk Creek flowed from their
western side, and our two hundred and sixty-three miles began to grow a
small thing in my eyes. Buck and Muggins, I think, knew perfectly that
to-morrow would see them home. They recognized this region; and once they
turned off at a fork in the road. The Virginian pulled them back rather
sharply.
“Want to go back to Balaam’s?” he inquired of them. “I thought you had
more sense.”
I asked, “Who was Balaam?”
“A maltreater of hawsses,” replied the cow-puncher. “His ranch is on Butte
Creek oveh yondeh.” And he pointed to where the diverging road melted into
space. “The Judge bought Buck and Muggins from him in the spring.”
“So he maltreats horses?” I repeated.
“That’s the word all through this country. A man that will do what they
claim Balaam does to a hawss when he’s mad, ain’t fit to be called human.”
The Virginian told me some particulars.
“Oh!” I almost screamed at the horror of it, and again, “Oh!”
“He’d have prob’ly done that to Buck as soon as he stopped runnin’ away.
If I caught a man doin’ that—”
We were interrupted by a sedate-looking traveller riding upon an equally
sober horse.
“Mawnin’, Taylor,” said the Virginian, pulling up for gossip. “Ain’t you
strayed off your range pretty far?”
“You’re a nice one!” replied Mr. Taylor, stopping his horse and smiling
amiably.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” retorted the Virginian.
“Hold up a man at cards and rob him,” pursued Mr. Taylor. “Oh, the news
has got ahead of you!”
“Trampas has been hyeh explainin’, has he?” said the Virginian with a
grin.
“Was that your victim’s name?” said Mr. Taylor, facetiously. “No, it
wasn’t him that brought the news. Say, what did you do, anyway?”
“So that thing has got around,” murmured the Virginian. “Well, it wasn’t
worth such wide repawtin’.” And he gave the simple facts to Taylor, while
I sat wondering at the contagious powers of Rumor. Here, through this
voiceless land, this desert, this vacuum, it had spread like a change of
weather. “Any news up your way?” the Virginian concluded.
Importance came into Mr. Taylor’s countenance. “Bear Creek is going to
build a schoolhouse,” said he.
“Goodness gracious!” drawled the Virginian. “What’s that for?”
Now Mr. Taylor had been married for some years. “To educate the offspring
of Bear Creek,” he answered with pride.
“Offspring of Bear Creek,” the Virginian meditatively repeated. “I don’t
remember noticin’ much offspring. There was some white tail deer, and a
right smart o’ jack rabbits.”
“The Swintons have moved up from Drybone,” said Mr. Taylor, always
seriously. “They found it no place for young children. And there’s Uncle
Carmody with six, and Ben Dow. And Westfall has become a family man, and—”
“Jim Westfall!” exclaimed the Virginian. “Him a fam’ly man! Well, if this
hyeh Territory is goin’ to get full o’ fam’ly men and empty o’ game, I
believe I’ll—”
“Get married yourself,” suggested Mr. Taylor.
“Me! I ain’t near reached the marriageable age. No, seh! But Uncle Hughey
has got there at last, yu’ know.”
“Uncle Hughey!” shouted Mr. Taylor. He had not heard this. Rumor is very
capricious. Therefore the Virginian told him, and the family man rocked in
his saddle.
“Build your schoolhouse,” said the Virginian. “Uncle Hughey has qualified
himself to subscribe to all such propositions. Got your eye on a
schoolmarm?”
V. ENTER THE WOMAN
“We are taking steps,” said Mr. Taylor. “Bear Creek ain’t going to be
hasty about a schoolmarm.”
“Sure,” assented the Virginian. “The children wouldn’t want yu’ to hurry.”
But Mr. Taylor was, as I have indicated, a serious family man. The problem
of educating his children could appear to him in no light except a sober
one. “Bear Creek,” he said, “don’t want the experience they had over at
Calef. We must not hire an ignoramus.”
“Sure!” assented the Virginian again.
“Nor we don’t want no gad-a-way flirt,” said Mr. Taylor.
“She must keep her eyes on the blackboa’d,” said the Virginian, gently.
“Well, we can wait till we get a guaranteed article,” said Mr. Taylor.
“And that’s what we’re going to do. It can’t be this year, and it needn’t
to be. None of the kids is very old, and the schoolhouse has got to be
built.” He now drew a letter from his pocket, and looked at me. “Are you
acquainted with Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington, Vermont?” he inquired.
I was not acquainted with her at this time.
“She’s one we are thinking of. She’s a correspondent with Mrs. Balaam.”
Taylor handed me the letter. “She wrote that to Mrs. Balaam, and Mrs.
Balaam said the best thing was for to let me see it and judge for myself.
I’m taking it back to Mrs. Balaam. Maybe you can give me your opinion how
it sizes up with the letters they write back East?”
The communication was mainly of a business kind, but also personal, and
freely written. I do not think that its writer expected it to be exhibited
as a document. The writer wished very much that she could see the West.
But she could not gratify this desire merely for pleasure, or she would
long ago have accepted the kind invitation to visit Mrs. Balaam’s ranch.
Teaching school was something she would like to do, if she were fitted for
it. “Since the mills failed” (the writer said) “we have all gone to work
and done a lot of things so that mother might keep on living in the old
house. Yes, the salary would be a temptation. But, my dear, isn’t Wyoming
bad for the complexion? And could I sue them if mine got damaged? It is
still admired. I could bring one male witness AT LEAST to prove that!”
Then the writer became businesslike again. Even if she came to feel that
she could leave home, she did not at all know that she could teach school.
Nor did she think it right to accept a position in which one had had no
experience. “I do love children, boys especially,” she went on. “My small
nephew and I get on famously. But imagine if a whole benchful of boys
began asking me questions that I couldn’t answer! What should I do? For
one could not spank them all, you know! And mother says that I ought not
to teach anybody spelling, because I leave the U out of HONOR.”
Altogether it was a letter which I could assure Mr. Taylor “sized up” very
well with the letters written in my part of the United States. And it was
signed, “Your very sincere spinster, Molly Stark Wood.”
“I never seen HONOR spelled with a U,” said Mr. Taylor, over whose not
highly civilized head certain portions of the letter had lightly passed.
I told him that some old-fashioned people still wrote the word so.
“Either way would satisfy Bear Creek,” said Mr. Taylor, “if she’s
otherwise up to requirements.”
The Virginian was now looking over the letter musingly, and with awakened
attention.
“’Your very sincere spinster,’” he read aloud slowly.
“I guess that means she’s forty,” said Taylor.
“I reckon she is about twenty,” said the Virginian. And again he fell to
musing over the paper that he held.
“Her handwriting ain’t like any I’ve saw,” pursued Mr. Taylor. “But Bear
Creek would not object to that, provided she knows ‘rithmetic and George
Washington, and them kind of things.”
“I expect she is not an awful sincere spinster,” surmised the Virginian,
still looking at the letter, still holding it as if it were some token.
Has any botanist set down what the seed of love is? Has it anywhere been
set down in how many ways this seed may be sown? In what various vessels
of gossamer it can float across wide spaces? Or upon what different soils
it can fall, and live unknown, and bide its time for blooming?
The Virginian handed back to Taylor the sheet of note paper where a girl
had talked as the women he had known did not talk. If his eyes had ever
seen such maidens, there had been no meeting of eyes; and if such maidens
had ever spoken to him, the speech was from an established distance. But
here was a free language, altogether new to him. It proved, however, not
alien to his understanding, as it was alien to Mr. Taylor’s.
We drove onward, a mile perhaps, and then two. He had lately been full of
words, but now he barely answered me, so that a silence fell upon both of
us. It must have been all of ten miles that we had driven when he spoke of
his own accord.
“Your real spinster don’t speak of her lot that easy,” he remarked. And
presently he quoted a phrase about the complexion, “’Could I sue them if
mine got damaged?’” and he smiled over this to himself, shaking his head.
“What would she be doing on Bear Creek?” he next said. And finally: “I
reckon that witness will detain her in Vermont. And her mother’ll keep
livin’ at the old house.”
Thus did the cow-puncher deliver himself, not knowing at all that the seed
had floated across wide spaces, and was biding its time in his heart.
On the morrow we reached Sunk Creek. Judge Henry’s welcome and his wife’s
would have obliterated any hardships that I had endured, and I had endured
none at all.
For a while I saw little of the Virginian. He lapsed into his native way
of addressing me occasionally as “seh”—a habit entirely repudiated
by this land of equality. I was sorry. Our common peril during the runaway
of Buck and Muggins had brought us to a familiarity that I hoped was
destined to last. But I think that it would not have gone farther, save
for a certain personage—I must call her a personage. And as I am
indebted to her for gaining me a friend whose prejudice against me might
never have been otherwise overcome, I shall tell you her little story, and
how her misadventures and her fate came to bring the Virginian and me to
an appreciation of one another. Without her, it is likely I should also
not have heard so much of the story of the schoolmarm, and how that lady
at last came to Bear Creek.
VI. EM’LY
My personage was a hen, and she lived at the Sunk Creek Ranch.
Judge Henry’s ranch was notable for several luxuries. He had milk, for
example. In those days his brother ranchmen had thousands of cattle very
often, but not a drop of milk, save the condensed variety. Therefore they
had no butter. The Judge had plenty. Next rarest to butter and milk in the
cattle country were eggs. But my host had chickens. Whether this was
because he had followed cock-fighting in his early days, or whether it was
due to Mrs. Henry, I cannot say. I only know that when I took a meal
elsewhere, I was likely to find nothing but the eternal “sowbelly,” beans,
and coffee; while at Sunk Creek the omelet and the custard were frequent.
The passing traveller was glad to tie his horse to the fence here, and sit
down to the Judge’s table. For its fame was as wide as Wyoming. It was an
oasis in the Territory’s desolate bill-of-fare.
The long fences of Judge Henry’s home ranch began upon Sunk Creek soon
after that stream emerged from its canyon through the Bow Leg. It was a
place always well cared for by the owner, even in the days of his
bachelorhood. The placid regiments of cattle lay in the cool of the
cottonwoods by the water, or slowly moved among the sage-brush, feeding
upon the grass that in those forever departed years was plentiful and
tall. The steers came fat off his unenclosed range and fattened still more
in his large pasture; while his small pasture, a field some eight miles
square, was for several seasons given to the Judge’s horses, and over this
ample space there played and prospered the good colts which he raised from
Paladin, his imported stallion. After he married, I have been assured that
his wife’s influence became visible in and about the house at once. Shade
trees were planted, flowers attempted, and to the chickens was added the
much more troublesome turkey. I, the visitor, was pressed into service
when I arrived, green from the East. I took hold of the farmyard and began
building a better chicken house, while the Judge was off creating meadow
land in his gray and yellow wilderness. When any cow-boy was unoccupied,
he would lounge over to my neighborhood, and silently regard my
carpentering.
Those cow-punchers bore names of various denominations. There was Honey
Wiggin; there was Nebrasky, and Dollar Bill, and Chalkeye. And they came
from farms and cities, from Maine and from California. But the romance of
American adventure had drawn them all alike to this great playground of
young men, and in their courage, their generosity, and their amusement at
me they bore a close resemblance to each other. Each one would silently
observe my achievements with the hammer and the chisel. Then he would
retire to the bunk-house, and presently I would overhear laughter. But
this was only in the morning. In the afternoon on many days of the summer
which I spent at the Sunk Creek Ranch I would go shooting, or ride up
toward the entrance of the canyon and watch the men working on the
irrigation ditches. Pleasant systems of water running in channels were
being led through the soil, and there was a sound of rippling here and
there among the yellow grain; the green thick alfalfa grass waved almost,
it seemed, of its own accord, for the wind never blew; and when at evening
the sun lay against the plain, the rift of the canyon was filled with a
violet light, and the Bow Leg Mountains became transfigured with hues of
floating and unimaginable color. The sun shone in a sky where never a
cloud came, and noon was not too warm nor the dark too cool. And so for
two months I went through these pleasant uneventful days, improving the
chickens, an object of mirth, living in the open air, and basking in the
perfection of content.
I was justly styled a tenderfoot. Mrs. Henry had in the beginning
endeavored to shield me from this humiliation; but when she found that I
was inveterate in laying my inexperience of Western matters bare to all
the world, begging to be enlightened upon rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs,
owls, blue and willow grouse, sage-hens, how to rope a horse or tighten
the front cinch of my saddle, and that my spirit soared into enthusiasm at
the mere sight of so ordinary an animal as a white-tailed deer, she let me
rush about with my firearms and made no further effort to stave off the
ridicule that my blunders perpetually earned from the ranch hands, her own
humorous husband, and any chance visitor who stopped for a meal or stayed
the night.
I was not called by my name after the first feeble etiquette due to a
stranger in his first few hours had died away. I was known simply as “the
tenderfoot.” I was introduced to the neighborhood (a circle of eighty
miles) as “the tenderfoot.” It was thus that Balaam, the maltreater of
horses, learned to address me when he came a two days’ journey to pay a
visit. And it was this name and my notorious helplessness that bid fair to
end what relations I had with the Virginian. For when Judge Henry
ascertained that nothing could prevent me from losing myself, that it was
not uncommon for me to saunter out after breakfast with a gun and in
thirty minutes cease to know north from south, he arranged for my
protection. He detailed an escort for me; and the escort was once more the
trustworthy man! The poor Virginian was taken from his work and his
comrades and set to playing nurse for me. And for a while this humiliation
ate into his untamed soul. It was his lugubrious lot to accompany me in my
rambles, preside over my blunders, and save me from calamitously passing
into the next world. He bore it in courteous silence, except when speaking
was necessary. He would show me the lower ford, which I could never find
for myself, generally mistaking a quicksand for it. He would tie my horse
properly. He would recommend me not to shoot my rifle at a white-tailed
deer in the particular moment that the outfit wagon was passing behind the
animal on the further side of the brush. There was seldom a day that he
was not obliged to hasten and save me from sudden death or from ridicule,
which is worse. Yet never once did he lose his patience and his gentle,
slow voice, and apparently lazy manner remained the same, whether we were
sitting at lunch together, or up in the mountain during a hunt, or whether
he was bringing me back my horse, which had run away because I had again
forgotten to throw the reins over his head and let them trail.
“He’ll always stand if yu’ do that,” the Virginian would say. “See how my
hawss stays right quiet yondeh.”
After such admonition he would say no more to me. But this tame nursery
business was assuredly gall to him. For though utterly a man in
countenance and in his self-possession and incapacity to be put at a loss,
he was still boyishly proud of his wild calling, and wore his leather
straps and jingled his spurs with obvious pleasure. His tiger limberness
and his beauty were rich with unabated youth; and that force which lurked
beneath his surface must often have curbed his intolerance of me. In spite
of what I knew must be his opinion of me, the tenderfoot, my liking for
him grew, and I found his silent company more and more agreeable. That he
had spells of talking, I had already learned at Medicine Bow. But his
present taciturnity might almost have effaced this impression, had I not
happened to pass by the bunk-house one evening after dark, when Honey
Wiggin and the rest of the cow-boys were gathered inside it.
That afternoon the Virginian and I had gone duck shooting. We had found
several in a beaver dam, and I had killed two as they sat close together;
but they floated against the breastwork of sticks out in the water some
four feet deep, where the escaping current might carry them down the
stream. The Judge’s red setter had not accompanied us, because she was
expecting a family.
“We don’t want her along anyways,” the cow-puncher had explained to me.
“She runs around mighty irresponsible, and she’ll stand a prairie-dog
’bout as often as she’ll stand a bird. She’s a triflin’ animal.”
My anxiety to own the ducks caused me to pitch into the water with all my
clothes on, and subsequently crawl out a slippery, triumphant, weltering
heap. The Virginian’s serious eyes had rested upon this spectacle of mud;
but he expressed nothing, as usual.
“They ain’t overly good eatin’,” he observed, tying the birds to his
saddle. “They’re divers.”
“Divers!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t they dive?”
“I reckon they was young ones and hadn’t experience.”
“Well,” I said, crestfallen, but attempting to be humorous, “I did the
diving myself.”
But the Virginian made no comment. He handed me my double-barrelled
English gun, which I was about to leave deserted on the ground behind me,
and we rode home in our usual silence, the mean little white-breasted,
sharp-billed divers dangling from his saddle.
It was in the bunk-house that he took his revenge. As I passed I heard his
gentle voice silently achieving some narrative to an attentive audience,
and just as I came by the open window where he sat on his bed in shirt and
drawers, his back to me, I heard his concluding words, “And the hat on his
haid was the one mark showed yu’ he weren’t a snappin’-turtle.”
The anecdote met with instantaneous success, and I hurried away into the
dark. The next morning I was occupied with the chickens. Two hens were
fighting to sit on some eggs that a third was daily laying, and which I
did not want hatched, and for the third time I had kicked Em’ly off seven
potatoes she had rolled together and was determined to raise I know not
what sort of family from. She was shrieking about the hen-house as the
Virginian came in to observe (I suspect) what I might be doing now that
could be useful for him to mention in the bunk-house.
He stood awhile, and at length said, “We lost our best rooster when Mrs.
Henry came to live hyeh.”
I paid no attention.
“He was a right elegant Dominicker,” he continued.
I felt a little riled about the snapping-turtle, and showed no interest in
what he was saying, but continued my functions among the hens. This
unusual silence of mine seemed to elicit unusual speech from him.
“Yu’ see, that rooster he’d always lived round hyeh when the Judge was a
bachelor, and he never seen no ladies or any persons wearing female
gyarments. You ain’t got rheumatism, seh?”
“Me? No.”
“I reckoned maybe them little odd divers yu’ got damp goin’ afteh—”
He paused.
“Oh, no, not in the least, thank you.”
“Yu’ seemed sort o’ grave this mawnin’, and I’m cert’nly glad it ain’t
them divers.”
“Well, the rooster?” I inquired finally.
“Oh, him! He weren’t raised where he could see petticoats. Mrs. Henry she
come hyeh from the railroad with the Judge afteh dark. Next mawnin’ early
she walked out to view her new home, and the rooster was a-feedin’ by the
door, and he seen her. Well, seh, he screeched that awful I run out of the
bunk-house; and he jus’ went over the fence and took down Sunk Creek
shoutin’ fire, right along. He has never come back.”
“There’s a hen over there now that has no judgment,” I said, indicating
Em’ly. She had got herself outside the house, and was on the bars of a
corral, her vociferations reduced to an occasional squawk. I told him
about the potatoes.
“I never knowed her name before,” said he. “That runaway rooster, he hated
her. And she hated him same as she hates ’em all.”
“I named her myself,” said I, “after I came to notice her particularly.
There’s an old maid at home who’s charitable, and belongs to the Cruelty
to Animals, and she never knows whether she had better cross in front of a
street car or wait. I named the hen after her. Does she ever lay eggs?”
The Virginian had not “troubled his haid” over the poultry.
“Well, I don’t believe she knows how. I think she came near being a
rooster.”
“She’s sure manly-lookin’,” said the Virginian. We had walked toward the
corral, and he was now scrutinizing Em’ly with interest.
She was an egregious fowl. She was huge and gaunt, with great yellow beak,
and she stood straight and alert in the manner of responsible people.
There was something wrong with her tail. It slanted far to one side, one
feather in it twice as long as the rest. Feathers on her breast there were
none. These had been worn entirely off by her habit of sitting upon
potatoes and other rough abnormal objects. And this lent to her appearance
an air of being décollete, singularly at variance with her otherwise
prudish ensemble. Her eye was remarkably bright, but somehow it had an
outraged expression. It was as if she went about the world perpetually
scandalized over the doings that fell beneath her notice. Her legs were
blue, long, and remarkably stout.
“She’d ought to wear knickerbockers,” murmured the Virginian. “She’d look
a heap better ‘n some o’ them college students. And she’ll set on
potatoes, yu’ say?”
“She thinks she can hatch out anything. I’ve found her with onions, and
last Tuesday I caught her on two balls of soap.”
In the afternoon the tall cow-puncher and I rode out to get an antelope.
After an hour, during which he was completely taciturn, he said: “I reckon
maybe this hyeh lonesome country ain’t been healthy for Em’ly to live in.
It ain’t for some humans. Them old trappers in the mountains gets skewed
in the haid mighty often, an’ talks out loud when nobody’s nigher ‘n a
hundred miles.”
“Em’ly has not been solitary,” I replied. “There are forty chickens here.”
“That’s so,” said he. “It don’t explain her.”
He fell silent again, riding beside me, easy and indolent in the saddle.
His long figure looked so loose and inert that the swift, light spring he
made to the ground seemed an impossible feat. He had seen an antelope
where I saw none.
“Take a shot yourself,” I urged him, as he motioned me to be quick. “You
never shoot when I’m with you.”
“I ain’t hyeh for that,” he answered. “Now you’ve let him get away on
yu’!”
The antelope had in truth departed.
“Why,” he said to my protest, “I can hit them things any day. What’s your
notion as to Em’ly?”
“I can’t account for her,” I replied.
“Well,” he said musingly, and then his mind took one of those particular
turns that made me love him, “Taylor ought to see her. She’d be just the
schoolmarm for Bear Creek!”
“She’s not much like the eating-house lady at Medicine Bow,” I said.
He gave a hilarious chuckle. “No, Em’ly knows nothing o’ them joys. So yu’
have no notion about her? Well, I’ve got one. I reckon maybe she was
hatched after a big thunderstorm.”
“In a big thunderstorm!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. Don’t yu’ know about them, and what they’ll do to aiggs? A big case
o’ lightnin’ and thunder will addle aiggs and keep ’em from hatchin’. And
I expect one came along, and all the other aiggs of Em’ly’s set didn’t
hatch out, but got plumb addled, and she happened not to get addled that
far, and so she just managed to make it through. But she cert’nly ain’t
got a strong haid.”
“I fear she has not,” said I.
“Mighty hon’ble intentions,” he observed. “If she can’t make out to lay
anything, she wants to hatch somethin’, and be a mother anyways.”
“I wonder what relation the law considers that a hen is to the chicken she
hatched but did not lay?” I inquired.
The Virginian made no reply to this frivolous suggestion. He was gazing
over the wide landscape gravely and with apparent inattention. He
invariably saw game before I did, and was off his horse and crouched among
the sage while I was still getting my left foot clear of the stirrup. I
succeeded in killing an antelope, and we rode home with the head and hind
quarters.
“No,” said he. “It’s sure the thunder, and not the lonesomeness. How do
yu’ like the lonesomeness yourself?”
I told him that I liked it.
“I could not live without it now,” he said. “This has got into my system.”
He swept his hand out at the vast space of world. “I went back home to see
my folks onced. Mother was dyin’ slow, and she wanted me. I stayed a year.
But them Virginia mountains could please me no more. Afteh she was gone, I
told my brothers and sisters good-by. We like each other well enough, but
I reckon I’ll not go back.”
We found Em’ly seated upon a collection of green California peaches, which
the Judge had brought from the railroad.
“I don’t mind her any more,” I said; “I’m sorry for her.”
“I’ve been sorry for her right along,” said the Virginian. “She does hate
the roosters so.” And he said that he was making a collection of every
class of object which he found her treating as eggs.
But Em’ly’s egg-industry was terminated abruptly one morning, and her
unquestioned energies diverted to a new channel. A turkey which had been
sitting in the root-house appeared with twelve children, and a family of
bantams occurred almost simultaneously. Em’ly was importantly scratching
the soil inside Paladin’s corral when the bantam tribe of newly born came
by down the lane, and she caught sight of them through the bars. She
crossed the corral at a run, and intercepted two of the chicks that were
trailing somewhat behind their real mamma. These she undertook to
appropriate, and assumed a high tone with the bantam, who was the smaller,
and hence obliged to retreat with her still numerous family. I interfered,
and put matters straight; but the adjustment was only temporary. In an
hour I saw Em’ly immensely busy with two more bantams, leading them about
and taking a care of them which I must admit seemed perfectly efficient.
And now came the first incident that made me suspect her to be demented.
She had proceeded with her changelings behind the kitchen, where one of
the irrigation ditches ran under the fence from the hay-field to supply
the house with water. Some distance along this ditch inside the field were
the twelve turkeys in the short, recently cut stubble. Again Em’ly set off
instantly like a deer. She left the dismayed bantams behind her. She
crossed the ditch with one jump of her stout blue legs, flew over the
grass, and was at once among the turkeys, where, with an instinct of
maternity as undiscriminating as it was reckless, she attempted to huddle
some of them away. But this other mamma was not a bantam, and in a few
moments Em’ly was entirely routed in her attempt to acquire a new variety
of family.
This spectacle was witnessed by the Virginian and myself, and it overcame
him. He went speechless across to the bunk-house, by himself, and sat on
his bed, while I took the abandoned bantams back to their own circle.
I have often wondered what the other fowls thought of all this. Some
impression it certainly did make upon them. The notion may seem out of
reason to those who have never closely attended to other animals than man;
but I am convinced that any community which shares some of our instincts
will share some of the resulting feelings, and that birds and beasts have
conventions, the breach of which startles them. If there be anything in
evolution, this would seem inevitable. At all events, the chicken-house
was upset during the following several days. Em’ly disturbed now the
bantams and now the turkeys, and several of these latter had died, though
I will not go so far as to say that this was the result of her misplaced
attentions. Nevertheless, I was seriously thinking of locking her up till
the broods should be a little older, when another event happened, and all
was suddenly at peace.
The Judge’s setter came in one morning, wagging her tail. She had had her
puppies, and she now took us to where they were housed, in between the
floor of a building and the hollow ground. Em’ly was seated on the whole
litter.
“No,” I said to the Judge, “I am not surprised. She is capable of
anything.”
In her new choice of offspring, this hen had at length encountered an
unworthy parent. The setter was bored by her own puppies. She found the
hole under the house an obscure and monotonous residence compared with the
dining room, and our company more stimulating and sympathetic than that of
her children. A much-petted contact with our superior race had developed
her dog intelligence above its natural level, and turned her into an
unnatural, neglectful mother, who was constantly forgetting her nursery
for worldly pleasures.
At certain periods of the day she repaired to the puppies and fed them,
but came away when this perfunctory ceremony was accomplished; and she was
glad enough to have a governess bring them up. She made no quarrel with
Em’ly, and the two understood each other perfectly. I have never seen
among animals any arrangement so civilized and so perverted. It made Em’ly
perfectly happy. To see her sitting all day jealously spreading her wings
over some blind puppies was sufficiently curious; but when they became
large enough to come out from under the house and toddle about in the
proud hen’s wake, I longed for some distinguished naturalist. I felt that
our ignorance made us inappropriate spectators of such a phenomenon. Em’ly
scratched and clucked, and the puppies ran to her, pawed her with their
fat limp little legs, and retreated beneath her feathers in their games of
hide and seek. Conceive, if you can, what confusion must have reigned in
their infant minds as to who the setter was!
“I reckon they think she’s the wet-nurse,” said the Virginian.
When the puppies grew to be boisterous, I perceived that Em’ly’s mission
was approaching its end. They were too heavy for her, and their increasing
scope of playfulness was not in her line. Once or twice they knocked her
over, upon which she arose and pecked them severely, and they retired to a
safe distance, and sitting in a circle, yapped at her. I think they began
to suspect that she was only a hen after all. So Em’ly resigned with an
indifference which surprised me, until I remembered that if it had been
chickens, she would have ceased to look after them by this time.
But here she was again “out of a job,” as the Virginian said.
“She’s raised them puppies for that triflin’ setter, and now she’ll be
huntin’ around for something else useful to do that ain’t in her
business.”
Now there were other broods of chickens to arrive in the hen-house, and I
did not desire any more bantam and turkey performances. So, to avoid
confusion, I played a trick upon Em’ly. I went down to Sunk Creek and
fetched some smooth, oval stones. She was quite satisfied with these, and
passed a quiet day with them in a box. This was not fair, the Virginian
asserted.
“You ain’t going to jus’ leave her fooled that a-way?”
I did not see why not.
“Why, she raised them puppies all right. Ain’t she showed she knows how to
be a mother anyways? Em’ly ain’t going to get her time took up for nothing
while I’m round hyeh,” said the cow-puncher.
He laid a gentle hold of Em’ly and tossed her to the ground. She, of
course, rushed out among the corrals in a great state of nerves.
“I don’t see what good you do meddling,” I protested.
To this he deigned no reply, but removed the unresponsive stones from the
straw.
“Why, if they ain’t right warm!” he exclaimed plaintively. “The poor,
deluded son-of-a-gun!” And with this unusual description of a lady, he
sent the stones sailing like a line of birds. “I’m regular getting stuck
on Em’ly,” continued the Virginian. “Yu’ needn’t to laugh. Don’t yu’ see
she’s got sort o’ human feelin’s and desires? I always knowed hawsses was
like people, and my collie, of course. It is kind of foolish, I expect,
but that hen’s goin’ to have a real aigg di-rectly, right now, to set on.”
With this he removed one from beneath another hen. “We’ll have Em’ly raise
this hyeh,” said he, “so she can put in her time profitable.”
It was not accomplished at once; for Em’ly, singularly enough, would not
consent to stay in the box whence she had been routed. At length we found
another retreat for her, and in these new surroundings, with a new piece
of work for her to do, Em’ly sat on the one egg which the Virginian had so
carefully provided for her.
Thus, as in all genuine tragedies, was the stroke of Fate wrought by
chance and the best intentions.
Em’ly began sitting on Friday afternoon near sundown. Early next morning
my sleep was gradually dispersed by a sound unearthly and continuous. Now
it dwindled, receding to a distance; again it came near, took a turn,
drifted to the other side of the house; then, evidently, whatever it was,
passed my door close, and I jumped upright in my bed. The high, tense
strain of vibration, nearly, but not quite, a musical note, was like the
threatening scream of machinery, though weaker, and I bounded out of the
house in my pajamas.
There was Em’ly, dishevelled, walking wildly about, her one egg
miraculously hatched within ten hours. The little lonely yellow ball of
down went cheeping along behind, following its mother as best it could.
What, then, had happened to the established period of incubation? For an
instant the thing was like a portent, and I was near joining Em’ly in her
horrid surprise, when I saw how it all was. The Virginian had taken an egg
from a hen which had already been sitting for three weeks.
I dressed in haste, hearing Em’ly’s distracted outcry. It steadily
sounded, without perceptible pause for breath, and marked her erratic
journey back and forth through stables, lanes, and corrals. The shrill
disturbance brought all of us out to see her, and in the hen-house I
discovered the new brood making its appearance punctually.
But this natural explanation could not be made to the crazed hen. She
continued to scour the premises, her slant tail and its one preposterous
feather waving as she aimlessly went, her stout legs stepping high with an
unnatural motion, her head lifted nearly off her neck, and in her
brilliant yellow eye an expression of more than outrage at this
overturning of a natural law. Behind her, entirely ignored and neglected,
trailed the little progeny. She never looked at it. We went about our
various affairs, and all through the clear, sunny day that unending
metallic scream pervaded the premises. The Virginian put out food and
water for her, but she tasted nothing. I am glad to say that the little
chicken did. I do not think that the hen’s eyes could see, except in the
way that sleep-walkers’ do.
The heat went out of the air, and in the canyon the violet light began to
show. Many hours had gone, but Em’ly never ceased. Now she suddenly flew
up in a tree and sat there with her noise still going; but it had risen
lately several notes into a slim, acute level of terror, and was not like
machinery any more, nor like any sound I ever heard before or since. Below
the tree stood the bewildered little chicken, cheeping, and making tiny
jumps to reach its mother.
“Yes,” said the Virginian, “it’s comical. Even her aigg acted different
from anybody else’s.” He paused, and looked across the wide, mellowing
plain with the expression of easy-going gravity so common with him. Then
he looked at Em’ly in the tree and the yellow chicken.
“It ain’t so damned funny,” said he.
We went in to supper, and I came out to find the hen lying on the ground,
dead. I took the chicken to the family in the hen-house.
No, it was not altogether funny any more. And I did not think less of the
Virginian when I came upon him surreptitiously digging a little hole in
the field for her.
“I have buried some citizens here and there,” said he, “that I have
respected less.”
And when the time came for me to leave Sunk Creek, my last word to the
Virginian was, “Don’t forget Em’ly.”
“I ain’t likely to,” responded the cow-puncher. “She is just one o’ them
parables.”
Save when he fell into his native idioms (which, they told me, his
wanderings had well-nigh obliterated until that year’s visit to his home
again revived them in his speech), he had now for a long while dropped the
“seh,” and all other barriers between us. We were thorough friends, and
had exchanged many confidences both of the flesh and of the spirit. He
even went the length of saying that he would write me the Sunk Creek news
if I would send him a line now and then. I have many letters from him now.
Their spelling came to be faultless, and in the beginning was little worse
than George Washington’s.
The Judge himself drove me to the railroad by another way—across the
Bow Leg Mountains, and south through Balaam’s Ranch and Drybone to Rock
Creek.
“I’ll be very homesick,” I told him.
“Come and pull the latch-string whenever you please,” he bade me. I wished
that I might! No lotus land ever cast its spell upon man’s heart more than
Wyoming had enchanted mine.
VII. THROUGH TWO SNOWS
“Dear Friend [thus in the spring the Virginian wrote me], Yours received.
It must be a poor thing to be sick. That time I was shot at Cañada de Oro
would have made me sick if it had been a littel lower or if I was much of
a drinking man. You will be well if you give over city life and take a
hunt with me about August or say September for then the elk will be out of
the velvett.
“Things do not please me here just now and I am going to settel it by
vamosing. But I would be glad to see you. It would be pleasure not
business for me to show you plenty elk and get you strong. I am not
crybabying to the Judge or making any kick about things. He will want me
back after he has swallowed a litter tincture of time. It is the best dose
I know.
“Now to answer your questions. Yes the Emmily hen might have ate loco weed
if hens do. I never saw anything but stock and horses get poisoned with
loco weed. No the school is not built yet. They are always big talkers on
Bear Creek. No I have not seen Steve. He is around but I am sorry for him.
Yes I have been to Medicine Bow. I had the welcom I wanted. Do you
remember a man I played poker and he did not like it? He is working on the
upper ranch near Ten Sleep. He does not amount to a thing except with
weaklings. Uncle Hewie has twins. The boys got him vexed some about it,
but I think they are his. Now that is all I know to-day and I would like
to see you poco presently as they say at Los Cruces. There’s no sense in
you being sick.”
The rest of this letter discussed the best meeting point for us should I
decide to join him for a hunt.
That hunt was made, and during the weeks of its duration something was
said to explain a little more fully the Virginian’s difficulty at the Sunk
Creek Ranch, and his reason for leaving his excellent employer the Judge.
Not much was said, to be sure; the Virginian seldom spent many words upon
his own troubles. But it appeared that owing to some jealousy of him on
the part of the foreman, or the assistant foreman, he found himself
continually doing another man’s work, but under circumstances so skilfully
arranged that he got neither credit nor pay for it. He would not stoop to
telling tales out of school. Therefore his ready and prophetic mind
devised the simple expedient of going away altogether. He calculated that
Judge Henry would gradually perceive there was a connection between his
departure and the cessation of the satisfactory work. After a judicious
interval it was his plan to appear again in the neighborhood of Sunk Creek
and await results.
Concerning Steve he would say no more than he had written. But it was
plain that for some cause this friendship had ceased.
Money for his services during the hunt he positively declined to accept,
asserting that he had not worked enough to earn his board. And the
expedition ended in an untravelled corner of the Yellowstone Park, near
Pitchstone Canyon, where he and young Lin McLean and others were witnesses
of a sad and terrible drama that has been elsewhere chronicled.
His prophetic mind had foreseen correctly the shape of events at Sunk
Creek. The only thing that it had not foreseen was the impression to be
made upon the Judge’s mind by his conduct.
Toward the close of that winter, Judge and Mrs. Henry visited the East.
Through them a number of things became revealed. The Virginian was back at
Sunk Creek.
“And,” said Mrs. Henry, “he would never have left you if I had had my way,
Judge H.!”
“No, Madam Judge,” retorted her husband; “I am aware of that. For you have
always appreciated a fine appearance in a man.”
“I certainly have,” confessed the lady, mirthfully. “And the way he used
to come bringing my horse, with the ridges of his black hair so carefully
brushed and that blue spotted handkerchief tied so effectively round his
throat, was something that I missed a great deal after he went away.”
“Thank you, my dear, for this warning. I have plans that will keep him
absent quite constantly for the future.”
And then they spoke less flightily. “I always knew,” said the lady, “that
you had found a treasure when that man came.”
The Judge laughed. “When it dawned on me,” he said, “how cleverly he
caused me to learn the value of his services by depriving me of them, I
doubted whether it was safe to take him back.”
“Safe!” cried Mrs. Henry.
“Safe, my dear. Because I’m afraid he is pretty nearly as shrewd as I am.
And that’s rather dangerous in a subordinate.” The Judge laughed again.
“But his action regarding the man they call Steve has made me feel easy.”
And then it came out that the Virginian was supposed to have discovered in
some way that Steve had fallen from the grace of that particular honesty
which respects another man’s cattle. It was not known for certain. But
calves had begun to disappear in Cattle Land, and cows had been found
killed. And calves with one brand upon them had been found with mothers
that bore the brand of another owner. This industry was taking root in
Cattle Land, and of those who practised it, some were beginning to be
suspected. Steve was not quite fully suspected yet. But that the Virginian
had parted company with him was definitely known. And neither man would
talk about it.
There was the further news that the Bear Creek schoolhouse at length stood
complete, floor, walls, and roof; and that a lady from Bennington,
Vermont, a friend of Mrs. Balaam’s, had quite suddenly decided that she
would try her hand at instructing the new generation.
The Judge and Mrs. Henry knew this because Mrs. Balaam had told them of
her disappointment that she would be absent from the ranch on Butte Creek
when her friend arrived, and therefore unable to entertain her. The
friend’s decision had been quite suddenly made, and must form the subject
of the next chapter.
VIII. THE SINCERE SPINSTER
I do not know with which of the two estimates—Mr. Taylor’s or the
Virginian’s—you agreed. Did you think that Miss Mary Stark Wood of
Bennington, Vermont, was forty years of age? That would have been an
error. At the time she wrote the letter to Mrs. Balaam, of which letter
certain portions have been quoted in these pages, she was in her
twenty-first year; or, to be more precise, she had been twenty some eight
months previous.
Now, it is not usual for young ladies of twenty to contemplate a journey
of nearly two thousand miles to a country where Indians and wild animals
live unchained, unless they are to make such journey in company with a
protector, or are going to a protector’s arms at the other end. Nor is
school teaching on Bear Creek a usual ambition for such young ladies.
But Miss Mary Stark Wood was not a usual young lady for two reasons.
First, there was her descent. Had she so wished, she could have belonged
to any number of those patriotic societies of which our American ears have
grown accustomed to hear so much. She could have been enrolled in the
Boston Tea Party, the Ethan Allen Ticonderogas, the Green Mountain
Daughters, the Saratoga Sacred Circle, and the Confederated Colonial
Chatelaines. She traced direct descent from the historic lady whose name
she bore, that Molly Stark who was not a widow after the battle where her
lord, her Captain John, battled so bravely as to send his name thrilling
down through the blood of generations of schoolboys. This ancestress was
her chief claim to be a member of those shining societies which I have
enumerated. But she had been willing to join none of them, although
invitations to do so were by no means lacking. I cannot tell you her
reason. Still, I can tell you this. When these societies were much spoken
of in her presence, her very sprightly countenance became more sprightly,
and she added her words of praise or respect to the general chorus. But
when she received an invitation to join one of these bodies, her
countenance, as she read the missive, would assume an expression which was
known to her friends as “sticking her nose in the air.” I do not think
that Molly’s reason for refusing to join could have been a truly good one.
I should add that her most precious possession—a treasure which
accompanied her even if she went away for only one night’s absence—was
an heirloom, a little miniature portrait of the old Molly Stark, painted
when that far-off dame must have been scarce more than twenty. And when
each summer the young Molly went to Dunbarton, New Hampshire, to pay her
established family visit to the last survivors of her connection who bore
the name of Stark, no word that she heard in the Dunbarton houses pleased
her so much as when a certain great-aunt would take her by the hand, and,
after looking with fond intentness at her, pronounce: “My dear, you’re
getting more like the General’s wife every year you live.”
“I suppose you mean my nose,” Molly would then reply.
“Nonsense, child. You have the family length of nose, and I’ve never heard
that it has disgraced us.”
“But I don’t think I’m tall enough for it.”
“There now, run to your room, and dress for tea. The Starks have always
been punctual.”
And after this annual conversation, Molly would run to her room, and there
in its privacy, even at the risk of falling below the punctuality of the
Starks, she would consult two objects for quite a minute before she began
to dress. These objects, as you have already correctly guessed, were the
miniature of the General’s wife and the looking glass.
So much for Miss Molly Stark Wood’s descent.
The second reason why she was not a usual girl was her character. This
character was the result of pride and family pluck battling with family
hardship.
Just one year before she was to be presented to the world—not the
great metropolitan world, but a world that would have made her welcome and
done her homage at its little dances and little dinners in Troy and
Rutland and Burlington—fortune had turned her back upon the Woods.
Their possessions had never been great ones; but they had sufficed. From
generation to generation the family had gone to school like gentlefolk,
dressed like gentlefolk, used the speech and ways of gentlefolk, and as
gentlefolk lived and died. And now the mills failed.
Instead of thinking about her first evening dress, Molly found pupils to
whom she could give music lessons. She found handkerchiefs that she could
embroider with initials. And she found fruit that she could make into
preserves. That machine called the typewriter was then in existence, but
the day of women typewriters had as yet scarcely begun to dawn, else I
think Molly would have preferred this occupation to the handkerchiefs and
the preserves.
There were people in Bennington who “wondered how Miss Wood could go about
from house to house teaching the piano, and she a lady.” There always have
been such people, I suppose, because the world must always have a rubbish
heap. But we need not dwell upon them further than to mention one other
remark of theirs regarding Molly. They all with one voice declared that
Sam Bannett was good enough for anybody who did fancy embroidery at five
cents a letter.
“I dare say he had a great-grandmother quite as good as hers,” remarked
Mrs. Flynt, the wife of the Baptist minister.
“That’s entirely possible,” returned the Episcopal rector of Hoosic, “only
we don’t happen to know who she was.” The rector was a friend of Molly’s.
After this little observation, Mrs. Flynt said no more, but continued her
purchases in the store where she and the rector had happened to find
themselves together. Later she stated to a friend that she had always
thought the Episcopal Church a snobbish one, and now she knew it.
So public opinion went on being indignant over Molly’s conduct. She could
stoop to work for money, and yet she pretended to hold herself above the
most rising young man in Hoosic Falls, and all just because there was a
difference in their grandmothers!
Was this the reason at the bottom of it? The very bottom? I cannot be
certain, because I have never been a girl myself. Perhaps she thought that
work is not a stooping, and that marriage may be. Perhaps—But all I
really know is that Molly Wood continued cheerfully to embroider the
handkerchiefs, make the preserves, teach the pupils—and firmly to
reject Sam Bannett.
Thus it went on until she was twenty. There certain members of her family
began to tell her how rich Sam was going to be—was, indeed, already.
It was at this time that she wrote Mrs. Balaam her doubts and her desires
as to migrating to Bear Creek. It was at this time also that her face grew
a little paler, and her friends thought that she was overworked, and Mrs.
Flynt feared she was losing her looks. It was at this time, too, that she
grew very intimate with that great-aunt over at Dunbarton, and from her
received much comfort and strengthening.
“Never!” said the old lady, “especially if you can’t love him.”
“I do like him,” said Molly; “and he is very kind.”
“Never!” said the old lady again. “When I die, you’ll have something—and
that will not be long now.”
Molly flung her arms around her aunt, and stopped her words with a kiss.
And then one winter afternoon, two years later, came the last straw.
The front door of the old house had shut. Out of it had stepped the
persistent suitor. Mrs. Flynt watched him drive away in his smart sleigh.
“That girl is a fool!” she said furiously; and she came away from her
bedroom window where she had posted herself for observation.
Inside the old house a door had also shut. This was the door of Molly’s
own room. And there she sat, in floods of tears. For she could not bear to
hurt a man who loved her with all the power of love that was in him.
It was about twilight when her door opened, and an elderly lady came
softly in.
“My dear,” she ventured, “and you were not able—”
“Oh, mother!” cried the girl, “have you come to say that too?”
The next day Miss Wood had become very hard. In three weeks she had
accepted the position on Bear Creek. In two months she started,
heart-heavy, but with a spirit craving the unknown.
IX. THE SPINSTER MEETS THE UNKNOWN
On a Monday noon a small company of horsemen strung out along the trail
from Sunk Creek to gather cattle over their allotted sweep of range.
Spring was backward, and they, as they rode galloping and gathering upon
the cold week’s work, cursed cheerily and occasionally sang. The Virginian
was grave in bearing and of infrequent speech; but he kept a song going—a
matter of some seventy-nine verses. Seventy-eight were quite unprintable,
and rejoiced his brother cow-punchers monstrously. They, knowing him to be
a singular man, forebore ever to press him, and awaited his own humor,
lest he should weary of the lyric; and when after a day of silence
apparently saturnine, he would lift his gentle voice and begin:
“If you go to monkey with my Looloo girl,
I’ll tell you what I’ll do:
I’ll cyarve your heart with my razor, AND
I’ll shoot you with my pistol, too—”
then they would stridently take up each last line, and keep it going
three, four, ten times, and kick holes in the ground to the swing of it.
By the levels of Bear Creek that reach like inlets among the promontories
of the lonely hills, they came upon the schoolhouse, roofed and ready for
the first native Wyoming crop. It symbolized the dawn of a neighborhood,
and it brought a change into the wilderness air. The feel of it struck
cold upon the free spirits of the cow-punchers, and they told each other
that, what with women and children and wire fences, this country would not
long be a country for men. They stopped for a meal at an old comrade’s.
They looked over his gate, and there he was pattering among garden
furrows.
“Pickin’ nosegays?” inquired the Virginian and the old comrade asked if
they could not recognize potatoes except in the dish. But he grinned
sheepishly at them, too, because they knew that he had not always lived in
a garden. Then he took them into his house, where they saw an object
crawling on the floor with a handful of sulphur matches. He began to
remove the matches, but stopped in alarm at the vociferous result; and his
wife looked in from the kitchen to caution him about humoring little
Christopher.
When she beheld the matches she was aghast but when she saw her baby grow
quiet in the arms of the Virginian, she smiled at that cow-puncher and
returned to her kitchen.
Then the Virginian slowly spoke again: “How many little strangers have yu’
got, James?”
“Only two.”
“My! Ain’t it most three years since yu’ maried? Yu’ mustn’t let time
creep ahaid o’ yu’, James.”
The father once more grinned at his guests, who themselves turned sheepish
and polite; for Mrs. Westfall came in, brisk and hearty, and set the meat
upon the table. After that, it was she who talked. The guests ate
scrupulously, muttering, “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am,” in their plates,
while their hostess told them of increasing families upon Bear Creek, and
the expected school-teacher, and little Alfred’s early teething, and how
it was time for all of them to become husbands like James. The bachelors
of the saddle listened, always diffident, but eating heartily to the end;
and soon after they rode away in a thoughtful clump. The wives of Bear
Creek were few as yet, and the homes scattered; the schoolhouse was only a
sprig on the vast face of a world of elk and bear and uncertain Indians;
but that night, when the earth near the fire was littered with the
cow-punchers’ beds, the Virginian was heard drawling to himself: “Alfred
and Christopher. Oh, sugar!”
They found pleasure in the delicately chosen shade of this oath. He also
recited to them a new verse about how he took his Looloo girl to the
schoolhouse for to learn her A B C; and as it was quite original and
unprintable, the camp laughed and swore joyfully, and rolled in its
blankets to sleep under the stars.
Upon a Monday noon likewise (for things will happen so) some tearful
people in petticoats waved handkerchiefs at a train that was just leaving
Bennington, Vermont. A girl’s face smiled back at them once, and withdrew
quickly, for they must not see the smile die away.
She had with her a little money, a few clothes, and in her mind a rigid
determination neither to be a burden to her mother nor to give in to that
mother’s desires. Absence alone would enable her to carry out this
determination. Beyond these things, she possessed not much except
spelling-books, a colonial miniature, and that craving for the unknown
which has been mentioned. If the ancestors that we carry shut up inside us
take turns in dictating to us our actions and our state of mind,
undoubtedly Grandmother Stark was empress of Molly’s spirit upon this
Monday.
At Hoosic Junction, which came soon, she passed the up-train bound back to
her home, and seeing the engineer and the conductor,—faces that she
knew well,—her courage nearly failed her, and she shut her eyes
against this glimpse of the familiar things that she was leaving. To keep
herself steady she gripped tightly a little bunch of flowers in her hand.
But something caused her eyes to open; and there before her stood Sam
Bannett, asking if he might accompany her so far as Rotterdam Junction.
“No!” she told him with a severity born from the struggle she was making
with her grief. “Not a mile with me. Not to Eagle Bridge. Good-by.”
And Sam—what did he do? He obeyed her, I should like to be sorry for
him. But obedience was not a lover’s part here. He hesitated, the golden
moment hung hovering, the conductor cried “All aboard!” the train went,
and there on the platform stood obedient Sam, with his golden moment gone
like a butterfly.
After Rotterdam Junction, which was some forty minutes farther, Molly Wood
sat bravely up in the through car, dwelling upon the unknown. She thought
that she had attained it in Ohio, on Tuesday morning, and wrote a letter
about it to Bennington. On Wednesday afternoon she felt sure, and wrote a
letter much more picturesque. But on the following day, after breakfast at
North Platte, Nebraska, she wrote a very long letter indeed, and told them
that she had seen a black pig on a white pile of buffalo bones, catching
drops of water in the air as they fell from the railroad tank. She also
wrote that trees were extraordinarily scarce. Each hour westward from the
pig confirmed this opinion, and when she left the train at Rock Creek,
late upon that fourth night,—in those days the trains were slower,—she
knew that she had really attained the unknown, and sent an expensive
telegram to say that she was quite well.
At six in the morning the stage drove away into the sage-brush, with her
as its only passenger; and by sundown she had passed through some of the
primitive perils of the world. The second team, virgin to harness, and
displeased with this novelty, tried to take it off, and went down to the
bottom of a gully on its eight hind legs, while Miss Wood sat mute and
unflinching beside the driver. Therefore he, when it was over, and they on
the proper road again, invited her earnestly to be his wife during many of
the next fifteen miles, and told her of his snug cabin and his horses and
his mine. Then she got down and rode inside, Independence and Grandmother
Stark shining in her eye. At Point of Rocks, where they had supper and his
drive ended, her face distracted his heart, and he told her once more
about his cabin, and lamentably hoped she would remember him. She answered
sweetly that she would try, and gave him her hand. After all, he was a
frank-looking boy, who had paid her the highest compliment that a boy (or
a man for that matter) knows; and it is said that Molly Stark, in her day,
was not a New Woman.
The new driver banished the first one from the maiden’s mind. He was not a
frank-looking boy, and he had been taking whiskey. All night long he took
it, while his passenger, helpless and sleepless inside the lurching stage,
sat as upright as she possibly could; nor did the voices that she heard at
Drybone reassure her. Sunrise found the white stage lurching eternally on
across the alkali, with a driver and a bottle on the box, and a pale girl
staring out at the plain, and knotting in her handkerchief some utterly
dead flowers. They came to a river where the man bungled over the ford.
Two wheels sank down over an edge, and the canvas toppled like a
descending kite. The ripple came sucking through the upper spokes, and as
she felt the seat careen, she put out her head and tremulously asked if
anything was wrong. But the driver was addressing his team with much
language, and also with the lash.
Then a tall rider appeared close against the buried axles, and took her
out of the stage on his horse so suddenly that she screamed. She felt
splashes, saw a swimming flood, and found herself lifted down upon the
shore. The rider said something to her about cheering up, and its being
all right, but her wits were stock-still, so she did not speak and thank
him. After four days of train and thirty hours of stage, she was having a
little too much of the unknown at once. Then the tall man gently withdrew
leaving her to become herself again. She limply regarded the river pouring
round the slanted stage, and a number of horsemen with ropes, who righted
the vehicle, and got it quickly to dry land, and disappeared at once with
a herd of cattle, uttering lusty yells.
She saw the tall one delaying beside the driver, and speaking. He spoke so
quietly that not a word reached her, until of a sudden the driver
protested loudly. The man had thrown something, which turned out to be a
bottle. This twisted loftily and dived into the stream. He said something
more to the driver, then put his hand on the saddle-horn, looked
half-lingeringly at the passenger on the bank, dropped his grave eyes from
hers, and swinging upon his horse, was gone just as the passenger opened
her mouth and with inefficient voice murmured, “Oh, thank you!” at his
departing back.
The driver drove up now, a chastened creature. He helped Miss Wood in, and
inquired after her welfare with a hanging head; then meek as his own
drenched horses, he climbed back to his reins, and nursed the stage on
toward the Bow Leg Mountains much as if it had been a perambulator.
As for Miss Wood, she sat recovering, and she wondered what the man on the
horse must think of her. She knew that she was not ungrateful, and that if
he had given her an opportunity she would have explained to him. If he
supposed that she did not appreciate his act—Here into the midst of
these meditations came an abrupt memory that she had screamed—she
could not be sure when. She rehearsed the adventure from the beginning,
and found one or two further uncertainties—how it had all been while
she was on the horse, for instance. It was confusing to determine
precisely what she had done with her arms. She knew where one of his arms
had been. And the handkerchief with the flowers was gone. She made a few
rapid dives in search of it. Had she, or had she not, seen him putting
something in his pocket? And why had she behaved so unlike herself? In a
few miles Miss Wood entertained sentiments of maidenly resentment toward
her rescuer, and of maidenly hope to see him again.
To that river crossing he came again, alone, when the days were growing
short. The ford was dry sand, and the stream a winding lane of shingle. He
found a pool,—pools always survive the year round in this stream,—and
having watered his pony, he lunched near the spot to which he had borne
the frightened passenger that day. Where the flowing current had been he
sat, regarding the now extremely safe channel.
“She cert’nly wouldn’t need to grip me so close this mawnin’,” he said, as
he pondered over his meal. “I reckon it will mightily astonish her when I
tell her how harmless the torrent is lookin’.” He held out to his pony a
slice of bread matted with sardines, which the pony expertly accepted.
“You’re a plumb pie-biter you Monte,” he continued. Monte rubbed his nose
on his master’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t trust you with berries and cream.
No, seh; not though yu’ did rescue a drownin’ lady.”
Presently he tightened the forward cinch, got in the saddle, and the pony
fell into his wise mechanical jog; for he had come a long way, and was
going a long way, and he knew this as well as the man did.
To use the language of Cattle Land, steers had “jumped to seventy-five.”
This was a great and prosperous leap in their value. To have flourished in
that golden time you need not be dead now, nor even middle-aged; but it is
Wyoming mythology already—quite as fabulous as the high-jumping cow.
Indeed, people gathered together and behaved themselves much in the same
pleasant and improbable way. Johnson County, and Natrona, and Converse,
and others, to say nothing of the Cheyenne Club, had been jumping over the
moon for some weeks, all on account of steers; and on the strength of this
vigorous price of seventy-five, the Stanton Brothers were giving a
barbecue at the Goose Egg outfit, their ranch on Bear Creek. Of course the
whole neighborhood was bidden, and would come forty miles to a man; some
would come further—the Virginian was coming a hundred and eighteen.
It had struck him—rather suddenly, as shall be made plain—that
he should like to see how they were getting along up there on Bear Creek.
“They,” was how he put it to his acquaintances. His acquaintances did not
know that he had bought himself a pair of trousers and a scarf,
unnecessarily excellent for such a general visit. They did not know that
in the spring, two days after the adventure with the stage, he had learned
accidentally who the lady in the stage was. This he had kept to himself;
nor did the camp ever notice that he had ceased to sing that eightieth
stanza he had made about the A B C—the stanza which was not
printable. He effaced it imperceptibly, giving the boys the other
seventy-nine at judicious intervals. They dreamed of no guile, but merely
saw in him, whether frequenting camp or town, the same not over-angelic
comrade whom they valued and could not wholly understand.
All spring he had ridden trail, worked at ditches during summer, and now
he had just finished with the beef round-up. Yesterday, while he was
spending a little comfortable money at the Drybone hog-ranch, a casual
traveller from the north gossiped of Bear Creek, and the fences up there,
and the farm crops, the Westfalls, and the young schoolmarm from Vermont,
for whom the Taylors had built a cabin next door to theirs. The traveller
had not seen her, but Mrs. Taylor and all the ladies thought the world of
her, and Lin McLean had told him she was “away up in G.” She would have
plenty of partners at this Swinton barbecue. Great boon for the country,
wasn’t it, steers jumping that way?
The Virginian heard, asking no questions; and left town in an hour, with
the scarf and trousers tied in his slicker behind his saddle. After
looking upon the ford again, even though it was dry and not at all the
same place, he journeyed in attentively. When you have been hard at work
for months with no time to think, of course you think a great deal during
your first empty days. “Step along, you Monte hawss!” he said, rousing
after some while. He disciplined Monte, who flattened his ears affectedly
and snorted. “Why, you surely ain’ thinkin’ of you’-self as a hero? She
wasn’t really a-drowndin’, you pie-biter.” He rested his serious glance
upon the alkali. “She’s not likely to have forgot that mix-up, though. I
guess I’ll not remind her about grippin’ me, and all that. She wasn’t the
kind a man ought to josh about such things. She had a right clear eye.”
Thus, tall and loose in the saddle, did he jog along the sixty miles which
still lay between him and the dance.
X. WHERE FANCY WAS BRED
Two camps in the open, and the Virginian’s Monte horse, untired, brought
him to the Swintons’ in good time for the barbecue. The horse received
good food at length, while his rider was welcomed with good whiskey. GOOD
whiskey—for had not steers jumped to seventy-five?
Inside the Goose Egg kitchen many small delicacies were preparing, and a
steer was roasting whole outside. The bed of flame under it showed
steadily brighter against the dusk that was beginning to veil the
lowlands. The busy hosts went and came, while men stood and men lay near
the fire-glow. Chalkeye was there, and Nebrasky, and Trampas, and Honey
Wiggin, with others, enjoying the occasion; but Honey Wiggin was enjoying
himself: he had an audience; he was sitting up discoursing to it.
“Hello!” he said, perceiving the Virginian. “So you’ve dropped in for your
turn! Number—six, ain’t he, boys?”
“Depends who’s a-runnin’ the countin’,” said the Virginian, and stretched
himself down among the audience.
“I’ve saw him number one when nobody else was around,” said Trampas.
“How far away was you standin’ when you beheld that?” inquired the
lounging Southerner.
“Well, boys,” said Wiggin, “I expect it will be Miss Schoolmarm says who’s
number one to-night.”
“So she’s arrived in this hyeh country?” observed the Virginian, very
casually.
“Arrived!” said Trampas again. “Where have you been grazing lately?”
“A right smart way from the mules.”
“Nebrasky and the boys was tellin’ me they’d missed yu’ off the range,”
again interposed Wiggin. “Say, Nebrasky, who have yu’ offered your canary
to the schoolmarm said you mustn’t give her?”
Nebrasky grinned wretchedly.
“Well, she’s a lady, and she’s square, not takin’ a man’s gift when she
don’t take the man. But you’d ought to get back all them letters yu’ wrote
her. Yu’ sure ought to ask her for them tell-tales.”
“Ah, pshaw, Honey!” protested the youth. It was well known that he could
not write his name.
“Why, if here ain’t Bokay Baldy!” cried the agile Wiggin, stooping to
fresh prey. “Found them slippers yet, Baldy? Tell yu’ boys, that was
turruble sad luck Baldy had. Did yu’ hear about that? Baldy, yu’ know, he
can stay on a tame horse most as well as the schoolmarm. But just you give
him a pair of young knittin’-needles and see him make ’em sweat! He worked
an elegant pair of slippers with pink cabbages on ’em for Miss Wood.”
“I bought ’em at Medicine Bow,” blundered Baldy.
“So yu’ did!” assented the skilful comedian. “Baldy he bought ’em. And on
the road to her cabin there at the Taylors’ he got thinkin’ they might be
too big, and he got studyin’ what to do. And he fixed up to tell her about
his not bein’ sure of the size, and how she was to let him know if they
dropped off her, and he’d exchange ’em, and when he got right near her
door, why, he couldn’t find his courage. And so he slips the parcel under
the fence and starts serenadin’ her. But she ain’t inside her cabin at
all. She’s at supper next door with the Taylors, and Baldy singin’ ‘Love
has conqwered pride and angwer’ to a lone house. Lin McLean was comin’ up
by Taylor’s corral, where Taylor’s Texas bull was. Well, it was turruble
sad. Baldy’s pants got tore, but he fell inside the fence, and Lin druv
the bull back and somebody stole them Medicine Bow galoshes. Are you goin’
to knit her some more, Bokay?”
“About half that ain’t straight,” Baldy commented, with mildness.
“The half that was tore off yer pants? Well, never mind, Baldy; Lin will
get left too, same as all of yu’.”
“Is there many?” inquired the Virginian. He was still stretched on his
back, looking up at the sky.
“I don’t know how many she’s been used to where she was raised,” Wiggin
answered. “A kid stage-driver come from Point of Rocks one day and went
back the next. Then the foreman of the 76 outfit, and the horse-wrangler
from the Bar-Circle-L, and two deputy marshals, with punchers, stringin’
right along,—all got their tumble. Old Judge Burrage from Cheyenne
come up in August for a hunt and stayed round here and never hunted at
all. There was that horse thief—awful good-lookin’. Taylor wanted to
warn her about him, but Mrs. Taylor said she’d look after her if it was
needed. Mr. Horse-thief gave it up quicker than most; but the schoolmarm
couldn’t have knowed he had a Mrs. Horse-thief camped on Poison Spider
till afterwards. She wouldn’t go ridin’ with him. She’ll go with some,
takin’ a kid along.”
“Bah!” said Trampas.
The Virginian stopped looking at the sky, and watched Trampas from where
he lay.
“I think she encourages a man some,” said poor Nebrasky.
“Encourages? Because she lets yu’ teach her how to shoot,” said Wiggin.
“Well—I don’t guess I’m a judge. I’ve always kind o’ kep’ away from
them good women. Don’t seem to think of anything to chat about to ’em. The
only folks I’d say she encourages is the school kids. She kisses them.”
“Riding and shooting and kissing the kids,” sneered Trampas. “That’s a
heap too pussy-kitten for me.”
They laughed. The sage-brush audience is readily cynical.
“Look for the man, I say,” Trampas pursued. “And ain’t he there? She
leaves Baldy sit on the fence while she and Lin McLean—”
They laughed loudly at the blackguard picture which he drew; and the laugh
stopped short, for the Virginian stood over Trampas.
“You can rise up now, and tell them you lie,” he said.
The man was still for a moment in the dead silence. “I thought you claimed
you and her wasn’t acquainted,” said he then.
“Stand on your laigs, you polecat, and say you’re a liar!”
Trampas’s hand moved behind him.
“Quit that,” said the Southerner, “or I’ll break your neck!”
The eye of a man is the prince of deadly weapons. Trampas looked in the
Virginian’s, and slowly rose. “I didn’t mean—” he began, and paused,
his face poisonously bloated.
“Well, I’ll call that sufficient. Keep a-standin’ still. I ain’ going to
trouble yu’ long. In admittin’ yourself to be a liar you have spoke God’s
truth for onced. Honey Wiggin, you and me and the boys have hit town too
frequent for any of us to play Sunday on the balance of the gang.” He
stopped and surveyed Public Opinion, seated around in carefully
inexpressive attention. “We ain’t a Christian outfit a little bit, and
maybe we have most forgotten what decency feels like. But I reckon we
haven’t forgot what it means. You can sit down now, if you want.”
The liar stood and sneered experimentally, looking at Public Opinion. But
this changeful deity was no longer with him, and he heard it variously
assenting, “That’s so,” and “She’s a lady,” and otherwise excellently
moralizing. So he held his peace. When, however, the Virginian had
departed to the roasting steer, and Public Opinion relaxed into that
comfort which we all experience when the sermon ends, Trampas sat down
amid the reviving cheerfulness, and ventured again to be facetious.
“Shut your rank mouth,” said Wiggin to him, amiably. “I don’t care whether
he knows her or if he done it on principle. I’ll accept the roundin’ up he
gave us—and say! You’ll swallo’ your dose, too! Us boys’ll stand in
with him in this.”
So Trampas swallowed. And what of the Virginian?
He had championed the feeble, and spoken honorably in meeting, and
according to all the constitutions and by-laws of morality, he should have
been walking in virtue’s especial calm. But there it was! he had spoken;
he had given them a peep through the key-hole at his inner man; and as he
prowled away from the assemblage before whom he stood convicted of
decency, it was vicious rather than virtuous that he felt. Other matters
also disquieted him—so Lin McLean was hanging round that schoolmarm!
Yet he joined Ben Swinton in a seemingly Christian spirit. He took some
whiskey and praised the size of the barrel, speaking with his host like
this: “There cert’nly ain’ goin’ to be trouble about a second helpin’.”
“Hope not. We’d ought to have more trimmings, though. We’re shy on ducks.”
“Yu’ have the barrel. Has Lin McLean seen that?”
“No. We tried for ducks away down as far as the Laparel outfit. A real
barbecue—”
“There’s large thirsts on Bear Creek. Lin McLean will pass on ducks.”
“Lin’s not thirsty this month.”
“Signed for one month, has he?”
“Signed! He’s spooning our schoolmarm!”
“They claim she’s a right sweet-faced girl.”
“Yes; yes; awful agreeable. And next thing you’re fooled clean through.”
“Yu’ don’t say!”
“She keeps a-teaching the darned kids, and it seems like a good growed-up
man can’t interest her.”
“YU’ DON’T SAY!”
“There used to be all the ducks you wanted at the Laparel, but their fool
cook’s dead stuck on raising turkeys this year.”
“That must have been mighty close to a drowndin’ the schoolmarm got at
South Fork.”
“Why, I guess not. When? She’s never spoken of any such thing—that
I’ve heard.”
“Mos’ likely the stage-driver got it wrong, then.”
“Yes. Must have drownded somebody else. Here they come! That’s her ridin’
the horse. There’s the Westfalls. Where are you running to?”
“To fix up. Got any soap around hyeh?”
“Yes,” shouted Swinton, for the Virginian was now some distance away;
“towels and everything in the dugout.” And he went to welcome his first
formal guests.
The Virginian reached his saddle under a shed. “So she’s never mentioned
it,” said he, untying his slicker for the trousers and scarf. “I didn’t
notice Lin anywheres around her.” He was over in the dugout now, whipping
off his overalls; and soon he was excellently clean and ready, except for
the tie in his scarf and the part in his hair. “I’d have knowed her in
Greenland,” he remarked. He held the candle up and down at the
looking-glass, and the looking-glass up and down at his head. “It’s mighty
strange why she ain’t mentioned that.” He worried the scarf a fold or two
further, and at length, a trifle more than satisfied with his appearance,
he proceeded most serenely toward the sound of the tuning fiddles. He
passed through the store-room behind the kitchen, stepping lightly lest he
should rouse the ten or twelve babies that lay on the table or beneath it.
On Bear Creek babies and children always went with their parents to a
dance, because nurses were unknown. So little Alfred and Christopher lay
there among the wraps, parallel and crosswise with little Taylors, and
little Carmodys, and Lees, and all the Bear Creek offspring that was not
yet able to skip at large and hamper its indulgent elders in the
ball-room.
“Why, Lin ain’t hyeh yet!” said the Virginian, looking in upon the people.
There was Miss Wood, standing up for the quadrille. “I didn’t remember her
hair was that pretty,” said he. “But ain’t she a little, little girl!”
Now she was in truth five feet three; but then he could look away down on
the top of her head.
“Salute your honey!” called the first fiddler. All partners bowed to each
other, and as she turned, Miss Wood saw the man in the doorway. Again, as
it had been at South Fork that day, his eyes dropped from hers, and she
divining instantly why he had come after half a year, thought of the
handkerchief and of that scream of hers in the river, and became filled
with tyranny and anticipation; for indeed he was fine to look upon. So she
danced away, carefully unaware of his existence.
“First lady, centre!” said her partner, reminding her of her turn. “Have
you forgotten how it goes since last time?”
Molly Wood did not forget again, but quadrilled with the most sprightly
devotion.
“I see some new faces to-night,” said she, presently.
“Yu’ always do forget our poor faces,” said her partner.
“Oh, no! There’s a stranger now. Who is that black man?”
“Well—he’s from Virginia, and he ain’t allowin’ he’s black.”
“He’s a tenderfoot, I suppose?”
“Ha, ha, ha! That’s rich, too!” and so the simple partner explained a
great deal about the Virginian to Molly Wood. At the end of the set she
saw the man by the door take a step in her direction.
“Oh,” said she, quickly, to the partner, “how warm it is! I must see how
those babies are doing.” And she passed the Virginian in a breeze of
unconcern.
His eyes gravely lingered where she had gone. “She knowed me right away,”
said he. He looked for a moment, then leaned against the door. “’How warm
it is!’ said she. Well, it ain’t so screechin’ hot hyeh; and as for
rushin’ after Alfred and Christopher, when their natural motheh is bumpin’
around handy—she cert’nly can’t be offended?” he broke off, and
looked again where she had gone. And then Miss Wood passed him brightly
again, and was dancing the schottische almost immediately. “Oh, yes, she
knows me,” the swarthy cow-puncher mused. “She has to take trouble not to
see me. And what she’s a-fussin’ at is mighty interestin’. Hello!”
“Hello!” returned Lin McLean, sourly. He had just looked into the kitchen.
“Not dancin’?” the Southerner inquired.
“Don’t know how.”
“Had scyarlet fever and forgot your past life?”
Lin grinned.
“Better persuade the schoolmarm to learn it. She’s goin’ to give me
instruction.”
“Huh!” went Mr. McLean, and skulked out to the barrel.
“Why, they claimed you weren’t drinkin’ this month!” said his friend,
following.
“Well, I am. Here’s luck!” The two pledged in tin cups. “But I’m not
waltzin’ with her,” blurted Mr. McLean grievously. “She called me an
exception.”
“Waltzin’,” repeated the Virginian quickly, and hearing the fiddles he
hastened away.
Few in the Bear Creek Country could waltz, and with these few it was
mostly an unsteered and ponderous exhibition; therefore was the Southerner
bent upon profiting by his skill. He entered the room, and his lady saw
him come where she sat alone for the moment, and her thoughts grew a
little hurried.
“Will you try a turn, ma’am?”
“I beg your pardon?” It was a remote, well-schooled eye that she lifted
now upon him.
“If you like a waltz, ma’am, will you waltz with me?”
“You’re from Virginia, I understand?” said Molly Wood, regarding him
politely, but not rising. One gains authority immensely by keeping one’s
seat. All good teachers know this.
“Yes, ma’am, from Virginia.”
“I’ve heard that Southerners have such good manners.”
“That’s correct.” The cow-puncher flushed, but he spoke in his unvaryingly
gentle voice.
“For in New England, you know,” pursued Miss Molly, noting his scarf and
clean-shaven chin, and then again steadily meeting his eye, “gentlemen ask
to be presented to ladies before they ask them to waltz.”
He stood a moment before her, deeper and deeper scarlet; and the more she
saw his handsome face, the keener rose her excitement. She waited for him
to speak of the river; for then she was going to be surprised, and
gradually to remember, and finally to be very nice to him. But he did not
wait. “I ask your pardon, lady,” said he, and bowing, walked off, leaving
her at once afraid that he might not come back. But she had altogether
mistaken her man. Back he came serenely with Mr. Taylor, and was duly
presented to her. Thus were the conventions vindicated.
It can never be known what the cow-puncher was going to say next; for
Uncle Hughey stepped up with a glass of water which he had left Wood to
bring, and asking for a turn, most graciously received it. She danced away
from a situation where she began to feel herself getting the worst of it.
One moment the Virginian stared at his lady as she lightly circulated, and
then he went out to the barrel.
Leave him for Uncle Hershey! Jealousy is a deep and delicate thing, and
works its spite in many ways. The Virginian had been ready to look at Lin
McLean with a hostile eye; but finding him now beside the barrel, he felt
a brotherhood between himself and Lin, and his hostility had taken a new
and whimsical direction.
“Here’s how!” said he to McLean. And they pledged each other in the tin
cups.
“Been gettin’ them instructions?” said Mr. McLean, grinning. “I thought I
saw yu’ learning your steps through the window.”
“Here’s your good health,” said the Southerner. Once more they pledged
each other handsomely.
“Did she call you an exception, or anything?” said Lin.
“Well, it would cipher out right close in that neighborhood.”
“Here’s how, then!” cried the delighted Lin, over his cup.
“Jest because yu’ happen to come from Vermont,” continued Mr. McLean, “is
no cause for extra pride. Shoo! I was raised in Massachusetts myself, and
big men have been raised there, too,—Daniel Webster and Israel
Putnam: and a lot of them politicians.”
“Virginia is a good little old state,” observed the Southerner.
“Both of ’em’s a sight ahead of Vermont. She told me I was the first
exception she’d struck.”
“What rule were you provin’ at the time, Lin?”
“Well yu’ see, I started to kiss her.”
“Yu’ didn’t!”
“Shucks! I didn’t mean nothin’.”
“I reckon yu’ stopped mighty sudden?”
“Why, I’d been ridin’ out with her—ridin’ to school, ridin’ from
school, and a-comin’ and a-goin’, and she chattin’ cheerful and askin’ me
a heap o’ questions all about myself every day, and I not lyin’ much
neither. And so I figured she wouldn’t mind. Lots of ’em like it. But she
didn’t, you bet!”
“No,” said the Virginian, deeply proud of his lady who had slighted him.
He had pulled her out of the water once, and he had been her unrewarded
knight even to-day, and he felt his grievance; but he spoke not of it to
Lin; for he felt also, in memory, her arms clinging round him as he
carried her ashore upon his horse. But he muttered, “Plumb ridiculous!” as
her injustice struck him afresh, while the outraged McLean told his tale.
“Trample is what she has done on me to-night, and without notice. We was
startin’ to come here; Taylor and Mrs. were ahead in the buggy, and I was
holdin’ her horse, and helpin’ her up in the saddle, like I done for days
and days. Who was there to see us? And I figured she’d not mind, and she
calls me an exception! Yu’d ought to’ve just heard her about Western men
respectin’ women. So that’s the last word we’ve spoke. We come twenty-five
miles then, she scootin’ in front, and her horse kickin’ the sand in my
face. Mrs. Taylor, she guessed something was up, but she didn’t tell.”
“Miss Wood did not tell?”
“Not she! She’ll never open her head. She can take care of herself, you
bet!” The fiddles sounded hilariously in the house, and the feet also.
They had warmed up altogether, and their dancing figures crossed the
windows back and forth. The two cow-punchers drew near to a window and
looked in gloomily.
“There she goes,” said Lin.
“With Uncle Hughey again,” said the Virginian, sourly. “Yu’ might suppose
he didn’t have a wife and twins, to see the way he goes gambollin’
around.”
“Westfall is takin’ a turn with her now,” said McLean.
“James!” exclaimed the Virginian. “He’s another with a wife and fam’ly,
and he gets the dancin’, too.”
“There she goes with Taylor,” said Lin, presently.
“Another married man!” the Southerner commented. They prowled round to the
store-room, and passed through the kitchen to where the dancers were
robustly tramping. Miss Wood was still the partner of Mr. Taylor. “Let’s
have some whiskey,” said the Virginian. They had it, and returned, and the
Virginian’s disgust and sense of injury grew deeper. “Old Carmody has got
her now,” he drawled. “He polkas like a landslide. She learns his
monkey-faced kid to spell dog and cow all the mawnin’. He’d ought to be
tucked up cosey in his bed right now, old Carmody ought.”
They were standing in that place set apart for the sleeping children; and
just at this moment one of two babies that were stowed beneath a chair
uttered a drowsy note. A much louder cry, indeed a chorus of lament, would
have been needed to reach the ears of the parents in the room beyond, such
was the noisy volume of the dance. But in this quiet place the light sound
caught Mr. McLean’s attention, and he turned to see if anything were
wrong. But both babies were sleeping peacefully.
“Them’s Uncle Hughey’s twins,” he said.
“How do you happen to know that?” inquired the Virginian, suddenly
interested.
“Saw his wife put ’em under the chair so she could find ’em right off when
she come to go home.”
“Oh,” said the Virginian, thoughtfully. “Oh, find ’em right off. Yes.
Uncle Hughey’s twins.” He walked to a spot from which he could view the
dance. “Well,” he continued, returning, “the schoolmarm must have taken
quite a notion to Uncle Hughey. He has got her for this quadrille.” The
Virginian was now speaking without rancor; but his words came with a
slightly augmented drawl, and this with him was often a bad omen. He now
turned his eyes upon the collected babies wrapped in various colored
shawls and knitted work. “Nine, ten, eleven, beautiful sleepin’
strangers,” he counted, in a sweet voice. “Any of ’em your’n, Lin?”
“Not that I know of,” grinned Mr. McLean.
“Eleven, twelve. This hyeh is little Christopher in the blue-stripe quilt—or
maybe that other yello’-head is him. The angels have commenced to drop in
on us right smart along Bear Creek, Lin.”
“What trash are yu’ talkin’ anyway?”
“If they look so awful alike in the heavenly gyarden,” the gentle
Southerner continued, “I’d just hate to be the folks that has the cuttin’
of ’em out o’ the general herd. And that’s a right quaint notion too,” he
added softly. “Them under the chair are Uncle Hughey’s, didn’t you tell
me?” And stooping, he lifted the torpid babies and placed them beneath a
table. “No, that ain’t thorough,” he murmured. With wonderful dexterity
and solicitude for their wellfare, he removed the loose wrap which was
around them, and this soon led to an intricate process of exchange. For a
moment Mr. McLean had been staring at the Virginian, puzzled. Then, with a
joyful yelp of enlightenment, he sprang to abet him.
And while both busied themselves with the shawls and quilts, the
unconscious parents went dancing vigorously on, and the small, occasional
cries of their progeny did not reach them.
XI. “YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE ME BEFORE WE GET THROUGH”
The Swinton barbecue was over. The fiddles were silent, the steer was
eaten, the barrel emptied, or largely so, and the tapers extinguished;
round the house and sunken fire all movement of guests was quiet; the
families were long departed homeward, and after their hospitable
turbulence, the Swintons slept.
Mr. and Mrs. Westfall drove through the night, and as they neared their
cabin there came from among the bundled wraps a still, small voice.
“Jim,” said his wife, “I said Alfred would catch cold.”
“Bosh! Lizzie, don’t you fret. He’s a little more than a yearlin’, and of
course he’ll snuffle.” And young James took a kiss from his love.
“Well, how you can speak of Alfred that way, calling him a yearling, as if
he was a calf, and he just as much your child as mine, I don’t see, James
Westfall!”
“Why, what under the sun do you mean?”
“There he goes again! Do hurry up home, Jim. He’s got a real strange
cough.”
So they hurried home. Soon the nine miles were finished, and good James
was unhitching by his stable lantern, while his wife in the house hastened
to commit their offspring to bed. The traces had dropped, and each horse
marched forward for further unbuckling, when James heard himself called.
Indeed, there was that in his wife’s voice which made him jerk out his
pistol as he ran. But it was no bear or Indian—only two strange
children on the bed. His wife was glaring at them.
He sighed with relief and laid down the pistol.
“Put that on again, James Westfall. You’ll need it. Look here!”
“Well, they won’t bite. Whose are they? Where have you stowed ourn?”
“Where have I—” Utterance forsook this mother for a moment. “And you
ask me!” she continued. “Ask Lin McLean. Ask him that sets bulls on folks
and steals slippers, what he’s done with our innocent lambs, mixing them
up with other people’s coughing, unhealthy brats. That’s Charlie Taylor in
Alfred’s clothes, and I know Alfred didn’t cough like that, and I said to
you it was strange; and the other one that’s been put in Christopher’s new
quilts is not even a bub—bub—boy!”
As this crime against society loomed clear to James Westfall’s
understanding, he sat down on the nearest piece of furniture, and heedless
of his wife’s tears and his exchanged children, broke into unregenerate
laughter. Doubtless after his sharp alarm about the bear, he was unstrung.
His lady, however, promptly restrung him; and by the time they had
repacked the now clamorous changelings, and were rattling on their way to
the Taylors’, he began to share her outraged feelings properly, as a
husband and a father should; but when he reached the Taylors’ and learned
from Miss Wood that at this house a child had been unwrapped whom nobody
could at all identify, and that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were already far on
the road to the Swintons’, James Westfall whipped up his horses and grew
almost as thirsty for revenge as was his wife.
Where the steer had been roasted, the powdered ashes were now cold white,
and Mr. McLean, feeling through his dreams the change of dawn come over
the air, sat up cautiously among the outdoor slumberers and waked his
neighbor.
“Day will be soon,” he whispered, “and we must light out of this. I never
suspicioned yu’ had that much of the devil in you before.”
“I reckon some of the fellows will act haidstrong,” the Virginian murmured
luxuriously, among the warmth of his blankets.
“I tell yu’ we must skip,” said Lin, for the second time; and he rubbed
the Virginian’s black head, which alone was visible.
“Skip, then, you,” came muffled from within, “and keep you’self mighty
sca’ce till they can appreciate our frolic.”
The Southerner withdrew deeper into his bed, and Mr. McLean, informing him
that he was a fool, arose and saddled his horse. From the saddle-bag, he
brought a parcel, and lightly laying this beside Bokay Baldy, he mounted
and was gone. When Baldy awoke later, he found the parcel to be a pair of
flowery slippers.
In selecting the inert Virginian as the fool, Mr. McLean was scarcely
wise; it is the absent who are always guilty.
Before ever Lin could have been a mile in retreat, the rattle of the
wheels roused all of them, and here came the Taylors. Before the Taylors’
knocking had brought the Swintons to their door, other wheels sounded, and
here were Mr. and Mrs. Carmody, and Uncle Hughey with his wife, and close
after them Mr. Dow, alone, who told how his wife had gone into one of her
fits—she upon whom Dr. Barker at Drybone had enjoined total
abstinence from all excitement. Voices of women and children began to be
uplifted; the Westfalls arrived in a lather, and the Thomases; and by
sunrise, what with fathers and mothers and spectators and loud offspring,
there was gathered such a meeting as has seldom been before among the
generations of speaking men. To-day you can hear legends of it from Texas
to Montana; but I am giving you the full particulars.
Of course they pitched upon poor Lin. Here was the Virginian doing his
best, holding horses and helping ladies descend, while the name of McLean
began to be muttered with threats. Soon a party led by Mr. Dow set forth
in search of him, and the Southerner debated a moment if he had better not
put them on a wrong track. But he concluded that they might safely go on
searching.
Mrs. Westfall found Christopher at once in the green shawl of Anna Maria
Dow, but all was not achieved thus in the twinkling of an eye. Mr. McLean
had, it appeared, as James Westfall lugubriously pointed out, not merely
“swapped the duds; he had shuffled the whole doggone deck;” and they
cursed this Satanic invention. The fathers were but of moderate
assistance; it was the mothers who did the heavy work; and by ten o’clock
some unsolved problems grew so delicate that a ladies’ caucus was
organized in a private room,—no admittance for men,—and what
was done there I can only surmise.
During its progress the search party returned. It had not found Mr.
McLean. It had found a tree with a notice pegged upon it, reading, “God
bless our home!” This was captured.
But success attended the caucus; each mother emerged, satisfied that she
had received her own, and each sire, now that his family was itself again,
began to look at his neighbor sideways. After a man has been angry enough
to kill another man, after the fire of righteous slaughter has raged in
his heart as it had certainly raged for several hours in the hearts of
these fathers, the flame will usually burn itself out. This will be so in
a generous nature, unless the cause of the anger is still unchanged. But
the children had been identified; none had taken hurt. All had been
humanely given their nourishment. The thing was over. The day was
beautiful. A tempting feast remained from the barbecue. These Bear Creek
fathers could not keep their ire at red heat. Most of them, being as yet
more their wives’ lovers than their children’s parents, began to see the
mirthful side of the adventure; and they ceased to feel very severely
toward Lin McLean.
Not so the women. They cried for vengeance; but they cried in vain, and
were met with smiles.
Mrs. Westfall argued long that punishment should be dealt the offender.
“Anyway,” she persisted, “it was real defiant of him putting that up on
the tree. I might forgive him but for that.”
“Yes,” spoke the Virginian in their midst, “that wasn’t sort o’ right.
Especially as I am the man you’re huntin’.”
They sat dumb at his assurance.
“Come and kill me,” he continued, round upon the party. “I’ll not resist.”
But they could not resist the way in which he had looked round upon them.
He had chosen the right moment for his confession, as a captain of a horse
awaits the proper time for a charge. Some rebukes he did receive; the
worst came from the mothers. And all that he could say for himself was, “I
am getting off too easy.”
“But what was your point?” said Westfall.
“Blamed if I know any more. I expect it must have been the whiskey.”
“I would mind it less,” said Mrs. Westfall, “if you looked a bit sorry or
ashamed.”
The Virginian shook his head at her penitently. “I’m tryin’ to,” he said.
And thus he sat disarming his accusers until they began to lunch upon the
copious remnants of the barbecue. He did not join them at this meal. In
telling you that Mrs. Dow was the only lady absent upon this historic
morning, I was guilty of an inadvertence. There was one other.
The Virginian rode away sedately through the autumn sunshine; and as he
went he asked his Monte horse a question. “Do yu’ reckon she’ll have
forgotten you too, you pie-biter?” said he. Instead of the new trousers,
the cow-puncher’s leathern chaps were on his legs. But he had the new
scarf knotted at his neck. Most men would gladly have equalled him in
appearance. “You Monte,” said he, “will she be at home?”
It was Sunday, and no school day, and he found her in her cabin that stood
next the Taylors’ house. Her eyes were very bright.
“I’d thought I’d just call,” said he.
“Why, that’s such a pity! Mr. and Mrs. Taylor are away.”
“Yes; they’ve been right busy. That’s why I thought I’d call. Will yu’
come for a ride, ma’am?”
“Dear me! I—”
“You can ride my hawss. He’s gentle.”
“What! And you walk?”
“No, ma’am. Nor the two of us ride him THIS time, either.” At this she
turned entirely pink, and he, noticing, went on quietly: “I’ll catch up
one of Taylor’s hawsses. Taylor knows me.”
“No. I don’t really think I could do that. But thank you. Thank you very
much. I must go now and see how Mrs. Taylor’s fire is.”
“I’ll look after that, ma’am. I’d like for yu’ to go ridin’ mighty well.
Yu’ have no babies this mawnin’ to be anxious after.”
At this shaft, Grandmother Stark flashed awake deep within the spirit of
her descendant, and she made a haughty declaration of war. “I don’t know
what you mean, sir,” she said.
Now was his danger; for it was easy to fall into mere crude impertinence
and ask her why, then, did she speak thus abruptly? There were various
easy things of this kind for him to say. And any rudeness would have lost
him the battle. But the Virginian was not the man to lose such a battle in
such a way. His shaft had hit. She thought he referred to those babies
about whom last night she had shown such superfluous solicitude. Her
conscience was guilty. This was all that he had wished to make sure of
before he began operations.
“Why, I mean,” said he, easily, sitting down near the door, “that it’s
Sunday. School don’t hinder yu’ from enjoyin’ a ride to-day. You’ll teach
the kids all the better for it to-morro’, ma’am. Maybe it’s your duty.”
And he smiled at her.
“My duty! It’s quite novel to have strangers—”
“Am I a stranger?” he cut in, firing his first broadside. “I was
introduced, ma’am,” he continued, noting how she had flushed again. “And I
would not be oversteppin’ for the world. I’ll go away if yu’ want.” And
hereupon he quietly rose, and stood, hat in hand.
Molly was flustered. She did not at all want him to go. No one of her
admirers had ever been like this creature. The fringed leathern
chaparreros, the cartridge belt, the flannel shirt, the knotted scarf at
the neck, these things were now an old story to her. Since her arrival she
had seen young men and old in plenty dressed thus. But worn by this man
now standing by her door, they seemed to radiate romance. She did not want
him to go—and she wished to win her battle. And now in her agitation
she became suddenly severe, as she had done at Hoosic Junction. He should
have a punishment to remember!
“You call yourself a man, I suppose,” she said.
But he did not tremble in the least. Her fierceness filled him with
delight, and the tender desire of ownership flooded through him.
“A grown-up, responsible man,” she repeated.
“Yes, ma’am. I think so.” He now sat down again.
“And you let them think that—that Mr. McLean—You dare not look
me in the face and say that Mr. McLean did that last night!”
“I reckon I dassent.”
“There! I knew it! I said so from the first!”
“And me a stranger to you!” he murmured.
It was his second broadside. It left her badly crippled. She was silent.
“Who did yu’ mention it to, ma’am?”
She hoped she had him. “Why, are you afraid?” And she laughed lightly.
“I told ’em myself. And their astonishment seemed so genu-wine I’d just
hate to think they had fooled me that thorough when they knowed it all
along from you seeing me.”
“I did not see you. I knew it must—of course I did not tell any one.
When I said I said so from the first, I meant—you can understand
perfectly what I meant.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Poor Molly was near stamping her foot. “And what sort of a trick,” she
rushed on, “was that to play? Do you call it a manly thing to frighten and
distress women because you—for no reason at all? I should never have
imagined it could be the act of a person who wears a big pistol and rides
a big horse. I should be afraid to go riding with such an immature
protector.”
“Yes; that was awful childish. Your words do cut a little; for maybe
there’s been times when I have acted pretty near like a man. But I
cert’nly forgot to be introduced before I spoke to yu’ last night. Because
why? You’ve found me out dead in one thing. Won’t you take a guess at this
too?”
“I cannot sit guessing why people do not behave themselves—who seem
to know better.”
“Well, ma’am, I’ve played square and owned up to yu’. And that’s not what
you’re doin’ by me. I ask your pardon if I say what I have a right to say
in language not as good as I’d like to talk to yu’ with. But at South Fork
Crossin’ who did any introducin’? Did yu’ complain I was a stranger then?”
“I—no!” she flashed out; then, quite sweetly, “The driver told me it
wasn’t REALLY so dangerous there, you know.”
“That’s not the point I’m makin’. You are a grown-up woman, a responsible
woman. You’ve come ever so far, and all alone, to a rough country to
instruct young children that play games,—tag, and hide-and-seek, and
fooleries they’ll have to quit when they get old. Don’t you think
pretendin’ yu’ don’t know a man,—his name’s nothin’, but him,—a
man whom you were glad enough to let assist yu’ when somebody was needed,—don’t
you think that’s mighty close to hide-and-seek them children plays? I
ain’t so sure but what there’s a pair of us children in this hyeh room.”
Molly Wood was regarding him saucily. “I don’t think I like you,” said
she.
“That’s all square enough. You’re goin’ to love me before we get through.
I wish yu’d come a-ridin, ma’am.”
“Dear, dear, dear! So I’m going to love you? How will you do it? I know
men think that they only need to sit and look strong and make chests at a
girl—”
“Goodness gracious! I ain’t makin’ any chests at yu’!” Laughter overcame
him for a moment, and Miss Wood liked his laugh very much. “Please come
a-ridin’,” he urged. “It’s the prettiest kind of a day.”
She looked at him frankly, and there was a pause. “I will take back two
things that I said to you,” she then answered him. “I believe that I do
like you. And I know that if I went riding with you, I should not have an
immature protector.” And then, with a final gesture of acknowledgment, she
held out her hand to him. “And I have always wanted,” she said, “to thank
you for what you did at the river.”
He took her hand, and his heart bounded. “You’re a gentleman!” he
exclaimed.
It was now her turn to be overcome with merriment. “I’ve always wanted to
be a man,” she said.
“I am mighty glad you ain’t,” said he, looking at her.
But Molly had already received enough broadsides for one day. She could
allow no more of them, and she took herself capably in hand. “Where did
you learn to make such pretty speeches?” she asked. “Well, never mind
that. One sees that you have had plenty of practice for one so young.”
“I am twenty-seven,” blurted the Virginian, and knew instantly that he had
spoken like a fool.
“Who would have dreamed it!” said Molly, with well-measured mockery. She
knew that she had scored at last, and that this day was hers. “Don’t be
too sure you are glad I’m not a man,” she now told him. There was
something like a challenge in her voice.
“I risk it,” he remarked.
“For I am almost twenty-three myself,” she concluded. And she gave him a
look on her own account.
“And you’ll not come a-ridin’?” he persisted.
“No,” she answered him; “no.” And he knew that he could not make her.
“Then I will tell yu’ good-by,” said he. “But I am comin’ again. And next
time I’ll have along a gentle hawss for yu’.”
“Next time! Next time! Well, perhaps I will go with you. Do you live far?”
“I live on Judge Henry’s ranch, over yondeh.” He pointed across the
mountains. “It’s on Sunk Creek. A pretty rough trail; but I can come hyeh
to see you in a day, I reckon. Well, I hope you’ll cert’nly enjoy good
health, ma’am.”
“Oh, there’s one thing!” said Molly Wood, calling after him rather
quickly. “I—I’m not at all afraid of horses. You needn’t bring such
a gentle one. I—was very tired that day, and—and I don’t
scream as a rule.”
He turned and looked at her so that she could not meet his glance. “Bless
your heart!” said he. “Will yu’ give me one o’ those flowers?”
“Oh, certainly! I’m always so glad when people like them.”
“They’re pretty near the color of your eyes.”
“Never mind my eyes.”
“Can’t help it, ma’am. Not since South Fork.”
He put the flower in the leather band of his hat, and rode away on his
Monte horse. Miss Wood lingered a moment, then made some steps toward her
gate, from which he could still be seen; and then, with something like a
toss of the head, she went in and shut her door.
Later in the day the Virginian met Mr. McLean, who looked at his hat and
innocently quoted, “’My Looloo picked a daisy.’”
“Don’t yu’, Lin,” said the Southerner.
“Then I won’t,” said Lin.
Thus, for this occasion, did the Virginian part from his lady—and
nothing said one way or another about the handkerchief that had
disappeared during the South Fork incident.
As we fall asleep at night, our thoughts will often ramble back and forth
between the two worlds.
“What color were his eyes?” wondered Molly on her pillow. “His mustache is
not bristly like so many of them. Sam never gave me such a look at Hoosic
Junction. No…. You can’t come with me…. Get off your horse…. The
passengers are all staring….”
And while Molly was thus dreaming that the Virginian had ridden his horse
into the railroad car, and sat down beside her, the fire in the great
stone chimney of her cabin flickered quietly, its gleams now and again
touching the miniature of Grandmother Stark upon the wall.
Camped on the Sunk Creek trail, the Virginian was telling himself in his
blankets: “I ain’t too old for education. Maybe she will lend me books.
And I’ll watch her ways and learn…stand still, Monte. I can learn a lot
more than the kids on that. There’s Monte…you pie-biter, stop…. He has
ate up your book, ma’am, but I’ll get yu’….”
And then the Virginian was fast asleep.
XII. QUALITY AND EQUALITY
To the circle at Bennington, a letter from Bear Creek was always a welcome
summons to gather and hear of doings very strange to Vermont. And when the
tale of the changed babies arrived duly by the post, it created a more
than usual sensation, and was read to a large number of pleased and
scandalized neighbors. “I hate her to be where such things can happen,”
said Mrs. Wood.
“I wish I could have been there,” said her son-in-law, Andrew Bell.
“She does not mention who played the trick,” said Mrs. Andrew Bell.
“We shouldn’t be any wiser if she did,” said Mrs. Wood.
“I’d like to meet the perpetrator,” said Andrew.
“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Wood. “They’re all horrible.”
And she wrote at once, begging her daughter to take good care of herself,
and to see as much of Mrs. Balaam as possible. “And of any other ladies
that are near you. For you seem to me to be in a community of roughs. I
wish you would give it all up. Did you expect me to laugh about the
babies?”
Mrs. Flynt, when this story was repeated to her (she had not been invited
in to hear the letter), remarked that she had always felt that Molly Wood
must be a little vulgar, ever since she began to go about giving music
lessons like any ordinary German.
But Mrs. Wood was considerably relieved when the next letter arrived. It
contained nothing horrible about barbecues or babies. It mentioned the
great beauty of the weather, and how well and strong the fine air was
making the writer feel. And it asked that books might be sent, many books
of all sorts, novels, poetry, all the good old books and any good new ones
that could be spared. Cheap editions, of course.
“Indeed she shall have them!” said Mrs. Wood. “How her mind must be
starving in that dreadful place!” The letter was not a long one, and,
besides the books, spoke of little else except the fine weather and the
chances for outdoor exercise that this gave. “You have no idea,” it said,
“how delightful it is to ride, especially on a spirited horse, which I can
do now quite well.”
“How nice that is!” said Mrs. Wood, putting down the letter. “I hope the
horse is not too spirited.”
“Who does she go riding with?” asked Mrs. Bell.
“She doesn’t say, Sarah. Why?”
“Nothing. She has a queer way of not mentioning things, now and then.”
“Sarah!” exclaimed Mrs. Wood, reproachfully. “Oh, well, mother, you know
just as well as I do that she can be very independent and unconventional.”
“Yes; but not in that way. She wouldn’t ride with poor Sam Bannett, and
after all he is a suitable person.”
Nevertheless, in her next letter, Mrs. Wood cautioned her daughter about
trusting herself with any one of whom Mrs. Balaam did not thoroughly
approve. The good lady could never grasp that Mrs. Balaam lived a long
day’s journey from Bear Creek, and that Molly saw her about once every
three months. “We have sent your books,” the mother wrote; “everybody has
contributed from their store,—Shakespeare, Tennyson, Browning,
Longfellow; and a number of novels by Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot,
Hawthorne, and lesser writers; some volumes of Emerson; and Jane Austen
complete, because you admire her so particularly.”
This consignment of literature reached Bear Creek about a week before
Christmas time.
By New Year’s Day, the Virginian had begun his education.
“Well, I have managed to get through ’em,” he said, as he entered Molly’s
cabin in February. And he laid two volumes upon her table.
“And what do you think of them?” she inquired.
“I think that I’ve cert’nly earned a good long ride to-day.”
“Georgie Taylor has sprained his ankle.”
“No, I don’t mean that kind of a ride. I’ve earned a ride with just us two
alone. I’ve read every word of both of ’em, yu’ know.”
“I’ll think about it. Did you like them?”
“No. Not much. If I’d knowed that one was a detective story, I’d have got
yu’ to try something else on me. Can you guess the murderer, or is the
author too smart for yu’? That’s all they amount to. Well, he was too
smart for me this time, but that didn’t distress me any. That other book
talks too much.”
Molly was scandalized, and she told him it was a great work.
“Oh, yes, yes. A fine book. But it will keep up its talkin’. Don’t let you
alone.”
“Didn’t you feel sorry for poor Maggie Tulliver?”
“Hmp. Yes. Sorry for her, and for Tawmmy, too. But the man did right to
drownd ’em both.”
“It wasn’t a man. A woman wrote that.”
“A woman did! Well, then, o’ course she talks too much.”
“I’ll not go riding with you!” shrieked Molly.
But she did. And he returned to Sunk Creek, not with a detective story,
but this time with a Russian novel.
It was almost April when he brought it back to her—and a heavy sleet
storm lost them their ride. So he spent his time indoors with her, not
speaking a syllable of love. When he came to take his departure, he asked
her for some other book by this same Russian. But she had no more.
“I wish you had,” he said. “I’ve never saw a book could tell the truth
like that one does.”
“Why, what do you like about it?” she exclaimed. To her it had been
distasteful.
“Everything,” he answered. “That young come-outer, and his fam’ly that
can’t understand him—for he is broad gauge, yu’ see, and they are
narro’ gauge.” The Virginian looked at Molly a moment almost shyly. “Do
you know,” he said, and a blush spread over his face, “I pretty near cried
when that young come-outer was dyin’, and said about himself, ‘I was a
giant.’ Life made him broad gauge, yu’ see, and then took his chance
away.”
Molly liked the Virginian for his blush. It made him very handsome. But
she thought that it came from his confession about “pretty near crying.”
The deeper cause she failed to divine,—that he, like the dying hero
in the novel, felt himself to be a giant whom life had made “broad gauge,”
and denied opportunity. Fecund nature begets and squanders thousands of
these rich seeds in the wilderness of life.
He took away with him a volume of Shakespeare. “I’ve saw good plays of
his,” he remarked.
Kind Mrs. Taylor in her cabin next door watched him ride off in the sleet,
bound for the lonely mountain trail.
“If that girl don’t get ready to take him pretty soon,” she observed to
her husband, “I’ll give her a piece of my mind.”
Taylor was astonished. “Is he thinking of her?” he inquired.
“Lord, Mr. Taylor, and why shouldn’t he?”
Mr. Taylor scratched his head and returned to his newspaper.
It was warm—warm and beautiful upon Bear Creek. Snow shone upon the
peaks of the Bow Leg range; lower on their slopes the pines were stirring
with a gentle song; and flowers bloomed across the wide plains at their
feet.
Molly and her Virginian sat at a certain spring where he had often ridden
with her. On this day he was bidding her farewell before undertaking the
most important trust which Judge Henry had as yet given him. For this
journey she had provided him with Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth.
Shakespeare he had returned to her. He had bought Shakespeare for himself.
“As soon as I got used to readin’ it,” he had told her, “I knowed for
certain that I liked readin’ for enjoyment.”
But it was not of books that he had spoken much to-day. He had not spoken
at all. He had bade her listen to the meadow-lark, when its song fell upon
the silence like beaded drops of music. He had showed her where a covey of
young willow-grouse were hiding as their horses passed. And then, without
warning, as they sat by the spring, he had spoken potently of his love.
She did not interrupt him. She waited until he was wholly finished.
“I am not the sort of wife you want,” she said, with an attempt of
airiness.
He answered roughly, “I am the judge of that.” And his roughness was a
pleasure to her, yet it made her afraid of herself. When he was absent
from her, and she could sit in her cabin and look at Grandmother Stark,
and read home letters, then in imagination she found it easy to play the
part which she had arranged to play regarding him—the part of the
guide, and superior, and indulgent companion. But when he was by her side,
that part became a difficult one. Her woman’s fortress was shaken by a
force unknown to her before. Sam Bannett did not have it in him to look as
this man could look, when the cold lustre of his eyes grew hot with
internal fire. What color they were baffled her still. “Can it possibly
change?” she wondered. It seemed to her that sometimes when she had been
looking from a rock straight down into clear sea water, this same color
had lurked in its depths. “Is it green, or is it gray?” she asked herself,
but did not turn just now to see. She kept her face toward the landscape.
“All men are born equal,” he now remarked slowly.
“Yes,” she quickly answered, with a combative flash. “Well?”
“Maybe that don’t include women?” he suggested.
“I think it does.”
“Do yu’ tell the kids so?”
“Of course I teach them what I believe!”
He pondered. “I used to have to learn about the Declaration of
Independence. I hated books and truck when I was a kid.”
“But you don’t any more.”
“No. I cert’nly don’t. But I used to get kep’ in at recess for bein’ so
dumb. I was most always at the tail end of the class. My brother, he’d be
head sometimes.”
“Little George Taylor is my prize scholar,” said Molly.
“Knows his tasks, does he?”
“Always. And Henry Dow comes next.”
“Who’s last?”
“Poor Bob Carmody. I spend more time on him than on all the rest put
together.”
“My!” said the Virginian. “Ain’t that strange!”
She looked at him, puzzled by his tone. “It’s not strange when you know
Bob,” she said.
“It’s very strange,” drawled the Virginian. “Knowin’ Bob don’t help it
any.”
“I don’t think that I understand you,” said Molly, sticky.
“Well, it is mighty confusin’. George Taylor, he’s your best scholar, and
poor Bob, he’s your worst, and there’s a lot in the middle—and you
tell me we’re all born equal!”
Molly could only sit giggling in this trap he had so ingeniously laid for
her.
“I’ll tell you what,” pursued the cow-puncher, with slow and growing
intensity, “equality is a great big bluff. It’s easy called.”
“I didn’t mean—” began Molly.
“Wait, and let me say what I mean.” He had made an imperious gesture with
his hand. “I know a man that mostly wins at cyards. I know a man that
mostly loses. He says it is his luck. All right. Call it his luck. I know
a man that works hard and he’s gettin’ rich, and I know another that works
hard and is gettin’ poor. He says it is his luck. All right. Call it his
luck. I look around and I see folks movin’ up or movin’ down, winners or
losers everywhere. All luck, of course. But since folks can be born that
different in their luck, where’s your equality? No, seh! call your failure
luck, or call it laziness, wander around the words, prospect all yu’ mind
to, and yu’ll come out the same old trail of inequality.” He paused a
moment and looked at her. “Some holds four aces,” he went on, “and some
holds nothin’, and some poor fello’ gets the aces and no show to play ’em;
but a man has got to prove himself my equal before I’ll believe him.”
Molly sat gazing at him, silent.
“I know what yu’ meant,” he told her now, “by sayin’ you’re not the wife
I’d want. But I am the kind that moves up. I am goin’ to be your best
scholar.” He turned toward her, and that fortress within her began to
shake.
“Don’t,” she murmured. “Don’t, please.”
“Don’t what?”
“Why—spoil this.”
“Spoil it?”
“These rides—I don’t love you—I can’t—but these rides
are—”
“What are they?”
“My greatest pleasure. There! And, please, I want them to go on so.”
“Go on so! I don’t reckon yu’ know what you’re sayin’. Yu’ might as well
ask fruit to stay green. If the way we are now can keep bein’ enough for
you, it can’t for me. A pleasure to you, is it? Well, to me it is—I
don’t know what to call it. I come to yu’ and I hate it, and I come again
and I hate it, and I ache and grieve all over when I go. No! You will have
to think of some other way than just invitin’ me to keep green.”
“If I am to see you—” began the girl.
“You’re not to see me. Not like this. I can stay away easier than what I
am doin’.”
“Will you do me a favor, a great one?” said she, now.
“Make it as impossible as you please!” he cried. He thought it was to be
some action.
“Go on coming. But don’t talk to me about—don’t talk in that way—if
you can help it.”
He laughed out, not permitting himself to swear.
“But,” she continued, “if you can’t help talking that way—sometimes—I
promise I will listen. That is the only promise I make.”
“That is a bargain,” he said.
Then he helped her mount her horse, restraining himself like a Spartan,
and they rode home to her cabin.
“You have made it pretty near impossible,” he said, as he took his leave.
“But you’ve been square to-day, and I’ll show you I can be square when I
come back. I’ll not do more than ask you if your mind’s the same. And now
I’ll not see you for quite a while. I am going a long way. But I’ll be
very busy. And bein’ busy always keeps me from grievin’ too much about
you.”
Strange is woman! She would rather have heard some other last remark than
this.
“Oh, very well!” she said. “I’ll not miss you either.”
He smiled at her. “I doubt if yu’ can help missin’ me,” he remarked. And
he was gone at once, galloping on his Monte horse.
Which of the two won a victory this day?
XIII. THE GAME AND THE NATION—ACT FIRST
There can be no doubt of this: All America is divided into two classes,—the
quality and the equality.
The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both
will be with us until our women bear nothing but kings.
It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans
acknowledged the ETERNAL INEQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished a
cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held up in
high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our
own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature.
Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty
to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave
freedom to true aristocracy, saying, “Let the best man win, whoever he
is.” Let the best man win! That is America’s word. That is true democracy.
And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If
anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight.
The above reflections occurred to me before reaching Billings, Montana,
some three weeks after I had unexpectedly met the Virginian at Omaha,
Nebraska. I had not known of that trust given to him by Judge Henry, which
was taking him East. I was looking to ride with him before long among the
clean hills of Sunk Creek. I supposed he was there. But I came upon him
one morning in Colonel Cyrus Jones’s eating palace.
Did you know the palace? It stood in Omaha, near the trains, and it was
ten years old (which is middle-aged in Omaha) when I first saw it. It was
a shell of wood, painted with golden emblems,—the steamboat, the
eagle, the Yosemite,—and a live bear ate gratuities at its entrance.
Weather permitting, it opened upon the world as a stage upon the audience.
You sat in Omaha’s whole sight and dined, while Omaha’s dust came and
settled upon the refreshments. It is gone the way of the Indian and the
buffalo, for the West is growing old. You should have seen the palace and
sat there. In front of you passed rainbows of men,—Chinese, Indian
chiefs, Africans, General Miles, younger sons, Austrian nobility, wide
females in pink. Our continent drained prismatically through Omaha once.
So I was passing that way also, walking for the sake of ventilation from a
sleeping-car toward a bath, when the language of Colonel Cyrus Jones came
out to me. The actual colonel I had never seen before. He stood at the
rear of his palace in gray flowery mustaches and a Confederate uniform,
telling the wishes of his guests to the cook through a hole. You always
bought meal tickets at once, else you became unwelcome. Guests here had
foibles at times, and a rapid exit was too easy. Therefore I bought a
ticket. It was spring and summer since I had heard anything like the
colonel. The Missouri had not yet flowed into New York dialect freely, and
his vocabulary met me like the breeze of the plains. So I went in to be
fanned by it, and there sat the Virginian at a table, alone.
His greeting was up to the code of indifference proper on the plains; but
he presently remarked, “I’m right glad to see somebody,” which was a good
deal to say. “Them that comes hyeh,” he observed next, “don’t eat. They
feed.” And he considered the guests with a sombre attention. “D’ yu’
reckon they find joyful digestion in this swallo’-an’-get-out trough?”
“What are you doing here, then?” said I.
“Oh, pshaw! When yu’ can’t have what you choose, yu’ just choose what you
have.” And he took the bill-of-fare. I began to know that he had something
on his mind, so I did not trouble him further.
Meanwhile he sat studying the bill-of-fare.
“Ever heard o’ them?” he inquired, shoving me the spotted document.
Most improbable dishes were there,—salmis, canapes, supremes,—all
perfectly spelt and absolutely transparent. It was the old trick of
copying some metropolitan menu to catch travellers of the third and last
dimension of innocence; and whenever this is done the food is of the third
and last dimension of awfulness, which the cow-puncher knew as well as
anybody.
“So they keep that up here still,” I said.
“But what about them?” he repeated. His finger was at a special item,
FROGS’ LEGS A LA DELMONICO. “Are they true anywheres?” he asked. And I
told him, certainly. I also explained to him about Delmonico of New York
and about Augustin of Philadelphia.
“There’s not a little bit o’ use in lyin’ to me this mawnin’,” he said,
with his engaging smile. “I ain’t goin’ to awdeh anything’s laigs.”
“Well, I’ll see how he gets out of it,” I said, remembering the odd Texas
legend. (The traveller read the bill-of-fare, you know, and called for a
vol-au-vent. And the proprietor looked at the traveller, and running a
pistol into his ear, observed, “You’ll take hash.”) I was thinking of this
and wondering what would happen to me. So I took the step.
“Wants frogs’ legs, does he?” shouted Colonel Cyrus Jones. He fixed his
eye upon me, and it narrowed to a slit. “Too many brain workers
breakfasting before yu’ came in, professor,” said he. “Missionary ate the
last leg off me just now. Brown the wheat!” he commanded, through the hole
to the cook, for some one had ordered hot cakes.
“I’ll have fried aiggs,” said the Virginian. “Cooked both sides.”
“White wings!” sang the colonel through the hole. “Let ’em fly up and
down.”
“Coffee an’ no milk,” said the Virginian.
“Draw one in the dark!” the colonel roared.
“And beefsteak, rare.”
“One slaughter in the pan, and let the blood drip!”
“I should like a glass of water, please,” said I. The colonel threw me a
look of pity.
“One Missouri and ice for the professor!” he said.
“That fello’s a right live man,” commented the Virginian. But he seemed
thoughtful. Presently he inquired, “Yu’ say he was a foreigner, an’
learned fancy cookin’ to New Yawk?”
That was this cow-puncher’s way. Scarcely ever would he let drop a thing
new to him until he had got from you your whole information about it. So I
told him the history of Lorenzo Delmonico and his pioneer work, as much as
I knew, and the Southerner listened intently.
“Mighty inter-estin’,” he said—“mighty. He could just take little
old o’rn’ry frawgs, and dandy ’em up to suit the bloods. Mighty
inter-estin’. I expaict, though, his cookin’ would give an outraiged
stomach to a plain-raised man.”
“If you want to follow it up,” said I, by way of a sudden experiment,
“Miss Molly Wood might have some book about French dishes.”
But the Virginian did not turn a hair. “I reckon she wouldn’t,” he
answered. “She was raised in Vermont. They don’t bother overly about their
eatin’ up in Vermont. Hyeh’s what Miss Wood recommended the las’ time I
was seein’ her,” the cow-puncher added, bringing Kenilworth from his
pocket. “Right fine story. That Queen Elizabeth must have cert’nly been a
competent woman.”
“She was,” said I. But talk came to an end here. A dusty crew, most
evidently from the plains, now entered and drifted to a table; and each
man of them gave the Virginian about a quarter of a slouchy nod. His
greeting to them was very serene. Only, Kenilworth went back into his
pocket, and he breakfasted in silence. Among those who had greeted him I
now recognized a face.
“Why, that’s the man you played cards with at Medicine Bow!” I said.
“Yes. Trampas. He’s got a job at the ranch now.” The Virginian said no
more, but went on with his breakfast.
His appearance was changed. Aged I would scarcely say, for this would seem
as if he did not look young. But I think that the boy was altogether gone
from his face—the boy whose freak with Steve had turned Medicine Bow
upside down, whose other freak with the babies had outraged Bear Creek,
the boy who had loved to jingle his spurs. But manhood had only trained,
not broken, his youth. It was all there, only obedient to the rein and
curb.
Presently we went together to the railway yard.
“The Judge is doing a right smart o’ business this year,” he began, very
casually indeed, so that I knew this was important. Besides bells and coal
smoke, the smell and crowded sounds of cattle rose in the air around us.
“Hyeh’s our first gather o’ beeves on the ranch,” continued the Virginian.
“The whole lot’s shipped through to Chicago in two sections over the
Burlington. The Judge is fighting the Elkhorn road.” We passed slowly
along the two trains,—twenty cars, each car packed with huddled,
round-eyed, gazing steers. He examined to see if any animals were down.
“They ain’t ate or drank anything to speak of,” he said, while the
terrified brutes stared at us through their slats. “Not since they struck
the railroad they’ve not drank. Yu’ might suppose they know somehow what
they’re travellin’ to Chicago for.” And casually, always casually, he told
me the rest. Judge Henry could not spare his foreman away from the second
gather of beeves. Therefore these two ten-car trains with their double
crew of cow-boys had been given to the Virginian’s charge. After Chicago,
he was to return by St. Paul over the Northern Pacific; for the Judge had
wished him to see certain of the road’s directors and explain to them
persuasively how good a thing it would be for them to allow especially
cheap rates to the Sunk Creek outfit henceforth. This was all the
Virginian told me; and it contained the whole matter, to be sure.
“So you’re acting foreman,” said I.
“Why, somebody has to have the say, I reckon.”
“And of course you hated the promotion?”
“I don’t know about promotion,” he replied. “The boys have been used to
seein’ me one of themselves. Why don’t you come along with us far as
Plattsmouth?” Thus he shifted the subject from himself, and called to my
notice the locomotives backing up to his cars, and reminded me that from
Plattsmouth I had the choice of two trains returning. But he could not
hide or belittle this confidence of his employer in him. It was the care
of several thousand perishable dollars and the control of men. It was a
compliment. There were more steers than men to be responsible for; but
none of the steers had been suddenly picked from the herd and set above
his fellows. Moreover, Chicago finished up the steers; but the new-made
deputy foreman had then to lead his six highly unoccupied brethren away
from towns, and back in peace to the ranch, or disappoint the Judge, who
needed their services. These things sometimes go wrong in a land where
they say you are all born equal; and that quarter of a nod in Colonel
Cyrus Jones’s eating palace held more equality than any whole nod you
could see. But the Virginian did not see it, there being a time for all
things.
We trundled down the flopping, heavy-eddied Missouri to Plattsmouth, and
there they backed us on to a siding, the Christian Endeavor being expected
to pass that way. And while the equality absorbed themselves in a deep but
harmless game of poker by the side of the railway line, the Virginian and
I sat on the top of a car, contemplating the sandy shallows of the Platte.
“I should think you’d take a hand,” said I.
“Poker? With them kittens?” One flash of the inner man lightened in his
eyes and died away, and he finished with his gentle drawl, “When I play, I
want it to be interestin’.” He took out Sir Walter’s Kenilworth once more,
and turned the volume over and over slowly, without opening it. You cannot
tell if in spirit he wandered on Bear Creek with the girl whose book it
was. The spirit will go one road, and the thought another, and the body
its own way sometimes. “Queen Elizabeth would have played a mighty pow’ful
game,” was his next remark.
“Poker?” said I.
“Yes, seh. Do you expaict Europe has got any queen equal to her at
present?”
I doubted it.
“Victoria’d get pretty nigh slain sliding chips out agaynst Elizabeth.
Only mos’ prob’ly Victoria she’d insist on a half-cent limit. You have
read this hyeh Kenilworth? Well, deal Elizabeth ace high, an’ she could
scare Robert Dudley with a full house plumb out o’ the bettin’.”
I said that I believed she unquestionably could.
“And,” said the Virginian, “if Essex’s play got next her too near, I
reckon she’d have stacked the cyards. Say, d’ yu’ remember Shakespeare’s
fat man?”
“Falstaff? Oh, yes, indeed.”
“Ain’t that grand? Why, he makes men talk the way they do in life. I
reckon he couldn’t get printed to-day. It’s a right down shame Shakespeare
couldn’t know about poker. He’d have had Falstaff playing all day at that
Tearsheet outfit. And the Prince would have beat him.”
“The Prince had the brains,” said I.
“Brains?”
“Well, didn’t he?”
“I neveh thought to notice. Like as not he did.”
“And Falstaff didn’t, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, seh! Falstaff could have played whist.”
“I suppose you know what you’re talking about; I don’t,” said I, for he
was drawling again.
The cow-puncher’s eye rested a moment amiably upon me. “You can play whist
with your brains,” he mused,—“brains and cyards. Now cyards are only
one o’ the manifestations of poker in this hyeh world. One o’ the shapes
yu fool with it in when the day’s work is oveh. If a man is built like
that Prince boy was built (and it’s away down deep beyond brains), he’ll
play winnin’ poker with whatever hand he’s holdin’ when the trouble
begins. Maybe it will be a mean, triflin’ army, or an empty six-shooter,
or a lame hawss, or maybe just nothin’ but his natural countenance. ‘Most
any old thing will do for a fello’ like that Prince boy to play poker
with.”
“Then I’d be grateful for your definition of poker,” said I.
Again the Virginian looked me over amiably. “You put up a mighty pretty
game o’ whist yourself,” he remarked. “Don’t that give you the contented
spirit?” And before I had any reply to this, the Christian Endeavor began
to come over the bridge. Three instalments crossed the Missouri from
Pacific Junction, bound for Pike’s Peak, every car swathed in bright
bunting, and at each window a Christian with a handkerchief, joyously
shrieking. Then the cattle trains got the open signal, and I jumped off.
“Tell the Judge the steers was all right this far,” said the Virginian.
That was the last of the deputy foreman for a while.
XIV. BETWEEN THE ACTS
My road to Sunk Creek lay in no straight line. By rail I diverged
northwest to Fort Meade, and thence, after some stay with the kind
military people, I made my way on a horse. Up here in the Black Hills it
sluiced rain most intolerably. The horse and I enjoyed the country and
ourselves but little; and when finally I changed from the saddle into a
stagecoach, I caught a thankful expression upon the animal’s face, and
returned the same.
“Six legs inside this jerky to-night?” said somebody, as I climbed the
wheel. “Well, we’ll give thanks for not havin’ eight,” he added
cheerfully. “Clamp your mind on to that, Shorty.” And he slapped the
shoulder of his neighbor. Naturally I took these two for old companions.
But we were all total strangers. They told me of the new gold excitement
at Rawhide, and supposed it would bring up the Northern Pacific; and when
I explained the millions owed to this road’s German bondholders, they were
of opinion that a German would strike it richer at Rawhide. We spoke of
all sorts of things, and in our silence I gloated on the autumn holiday
promised me by Judge Henry. His last letter had said that an outfit would
be starting for his ranch from Billings on the seventh, and he would have
a horse for me. This was the fifth. So we six legs in the jerky travelled
harmoniously on over the rain-gutted road, getting no deeper knowledge of
each other than what our outsides might imply.
Not that we concealed anything. The man who had slapped Shorty introduced
himself early. “Scipio le Moyne, from Gallipolice, Ohio,” he said. “The
eldest of us always gets called Scipio. It’s French. But us folks have
been white for a hundred years.” He was limber and light-muscled, and fell
skilfully about, evading bruises when the jerky reeled or rose on end. He
had a strange, long, jocular nose, very wary-looking, and a bleached blue
eye. Cattle was his business, as a rule, but of late he had been “looking
around some,” and Rawhide seemed much on his brain. Shorty struck me as
“looking around” also. He was quite short, indeed, and the jerky hurt him
almost every time. He was light-haired and mild. Think of a yellow dog
that is lost, and fancies each newcomer in sight is going to turn out his
master, and you will have Shorty.
It was the Northern Pacific that surprised us into intimacy. We were
nearing Medora. We had made a last arrangement of our legs. I lay
stretched in silence, placid in the knowledge it was soon to end. So I
drowsed. I felt something sudden, and, waking, saw Scipio passing through
the air. As Shorty next shot from the jerky, I beheld smoke and the
locomotive. The Northern Pacific had changed its schedule. A valise is a
poor companion for catching a train with. There was rutted sand and lumpy,
knee-high grease wood in our short cut. A piece of stray wire sprang from
some hole and hung caracoling about my ankle. Tin cans spun from my
stride. But we made a conspicuous race. Two of us waved hats, and there
was no moment that some one of us was not screeching. It meant twenty-four
hours to us.
Perhaps we failed to catch the train’s attention, though the theory seems
monstrous. As it moved off in our faces, smooth and easy and insulting,
Scipio dropped instantly to a walk, and we two others outstripped him and
came desperately to the empty track. There went the train. Even still its
puffs were the separated puffs of starting, that bitten-off, snorty kind,
and sweat and our true natures broke freely forth.
I kicked my valise, and then sat on it, dumb.
Shorty yielded himself up aloud. All his humble secrets came out of him.
He walked aimlessly round, lamenting. He had lost his job, and he
mentioned the ranch. He had played cards, and he mentioned the man. He had
sold his horse and saddle to catch a friend on this train, and he
mentioned what the friend had been going to do for him. He told a string
of griefs and names to the air, as if the air knew.
Meanwhile Scipio arrived with extreme leisure at the rails. He stuck his
hands into his pockets and his head out at the very small train. His
bleached blue eyes shut to slits as he watched the rear car in its
smoke-blur ooze away westward among the mounded bluffs. “Lucky it’s out of
range,” I thought. But now Scipio spoke to it.
“Why, you seem to think you’ve left me behind,” he began easily, in
fawning tones. “You’re too much of a kid to have such thoughts. Age some.”
His next remark grew less wheedling. “I wouldn’t be a bit proud to meet
yu’. Why, if I was seen travellin’ with yu’, I’d have to explain it to my
friends! Think you’ve got me left, do yu’? Just because yu’ ride through
this country on a rail, do yu’ claim yu’ can find your way around? I could
take yu’ out ten yards in the brush and lose yu’ in ten seconds, you
spangle-roofed hobo! Leave ME behind? you recent blanket-mortgage
yearlin’! You plush-lined, nickel-plated, whistlin’ wash room, d’ yu’
figure I can’t go east just as soon as west? Or I’ll stay right here if it
suits me, yu’ dude-inhabited hot-box! Why, yu’ coon-bossed face-towel—”
But from here he rose in flights of novelty that appalled and held me
spellbound, and which are not for me to say to you. Then he came down
easily again, and finished with expressions of sympathy for it because it
could never have known a mother.
“Do you expaict it could show a male parent offhand?” inquired a slow
voice behind us. I jumped round, and there was the Virginian.
“Male parent!” scoffed the prompt Scipio. “Ain’t you heard about THEM
yet?”
“Them? Was there two?”
“Two? The blamed thing was sired by a whole doggone Dutch syndicate.”
“Why, the piebald son of a gun!” responded the Virginian, sweetly. “I got
them steers through all right,” he added to me. “Sorry to see yu’ get so
out o’ breath afteh the train. Is your valise sufferin’ any?”
“Who’s he?” inquired Scipio, curiously, turning to me.
The Southerner sat with a newspaper on the rear platform of a caboose. The
caboose stood hitched behind a mile or so of freight train, and the train
was headed west. So here was the deputy foreman, his steers delivered in
Chicago, his men (I could hear them) safe in the caboose, his paper in his
lap, and his legs dangling at ease over the railing. He wore the look of a
man for whom things are going smooth. And for me the way to Billings was
smooth now, also.
“Who’s he?” Scipio repeated.
But from inside the caboose loud laughter and noise broke on us. Some one
was reciting “And it’s my night to howl.”
“We’ll all howl when we get to Rawhide,” said some other one; and they
howled now.
“These hyeh steam cyars,” said the Virginian to Scipio, “make a man’s
language mighty nigh as speedy as his travel.” Of Shorty he took no notice
whatever—no more than of the manifestations in the caboose.
“So yu’ heard me speakin’ to the express,” said Scipio. “Well, I guess,
sometimes I—See here,” he exclaimed, for the Virginian was gravely
considering him, “I may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You
didn’t catch ME squandering no speed. Soon as—”
“I noticed,” said the Virginian, “thinkin’ came quicker to yu’ than
runnin’.”
I was glad I was not Shorty, to have my measure taken merely by my way of
missing a train. And of course I was sorry that I had kicked my valise.
“Oh, I could tell yu’d been enjoyin’ us!” said Scipio. “Observin’ somebody
else’s scrape always kind o’ rests me too. Maybe you’re a philosopher, but
maybe there’s a pair of us drawd in this deal.”
Approval now grew plain upon the face of the Virginian. “By your laigs,”
said he, “you are used to the saddle.”
“I’d be called used to it, I expect.”
“By your hands,” said the Southerner, again, “you ain’t roped many steers
lately. Been cookin’ or something?”
“Say,” retorted Scipio, “tell my future some now. Draw a conclusion from
my mouth.”
“I’m right distressed,” answered the gentle Southerner, “we’ve not a drop
in the outfit.”
“Oh, drink with me uptown!” cried Scipio. “I’m pleased to death with yu’.”
The Virginian glanced where the saloons stood just behind the station, and
shook his head.
“Why, it ain’t a bit far to whiskey from here!” urged the other,
plaintively. “Step down, now. Scipio le Moyne’s my name. Yes, you’re
lookin’ for my brass ear-rings. But there ain’t no ear-rings on me. I’ve
been white for a hundred years. Step down. I’ve a forty-dollar thirst.”
“You’re certainly white,” began the Virginian. “But—”
Here the caboose resumed:
“I’m wild, and woolly, and full of peas;
I’m hard to curry above the knees;
I’m a she-wolf from Bitter Creek, and
It’s my night to ho-o-wl—”
And as they howled and stamped, the wheels of the caboose began to turn
gently and to murmur.
The Virginian rose suddenly. “Will yu’ save that thirst and take a
forty-dollar job?”
“Missin’ trains, profanity, or what?” said Scipio.
“I’ll tell yu’ soon as I’m sure.”
At this Scipio looked hard at the Virginian. “Why, you’re talkin’
business!” said he, and leaped on the caboose, where I was already. “I WAS
thinkin’ of Rawhide,” he added, “but I ain’t any more.”
“Well, good luck!” said Shorty, on the track behind us.
“Oh, say!” said Scipio, “he wanted to go on that train, just like me.”
“Get on,” called the Virginian. “But as to getting a job, he ain’t just
like you.” So Shorty came, like a lost dog when you whistle to him.
Our wheels clucked over the main-line switch. A train-hand threw it shut
after us, jumped aboard, and returned forward over the roofs. Inside the
caboose they had reached the third howling of the she-wolf.
“Friends of yourn?” said Scipio.
“My outfit,” drawled the Virginian.
“Do yu’ always travel outside?” inquired Scipio.
“It’s lonesome in there,” returned the deputy foreman. And here one of
them came out, slamming the door.
“Hell!” he said, at sight of the distant town. Then, truculently, to the
Virginian, “I told you I was going to get a bottle here.”
“Have your bottle, then,” said the deputy foreman, and kicked him off into
Dakota. (It was not North Dakota yet; they had not divided it.) The
Virginian had aimed his pistol at about the same time with his boot.
Therefore the man sat in Dakota quietly, watching us go away into Montana,
and offering no objections. Just before he became too small to make out,
we saw him rise and remove himself back toward the saloons.
XV. THE GAME AND THE NATION—ACT SECOND
“That is the only step I have had to take this whole trip,” said the
Virginian. He holstered his pistol with a jerk. “I have been fearing he
would force it on me.” And he looked at empty, receding Dakota with
disgust. “So nyeh back home!” he muttered.
“Known your friend long?” whispered Scipio to me.
“Fairly,” I answered.
Scipio’s bleached eyes brightened with admiration as he considered the
Southerner’s back. “Well,” he stated judicially, “start awful early when
yu’ go to fool with him, or he’ll make you feel unpunctual.”
“I expaict I’ve had them almost all of three thousand miles,” said the
Virginian, tilting his head toward the noise in the caboose. “And I’ve
strove to deliver them back as I received them. The whole lot. And I would
have. But he has spoiled my hopes.” The deputy foreman looked again at
Dakota. “It’s a disappointment,” he added. “You may know what I mean.”
I had known a little, but not to the very deep, of the man’s pride and
purpose in this trust. Scipio gave him sympathy. “There must be quite a
balance of ’em left with yu’ yet,” said Scipio, cheeringly.
“I had the boys plumb contented,” pursued the deputy foreman, hurt into
open talk of himself. “Away along as far as Saynt Paul I had them
reconciled to my authority. Then this news about gold had to strike us.”
“And they’re a-dreamin’ nuggets and Parisian bowleyvards,” suggested
Scipio.
The Virginian smiled gratefully at him.
“Fortune is shinin’ bright and blindin’ to their delicate young eyes,” he
said, regaining his usual self.
We all listened a moment to the rejoicings within.
“Energetic, ain’t they?” said the Southerner. “But none of ’em was whelped
savage enough to sing himself bloodthirsty. And though they’re strainin’
mighty earnest not to be tame, they’re goin’ back to Sunk Creek with me
accordin’ to the Judge’s awders. Never a calf of them will desert to
Rawhide, for all their dangerousness; nor I ain’t goin’ to have any fuss
over it. Only one is left now that don’t sing. Maybe I will have to make
some arrangements about him. The man I have parted with,” he said, with
another glance at Dakota, “was our cook, and I will ask yu’ to replace
him, Colonel.”
Scipio gaped wide. “Colonel! Say!” He stared at the Virginian. “Did I meet
yu’ at the palace?”
“Not exackly meet,” replied the Southerner. “I was present one mawnin’
las’ month when this gentleman awdehed frawgs’ laigs.”
“Sakes and saints, but that was a mean position!” burst out Scipio. “I had
to tell all comers anything all day. Stand up and jump language hot off my
brain at ’em. And the pay don’t near compensate for the drain on the
system. I don’t care how good a man is, you let him keep a-tappin’ his
presence of mind right along, without takin’ a lay-off, and you’ll have
him sick. Yes, sir. You’ll hit his nerves. So I told them they could hire
some fresh man, for I was goin’ back to punch cattle or fight Indians, or
take a rest somehow, for I didn’t propose to get jaded, and me only
twenty-five years old. There ain’t no regular Colonel Cyrus Jones any
more, yu’ know. He met a Cheyenne telegraph pole in seventy-four, and was
buried. But his palace was doin’ big business, and he had been a kind of
attraction, and so they always keep a live bear outside, and some poor
fello’, fixed up like the Colonel used to be, inside. And it’s a turruble
mean position. Course I’ll cook for yu’. Yu’ve a dandy memory for faces!”
“I wasn’t right convinced till I kicked him off and you gave that shut to
your eyes again,” said the Virginian.
Once more the door opened. A man with slim black eyebrows, slim black
mustache, and a black shirt tied with a white handkerchief was looking
steadily from one to the other of us.
“Good day!” he remarked generally and without enthusiasm; and to the
Virginian, “Where’s Schoffner?”
“I expaict he’ll have got his bottle by now, Trampas.”
Trampas looked from one to the other of us again. “Didn’t he say he was
coming back?”
“He reminded me he was going for a bottle, and afteh that he didn’t wait
to say a thing.”
Trampas looked at the platform and the railing and the steps. “He told me
he was coming back,” he insisted.
“I don’t reckon he has come, not without he clumb up ahaid somewhere. An’
I mus’ say, when he got off he didn’t look like a man does when he has the
intention o’ returnin’.”
At this Scipio coughed, and pared his nails attentively. We had already
been avoiding each other’s eye. Shorty did not count. Since he got aboard,
his meek seat had been the bottom step.
The thoughts of Trampas seemed to be in difficulty. “How long’s this train
been started?” he demanded.
“This hyeh train?” The Virginian consulted his watch. “Why, it’s been
fanning it a right smart little while,” said he, laying no stress upon his
indolent syllables.
“Huh!” went Trampas. He gave the rest of us a final unlovely scrutiny. “It
seems to have become a passenger train,” he said. And he returned abruptly
inside the caboose.
“Is he the member who don’t sing?” asked Scipio.
“That’s the specimen,” replied the Southerner.
“He don’t seem musical in the face,” said Scipio.
“Pshaw!” returned the Virginian. “Why, you surely ain’t the man to mind
ugly mugs when they’re hollow!”
The noise inside had dropped quickly to stillness. You could scarcely
catch the sound of talk. Our caboose was clicking comfortably westward,
rail after rail, mile upon mile, while night was beginning to rise from
earth into the clouded sky.
“I wonder if they have sent a search party forward to hunt Schoffner?”
said the Virginian. “I think I’ll maybe join their meeting.” He opened the
door upon them. “Kind o’ dark hyeh, ain’t it?” said he. And lighting the
lantern, he shut us out.
“What do yu’ think?” said Scipio to me. “Will he take them to Sunk Creek?”
“He evidently thinks he will,” said I. “He says he will, and he has the
courage of his convictions.”
“That ain’t near enough courage to have!” Scipio exclaimed. “There’s times
in life when a man has got to have courage WITHOUT convictions—WITHOUT
them—or he is no good. Now your friend is that deep constitooted
that you don’t know and I don’t know what he’s thinkin’ about all this.”
“If there’s to be any gun-play,” put in the excellent Shorty, “I’ll stand
in with him.”
“Ah, go to bed with your gun-play!” retorted Scipio, entirely
good-humored. “Is the Judge paying for a carload of dead punchers to
gather his beef for him? And this ain’t a proposition worth a man’s
gettin’ hurt for himself, anyway.”
“That’s so,” Shorty assented.
“No,” speculated Scipio, as the night drew deeper round us and the caboose
click-clucked and click-clucked over the rail joints; “he’s waitin’ for
somebody else to open this pot. I’ll bet he don’t know but one thing now,
and that’s that nobody else shall know he don’t know anything.”
Scipio had delivered himself. He lighted a cigarette, and no more wisdom
came from him. The night was established. The rolling bad-lands sank away
in it. A train-hand had arrived over the roof, and hanging the red lights
out behind, left us again without remark or symptom of curiosity. The
train-hands seemed interested in their own society and lived in their own
caboose. A chill wind with wet in it came blowing from the invisible
draws, and brought the feel of the distant mountains.
“That’s Montana!” said Scipio, snuffing. “I am glad to have it inside my
lungs again.”
“Ain’t yu’ getting cool out there?” said the Virginian’s voice. “Plenty
room inside.”
Perhaps he had expected us to follow him; or perhaps he had meant us to
delay long enough not to seem like a reenforcement. “These gentlemen
missed the express at Medora,” he observed to his men, simply.
What they took us for upon our entrance I cannot say, or what they
believed. The atmosphere of the caboose was charged with voiceless
currents of thought. By way of a friendly beginning to the three hundred
miles of caboose we were now to share so intimately, I recalled myself to
them. I trusted no more of the Christian Endeavor had delayed them. “I am
so lucky to have caught you again,” I finished. “I was afraid my last
chance of reaching the Judge’s had gone.”
Thus I said a number of things designed to be agreeable, but they met my
small talk with the smallest talk you can have. “Yes,” for instance, and
“Pretty well, I guess,” and grave strikings of matches and thoughtful
looks at the floor. I suppose we had made twenty miles to the
imperturbable clicking of the caboose when one at length asked his
neighbor had he ever seen New York.
“No,” said the other. “Flooded with dudes, ain’t it?”
“Swimmin’,” said the first.
“Leakin’, too,” said a third.
“Well, my gracious!” said a fourth, and beat his knee in private delight.
None of them ever looked at me. For some reason I felt exceedingly ill at
ease.
“Good clothes in New York,” said the third.
“Rich food,” said the first.
“Fresh eggs, too,” said the third.
“Well, my gracious!” said the fourth, beating his knee.
“Why, yes,” observed the Virginian, unexpectedly; “they tell me that aiggs
there ain’t liable to be so rotten as yu’ll strike ’em in this country.”
None of them had a reply for this, and New York was abandoned. For some
reason I felt much better.
It was a new line they adopted next, led off by Trampas.
“Going to the excitement?” he inquired, selecting Shorty.
“Excitement?” said Shorty, looking up.
“Going to Rawhide?” Trampas repeated. And all watched Shorty.
“Why, I’m all adrift missin’ that express,” said Shorty.
“Maybe I can give you employment,” suggested the Virginian. “I am taking
an outfit across the basin.”
“You’ll find most folks going to Rawhide, if you’re looking for company,”
pursued Trampas, fishing for a recruit.
“How about Rawhide, anyway?” said Scipio, skillfully deflecting this
missionary work. “Are they taking much mineral out? Have yu’ seen any of
the rock?”
“Rock?” broke in the enthusiast who had beaten his knee. “There!” And he
brought some from his pocket.
“You’re always showing your rock,” said Trampas, sulkily; for Scipio now
held the conversation, and Shorty returned safely to his dozing.
“H’m!” went Scipio at the rock. He turned it back and forth in his hand,
looking it over; he chucked and caught it slightingly in the air, and
handed it back. “Porphyry, I see.” That was his only word about it. He
said it cheerily. He left no room for discussion. You could not damn a
thing worse. “Ever been in Santa Rita?” pursued Scipio, while the
enthusiast slowly pushed his rock back into his pocket. “That’s down in
New Mexico. Ever been to Globe, Arizona?” And Scipio talked away about the
mines he had known. There was no getting at Shorty any more that evening.
Trampas was foiled of his fish, or of learning how the fish’s heart lay.
And by morning Shorty had been carefully instructed to change his mind
about once an hour. This is apt to discourage all but very superior
missionaries. And I too escaped for the rest of this night. At Glendive we
had a dim supper, and I bought some blankets; and after that it was late,
and sleep occupied the attention of us all.
We lay along the shelves of the caboose, a peaceful sight I should think,
in that smoothly trundling cradle. I slept almost immediately, so tired
that not even our stops or anything else waked me, save once, when the air
I was breathing grew suddenly pure, and I roused. Sitting in the door was
the lonely figure of the Virginian. He leaned in silent contemplation of
the occasional moon, and beneath it the Yellowstone’s swift ripples. On
the caboose shelves the others slept sound and still, each stretched or
coiled as he had first put himself. They were not untrustworthy to look
at, it seemed to me—except Trampas. You would have said the rest of
that young humanity was average rough male blood, merely needing to be
told the proper things at the right time; and one big bunchy stocking of
the enthusiast stuck out of his blanket, solemn and innocent, and I
laughed at it. There was a light sound by the door, and I found the
Virginian’s eye on me. Finding who it was, he nodded and motioned with his
hand to go to sleep. And this I did with him in my sight, still leaning in
the open door, through which came the interrupted moon and the swimming
reaches of the Yellowstone.
XVI. THE GAME AND THE NATION—LAST ACT
It has happened to you, has it not, to wake in the morning and wonder for
a while where on earth you are? Thus I came half to life in the caboose,
hearing voices, but not the actual words at first.
But presently, “Hathaway!” said some one more clearly. “Portland 1291!”
This made no special stir in my intelligence, and I drowsed off again to
the pleasant rhythm of the wheels. The little shock of stopping next
brought me to, somewhat, with the voices still round me; and when we were
again in motion, I heard: “Rosebud! Portland 1279!” These figures jarred
me awake, and I said, “It was 1291 before,” and sat up in my blankets.
The greeting they vouchsafed and the sight of them clustering
expressionless in the caboose brought last evening’s uncomfortable memory
back to me. Our next stop revealed how things were going to-day.
“Forsythe,” one of them read on the station. “Portland 1266.”
They were counting the lessening distance westward. This was the
undercurrent of war. It broke on me as I procured fresh water at Forsythe
and made some toilet in their stolid presence. We were drawing nearer the
Rawhide station—the point, I mean, where you left the railway for
the new mines. Now Rawhide station lay this side of Billings. The broad
path of desertion would open ready for their feet when the narrow path to
duty and Sunk Creek was still some fifty miles more to wait. Here was
Trampas’s great strength; he need make no move meanwhile, but lie low for
the immediate temptation to front and waylay them and win his battle over
the deputy foreman. But the Virginian seemed to find nothing save
enjoyment in this sunny September morning, and ate his breakfast at
Forsythe serenely.
That meal done and that station gone, our caboose took up again its easy
trundle by the banks of the Yellowstone. The mutineers sat for a while
digesting in idleness.
“What’s your scar?” inquired one at length inspecting casually the neck of
his neighbor.
“Foolishness,” the other answered.
“Yourn?”
“Mine.”
“Well, I don’t know but I prefer to have myself to thank for a thing,”
said the first.
“I was displaying myself,” continued the second. “One day last summer it
was. We come on a big snake by Torrey Creek corral. The boys got betting
pretty lively that I dassent make my word good as to dealing with him, so
I loped my cayuse full tilt by Mr. Snake, and swung down and catched him
up by the tail from the ground, and cracked him same as a whip, and
snapped his head off. You’ve saw it done?” he said to the audience.
The audience nodded wearily.
“But the loose head flew agin me, and the fangs caught. I was pretty sick
for a while.”
“It don’t pay to be clumsy,” said the first man. “If you’d snapped the
snake away from yu’ instead of toward yu’, its head would have whirled off
into the brush, same as they do with me.”
“How like a knife-cut your scar looks!” said I.
“Don’t it?” said the snake-snapper. “There’s many that gets fooled by it.”
“An antelope knows a snake is his enemy,” said another to me. “Ever seen a
buck circling round and round a rattler?”
“I have always wanted to see that,” said I, heartily. For this I knew to
be a respectable piece of truth.
“It’s worth seeing,” the man went on. “After the buck gets close in, he
gives an almighty jump up in the air, and down comes his four hoofs in a
bunch right on top of Mr. Snake. Cuts him all to hash. Now you tell me how
the buck knows that.”
Of course I could not tell him. And again we sat in silence for a while—friendlier
silence, I thought.
“A skunk’ll kill yu’ worse than a snake bite,” said another, presently.
“No, I don’t mean that way,” he added. For I had smiled. “There is a brown
skunk down in Arkansaw. Kind of prairie-dog brown. Littler than our
variety, he is. And he is mad the whole year round, same as a dog gets.
Only the dog has a spell and dies but this here Arkansaw skunk is mad
right along, and it don’t seem to interfere with his business in other
respects. Well, suppose you’re camping out, and suppose it’s a hot night,
or you’re in a hurry, and you’ve made camp late, or anyway you haven’t got
inside any tent, but you have just bedded down in the open. Skunk comes
travelling along and walks on your blankets. You’re warm. He likes that,
same as a cat does. And he tramps with pleasure and comfort, same as a
cat. And you move. You get bit, that’s all. And you die of hydrophobia.
Ask anybody.”
“Most extraordinary!” said I. “But did you ever see a person die from
this?”
“No, sir. Never happened to. My cousin at Bald Knob did.”
“Died?”
“No, sir. Saw a man.”
“But how do you know they’re not sick skunks?”
“No, sir! They’re well skunks. Well as anything. You’ll not meet skunks in
any state of the Union more robust than them in Arkansaw. And thick.”
“That’s awful true,” sighed another. “I have buried hundreds of dollars’
worth of clothes in Arkansaw.”
“Why didn’t yu’ travel in a sponge bag?” inquired Scipio. And this brought
a slight silence.
“Speakin’ of bites,” spoke up a new man, “how’s that?” He held up his
thumb.
“My!” breathed Scipio. “Must have been a lion.”
The man wore a wounded look. “I was huntin’ owl eggs for a botanist from
Boston,” he explained to me.
“Chiropodist, weren’t he?” said Scipio. “Or maybe a sonnabulator?”
“No, honest,” protested the man with the thumb; so that I was sorry for
him, and begged him to go on.
“I’ll listen to you,” I assured him. And I wondered why this politeness of
mine should throw one or two of them into stifled mirth. Scipio, on the
other hand, gave me a disgusted look and sat back sullenly for a moment,
and then took himself out on the platform, where the Virginian was
lounging.
“The young feller wore knee-pants and ever so thick spectacles with a
half-moon cut in ’em,” resumed the narrator, “and he carried a tin box
strung to a strap I took for his lunch till it flew open on him and a horn
toad hustled out. Then I was sure he was a botanist—or whatever yu’
say they’re called. Well, he would have owl eggs—them little
prairie-owl that some claim can turn their head clean around and keep
a-watchin’ yu’, only that’s nonsense. We was ridin’ through that
prairie-dog town, used to be on the flat just after yu’ crossed the south
fork of Powder River on the Buffalo trail, and I said I’d dig an owl nest
out for him if he was willing to camp till I’d dug it. I wanted to know
about them owls some myself—if they did live with the dogs and
snakes, yu’ know,” he broke off, appealing to me.
“Oh, yes,” I told him eagerly.
“So while the botanist went glarin’ around the town with his glasses to
see if he could spot a prairie-dog and an owl usin’ the same hole, I was
diggin’ in a hole I’d seen an owl run down. And that’s what I got.” He
held up his thumb again.
“The snake!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Rattler was keepin’ house that day. Took me right there. I
hauled him out of the hole hangin’ to me. Eight rattles.”
“Eight!” said I. “A big one.”
“Yes, sir. Thought I was dead. But the woman—”
“The woman?” said I.
“Yes, woman. Didn’t I tell yu’ the botanist had his wife along? Well, he
did. And she acted better than the man, for he was losin’ his head, and
shoutin’ he had no whiskey, and he didn’t guess his knife was sharp enough
to amputate my thumb, and none of us chewed, and the doctor was twenty
miles away, and if he had only remembered to bring his ammonia—well,
he was screeching out ‘most everything he knew in the world, and without
arranging it any, neither. But she just clawed his pocket and burrowed and
kep’ yelling, ‘Give him the stone, Augustus!’ And she whipped out one of
them Injun medicine-stones,—first one I ever seen,—and she
clapped it on to my thumb, and it started in right away.”
“What did it do?” said I.
“Sucked. Like blotting-paper does. Soft and funny it was, and gray. They
get ’em from elks’ stomachs, yu’ know. And when it had sucked the poison
out of the wound, off it falls of my thumb by itself! And I thanked the
woman for saving my life that capable and keeping her head that cool. I
never knowed how excited she had been till afterward. She was awful
shocked.”
“I suppose she started to talk when the danger was over,” said I, with
deep silence around me.
“No; she didn’t say nothing to me. But when her next child was born, it
had eight rattles.”
Din now rose wild in the caboose. They rocked together. The enthusiast
beat his knee tumultuously. And I joined them. Who could help it? It had
been so well conducted from the imperceptible beginning. Fact and
falsehood blended with such perfect art. And this last, an effect so new
made with such world-old material! I cared nothing that I was the victim,
and I joined them; but ceased, feeling suddenly somehow estranged or
chilled. It was in their laughter. The loudness was too loud. And I caught
the eyes of Trampas fixed upon the Virginian with exultant malevolence.
Scipio’s disgusted glance was upon me from the door.
Dazed by these signs, I went out on the platform to get away from the
noise. There the Virginian said to me: “Cheer up! You’ll not be so easy
for ’em that-a-way next season.”
He said no more; and with his legs dangled over the railing, appeared to
resume his newspaper.
“What’s the matter?” said I to Scipio.
“Oh, I don’t mind if he don’t,” Scipio answered. “Couldn’t yu’ see? I
tried to head ’em off from yu’ all I knew, but yu’ just ran in among ’em
yourself. Couldn’t yu’ see? Kep’ hinderin’ and spoilin’ me with askin’
those urgent questions of yourn—why, I had to let yu’ go your way!
Why, that wasn’t the ordinary play with the ordinary tenderfoot they
treated you to! You ain’t a common tenderfoot this trip. You’re the
foreman’s friend. They’ve hit him through you. That’s the way they count
it. It’s made them encouraged. Can’t yu’ see?”
Scipio stated it plainly. And as we ran by the next station, “Howard!”
they harshly yelled. “Portland 1256!”
We had been passing gangs of workmen on the track. And at that last yell
the Virginian rose. “I reckon I’ll join the meeting again,” he said. “This
filling and repairing looks like the washout might have been true.”
“Washout?” said Scipio.
“Big Horn bridge, they say—four days ago.”
“Then I wish it came this side Rawhide station.”
“Do yu’?” drawled the Virginian. And smiling at Scipio, he lounged in
through the open door.
“He beats me,” said Scipio, shaking his head. “His trail is turruble hard
to anticipate.”
We listened.
“Work bein’ done on the road, I see,” the Virginian was saying, very
friendly and conversational.
“We see it too,” said the voice of Trampas.
“Seem to be easin’ their grades some.”
“Roads do.”
“Cheaper to build ’em the way they want ’em at the start, a man would
think,” suggested the Virginian, most friendly. “There go some more
I-talians.”
“They’re Chinese,” said Trampas.
“That’s so,” acknowledged the Virginian, with a laugh.
“What’s he monkeyin’ at now?” muttered Scipio.
“Without cheap foreigners they couldn’t afford all this hyeh new gradin’,”
the Southerner continued.
“Grading! Can’t you tell when a flood’s been eating the banks?”
“Why, yes,” said the Virginian, sweet as honey. “But ‘ain’t yu’ heard of
the improvements west of Big Timber, all the way to Missoula, this season?
I’m talkin’ about them.”
“Oh! Talking about them. Yes, I’ve heard.”
“Good money-savin’ scheme, ain’t it?” said the Virginian. “Lettin’ a
freight run down one hill an’ up the next as far as she’ll go without
steam, an’ shavin’ the hill down to that point.” Now this was an honest
engineering fact. “Better’n settin’ dudes squintin’ through telescopes and
cypherin’ over one per cent reductions,” the Southerner commented.
“It’s common sense,” assented Trampas. “Have you heard the new scheme
about the water-tanks?”
“I ain’t right certain,” said the Southerner.
“I must watch this,” said Scipio, “or I shall bust.” He went in, and so
did I.
They were all sitting over this discussion of the Northern Pacific’s
recent policy as to betterments, as though they were the board of
directors. Pins could have dropped. Only nobody would have cared to hear a
pin.
“They used to put all their tanks at the bottom of their grades,” said
Trampas.
“Why, yu’ get the water easier at the bottom.”
“You can pump it to the top, though,” said Trampas, growing superior. “And
it’s cheaper.”
“That gets me,” said the Virginian, interested.
“Trains after watering can start down hill now and get the benefit of the
gravity. It’ll cut down operating expenses a heap.”
“That’s cert’nly common sense!” exclaimed the Virginian, absorbed. “But
ain’t it kind o’ tardy?”
“Live and learn. So they gained speed, too. High speed on half the coal
this season, until the accident.”
“Accident!” said the Virginian, instantly.
“Yellowstone Limited. Man fired at engine driver. Train was flying past
that quick the bullet broke every window and killed a passenger on the
back platform. You’ve been running too much with aristocrats,” finished
Trampas, and turned on his heel.
“Haw, hew!” began the enthusiast, but his neighbor gripped him to silence.
This was a triumph too serious for noise. Not a mutineer moved; and I felt
cold.
“Trampas,” said the Virginian, “I thought yu’d be afeared to try it on
me.”
Trampas whirled round. His hand was at his belt. “Afraid!” he sneered.
“Shorty!” said Scipio, sternly, and leaping upon that youth, took his
half-drawn pistol from him.
“I’m obliged to yu’,” said the Virginian to Scipio. Trampas’s hand left
his belt. He threw a slight, easy look at his men, and keeping his back to
the Virginian, walked out on the platform and sat on the chair where the
Virginian had sat so much.
“Don’t you comprehend,” said the Virginian to Shorty, amiably, “that this
hyeh question has been discussed peaceable by civilized citizens? Now you
sit down and be good, and Mr. Le Moyne will return your gun when we’re
across that broken bridge, if they have got it fixed for heavy trains
yet.”
“This train will be lighter when it gets to that bridge,” spoke Trampas,
out on his chair.
“Why, that’s true, too!” said the Virginian. “Maybe none of us are
crossin’ that Big Horn bridge now, except me. Funny if yu’ should end by
persuadin’ me to quit and go to Rawhide myself! But I reckon I’ll not. I
reckon I’ll worry along to Sunk Creek, somehow.”
“Don’t forget I’m cookin’ for yu’,” said Scipio, gruffy.
“I’m obliged to yu’,” said the Southerner.
“You were speaking of a job for me,” said Shorty.
“I’m right obliged. But yu’ see—I ain’t exackly foreman the way this
comes out, and my promises might not bind Judge Henry to pay salaries.”
A push came through the train from forward. We were slowing for the
Rawhide station, and all began to be busy and to talk. “Going up to the
mines to-day?” “Oh, let’s grub first.” “Guess it’s too late, anyway.” And
so forth; while they rolled and roped their bedding, and put on their
coats with a good deal of elbow motion, and otherwise showed off. It was
wasted. The Virginian did not know what was going on in the caboose. He
was leaning and looking out ahead, and Scipio’s puzzled eye never left
him. And as we halted for the water-tank, the Southerner exclaimed, “They
‘ain’t got away yet!” as if it were good news to him.
He meant the delayed trains. Four stalled expresses were in front of us,
besides several freights. And two hours more at least before the bridge
would be ready.
Travellers stood and sat about forlorn, near the cars, out in the
sage-brush, anywhere. People in hats and spurs watched them, and Indian
chiefs offered them painted bows and arrows and shiny horns.
“I reckon them passengers would prefer a laig o’ mutton,” said the
Virginian to a man loafing near the caboose.
“Bet your life!” said the man. “First lot has been stuck here four days.”
“Plumb starved, ain’t they?” inquired the Virginian.
“Bet your life! They’ve eat up their dining cars and they’ve eat up this
town.”
“Well,” said the Virginian, looking at the town, “I expaict the
dining-cyars contained more nourishment.”
“Say, you’re about right there!” said the man. He walked beside the
caboose as we puffed slowly forward from the water-tank to our siding.
“Fine business here if we’d only been ready,” he continued. “And the Crow
agent has let his Indians come over from the reservation. There has been a
little beef brought in, and game, and fish. And big money in it, bet your
life! Them Eastern passengers has just been robbed. I wisht I had
somethin’ to sell!”
“Anything starting for Rawhide this afternoon?” said Trampas, out of the
caboose door.
“Not until morning,” said the man. “You going to the mines?” he resumed to
the Virginian.
“Why,” answered the Southerner, slowly and casually, and addressing
himself strictly to the man, while Trampas, on his side, paid obvious
inattention, “this hyeh delay, yu’ see, may unsettle our plans some. But
it’ll be one of two ways,—we’re all goin’ to Rawhide, or we’re all
goin’ to Billings. We’re all one party, yu’ see.”
Trampas laughed audibly inside the door as he rejoined his men. “Let him
keep up appearances,” I heard him tell them. “It don’t hurt us what he
says to strangers.”
“But I’m goin’ to eat hearty either way,” continued the Virginian. “And I
ain’ goin’ to be robbed. I’ve been kind o’ promisin’ myself a treat if we
stopped hyeh.”
“Town’s eat clean out,” said the man.
“So yu’ tell me. But all you folks has forgot one source of revenue that
yu’ have right close by, mighty handy. If you have got a gunny sack, I’ll
show you how to make some money.”
“Bet your life!” said the man.
“Mr. Le Moyne,” said the Virginian, “the outfit’s cookin’ stuff is aboard,
and if you’ll get the fire ready, we’ll try how frawgs’ laigs go fried.”
He walked off at once, the man following like a dog. Inside the caboose
rose a gust of laughter.
“Frogs!” muttered Scipio. And then turning a blank face to me, “Frogs?”
“Colonel Cyrus Jones had them on his bill of fare,” I said. “’FROGS’ LEGS
A LA DELMONICO.’”
“Shoo! I didn’t get up that thing. They had it when I came. Never looked
at it. Frogs?” He went down the steps very slowly, with a long frown.
Reaching the ground, he shook his head. “That man’s trail is surely hard
to anticipate,” he said. “But I must hurry up that fire. For his
appearance has given me encouragement,” Scipio concluded, and became
brisk. Shorty helped him, and I brought wood. Trampas and the other people
strolled off to the station, a compact band.
Our little fire was built beside the caboose, so the cooking things might
be easily reached and put back. You would scarcely think such operations
held any interest, even for the hungry, when there seemed to be nothing to
cook. A few sticks blazing tamely in the dust, a frying-pan, half a tin
bucket of lard, some water, and barren plates and knives and forks, and
three silent men attending to them—that was all. But the travellers
came to see. These waifs drew near us, and stood, a sad, lone, shifting
fringe of audience; four to begin with; and then two wandered away; and
presently one of these came back, finding it worse elsewhere. “Supper,
boys?” said he. “Breakfast,” said Scipio, crossly. And no more of them
addressed us. I heard them joylessly mention Wall Street to each other,
and Saratoga; I even heard the name Bryn Mawr, which is near Philadelphia.
But these fragments of home dropped in the wilderness here in Montana
beside a freight caboose were of no interest to me now.
“Looks like frogs down there, too,” said Scipio. “See them marshy sloos
full of weeds?” We took a little turn and had a sight of the Virginian
quite active among the ponds. “Hush! I’m getting some thoughts,” continued
Scipio. “He wasn’t sorry enough. Don’t interrupt me.”
“I’m not,” said I.
“No. But I’d ‘most caught a-hold.” And Scipio muttered to himself again,
“He wasn’t sorry enough.” Presently he swore loud and brilliantly. “Tell
yu’!” he cried. “What did he say to Trampas after that play they exchanged
over railroad improvements and Trampas put the josh on him? Didn’t he say,
‘Trampas, I thought you’d be afraid to do it?’ Well, sir, Trampas had
better have been afraid. And that’s what he meant. There’s where he was
bringin’ it to. Trampas made an awful bad play then. You wait. Glory, but
he’s a knowin’ man! Course he wasn’t sorry. I guess he had the hardest
kind of work to look as sorry as he did. You wait.”
“Wait? What for? Go on, man! What for?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! Whatever hand he’s been holdin’ up, this is
the show-down. He’s played for a show-down here before the caboose gets
off the bridge. Come back to the fire, or Shorty’ll be leavin’ it go out.
Grow happy some, Shorty!” he cried on arriving, and his hand cracked on
Shorty’s shoulder. “Supper’s in sight, Shorty. Food for reflection.”
“None for the stomach?” asked the passenger who had spoken once before.
“We’re figuring on that too,” said Scipio. His crossness had melted
entirely away.
“Why, they’re cow-boys!” exclaimed another passenger; and he moved nearer.
From the station Trampas now came back, his herd following him less
compactly. They had found famine, and no hope of supplies until the next
train from the East. This was no fault of Trampas’s; but they were
following him less compactly. They carried one piece of cheese, the size
of a fist, the weight of a brick, the hue of a corpse. And the passengers,
seeing it, exclaimed, “There’s Old Faithful again!” and took off their
hats.
“You gentlemen met that cheese before, then?” said Scipio, delighted.
“It’s been offered me three times a day for four days,” said the
passenger. “Did he want a dollar or a dollar and a half?”
“Two dollars!” blurted out the enthusiast. And all of us save Trampas fell
into fits of imbecile laughter.
“Here comes our grub, anyway,” said Scipio, looking off toward the
marshes. And his hilarity sobered away in a moment.
“Well, the train will be in soon,” stated Trampas. “I guess we’ll get a
decent supper without frogs.”
All interest settled now upon the Virginian. He was coming with his man
and his gunny sack, and the gunny sack hung from his shoulder heavily, as
a full sack should. He took no notice of the gathering, but sat down and
partly emptied the sack. “There,” said he, very businesslike, to his
assistant, “that’s all we’ll want. I think you’ll find a ready market for
the balance.”
“Well, my gracious!” said the enthusiast. “What fool eats a frog?”
“Oh, I’m fool enough for a tadpole!” cried the passenger. And they began
to take out their pocket-books.
“You can cook yours right hyeh, gentlemen,” said the Virginian, with his
slow Southern courtesy. “The dining-cyars don’t look like they were fired
up.”
“How much will you sell a couple for?” inquired the enthusiast.
The Virginian looked at him with friendly surprise. “Why, help yourself!
We’re all together yet awhile. Help yourselves,” he repeated, to Trampas
and his followers. These hung back a moment, then, with a slinking motion,
set the cheese upon the earth and came forward nearer the fire to receive
some supper.
“It won’t scarcely be Delmonico style,” said the Virginian to the
passengers, “nor yet Saynt Augustine.” He meant the great Augustin, the
traditional chef of Philadelphia, whose history I had sketched for him at
Colonel Cyrus Jones’s eating palace.
Scipio now officiated. His frying-pan was busy, and prosperous odors rose
from it.
“Run for a bucket of fresh water, Shorty,” the Virginian continued,
beginning his meal. “Colonel, yu’ cook pretty near good. If yu’ had sold
’em as advertised, yu’d have cert’nly made a name.”
Several were now eating with satisfaction, but not Scipio. It was all that
he could do to cook straight. The whole man seemed to glisten. His eye was
shut to a slit once more, while the innocent passengers thankfully
swallowed.
“Now, you see, you have made some money,” began the Virginian to the
native who had helped him get the frogs.
“Bet your life!” exclaimed the man. “Divvy, won’t you?” And he held out
half his gains.
“Keep ’em,” returned the Southerner. “I reckon we’re square. But I expaict
they’ll not equal Delmonico’s, seh?” he said to a passenger.
“Don’t trust the judgment of a man as hungry as I am!” exclaimed the
traveller, with a laugh. And he turned to his fellow-travellers. “Did you
ever enjoy supper at Delmonico’s more than this?”
“Never!” they sighed.
“Why, look here,” said the traveller, “what fools the people of this town
are! Here we’ve been all these starving days, and you come and get ahead
of them!”
“That’s right easy explained,” said the Virginian. “I’ve been where there
was big money in frawgs, and they ‘ain’t been. They’re all cattle hyeh.
Talk cattle, think cattle, and they’re bankrupt in consequence. Fallen
through. Ain’t that so?” he inquired of the native.
“That’s about the way,” said the man.
“It’s mighty hard to do what your neighbors ain’t doin’,” pursued the
Virginian. “Montana is all cattle, an’ these folks must be cattle, an’
never notice the country right hyeh is too small for a range, an’ swampy,
anyway, an’ just waitin’ to be a frawg ranch.”
At this, all wore a face of careful reserve.
“I’m not claimin’ to be smarter than you folks hyeh,” said the Virginian,
deprecatingly, to his assistant. “But travellin’ learns a man many
customs. You wouldn’t do the business they done at Tulare, California,
north side o’ the lake. They cert’nly utilized them hopeless swamps
splendid. Of course they put up big capital and went into it scientific,
gettin’ advice from the government Fish Commission, an’ such like
knowledge. Yu’ see, they had big markets for their frawgs,—San
Francisco, Los Angeles, and clear to New York afteh the Southern Pacific
was through. But up hyeh yu’ could sell to passengers every day like yu’
done this one day. They would get to know yu’ along the line. Competing
swamps are scarce. The dining-cyars would take your frawgs, and yu’ would
have the Yellowstone Park for four months in the year. Them hotels are
anxious to please, an’ they would buy off yu’ what their Eastern patrons
esteem as fine-eatin’. And you folks would be sellin’ something instead o’
nothin’.”
“That’s a practical idea,” said a traveller. “And little cost.”
“And little cost,” said the Virginian.
“Would Eastern people eat frogs?” inquired the man.
“Look at us!” said the traveller.
“Delmonico doesn’t give yu’ such a treat!” said the Virginian.
“Not exactly!” the traveller exclaimed.
“How much would be paid for frogs?” said Trampas to him. And I saw Scipio
bend closer to his cooking.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the traveller. “We’ve paid pretty well, you see.”
“You’re late for Tulare, Trampas,” said the Virginian.
“I was not thinking of Tulare,” Trampas retorted. Scipio’s nose was in the
frying-pan.
“Mos’ comical spot you ever struck!” said the Virginian, looking round
upon the whole company. He allowed himself a broad smile of retrospect.
“To hear ’em talk frawgs at Tulare! Same as other folks talks hawsses or
steers or whatever they’re raising to sell. Yu’d fall into it yourselves
if yu’ started the business. Anything a man’s bread and butter depends on,
he’s going to be earnest about. Don’t care if it is a frawg.”
“That’s so,” said the native. “And it paid good?”
“The only money in the county was right there,” answered the Virginian.
“It was a dead county, and only frawgs was movin’. But that business was
a-fannin’ to beat four of a kind. It made yu’ feel strange at first, as I
said. For all the men had been cattle-men at one time or another. Till yu’
got accustomed, it would give ‘most anybody a shock to hear ’em speak
about herdin’ the bulls in a pasture by themselves.” The Virginian allowed
himself another smile, but became serious again. “That was their policy,”
he explained. “Except at certain times o’ year they kept the bulls
separate. The Fish Commission told ’em they’d better, and it cert’nly
worked mighty well. It or something did—for, gentlemen, hush! but
there was millions. You’d have said all the frawgs in the world had taken
charge at Tulare. And the money rolled in! Gentlemen, hush! ’twas a gold
mine for the owners. Forty per cent they netted some years. And they paid
generous wages. For they could sell to all them French restaurants in San
Francisco, yu’ see. And there was the Cliff House. And the Palace Hotel
made it a specialty. And the officers took frawgs at the Presidio, an’
Angel Island, an’ Alcatraz, an’ Benicia. Los Angeles was beginnin’ its
boom. The corner-lot sharps wanted something by way of varnish. An’ so
they dazzled Eastern investors with advertisin’ Tulare frawgs clear to New
Orleans an’ New York. ‘Twas only in Sacramento frawgs was dull. I expaict
the California legislature was too or’n’ry for them fine-raised luxuries.
They tell of one of them senators that he raked a million out of Los
Angeles real estate, and started in for a bang-up meal with champagne.
Wanted to scatter his new gold thick an’ quick. But he got astray among
all the fancy dishes, an’ just yelled right out before the ladies, ‘Damn
it! bring me forty dollars’ worth of ham and aiggs.’ He was a funny
senator, now.”
The Virginian paused, and finished eating a leg. And then with diabolic
art he made a feint at wandering to new fields of anecdote. “Talkin’ of
senators,” he resumed, “Senator Wise—”
“How much did you say wages were at Tulare?” inquired one of the Trampas
faction.
“How much? Why, I never knew what the foreman got. The regular hands got a
hundred. Senator Wise—”
“A hundred a MONTH?”
“Why, it was wet an’ muddy work, yu’ see. A man risked rheumatism some. He
risked it a good deal. Well, I was going to tell about Senator Wise. When
Senator Wise was speaking of his visit to Alaska—”
“Forty per cent, was it?” said Trampas.
“Oh, I must call my wife,” said the traveller behind me. “This is what I
came West for.” And he hurried away.
“Not forty per cent the bad years,” replied the Virginian. “The frawgs had
enemies, same as cattle. I remember when a pelican got in the spring
pasture, and the herd broke through the fence—”
“Fence?” said a passenger.
“Ditch, seh, and wire net. Every pasture was a square swamp with a ditch
around, and a wire net. Yu’ve heard the mournful, mixed-up sound a big
bunch of cattle will make? Well, seh, as yu’ druv from the railroad to the
Tulare frawg ranch yu’ could hear ’em a mile. Springtime they’d sing like
girls in the organ loft, and by August they were about ready to hire out
for bass. And all was fit to be soloists, if I’m a judge. But in a bad
year it might only be twenty per cent. The pelican rushed ’em from the
pasture right into the San Joaquin River, which was close by the property.
The big balance of the herd stampeded, and though of course they came out
on the banks again, the news had went around, and folks below at Hemlen
eat most of ’em just to spite the company. Yu’ see, a frawg in a river is
more hopeless than any maverick loose on the range. And they never struck
any plan to brand their stock and prove ownership.”
“Well, twenty per cent is good enough for me,” said Trampas, “if Rawhide
don’t suit me.”
“A hundred a month!” said the enthusiast. And busy calculations began to
arise among them.
“It went to fifty per cent,” pursued the Virginian, “when New York and
Philadelphia got to biddin’ agaynst each other. Both cities had signs all
over ’em claiming to furnish the Tulare frawg. And both had ’em all right.
And same as cattle trains, yu’d see frawg trains tearing acrosst Arizona—big
glass tanks with wire over ’em—through to New York, an’ the frawgs
starin’ out.”
“Why, George,” whispered a woman’s voice behind me, “he’s merely deceiving
them! He’s merely making that stuff up out of his head.”
“Yes, my dear, that’s merely what he’s doing.”
“Well, I don’t see why you imagined I should care for this. I think I’ll
go back.”
“Better see it out, Daisy. This beats the geysers or anything we’re likely
to find in the Yellowstone.”
“Then I wish we had gone to Bar Harbor as usual,” said the lady, and she
returned to her Pullman.
But her husband stayed. Indeed, the male crowd now was a goodly sight to
see, how the men edged close, drawn by a common tie. Their different kinds
of feet told the strength of the bond—yellow sleeping-car slippers
planted miscellaneous and motionless near a pair of Mexican spurs. All
eyes watched the Virginian and gave him their entire sympathy. Though they
could not know his motive for it, what he was doing had fallen as light
upon them—all except the excited calculators. These were loudly
making their fortunes at both Rawhide and Tulare, drugged by their
satanically aroused hopes of gold, heedless of the slippers and the spurs.
Had a man given any sign to warn them, I think he would have been lynched.
Even the Indian chiefs had come to see in their show war bonnets and
blankets. They naturally understood nothing of it, yet magnetically knew
that the Virginian was the great man. And they watched him with approval.
He sat by the fire with the frying-pan, looking his daily self—engaging
and saturnine. And now as Trampas declared tickets to California would be
dear and Rawhide had better come first, the Southerner let loose his
heaven-born imagination.
“There’s a better reason for Rawhide than tickets, Trampas,” said he. “I
said it was too late for Tulare.”
“I heard you,” said Trampas. “Opinions may differ. You and I don’t think
alike on several points.”
“Gawd, Trampas!” said the Virginian, “d’ yu’ reckon I’d be rotting hyeh on
forty dollars if Tulare was like it used to be? Tulare is broke.”
“What broke it? Your leaving?”
“Revenge broke it, and disease,” said the Virginian, striking the
frying-pan on his knee, for the frogs were all gone. At those lurid words
their untamed child minds took fire, and they drew round him again to hear
a tale of blood. The crowd seemed to lean nearer.
But for a short moment it threatened to be spoiled. A passenger came
along, demanding in an important voice, “Where are these frogs?” He was a
prominent New York after-dinner speaker, they whispered me, and out for a
holiday in his private car. Reaching us and walking to the Virginian, he
said cheerily, “How much do you want for your frogs, my friend?”
“You got a friend hyeh?” said the Virginian. “That’s good, for yu’ need
care taken of yu’.” And the prominent after-dinner speaker did not further
discommode us.
“That’s worth my trip,” whispered a New York passenger to me.
“Yes, it was a case of revenge,” resumed the Virginian, “and disease.
There was a man named Saynt Augustine got run out of Domingo, which is a
Dago island. He come to Philadelphia, an’ he was dead broke. But Saynt
Augustine was a live man, an’ he saw Philadelphia was full o’ Quakers that
dressed plain an’ eat humdrum. So he started cookin’ Domingo way for ’em,
an’ they caught right ahold. Terrapin, he gave ’em, an’ croakeets, an’
he’d use forty chickens to make a broth he called consommay. An’ he got
rich, and Philadelphia got well known, an’ Delmonico in New York he got
jealous. He was the cook that had the say-so in New York.”
“Was Delmonico one of them I-talians?” inquired a fascinated mutineer.
“I don’t know. But he acted like one. Lorenzo was his front name. He aimed
to cut—”
“Domingo’s throat?” breathed the enthusiast.
“Aimed to cut away the trade from Saynt Augustine an’ put Philadelphia
back where he thought she belonged. Frawgs was the fashionable rage then.
These foreign cooks set the fashion in eatin’, same as foreign dressmakers
do women’s clothes. Both cities was catchin’ and swallowin’ all the frawgs
Tulare could throw at ’em. So he—”
“Lorenzo?” said the enthusiast.
“Yes, Lorenzo Delmonico. He bid a dollar a tank higher. An’ Saynt
Augustine raised him fifty cents. An’ Lorenzo raised him a dollar. An’
Saynt Augustine shoved her up three. Lorenzo he didn’t expect Philadelphia
would go that high, and he got hot in the collar, an’ flew round his
kitchen in New York, an’ claimed he’d twist Saynt Augustine’s Domingo tail
for him and crack his ossified system. Lorenzo raised his language to a
high temperature, they say. An’ then quite sudden off he starts for
Tulare. He buys tickets over the Santa Fe, and he goes a-fannin’ and
a-foggin’. But, gentlemen, hush! The very same day Saynt Augustine he
tears out of Philadelphia. He travelled by the way o’ Washington, an’ out
he comes a-fannin’ an’ a-foggin’ over the Southern Pacific. Of course
Tulare didn’t know nothin’ of this. All it knowed was how the frawg market
was on soarin’ wings, and it was feelin’ like a flight o’ rawckets. If
only there’d been some preparation,—a telegram or something,—the
disaster would never have occurred. But Lorenzo and Saynt Augustine was
that absorbed watchin’ each other—for, yu’ see, the Santa Fe and the
Southern Pacific come together at Mojave, an’ the two cooks travelled a
matter of two hundred an’ ten miles in the same cyar—they never
thought about a telegram. And when they arruv, breathless, an’ started in
to screechin’ what they’d give for the monopoly, why, them unsuspectin’
Tulare boys got amused at ’em. I never heard just all they done, but they
had Lorenzo singin’ and dancin’, while Saynt Augustine played the fiddle
for him. And one of Lorenzo’s heels did get a trifle grazed. Well, them
two cooks quit that ranch without disclosin’ their identity, and soon as
they got to a safe distance they swore eternal friendship, in their
excitable foreign way. And they went home over the Union Pacific, sharing
the same stateroom. Their revenge killed frawgs. The disease—”
“How killed frogs?” demanded Trampas.
“Just killed ’em. Delmonico and Saynt Augustine wiped frawgs off the slate
of fashion. Not a banker in Fifth Avenue’ll touch one now if another
banker’s around watchin’ him. And if ever yu’ see a man that hides his
feet an’ won’t take off his socks in company, he has worked in them Tulare
swamps an’ got the disease. Catch him wadin’, and yu’ll find he’s
web-footed. Frawgs are dead, Trampas, and so are you.”
“Rise up, liars, and salute your king!” yelled Scipio. “Oh, I’m in love
with you!” And he threw his arms round the Virginian.
“Let me shake hands with you,” said the traveller, who had failed to
interest his wife in these things. “I wish I was going to have more of
your company.”
“Thank ye’, seh,” said the Virginian.
Other passengers greeted him, and the Indian chiefs came, saying, “How!”
because they followed their feelings without understanding.
“Don’t show so humbled, boys,” said the deputy foreman to his most
sheepish crew. “These gentlemen from the East have been enjoying yu’ some,
I know. But think what a weary wait they have had hyeh. And you insisted
on playing the game with me this way, yu’ see. What outlet did yu’ give
me? Didn’t I have it to do? And I’ll tell yu’ one thing for your
consolation: when I got to the middle of the frawgs I ‘most believed it
myself.” And he laughed out the first laugh I had heard him give.
The enthusiast came up and shook hands. That led off, and the rest
followed, with Trampas at the end. The tide was too strong for him. He was
not a graceful loser; but he got through this, and the Virginian eased him
down by treating him precisely like the others—apparently. Possibly
the supreme—the most American—moment of all was when word came
that the bridge was open, and the Pullman trains, with noise and triumph,
began to move westward at last. Every one waved farewell to every one,
craning from steps and windows, so that the cars twinkled with hilarity;
and in twenty minutes the whole procession in front had moved, and our
turn came.
“Last chance for Rawhide,” said the Virginian.
“Last chance for Sunk Creek,” said a reconstructed mutineer, and all
sprang aboard. There was no question who had won his spurs now.
Our caboose trundled on to Billings along the shingly cotton-wooded
Yellowstone; and as the plains and bluffs and the distant snow began to
grow well known, even to me, we turned to our baggage that was to come
off, since camp would begin in the morning. Thus I saw the Virginian
carefully rewrapping Kenilworth, that he might bring it to its owner
unharmed; and I said, “Don’t you think you could have played poker with
Queen Elizabeth?”
“No; I expaict she’d have beat me,” he replied. “She was a lady.”
It was at Billings, on this day, that I made those reflections about
equality. For the Virginian had been equal to the occasion: that is the
only kind of equality which I recognize.
XVII. SCIPIO MORALIZES
Into what mood was it that the Virginian now fell? Being less busy, did he
begin to “grieve” about the girl on Bear Creek? I only know that after
talking so lengthily he fell into a nine days’ silence. The talking part
of him deeply and unbrokenly slept.
Official words of course came from him as we rode southward from the
railroad, gathering the Judge’s stray cattle. During the many weeks since
the spring round-up, some of these animals had as usual got very far off
their range, and getting them on again became the present business of our
party.
Directions and commands—whatever communications to his subordinates
were needful to the forwarding of this—he duly gave. But routine has
never at any time of the world passed for conversation. His utterances,
such as, “We’ll work Willo’ Creek to-morro’ mawnin’,” or, “I want the
wagon to be at the fawks o’ Stinkin’ Water by Thursday,” though on some
occasions numerous enough to sound like discourse, never once broke the
man’s true silence. Seeming to keep easy company with the camp, he yet
kept altogether to himself. That talking part of him—the mood which
brings out for you your friend’s spirit and mind as a free gift or as an
exchange—was down in some dark cave of his nature, hidden away.
Perhaps it had been dreaming; perhaps completely reposing. The Virginian
was one of those rare ones who are able to refresh themselves in sections.
To have a thing on his mind did not keep his body from resting. During our
recent journey—it felt years ago now!—while our caboose on the
freight train had trundled endlessly westward, and the men were on the
ragged edge, the very jumping-off place, of mutiny and possible murder, I
had seen him sleep like a child. He snatched the moments not necessary for
vigil. I had also seen him sit all night watching his responsibility,
ready to spring on it and fasten his teeth in it. And now that he had
confounded them with their own attempted weapon of ridicule, his powers
seemed to be profoundly dormant. That final pitched battle of wits had
made the men his captives and admirers—all save Trampas. And of him
the Virginian did not seem to be aware.
But Scipio le Moyne would say to me now and then, “If I was Trampas, I’d
pull my freight.” And once he added, “Pull it kind of casual, yu’ know,
like I wasn’t noticing myself do it.”
“Yes,” our friend Shorty murmured pregnantly, with his eye upon the quiet
Virginian, “he’s sure studying his revenge.”
“Studying your pussy-cat,” said Scipio. “He knows what he’ll do. The time
ain’t arrived.” This was the way they felt about it; and not unnaturally
this was the way they made me, the inexperienced Easterner, feel about it.
That Trampas also felt something about it was easy to know. Like the
leaven which leavens the whole lump, one spot of sulkiness in camp will
spread its dull flavor through any company that sits near it; and we had
to sit near Trampas at meals for nine days.
His sullenness was not wonderful. To feel himself forsaken by his recent
adherents, to see them gone over to his enemy, could not have made his
reflections pleasant. Why he did not take himself off to other climes—“pull
his freight casual,” as Scipio said—I can explain only thus: pay was
due him—“time,” as it was called in cow-land; if he would have this
money, he must stay under the Virginian’s command until the Judge’s ranch
on Sunk Creek should be reached; meanwhile, each day’s work added to the
wages in store for him; and finally, once at Sunk Creek, it would be no
more the Virginian who commanded him; it would be the real ranch foreman.
At the ranch he would be the Virginian’s equal again, both of them taking
orders from their officially recognized superior, this foreman. Shorty’s
word about “revenge” seemed to me like putting the thing backwards.
Revenge, as I told Scipio, was what I should be thinking about if I were
Trampas.
“He dassent,” was Scipio’s immediate view. “Not till he’s got strong
again. He got laughed plumb sick by the bystanders, and whatever spirit he
had was broke in the presence of us all. He’ll have to recuperate.” Scipio
then spoke of the Virginian’s attitude. “Maybe revenge ain’t just the
right word for where this affair has got to now with him. When yu’ beat
another man at his own game like he done to Trampas, why, yu’ve had all
the revenge yu’ can want, unless you’re a hog. And he’s no hog. But he has
got it in for Trampas. They’ve not reckoned to a finish. Would you let a
man try such spite-work on you and quit thinkin’ about him just because
yu’d headed him off?” To this I offered his own notion about hogs and
being satisfied. “Hogs!” went on Scipio, in a way that dashed my
suggestion to pieces; “hogs ain’t in the case. He’s got to deal with
Trampas somehow—man to man. Trampas and him can’t stay this way when
they get back and go workin’ same as they worked before. No, sir; I’ve
seen his eye twice, and I know he’s goin’ to reckon to a finish.”
I still must, in Scipio’s opinion, have been slow to understand, when on
the afternoon following this talk I invited him to tell me what sort of
“finish” he wanted, after such a finishing as had been dealt Trampas
already. Getting “laughed plumb sick by the bystanders” (I borrowed his
own not overstated expression) seemed to me a highly final finishing.
While I was running my notions off to him, Scipio rose, and, with the
frying-pan he had been washing, walked slowly at me.
“I do believe you’d oughtn’t to be let travel alone the way you do.” He
put his face close to mine. His long nose grew eloquent in its shrewdness,
while the fire in his bleached blue eye burned with amiable satire. “What
has come and gone between them two has only settled the one point he was
aimin’ to make. He was appointed boss of this outfit in the absence of the
regular foreman. Since then all he has been playin’ for is to hand back
his men to the ranch in as good shape as they’d been handed to him, and
without losing any on the road through desertion or shooting or what not.
He had to kick his cook off the train that day, and the loss made him
sorrowful, I could see. But I’d happened to come along, and he jumped me
into the vacancy, and I expect he is pretty near consoled. And as boss of
the outfit he beat Trampas, who was settin’ up for opposition boss. And
the outfit is better than satisfied it come out that way, and they’re
stayin’ with him; and he’ll hand them all back in good condition, barrin’
that lost cook. So for the present his point is made, yu’ see. But look
ahead a little. It may not be so very far ahead yu’ll have to look. We get
back to the ranch. He’s not boss there any more. His responsibility is
over. He is just one of us again, taking orders from a foreman they tell
me has showed partiality to Trampas more’n a few times. Partiality! That’s
what Trampas is plainly trusting to. Trusting it will fix him all right
and fix his enemy all wrong. He’d not otherwise dare to keep sour like
he’s doing. Partiality! D’ yu’ think it’ll scare off the enemy?” Scipio
looked across a little creek to where the Virginian was helping throw the
gathered cattle on the bedground. “What odds”—he pointed the
frying-pan at the Southerner—“d’ yu’ figure Trampas’s being under
any foreman’s wing will make to a man like him? He’s going to remember Mr.
Trampas and his spite-work if he’s got to tear him out from under the
wing, and maybe tear off the wing in the operation. And I am goin’ to
advise your folks,” ended the complete Scipio, “not to leave you travel so
much alone—not till you’ve learned more life.”
He had made me feel my inexperience, convinced me of innocence,
undoubtedly; and during the final days of our journey I no longer invoked
his aid to my reflections upon this especial topic: What would the
Virginian do to Trampas? Would it be another intellectual crushing of him,
like the frog story, or would there be something this time more material—say
muscle, or possibly gunpowder—in it? And was Scipio, after all,
infallible? I didn’t pretend to understand the Virginian; after several
years’ knowledge of him he remained utterly beyond me. Scipio’s experience
was not yet three weeks long. So I let him alone as to all this,
discussing with him most other things good and evil in the world, and
being convinced of much further innocence; for Scipio’s twenty odd years
were indeed a library of life. I have never met a better heart, a shrewder
wit, and looser morals, with yet a native sense of decency and duty
somewhere hard and fast enshrined.
But all the while I was wondering about the Virginian: eating with him,
sleeping with him (only not so sound as he did), and riding beside him
often for many hours.
Experiments in conversation I did make—and failed. One day
particularly while, after a sudden storm of hail had chilled the earth
numb and white like winter in fifteen minutes, we sat drying and warming
ourselves by a fire that we built, I touched upon that theme of equality
on which I knew him to hold opinions as strong as mine. “Oh,” he would
reply, and “Cert’nly”; and when I asked him what it was in a man that made
him a leader of men, he shook his head and puffed his pipe. So then,
noticing how the sun had brought the earth in half an hour back from
winter to summer again, I spoke of our American climate.
It was a potent drug, I said, for millions to be swallowing every day.
“Yes,” said he, wiping the damp from his Winchester rifle.
Our American climate, I said, had worked remarkable changes, at least.
“Yes,” he said; and did not ask what they were.
So I had to tell him. “It has made successful politicians of the Irish.
That’s one. And it has given our whole race the habit of poker.”
Bang went his Winchester. The bullet struck close to my left. I sat up
angrily.
“That’s the first foolish thing I ever saw you do!” I said.
“Yes,” he drawled slowly, “I’d ought to have done it sooner. He was pretty
near lively again.” And then he picked up a rattlesnake six feet behind
me. It had been numbed by the hail, part revived by the sun, and he had
shot its head off.
XVIII. “WOULD YOU BE A PARSON?”
After this I gave up my experiments in conversation. So that by the final
afternoon of our journey, with Sunk Creek actually in sight, and the great
grasshoppers slatting their dry song over the sage-brush, and the time at
hand when the Virginian and Trampas would be “man to man,” my thoughts
rose to a considerable pitch of speculation.
And now that talking part of the Virginian, which had been nine days
asleep, gave its first yawn and stretch of waking. Without preface, he
suddenly asked me, “Would you be a parson?”
I was mentally so far away that I couldn’t get back in time to comprehend
or answer before he had repeated: “What would yu’ take to be a parson?”
He drawled it out in his gentle way, precisely as if no nine days stood
between it and our last real intercourse.
“Take?” I was still vaguely moving in my distance. “How?”
His next question brought me home.
“I expect the Pope’s is the biggest of them parson jobs?”
It was with an “Oh!” that I now entirely took his idea. “Well, yes;
decidedly the biggest.”
“Beats the English one? Archbishop—ain’t it?—of Canterbury?
The Pope comes ahead of him?”
“His Holiness would say so if his Grace did not.”
The Virginian turned half in his saddle to see my face—I was, at the
moment, riding not quite abreast of him—and I saw the gleam of his
teeth beneath his mustache. It was seldom I could make him smile, even to
this slight extent. But his eyes grew, with his next words, remote again
in their speculation.
“His Holiness and his Grace. Now if I was to hear ’em namin’ me that-a-way
every mawnin’, I’d sca’cely get down to business.”
“Oh, you’d get used to the pride of it.”
“’Tisn’t the pride. The laugh is what would ruin me. ‘Twould take ‘most
all my attention keeping a straight face. The Archbishop”—here he
took one of his wide mental turns—“is apt to be a big man in them
Shakespeare plays. Kings take talk from him they’d not stand from anybody
else; and he talks fine, frequently. About the bees, for instance, when
Henry is going to fight France. He tells him a beehive is similar to a
kingdom. I learned that piece.” The Virginian could not have expected to
blush at uttering these last words. He knew that his sudden color must
tell me in whose book it was he had learned the piece. Was not her copy of
Kenilworth even now in his cherishing pocket? So he now, to cover his
blush, very deliberately recited to me the Archbishop’s discourse upon
bees and their kingdom:
“’Where some, like magistrates, correct at home…
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make loot upon the summer’s velvet buds;
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor:
He, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold.’
“Ain’t that a fine description of bees a-workin’? ‘The singing masons
building roofs of gold!’ Puts ’em right before yu’, and is poetry without
bein’ foolish. His Holiness and his Grace. Well, they could not hire me
for either o’ those positions. How many religions are there?”
“All over the earth?”
“Yu’ can begin with ourselves. Right hyeh at home I know there’s
Romanists, and Episcopals—”
“Two kinds!” I put in. “At least two of Episcopals.”
“That’s three. Then Methodists and Baptists, and—”
“Three Methodists!”
“Well, you do the countin’.”
I accordingly did it, feeling my revolving memory slip cogs all the way
round. “Anyhow, there are safely fifteen.”
“Fifteen.” He held this fact a moment. “And they don’t worship a whole
heap o’ different gods like the ancients did?”
“Oh, no!”
“It’s just the same one?”
“The same one.”
The Virginian folded his hands over the horn of his saddle, and leaned
forward upon them in contemplation of the wide, beautiful landscape.
“One God and fifteen religions,” was his reflection. “That’s a right smart
of religions for just one God.”
This way of reducing it was, if obvious to him, so novel to me that my
laugh evidently struck him as a louder and livelier comment than was
required. He turned on me as if I had somehow perverted the spirit of his
words.
“I ain’t religious. I know that. But I ain’t unreligious. And I know that
too.”
“So do I know it, my friend.”
“Do you think there ought to be fifteen varieties of good people?” His
voice, while it now had an edge that could cut anything it came against,
was still not raised. “There ain’t fifteen. There ain’t two. There’s one
kind. And when I meet it, I respect it. It is not praying nor preaching
that has ever caught me and made me ashamed of myself, but one or two
people I have knowed that never said a superior word to me. They thought
more o’ me than I deserved, and that made me behave better than I
naturally wanted to. Made me quit a girl onced in time for her not to lose
her good name. And so that’s one thing I have never done. And if ever I
was to have a son or somebody I set store by, I would wish their lot to be
to know one or two good folks mighty well—men or women—women
preferred.”
He had looked away again to the hills behind Sunk Creek ranch, to which
our walking horses had now almost brought us.
“As for parsons “—the gesture of his arm was a disclaiming one—“I
reckon some parsons have a right to tell yu’ to be good. The bishop of
this hyeh Territory has a right. But I’ll tell yu’ this: a middlin’ doctor
is a pore thing, and a middlin’ lawyer is a pore thing; but keep me from a
middlin’ man of God.”
Once again he had reduced it, but I did not laugh this time. I thought
there should in truth be heavy damages for malpractice on human souls. But
the hot glow of his words, and the vision of his deepest inner man it
revealed, faded away abruptly.
“What do yu’ make of the proposition yondeh?” As he pointed to the cause
of this question he had become again his daily, engaging, saturnine self.
Then I saw over in a fenced meadow, to which we were now close, what he
was pleased to call “the proposition.” Proposition in the West does, in
fact, mean whatever you at the moment please,—an offer to sell you a
mine, a cloud-burst, a glass of whiskey, a steamboat. This time it meant a
stranger clad in black, and of a clerical deportment which would in that
atmosphere and to a watchful eye be visible for a mile or two.
“I reckoned yu’ hadn’t noticed him,” was the Virginian’s reply to my
ejaculation. “Yes. He set me goin’ on the subject a while back. I expect
he is another missionary to us pore cow-boys.”
I seemed from a hundred yards to feel the stranger’s forceful personality.
It was in his walk—I should better say stalk—as he promenaded
along the creek. His hands were behind his back, and there was an air of
waiting, of displeased waiting, in his movement.
“Yes, he’ll be a missionary,” said the Virginian, conclusively; and he
took to singing, or rather to whining, with his head tilted at an absurd
angle upward at the sky:
“’Dar is a big Car’lina nigger,
About de size of dis chile or p’raps a little bigger,
By de name of Jim Crow.
Dat what de white folks call him.
If ever I sees him I ‘tends for to maul him,
Just to let de white folks see
Such an animos as he
Can’t walk around the streets and scandalize me.’”
The lane which was conducting us to the group of ranch buildings now
turned a corner of the meadow, and the Virginian went on with his second
verse:
“’Great big fool, he hasn’t any knowledge.
Gosh! how could he, when he’s never been to scollege?
Neither has I.
But I’se come mighty nigh;
I peaked through de door as I went by.’”
He was beginning a third stanza, but stopped short; a horse had neighed
close behind us.
“Trampas,” said he, without turning his head, “we are home.”
“It looks that way.” Some ten yards were between ourselves and Trampas,
where he followed.
“And I’ll trouble yu’ for my rope yu’ took this mawnin’ instead o’ your
own.”
“I don’t know as it’s your rope I’ve got.” Trampas skilfully spoke this so
that a precisely opposite meaning flowed from his words.
If it was discussion he tried for, he failed. The Virginian’s hand moved,
and for one thick, flashing moment my thoughts were evidently also the
thoughts of Trampas. But the Virginian only held out to Trampas the rope
which he had detached from his saddle.
“Take your hand off your gun, Trampas. If I had wanted to kill yu’ you’d
be lying nine days back on the road now. Here’s your rope. Did yu’ expect
I’d not know it? It’s the only one in camp the stiffness ain’t all drug
out of yet. Or maybe yu’ expected me to notice and—not take notice?”
“I don’t spend my time in expectations about you. If—”
The Virginian wheeled his horse across the road. “Yu’re talkin’ too soon
after reachin’ safety, Trampas. I didn’t tell yu’ to hand me that rope
this mawnin’, because I was busy. I ain’t foreman now; and I want that
rope.”
Trampas produced a smile as skilful as his voice. “Well, I guess your
having mine proves this one is yours.” He rode up and received the coil
which the Virginian held out, unloosing the disputed one on his saddle. If
he had meant to devise a slippery, evasive insult, no small trick in
cow-land could be more offensive than this taking another man’s rope. And
it is the small tricks which lead to the big bullets. Trampas put a smooth
coating of plausibility over the whole transaction. “After the rope corral
we had to make this morning”—his tone was mock explanatory—“the
ropes was all strewed round camp, and in the hustle I—”
“Pardon me,” said a sonorous voice behind us, “do you happen to have seen
Judge Henry?” It was the reverend gentleman in his meadow, come to the
fence. As we turned round to him he spoke on, with much rotund authority
in his eye. “From his answer to my letter, Judge Henry undoubtedly expects
me here. I have arrived from Fetterman according to my plan which I
announced to him, to find that he has been absent all day—absent the
whole day.”
The Virginian sat sidewise to talk, one long, straight leg supporting him
on one stirrup, the other bent at ease, the boot half lifted from its
dangling stirrup. He made himself the perfection of courtesy. “The Judge
is frequently absent all night, seh.”
“Scarcely to-night, I think. I thought you might know something about
him.”
“I have been absent myself, seh.”
“Ah! On a vacation, perhaps?” The divine had a ruddy facet. His strong
glance was straight and frank and fearless; but his smile too much
reminded me of days bygone, when we used to return to school from the
Christmas holidays, and the masters would shake our hands and welcome us
with: “Robert, John, Edward, glad to see you all looking so well! Rested,
and ready for hard work, I’m sure!”
That smile does not really please even good, tame little boys; and the
Virginian was nearing thirty.
“It has not been vacation this trip, seh,” said he, settling straight in
his saddle. “There’s the Judge driving in now, in time for all questions
yu’ have to ask him.”
His horse took a step, but was stopped short. There lay the Virginian’s
rope on the ground. I had been aware of Trampas’s quite proper departure
during the talk; and as he was leaving, I seemed also to be aware of his
placing the coil across the cantle of its owner’s saddle. Had he intended
it to fall and have to be picked up? It was another evasive little
business, and quite successful, if designed to nag the owner of the rope.
A few hundred yards ahead of us Trampas was now shouting loud cow-boy
shouts. Were they to announce his return to those at home, or did they
mean derision? The Virginian leaned, keeping his seat, and, swinging down
his arm, caught up the rope, and hung it on his saddle somewhat carefully.
But the hue of rage spread over his face.
From his fence the divine now spoke, in approbation, but with another
strong, cheerless smile. “You pick up that rope as if you were well
trained to it.”
“It’s part of our business, seh, and we try to mind it like the rest.” But
this, stated in a gentle drawl, did not pierce the missionary’s armor; his
superiority was very thick.
We now rode on, and I was impressed by the reverend gentleman’s robust,
dictatorial back as he proceeded by a short cut through the meadow to the
ranch. You could take him for nothing but a vigorous, sincere, dominating
man, full of the highest purpose. But whatever his creed, I already
doubted if he were the right one to sow it and make it grow in these new,
wild fields. He seemed more the sort of gardener to keep old walks and
vines pruned in their antique rigidity. I admired him for coming all this
way with his clean, short, gray whiskers and his black, well-brushed suit.
And he made me think of a powerful locomotive stuck puffing on a grade.
Meanwhile, the Virginian rode beside me, so silent in his volcanic wrath
that I did not perceive it. The missionary coming on top of Trampas had
been more than he could stand. But I did not know, and I spoke with
innocent cheeriness.
“Is the parson going to save us?” I asked; and I fairly jumped at his
voice: “Don’t talk so much!” he burst out. I had got the whole
accumulation!
“Who’s been talking?” I in equal anger screeched back. “I’m not trying to
save you. I didn’t take your rope.” And having poured this out, I whipped
up my pony.
But he spurred his own alongside of me; and glancing at him, I saw that he
was now convulsed with internal mirth. I therefore drew down to a walk,
and he straightened into gravity.
“I’m right obliged to yu’,” he laid his hand in its buckskin gauntlet upon
my horse’s mane as he spoke, “for bringing me back out o’ my nonsense.
I’ll be as serene as a bird now—whatever they do. A man,” he stated
reflectively, “any full-sized man, ought to own a big lot of temper. And
like all his valuable possessions, he’d ought to keep it and not lose
any.” This was his full apology. “As for salvation, I have got this far:
somebody,” he swept an arm at the sunset and the mountains, “must have
made all that, I know. But I know one more thing I would tell Him to His
face: if I can’t do nothing long enough and good enough to earn eternal
happiness, I can’t do nothing long enough and bad enough to be damned. I
reckon He plays a square game with us if He plays at all, and I ain’t
bothering my haid about other worlds.”
As we reached the stables, he had become the serene bird he promised, and
was sentimentally continuing:
“’De sun is made of mud from de bottom of de river;
De moon is made o’ fox-fire, as you might disciver;
De stars like de ladies’ eyes,
All round de world dey flies,
To give a little light when de moon don’t rise.’”
If words were meant to conceal our thoughts, melody is perhaps a still
thicker veil for them. Whatever temper he had lost, he had certainly found
again; but this all the more fitted him to deal with Trampas, when the
dealing should begin. I had half a mind to speak to the Judge, only it
seemed beyond a mere visitor’s business. Our missionary was at this moment
himself speaking to Judge Henry at the door of the home ranch.
“I reckon he’s explaining he has been a-waiting.” The Virginian was
throwing his saddle off as I loosened the cinches of mine. “And the Judge
don’t look like he was hopelessly distressed.”
I now surveyed the distant parley, and the Judge, from the wagonful of
guests whom he had evidently been driving upon a day’s excursion, waved me
a welcome, which I waved back. “He’s got Miss Molly Wood there!” I
exclaimed.
“Yes.” The Virginian was brief about this fact. “I’ll look afteh your
saddle. You go and get acquainted with the company.”
This favor I accepted; it was the means he chose for saying he hoped,
after our recent boiling over, that all was now more than right between
us. So for the while I left him to his horses, and his corrals, and his
Trampas, and his foreman, and his imminent problem.
XIX. DR. MACBRIDE BEGS PARDON
Judge and Mrs. Henry, Molly Wood, and two strangers, a lady and a
gentleman, were the party which had been driving in the large three-seated
wagon. They had seemed a merry party. But as I came within hearing of
their talk, it was a fragment of the minister’s sonority which reached me
first: “—more opportunity for them to have the benefit of hearing
frequent sermons,” was the sentence I heard him bring to completion.
“Yes, to be sure, sir.” Judge Henry gave me (it almost seemed) additional
warmth of welcome for arriving to break up the present discourse. “Let me
introduce you to the Rev. Dr. Alexander MacBride. Doctor, another guest we
have been hoping for about this time,” was my host’s cordial explanation
to him of me. There remained the gentleman with his wife from New York,
and to these I made my final bows. But I had not broken up the discourse.
“We may be said to have met already.” Dr. MacBride had fixed upon me his
full, mastering eye; and it occurred to me that if they had policemen in
heaven, he would be at least a centurion in the force. But he did not mean
to be unpleasant; it was only that in a mind full of matters less worldly,
pleasure was left out. “I observed your friend was a skilful horseman,” he
continued. “I was saying to Judge Henry that I could wish such skilful
horsemen might ride to a church upon the Sabbath. A church, that is, of
right doctrine, where they would have opportunity to hear frequent
sermons.”
“Yes,” said Judge Henry, “yes. It would be a good thing.”
Mrs. Henry, with some murmur about the kitchen, here went into the house.
“I was informed,” Dr. MacBride held the rest of us, “before undertaking my
journey that I should find a desolate and mainly godless country. But
nobody gave me to understand that from Medicine Bow I was to drive three
hundred miles and pass no church of any faith.”
The Judge explained that there had been a few a long way to the right and
left of him. “Still,” he conceded, “you are quite right. But don’t forget
that this is the newest part of a new world.”
“Judge,” said his wife, coming to the door, “how can you keep them
standing in the dust with your talking?”
This most efficiently did break up the discourse. As our little party,
with the smiles and the polite holdings back of new acquaintanceship,
moved into the house, the Judge detained me behind all of them long enough
to whisper dolorously, “He’s going to stay a whole week.”
I had hopes that he would not stay a whole week when I presently learned
of the crowded arrangements which our hosts, with many hospitable
apologies, disclosed to us. They were delighted to have us, but they
hadn’t foreseen that we should all be simultaneous. The foreman’s house
had been prepared for two of us, and did we mind? The two of us were Dr.
MacBride and myself; and I expected him to mind. But I wronged him
grossly. It would be much better, he assured Mrs. Henry, than straw in a
stable, which he had tried several times, and was quite ready for. So I
saw that though he kept his vigorous body clean when he could, he cared
nothing for it in the face of his mission. How the foreman and his wife
relished being turned out during a week for a missionary and myself was
not my concern, although while he and I made ready for supper over there,
it struck me as hard on them. The room with its two cots and furniture was
as nice as possible; and we closed the door upon the adjoining room,
which, however, seemed also untenanted.
Mrs. Henry gave us a meal so good that I have remembered it, and her
husband the Judge strove his best that we should eat it in merriment. He
poured out his anecdotes like wine, and we should have quickly warmed to
them; but Dr. MacBride sat among us, giving occasional heavy ha-ha’s,
which produced, as Miss Molly Wood whispered to me, a “dreadfully
cavernous effect.” Was it his sermon, we wondered, that he was thinking
over? I told her of the copious sheaf of them I had seen him pull from his
wallet over at the foreman’s. “Goodness!” said she. “Then are we to hear
one every evening?” This I doubted; he had probably been picking one out
suitable for the occasion. “Putting his best foot foremost,” was her
comment; “I suppose they have best feet, like the rest of us.” Then she
grew delightfully sharp. “Do you know, when I first heard him I thought
his voice was hearty. But if you listen, you’ll find it’s merely militant.
He never really meets you with it. He’s off on his hill watching the
battle-field the whole time.”
“He will find a hardened pagan here.”
“Judge Henry?”
“Oh, no! The wild man you’re taming brought you Kenilworth safe back.”
She was smooth. “Oh, as for taming him! But don’t you find him
intelligent?”
Suddenly I somehow knew that she didn’t want to tame him. But what did she
want to do? The thought of her had made him blush this afternoon. No
thought of him made her blush this evening.
A great laugh from the rest of the company made me aware that the Judge
had consummated his tale of the “Sole Survivor.”
“And so,” he finished, “they all went off as mad as hops because it hadn’t
been a massacre.” Mr. and Mrs. Ogden—they were the New Yorkers—gave
this story much applause, and Dr. MacBride half a minute later laid his
“ha-ha,” like a heavy stone, upon the gayety.
“I’ll never be able to stand seven sermons,” said Miss Wood to me.
“Talking of massacres,”—I now hastened to address the already
saddened table,—“I have recently escaped one myself.”
The Judge had come to an end of his powers. “Oh, tell us!” he implored.
“Seriously, sir, I think we grazed pretty wet tragedy but your
extraordinary man brought us out into comedy safe and dry.”
This gave me their attention; and, from that afternoon in Dakota when I
had first stepped aboard the caboose, I told them the whole tale of my
experience: how I grew immediately aware that all was not right, by the
Virginian’s kicking the cook off the train; how, as we journeyed, the dark
bubble of mutiny swelled hourly beneath my eyes; and how, when it was
threatening I know not what explosion, the Virginian had pricked it with
humor, so that it burst in nothing but harmless laughter.
Their eyes followed my narrative: the New Yorkers, because such events do
not happen upon the shores of the Hudson; Mrs. Henry, because she was my
hostess; Miss Wood followed for whatever her reasons were—I couldn’t
see her eyes; rather, I FELT her listening intently to the deeds and
dangers of the man she didn’t care to tame. But it was the eyes of the
Judge and the missionary which I saw riveted upon me indeed until the end;
and they forthwith made plain their quite dissimilar opinions.
Judge Henry struck the table lightly with his fist. “I knew it!” And he
leaned back in his chair with a face of contentment. He had trusted his
man, and his man had proved worthy.
“Pardon me.” Dr. MacBride had a manner of saying “pardon me,” which
rendered forgiveness well-nigh impossible.
The Judge waited for him.
“Am I to understand that these—a—cow-boys attempted to mutiny,
and were discouraged in this attempt upon finding themselves less skilful
at lying than the man they had plotted to depose?”
I began an answer. “It was other qualities, sir, that happened to be
revealed and asserted by what you call his lying that—”
“And what am I to call it, if it is not lying? A competition in deceit in
which, I admit, he out did them.
“It’s their way to—”
“Pardon me. Their way to lie? They bow down to the greatest in this?”
“Oh,” said Miss Wood in my ear, “give him up.”
The Judge took a turn. “We-ell, Doctor—” He seemed to stick here.
Mr. Ogden handsomely assisted him. “You’ve said the word yourself, Doctor.
It’s the competition, don’t you see? The trial of strength by no matter
what test.”
“Yes,” said Miss Wood, unexpectedly. “And it wasn’t that George Washington
couldn’t tell a lie. He just wouldn’t. I’m sure if he’d undertaken to he’d
have told a much better one than Cornwall’s.”
“Ha-ha, madam! You draw an ingenious subtlety from your books.”
“It’s all plain to me,” Ogden pursued. “The men were morose. This foreman
was in the minority. He cajoled them into a bout of tall stories, and told
the tallest himself. And when they found they had swallowed it whole—well,
it would certainly take the starch out of me,” he concluded. “I couldn’t
be a serious mutineer after that.”
Dr. MacBride now sounded his strongest bass. “Pardon me. I cannot accept
such a view, sir. There is a levity abroad in our land which I must
deplore. No matter how leniently you may try to put it, in the end we have
the spectacle of a struggle between men where lying decides the survival
of the fittest. Better, far better, if it was to come, that they had shot
honest bullets. There are worse evils than war.”
The Doctor’s eye glared righteously about him. None of us, I think,
trembled; or, if we did, it was with emotions other than fear. Mrs. Henry
at once introduced the subject of trout-fishing, and thus happily removed
us from the edge of whatever sort of precipice we seemed to have
approached; for Dr. MacBride had brought his rod. He dilated upon this
sport with fervor, and we assured him that the streams upon the west slope
of the Bow Leg Mountains would afford him plenty of it. Thus we ended our
meal in carefully preserved amity.
XX. THE JUDGE IGNORES PARTICULARS
“Do you often have these visitations?” Ogden inquired of Judge Henry. Our
host was giving us whiskey in his office, and Dr. MacBride, while we
smoked apart from the ladies, had repaired to his quarters in the
foreman’s house previous to the service which he was shortly to hold.
The Judge laughed. “They come now and then through the year. I like the
bishop to come. And the men always like it. But I fear our friend will
scarcely please them so well.”
“You don’t mean they’ll—”
“Oh, no. They’ll keep quiet. The fact is, they have a good deal better
manners than he has, if he only knew it. They’ll be able to bear him. But
as for any good he’ll do—”
“I doubt if he knows a word of science,” said I, musing about the Doctor.
“Science! He doesn’t know what Christianity is yet. I’ve entertained many
guests, but none—The whole secret,” broke off Judge Henry, “lies in
the way you treat people. As soon as you treat men as your brothers, they
are ready to acknowledge you—if you deserve it—as their
superior. That’s the whole bottom of Christianity, and that’s what our
missionary will never know.”
There was a somewhat heavy knock at the office door, and I think we all
feared it was Dr. MacBride. But when the Judge opened, the Virginian was
standing there in the darkness.
“So!” The Judge opened the door wide. He was very hearty to the man he had
trusted. “You’re back at last.”
“I came to repawt.”
While they shook hands, Ogden nudged me. “That the fellow?” I nodded.
“Fellow who kicked the cook off the train?” I again nodded, and he looked
at the Virginian, his eye and his stature.
Judge Henry, properly democratic, now introduced him to Ogden.
The New Yorker also meant to be properly democratic. “You’re the man I’ve
been hearing such a lot about.”
But familiarity is not equality. “Then I expect yu’ have the advantage of
me, seh,” said the Virginian, very politely. “Shall I repawt to-morro’?”
His grave eyes were on the Judge again. Of me he had taken no notice; he
had come as an employee to see his employer.
“Yes, yes; I’ll want to hear about the cattle to-morrow. But step inside a
moment now. There’s a matter—” The Virginian stepped inside, and
took off his hat. “Sit down. You had trouble—I’ve heard something
about it,” the Judge went on.
The Virginian sat down, grave and graceful. But he held the brim of his
hat all the while. He looked at Ogden and me, and then back at his
employer. There was reluctance in his eye. I wondered if his employer
could be going to make him tell his own exploits in the presence of us
outsiders; and there came into my memory the Bengal tiger at a
trained-animal show I had once seen.
“You had some trouble,” repeated the Judge.
“Well, there was a time when they maybe wanted to have notions. They’re
good boys.” And he smiled a very little.
Contentment increased in the Judge’s face. “Trampas a good boy too?”
But this time the Bengal tiger did not smile. He sat with his eye fastened
on his employer.
The Judge passed rather quickly on to his next point. “You’ve brought them
all back, though, I understand, safe and sound, without a scratch?”
The Virginian looked down at his hat, then up again at the Judge, mildly.
“I had to part with my cook.”
There was no use; Ogden and myself exploded. Even upon the embarrassed
Virginian a large grin slowly forced itself. “I guess yu’ know about it,”
he murmured. And he looked at me with a sort of reproach. He knew it was I
who had told tales out of school.
“I only want to say,” said Ogden, conciliatingly, “that I know I couldn’t
have handled those men.”
The Virginian relented. “Yu’ never tried, seh.”
The Judge had remained serious; but he showed himself plainly more and
more contented. “Quite right,” he said. “You had to part with your cook.
When I put a man in charge, I put him in charge. I don’t make particulars
my business. They’re to be always his. Do you understand?”
“Thank yu’.” The Virginian understood that his employer was praising his
management of the expedition. But I don’t think he at all discerned—as
I did presently—that his employer had just been putting him to a
further test, had laid before him the temptation of complaining of a
fellow-workman and blowing his own trumpet, and was delighted with his
reticence. He made a movement to rise.
“I haven’t finished,” said the Judge. “I was coming to the matter. There’s
one particular—since I do happen to have been told. I fancy Trampas
has learned something he didn’t expect.”
This time the Virginian evidently did not understand, any more than I did.
One hand played with his hat, mechanically turning it round.
The Judge explained. “I mean about Roberts.”
A pulse of triumph shot over the Southerner’s face, turning it savage for
that fleeting instant. He understood now, and was unable to suppress this
much answer. But he was silent.
“You see,” the Judge explained to me, “I was obliged to let Roberts, my
old foreman, go last week. His wife could not have stood another winter
here, and a good position was offered to him near Los Angeles.”
I did see. I saw a number of things. I saw why the foreman’s house had
been empty to receive Dr. MacBride and me. And I saw that the Judge had
been very clever indeed. For I had abstained from telling any tales about
the present feeling between Trampas and the Virginian; but he had divined
it. Well enough for him to say that “particulars” were something he let
alone; he evidently kept a deep eye on the undercurrents at his ranch. He
knew that in Roberts, Trampas had lost a powerful friend. And this was
what I most saw, this final fact, that Trampas had no longer any
intervening shield. He and the Virginian stood indeed man to man.
“And so,” the Judge continued speaking to me, “here I am at a very
inconvenient time without a foreman. Unless,” I caught the twinkle in his
eyes before he turned to the Virginian, “unless you’re willing to take the
position yourself. Will you?”
I saw the Southerner’s hand grip his hat as he was turning it round. He
held it still now, and his other hand found it and gradually crumpled the
soft crown in. It meant everything to him: recognition, higher station,
better fortune, a separate house of his own, and—perhaps—one
step nearer to the woman he wanted. I don’t know what words he might have
said to the Judge had they been alone, but the Judge had chosen to do it
in our presence, the whole thing from beginning to end. The Virginian sat
with the damp coming out on his forehead, and his eyes dropped from his
employer’s.
“Thank yu’,” was what he managed at last to say.
“Well, now, I’m greatly relieved!” exclaimed the Judge, rising at once. He
spoke with haste, and lightly. “That’s excellent. I was in some thing of a
hole,” he said to Ogden and me; “and this gives me one thing less to think
of. Saves me a lot of particulars,” he jocosely added to the Virginian,
who was now also standing up. “Begin right off. Leave the bunk house. The
gentlemen won’t mind your sleeping in your own house.”
Thus he dismissed his new foreman gayly. But the new foreman, when he got
outside, turned back for one gruff word,—“I’ll try to please yu’.”
That was all. He was gone in the darkness. But there was light enough for
me, looking after him, to see him lay his hand on a shoulder-high gate and
vault it as if he had been the wind. Sounds of cheering came to us a few
moments later from the bunk house. Evidently he had “begun right away,” as
the Judge had directed. He had told his fortune to his brother
cow-punchers, and this was their answer.
“I wonder if Trampas is shouting too?” inquired Ogden.
“Hm!” said the Judge. “That is one of the particulars I wash my hands of.”
I knew that he entirely meant it. I knew, once his decision taken of
appointing the Virginian his lieutenant for good and all, that, like a
wise commander-in-chief, he would trust his lieutenant to take care of his
own business.
“Well,” Ogden pursued with interest, “haven’t you landed Trampas plump at
his mercy?”
The phrase tickled the Judge. “That is where I’ve landed him!” he
declared. “And here is Dr. MacBride.”
XXI. IN A STATE OF SIN
Thunder sat imminent upon the missionary’s brow. Many were to be at his
mercy soon. But for us he had sunshine still. “I am truly sorry to be
turning you upside down,” he said importantly. “But it seems the best
place for my service.” He spoke of the tables pushed back and the chairs
gathered in the hall, where the storm would presently break upon the
congregation. “Eight-thirty?” he inquired.
This was the hour appointed, and it was only twenty minutes off. We threw
the unsmoked fractions of our cigars away, and returned to offer our
services to the ladies. This amused the ladies. They had done without us.
All was ready in the hall.
“We got the cook to help us,” Mrs. Ogden told me, “so as not to disturb
your cigars. In spite of the cow-boys, I still recognize my own country.”
“In the cook?” I rather densely asked.
“Oh, no! I don’t have a Chinaman. It’s in the length of after-dinner
cigars.”
“Had you been smoking,” I returned, “you would have found them short this
evening.”
“You make it worse,” said the lady; “we have had nothing but Dr.
MacBride.”
“We’ll share him with you now,” I exclaimed.
“Has he announced his text? I’ve got one for him,” said Molly Wood,
joining us. She stood on tiptoe and spoke it comically in our ears. “’I
said in my haste, All men are liars.’” This made us merry as we stood
among the chairs in the congested hall.
I left the ladies, and sought the bunk house. I had heard the cheers, but
I was curious also to see the men, and how they were taking it. There was
but little for the eye. There was much noise in the room. They were
getting ready to come to church,—brushing their hair, shaving, and
making themselves clean, amid talk occasionally profane and continuously
diverting.
“Well, I’m a Christian, anyway,” one declared.
“I’m a Mormon, I guess,” said another.
“I belong to the Knights of Pythias,” said a third.
“I’m a Mohammedist,” said a fourth; “I hope I ain’t goin’ to hear nothin’
to shock me.”
And they went on with their joking. But Trampas was out of the joking. He
lay on his bed reading a newspaper, and took no pains to look pleasant. My
eyes were considering him when the blithe Scipio came in.
“Don’t look so bashful,” said he. “There’s only us girls here.”
He had been helping the Virginian move his belongings from the bunk house
over to the foreman’s cabin. He himself was to occupy the Virginian’s old
bed here. “And I hope sleepin’ in it will bring me some of his luck,” said
Scipio. “Yu’d ought to’ve seen us when he told us in his quiet way. Well,”
Scipio sighed a little, “it must feel good to have your friends glad about
you.”
“Especially Trampas,” said I. “The Judge knows about that,” I added.
“Knows, does he? What’s he say?” Scipio drew me quickly out of the bunk
house.
“Says it’s no business of his.”
“Said nothing but that?” Scipio’s curiosity seemed strangely intense.
“Made no suggestion? Not a thing?”
“Not a thing. Said he didn’t want to know and didn’t care.”
“How did he happen to hear about it?” snapped Scipio. “You told him!” he
immediately guessed. “He never would.” And Scipio jerked his thumb at the
Virginian, who appeared for a moment in the lighted window of the new
quarters he was arranging. “He never would tell,” Scipio repeated. “And so
the Judge never made a suggestion to him,” he muttered, nodding in the
darkness. “So it’s just his own notion. Just like him, too, come to think
of it. Only I didn’t expect—well, I guess he could surprise me any
day he tried.”
“You’re surprising me now,” I said. “What’s it all about?”
“Oh, him and Trampas.”
“What? Nothing surely happened yet?” I was as curious as Scipio had been.
“No, not yet. But there will.”
“Great Heavens, man! when?”
“Just as soon as Trampas makes the first move,” Scipio replied easily.
I became dignified. Scipio had evidently been told things by the
Virginian.
“Yes, I up and asked him plumb out,” Scipio answered. “I was liftin’ his
trunk in at the door, and I couldn’t stand it no longer, and I asked him
plumb out. ‘Yu’ve sure got Trampas where yu’ want him.’ That’s what I
said. And he up and answered and told me. So I know.” At this point Scipio
stopped; I was not to know.
“I had no idea,” I said, “that your system held so much meanness.”
“Oh, it ain’t meanness!” And he laughed ecstatically.
“What do you call it, then?”
“He’d call it discretion,” said Scipio. Then he became serious. “It’s too
blamed grand to tell yu’. I’ll leave yu’ to see it happen. Keep around,
that’s all. Keep around. I pretty near wish I didn’t know it myself.”
What with my feelings at Scipio’s discretion, and my human curiosity, I
was not in that mood which best profits from a sermon. Yet even though my
expectations had been cruelly left quivering in mid air, I was not sure
how much I really wanted to “keep around.” You will therefore understand
how Dr. MacBride was able to make a prayer and to read Scripture without
my being conscious of a word that he had uttered. It was when I saw him
opening the manuscript of his sermon that I suddenly remembered I was
sitting, so to speak, in church, and began once more to think of the
preacher and his congregation. Our chairs were in the front line, of
course; but, being next the wall, I could easily see the cow-boys behind
me. They were perfectly decorous. If Mrs. Ogden had looked for pistols,
daredevil attitudes, and so forth, she must have been greatly
disappointed. Except for their weather-beaten cheeks and eyes, they were
simply American young men with mustaches and without, and might have been
sitting, say, in Danbury, Connecticut. Even Trampas merged quietly with
the general placidity. The Virginian did not, to be sure, look like
Danbury, and his frame and his features showed out of the mass; but his
eyes were upon Dr. MacBride with a creamlike propriety.
Our missionary did not choose Miss Wood’s text. He made his selection from
another of the Psalms; and when it came, I did not dare to look at
anybody; I was much nearer unseemly conduct than the cow-boys. Dr.
MacBride gave us his text sonorously, “’They are altogether become filthy;
There is none of them that doeth good, no, not one.’” His eye showed us
plainly that present company was not excepted from this. He repeated the
text once more, then, launching upon his discourse, gave none of us a ray
of hope.
I had heard it all often before; but preached to cow-boys it took on a new
glare of untimeliness, of grotesque obsoleteness—as if some one
should say, “Let me persuade you to admire woman,” and forthwith hold out
her bleached bones to you. The cow-boys were told that not only they could
do no good, but that if they did contrive to, it would not help them. Nay,
more: not only honest deeds availed them nothing, but even if they
accepted this especial creed which was being explained to them as
necessary for salvation, still it might not save them. Their sin was
indeed the cause of their damnation, yet, keeping from sin, they might
nevertheless be lost. It had all been settled for them not only before
they were born, but before Adam was shaped. Having told them this, he
invited them to glorify the Creator of the scheme. Even if damned, they
must praise the person who had made them expressly for damnation. That is
what I heard him prove by logic to these cow-boys. Stone upon stone he
built the black cellar of his theology, leaving out its beautiful park and
the sunshine of its garden. He did not tell them the splendor of its past,
the noble fortress for good that it had been, how its tonic had
strengthened generations of their fathers. No; wrath he spoke of, and
never once of love. It was the bishop’s way, I knew well, to hold cow-boys
by homely talk of their special hardships and temptations. And when they
fell he spoke to them of forgiveness and brought them encouragement. But
Dr. MacBride never thought once of the lives of these waifs. Like himself,
like all mankind, they were invisible dots in creation; like him, they
were to feel as nothing, to be swept up in the potent heat of his faith.
So he thrust out to them none of the sweet but all the bitter of his
creed, naked and stern as iron. Dogma was his all in all, and poor
humanity was nothing but flesh for its canons.
Thus to kill what chance he had for being of use seemed to me more
deplorable than it did evidently to them. Their attention merely wandered.
Three hundred years ago they would have been frightened; but not in this
electric day. I saw Scipio stifling a smile when it came to the doctrine
of original sin. “We know of its truth,” said Dr. MacBride, “from the
severe troubles and distresses to which infants are liable, and from death
passing upon them before they are capable of sinning.” Yet I knew he was a
good man; and I also knew that if a missionary is to be tactless, he might
almost as well be bad.
I said their attention wandered, but I forgot the Virginian. At first his
attitude might have been mere propriety. One can look respectfully at a
preacher and be internally breaking all the commandments. But even with
the text I saw real attention light in the Virginian’s eye. And keeping
track of the concentration that grew on him with each minute made the
sermon short for me. He missed nothing. Before the end his gaze at the
preacher had become swerveless. Was he convert or critic? Convert was
incredible. Thus was an hour passed before I had thought of time.
When it was over we took it variously. The preacher was genial and spoke
of having now broken ground for the lessons that he hoped to instil. He
discoursed for a while about trout-fishing and about the rumored
uneasiness of the Indians northward where he was going. It was plain that
his personal safety never gave him a thought. He soon bade us good night.
The Ogdens shrugged their shoulders and were amused. That was their way of
taking it. Dr. MacBride sat too heavily on the Judge’s shoulders for him
to shrug them. As a leading citizen in the Territory he kept open house
for all comers. Policy and good nature made him bid welcome a wide variety
of travellers. The cow-boy out of employment found bed and a meal for
himself and his horse, and missionaries had before now been well received
at Sunk Creek Ranch.
“I suppose I’ll have to take him fishing,” said the Judge, ruefully.
“Yes, my dear,” said his wife, “you will. And I shall have to make his tea
for six days.”
“Otherwise,” Ogden suggested, “it might be reported that you were enemies
of religion.”
“That’s about it,” said the Judge. “I can get on with most people. But
elephants depress me.”
So we named the Doctor “Jumbo,” and I departed to my quarters.
At the bunk house, the comments were similar but more highly salted. The
men were going to bed. In spite of their outward decorum at the service,
they had not liked to be told that they were “altogether become filthy.”
It was easy to call names; they could do that themselves. And they
appealed to me, several speaking at once, like a concerted piece at the
opera: “Say, do you believe babies go to hell?”—“Ah, of course he
don’t.”—“There ain’t no hereafter, anyway.”—“Ain’t there?”—“Who
told yu’?”—“Same man as told the preacher we were all a sifted set
of sons-of-guns.”—“Well, I’m going to stay a Mormon.”—“Well,
I’m going to quit fleeing from temptation.”—“that’s so! Better get
it in the neck after a good time than a poor one.” And so forth. Their wit
was not extreme, yet I should like Dr. MacBride to have heard it. One
fellow put his natural soul pretty well into words, “If I happened to
learn what they had predestinated me to do, I’d do the other thing, just
to show ’em!”
And Trampas? And the Virginian? They were out of it. The Virginian had
gone straight to his new abode. Trampas lay in his bed, not asleep, and
sullen as ever.
“He ain’t got religion this trip,” said Scipio to me.
“Did his new foreman get it?” I asked.
“Huh! It would spoil him. You keep around that’s all. Keep around.”
Scipio was not to be probed; and I went, still baffled, to my repose.
No light burned in the cabin as I approached its door.
The Virginian’s room was quiet and dark; and that Dr. MacBride slumbered
was plainly audible to me, even before I entered. Go fishing with him! I
thought, as I undressed. And I selfishly decided that the Judge might have
this privilege entirely to himself. Sleep came to me fairly soon, in spite
of the Doctor. I was wakened from it by my bed’s being jolted—not a
pleasant thing that night. I must have started. And it was the quiet voice
of the Virginian that told me he was sorry to have accidentally disturbed
me. This disturbed me a good deal more. But his steps did not go to the
bunk house, as my sensational mind had suggested. He was not wearing much,
and in the dimness he seemed taller than common. I next made out that he
was bending over Dr. MacBride. The divine at last sprang upright.
“I am armed,” he said. “Take care. Who are you?”
“You can lay down your gun, seh. I feel like my spirit was going to bear
witness. I feel like I might get an enlightening.”
He was using some of the missionary’s own language. The baffling I had
been treated to by Scipio melted to nothing in this. Did living men
petrify, I should have changed to mineral between the sheets. The Doctor
got out of bed, lighted his lamp, and found a book; and the two retired
into the Virginian’s room, where I could hear the exhortations as I lay
amazed. In time the Doctor returned, blew out his lamp, and settled
himself. I had been very much awake, but was nearly gone to sleep again,
when the door creaked and the Virginian stood by the Doctor’s side.
“Are you awake, seh?”
“What? What’s that? What is it?”
“Excuse me, seh. The enemy is winning on me. I’m feeling less inward
opposition to sin.”
The lamp was lighted, and I listened to some further exhortations. They
must have taken half an hour. When the Doctor was in bed again, I thought
that I heard him sigh. This upset my composure in the dark; but I lay face
downward in the pillow, and the Doctor was soon again snoring. I envied
him for a while his faculty of easy sleep. But I must have dropped off
myself; for it was the lamp in my eyes that now waked me as he came back
for the third time from the Virginian’s room. Before blowing the light out
he looked at his watch, and thereupon I inquired the hour of him.
“Three,” said he.
I could not sleep any more now, and I lay watching the darkness.
“I’m afeared to be alone!” said the Virginian’s voice presently in the
next room. “I’m afeared.” There was a short pause, and then he shouted
very loud, “I’m losin’ my desire afteh the sincere milk of the Word!”
“What? What’s that? What?” The Doctor’s cot gave a great crack as he
started up listening, and I put my face deep in the pillow.
“I’m afeared! I’m afeared! Sin has quit being bitter in my belly.”
“Courage, my good man.” The Doctor was out of bed with his lamp again, and
the door shut behind him. Between them they made it long this time. I saw
the window become gray; then the corners of the furniture grow visible;
and outside, the dry chorus of the blackbirds began to fill the dawn. To
these the sounds of chickens and impatient hoofs in the stable were added,
and some cow wandered by loudly calling for her calf. Next, some one
whistling passed near and grew distant. But although the cold hue that I
lay staring at through the window warmed and changed, the Doctor continued
working hard over his patient in the next room. Only a word here and there
was distinct; but it was plain from the Virginian’s fewer remarks that the
sin in his belly was alarming him less. Yes, they made this time long. But
it proved, indeed, the last one. And though some sort of catastrophe was
bound to fall upon us, it was myself who precipitated the thing that did
happen.
Day was wholly come. I looked at my own watch, and it was six. I had been
about seven hours in my bed, and the Doctor had been about seven hours out
of his. The door opened, and he came in with his book and lamp. He seemed
to be shivering a little, and I saw him cast a longing eye at his couch.
But the Virginian followed him even as he blew out the now quite
superfluous light. They made a noticeable couple in their underclothes:
the Virginian with his lean racehorse shanks running to a point at his
ankle, and the Doctor with his stomach and his fat sedentary calves.
“You’ll be going to breakfast and the ladies, seh, pretty soon,” said the
Virginian, with a chastened voice. “But I’ll worry through the day somehow
without yu’. And to-night you can turn your wolf loose on me again.”
Once more it was no use. My face was deep in the pillow, but I made sounds
as of a hen who has laid an egg. It broke on the Doctor with a total
instantaneous smash, quite like an egg.
He tried to speak calmly. “This is a disgrace. An infamous disgrace. Never
in my life have I—” Words forsook him, and his face grew redder.
“Never in my life—” He stopped again, because, at the sight of him
being dignified in his red drawers, I was making the noise of a dozen
hens. It was suddenly too much for the Virginian. He hastened into his
room, and there sank on the floor with his head in his hands. The Doctor
immediately slammed the door upon him, and this rendered me easily fit for
a lunatic asylum. I cried into my pillow, and wondered if the Doctor would
come and kill me. But he took no notice of me whatever. I could hear the
Virginian’s convulsions through the door, and also the Doctor furiously
making his toilet within three feet of my head; and I lay quite still with
my face the other way, for I was really afraid to look at him. When I
heard him walk to the door in his boots, I ventured to peep; and there he
was, going out with his bag in his hand. As I still continued to lie, weak
and sore, and with a mind that had ceased all operation, the Virginian’s
door opened. He was clean and dressed and decent, but the devil still
sported in his eye. I have never seen a creature more irresistibly
handsome.
Then my mind worked again. “You’ve gone and done it,” said I. “He’s packed
his valise. He’ll not sleep here.”
The Virginian looked quickly out of the door. “Why, he’s leavin’ us!” he
exclaimed. “Drivin’ away right now in his little old buggy!” He turned to
me, and our eyes met solemnly over this large fact. I thought that I
perceived the faintest tincture of dismay in the features of Judge Henry’s
new, responsible, trusty foreman. This was the first act of his
administration. Once again he looked out at the departing missionary.
“Well,” he vindictively stated, “I cert’nly ain’t goin’ to run afteh him.”
And he looked at me again.
“Do you suppose the Judge knows?” I inquired.
He shook his head. “The windo’ shades is all down still oveh yondeh.” He
paused. “I don’t care,” he stated, quite as if he had been ten years old.
Then he grinned guiltily. “I was mighty respectful to him all night.”
“Oh, yes, respectful! Especially when you invited him to turn his wolf
loose.”
The Virginian gave a joyous gulp. He now came and sat down on the edge of
my bed. “I spoke awful good English to him most of the time,” said he. “I
can, yu’ know, when I cinch my attention tight on to it. Yes, I cert’nly
spoke a lot o’ good English. I didn’t understand some of it myself!”
He was now growing frankly pleased with his exploit. He had builded so
much better than he knew. He got up and looked out across the crystal
world of light. “The Doctor is at one-mile crossing,” he said. “He’ll get
breakfast at the N-lazy-Y.” Then he returned and sat again on my bed, and
began to give me his real heart. “I never set up for being better than
others. Not even to myself. My thoughts ain’t apt to travel around making
comparisons. And I shouldn’t wonder if my memory took as much notice of
the meannesses I have done as of—as of the other actions. But to
have to sit like a dumb lamb and let a stranger tell yu’ for an hour that
yu’re a hawg and a swine, just after you have acted in a way which them
that know the facts would call pretty near white—”
“Trampas!” I could not help exclaiming.
For there are moments of insight when a guess amounts to knowledge.
“Has Scipio told—”
“No. Not a word. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Well, yu’ see, I arrived home hyeh this evenin’ with several thoughts
workin’ and stirrin’ inside me. And not one o’ them thoughts was what yu’d
call Christian. I ain’t the least little bit ashamed of ’em. I’m a human.
But after the Judge—well, yu’ heard him. And so when I went away
from that talk and saw how positions was changed—”
A step outside stopped him short. Nothing more could be read in his face,
for there was Trampas himself in the open door.
“Good morning,” said Trampas, not looking at us. He spoke with the same
cool sullenness of yesterday.
We returned his greeting.
“I believe I’m late in congratulating you on your promotion,” said he.
The Virginian consulted his watch. “It’s only half afteh six,” he
returned.
Trampas’s sullenness deepened. “Any man is to be congratulated on getting
a rise, I expect.”
This time the Virginian let him have it. “Cert’nly. And I ain’t forgetting
how much I owe mine to you.”
Trampas would have liked to let himself go. “I’ve not come here for any
forgiveness,” he sneered.
“When did yu’ feel yu’ needed any?” The Virginian was impregnable.
Trampas seemed to feel how little he was gaining this way. He came out
straight now. “Oh, I haven’t any Judge behind me, I know. I heard you’d be
paying the boys this morning, and I’ve come for my time.”
“You’re thinking of leaving us?” asked the new foreman. “What’s your
dissatisfaction?”
“Oh, I’m not needing anybody back of me. I’ll get along by myself.” It was
thus he revealed his expectation of being dismissed by his enemy.
This would have knocked any meditated generosity out of my heart. But I
was not the Virginian. He shifted his legs, leaned back a little, and
laughed. “Go back to your job, Trampas, if that’s all your complaint.
You’re right about me being in luck. But maybe there’s two of us in luck.”
It was this that Scipio had preferred me to see with my own eyes. The
fight was between man and man no longer. The case could not be one of
forgiveness; but the Virginian would not use his official position to
crush his subordinate.
Trampas departed with something muttered that I did not hear, and the
Virginian closed intimate conversation by saying, “You’ll be late for
breakfast.” With that he also took himself away.
The ladies were inclined to be scandalized, but not the Judge. When my
whole story was done, he brought his fist down on the table, and not
lightly this time. “I’d make him lieutenant general if the ranch offered
that position!” he declared.
Miss Molly Wood said nothing at the time. But in the afternoon, by her
wish, she went fishing, with the Virginian deputed to escort her. I rode
with them, for a while. I was not going to continue a third in that party;
the Virginian was too becomingly dressed, and I saw KENILWORTH peeping out
of his pocket. I meant to be fishing by myself when that volume was
returned.
But Miss Wood talked with skilful openness as we rode. “I’ve heard all
about you and Dr. MacBride,” she said. “How could you do it, when the
Judge places such confidence in you?”
He looked pleased. “I reckon,” he said, “I couldn’t be so good if I wasn’t
bad onced in a while.”
“Why, there’s a skunk,” said I, noticing the pretty little animal trotting
in front of us at the edge of the thickets.
“Oh, where is it? Don’t let me see it!” screamed Molly. And at this deeply
feminine remark, the Virginian looked at her with such a smile that, had I
been a woman, it would have made me his to do what he pleased with on the
spot.
Upon the lady, however, it seemed to make less impression. Or rather, I
had better say, whatever were her feelings, she very naturally made no
display of them, and contrived not to be aware of that expression which
had passed over the Virginian’s face.
It was later that these few words reached me while I was fishing alone:
“Have you anything different to tell me yet?” I heard him say.
“Yes; I have.” She spoke in accents light and well intrenched. “I wish to
say that I have never liked any man better than you. But I expect to!”
He must have drawn small comfort from such an answer as that. But he
laughed out indomitably: “Don’t yu’ go betting on any such expectation!”
And then their words ceased to be distinct, and it was only their two
voices that I heard wandering among the windings of the stream.
XXII. “WHAT IS A RUSTLER?”
We all know what birds of a feather do. And it may be safely surmised that
if a bird of any particular feather has been for a long while unable to
see other birds of its kind, it will flock with them all the more
assiduously when they happen to alight in its vicinity.
Now the Ogdens were birds of Molly’s feather. They wore Eastern, and not
Western, plumage, and their song was a different song from that which the
Bear Creek birds sang. To be sure, the piping of little George Taylor was
full of hopeful interest; and many other strains, both striking and
melodious, were lifted in Cattle Land, and had given pleasure to Molly’s
ear. But although Indians, and bears, and mavericks, make worthy themes
for song, these are not the only songs in the world. Therefore the Eastern
warblings of the Ogdens sounded doubly sweet to Molly Wood. Such words as
Newport, Bar Harbor, and Tiffany’s thrilled her exceedingly. It made no
difference that she herself had never been to Newport or Bar Harbor, and
had visited Tiffany’s more often to admire than to purchase. On the
contrary, this rather added a dazzle to the music of the Ogdens. And
Molly, whose Eastern song had been silent in this strange land, began to
chirp it again during the visit that she made at the Sunk Creek Ranch.
Thus the Virginian’s cause by no means prospered at this time. His forces
were scattered, while Molly’s were concentrated. The girl was not at that
point where absence makes the heart grow fonder. While the Virginian was
trundling his long, responsible miles in the caboose, delivering the
cattle at Chicago, vanquishing Trampas along the Yellowstone, she had
regained herself.
Thus it was that she could tell him so easily during those first hours
that they were alone after his return, “I expect to like another man
better than you.”
Absence had recruited her. And then the Ogdens had reenforced her. They
brought the East back powerfully to her memory, and her thoughts filled
with it. They did not dream that they were assisting in any battle. No one
ever had more unconscious allies than did Molly at that time. But she used
them consciously, or almost consciously. She frequented them; she spoke of
Eastern matters; she found that she had acquaintances whom the Ogdens also
knew, and she often brought them into the conversation. For it may be
said, I think, that she was fighting a battle—nay, a campaign. And
perhaps this was a hopeful sign for the Virginian (had he but known it),
that the girl resorted to allies. She surrounded herself, she steeped
herself, with the East, to have, as it were, a sort of counteractant
against the spell of the black-haired horse man.
And his forces were, as I have said, scattered. For his promotion gave him
no more time for love-making. He was foreman now. He had said to Judge
Henry, “I’ll try to please yu’.” And after the throb of emotion which
these words had both concealed and conveyed, there came to him that sort
of intention to win which amounts to a certainty. Yes, he would please
Judge Henry!
He did not know how much he had already pleased him. He did not know that
the Judge was humorously undecided which of his new foreman’s first acts
had the more delighted him: his performance with the missionary, or his
magnanimity to Trampas.
“Good feeling is a great thing in any one,” the Judge would say; “but I
like to know that my foreman has so much sense.”
“I am personally very grateful to him,” said Mrs. Henry.
And indeed so was the whole company. To be afflicted with Dr. MacBride for
one night instead of six was a great liberation.
But the Virginian never saw his sweetheart alone again; while she was at
the Sunk Creek Ranch, his duties called him away so much that there was no
chance for him. Worse still, that habit of birds of a feather brought
about a separation more considerable. She arranged to go East with the
Ogdens. It was so good an opportunity to travel with friends, instead of
making the journey alone!
Molly’s term of ministration at the schoolhouse had so pleased Bear Creek
that she was warmly urged to take a holiday. School could afford to begin
a little late. Accordingly, she departed.
The Virginian hid his sore heart from her during the moment of farewell
that they had.
“No, I’ll not want any more books,” he said, “till yu’ come back.” And
then he made cheerfulness. “It’s just the other way round!” said he.
“What is the other way round?”
“Why, last time it was me that went travelling, and you that stayed
behind.”
“So it was!” And here she gave him a last scratch. “But you’ll be busier
than ever,” she said; “no spare time to grieve about me!”
She could wound him, and she knew it. Nobody else could. That is why she
did it.
But he gave her something to remember, too.
“Next time,” he said, “neither of us will stay behind. We’ll both go
together.”
And with these words he gave her no laughing glance. It was a look that
mingled with the words; so that now and again in the train, both came back
to her, and she sat pensive, drawing near to Bennington and hearing his
voice and seeing his eyes.
How is it that this girl could cry at having to tell Sam Bannett she could
not think of him, and then treat another lover as she treated the
Virginian? I cannot tell you, having never (as I said before) been a woman
myself.
Bennington opened its arms to its venturesome daughter. Much was made of
Molly Wood. Old faces and old places welcomed her. Fatted calves of
varying dimensions made their appearance. And although the fatted calf is
an animal that can assume more divergent shapes than any other known
creature,—being sometimes champagne and partridges, and again cake
and currant wine,—through each disguise you can always identify the
same calf. The girl from Bear Creek met it at every turn.
The Bannetts at Hoosic Falls offered a large specimen to Molly—a
dinner (perhaps I should say a banquet) of twenty-four. And Sam Bannett of
course took her to drive more than once.
“I want to see the Hoosic Bridge,” she would say. And when they reached
that well-remembered point, “How lovely it is!” she exclaimed. And as she
gazed at the view up and down the valley, she would grow pensive. “How
natural the church looks,” she continued. And then, having crossed both
bridges, “Oh, there’s the dear old lodge gate!” Or again, while they drove
up the valley of the little Hoosic: “I had forgotten it was so nice and
lonely. But after all, no woods are so interesting as those where you
might possibly see a bear or an elk.” And upon another occasion, after a
cry of enthusiasm at the view from the top of Mount Anthony, “It’s lovely,
lovely, lovely,” she said, with diminishing cadence, ending in pensiveness
once more. “Do you see that little bit just there? No, not where the trees
are—that bare spot that looks brown and warm in the sun. With a
little sagebrush, that spot would look something like a place I know on
Bear Creek. Only of course you don’t get the clear air here.”
“I don’t forget you,” said Sam. “Do you remember me? Or is it out of sight
out of mind?”
And with this beginning he renewed his suit. She told him that she forgot
no one; that she should return always, lest they might forget her.
“Return always!” he exclaimed. “You talk as if your anchor was dragging.”
Was it? At all events, Sam failed in his suit.
Over in the house at Dunbarton, the old lady held Molly’s hand and looked
a long while at her. “You have changed very much,” she said finally.
“I am a year older,” said the girl.
“Pshaw, my dear!” said the great-aunt. “Who is he?”
“Nobody!” cried Molly, with indignation.
“Then you shouldn’t answer so loud,” said the great-aunt.
The girl suddenly hid her face. “I don’t believe I can love any one,” she
said, “except myself.”
And then that old lady, who in her day had made her courtesy to Lafayette,
began to stroke her niece’s buried head, because she more than half
understood. And understanding thus much, she asked no prying questions,
but thought of the days of her own youth, and only spoke a little quiet
love and confidence to Molly.
“I am an old, old woman,” she said. “But I haven’t forgotten about it.
They objected to him because he had no fortune. But he was brave and
handsome, and I loved him, my dear. Only I ought to have loved him more. I
gave him my promise to think about it. And he and his ship were lost.” The
great-aunt’s voice had become very soft and low, and she spoke with many
pauses. “So then I knew. If I had—if—perhaps I should have
lost him; but it would have been after—ah, well! So long as you can
help it, never marry! But when you cannot help it a moment longer, then
listen to nothing but that; for, my dear, I know your choice would be
worthy of the Starks. And now—let me see his picture.”
“Why, aunty!” said Molly.
“Well, I won’t pretend to be supernatural,” said the aunt, “but I thought
you kept one back when you were showing us those Western views last
night.”
Now this was the precise truth. Molly had brought a number of photographs
from Wyoming to show to her friends at home. These, however, with one
exception, were not portraits. They were views of scenery and of cattle
round-ups, and other scenes characteristic of ranch life. Of young men she
had in her possession several photographs, and all but one of these she
had left behind her. Her aunt’s penetration had in a way mesmerized the
girl; she rose obediently and sought that picture of the Virginian. It was
full length, displaying him in all his cow-boy trappings,—the
leathern chaps, the belt and pistol, and in his hand a coil of rope.
Not one of her family had seen it, or suspected its existence. She now
brought it downstairs and placed it in her aunt’s hand.
“Mercy!” cried the old lady.
Molly was silent, but her eye grew warlike.
“Is that the way—” began the aunt. “Mercy!” she murmured; and she
sat staring at the picture.
Molly remained silent.
Her aunt looked slowly up at her. “Has a man like that presumed—”
“He’s not a bit like that. Yes, he’s exactly like that,” said Molly. And
she would have snatched the photograph away, but her aunt retained it.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose there are days when he does not kill people.”
“He never killed anybody!” And Molly laughed.
“Are you seriously—” said the old lady.
“I almost might—at times. He is perfectly splendid.”
“My dear, you have fallen in love with his clothes.”
“It’s not his clothes. And I’m not in love. He often wears others. He
wears a white collar like anybody.”
“Then that would be a more suitable way to be photographed, I think. He
couldn’t go round like that here. I could not receive him myself.”
“He’d never think of such a thing. Why, you talk as if he were a savage.”
The old lady studied the picture closely for a minute. “I think it is a
good face,” she finally remarked. “Is the fellow as handsome as that, my
dear?”
More so, Molly thought. And who was he, and what were his prospects? were
the aunt’s next inquiries. She shook her head at the answers which she
received; and she also shook her head over her niece’s emphatic denial
that her heart was lost to this man. But when their parting came, the old
lady said: “God bless you and keep you, my dear. I’ll not try to manage
you. They managed me—” A sigh spoke the rest of this sentence. “But
I’m not worried about you—at least, not very much. You have never
done anything that was not worthy of the Starks. And if you’re going to
take him, do it before I die so that I can bid him welcome for your sake.
God bless you, my dear.”
And after the girl had gone back to Bennington, the great-aunt had this
thought: “She is like us all. She wants a man that is a man.” Nor did the
old lady breathe her knowledge to any member of the family. For she was a
loyal spirit, and her girl’s confidence was sacred to her.
“Besides,” she reflected, “if even I can do nothing with her, what a mess
THEY’D make of it! We should hear of her elopement next.”
So Molly’s immediate family never saw that photograph, and never heard a
word from her upon this subject. But on the day that she left for Bear
Creek, as they sat missing her and discussing her visit in the evening,
Mrs. Bell observed: “Mother, how did you think she was?”—“I never
saw her better, Sarah. That horrible place seems to agree with her.”—“Oh,
yes, agree. It seemed to me—“—“Well?”—“Oh, just somehow
that she was thinking.”—“Thinking?”—“Well, I believe she has
something on her mind.”—“You mean a man,” said Andrew Bell.—“A
man, Andrew?”—“Yes, Mrs. Wood, that’s what Sarah always means.”
It may be mentioned that Sarah’s surmises did not greatly contribute to
her mother’s happiness. And rumor is so strange a thing that presently
from the malicious outside air came a vague and dreadful word—one of
those words that cannot be traced to its source. Somebody said to Andrew
Bell that they heard Miss Molly Wood was engaged to marry a RUSTLER.
“Heavens, Andrew!” said his wife; “what is a rustler?”
It was not in any dictionary, and current translations of it were
inconsistent. A man at Hoosic Falls said that he had passed through
Cheyenne, and heard the term applied in a complimentary way to people who
were alive and pushing. Another man had always supposed it meant some kind
of horse. But the most alarming version of all was that a rustler was a
cattle thief.
Now the truth is that all these meanings were right. The word ran a sort
of progress in the cattle country, gathering many meanings as it went. It
gathered more, however, in Bennington. In a very few days, gossip had it
that Molly was engaged to a gambler, a gold miner, an escaped stage
robber, and a Mexican bandit; while Mrs. Flynt feared she had married a
Mormon.
Along Bear Creek, however, Molly and her “rustler” took a ride soon after
her return. They were neither married nor engaged, and she was telling him
about Vermont.
“I never was there,” said he. “Never happened to strike in that
direction.”
“What decided your direction?”
“Oh, looking for chances. I reckon I must have been more ambitious than my
brothers—or more restless. They stayed around on farms. But I got
out. When I went back again six years afterward, I was twenty. They was
talking about the same old things. Men of twenty-five and thirty—yet
just sittin’ and talkin’ about the same old things. I told my mother about
what I’d seen here and there, and she liked it, right to her death. But
the others—well, when I found this whole world was hawgs and turkeys
to them, with a little gunnin’ afteh small game throwed in, I put on my
hat one mawnin’ and told ’em maybe when I was fifty I’d look in on ’em
again to see if they’d got any new subjects. But they’ll never. My
brothers don’t seem to want chances.”
“You have lost a good many yourself,” said Molly.
“That’s correct.”
“And yet,” said she, “sometimes I think you know a great deal more than I
ever shall.”
“Why, of course I do,” said he, quite simply. “I have earned my living
since I was fourteen. And that’s from old Mexico to British Columbia. I
have never stolen or begged a cent. I’d not want yu’ to know what I know.”
She was looking at him, half listening and half thinking of her
great-aunt.
“I am not losing chances any more,” he continued. “And you are the best
I’ve got.”
She was not sorry to have Georgie Taylor come galloping along at this
moment and join them. But the Virginian swore profanely under his breath.
And on this ride nothing more happened.
XXIII. VARIOUS POINTS
Love had been snowbound for many weeks. Before this imprisonment its
course had run neither smooth nor rough, so far as eye could see; it had
run either not at all, or, as an undercurrent, deep out of sight. In their
rides, in their talks, love had been dumb, as to spoken words at least;
for the Virginian had set himself a heavy task of silence and of patience.
Then, where winter barred his visits to Bear Creek, and there was for the
while no ranch work or responsibility to fill his thoughts and blood with
action, he set himself a task much lighter. Often, instead of Shakespeare
and fiction, school books lay open on his cabin table; and penmanship and
spelling helped the hours to pass. Many sheets of paper did he fill with
various exercises, and Mrs. Henry gave him her assistance in advice and
corrections.
“I shall presently be in love with him myself,” she told the Judge. “And
it’s time for you to become anxious.”
“I am perfectly safe,” he retorted. “There’s only one woman for him any
more.”
“She is not good enough for him,” declared Mrs. Henry. “But he’ll never
see that.”
So the snow fell, the world froze, and the spelling-books and exercises
went on. But this was not the only case of education which was progressing
at the Sunk Creek Ranch while love was snowbound.
One morning Scipio le Moyne entered the Virginian’s sitting room—that
apartment where Dr. MacBride had wrestled with sin so courageously all
night.
The Virginian sat at his desk. Open books lay around him; a half-finished
piece of writing was beneath his fist; his fingers were coated with ink.
Education enveloped him, it may be said. But there was none in his eye.
That was upon the window, looking far across the cold plain.
The foreman did not move when Scipio came in, and this humorous spirit
smiled to himself. “It’s Bear Creek he’s havin’ a vision of,” he
concluded. But he knew instantly that this was not so. The Virginian was
looking at something real, and Scipio went to the window to see for
himself.
“Well,” he said, having seen, “when is he going to leave us?”
The foreman continued looking at two horsemen riding together. Their
shapes, small in the distance, showed black against the universal
whiteness.
“When d’ yu’ figure he’ll leave us?” repeated Scipio.
“He,” murmured the Virginian, always watching the distant horsemen; and
again, “he.”
Scipio sprawled down, familiarly, across a chair. He and the Virginian had
come to know each other very well since that first meeting at Medora. They
were birds many of whose feathers were the same, and the Virginian often
talked to Scipio without reserve. Consequently, Scipio now understood
those two syllables that the Virginian had pronounced precisely as though
the sentences which lay between them had been fully expressed.
“Hm,” he remarked. “Well, one will be a gain, and the other won’t be no
loss.”
“Poor Shorty!” said the Virginian. “Poor fool!”
Scipio was less compassionate. “No,” he persisted, “I ain’t sorry for him.
Any man old enough to have hair on his face ought to see through Trampas.”
The Virginian looked out of the window again, and watched Shorty and
Trampas as they rode in the distance. “Shorty is kind to animals,” he
said. “He has gentled that hawss Pedro he bought with his first money.
Gentled him wonderful. When a man is kind to dumb animals, I always say he
had got some good in him.”
“Yes,” Scipio reluctantly admitted. “Yes. But I always did hate a fool.”
“This hyeh is a mighty cruel country,” pursued the Virginian. “To animals
that is. Think of it! Think what we do to hundreds an’ thousands of little
calves! Throw ’em down, brand ’em, cut ’em, ear mark ’em, turn ’em loose,
and on to the next. It has got to be, of course. But I say this. If a man
can go jammin’ hot irons on to little calves and slicin’ pieces off ’em
with his knife, and live along, keepin’ a kindness for animals in his
heart, he has got some good in him. And that’s what Shorty has got. But he
is lettin’ Trampas get a hold of him, and both of them will leave us.” And
the Virginian looked out across the huge winter whiteness again. But the
riders had now vanished behind some foot-hills.
Scipio sat silent. He had never put these thoughts about men and animals
to himself, and when they were put to him, he saw that they were true.
“Queer,” he observed finally.
“What?”
“Everything.”
“Nothing’s queer,” stated the Virginian, “except marriage and lightning.
Them two occurrences can still give me a sensation of surprise.”
“All the same it is queer,” Scipio insisted
“Well, let her go at me.”
“Why, Trampas. He done you dirt. You pass that over. You could have fired
him, but you let him stay and keep his job. That’s goodness. And badness
is resultin’ from it, straight. Badness right from goodness.”
“You’re off the trail a whole lot,” said the Virginian.
“Which side am I off, then?”
“North, south, east, and west. First point. I didn’t expect to do Trampas
any good by not killin’ him, which I came pretty near doin’ three times.
Nor I didn’t expect to do Trampas any good by lettin’ him keep his job.
But I am foreman of this ranch. And I can sit and tell all men to their
face: ‘I was above that meanness.’ Point two: it ain’t any GOODNESS, it is
TRAMPAS that badness has resulted from. Put him anywhere and it will be
the same. Put him under my eye, and I can follow his moves a little,
anyway. You have noticed, maybe, that since you and I run on to that dead
Polled Angus cow, that was still warm when we got to her, we have found no
more cows dead of sudden death. We came mighty close to catchin’ whoever
it was that killed that cow and ran her calf off to his own bunch. He
wasn’t ten minutes ahead of us. We can prove nothin’; and he knows that
just as well as we do. But our cows have all quit dyin’ of sudden death.
And Trampas he’s gettin’ ready for a change of residence. As soon as all
the outfits begin hirin’ new hands in the spring, Trampas will leave us
and take a job with some of them. And maybe our cows’ll commence gettin’
killed again, and we’ll have to take steps that will be more emphatic—maybe.”
Scipio meditated. “I wonder what killin’ a man feels like?” he said.
“Why, nothing to bother yu’—when he’d ought to have been killed.
Next point: Trampas he’ll take Shorty with him, which is certainly bad for
Shorty. But it’s me that has kept Shorty out of harm’s way this long. If I
had fired Trampas, he’d have worked Shorty into dissatisfaction that much
sooner.”
Scipio meditated again. “I knowed Trampas would pull his freight,” he
said. “But I didn’t think of Shorty. What makes you think it?”
“He asked me for a raise.”
“He ain’t worth the pay he’s getting now.”
“Trampas has told him different.”
“When a man ain’t got no ideas of his own,” said Scipio, “he’d ought to be
kind o’ careful who he borrows ’em from.”
“That’s mighty correct,” said the Virginian. “Poor Shorty! He has told me
about his life. It is sorrowful. And he will never get wise. It was too
late for him to get wise when he was born. D’ yu’ know why he’s after
higher wages? He sends most all his money East.”
“I don’t see what Trampas wants him for,” said Scipio.
“Oh, a handy tool some day.”
“Not very handy,” said Scipio.
“Well, Trampas is aimin’ to train him. Yu’ see, supposin’ yu’ were
figuring to turn professional thief—yu’d be lookin’ around for a
nice young trustful accomplice to take all the punishment and let you take
the rest.”
“No such thing!” cried Scipio, angrily. “I’m no shirker.” And then,
perceiving the Virginian’s expression, he broke out laughing. “Well,” he
exclaimed, “yu’ fooled me that time.”
“Looks that way. But I do mean it about Trampas.”
Presently Scipio rose, and noticed the half-finished exercise upon the
Virginian’s desk. “Trampas is a rolling stone,” he said.
“A rolling piece of mud,” corrected the Virginian.
“Mud! That’s right. I’m a rolling stone. Sometimes I’d most like to quit
being.”
“That’s easy done,” said the Virginian.
“No doubt, when yu’ve found the moss yu’ want to gather.” As Scipio
glanced at the school books again, a sparkle lurked in his bleached blue
eye. “I can cipher some,” he said. “But I expect I’ve got my own notions
about spelling.”
“I retain a few private ideas that way myself,” remarked the Virginian,
innocently; and Scipio’s sparkle gathered light.
“As to my geography,” he pursued, “that’s away out loose in the brush. Is
Bennington the capital of Vermont? And how d’ yu’ spell bridegroom?”
“Last point!” shouted the Virginian, letting a book fly after him: “don’t
let badness and goodness worry yu’, for yu’ll never be a judge of them.”
But Scipio had dodged the book, and was gone. As he went his way, he said
to himself, “All the same, it must pay to fall regular in love.” At the
bunk house that afternoon it was observed that he was unusually silent.
His exit from the foreman’s cabin had let in a breath of winter so chill
that the Virginian went to see his thermometer, a Christmas present from
Mrs. Henry. It registered twenty below zero. After reviving the fire to a
white blaze, the foreman sat thinking over the story of Shorty: what its
useless, feeble past had been; what would be its useless, feeble future.
He shook his head over the sombre question, Was there any way out for
Shorty? “It may be,” he reflected, “that them whose pleasure brings yu’
into this world owes yu’ a living. But that don’t make the world
responsible. The world did not beget you. I reckon man helps them that
help themselves. As for the universe, it looks like it did too wholesale a
business to turn out an article up to standard every clip. Yes, it is
sorrowful. For Shorty is kind to his hawss.”
In the evening the Virginian brought Shorty into his room. He usually knew
what he had to say, usually found it easy to arrange his thoughts; and
after such arranging the words came of themselves. But as he looked at
Shorty, this did not happen to him. There was not a line of badness in the
face; yet also there was not a line of strength; no promise in eye, or
nose, or chin; the whole thing melted to a stubby, featureless mediocrity.
It was a countenance like thousands; and hopelessness filled the Virginian
as he looked at this lost dog, and his dull, wistful eyes.
But some beginning must be made.
“I wonder what the thermometer has got to be,” he said. “Yu’ can see it,
if yu’ll hold the lamp to that right side of the window.”
Shorty held the lamp. “I never used any,” he said, looking out at the
instrument, nevertheless.
The Virginian had forgotten that Shorty could not read. So he looked out
of the window himself, and found that it was twenty-two below zero. “This
is pretty good tobacco,” he remarked; and Shorty helped himself, and
filled his pipe.
“I had to rub my left ear with snow to-day,” said he. “I was just in
time.”
“I thought it looked pretty freezy out where yu’ was riding,” said the
foreman.
The lost dog’s eyes showed plain astonishment. “We didn’t see you out
there,” said he.
“Well,” said the foreman, “it’ll soon not be freezing any more; and then
we’ll all be warm enough with work. Everybody will be working all over the
range. And I wish I knew somebody that had a lot of stable work to be
attended to. I cert’nly do for your sake.”
“Why?” said Shorty.
“Because it’s the right kind of a job for you.”
“I can make more—” began Shorty, and stopped.
“There is a time coming,” said the Virginian, “when I’ll want somebody
that knows how to get the friendship of hawsses. I’ll want him to handle
some special hawsses the Judge has plans about. Judge Henry would pay
fifty a month for that.”
“I can make more,” said Shorty, this time with stubbornness.
“Well, yes. Sometimes a man can—when he’s not worth it, I mean. But
it don’t generally last.”
Shorty was silent. “I used to make more myself,” said the Virginian.
“You’re making a lot more now,” said Shorty.
“Oh, yes. But I mean when I was fooling around the earth, jumping from job
to job, and helling all over town between whiles. I was not worth fifty a
month then, nor twenty-five. But there was nights I made a heap more at
cyards.”
Shorty’s eyes grew large.
“And then, bang! it was gone with treatin’ the men and the girls.”
“I don’t always—” said Shorty, and stopped again.
The Virginian knew that he was thinking about the money he sent East.
“After a while,” he continued, “I noticed a right strange fact. The money
I made easy that I WASN’T worth, it went like it came. I strained myself
none gettin’ or spendin’ it. But the money I made hard that I WAS worth,
why I began to feel right careful about that. And now I have got savings
stowed away. If once yu’ could know how good that feels—”
“So I would know,” said Shorty, “with your luck.”
“What’s my luck?” said the Virginian, sternly.
“Well, if I had took up land along a creek that never goes dry and proved
upon it like you have, and if I had saw that land raise its value on me
with me lifting no finger—”
“Why did you lift no finger?” cut in the Virginian. “Who stopped yu’
taking up land? Did it not stretch in front of yu’, behind yu’, all around
yu’, the biggest, baldest opportunity in sight? That was the time I lifted
my finger; but yu’ didn’t.”
Shorty stood stubborn.
“But never mind that,” said the Virginian. “Take my land away to-morrow,
and I’d still have my savings in bank. Because, you see, I had to work
right hard gathering them in. I found out what I could do, and I settled
down and did it. Now you can do that too. The only tough part is the
finding out what you’re good for. And for you, that is found. If you’ll
just decide to work at this thing you can do, and gentle those hawsses for
the Judge, you’ll be having savings in a bank yourself.”
“I can make more,” said the lost dog.
The Virginian was on the point of saying, “Then get out!” But instead, he
spoke kindness to the end. “The weather is freezing yet,” he said, “and it
will be for a good long while. Take your time, and tell me if yu’ change
your mind.”
After that Shorty returned to the bunk house, and the Virginian knew that
the boy had learned his lesson of discontent from Trampas with a
thoroughness past all unteaching. This petty triumph of evil seemed scarce
of the size to count as any victory over the Virginian. But all men grasp
at straws. Since that first moment, when in the Medicine Bow saloon the
Virginian had shut the mouth of Trampas by a word, the man had been trying
to get even without risk; and at each successive clash of his weapon with
the Virginian’s, he had merely met another public humiliation. Therefore,
now at the Sunk Creek Ranch in these cold white days, a certain lurking
insolence in his gait showed plainly his opinion that by disaffecting
Shorty he had made some sort of reprisal.
Yes, he had poisoned the lost dog. In the springtime, when the neighboring
ranches needed additional hands, it happened as the Virginian had
foreseen,—Trampas departed to a “better job,” as he took pains to
say, and with him the docile Shorty rode away upon his horse Pedro.
Love now was not any longer snowbound. The mountain trails were open
enough for the sure feet of love’s steed—that horse called Monte.
But duty blocked the path of love. Instead of turning his face to Bear
Creek, the foreman had other journeys to make, full of heavy work, and
watchfulness, and councils with the Judge. The cattle thieves were growing
bold, and winter had scattered the cattle widely over the range. Therefore
the Virginian, instead of going to see her, wrote a letter to his
sweetheart. It was his first.
XXIV. A LETTER WITH A MORAL
The letter which the Virginian wrote to Molly Wood was, as has been
stated, the first that he had ever addressed to her. I think, perhaps, he
may have been a little shy as to his skill in the epistolary art, a little
anxious lest any sustained production from his pen might contain blunders
that would too staringly remind her of his scant learning. He could turn
off a business communication about steers or stock cars, or any other of
the subjects involved in his profession, with a brevity and a clearness
that led the Judge to confide three-quarters of such correspondence to his
foreman. “Write to the 76 outfit,” the Judge would say, “and tell them
that my wagon cannot start for the round-up until,” etc.; or “Write to
Cheyenne and say that if they will hold a meeting next Monday week, I
will,” etc. And then the Virginian would write such communications with
ease.
But his first message to his lady was scarcely written with ease. It must
be classed, I think, among those productions which are styled literary
EFFORTS. It was completed in pencil before it was copied in ink; and that
first draft of it in pencil was well-nigh illegible with erasures and
amendments. The state of mind of the writer during its composition may be
gathered without further description on my part from a slight interruption
which occurred in the middle.
The door opened, and Scipio put his head in. “You coming to dinner?” he
inquired.
“You go to hell,” replied the Virginian.
“My jinks!” said Scipio, quietly, and he shut the door without further
observation.
To tell the truth, I doubt if this letter would ever have been undertaken,
far less completed and despatched, had not the lover’s heart been wrung
with disappointment. All winter long he had looked to that day when he
should knock at the girl’s door, and hear her voice bid him come in. All
winter long he had been choosing the ride he would take her. He had
imagined a sunny afternoon, a hidden grove, a sheltering cleft of rock, a
running spring, and some words of his that should conquer her at last and
leave his lips upon hers. And with this controlled fire pent up within
him, he had counted the days, scratching them off his calendar with a dig
each night that once or twice snapped the pen. Then, when the trail stood
open, this meeting was deferred, put off for indefinite days, or weeks; he
could not tell how long. So, gripping his pencil and tracing heavy words,
he gave himself what consolation he could by writing her.
The letter, duly stamped and addressed to Bear Creek, set forth upon its
travels; and these were devious and long. When it reached its destination,
it was some twenty days old. It had gone by private hand at the outset,
taken the stagecoach at a way point, become late in that stagecoach,
reached a point of transfer, and waited there for the postmaster to begin,
continue, end, and recover from a game of poker, mingled with whiskey.
Then it once more proceeded, was dropped at the right way point, and
carried by private hand to Bear Creek. The experience of this letter,
however, was not at all a remarkable one at that time in Wyoming.
Molly Wood looked at the envelope. She had never before seen the
Virginian’s handwriting. She knew it instantly. She closed her door and
sat down to read it with a beating heart.
SUNK CREEK RANCH, May 5, 188-
My Dear Miss Wood: I am sorry about this. My plan was different. It was to
get over for a ride with you about now or sooner. This year Spring is
early. The snow is off the flats this side the range and where the sun
gets a chance to hit the earth strong all day it is green and has flowers
too, a good many. You can see them bob and mix together in the wind. The
quaking-asps down low on the South side are in small leaf and will soon be
twinkling like the flowers do now. I had planned to take a look at this
with you and that was a better plan than what I have got to do. The water
is high but I could have got over and as for the snow on top of the
mountain a man told me nobody could cross it for a week yet, because he
had just done it himself. Was not he a funny man? You ought to see how the
birds have streamed across the sky while Spring was coming. But you have
seen them on your side of the mountain. But I can’t come now Miss Wood.
There is a lot for me to do that has to be done and Judge Henry needs more
than two eyes just now. I could not think much of myself if I left him for
my own wishes.
But the days will be warmer when I come. We will not have to quit by five,
and we can get off and sit too. We could not sit now unless for a very
short while. If I know when I can come I will try to let you know, but I
think it will be this way. I think you will just see me coming for I have
things to do of an unsure nature and a good number of such. Do not believe
reports about Indians. They are started by editors to keep the soldiers in
the country. The friends of the editors get the hay and beef contracts.
Indians do not come to settled parts like Bear Creek is. It is all editors
and politicianists.
Nothing has happened worth telling you. I have read that play Othello. No
man should write down such a thing. Do you know if it is true? I have seen
one worse affair down in Arizona. He killed his little child as well as
his wife but such things should not be put down in fine language for the
public. I have read Romeo and Juliet. That is beautiful language but Romeo
is no man. I like his friend Mercutio that gets killed. He is a man. If he
had got Juliet there would have been no foolishness and trouble.
Well Miss Wood I would like to see you to-day. Do you know what I think
Monte would do if I rode him out and let the rein slack? He would come
straight to your gate for he is a horse of great judgement. (“That’s the
first word he has misspelled,” said Molly.) I suppose you are sitting with
George Taylor and those children right now. Then George will get old
enough to help his father but Uncle Hewie’s twins will be ready for you
about then and the supply will keep coming from all quarters all sizes for
you to say big A little a to them. There is no news here. Only calves and
cows and the hens are laying now which does always seem news to a hen
every time she does it. Did I ever tell you about a hen Emily we had here?
She was venturesome to an extent I have not seen in other hens only she
had poor judgement and would make no family ties. She would keep trying to
get interest in the ties of others taking charge of little chicks and
bantams and turkeys and puppies one time, and she thought most anything
was an egg. I will tell you about her sometime. She died without family
ties one day while I was building a house for her to teach school in.
(“The outrageous wretch!” cried Molly! And her cheeks turned deep pink as
she sat alone with her lover’s letter.)
I am coming the first day I am free. I will be a hundred miles from you
most of the time when I am not more but I will ride a hundred miles for
one hour and Monte is up to that. After never seeing you for so long I
will make one hour do if I have to. Here is a flower I have just been out
and picked. I have kissed it now. That is the best I can do yet.
Molly laid the letter in her lap and looked at the flower. Then suddenly
she jumped up and pressed it to her lips, and after a long moment held it
away from her.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no.” She sat down.
It was some time before she finished the letter. Then once more she got up
and put on her hat.
Mrs. Taylor wondered where the girl could be walking so fast. But she was
not walking anywhere, and in half an hour she returned, rosy with her
swift exercise, but with a spirit as perturbed as when she had set out.
Next morning at six, when she looked out of her window, there was Monte
tied to the Taylor’s gate. Ah, could he have come the day before, could
she have found him when she returned from that swift walk of hers!
XXV. PROGRESS OF THE LOST DOG
It was not even an hour’s visit that the Virginian was able to pay his
lady love. But neither had he come a hundred miles to see her. The
necessities of his wandering work had chanced to bring him close enough
for a glimpse of her, and this glimpse he took, almost on the wing. For he
had to rejoin a company of men at once.
“Yu’ got my letter?” he said.
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday! I wrote it three weeks ago. Well, yu’ got it. This cannot be
the hour with you that I mentioned. That is coming, and maybe very soon.”
She could say nothing. Relief she felt, and yet with it something like a
pang.
“To-day does not count,” he told her, “except that every time I see you
counts with me. But this is not the hour that I mentioned.”
What little else was said between them upon this early morning shall be
told duly. For this visit in its own good time did count momentously,
though both of them took it lightly while its fleeting minutes passed. He
returned to her two volumes that she had lent him long ago and with Taylor
he left a horse which he had brought for her to ride. As a good-by, he put
a bunch of flowers in her hand. Then he was gone, and she watched him
going by the thick bushes along the stream. They were pink with wild
roses; and the meadow-larks, invisible in the grass, like hiding
choristers, sent up across the empty miles of air their unexpected song.
Earth and sky had been propitious, could he have stayed; and perhaps one
portion of her heart had been propitious too. So, as he rode away on
Monte, she watched him, half chilled by reason, half melted by passion,
self-thwarted, self-accusing, unresolved. Therefore the days that came for
her now were all of them unhappy ones, while for him they were filled with
work well done and with changeless longing.
One day it seemed as if a lull was coming, a pause in which he could at
last attain that hour with her. He left the camp and turned his face
toward Bear Creek. The way led him along Butte Creek. Across the stream
lay Balaam’s large ranch; and presently on the other bank he saw Balaam
himself, and reined in Monte for a moment to watch what Balaam was doing.
“That’s what I’ve heard,” he muttered to himself. For Balaam had led some
horses to the water, and was lashing them heavily because they would not
drink. He looked at this spectacle so intently that he did not see Shorty
approaching along the trail.
“Morning,” said Shorty to him, with some constraint.
But the Virginian gave him a pleasant greeting, “I was afraid I’d not
catch you so quick,” said Shorty. “This is for you.” He handed his recent
foreman a letter of much battered appearance. It was from the Judge. It
had not come straight, but very gradually, in the pockets of three
successive cow-punchers. As the Virginian glanced over it and saw that the
enclosure it contained was for Balaam, his heart fell. Here were new
orders for him, and he could not go to see his sweetheart.
“Hello, Shorty!” said Balaam, from over the creek. To the Virginian he
gave a slight nod. He did not know him, although he knew well enough who
he was.
“Hyeh’s a letter from Judge Henry for yu’” said the Virginian, and he
crossed the creek.
Many weeks before, in the early spring, Balaam had borrowed two horses
from the Judge, promising to return them at once. But the Judge, of
course, wrote very civilly. He hoped that “this dunning reminder” might be
excused. As Balaam read the reminder, he wished that he had sent the
horses before. The Judge was a greater man than he in the Territory.
Balaam could not but excuse the “dunning reminder,”—but he was ready
to be disagreeable to somebody at once.
“Well,” he said, musing aloud in his annoyance, “Judge Henry wants them by
the 30th. Well, this is the 24th, and time enough yet.”
“This is the 27th,” said the Virginian, briefly.
That made a difference! Not so easy to reach Sunk Creek in good order by
the 30th! Balaam had drifted three sunrises behind the progress of the
month. Days look alike, and often lose their very names in the quiet
depths of Cattle Land. The horses were not even here at the ranch. Balaam
was ready to be very disagreeable now. Suddenly he perceived the date of
the Judge’s letter. He held it out to the Virginian, and struck the paper.
“What’s your idea in bringing this here two weeks late?” he said.
Now, when he had struck that paper, Shorty looked at the Virginian. But
nothing happened beyond a certain change of light in the Southerner’s
eyes. And when the Southerner spoke, it was with his usual gentleness and
civility. He explained that the letter had been put in his hands just now
by Shorty.
“Oh,” said Balaam. He looked at Shorty. How had he come to be a messenger?
“You working for the Sunk Creek outfit again?” said he.
“No,” said Shorty.
Balaam turned to the Virginian again. “How do you expect me to get those
horses to Sunk Creek by the 30th?”
The Virginian levelled a lazy eye on Balaam. “I ain’ doin’ any expecting,”
said he. His native dialect was on top to-day. “The Judge has friends
goin’ to arrive from New Yawk for a trip across the Basin,” he added. “The
hawsses are for them.”
Balaam grunted with displeasure, and thought of the sixty or seventy days
since he had told the Judge he would return the horses at once. He looked
across at Shorty seated in the shade, and through his uneasy thoughts his
instinct irrelevantly noted what a good pony the youth rode. It was the
same animal he had seen once or twice before. But something must be done.
The Judge’s horses were far out on the big range, and must be found and
driven in, which would take certainly the rest of this day, possibly part
of the next.
Balaam called to one of his men and gave some sharp orders, emphasizing
details, and enjoining haste, while the Virginian leaned slightly against
his horse, with one arm over the saddle, hearing and understanding, but
not smiling outwardly. The man departed to saddle up for his search on the
big range, and Balaam resumed the unhitching of his team.
“So you’re not working for the Sunk Creek outfit now?” he inquired of
Shorty. He ignored the Virginian. “Working for the Goose Egg?”
“No,” said Shorty.
“Sand Hill outfit, then?”
“No,” said Shorty.
Balaam grinned. He noticed how Shorty’s yellow hair stuck through a hole
in his hat, and how old and battered were Shorty’s overalls. Shorty had
been glad to take a little accidental pay for becoming the bearer of the
letter which he had delivered to the Virginian. But even that sum was no
longer in his possession. He had passed through Drybone on his way, and at
Drybone there had been a game of poker. Shorty’s money was now in the
pocket of Trampas. But he had one valuable possession in the world left to
him, and that was his horse Pedro.
“Good pony of yours,” said Balaam to him now, from across Butte Creek.
Then he struck his own horse in the jaw because he held back from coming
to the water as the other had done.
“Your trace ain’t unhitched,” commented the Virginian, pointing.
Balaam loosed the strap he had forgotten, and cut the horse again for
consistency’s sake. The animal, bewildered, now came down to the water,
with its head in the air, and snuffing as it took short, nervous steps.
The Virginian looked on at this, silent and sombre. He could scarcely
interfere between another man and his own beast. Neither he nor Balaam was
among those who say their prayers. Yet in this omission they were not
equal. A half-great poet once had a wholly great day, and in that great
day he was able to write a poem that has lived and become, with many, a
household word. He called it The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And it is
rich with many lines that possess the memory; but these are the golden
ones:
“He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
These lines are the pure gold. They are good to teach children; because
after the children come to be men, they may believe at least some part of
them still. The Virginian did not know them,—but his heart had
taught him many things. I doubt if Balaam knew them either. But on him
they would have been as pearls to swine.
“So you’ve quit the round-up?” he resumed to Shorty.
Shorty nodded and looked sidewise at the Virginian.
For the Virginian knew that he had been turned off for going to sleep
while night-herding.
Then Balaam threw another glance on Pedro the horse.
“Hello, Shorty!” he called out, for the boy was departing. “Don’t you like
dinner any more? It’s ready about now.”
Shorty forded the creek and slung his saddle off, and on invitation turned
Pedro, his buckskin pony, into Balaam’s pasture. This was green, the rest
of the wide world being yellow, except only where Butte Creek, with its
bordering cottonwoods, coiled away into the desert distance like a green
snake without end. The Virginian also turned his horse into the pasture.
He must stay at the ranch till the Judge’s horses should be found.
“Mrs. Balaam’s East yet,” said her lord, leading the way to his dining
room.
He wanted Shorty to dine with him, and could not exclude the Virginian,
much as he should have enjoyed this.
“See any Indians?” he enquired.
“Na-a!” said Shorty, in disdain of recent rumors.
“They’re headin’ the other way,” observed the Virginian. “Bow Laig Range
is where they was repawted.”
“What business have they got off the reservation, I’d like to know,” said
the ranchman, “Bow Leg, or anywhere?”
“Oh, it’s just a hunt, and a kind of visitin’ their friends on the South
Reservation,” Shorty explained. “Squaws along and all.”
“Well, if the folks at Washington don’t keep squaws and all where they
belong,” said Balaam, in a rage, “the folks in Wyoming Territory ‘ill do a
little job that way themselves.”
“There’s a petition out,” said Shorty. “Paper’s goin’ East with a lot of
names to it. But they ain’t no harm, them Indians ain’t.”
“No harm?” rasped out Balaam. “Was it white men druv off the O. C.
yearlings?”
Balaam’s Eastern grammar was sometimes at the mercy of his Western
feelings. The thought of the perennial stultification of Indian affairs at
Washington, whether by politician or philanthropist, was always sure to
arouse him. He walked impatiently about while he spoke, and halted
impatiently at the window. Out in the world the unclouded day was shining,
and Balaam’s eye travelled across the plains to where a blue line, faint
and pale, lay along the end of the vast yellow distance. That was the
beginning of the Bow Leg Mountains. Somewhere over there were the red men,
ranging in unfrequented depths of rock and pine—their forbidden
ground.
Dinner was ready, and they sat down.
“And I suppose,” Balaam continued, still hot on the subject, “you’d claim
Indians object to killing a white man when they run on to him good and far
from human help? These peaceable Indians are just the worst in the
business.”
“That’s so,” assented the easy-opinioned Shorty, exactly as if he had
always maintained this view. “Chap started for Sunk Creek three weeks ago.
Trapper he was; old like, with a red shirt. One of his horses come into
the round-up Toosday. Man ain’t been heard from.” He ate in silence for a
while, evidently brooding in his childlike mind. Then he said,
querulously, “I’d sooner trust one of them Indians than I would Trampas.”
Balaam slanted his fat bullet head far to one side, and laying his spoon
down (he had opened some canned grapes) laughed steadily at his guest with
a harsh relish of irony.
The guest ate a grape, and perceiving he was seen through, smiled back
rather miserably.
“Say, Shorty,” said Balaam, his head still slanted over, “what’s the
figures of your bank balance just now?”
“I ain’t usin’ banks,” murmured the youth.
Balaam put some more grapes on Shorty’s plate, and drawing a cigar from
his waistcoat, sent it rolling to his guest.
“Matches are behind you,” he added. He gave a cigar to the Virginian as an
afterthought, but to his disgust, the Southerner put it in his pocket and
lighted a pipe.
Balaam accompanied his guest, Shorty, when he went to the pasture to
saddle up and depart. “Got a rope?” he asked the guest, as they lifted
down the bars.
“Don’t need to rope him. I can walk right up to Pedro. You stay back.”
Hiding his bridle behind him, Shorty walked to the river-bank, where the
pony was switching his long tail in the shade; and speaking persuasively
to him, he came nearer, till he laid his hand on Pedro’s dusky mane, which
was many shades darker than his hide. He turned expectantly, and his
master came up to his expectations with a piece of bread.
“Eats that, does he?” said Balaam, over the bars.
“Likes the salt,” said Shorty. “Now, n-n-ow, here! Yu’ don’t guess yu’ll
be bridled, don’t you? Open your teeth! Yu’d like to play yu’ was nobody’s
horse and live private? Or maybe yu’d prefer ownin’ a saloon?”
Pedro evidently enjoyed this talk, and the dodging he made about the bit.
Once fairly in his mouth, he accepted the inevitable, and followed Shorty
to the bars. Then Shorty turned and extended his hand.
“Shake!” he said to his pony, who lifted his forefoot quietly and put it
in his master’s hand. Then the master tickled his nose, and he wrinkled it
and flattened his ears, pretending to bite. His face wore an expression of
knowing relish over this performance. “Now the other hoof,” said Shorty;
and the horse and master shook hands with their left. “I learned him
that,” said the cow-boy, with pride and affection. “Say, Pede,” he
continued, in Pedro’s ear, “ain’t yu’ the best little horse in the
country? What? Here, now! Keep out of that, you dead-beat! There ain’t no
more bread.” He pinched the pony’s nose, one quarter of which was wedged
into his pocket.
“Quite a lady’s little pet!” said Balaam, with the rasp in his voice.
“Pity this isn’t New York, now, where there’s a big market for harmless
horses. Gee-gees, the children call them.”
“He ain’t no gee-gee,” said Shorty, offended. “He’ll beat any cow-pony
workin’ you’ve got. Yu’ can turn him on a half-dollar. Don’t need to touch
the reins. Hang ’em on one finger and swing your body, and he’ll turn.”
Balaam knew this, and he knew that the pony was only a four-year-old.
“Well,” he said, “Drybone’s had no circus this season. Maybe they’d buy
tickets to see Pedro. He’s good for that, anyway.”
Shorty became gloomy. The Virginian was grimly smoking. Here was something
else going on not to his taste, but none of his business.
“Try a circus,” persisted Balaam. “Alter your plans for spending cash in
town, and make a little money instead.”
Shorty having no plans to alter and no cash to spend, grew still more
gloomy.
“What’ll you take for that pony?” said Balaam.
Shorty spoke up instantly. “A hundred dollars couldn’t buy that piece of
stale mud off his back,” he asserted, looking off into the sky
grandiosely.
But Balaam looked at Shorty, “You keep the mud,” he said, “and I’ll give
you thirty dollars for the horse.”
Shorty did a little professional laughing, and began to walk toward his
saddle.
“Give you thirty dollars,” repeated Balaam, picking a stone up and
slinging it into the river.
“How far do yu’ call it to Drybone?” Shorty remarked, stooping to
investigate the bucking-strap on his saddle—a superfluous
performance, for Pedro never bucked.
“You won’t have to walk,” said Balaam. “Stay all night, and I’ll send you
over comfortably in the morning, when the wagon goes for the mail.”
“Walk?” Shorty retorted. “Drybone’s twenty-five miles. Pedro’ll put me
there in three hours and not know he done it.” He lifted the saddle on the
horse’s back. “Come, Pedro,” said he.
“Come, Pedro!” mocked Balaam.
There followed a little silence.
“No, sir,” mumbled Shorty, with his head under Pedro’s belly, busily
cinching. “A hundred dollars is bottom figures.”
Balaam, in his turn, now duly performed some professional laughing, which
was noted by Shorty under the horse’s belly. He stood up and squared round
on Balaam. “Well, then,” he said, “what’ll yu give for him?”
“Thirty dollars,” said Balaam, looking far off into the sky, as Shorty had
looked.
“Oh, come, now,” expostulated Shorty.
It was he who now did the feeling for an offer and this was what Balaam
liked to see. “Why yes,” he said, “thirty,” and looked surprised that he
should have to mention the sum so often.
“I thought yu’d quit them first figures,” said the cow-puncher, “for yu’
can see I ain’t goin’ to look at em.”
Balaam climbed on the fence and sat there “I’m not crying for your Pedro,”
he observed dispassionately. “Only it struck me you were dead broke, and
wanted to raise cash and keep yourself going till you hunted up a job and
could buy him back.” He hooked his right thumb inside his waistcoat
pocket. “But I’m not cryin’ for him,” he repeated. “He’d stay right here,
of course. I wouldn’t part with him. Why does he stand that way? Hello!”
Balaam suddenly straightened himself, like a man who has made a discovery.
“Hello, what?” said Shorty, on the defensive.
Balaam was staring at Pedro with a judicial frown. Then he stuck out a
finger at the horse, keeping the thumb hooked in his pocket. So meagre a
gesture was felt by the ruffled Shorty to be no just way to point at
Pedro. “What’s the matter with that foreleg there?” said Balaam.
“Which? Nothin’s the matter with it!” snapped Shorty.
Balaam climbed down from his fence and came over with elaborate
deliberation. He passed his hand up and down the off foreleg. Then he spit
slenderly. “Mm!” he said thoughtfully; and added, with a shade of sadness,
“that’s always to be expected when they’re worked too young.”
Shorty slid his hand slowly over the disputed leg. “What’s to be
expected?” he inquired—“that they’ll eat hearty? Well, he does.”
At this retort the Virginian permitted himself to laugh in audible
sympathy.
“Sprung,” continued Balaam, with a sigh. “Whirling round short when his
bones were soft did that. Yes.”
“Sprung!” Shorty said, with a bark of indignation. “Come on, Pede; you and
me’ll spring for town.”
He caught the horn of the saddle, and as he swung into place the horse
rushed away with him. “O-ee! yoi-yup, yup, yup!” sang Shorty, in the
shrill cow dialect. He made Pedro play an exhibition game of speed,
bringing him round close to Balaam in a wide circle, and then he vanished
in dust down the left-bank trail.
Balaam looked after him and laughed harshly. He had seen trout dash about
like that when the hook in their jaw first surprised them. He knew Shorty
would show the pony off, and he knew Shorty’s love for Pedro was not equal
to his need of money. He called to one of his men, asked something about
the dam at the mouth of the canyon, where the main irrigation ditch began,
made a remark about the prolonged drought, and then walked to his
dining-room door, where, as he expected, Shorty met him.
“Say,” said the youth, “do you consider that’s any way to talk about a
good horse?”
“Any dude could see the leg’s sprung,” said Balaam. But he looked at
Pedro’s shoulder, which was well laid back; and he admired his points,
dark in contrast with the buckskin, and also the width between the eyes.
“Now you know,” whined Shorty, “that it ain’t sprung any more than your
leg’s cork. If you mean the right leg ain’t plumb straight, I can tell you
he was born so. That don’t make no difference, for it ain’t weak. Try him
onced. Just as sound and strong as iron. Never stumbles. And he don’t
never go to jumpin’ with yu’. He’s kind and he’s smart.” And the master
petted his pony, who lifted a hoof for another handshake.
Of course Balaam had never thought the leg was sprung, and he now took on
an unprejudiced air of wanting to believe Shorty’s statements if he only
could.
“Maybe there’s two years’ work left in that leg,” he now observed.
“Better give your hawss away, Shorty,” said the Virginian.
“Is this your deal, my friend?” inquired Balaam. And he slanted his bullet
head at the Virginian.
“Give him away, Shorty,” drawled the Southerner. “His laig is busted. Mr.
Balaam says so.”
Balaam’s face grew evil with baffled fury. But the Virginian was gravely
considering Pedro. He, too, was not pleased. But he could not interfere.
Already he had overstepped the code in these matters. He would have dearly
liked—for reasons good and bad, spite and mercy mingled—to
have spoiled Balaam’s market, to have offered a reasonable or even an
unreasonable price for Pedro, and taken possession of the horse himself.
But this might not be. In bets, in card games, in all horse transactions
and other matters of similar business, a man must take care of himself,
and wiser onlookers must suppress their wisdom and hold their peace.
That evening Shorty again had a cigar. He had parted with Pedro for forty
dollars, a striped Mexican blanket, and a pair of spurs. Undressing over
in the bunk house, he said to the Virginian, “I’ll sure buy Pedro back off
him just as soon as ever I rustle some cash.” The Virginian grunted. He
was thinking he should have to travel hard to get the horses to the Judge
by the 30th; and below that thought lay his aching disappointment and his
longing for Bear Creek.
In the early dawn Shorty sat up among his blankets on the floor of the
bunk house and saw the various sleepers coiled or sprawled in their beds;
their breathing had not yet grown restless at the nearing of day. He
stepped to the door carefully, and saw the crowding blackbirds begin their
walk and chatter in the mud of the littered and trodden corrals. From
beyond among the cottonwoods, came continually the smooth unemphatic sound
of the doves answering each other invisibly; and against the empty ridge
of the river-bluff lay the moon, no longer shining, for there was
established a new light through the sky. Pedro stood in the pasture close
to the bars. The cow-boy slowly closed the door behind him, and sitting
down on the step, drew his money out and idly handled it, taking no
comfort just then from its possession. Then he put it back, and after
dragging on his boots, crossed to the pasture, and held a last talk with
his pony, brushing the cakes of mud from his hide where he had rolled, and
passing a lingering hand over his mane. As the sounds of the morning came
increasingly from tree and plain, Shorty glanced back to see that no one
was yet out of the cabin, and then put his arms round the horse’s neck,
laying his head against him. For a moment the cow-boy’s insignificant face
was exalted by the emotion he would never have let others see. He hugged
tight this animal, who was dearer to his heart than anybody in the world.
“Good-by, Pedro,” he said—“good-by.” Pedro looked for bread.
“No,” said his master, sorrowfully, “not any more. Yu’ know well I’d give
it yu’ if I had it. You and me didn’t figure on this, did we, Pedro?
Good-by!”
He hugged his pony again, and got as far as the bars of the pasture, but
returned once more. “Good-by, my little horse, my dear horse, my little,
little Pedro,” he said, as his tears wet the pony’s neck. Then he wiped
them with his hand, and got himself back to the bunk house. After
breakfast he and his belongings departed to Drybone, and Pedro from his
field calmly watched this departure; for horses must recognize even less
than men the black corners that their destinies turn. The pony stopped
feeding to look at the mail-wagon pass by; but the master sitting in the
wagon forebore to turn his head.
XXVI. BALAAM AND PEDRO
Resigned to wait for the Judge’s horses, Balaam went into his office this
dry, bright morning and read nine accumulated newspapers; for he was
behindhand. Then he rode out on the ditches, and met his man returning
with the troublesome animals at last. He hastened home and sent for the
Virginian. He had made a decision.
“See here,” he said; “those horses are coming. What trail would you take
over to the Judge’s?”
“Shortest trail’s right through the Bow Laig Mountains,” said the foreman,
in his gentle voice.
“Guess you’re right. It’s dinner-time. We’ll start right afterward. We’ll
make Little Muddy Crossing by sundown, and Sunk Creek to-morrow, and the
next day’ll see us through. Can a wagon get through Sunk Creek Canyon?”
The Virginian smiled. “I reckon it can’t, seh, and stay resembling a
wagon.”
Balaam told them to saddle Pedro and one packhorse, and drive the bunch of
horses into a corral, roping the Judge’s two, who proved extremely wild.
He had decided to take this journey himself on remembering certain
politics soon to be rife in Cheyenne. For Judge Henry was indeed a greater
man than Balaam. This personally conducted return of the horses would
temper its tardiness, and, moreover, the sight of some New York visitors
would be a good thing after seven months of no warmer touch with that
metropolis than the Sunday HERALD, always eight days old when it reached
the Butte Creek Ranch.
They forded Butte Creek, and, crossing the well-travelled trail which
follows down to Drybone, turned their faces toward the uninhabited country
that began immediately, as the ocean begins off a sandy shore. And as a
single mast on which no sail is shining stands at the horizon and seems to
add a loneliness to the surrounding sea, so the long gray line of fence,
almost a mile away, that ended Balaam’s land on this side the creek,
stretched along the waste ground and added desolation to the plain. No
solitary watercourse with margin of cottonwoods or willow thickets flowed
here to stripe the dingy, yellow world with interrupting green, nor were
cattle to be seen dotting the distance, nor moving objects at all, nor any
bird in the soundless air. The last gate was shut by the Virginian, who
looked back at the pleasant trees of the ranch, and then followed on in
single file across the alkali of No Man’s Land.
No cloud was in the sky. The desert’s grim noon shone sombrely on flat and
hill. The sagebrush was dull like zinc. Thick heat rose near at hand from
the caked alkali, and pale heat shrouded the distant peaks.
There were five horses. Balaam led on Pedro, his squat figure stiff in the
saddle, but solid as a rock, and tilted a little forward, as his habit
was. One of the Judge’s horses came next, a sorrel, dragging back
continually on the rope by which he was led. After him ambled Balaam’s
wise pack-animal, carrying the light burden of two days’ food and lodging.
She was an old mare who could still go when she chose, but had been
schooled by the years, and kept the trail, giving no trouble to the
Virginian who came behind her. He also sat solid as a rock, yet subtly
bending to the struggles of the wild horse he led, as a steel spring bends
and balances and resumes its poise.
Thus they made but slow time, and when they topped the last dull rise of
ground and looked down on the long slant of ragged, caked earth to the
crossing of Little Muddy, with its single tree and few mean bushes, the
final distance where eyesight ends had deepened to violet from the thin,
steady blue they had stared at for so many hours, and all heat was gone
from the universal dryness. The horses drank a long time from the sluggish
yellow water, and its alkaline taste and warmth were equally welcome to
the men. They built a little fire, and when supper was ended, smoked but a
short while and in silence, before they got in the blankets that were
spread in a smooth place beside the water.
They had picketed the two horses of the Judge in the best grass they could
find, letting the rest go free to find pasture where they could. When the
first light came, the Virginian attended to breakfast, while Balaam rode
away on the sorrel to bring in the loose horses. They had gone far out of
sight, and when he returned with them, after some two hours, he was on
Pedro. Pedro was soaking with sweat, and red froth creamed from his mouth.
The Virginian saw the horses must have been hard to drive in, especially
after Balaam brought them the wild sorrel as a leader.
“If you’d kep’ ridin’ him, ‘stead of changin’ off on your hawss, they’d
have behaved quieter,” said the foreman.
“That’s good seasonable advice,” said Balaam, sarcastically. “I could have
told you that now.”
“I could have told you when you started,” said the Virginian, heating the
coffee for Balaam.
Balaam was eloquent on the outrageous conduct of the horses. He had come
up with them evidently striking back for Butte Creek, with the old mare in
the lead.
“But I soon showed her the road she was to go,” he said, as he drove them
now to the water.
The Virginian noticed the slight limp of the mare, and how her pastern was
cut as if with a stone or the sharp heel of a boot.
“I guess she’ll not be in a hurry to travel except when she’s wanted to,”
continued Balaam. He sat down, and sullenly poured himself some coffee.
“We’ll be in luck if we make any Sunk Creek this night.”
He went on with his breakfast, thinking aloud for the benefit of his
companion, who made no comments, preferring silence to the discomfort of
talking with a man whose vindictive humor was so thoroughly uppermost. He
did not even listen very attentively, but continued his preparations for
departure, washing the dishes, rolling the blankets, and moving about in
his usual way of easy and visible good nature.
“Six o’clock, already,” said Balaam, saddling the horses. “And we’ll not
get started for ten minutes more.” Then he came to Pedro. “So you haven’t
quit fooling yet, haven’t you?” he exclaimed, for the pony shrank as he
lifted the bridle. “Take that for your sore mouth!” and he rammed the bit
in, at which Pedro flung back and reared.
“Well, I never saw Pedro act that way yet,” said the Virginian.
“Ah, rubbish!” said Balaam. “They’re all the same. Not a bastard one but’s
laying for his chance to do for you. Some’ll buck you off, and some’ll
roll with you, and some’ll fight you with their fore feet. They may play
good for a year, but the Western pony’s man’s enemy, and when he judges
he’s got his chance, he’s going to do his best. And if you come out alive
it won’t be his fault.” Balaam paused for a while, packing. “You’ve got to
keep them afraid of you,” he said next; “that’s what you’ve got to do if
you don’t want trouble. That Pedro horse there has been fed, hand-fed, and
fooled with like a damn pet, and what’s that policy done? Why, he goes
ugly when he thinks it’s time, and decides he’ll not drive any horses into
camp this morning. He knows better now.”
“Mr. Balaam,” said the Virginian, “I’ll buy that hawss off yu’ right now.”
Balaam shook his head. “You’ll not do that right now or any other time,”
said he. “I happen to want him.”
The Virginian could do no more. He had heard cow-punchers say to
refractory ponies, “You keep still, or I’ll Balaam you!” and he now
understood the aptness of the expression.
Meanwhile Balaam began to lead Pedro to the creek for a last drink before
starting across the torrid drought. The horse held back on the rein a
little, and Balaam turned and cut the whip across his forehead. A delay of
forcing and backing followed, while the Virginian, already in the saddle,
waited. The minutes passed, and no immediate prospect, apparently, of
getting nearer Sunk Creek.
“He ain’ goin’ to follow you while you’re beatin’ his haid,” the
Southerner at length remarked.
“Do you think you can teach me anything about horses?” retorted Balaam.
“Well, it don’t look like I could,” said the Virginian, lazily.
“Then don’t try it, so long as it’s not your horse, my friend.”
Again the Southerner levelled his eye on Balaam. “All right,” he said, in
the same gentle voice. “And don’t you call me your friend. You’ve made
that mistake twiced.”
The road was shadeless, as it had been from the start, and they could not
travel fast. During the first few hours all coolness was driven out of the
glassy morning, and another day of illimitable sun invested the world with
its blaze. The pale Bow Leg Range was coming nearer, but its hard hot
slants and rifts suggested no sort of freshness, and even the pines that
spread for wide miles along near the summit counted for nothing in the
distance and the glare, but seemed mere patches of dull dry discoloration.
No talk was exchanged between the two travellers, for the cow-puncher had
nothing to say and Balaam was sulky, so they moved along in silent
endurance of each other’s company and the tedium of the journey.
But the slow succession of rise and fall in the plain changed and
shortened. The earth’s surface became lumpy, rising into mounds and
knotted systems of steep small hills cut apart by staring gashes of sand,
where water poured in the spring from the melting snow. After a time they
ascended through the foot-hills till the plain below was for a while
concealed, but came again into view in its entirety, distant and a thing
of the past, while some magpies sailed down to meet them from the new
country they were entering. They passed up through a small transparent
forest of dead trees standing stark and white, and a little higher came on
a line of narrow moisture that crossed the way and formed a stale pool
among some willow thickets. They turned aside to water their horses, and
found near the pool a circular spot of ashes and some poles lying, and
beside these a cage-like edifice of willow wands built in the ground.
“Indian camp,” observed the Virginian.
There were the tracks of five or six horses on the farther side of the
pool, and they did not come into the trail, but led off among the rocks on
some system of their own.
“They’re about a week old,” said Balaam. “It’s part of that outfit that’s
been hunting.”
“They’ve gone on to visit their friends,” added the cow-puncher.
“Yes, on the Southern Reservation. How far do you call Sunk Creek now?”
“Well,” said the Virginian, calculating, “it’s mighty nigh fo’ty miles
from Muddy Crossin’, an’ I reckon we’ve come eighteen.”
“Just about. It’s noon.” Balaam snapped his watch shut. “We’ll rest here
till 12:30.”
When it was time to go, the Virginian looked musingly at the mountains.
“We’ll need to travel right smart to get through the canyon to-night,” he
said.
“Tell you what,” said Balaam; “we’ll rope the Judge’s horses together and
drive ’em in front of us. That’ll make speed.”
“Mightn’t they get away on us?” objected the Virginian. “They’re pow’ful
wild.”
“They can’t get away from me, I guess,” said Balaam, and the arrangement
was adopted. “We’re the first this season over this piece of the trail,”
he observed presently.
His companion had noticed the ground already, and assented. There were no
tracks anywhere to be seen over which winter had not come and gone since
they had been made. Presently the trail wound into a sultry gulch that
hemmed in the heat and seemed to draw down the sun’s rays more vertically.
The sorrel horse chose this place to make a try for liberty. He suddenly
whirled from the trail, dragging with him his less inventive fellow.
Leaving the Virginian with the old mare, Balaam headed them off, for Pedro
was quick, and they came jumping down the bank together, but swiftly
crossed up on the other side, getting much higher before they could be
reached. It was no place for this sort of game, as the sides of the ravine
were ploughed with steep channels, broken with jutting knobs of rock, and
impeded by short twisted pines that swung out from their roots
horizontally over the pitch of the hill. The Virginian helped, but used
his horse with more judgment, keeping as much on the level as possible,
and endeavoring to anticipate the next turn of the runaways before they
made it, while Balaam attempted to follow them close, wheeling short when
they doubled, heavily beating up the face of the slope, veering again to
come down to the point he had left, and whenever he felt Pedro begin to
flag, driving his spurs into the horse and forcing him to keep up the
pace. He had set out to overtake and capture on the side of the mountain
these two animals who had been running wild for many weeks, and now
carried no weight but themselves, and the futility of such work could not
penetrate his obstinate and rising temper. He had made up his mind not to
give in. The Virginian soon decided to move slowly along for the present,
preventing the wild horses from passing down the gulch again, but
otherwise saving his own animal from useless fatigue. He saw that Pedro
was reeking wet, with mouth open, and constantly stumbling, though he
galloped on. The cow-puncher kept the group in sight, driving the
packhorse in front of him, and watching the tactics of the sorrel, who had
now undoubtedly become the leader of the expedition, and was at the top of
the gulch, in vain trying to find an outlet through its rocky rim to the
levels above. He soon judged this to be no thoroughfare, and changing his
plan, trotted down to the bottom and up the other side, gaining more and
more; for in this new descent Pedro had fallen twice. Then the sorrel
showed the cleverness of a genuinely vicious horse. The Virginian saw him
stop and fall to kicking his companion with all the energy that a short
rope would permit. The rope slipped, and both, unencumbered, reached the
top and disappeared. Leaving the packhorse for Balaam, the Virginian
started after them and came into a high tableland, beyond which the
mountains began in earnest. The runaways were moving across toward these
at an easy rate. He followed for a moment, then looking back, and seeing
no sign of Balaam, waited, for the horses were sure not to go fast when
they reached good pasture or water.
He got out of the saddle and sat on the ground, watching, till the mare
came up slowly into sight, and Balaam behind her. When they were near,
Balaam dismounted and struck Pedro fearfully, until the stick broke, and
he raised the splintered half to continue.
Seeing the pony’s condition, the Virginian spoke, and said, “I’d let that
hawss alone.”
Balaam turned to him, but wholly possessed by passion did not seem to
hear, and the Southerner noticed how white and like that of a maniac his
face was. The stick slid to the ground.
“He played he was tired,” said Balaam, looking at the Virginian with
glazed eyes. The violence of his rage affected him physically, like some
stroke of illness. “He played out on me on purpose.” The man’s voice was
dry and light. “He’s perfectly fresh now,” he continued, and turned again
to the coughing, swaying horse, whose eyes were closed. Not having the
stick, he seized the animal’s unresisting head and shook it. The Virginian
watched him a moment, and rose to stop such a spectacle. Then, as if
conscious he was doing no real hurt, Balaam ceased, and turning again in
slow fashion looked across the level, where the runaways were still
visible.
“I’ll have to take your horse,” he said, “mine’s played out on me.”
“You ain’ goin’ to touch my hawss.”
Again the words seemed not entirely to reach Balaam’s understanding, so
dulled by rage were his senses. He made no answer, but mounted Pedro; and
the failing pony walked mechanically forward, while the Virginian,
puzzled, stood looking after him. Balaam seemed without purpose of going
anywhere, and stopped in a moment. Suddenly he was at work at something.
This sight was odd and new to look at. For a few seconds it had no meaning
to the Virginian as he watched. Then his mind grasped the horror, too
late. Even with his cry of execration and the tiger spring that he gave to
stop Balaam, the monstrosity was wrought. Pedro sank motionless, his head
rolling flat on the earth. Balaam was jammed beneath him. The man had
struggled to his feet before the Virginian reached the spot, and the horse
then lifted his head and turned it piteously round.
Then vengeance like a blast struck Balaam. The Virginian hurled him to the
ground, lifted and hurled him again, lifted him and beat his face and
struck his jaw. The man’s strong ox-like fighting availed nothing. He
fended his eyes as best he could against these sledge-hammer blows of
justice. He felt blindly for his pistol. That arm was caught and wrenched
backward, and crushed and doubled. He seemed to hear his own bones, and
set up a hideous screaming of hate and pain. Then the pistol at last came
out, and together with the hand that grasped it was instantly stamped into
the dust. Once again the creature was lifted and slung so that he lay
across Pedro’s saddle a blurred, dingy, wet pulp.
Vengeance had come and gone. The man and the horse were motionless. Around
them, silence seemed to gather like a witness.
“If you are dead,” said the Virginian, “I am glad of it.” He stood looking
down at Balaam and Pedro, prone in the middle of the open tableland. Then
he saw Balaam looking at him. It was the quiet stare of sight without
thought or feeling, the mere visual sense alone, almost frightful in its
separation from any self. But as he watched those eyes, the self came back
into them. “I have not killed you,” said the Virginian. “Well, I ain’t
goin’ to do any more to yu’—if that’s a satisfaction to know.”
Then he began to attend to Balaam with impersonal skill, like some one
hired for the purpose. “He ain’t hurt bad,” he asserted aloud, as if the
man were some nameless patient; and then to Balaam he remarked, “I reckon
it might have put a less tough man than you out of business for quite a
while. I’m goin’ to get some water now.” When he returned with the water,
Balsam was sitting up, looking about him. He had not yet spoken, nor did
he now speak. The sunlight flashed on the six-shooter where it lay, and
the Virginian secured it. “She ain’t so pretty as she was,” he remarked,
as he examined the weapon. “But she’ll go right handy yet.”
Strength was in a measure returning to Pedro. He was a young horse, and
the exhaustion neither of anguish nor of over-riding was enough to affect
him long or seriously. He got himself on his feet and walked waveringly
over to the old mare, and stood by her for comfort. The cow-puncher came
up to him, and Pedro, after starting back slightly, seemed to comprehend
that he was in friendly hands. It was plain that he would soon be able to
travel slowly if no weight was on him, and that he would be a very good
horse again. Whether they abandoned the runaways or not, there was no
staying here for night to overtake them without food or water. The day was
still high, and what its next few hours had in store the Virginian could
not say, and he left them to take care of themselves, determining
meanwhile that he would take command of the minutes and maintain the
position he had assumed both as to Balaam and Pedro. He took Pedro’s
saddle off, threw the mare’s pack to the ground, put Balaam’s saddle on
her, and on that stowed or tied her original pack, which he could do,
since it was so light. Then he went to Balaam, who was sitting up.
“I reckon you can travel,” said the Virginian. “And your hawss can. If
you’re comin’ with me, you’ll ride your mare. I’m goin’ to trail them
hawsses. If you’re not comin’ with me, your hawss comes with me, and
you’ll take fifty dollars for him.”
Balaam was indifferent to this good bargain. He did not look at the other
or speak, but rose and searched about him on the ground. The Virginian was
also indifferent as to whether Balaam chose to answer or not. Seeing
Balaam searching the ground, he finished what he had to say.
“I have your six-shooter, and you’ll have it when I’m ready for you to.
Now, I’m goin’,” he concluded.
Balaam’s intellect was clear enough now, and he saw that though the rest
of this journey would be nearly intolerable, it must go on. He looked at
the impassive cow-puncher getting ready to go and tying a rope on Pedro’s
neck to lead him, then he looked at the mountains where the runaways had
vanished, and it did not seem credible to him that he had come into such
straits. He was helped stiffly on the mare, and the three horses in single
file took up their journey once more, and came slowly among the mountains.
The perpetual desert was ended, and they crossed a small brook, where they
missed the trail. The Virginian dismounted to find where the horses had
turned off, and discovered that they had gone straight up the ridge by the
watercourse.
“There’s been a man camped in hyeh inside a month,” he said, kicking up a
rag of red flannel. “White man and two hawsses. Ours have went up his old
tracks.”
It was not easy for Balaam to speak yet, and he kept his silence. But he
remembered that Shorty had spoken of a trapper who had started for Sunk
Creek.
For three hours they followed the runaways’ course over softer ground, and
steadily ascending, passed one or two springs, at length, where the mud
was not yet settled in the hoofprints. Then they came through a corner of
pine forest and down a sudden bank among quaking-asps to a green park.
Here the runaways beside a stream were grazing at ease, but saw them
coming, and started on again, following down the stream. For the present
all to be done was to keep them in sight. This creek received tributaries
and widened, making a valley for itself. Above the bottom, lining the
first terrace of the ridge, began the pines, and stretched back, unbroken
over intervening summit and basin, to cease at last where the higher peaks
presided.
“This hyeh’s the middle fork of Sunk Creek,” said the Virginian. “We’ll
get on to our right road again where they join.”
Soon a game trail marked itself along the stream. If this would only
continue, the runaways would be nearly sure to follow it down into the
canyon. Then there would be no way for them but to go on and come out into
their own country, where they would make for the Judge’s ranch of their
own accord. The great point was to reach the canyon before dark. They
passed into permanent shadow; for though the other side of the creek shone
in full day, the sun had departed behind the ridges immediately above
them. Coolness filled the air, and the silence, which in this deep valley
of invading shadow seemed too silent, was relieved by the birds. Not birds
of song, but a freakish band of gray talkative observers, who came calling
and croaking along through the pines, and inspected the cavalcade, keeping
it company for a while, and then flying up into the woods again. The
travellers came round a corner on a little spread of marsh, and from
somewhere in the middle of it rose a buzzard and sailed on its black
pinions into the air above them, wheeling and wheeling, but did not grow
distant. As it swept over the trail, something fell from its claw, a rag
of red flannel; and each man in turn looked at it as his horse went by.
“I wonder if there’s plenty elk and deer hyeh?” said the Virginian.
“I guess there is,” Balaam replied, speaking at last. The travellers had
become strangely reconciled.
“There’s game ‘most all over these mountains,” the Virginian continued;
“country not been settled long enough to scare them out.” So they fell
into casual conversation, and for the first time were glad of each other’s
company.
The sound of a new bird came from the pines above—the hoot of an owl—and
was answered from some other part of the wood. This they did not
particularly notice at first, but soon they heard the same note,
unexpectedly distant, like an echo. The game trail, now quite a defined
path beside the river, showed no sign of changing its course or fading out
into blank ground, as these uncertain guides do so often. It led
consistently in the desired direction, and the two men were relieved to
see it continue. Not only were the runaways easier to keep track of, but
better speed was made along this valley. The pervading imminence of night
more and more dispelled the lingering afternoon, though there was yet no
twilight in the open, and the high peaks opposite shone yellow in the
invisible sun. But now the owls hooted again. Their music had something in
it that caused both the Virginian and Balaam to look up at the pines and
wish that this valley would end. Perhaps it was early for night-birds to
begin; or perhaps it was that the sound never seemed to fall behind, but
moved abreast of them among the trees above, as they rode on without pause
down below; some influence made the faces of the travellers grave. The
spell of evil which the sight of the wheeling buzzard had begun, deepened
as evening grew, while ever and again along the creek the singular call
and answer of the owls wandered among the darkness of the trees not far
away.
The sun was gone from the peaks when at length the other side of the
stream opened into a long wide meadow. The trail they followed, after
crossing a flat willow thicket by the water, ran into dense pines, that
here for the first time reached all the way down to the water’s edge. The
two men came out of the willows, and saw ahead the capricious runaways
leave the bottom and go up the hill and enter the wood.
“We must hinder that,” said the Virginian; and he dropped Pedro’s rope.
“There’s your six-shooter. You keep the trail, and camp down there”—he
pointed to where the trees came to the water—“till I head them
hawsses off. I may not get back right away.” He galloped up the open hill
and went into the pine, choosing a place above where the vagrants had
disappeared.
Balaam dismounted, and picking up his six-shooter, took the rope off
Pedro’s neck and drove him slowly down toward where the wood began. Its
interior was already dim, and Balaam saw that here must be their
stopping-place to-night, since there was no telling how wide this pine
strip might extend along the trail before they could come out of it and
reach another suitable camping-ground. Pedro had recovered his strength,
and he now showed signs of restlessness. He shied where there was not even
a stone in the trail, and finally turned sharply round. Balaam expected he
was going to rush back on the way they had come; but the horse stood
still, breathing excitedly. He was urged forward again, though he turned
more than once. But when they were a few paces from the wood, and Balaam
had got off preparatory to camping, the horse snorted and dashed into the
water, and stood still there. The astonished Balaam followed to turn him;
but Pedro seemed to lose control of himself, and plunged to the middle of
the river, and was evidently intending to cross. Fearing that he would
escape to the opposite meadow and add to their difficulties, Balaam, with
the idea of turning him round, drew his six-shooter and fired in front of
the horse, divining, even as the flash cut the dusk, the secret of all
this—the Indians; but too late. His bruised hand had stiffened,
marring his aim, and he saw Pedro fall over in the water then rise and
struggle up the bank on the farther shore, where he now hurried also, to
find that he had broken the pony’s leg.
He needed no interpreter for the voices of the seeming owls that had
haunted the latter hour of their journey, and he knew that his beast’s
keener instinct had perceived the destruction that lurked in the interior
of the wood. The history of the trapper whose horse had returned without
him might have been—might still be—his own; and he thought of
the rag that had fallen from the buzzard’s talons when he had been
disturbed at his meal in the marsh. “Peaceable” Indians were still in
these mountains, and some few of them had for the past hour been skirting
his journey unseen, and now waited for him in the wood which they expected
him to enter. They had been too wary to use their rifles or show
themselves, lest these travellers should be only part of a larger company
following, who would hear the noise of a shot, and catch them in the act
of murder. So, safe under the cover of the pines, they had planned to
sling their silent noose, and drag the white man from his horse as he
passed through the trees.
Balaam looked over the river at the ominous wood, and then he looked at
Pedro, the horse that he had first maimed and now ruined, to whom he
probably owed his life. He was lying on the ground, quietly looking over
the green meadow, where dusk was gathering. Perhaps he was not suffering
from his wound yet, as he rested on the ground; and into his animal
intelligence there probably came no knowledge of this final stroke of his
fate. At any rate, no sound of pain came from Pedro, whose friendly and
gentle face remained turned toward the meadow. Once more Balaam fired his
pistol, and this time the aim was true, and the horse rolled over, with a
ball through his brain. It was the best reward that remained for him.
Then Balaam rejoined the old mare, and turned from the middle fork of Sunk
Creek. He dashed across the wide field, and went over a ridge, and found
his way along in the night till he came to the old trail—the road
which they would never have left but for him and his obstinacy. He
unsaddled the weary mare by Sunk Creek, where the canyon begins, letting
her drag a rope and find pasture and water, while he, lighting no fire to
betray him, crouched close under a tree till the light came. He thought of
the Virginian in the wood. But what could either have done for the other
had he stayed to look for him among the pines? If the cow-puncher came
back to the corner, he would follow Balaam’s tracks or not. They would
meet, at any rate, where the creeks joined.
But they did not meet. And then to Balaam the prospect of going onward to
the Sunk Creek Ranch became more than he could bear. To come without the
horses, to meet Judge Henry, to meet the guests of the Judge’s, looking as
he did now after his punishment by the Virginian, to give the news about
the Judge’s favorite man—no, how could he tell such a story as this?
Balaam went no farther than a certain cabin, where he slept, and wrote a
letter to the Judge. This the owner of the cabin delivered. And so, having
spread news which would at once cause a search for the Virginian, and
having constructed such sentences to the Judge as would most smoothly
explain how, being overtaken by illness, he had not wished to be a burden
at Sunk Creek, Balaam turned homeward by himself. By the time he was once
more at Butte Creek, his general appearance was a thing less to be
noticed. And there was Shorty, waiting!
One way and another, the lost dog had been able to gather some ready
money. He was cheerful because of this momentary purseful of prosperity.
“And so I come back, yu’ see,” he said. “For I figured on getting Pedro
back as soon as I could when I sold him to yu’.”
“You’re behind the times, Shorty,” said Balaam.
Shorty looked blank. “You’ve sure not sold Pedro?” he exclaimed.
“Them Indians,” said Balaam, “got after me on the Bow Leg trail. Got after
me and that Virginia man. But they didn’t get me.”
Balaam wagged his bullet head to imply that this escape was due to his own
superior intelligence. The Virginian had been stupid, and so the Indians
had got him. “And they shot your horse,” Balaam finished. “Stop and get
some dinner with the boys.”
Having eaten, Shorty rode away in mournful spirits. For he had made so
sure of once more riding and talking with Pedro, his friend whom he had
taught to shake hands.
XXVII. GRANDMOTHER STARK
Except for its chair and bed, the cabin was stripped almost bare. Amid its
emptiness of dismantled shelves and walls and floor, only the tiny
ancestress still hung in her place, last token of the home that had been.
This miniature, tacked against the despoiled boards, and its descendant,
the angry girl with her hand on an open box-lid, made a sort of couple in
the loneliness: she on the wall sweet and serene, she by the box sweet and
stormy. The picture was her final treasure waiting to be packed for the
journey. In whatever room she had called her own since childhood, there it
had also lived and looked at her, not quite familiar, not quite smiling,
but in its prim colonial hues delicate as some pressed flower. Its pale
oval, of color blue and rose and flaxen, in a battered, pretty gold frame,
unconquerably pervaded any surroundings with a something like last year’s
lavender. Till yesterday a Crow Indian war-bonnet had hung next it, a
sumptuous cascade of feathers; on the other side a bow with arrows had
dangled; opposite had been the skin of a silver fox; over the door had
spread the antlers of a black-tail deer; a bearskin stretched beneath it.
Thus had the whole cosey log cabin been upholstered, lavish with trophies
of the frontier; and yet it was in front of the miniature that the
visitors used to stop.
Shining quietly now in the cabin’s blackness this summer day, the heirloom
was presiding until the end. And as Molly Wood’s eyes fell upon her
ancestress of Bennington, 1777, there flashed a spark of steel in them,
alone here in the room that she was leaving forever. She was not going to
teach school any more on Bear Creek, Wyoming; she was going home to
Bennington, Vermont. When time came for school to open again, there should
be a new schoolmarm.
This was the momentous result of that visit which the Virginian had paid
her. He had told her that he was coming for his hour soon. From that hour
she had decided to escape. She was running away from her own heart. She
did not dare to trust herself face to face again with her potent,
indomitable lover. She longed for him, and therefore she would never see
him again. No great-aunt at Dunbarton, or anybody else that knew her and
her family, should ever say that she had married below her station, had
been an unworthy Stark! Accordingly, she had written to the Virginian,
bidding him good-by, and wishing him everything in the world. As she
happened to be aware that she was taking everything in the world away from
him, this letter was not the most easy of letters to write. But she had
made the language very kind. Yes; it was a thoroughly kind communication.
And all because of that momentary visit, when he had brought back to her
two novels, EMMA and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.
“How do you like them?” she had then inquired; and he had smiled slowly at
her. “You haven’t read them!” she exclaimed.
“No.”
“Are you going to tell me there has been no time?”
“No.”
Then Molly had scolded her cow-puncher, and to this he had listened with
pleasure undisguised, as indeed he listened to every word that she said.
“Why, it has come too late,” he had told her when the scolding was over.
“If I was one of your little scholars hyeh in Bear Creek schoolhouse, yu’
could learn me to like such frillery I reckon. But I’m a mighty ignorant,
growed-up man.”
“So much the worse for you!” said Molly.
“No. I am pretty glad I am a man. Else I could not have learned the thing
you have taught me.”
But she shut her lips and looked away. On the desk was a letter written
from Vermont. “If you don’t tell me at once when you decide,” had said the
arch writer, “never hope to speak to me again. Mary Wood, seriously, I am
suspicious. Why do you never mention him nowadays? How exciting to have
you bring a live cow-boy to Bennington! We should all come to dinner.
Though of course I understand now that many of them have excellent
manners. But would he wear his pistol at table?” So the letter ran on. It
recounted the latest home gossip and jokes. In answering it Molly Wood had
taken no notice of its childish tone here and there.
“Hyeh’s some of them cactus blossoms yu’ wanted,” said the Virginian. His
voice recalled the girl with almost a start. “I’ve brought a good hawss
I’ve gentled for yu’, and Taylor’ll keep him till I need him.”
“Thank you so much! but I wish—”
“I reckon yu’ can’t stop me lendin’ Taylor a hawss. And you cert’nly’ll
get sick schoolteachin’ if yu’ don’t keep outdoors some. Good-by—till
that next time.”
“Yes; there’s always a next time,” she answered, as lightly as she could.
“There always will be. Don’t yu’ know that?”
She did not reply.
“I have discouraged spells,” he pursued, “but I down them. For I’ve told
yu’ you were going to love me. You are goin’ to learn back the thing you
have taught me. I’m not askin’ anything now; I don’t want you to speak a
word to me. But I’m never goin’ to quit till ‘next time’ is no more, and
it’s ‘all the time’ for you and me.”
With that he had ridden away, not even touching her hand. Long after he
had gone she was still in her chair, her eyes lingering upon his flowers,
those yellow cups of the prickly pear. At length she had risen
impatiently, caught up the flowers, gone with them to the open window,—and
then, after all, set them with pains in water.
But to-day Bear Creek was over. She was going home now. By the week’s end
she would be started. By the time the mail brought him her good-by letter
she would be gone. She had acted.
To Bear Creek, the neighborly, the friendly, the not comprehending, this
move had come unlooked for, and had brought regret. Only one hard word had
been spoken to Molly, and that by her next-door neighbor and kindest
friend. In Mrs. Taylor’s house the girl had daily come and gone as a
daughter, and that lady reached the subject thus:— “When I took
Taylor,” said she, sitting by as Robert Browning and Jane Austen were
going into their box, “I married for love.”
“Do you wish it had been money?” said Molly, stooping to her industries.
“You know both of us better than that, child.”
“I know I’ve seen people at home who couldn’t possibly have had any other
reason. They seemed satisfied, too.”
“Maybe the poor ignorant things were!”
“And so I have never been sure how I might choose.”
“Yes, you are sure, deary. Don’t you think I know you? And when it comes
over Taylor once in a while, and he tells me I’m the best thing in his
life, and I tell him he ain’t merely the best thing but the only thing in
mine,—him and the children,—why, we just agree we’d do it all
over the same way if we had the chance.”
Molly continued to be industrious.
“And that’s why,” said Mrs. Taylor, “I want every girl that’s anything to
me to know her luck when it comes. For I was that near telling Taylor I
wouldn’t!”
“If ever my luck comes,” said Molly, with her back to her friend, “I shall
say ‘I will’ at once.”
“Then you’ll say it at Bennington next week.”
Molly wheeled round.
“Why, you surely will. Do you expect he’s going to stay here, and you in
Bennington?” And the campaigner sat back in her chair.
“He? Goodness! Who is he?”
“Child, child, you’re talking cross to-day because you’re at outs with
yourself. You’ve been at outs ever since you took this idea of leaving the
school and us and everything this needless way. You have not treated him
right. And why, I can’t make out to save me. What have you found out all
of a sudden? If he was not good enough for you, I—But, oh, it’s a
prime one you’re losing, Molly. When a man like that stays faithful to a
girl ‘spite all the chances he gets, her luck is come.”
“Oh, my luck! People have different notions of luck.”
“Notions!”
“He has been very kind.”
“Kind!” And now without further simmering, Mrs. Taylor’s wrath boiled up
and poured copiously over Molly Wood. “Kind! There’s a word you shouldn’t
use, my dear. No doubt you can spell it. But more than its spelling I
guess you don’t know. The children can learn what it means from some of
the rest of us folks that don’t spell so correct, maybe.”
“Mrs. Taylor, Mrs. Taylor—”
“I can’t wait, deary. Since the roughness looks bigger to you than the
diamond, you had better go back to Vermont. I expect you’ll find better
grammar there, deary.”
The good dame stalked out, and across to her own cabin, and left the angry
girl among her boxes. It was in vain she fell to work upon them. Presently
something had to be done over again, and when it was the box held several
chattels less than before the readjustment. She played a sort of desperate
dominos to fit these objects in the space, but here were a paper-weight, a
portfolio, with two wretched volumes that no chink would harbor; and
letting them fall all at once, she straightened herself, still stormy with
revolt, eyes and cheeks still hot from the sting of long-parried truth.
There, on her wall still, was the miniature, the little silent ancestress;
and upon this face the girl’s glance rested. It was as if she appealed to
Grandmother Stark for support and comfort across the hundred years which
lay between them. So the flaxen girl on the wall and she among the boxes
stood a moment face to face in seeming communion, and then the descendant
turned again to her work. But after a desultory touch here and there she
drew a long breath and walked to the open door. What use was in finishing
to-day, when she had nearly a week? This first spurt of toil had swept the
cabin bare of all indwelling charm, and its look was chill. Across the
lane his horse, the one he had “gentled” for her, was grazing idly. She
walked there and caught him, and led him to her gate. Mrs. Taylor saw her
go in, and soon come out in riding-dress; and she watched the girl throw
the saddle on with quick ease—the ease he had taught her. Mrs.
Taylor also saw the sharp cut she gave the horse, and laughed grimly to
herself in her window as horse and rider galloped into the beautiful sunny
loneliness.
To the punished animal this switching was new! and at its third repetition
he turned his head in surprise, but was no more heeded than were the
bluffs and flowers where he was taking his own undirected choice of way.
He carried her over ground she knew by heart—Corncliff Mesa,
Crowheart Butte, Westfall’s Crossing, Upper Canyon; open land and
woodland, pines and sage-brush, all silent and grave and lustrous in the
sunshine. Once and again a ranchman greeted her, and wondered if she had
forgotten who he was; once she passed some cow-punchers with a small herd
of steers, and they stared after her too. Bear Creek narrowed, its
mountain-sides drew near, its little falls began to rush white in midday
shadow, and the horse suddenly pricked his ears. Unguided, he was taking
this advantage to go home. Though he had made but little way—a mere
beginning yet—on this trail over to Sunk Creek, here was already a
Sunk Creek friend whinnying good day to him, so he whinnied back and
quickened his pace, and Molly started to life. What was Monte doing here?
She saw the black horse she knew also, saddled, with reins dragging on the
trail as the rider had dropped them to dismount. A cold spring bubbled out
beyond the next rock, and she knew her lover’s horse was waiting for him
while he drank. She pulled at the reins, but loosed them, for to turn and
escape now was ridiculous; and riding boldly round the rock, she came upon
him by the spring. One of his arms hung up to its elbow in the pool, the
other was crooked beside his head, but the face was sunk downward against
the shelving rock, so that she saw only his black, tangled hair. As her
horse snorted and tossed his head she looked swiftly at Monte, as if to
question him. Seeing now the sweat matted on his coat, and noting the
white rim of his eye, she sprang and ran to the motionless figure. A patch
of blood at his shoulder behind stained the soft flannel shirt, spreading
down beneath his belt, and the man’s whole strong body lay slack and
pitifully helpless.
She touched the hand beside his head, but it seemed neither warm nor cold
to her; she felt for the pulse, as nearly as she could remember the
doctors did, but could not tell whether she imagined or not that it was
still; twice with painful care her fingers sought and waited for the beat,
and her face seemed like one of listening. She leaned down and lifted his
other arm and hand from the water, and as their ice-coldness reached her
senses, clearly she saw the patch near the shoulder she had moved grow wet
with new blood, and at that sight she grasped at the stones upon which she
herself now sank. She held tight by two rocks, sitting straight beside
him, staring, and murmuring aloud, “I must not faint; I will not faint;”
and the standing horses looked at her, pricking their ears.
In this cup-like spread of the ravine the sun shone warmly down, the tall
red cliff was warm, the pines were a warm film and filter of green;
outside the shade across Bear Creek rose the steep, soft, open yellow
hill, warm and high to the blue, and Bear Creek tumbled upon its
sunsparkling stones. The two horses on the margin trail still looked at
the spring and trees, where sat the neat flaxen girl so rigid by the slack
prone body in its flannel shirt and leathern chaps. Suddenly her face
livened. “But the blood ran!” she exclaimed, as if to the horses, her
companions in this. She moved to him, and put her hand in through his
shirt against his heart.
Next moment she had sprung up and was at his saddle, searching, then
swiftly went on to her own and got her small flask and was back beside
him. Here was the cold water he had sought, and she put it against his
forehead and drenched the wounded shoulder with it. Three times she tried
to move him, so he might lie more easy, but his dead weight was too much,
and desisting, she sat close and raised his head to let it rest against
her. Thus she saw the blood that was running from in front of the shoulder
also; but she said no more about fainting. She tore strips from her dress
and soaked them, keeping them cold and wet upon both openings of his
wound, and she drew her pocket-knife out and cut his shirt away from the
place. As she continually rinsed and cleaned it, she watched his
eyelashes, long and soft and thick, but they did not stir. Again she tried
the flask, but failed from being still too gentle, and her searching eyes
fell upon ashes near the pool. Still undispersed by the weather lay the
small charred ends of a fire he and she had made once here together, to
boil coffee and fry trout. She built another fire now, and when the flames
were going well, filled her flask-cup from the spring and set it to heat.
Meanwhile, she returned to nurse his head and wound. Her cold water had
stopped the bleeding. Then she poured her brandy in the steaming cup, and,
made rough by her desperate helplessness, forced some between his lips and
teeth.
Instantly, almost, she felt the tremble of life creeping back, and as his
deep eyes opened upon her she sat still and mute. But the gaze seemed
luminous with an unnoting calm, and she wondered if perhaps he could not
recognize her; she watched this internal clearness of his vision, scarcely
daring to breathe, until presently he began to speak, with the same
profound and clear impersonality sounding in his slowly uttered words.
“I thought they had found me. I expected they were going to kill me.” He
stopped, and she gave him more of the hot drink, which he took, still
lying and looking at her as if the present did not reach his senses. “I
knew hands were touching me. I reckon I was not dead. I knew about them
soon as they began, only I could not interfere.” He waited again. “It is
mighty strange where I have been. No. Mighty natural.” Then he went back
into his revery, and lay with his eyes still full open upon her where she
sat motionless.
She began to feel a greater awe in this living presence than when it had
been his body with an ice-cold hand; and she quietly spoke his name,
venturing scarcely more than a whisper.
At this, some nearer thing wakened in his look. “But it was you all
along,” he resumed. “It is you now. You must not stay—” Weakness
overcame him, and his eyes closed. She sat ministering to him, and when he
roused again, he began anxiously at once: “You must not stay. They would
get you, too.”
She glanced at him with a sort of fierceness, then reached for his pistol,
in which was nothing but blackened empty cartridges. She threw these out
and drew six from his belt, loaded the weapon, and snapped shut its hinge.
“Please take it,” he said, more anxious and more himself. “I ain’t worth
tryin’ to keep. Look at me!”
“Are you giving up?” she inquired, trying to put scorn in her tone. Then
she seated herself.
“Where is the sense in both of us—”
“You had better save your strength,” she interrupted.
He tried to sit up.
“Lie down!” she ordered.
He sank obediently, and began to smile.
When she saw that, she smiled too, and unexpectedly took his hand.
“Listen, friend,” said she. “Nobody shall get you, and nobody shall get
me. Now take some more brandy.”
“It must be noon,” said the cow-puncher, when she had drawn her hand away
from him. “I remember it was dark when—when—when I can
remember. I reckon they were scared to follow me in so close to settlers.
Else they would have been here.”
“You must rest,” she observed.
She broke the soft ends of some evergreen, and putting them beneath his
head, went to the horses, loosened the cinches, took off the bridles, led
them to drink, and picketed them to feed. Further still, to leave nothing
undone which she could herself manage, she took the horses’ saddles off to
refold the blankets when the time should come, and meanwhile brought them
for him. But he put them away from him. He was sitting up against a rock,
stronger evidently, and asking for cold water. His head was fire-hot, and
the paleness beneath his swarthy skin had changed to a deepening flush.
“Only five miles!” she said to him, bathing his head.
“Yes. I must hold it steady,” he answered, waving his hand at the cliff.
She told him to try and keep it steady until they got home.
“Yes,” he repeated. “Only five miles. But it’s fightin’ to turn around.”
Half aware that he was becoming light-headed, he looked from the rock to
her and from her to the rock with dilating eyes.
“We can hold it together,” she said. “You must get on your horse.” She
took his handkerchief from round his neck, knotting it with her own, and
to make more bandage she ran to the roll of clothes behind his saddle and
tore in halves a clean shirt. A handkerchief fell from it, which she
seized also, and opening, saw her own initials by the hem. Then she
remembered: she saw again their first meeting, the swollen river, the
overset stage, the unknown horseman who carried her to the bank on his
saddle and went away unthanked—her whole first adventure on that
first day of her coming to this new country—and now she knew how her
long-forgotten handkerchief had gone that day. She refolded it gently and
put it back in his bundle, for there was enough bandage without it. She
said not a word to him, and he placed a wrong meaning upon the look which
she gave him as she returned to bind his shoulder.
“It don’t hurt so much,” he assured her (though extreme pain was clearing
his head for the moment, and he had been able to hold the cliff from
turning). “Yu’ must not squander your pity.”
“Do not squander your strength,” said she.
“Oh, I could put up a pretty good fight now!” But he tottered in showing
her how strong he was, and she told him that, after all, he was a child
still.
“Yes,” he slowly said, looking after her as she went to bring his horse,
“the same child that wanted to touch the moon, I guess.” And during the
slow climb down into the saddle from a rock to which she helped him he
said, “You have got to be the man all through this mess.”
She saw his teeth clinched and his drooping muscles compelled by will; and
as he rode and she walked to lend him support, leading her horse by a
backward-stretched left hand, she counted off the distance to him
continually—the increasing gain, the lessening road, the landmarks
nearing and dropping behind; here was the tree with the wasp-nest gone;
now the burned cabin was passed; now the cottonwoods at the ford were in
sight. He was silent, and held to the saddle-horn, leaning more and more
against his two hands clasped over it; and just after they had made the
crossing he fell, without a sound slipping to the grass, and his descent
broken by her. But it started the blood a little, and she dared not leave
him to seek help. She gave him the last of the flask and all the water he
craved.
Revived, he managed to smile. “Yu’ see, I ain’t worth keeping.”
“It’s only a mile,” said she. So she found a log, a fallen trunk, and he
crawled to that, and from there crawled to his saddle, and she marched on
with him, talking, bidding him note the steps accomplished. For the next
half-mile they went thus, the silent man clinched on the horse, and by his
side the girl walking and cheering him forward, when suddenly he began to
speak:— “I will say good-by to you now, ma’am.”
She did not understand, at first, the significance of this.
“He is getting away,” pursued the Virginian. “I must ask you to excuse me,
ma’am.”
It was a long while since her lord had addressed her as “ma’am.” As she
looked at him in growing apprehension, he turned Monte and would have
ridden away, but she caught the bridle.
“You must take me home,” said she, with ready inspiration. “I am afraid of
the Indians.”
“Why, you—why, they’ve all gone. There he goes. Ma’am—that
hawss—”
“No,” said she, holding firmly his rein and quickening her step. “A
gentleman does not invite a lady to go out riding and leave her.”
His eyes lost their purpose. “I’ll cert’nly take you home. That sorrel has
gone in there by the wallow, and Judge Henry will understand.” With his
eyes watching imaginary objects, he rode and rambled and it was now the
girl who was silent, except to keep his mind from its half-fixed idea of
the sorrel. As he grew more fluent she hastened still more, listening to
head off that notion of return, skilfully inventing questions to engage
him, so that when she brought him to her gate she held him in a manner
subjected, answering faithfully the shrewd unrealities which she devised,
whatever makeshifts she could summon to her mind; and next she had got him
inside her dwelling and set him down docile, but now completely wandering;
and then—no help was at hand, even here. She had made sure of aid
from next door, and there she hastened, to find the Taylor’s cabin locked
and silent; and this meant that parents and children were gone to drive;
nor might she be luckier at her next nearest neighbors’, should she travel
the intervening mile to fetch them. With a mind jostled once more into
uncertainty, she returned to her room, and saw a change in him already.
Illness had stridden upon him; his face was not as she had left it, and
the whole body, the splendid supple horseman, showed sickness in every
line and limb, its spurs and pistol and bold leather chaps a mockery of
trappings. She looked at him, and decision came back to her, clear and
steady. She supported him over to her bed and laid him on it. His head
sank flat, and his loose, nerveless arms stayed as she left them. Then
among her packing-boxes and beneath the little miniature, blue and flaxen
and gold upon its lonely wall, she undressed him. He was cold, and she
covered him to the face, and arranged the pillow, and got from its box her
scarlet and black Navajo blanket and spread it over him. There was no more
that she could do, and she sat down by him to wait. Among the many and
many things that came into her mind was a word he said to her lightly a
long while ago. “Cow-punchers do not live long enough to get old,” he had
told her. And now she looked at the head upon the pillow, grave and
strong, but still the head of splendid, unworn youth.
At the distant jingle of the wagon in the lane she was out, and had met
her returning neighbors midway. They heard her with amazement, and came in
haste to the bedside; then Taylor departed to spread news of the Indians
and bring the doctor, twenty-five miles away. The two women friends stood
alone again, as they had stood in the morning when anger had been between
them.
“Kiss me, deary,” said Mrs. Taylor. “Now I will look after him—and
you’ll need some looking after yourself.”
But on returning from her cabin with what store she possessed of lint and
stimulants, she encountered a rebel, independent as ever. Molly would hear
no talk about saving her strength, would not be in any room but this one
until the doctor should arrive; then perhaps it would be time to think
about resting. So together the dame and the girl rinsed the man’s wound
and wrapped him in clean things, and did all the little that they knew—which
was, in truth, the very thing needed. Then they sat watching him toss and
mutter. It was no longer upon Indians or the sorrel horse that his talk
seemed to run, or anything recent, apparently, always excepting his work.
This flowingly merged with whatever scene he was inventing or living
again, and he wandered unendingly in that incompatible world we dream in.
Through the medley of events and names, often thickly spoken, but rising
at times to grotesque coherence, the listeners now and then could piece
out the reference from their own knowledge. “Monte,” for example,
continually addressed, and Molly heard her own name, but invariably as
“Miss Wood”; nothing less respectful came out, and frequently he answered
some one as “ma’am.” At these fragments of revelation Mrs. Taylor
abstained from speech, but eyed Molly Wood with caustic reproach. As the
night wore on, short lulls of silence intervened, and the watchers were
deceived into hope that the fever was abating. And when the Virginian sat
quietly up in bed, essayed to move his bandage, and looked steadily at
Mrs. Taylor, she rose quickly and went to him with a question as to how he
was doing.
“Rise on your laigs, you polecat,” said he, “and tell them you’re a liar.”
The good dame gasped, then bade him lie down, and he obeyed her with that
strange double understanding of the delirious; for even while submitting,
he muttered “liar,” “polecat,” and then “Trampas.”
At that name light flashed on Mrs. Taylor, and she turned to Molly; and
there was the girl struggling with a fit of mirth at his speech; but the
laughter was fast becoming a painful seizure. Mrs. Taylor walked Molly up
and down, speaking mmediately to arrest her attention.
“You might as well know it,” she said. “He would blame me for speaking of
it, but where’s the harm all this while after? And you would never hear it
from his mouth. Molly, child, they say Trampas would kill him if he dared,
and that’s on account of you.”
“I never saw Trampas,” said Molly, fixing her eyes upon the speaker.
“No, deary. But before a lot of men—Taylor has told me about it—Trampas
spoke disrespectfully of you, and before them all he made Trampas say he
was a liar. That is what he did when you were almost a stranger among us,
and he had not started seeing so much of you. I expect Trampas is the only
enemy he ever had in this country. But he would never let you know about
that.”
“No,” whispered Molly; “I did not know.”
“Steve!” the sick man now cried out, in poignant appeal. “Steve!” To the
women it was a name unknown,—unknown as was also this deep inward
tide of feeling which he could no longer conceal, being himself no longer.
“No, Steve,” he said next, and muttering followed. “It ain’t so!” he
shouted; and then cunningly in a lowered voice, “Steve, I have lied for
you.”
In time Mrs. Taylor spoke some advice.
“You had better go to bed, child. You look about ready for the doctor
yourself.”
“Then I will wait for him,” said Molly.
So the two nurses continued to sit until darkness at the windows weakened
into gray, and the lamp was no more needed. Their patient was rambling
again. Yet, into whatever scenes he went, there in some guise did the
throb of his pain evidently follow him, and he lay hitching his great
shoulder as if to rid it of the cumbrance. They waited for the doctor, not
daring much more than to turn pillows and give what other ease they could;
and then, instead of the doctor, came a messenger, about noon, to say he
was gone on a visit some thirty miles beyond, where Taylor had followed to
bring him here as soon as might be. At this Molly consented to rest and to
watch, turn about; and once she was over in her friend’s house lying down,
they tried to keep her there. But the revolutionist could not be put down,
and when, as a last pretext, Mrs. Taylor urged the proprieties and
conventions, the pale girl from Vermont laughed sweetly in her face and
returned to sit by the sick man. With the approach of the second night his
fever seemed to rise and master him more completely than they had yet seen
it, and presently it so raged that the women called in stronger arms to
hold him down. There were times when he broke out in the language of the
round-up, and Mrs. Taylor renewed her protests. “Why,” said Molly, “don’t
you suppose I knew they could swear?” So the dame, in deepening
astonishment and affection, gave up these shifts at decorum. Nor did the
delirium run into the intimate, coarse matters that she dreaded. The
cow-puncher had lived like his kind, but his natural daily thoughts were
clean, and came from the untamed but unstained mind of a man. And toward
morning, as Mrs. Taylor sat taking her turn, suddenly he asked had he been
sick long, and looked at her with a quieted eye. The wandering seemed to
drop from him at a stroke, leaving him altogether himself. He lay very
feeble, and inquired once or twice of his state and how he came here; nor
was anything left in his memory of even coming to the spring where he had
been found.
When the doctor arrived, he pronounced that it would be long—or very
short. He praised their clean water treatment; the wound was fortunately
well up on the shoulder, and gave so far no bad signs; there were not any
bad signs; and the blood and strength of the patient had been as few men’s
were; each hour was now an hour nearer certainty, and meanwhile—meanwhile
the doctor would remain as long as he could. He had many inquiries to
satisfy. Dusty fellows would ride up, listen to him, and reply, as they
rode away, “Don’t yu’ let him die, Doc.” And Judge Henry sent over from
Sunk Creek to answer for any attendance or medicine that might help his
foreman. The country was moved with concern and interest; and in Molly’s
ears its words of good feeling seemed to unite and sum up a burden, “Don’t
yu’ let him die, Doc.” The Indians who had done this were now in military
custody. They had come unpermitted from a southern reservation, hunting,
next thieving, and as the slumbering spirit roused in one or two of the
young and ambitious, they had ventured this in the secret mountains, and
perhaps had killed a trapper found there. Editors immediately reared a
tall war out of it; but from five Indians in a guard-house waiting
punishment not even an editor can supply spar for more than two editions,
and if the recent alarm was still a matter of talk anywhere, it was not
here in the sick-room. Whichever way the case should turn, it was through
Molly alone (the doctor told her) that the wounded man had got this chance—this
good chance, he related.
And he told her she had not done a woman’s part, but a man’s part, and now
had no more to do; no more till the patient got well, and could thank her
in his own way, said the doctor, smiling, and supposing things that were
not so—misled perhaps by Mrs. Taylor.
“I’m afraid I’ll be gone by the time he is well,” said Molly, coldly; and
the discreet physician said ah, and that she would find Bennington quite a
change from Bear Creek.
But Mrs. Taylor spoke otherwise, and at that the girl said: “I shall stay
as long as I am needed. I will nurse him. I want to nurse him. I will do
everything for him that I can!” she exclaimed, with force.
“And that won’t be anything, deary,” said Mrs. Taylor, harshly. “A year of
nursing don’t equal a day of sweetheart.”
The girl took a walk,—she was of no more service in the room at
present,—but she turned without going far, and Mrs. Taylor spied her
come to lean over the pasture fence and watch the two horses—that
one the Virginian had “gentled” for her, and his own Monte. During this
suspense came a new call for the doctor, neighbors profiting by his visit
to Bear Creek; and in his going away to them, even under promise of quick
return, Mrs. Taylor suspected a favorable sign. He kept his word as
punctually as had been possible, arriving after some six hours with a
confident face, and spending now upon the patient a care not needed, save
to reassure the bystanders. He spoke his opinion that all was even better
than he could have hoped it would be, so soon. Here was now the beginning
of the fifth day; the wound’s look was wholesome, no further delirium had
come, and the fever had abated a degree while he was absent. He believed
the serious danger-line lay behind, and (short of the unforeseen) the
man’s deep untainted strength would reassert its control. He had much
blood to make, and must be cared for during weeks—three, four, five—there
was no saying how long yet. These next few days it must be utter quiet for
him; he must not talk nor hear anything likely to disturb him; and then
the time for cheerfulness and gradual company would come—sooner than
later, the doctor hoped. So he departed, and sent next day some bottles,
with further cautions regarding the wound and dirt, and to say he should
be calling the day after to-morrow.
Upon that occasion he found two patients. Molly Wood lay in bed at Mrs.
Taylor’s, filled with apology and indignation. With little to do, and
deprived of the strong stimulant of anxiety and action, her strength had
quite suddenly left her, so that she had spoken only in a sort of whisper.
But upon waking from a long sleep, after Mrs. Taylor had taken her firmly,
almost severely, in hand, her natural voice had returned, and now the
chief treatment the doctor gave her was a sort of scolding, which it
pleased Mrs. Taylor to hear. The doctor even dropped a phrase concerning
the arrogance of strong nerves in slender bodies, and of undertaking
several people’s work when several people were at hand to do it for
themselves, and this pleased Mrs. Taylor remarkably. As for the wounded
man, he was behaving himself properly. Perhaps in another week he could be
moved to a more cheerful room. Just now, with cleanliness and pure air,
any barn would do.
“We are real lucky to have such a sensible doctor in the country,” Mrs.
Taylor observed, after the physician had gone.
“No doubt,” said Molly. “He said my room was a barn.”
“That’s what you’ve made it, deary. But sick men don’t notice much.”
Nevertheless, one may believe, without going widely astray, that illness,
so far from veiling, more often quickens the perceptions—at any rate
those of the naturally keen. On a later day—and the interval was
brief—while Molly was on her second drive to take the air with Mrs.
Taylor, that lady informed her that the sick man had noticed. “And I could
not tell him things liable to disturb him,” said she, “and so I—well,
I expect I just didn’t exactly tell him the facts. I said yes, you were
packing up for a little visit to your folks. They had not seen you for
quite a while, I said. And he looked at those boxes kind of silent like.”
“There’s no need to move him,” said Molly. ‘“It is simpler to move them—the
boxes. I could take out some of my things, you know, just while he has to
be kept there. I mean—you see, if the doctor says the room should be
cheerful—”
“Yes, deary.”
“I will ask the doctor next time,” said Molly, “if he believes I am—competent
to spread a rug upon a floor.” Molly’s references to the doctor were
usually acid these days. And this he totally failed to observe, telling
her when he came, why, to be sure! the very thing! And if she could play
cards or read aloud, or afford any other light distractions, provided they
did not lead the patient to talk and tire himself, that she would be most
useful. Accordingly she took over the cribbage board, and came with
unexpected hesitation face to face again with the swarthy man she had
saved and tended. He was not so swarthy now, but neat, with chin clean,
and hair and mustache trimmed and smooth, and he sat propped among pillows
watching for her.
“You are better,” she said, speaking first, and with uncertain voice.
“Yes. They have given me awdehs not to talk,” said the Southerner,
smiling.
“Oh, yes. Please do not talk—not to-day.”
“No. Only this”—he looked at her, and saw her seem to shrink—“thank
you for what you have done,” he said simply.
She took tenderly the hand he stretched to her; and upon these terms they
set to work at cribbage. She won, and won again, and the third time laid
down her cards and reproached him with playing in order to lose.
“No,” he said, and his eye wandered to the boxes. “But my thoughts get
away from me. I’ll be strong enough to hold them on the cyards next time,
I reckon.”
Many tones in his voice she had heard, but never the tone of sadness until
to-day.
Then they played a little more, and she put away the board for this first
time.
“You are going now?” he asked.
“When I have made this room look a little less forlorn. They haven’t
wanted to meddle with my things, I suppose.” And Molly stooped once again
among the chattels destined for Vermont. Out they came; again the bearskin
was spread on the floor, various possessions and ornaments went back into
their ancient niches, the shelves grew comfortable with books, and, last,
some flowers were stood on the table.
“More like old times,” said the Virginian, but sadly.
“It’s too bad,” said Molly, “you had to be brought into such a looking
place.”
“And your folks waiting for you,” said he.
“Oh, I’ll pay my visit later,” said Molly, putting the rug a trifle
straighter.
“May I ask one thing?” pleaded the Virginian, and at the gentleness of his
voice her face grew rosy, and she fixed her eyes on him with a sort of
dread.
“Anything that I can answer,” said she.
“Oh, yes. Did I tell yu’ to quit me, and did yu’ load up my gun and stay?
Was that a real business? I have been mixed up in my haid.”
“That was real,” said Molly. “What else was there to do?”
“Just nothing—for such as you!” he exclaimed. “My haid has been
mighty crazy; and that little grandmother of yours yondeh, she—but I
can’t just quite catch a-hold of these things”—he passed a hand over
his forehead—“so many—or else one right along—well, it’s
all foolishness!” he concluded, with something almost savage in his tone.
And after she had gone from the cabin he lay very still, looking at the
miniature on the wall.
He was in another sort of mood the next time, cribbage not interesting him
in the least. “Your folks will be wondering about you,” said he.
“I don’t think they will mind which month I go to them,” said Molly.
“Especially when they know the reason.”
“Don’t let me keep you, ma’am,” said he. Molly stared at him; but he
pursued, with the same edge lurking in his slow words: “Though I’ll never
forget. How could I forget any of all you have done—and been? If
there had been none of this, why, I had enough to remember! But please
don’t stay, ma’am. We’ll say I had a claim when yu’ found me pretty well
dead, but I’m gettin’ well, yu’ see—right smart, too!”
“I can’t understand, indeed I can’t,” said Molly, “why you’re talking so!”
He seemed to have certain moods when he would address her as “ma’am,” and
this she did not like, but could not prevent.
“Oh, a sick man is funny. And yu’ know I’m grateful to you.”
“Please say no more about that, or I shall go this afternoon. I don’t want
to go. I am not ready. I think I had better read something now.”
“Why, yes. That’s cert’nly a good notion. Why, this is the best show
you’ll ever get to give me education. Won’t yu’ please try that EMMA book
now, ma’am? Listening to you will be different.” This was said with
softness and humility.
Uncertain—as his gravity often left her—precisely what he
meant by what he said, Molly proceeded with EMMA, slackly at first, but
soon with the enthusiasm that Miss Austen invariably gave her. She held
the volume and read away at it, commenting briefly, and then, finishing a
chapter of the sprightly classic, found her pupil slumbering peacefully.
There was no uncertainty about that.
“You couldn’t be doing a healthier thing for him, deary,” said Mrs.
Taylor. “If it gets to make him wakeful, try something harder.” This was
the lady’s scarcely sympathetic view.
But it turned out to be not obscurity in which Miss Austen sinned.
When Molly next appeared at the Virginian’s threshold, he said
plaintively, “I reckon I am a dunce.” And he sued for pardon. “When I
waked up,” he said, “I was ashamed of myself for a plumb half-hour.” Nor
could she doubt this day that he meant what he said. His mood was again
serene and gentle, and without referring to his singular words that had
distressed her, he made her feel his contrition, even in his silence.
“I am right glad you have come,” he said. And as he saw her going to the
bookshelf, he continued, with diffidence: “As regyards that EMMA book, yu’
see—yu’ see, the doin’s and sayin’s of folks like them are above me.
But I think” (he spoke most diffidently), “if yu’ could read me something
that was ABOUT something, I—I’d be liable to keep awake.” And he
smiled with a certain shyness.
“Something ABOUT something?” queried Molly, at a loss.
“Why, yes. Shakespeare. HENRY THE FOURTH. The British king is fighting,
and there is his son the prince. He cert’nly must have been a jim-dandy
boy if that is all true. Only he would go around town with a mighty
triflin’ gang. They sported and they held up citizens. And his father
hated his travelling with trash like them. It was right natural—the
boy and the old man! But the boy showed himself a man too. He killed a big
fighter on the other side who was another jim-dandy—and he was sorry
for having it to do.” The Virginian warmed to his recital. “I understand
most all of that. There was a fat man kept everybody laughing. He was
awful natural too; except yu’ don’t commonly meet ’em so fat. But the
prince—that play is bed-rock, ma’am! Have you got something like
that?”
“Yes, I think so,” she replied. “I believe I see what you would
appreciate.”
She took her Browning, her idol, her imagined affinity. For the pale
decadence of New England had somewhat watered her good old Revolutionary
blood too, and she was inclined to think under glass and to live underdone—when
there were no Indians to shoot! She would have joyed to venture
“Paracelsus” on him, and some lengthy rhymed discourses; and she fondly
turned leaves and leaves of her pet doggerel analytics. “Pippa Passes” and
others she had to skip, from discreet motives—pages which he would
have doubtless stayed awake at; but she chose a poem at length. This was
better than Emma, he pronounced. And short. The horse was a good horse. He
thought a man whose horse must not play out on him would watch the ground
he was galloping over for holes, and not be likely to see what color the
rims of his animal’s eye-sockets were. You could not see them if you sat
as you ought to for such a hard ride. Of the next piece that she read him
he thought still better. “And it is short,” said he. “But the last part
drops.”
Molly instantly exacted particulars.
“The soldier should not have told the general he was killed,” stated the
cow-puncher.
“What should he have told him, I’d like to know?” said Molly.
“Why, just nothing. If the soldier could ride out of the battle all shot
up, and tell his general about their takin’ the town—that was being
gritty, yu’ see. But that truck at the finish—will yu’ please say it
again?”
So Molly read:—
“’You’re wounded! ‘Nay,’ the soldier’s pride
Touched to the quick, he said,
‘I’m killed, sire!’ And, his chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead.”
“’Nay, I’m killed, sire,’” drawled the Virginian, amiably; for (symptom of
convalescence) his freakish irony was revived in him. “Now a man who was
man enough to act like he did, yu’ see, would fall dead without mentioning
it.”
None of Molly’s sweet girl friends had ever thus challenged Mr. Browning.
They had been wont to cluster over him with a joyous awe that deepened
proportionally with their misunderstanding. Molly paused to consider this
novelty of view about the soldier. “He was a Frenchman, you know,” she
said, under inspiration.
“A Frenchman,” murmured the grave cow-puncher. “I never knowed a Frenchman,
but I reckon they might perform that class of foolishness.”
“But why was it foolish?” she cried.
“His soldier’s pride—don’t you see?”
“No.”
Molly now burst into a luxury of discussion. She leaned toward her
cow-puncher with bright eyes searching his; with elbow on knee and hand
propping chin, her lap became a slant, and from it Browning the poet slid
and toppled, and lay unrescued. For the slow cow-puncher unfolded his
notions of masculine courage and modesty (though he did not deal in such
high-sounding names), and Molly forgot everything to listen to him, as he
forgot himself and his inveterate shyness and grew talkative to her. “I
would never have supposed that!” she would exclaim as she heard him; or,
presently again, “I never had such an idea!” And her mind opened with
delight to these new things which came from the man’s mind so simple and
direct. To Browning they did come back, but the Virginian, though
interested, conceived a dislike for him. “He is a smarty,” said he, once
or twice.
“Now here is something,” said Molly. “I have never known what to think.”
“Oh, Heavens!” murmured the sick man, smiling. “Is it short?”
“Very short. Now please attend.” And she read him twelve lines about a
lover who rowed to a beach in the dusk, crossed a field, tapped at a pane,
and was admitted.
“That is the best yet,” said the Virginian. “There’s only one thing yu’
can think about that.”
“But wait,” said the girl, swiftly. “Here is how they parted:—
“Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim—
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.”
“That is very, very true,” murmured the Virginian, dropping his eyes from
the girl’s intent ones.
“Had they quarrelled?” she inquired.
“Oh, no!”
“But—”
“I reckon he loved her very much.”
“Then you’re sure they hadn’t quarrelled?”
“Dead sure, ma’am. He would come back afteh he had played some more of the
game.”
“The game?”
“Life, ma’am. Whatever he was a-doin’ in the world of men. That’s a
bed-rock piece, ma’am!”
“Well, I don’t see why you think it’s so much better than some of the
others.”
“I could sca’cely explain,” answered the man. “But that writer does know
something.”
“I am glad they hadn’t quarrelled,” said Molly, thoughtfully. And she
began to like having her opinions refuted.
His bandages, becoming a little irksome, had to be shifted, and this
turned their discourse from literature to Wyoming; and Molly inquired, had
he ever been shot before? Only once, he told her. “I have been lucky in
having few fusses,” said he. “I hate them. If a man has to be killed—”
“You never—” broke in Molly. She had started back a little. “Well,”
she added hastily, “don’t tell me if—”
“I shouldn’t wonder if I got one of those Indians,” he said quietly. “But
I wasn’t waitin’ to see! But I came mighty near doing for a white man that
day. He had been hurtin’ a hawss.”
“Hurting?” said Molly.
“Injurin.’ I will not tell yu’ about that. It would hurt yu’ to hear such
things. But hawsses—don’t they depend on us? Ain’t they somethin’
like children? I did not lay up the man very bad. He was able to travel
‘most right away. Why, you’d have wanted to kill him yourself!”
So the Virginian talked, nor knew what he was doing to the girl. Nor was
she aware of what she was receiving from him as he unwittingly spoke
himself out to her in these Browning meetings they had each day. But Mrs.
Taylor grew pleased. The kindly dame would sometimes cross the road to see
if she were needed, and steal away again after a peep at the window.
There, inside, among the restored home treasures, sat the two: the rosy
alert girl, sweet as she talked or read to him; and he, the grave,
half-weak giant among his wraps, watching her.
Of her delayed home visit he never again spoke, either to her or to Mrs.
Taylor; and Molly veered aside from any trend of talk she foresaw was
leading toward that subject. But in those hours when no visitors came, and
he was by himself in the quiet, he would lie often sombrely contemplating
the girl’s room, her little dainty knickknacks, her home photographs, all
the delicate manifestations of what she came from and what she was.
Strength was flowing back into him each day, and Judge Henry’s latest
messenger had brought him clothes and mail from Sunk Creek and many
inquiries of kindness, and returned taking the news of the cow-puncher’s
improvement, and how soon he would be permitted the fresh air. Hence Molly
found him waiting in a flannel shirt of highly becoming shade, and with a
silk handkerchief knotted round his throat; and he told her it was good to
feel respectable again.
She had come to read to him for the allotted time; and she threw around
his shoulders the scarlet and black Navajo blanket, striped with its
splendid zigzags of barbarity. Thus he half sat, half leaned, languid but
at ease. In his lap lay one of the letters brought over by the messenger:
and though she was midway in a book that engaged his full attention—DAVID
COPPERFIELD—his silence and absent look this morning stopped her,
and she accused him of not attending.
“No,” he admitted; “I am thinking of something else.”
She looked at him with that apprehension which he knew.
“It had to come,” said he. “And to-day I see my thoughts straighter than
I’ve been up to managing since—since my haid got clear. And now I
must say these thoughts—if I can, if I can!” He stopped. His eyes
were intent upon her; one hand was gripping the arm of his chair.
“You promised—” trembled Molly.
“I promised you should love me,” he sternly interrupted. “Promised that to
myself. I have broken that word.”
She shut DAVID COPPERFIELD mechanically, and grew white.
“Your letter has come to me hyeh,” he continued, gentle again.
“My—” She had forgotten it.
“The letter you wrote to tell me good-by. You wrote it a little while ago—not
a month yet, but it’s away and away long gone for me.”
“I have never let you know—” began Molly.
“The doctor,” he interrupted once more, but very gently now, “he gave
awdehs I must be kept quiet. I reckon yu’ thought tellin’ me might—”
“Forgive me!” cried the girl. “Indeed I ought to have told you sooner!
Indeed I had no excuse!”
“Why, should yu’ tell me if yu’ preferred not? You had written. And you
speak” (he lifted the letter) “of never being able to repay kindness; but
you have turned the tables. I can never repay you by anything! by
anything! So I had figured I would just jog back to Sunk Creek and let you
get away, if you did not want to say that kind of good-by. For I saw the
boxes. Mrs. Taylor is too nice a woman to know the trick of lyin’, and she
could not deceive me. I have knowed yu’ were going away for good ever
since I saw those boxes. But now hyeh comes your letter, and it seems no
way but I must speak. I have thought a deal, lyin’ in this room. And—to-day—I
can say what I have thought. I could not make you happy.” He stopped, but
she did not answer. His voice had grown softer than whispering, but yet
was not a whisper. From its quiet syllables she turned away, blinded with
sudden tears.
“Once, I thought love must surely be enough,” he continued. “And I thought
if I could make you love me, you could learn me to be less—less—more
your kind. And I think I could give you a pretty good sort of love. But
that don’t help the little mean pesky things of day by day that make
roughness or smoothness for folks tied together so awful close. Mrs.
Taylor hyeh—she don’t know anything better than Taylor does. She
don’t want anything he can’t give her. Her friends will do for him and his
for her. And when I dreamed of you in my home—” he closed his eyes
and drew a long breath. At last he looked at her again. “This is no
country for a lady. Will yu’ forget and forgive the bothering I have
done?”
“Oh!” cried Molly. “Oh!” And she put her hands to her eyes. She had risen
and stood with her face covered.
“I surely had to tell you this all out, didn’t I?” said the cow-puncher,
faintly, in his chair.
“Oh!” said Molly again.
“I have put it clear how it is,” he pursued. “I ought to have seen from
the start I was not the sort to keep you happy.”
“But,” said Molly—“but I—you ought—please try to keep me
happy!” And sinking by his chair, she hid her face on his knees.
Speechless, he bent down and folded her round, putting his hands on the
hair that had been always his delight. Presently he whispered:— “You
have beat me; how can I fight this?”
She answered nothing. The Navajo’s scarlet and black folds fell over both.
Not with words, not even with meeting eyes, did the two plight their troth
in this first new hour. So they remained long, the fair head nesting in
the great arms, and the black head laid against it, while over the silent
room presided the little Grandmother Stark in her frame, rosy, blue, and
flaxen, not quite familiar, not quite smiling.
XXVIII. NO DREAM TO WAKE FROM
For a long while after she had left him, he lay still, stretched in his
chair. His eyes were fixed steadily upon the open window and the sunshine
outside. There he watched the movement of the leaves upon the green
cottonwoods. What had she said to him when she went? She had said, “Now I
know how unhappy I have been.” These sweet words he repeated to himself
over and over, fearing in some way that he might lose them. They almost
slipped from him at times; but with a jump of his mind he caught them
again and held them,—and then—“I’m not all strong yet,” he
murmured. “I must have been very sick.” And, weak from his bullet wound
and fever, he closed his eyes without knowing it. There were the
cottonwoods again, waving, waving; and he felt the cool, pleasant air from
the window. He saw the light draught stir the ashes in the great stone
fireplace. “I have been asleep,” he said. “But she was cert’nly here
herself. Oh, yes. Surely. She always has to go away every day because the
doctor says—why, she was readin’!” he broke off, aloud. “DAVID
COPPERFIELD.” There it was on the floor. “Aha! nailed you anyway!” he
said. “But how scared I am of myself!—You’re a fool. Of course it’s
so. No fever business could make yu’ feel like this.”
His eye dwelt awhile on the fireplace, next on the deer horns, and next it
travelled toward the shelf where her books were; but it stopped before
reaching them.
“Better say off the names before I look,” said he. “I’ve had a heap o’
misreading visions. And—and supposin’—if this was just my
sickness fooling me some more—I’d want to die. I would die! Now
we’ll see. If COPPERFIELD is on the floor” (he looked stealthily to be
sure that it was), “then she was readin’ to me when everything happened,
and then there should be a hole in the book row, top, left. Top, left,” he
repeated, and warily brought his glance to the place. “Proved!” he cried.
“It’s all so!”
He now noticed the miniature of Grandmother Stark. “You are awful like
her,” he whispered. “You’re cert’nly awful like her. May I kiss you too,
ma’am?”
Then, tottering, he rose from his sick-chair. The Navajo blanket fell from
his shoulders, and gradually, experimentally, he stood upright.
Helping himself with his hand slowly along the wall of the room, and round
to the opposite wall with many a pause, he reached the picture, and very
gently touched the forehead of the ancestral dame with his lips. “I
promise to make your little girl happy,” he whispered.
He almost fell in stooping to the portrait, but caught himself and stood
carefully quiet, trembling, and speaking to himself. “Where is your
strength?” he demanded. “I reckon it is joy that has unsteadied your
laigs.”
The door opened. It was she, come back with his dinner.
“My Heavens!” she said; and setting the tray down, she rushed to him. She
helped him back to his chair, and covered him again. He had suffered no
hurt, but she clung to him; and presently he moved and let himself kiss
her with fuller passion.
“I will be good,” he whispered.
“You must,” she said. “You looked so pale!”
“You are speakin’ low like me,” he answered. “But we have no dream we can
wake from.”
Had she surrendered on this day to her cow-puncher, her wild man? Was she
forever wholly his? Had the Virginian’s fire so melted her heart that no
rift in it remained? So she would have thought if any thought had come to
her. But in his arms to-day, thought was lost in something more divine.
XXIX. WORD TO BENNINGTON
They kept their secret for a while, or at least they had that special joy
of believing that no one in all the world but themselves knew this that
had happened to them. But I think that there was one person who knew how
to keep a secret even better than these two lovers. Mrs. Taylor made no
remarks to any one whatever. Nobody on Bear Creek, however, was so
extraordinarily cheerful and serene. That peculiar severity which she had
manifested in the days when Molly was packing her possessions, had now
altogether changed. In these days she was endlessly kind and indulgent to
her “deary.” Although, as a housekeeper, Mrs. Taylor believed in
punctuality at meals, and visited her offspring with discipline when they
were late without good and sufficient excuse, Molly was now exempt from
the faintest hint of reprimand.
“And it’s not because you’re not her mother,” said George Taylor,
bitterly. “She used to get it, too. And we’re the only ones that get it.
There she comes, just as we’re about ready to quit! Aren’t you going to
say NOTHING to her?”
“George,” said his mother, “when you’ve saved a man’s life it’ll be time
for you to talk.”
So Molly would come in to her meals with much irregularity; and her
remarks about the imperfections of her clock met with no rejoinder. And
yet one can scarcely be so severe as had been Mrs. Taylor, and become
wholly as mild as milk. There was one recurrent event that could
invariably awaken hostile symptoms in the dame. Whenever she saw a letter
arrive with the Bennington postmark upon it, she shook her fist at that
letter. “What’s family pride?” she would say to herself. “Taylor could be
a Son of the Revolution if he’d a mind to. I wonder if she has told her
folks yet.”
And when letters directed to Bennington would go out, Mrs. Taylor would
inspect every one as if its envelope ought to grow transparent beneath her
eyes, and yield up to her its great secret, if it had one. But in truth
these letters had no great secret to yield up, until one day—yes;
one day Mrs. Taylor would have burst, were bursting a thing that people
often did. Three letters were the cause of this emotion on Mrs. Taylor’s
part; one addressed to Bennington, one to Dunbarton, and the third—here
was the great excitement—to Bennington, but not in the little
schoolmarm’s delicate writing. A man’s hand had traced those plain, steady
vowels and consonants.
“It’s come!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor, at this sight. “He has written to her
mother himself.”
That is what the Virginian had done, and here is how it had come about.
The sick man’s convalescence was achieved. The weeks had brought back to
him, not his whole strength yet—that could come only by many miles
of open air on the back of Monte; but he was strong enough now to GET
strength. When a patient reaches this stage, he is out of the woods.
He had gone for a little walk with his nurse. They had taken (under the
doctor’s recommendation) several such little walks, beginning with a
five-minute one, and at last to-day accomplishing three miles.
“No, it has not been too far,” said he. “I am afraid I could walk twice as
far.”
“Afraid?”
“Yes. Because it means I can go to work again. This thing we have had
together is over.”
For reply, she leaned against him.
“Look at you!” he said. “Only a little while ago you had to help me stand
on my laigs. And now—” For a while there was silence between them.
“I have never had a right down sickness before,” he presently went on.
“Not to remember, that is. If any person had told me I could ENJOY such a
thing—” He said no more, for she reached up, and no more speech was
possible.
“How long has it been?” he next asked her.
She told him.
“Well, if it could be forever—no. Not forever with no more than
this. I reckon I’d be sick again! But if it could be forever with just you
and me, and no one else to bother with. But any longer would not be doing
right by your mother. She would have a right to think ill of me.”
“Oh!” said the girl. “Let us keep it.”
“Not after I am gone. Your mother must be told.”
“It seems so—can’t we—oh, why need anybody know?”
“Your mother ain’t ‘anybody.’ She is your mother. I feel mighty
responsible to her for what I have done.”
“But I did it!”
“Do you think so? Your mother will not think so. I am going to write to
her to-day.”
“You! Write to my mother! Oh, then everything will be so different! They
will all—” Molly stopped before the rising visions of Bennington.
Upon the fairy-tale that she had been living with her cow-boy lover broke
the voices of the world. She could hear them from afar. She could see the
eyes of Bennington watching this man at her side. She could imagine the
ears of Bennington listening for slips in his English. There loomed upon
her the round of visits which they would have to make. The ringing of the
door-bells, the waiting in drawing-rooms for the mistress to descend and
utter her prepared congratulations, while her secret eye devoured the
Virginian’s appearance, and his manner of standing and sitting. He would
be wearing gloves, instead of fringed gauntlets of buckskin. In a smooth
black coat and waistcoat, how could they perceive the man he was? During
those short formal interviews, what would they ever find out of the things
that she knew about him? The things for which she was proud of him? He
would speak shortly and simply; they would say, “Oh, yes!” and “How
different you must find this from Wyoming!”—and then, after the door
was shut behind his departing back they would say—He would be
totally underrated, not in the least understood. Why should he be
subjected to this? He should never be!
Now in all these half-formed, hurried, distressing thoughts which streamed
through the girl’s mind, she altogether forgot one truth. True it was that
the voice of the world would speak as she imagined. True it was that in
the eyes of her family and acquaintance this lover of her choice would be
examined even more like a SPECIMEN than are other lovers upon these
occasions: and all accepted lovers have to face this ordeal of being
treated like specimens by the other family. But dear me! most of us manage
to stand it, don’t we? It isn’t, perhaps, the most delicious experience
that we can recall in connection with our engagement. But it didn’t prove
fatal. We got through it somehow. We dined with Aunt Jane, and wined with
Uncle Joseph, and perhaps had two fingers given to us by old Cousin
Horatio, whose enormous fortune was of the greatest importance to
everybody. And perhaps fragments of the other family’s estimate of us
subsequently reached our own ears. But if a chosen lover cannot stand
being treated as a specimen by the other family, he’s a very weak vessel,
and not worth any good girl’s love. That’s all I can say for him.
Now the Virginian was scarcely what even his enemy would term a weak
vessel; and Molly’s jealousy of the impression which he might make upon
Bennington was vastly superfluous. She should have known that he would
indeed care to make a good impression; but that such anxiety on his part
would be wholly for her sake, that in the eyes of her friends she might
stand justified in taking him for her wedded husband. So far as he was
concerned apart from her, Aunt Jane and Uncle Joseph might say anything
they pleased, or think anything they pleased. His character was open for
investigation. Judge Henry would vouch for him.
This is what he would have said to his sweetheart had she but revealed to
him her perturbations. But she did not reveal them; and they were not of
the order that he with his nature was likely to divine. I do not know what
good would have come from her speaking out to him, unless that perfect
understanding between lovers which indeed is a good thing. But I do not
believe that he could have reassured her; and I am certain that she could
not have prevented his writing to her mother.
“Well, then,” she sighed at last, “if you think so, I will tell her.”
That sigh of hers, be it well understood, was not only because of those
far-off voices which the world would in consequence of her news be lifting
presently. It came also from bidding farewell to the fairy-tale which she
must leave now; that land in which she and he had been living close
together alone, unhindered, unmindful of all things.
“Yes, you will tell her,” said her lover. “And I must tell her too.”
“Both of us?” questioned the girl.
What would he say to her mother? How would her mother like such a letter
as he would write to her? Suppose he should misspell a word? Would not
sentences from him at this time—written sentences—be a further
bar to his welcome acceptance at Bennington?
“Why don’t you send messages by me?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “She is not going to like it, anyway,” he answered. “I
must speak to her direct. It would be like shirking.”
Molly saw how true his instinct was here; and a little flame shot upward
from the glow of her love and pride in him. Oh, if they could all only
know that he was like this when you understood him! She did not dare say
out to him what her fear was about this letter of his to her mother. She
did not dare because—well, because she lacked a little faith. That
is it, I am afraid. And for that sin she was her own punishment. For in
this day, and in many days to come, the pure joy of her love was vexed and
clouded, all through a little lack of faith; while for him, perfect in his
faith, his joy was like crystal.
“Tell me what you’re going to write,” she said.
He smiled at her. “No.”
“Aren’t you going to let me see it when it’s done?”
“No.” Then a freakish look came into his eyes. “I’ll let yu’ see anything
I write to other women.” And he gave her one of his long kisses. “Let’s
get through with it together,” he suggested, when they were once more in
his sick-room, that room which she had given to him. “You’ll sit one side
o’ the table, and I’ll sit the other, and we’ll go ahaid; and pretty soon
it will be done.”
“O dear!” she said. “Yes, I suppose that is the best way.”
And so, accordingly, they took their places. The inkstand stood between
them. Beside each of them she distributed paper enough, almost, for a
presidential message. And pens and pencils were in plenty. Was this not
the headquarters of the Bear Creek schoolmarm?
“Why, aren’t you going to do it in pencil first?” she exclaimed, looking
up from her vacant sheet. His pen was moving slowly, but steadily.
“No, I don’t reckon I need to,” he answered, with his nose close to the
paper. “Oh, damnation, there’s a blot!” He tore his spoiled beginning in
small bits, and threw them into the fireplace. “You’ve got it too full,”
he commented; and taking the inkstand, he tipped a little from it out of
the window. She sat lost among her false starts. Had she heard him swear,
she would not have minded. She rather liked it when he swore. He possessed
that quality in his profanity of not offending by it. It is quite
wonderful how much worse the same word will sound in one man’s lips than
in another’s. But she did not hear him. Her mind was among a litter of
broken sentences. Each thought which she began ran out into the empty air,
or came against some stone wall. So there she sat, her eyes now upon that
inexorable blank sheet that lay before her, waiting, and now turned with
vacant hopelessness upon the sundry objects in the room. And while she
thus sat accomplishing nothing, opposite to her the black head bent down,
and the steady pen moved from phrase to phrase.
She became aware of his gazing at her, flushed and solemn. That strange
color of the sea-water, which she could never name, was lustrous in his
eyes. He was folding his letter.
“You have finished?” she said.
“Yes.” His voice was very quiet. “I feel like an honester man.”
“Perhaps I can do something to-night at Mrs. Taylor’s,” she said, looking
at her paper.
On it were a few words crossed out. This was all she had to show. At this
set task in letter-writing, the cow-puncher had greatly excelled the
schoolmarm!
But that night, while he lay quite fast asleep in his bed, she was keeping
vigil in her room at Mrs. Taylor’s.
Accordingly, the next day, those three letters departed for the mail, and
Mrs. Taylor consequently made her exclamation, “It’s come!”
On the day before the Virginian returned to take up his work at Judge
Henry’s ranch, he and Molly announced their news. What Molly said to Mrs.
Taylor and what Mrs. Taylor said to her, is of no interest to us, though
it was of much to them.
But Mr. McLean happened to make a call quite early in the morning to
inquire for his friend’s health.
“Lin,” began the Virginian, “there is no harm in your knowing an hour or
so before the rest, I am—”
“Lord!” said Mr. McLean, indulgently. “Everybody has knowed that since the
day she found yu’ at the spring.”
“It was not so, then,” said the Virginian, crossly.
“Lord! Everybody has knowed it right along.”
“Hmp!” said the Virginian. “I didn’t know this country was that rank with
gossips.”
Mr. McLean laughed mirthfully at the lover. “Well,” he said, “Mrs. McLean
will be glad. She told me to give yu’ her congratulations quite a while
ago. I was to have ’em ready just as soon as ever yu’ asked for ’em
yourself.” Lin had been made a happy man some twelve months previous to
this. And now, by way of an exchange of news, he added: “We’re expectin’ a
little McLean down on Box Elder. That’s what you’ll be expectin’ some of
these days, I hope.”
“Yes,” murmured the Virginian, “I hope so too.”
“And I don’t guess,” said Lin, “that you and I will do much shufflin’ of
other folks’ children any more.”
Whereupon he and the Virginian shook hands silently, and understood each
other very well.
On the day that the Virginian parted with Molly, beside the weight of
farewell which lay heavy on his heart, his thoughts were also grave with
news. The cattle thieves had grown more audacious. Horses and cattle both
were being missed, and each man began almost to doubt his neighbor.
“Steps will have to be taken soon by somebody, I reckon,” said the lover.
“By you?” she asked quickly.
“Most likely I’ll get mixed up with it.”
“What will you have to do?”
“Can’t say. I’ll tell yu’ when I come back.”
So did he part from her, leaving her more kisses than words to remember.
And what was doing at Bennington, meanwhile, and at Dunbarton? Those three
letters which by their mere outside had so moved Mrs. Taylor, produced by
their contents much painful disturbance.
It will be remembered that Molly wrote to her mother, and to her
great-aunt. That announcement to her mother was undertaken first. Its
composition occupied three hours and a half, and it filled eleven pages,
not counting a postscript upon the twelfth. The letter to the great-aunt
took only ten minutes. I cannot pretend to explain why this one was so
greatly superior to the other; but such is the remarkable fact. Its
beginning, to be sure, did give the old lady a start; she had dismissed
the cow-boy from her probabilities.
“Tut, tut, tut!” she exclaimed out loud in her bedroom. “She has thrown
herself away on that fellow!”
But some sentences at the end made her pause and sit still for a long
while. The severity upon her face changed to tenderness, gradually. “Ah,
me,” she sighed. “If marriage were as simple as love!” Then she went
slowly downstairs, and out into her garden, where she walked long between
the box borders. “But if she has found a great love,” said the old lady at
length. And she returned to her bedroom, and opened an old desk, and read
some old letters.
There came to her the next morning a communication from Bennington. This
had been penned frantically by poor Mrs. Wood. As soon as she had been
able to gather her senses after the shock of her daughter’s eleven pages
and the postscript, the mother had poured out eight pages herself to the
eldest member of the family. There had been, indeed, much excuse for the
poor lady. To begin with, Molly had constructed her whole opening page
with the express and merciful intention of preparing her mother.
Consequently, it made no sense whatever. Its effect was the usual effect
of remarks designed to break a thing gently. It merely made Mrs. Wood’s
head swim, and filled her with a sickening dread. “Oh, mercy, Sarah,” she
had cried, “come here. What does this mean?” And then, fortified by her
elder daughter, she had turned over that first page and found what it
meant on the top of the second. “A savage with knives and pistols!” she
wailed.
“Well, mother, I always told you so,” said her daughter Sarah.
“What is a foreman?” exclaimed the mother. “And who is Judge Henry?”
“She has taken a sort of upper servant,” said Sarah. “If it is allowed to
go as far as a wedding, I doubt if I can bring myself to be present.”
(This threat she proceeded to make to Molly, with results that shall be
set forth in their proper place.)
“The man appears to have written to me himself,” said Mrs. Wood.
“He knows no better,” said Sarah.
“Bosh!” said Sarah’s husband later. “It was a very manly thing to do.”
Thus did consternation rage in the house at Bennington. Molly might have
spared herself the many assurances that she gave concerning the universal
esteem in which her cow-puncher was held, and the fair prospects which
were his. So, in the first throes of her despair, Mrs. Wood wrote those
eight not maturely considered pages to the great-aunt.
“Tut, tut, tut!” said the great-aunt as she read them. Her face was much
more severe to-day. “You’d suppose,” she said, “that the girl had been
kidnapped! Why, she has kept him waiting three years!” And then she read
more, but soon put the letter down with laughter. For Mrs. Wood had
repeated in writing that early outburst of hers about a savage with knives
and pistols. “Law!” said the great-aunt. “Law, what a fool Lizzie is!”
So she sat down and wrote to Mrs. Wood a wholesome reply about putting a
little more trust in her own flesh and blood, and reminding her among
other things that General Stark had himself been wont to carry knives and
pistols owing to the necessities of his career, but that he had
occasionally taken them off, as did probably this young man in Wyoming.
“You had better send me the letter he has written you,” she concluded. “I
shall know much better what to think after I have seen that.”
It is not probable that Mrs. Wood got much comfort from this
communication; and her daughter Sarah was actually enraged by it. “She
grows more perverse as she nears her dotage,” said Sarah. But the
Virginian’s letter was sent to Dunbarton, where the old lady sat herself
down to read it with much attention.
Here is what the Virginian had said to the unknown mother of his
sweetheart.
MRS. JOHN STARK WOOD Bennington, Vermont.
Madam: If your daughter Miss Wood has ever told you about her saving a
man’s life here when some Indians had shot him that is the man who writes
to you now. I don’t think she can have told you right about that affair
for she is the only one in this country who thinks it was a little thing.
So I must tell you it, the main points. Such an action would have been
thought highly of in a Western girl, but with Miss Wood’s raising nobody
had a right to expect it.
“Indeed!” snorted the great-aunt. “Well, he would be right, if I had not
had a good deal more to do with her ‘raising’ than ever Lizzie had.” And
she went on with the letter.
I was starting in to die when she found me. I did not know anything then,
and she pulled me back from where I was half in the next world. She did
not know but what Indians would get her too but I could not make her leave
me. I am a heavy man one hundred and seventy-three stripped when in full
health. She lifted me herself from the ground me helping scarce any for
there was not much help in me that day. She washed my wound and brought me
to with her own whiskey. Before she could get me home I was out of my head
but she kept me on my horse somehow and talked wisely to me so I minded
her and did not go clean crazy till she had got me safe to bed. The doctor
says I would have died all the same if she had not nursed me the way she
did. It made me love her more which I did not know I could. But there is
no end, for this writing it down makes me love her more as I write it.
And now Mrs. Wood I am sorry this will be bad news for you to hear. I know
you would never choose such a man as I am for her for I have got no
education and must write humble against my birth. I wish I could make the
news easier but truth is the best.
I am of old stock in Virginia. English and one Scotch Irish grandmother my
father’s father brought from Kentucky. We have always stayed at the same
place farmers and hunters not bettering our lot and very plain. We have
fought when we got the chance, under Old Hickory and in Mexico and my
father and two brothers were killed in the Valley sixty-four. Always with
us one son has been apt to run away and I was the one this time. I had too
much older brothering to suit me. But now I am doing well being in full
sight of prosperity and not too old and very strong my health having stood
the sundries it has been put through. She shall teach school no more when
she is mine. I wish I could make this news easier for you Mrs. Wood. I do
not like promises I have heard so many. I will tell any man of your family
anything he likes to ask one, and Judge Henry would tell you about my
reputation. I have seen plenty rough things but can say I have never
killed for pleasure or profit and am not one of that kind, always
preferring peace. I have had to live in places where they had courts and
lawyers so called but an honest man was all the law you could find in five
hundred miles. I have not told her about those things not because I am
ashamed of them but there are so many things too dark for a girl like her
to hear about.
I had better tell you the way I know I love Miss Wood. I am not a boy now,
and women are no new thing to me. A man like me who has travelled meets
many of them as he goes and passes on but I stopped when I came to Miss
Wood. That is three years but I have not gone on. What right has such as
he? you will say. So did I say it after she had saved my life. It was hard
to get to that point and keep there with her around me all day. But I said
to myself you have bothered her for three years with your love and if you
let your love bother her you don’t love her like you should and you must
quit for her sake who has saved your life. I did not know what I was going
to do with my life after that but I supposed I could go somewhere and work
hard and so Mrs. Wood I told her I would give her up. But she said no. It
is going to be hard for her to get used to a man like me—
But at this point in the Virginian’s letter, the old great-aunt could read
no more. She rose, and went over to that desk where lay those faded
letters of her own. She laid her head down upon the package, and as her
tears flowed quietly upon it, “O dear,” she whispered, “O dear! And this
is what I lost!”
To her girl upon Bear Creek she wrote the next day. And this word from
Dunbarton was like balm among the harsh stings Molly was receiving. The
voices of the world reached her in gathering numbers, and not one of them
save that great-aunt’s was sweet. Her days were full of hurts; and there
was no one by to kiss the hurts away. Nor did she even hear from her lover
any more now. She only knew he had gone into lonely regions upon his
errand.
That errand took him far:— Across the Basin, among the secret places
of Owl Creek, past the Washakie Needles, over the Divide to Gros Ventre,
and so through a final barrier of peaks into the borders of East Idaho.
There, by reason of his bidding me, I met him, and came to share in a part
of his errand.
It was with no guide that I travelled to him. He had named a little
station on the railroad, and from thence he had charted my route by means
of landmarks. Did I believe in omens, the black storm that I set out in
upon my horse would seem like one to-day. But I had been living in cities
and smoke; and Idaho, even with rain, was delightful to me.
XXX. A STABLE ON THE FLAT
When the first landmark, the lone clump of cottonwoods, came at length in
sight, dark and blurred in the gentle rain, standing out perhaps a mile
beyond the distant buildings, my whole weary body hailed the approach of
repose. Saving the noon hour, I had been in the saddle since six, and now
six was come round again. The ranch, my resting-place for this night, was
a ruin—cabin, stable, and corral. Yet after the twelve hours of
pushing on and on through silence, still to have silence, still to eat and
go to sleep in it, perfectly fitted the mood of both my flesh and spirit.
At noon, when for a while I had thrown off my long oilskin coat, merely
the sight of the newspaper half crowded into my pocket had been a
displeasing reminder of the railway, and cities, and affairs. But for its
possible help to build fires, it would have come no farther with me. The
great levels around me lay cooled and freed of dust by the wet weather,
and full of sweet airs. Far in front the foot-hills rose through the rain,
indefinite and mystic. I wanted no speech with any one, nor to be near
human beings at all. I was steeped in a revery as of the primal earth;
even thoughts themselves had almost ceased motion. To lie down with wild
animals, with elk and deer, would have made my waking dream complete; and
since such dream could not be, the cattle around the deserted buildings,
mere dots as yet across separating space, were my proper companions for
this evening.
To-morrow night I should probably be camping with the Virginian in the
foot-hills. At his letter’s bidding I had come eastward across Idaho,
abandoning my hunting in the Saw Tooth Range to make this journey with him
back through the Tetons. It was a trail known to him, and not to many
other honest men. Horse Thief Pass was the name his letter gave it.
Business (he was always brief) would call him over there at this time.
Returning, he must attend to certain matters in the Wind River country.
There I could leave by stage for the railroad, or go on with him the whole
way back to Sunk Creek. He designated for our meeting the forks of a
certain little stream in the foot-hills which to-day’s ride had brought in
sight. There would be no chance for him to receive an answer from me in
the intervening time. If by a certain day—which was four days off
still—I had not reached the forks, he would understand I had other
plans. To me it was like living back in ages gone, this way of meeting my
friend, this choice of a stream so far and lonely that its very course
upon the maps was wrongly traced. And to leave behind all noise and
mechanisms, and set out at ease, slowly, with one packhorse, into the
wilderness, made me feel that the ancient earth was indeed my mother and
that I had found her again after being lost among houses, customs, and
restraints. I should arrive three days early at the forks—three days
of margin seeming to me a wise precaution against delays unforeseen. If
the Virginian were not there, good; I could fish and be happy. If he were
there but not ready to start, good; I could still fish and be happy. And
remembering my Eastern helplessness in the year when we had met first, I
enjoyed thinking how I had come to be trusted. In those days I had not
been allowed to go from the ranch for so much as an afternoon’s ride
unless tied to him by a string, so to speak; now I was crossing unmapped
spaces with no guidance. The man who could do this was scarce any longer a
“tenderfoot.”
My vision, as I rode, took in serenely the dim foot-hills,—to-morrow’s
goal,—and nearer in the vast wet plain the clump of cottonwoods, and
still nearer my lodging for to-night with the dotted cattle round it. And
now my horse neighed. I felt his gait freshen for the journey’s end, and
leaning to pat his neck I noticed his ears no longer slack and
inattentive, but pointing forward to where food and rest awaited both of
us. Twice he neighed, impatiently and long; and as he quickened his gait
still more, the packhorse did the same, and I realized that there was
about me still a spice of the tenderfoot: those dots were not cattle; they
were horses.
My horse had put me in the wrong. He had known his kind from afar, and was
hastening to them. The plainsman’s eye was not yet mine; and I smiled a
little as I rode. When was I going to know, as by instinct, the different
look of horses and cattle across some two or three miles of plain?
These miles we finished soon. The buildings changed in their aspect as
they grew to my approach, showing their desolation more clearly, and in
some way bringing apprehension into my mood. And around them the horses,
too, all standing with ears erect, watching me as I came—there was
something about them; or was it the silence? For the silence which I had
liked until now seemed suddenly to be made too great by the presence of
the deserted buildings. And then the door of the stable opened, and men
came out and stood, also watching me arrive. By the time I was dismounting
more were there. It was senseless to feel as unpleasant as I did, and I
strove to give to them a greeting that should sound easy. I told them that
I hoped there was room for one more here to-night. Some of them had
answered my greeting, but none of them answered this; and as I began to be
sure that I recognized several of their strangely imperturbable faces, the
Virginian came from the stable; and at that welcome sight my relief spoke
out instantly.
“I am here, you see!”
“Yes, I do see.” I looked hard at him, for in his voice was the same
strangeness that I felt in everything around me. But he was looking at his
companions. “This gentleman is all right,” he told them.
“That may be,” said one whom I now knew that I had seen before at Sunk
Creek; “but he was not due to-night.”
“Nor to-morrow,” said another.
“Nor yet the day after,” a third added.
The Virginian fell into his drawl. “None of you was ever early for
anything, I presume.”
One retorted, laughing, “Oh, we’re not suspicioning you of complicity.”
And another, “Not even when we remember how thick you and Steve used to
be.”
Whatever jokes they meant by this he did not receive as jokes. I saw
something like a wince pass over his face, and a flush follow it. But he
now spoke to me. “We expected to be through before this,” he began. “I’m
right sorry you have come to-night. I know you’d have preferred to keep
away.”
“We want him to explain himself,” put in one of the others. “If he
satisfies us, he’s free to go away.”
“Free to go away!” I now exclaimed. But at the indulgence in their
frontier smile I cooled down. “Gentlemen,” I said, “I don’t know why my
movements interest you so much. It’s quite a compliment! May I get under
shelter while I explain?”
No request could have been more natural, for the rain had now begun to
fall in straight floods. Yet there was a pause before one of them said,
“He might as well.”
The Virginian chose to say nothing more; but he walked beside me into the
stable. Two men sat there together, and a third guarded them. At that
sight I knew suddenly what I had stumbled upon; and on the impulse I
murmured to the Virginian, “You’re hanging them to-morrow.”
He kept his silence.
“You may have three guesses,” said a man behind me.
But I did not need them. And in the recoil of my insight the clump of
cottonwoods came into my mind, black and grim. No other trees high enough
grew within ten miles. This, then, was the business that the Virginian’s
letter had so curtly mentioned. My eyes went into all corners of the
stable, but no other prisoners were here. I half expected to see Trampas,
and I half feared to see Shorty; for poor stupid Shorty’s honesty had not
been proof against frontier temptations, and he had fallen away from the
company of his old friends. Often of late I had heard talk at Sunk Creek
of breaking up a certain gang of horse and cattle thieves that stole in
one Territory and sold in the next, and knew where to hide in the
mountains between. And now it had come to the point; forces had been
gathered, a long expedition made, and here they were, successful under the
Virginian’s lead, but a little later than their calculations. And here was
I, a little too early, and a witness in consequence. My presence seemed a
simple thing to account for; but when I had thus accounted for it, one of
them said with good nature:— “So you find us here, and we find you
here. Which is the most surprised, I wonder?”
“There’s no telling,” said I, keeping as amiable as I could; “nor any
telling which objects the most.”
“Oh, there’s no objection here. You’re welcome to stay. But not welcome to
go, I expect. He ain’t welcome to go, is he?”
By the answers that their faces gave him it was plain that I was not. “Not
till we are through,” said one.
“He needn’t to see anything,”’ another added.
“Better sleep late to-morrow morning,” a third suggested to me.
I did not wish to stay here. I could have made some sort of camp apart
from them before dark; but in the face of their needless caution I was
helpless. I made no attempt to inquire what kind of spy they imagined I
could be, what sort of rescue I could bring in this lonely country; my too
early appearance seemed to be all that they looked at. And again my eyes
sought the prisoners. Certainly there were only two. One was chewing
tobacco, and talking now and then to his guard as if nothing were the
matter. The other sat dull in silence, not moving his eyes; but his face
worked, and I noticed how he continually moistened his dry lips. As I
looked at these doomed prisoners, whose fate I was invited to sleep
through to-morrow morning, the one who was chewing quietly nodded to me.
“You don’t remember me?” he said.
It was Steve! Steve of Medicine Bow! The pleasant Steve of my first
evening in the West. Some change of beard had delayed my instant
recognition of his face. Here he sat sentenced to die. A shock, chill and
painful, deprived me of speech.
He had no such weak feelings. “Have yu’ been to Medicine Bow lately?” he
inquired. “That’s getting to be quite a while ago.”
I assented. I should have liked to say something natural and kind, but
words stuck against my will, and I stood awkward and ill at ease, noticing
idly that the silent one wore a gray flannel shirt like mine. Steve looked
me over, and saw in my pocket the newspaper which I had brought from the
railroad and on which I had pencilled a few expenses. He asked me, Would I
mind letting him have it for a while? And I gave it to him eagerly,
begging him to keep it as long as he wanted. I was overeager in my
embarrassment. “You need not return it at all,” I said; “those notes are
nothing. Do keep it.”
He gave me a short glance and a smile. “Thank you,” he said; “I’ll not
need it beyond to-morrow morning.” And he began to search through it.
“Jake’s election is considered sure,” he said to his companion, who made
no response. “Well, Fremont County owes it to Jake.” And I left him
interested in the local news.
Dead men I have seen not a few times, even some lying pale and terrible
after violent ends, and the edge of this wears off; but I hope I shall
never again have to be in the company with men waiting to be killed. By
this time to-morrow the gray flannel shirt would be buttoned round a
corpse. Until what moment would Steve chew? Against such fancies as these
I managed presently to barricade my mind, but I made a plea to be allowed
to pass the night elsewhere, and I suggested the adjacent cabin. By their
faces I saw that my words merely helped their distrust of me. The cabin
leaked too much, they said; I would sleep drier here. One man gave it to
me more directly: “If you figured on camping in this stable, what has
changed your mind?” How could I tell them that I shrunk from any contact
with what they were doing, although I knew that only so could justice be
dealt in this country? Their wholesome frontier nerves knew nothing of
such refinements.
But the Virginian understood part of it. “I am right sorry for your
annoyance,” he said. And now I noticed he was under a constraint very
different from the ease of the others.
After the twelve hours’ ride my bones were hungry for rest. I spread my
blankets on some straw in a stall by myself and rolled up in them; yet I
lay growing broader awake, every inch of weariness stricken from my
excited senses. For a while they sat over their councils, whispering
cautiously, so that I was made curious to hear them by not being able; was
it the names of Trampas and Shorty that were once or twice spoken—I
could not be sure. I heard the whisperers cease and separate. I heard
their boots as they cast them off upon the ground. And I heard the
breathing of slumber begin and grow in the interior silence. To one after
one sleep came, but not to me. Outside, the dull fall of the rain beat
evenly, and in some angle dripped the spouting pulses of a leak. Sometimes
a cold air blew in, bearing with it the keen wet odor of the sage-brush.
On hundreds of other nights this perfume had been my last waking
remembrance; it had seemed to help drowsiness; and now I lay staring,
thinking of this. Twice through the hours the thieves shifted their
positions with clumsy sounds, exchanging muted words with their guard. So,
often, had I heard other companions move and mutter in the darkness and
lie down again. It was the very naturalness and usualness of every fact of
the night,—the stable straw, the rain outside, my familiar blankets,
the cool visits of the wind,—and with all this the thought of Steve
chewing and the man in the gray flannel shirt, that made the hours
unearthly and strung me tight with suspense. And at last I heard some one
get up and begin to dress. In a little while I saw light suddenly through
my closed eyelids, and then darkness shut again abruptly upon them. They
had swung in a lantern and found me by mistake. I was the only one they
did not wish to rouse. Moving and quiet talking set up around me, and they
began to go out of the stable. At the gleams of new daylight which they
let in my thoughts went to the clump of cottonwoods, and I lay still with
hands and feet growing steadily cold. Now it was going to happen. I
wondered how they would do it; one instance had been described to me by a
witness, but that was done from a bridge, and there had been but a single
victim. This morning, would one have to wait and see the other go through
with it first?
The smell of smoke reached me, and next the rattle of tin dishes.
Breakfast was something I had forgotten, and one of them was cooking it
now in the dry shelter of the stable. He was alone, because the talking
and the steps were outside the stable, and I could hear the sounds of
horses being driven into the corral and saddled. Then I perceived that the
coffee was ready, and almost immediately the cook called them. One came
in, shutting the door behind him as he reentered, which the rest as they
followed imitated; for at each opening of the door I saw the light of day
leap into the stable and heard the louder sounds of the rain. Then the
sound and the light would again be shut out, until some one at length
spoke out bluntly, bidding the door be left open on account of the smoke.
What were they hiding from? he asked. The runaways that had escaped? A
laugh followed this sally, and the door was left open. Thus I learned that
there had been more thieves than the two that were captured. It gave a
little more ground for their suspicion about me and my anxiety to pass the
night elsewhere. It cost nothing to detain me, and they were taking no
chances, however remote.
The fresh air and the light now filled the stable, and I lay listening
while their breakfast brought more talk from them. They were more at ease
now than was I, who had nothing to do but carry out my role of slumber in
the stall; they spoke in a friendly, ordinary way, as if this were like
every other morning of the week to them. They addressed the prisoners with
a sort of fraternal kindness, not bringing them pointedly into the
conversation, nor yet pointedly leaving them out. I made out that they
must all be sitting round the breakfast together, those who had to die and
those who had to kill them. The Virginian I never heard speak. But I heard
the voice of Steve; he discussed with his captors the sundry points of his
capture.
“Do you remember a haystack?” he asked. “Away up the south fork of Gros
Ventre?”
“That was Thursday afternoon,” said one of the captors. “There was a
shower.”
“Yes. It rained. We had you fooled that time. I was laying on the ledge
above to report your movements.”
Several of them laughed. “We thought you were over on Spread Creek then.”
“I figured you thought so by the trail you left after the stack. Saturday
we watched you turn your back on us up Spread Creek. We were snug among
the trees the other side of Snake River. That was another time we had you
fooled.”
They laughed again at their own expense. I have heard men pick to pieces a
hand of whist with more antagonism.
Steve continued: “Would we head for Idaho? Would we swing back over the
Divide? You didn’t know which! And when we generalled you on to that band
of horses you thought was the band you were hunting—ah, we were a
strong combination!” He broke off with the first touch of bitterness I had
felt in his words.
“Nothing is any stronger than its weakest point.” It was the Virginian who
said this, and it was the first word he had spoken.
“Naturally,” said Steve. His tone in addressing the Virginian was so
different, so curt, that I supposed he took the weakest point to mean
himself. But the others now showed me that I was wrong in this
explanation.
“That’s so,” one said. “Its weakest point is where a rope or a gang of men
is going to break when the strain comes. And you was linked with a poor
partner, Steve.”
“You’re right I was,” said the prisoner, back in his easy, casual voice.
“You ought to have got yourself separated from him, Steve.”
There was a pause. “Yes,” said the prisoner, moodily. “I’m sitting here
because one of us blundered.” He cursed the blunderer. “Lighting his fool
fire queered the whole deal,” he added. As he again heavily cursed the
blunderer, the others murmured to each other various I told you so’s.
“You’d never have built that fire, Steve,” said one.
“I said that when we spied the smoke,” said another. “I said, ‘That’s none
of Steve’s work, lighting fires and revealing to us their whereabouts.’”
It struck me that they were plying Steve with compliments.
“Pretty hard to have the fool get away and you get caught,” a third
suggested. At this they seemed to wait. I felt something curious in all
this last talk.
“Oh, did he get away?” said the prisoner, then.
Again they waited; and a new voice spoke huskily:— “I built that
fire, boys.” It was the prisoner in the gray flannel shirt.
“Too late, Ed,” they told him kindly. “You ain’t a good liar.”
“What makes you laugh, Steve?” said some one.
“Oh, the things I notice.”
“Meaning Ed was pretty slow in backing up your play? The joke is really on
you, Steve. You’d ought never to have cursed the fire-builder if you
wanted us to believe he was present. But we’d not have done much to
Shorty, even if we had caught him. All he wants is to be scared good and
hard, and he’ll go back into virtuousness, which is his nature when not
travelling with Trampas.”
Steve’s voice sounded hard now. “You have caught Ed and me. That should
satisfy you for one gather.”
“Well, we think different, Steve. Trampas escaping leaves this thing
unfinished.”
“So Trampas escaped too, did he?” said the prisoner.
“Yes, Steve, Trampas escaped—this time; and Shorty with him—this
time. We know it most as well as if we’d seen them go. And we’re glad
Shorty is loose, for he’ll build another fire or do some other foolishness
next time, and that’s the time we’ll get Trampas.”
Their talk drifted to other points, and I lay thinking of the skirmish
that had played beneath the surface of their banter. Yes, the joke, as
they put it, was on Steve. He had lost one point in the game to them. They
were playing for names. He, being a chivalrous thief, was playing to hide
names. They could only, among several likely confederates, guess Trampas
and Shorty. So it had been a slip for him to curse the man who built the
fire. At least, they so held it. For, they with subtlety reasoned, one
curses the absent. And I agreed with them that Ed did not know how to lie
well; he should have at once claimed the disgrace of having spoiled the
expedition. If Shorty was the blunderer, then certainly Trampas was the
other man; for the two were as inseparable as don and master. Trampas had
enticed Shorty away from good, and trained him in evil. It now struck me
that after his single remark the Virginian had been silent throughout
their shrewd discussion.
It was the other prisoner that I heard them next address. “You don’t eat
any breakfast, Ed.”
“Brace up, Ed. Look at Steve, how hardy he eats!”
But Ed, it seemed, wanted no breakfast. And the tin dishes rattled as they
were gathered and taken to be packed.
“Drink this coffee, anyway,” another urged; “you’ll feel warmer.”
These words almost made it seem like my own execution. My whole body
turned cold in company with the prisoner’s, and as if with a clank the
situation tightened throughout my senses.
“I reckon if every one’s ready we’ll start.” It was the Virginian’s voice
once more, and different from the rest. I heard them rise at his bidding,
and I put the blanket over my head. I felt their tread as they walked out,
passing my stall. The straw that was half under me and half out in the
stable was stirred as by something heavy dragged or half lifted along over
it. “Look out, you’re hurting Ed’s arm,” one said to another, as the steps
with tangled sounds passed slowly out. I heard another among those who
followed say, “Poor Ed couldn’t swallow his coffee.” Outside they began
getting on their horses; and next their hoofs grew distant, until all was
silence round the stable except the dull, even falling of the rain.
XXXI. THE COTTONWOODS
I do not know how long I stayed there alone. It was the Virginian who came
back, and as he stood at the foot of my blankets his eye, after meeting
mine full for a moment, turned aside. I had never seen him look as he did
now, not even in Pitchstone Canyon when we came upon the bodies of Hank
and his wife. Until this moment we had found no chance of speaking
together, except in the presence of others.
“Seems to be raining still,” I began after a little.
“Yes. It’s a wet spell.”
He stared out of the door, smoothing his mustache.
It was again I that spoke. “What time is it?”
He brooded over his watch. “Twelve minutes to seven.”
I rose and stood drawing on my clothes.
“The fire’s out,” said he; and he assembled some new sticks over the
ashes. Presently he looked round with a cup.
“Never mind that for me,” I said.
“We’ve a long ride,” he suggested.
“I know. I’ve crackers in my pocket.”
My boots being pulled on, I walked to the door and watched the clouds.
“They seem as if they might lift,” I said. And I took out my watch.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“A quarter of—it’s run down.”
While I wound it he seemed to be consulting his own.
“Well?” I inquired.
“Ten minutes past seven.”
As I was setting my watch he slowly said:
“Steve wound his all regular. I had to night-guard him till two.” His
speech was like that of one in a trance: so, at least, it sounds in my
memory to-day.
Again I looked at the weather and the rainy immensity of the plain. The
foot-hills eastward where we were going were a soft yellow. Over the
gray-green sage-brush moved shapeless places of light—not yet the
uncovered sunlight, but spots where the storm was wearing thin; and
wandering streams of warmth passed by slowly in the surrounding air. As I
watched the clouds and the earth, my eyes chanced to fall on the distant
clump of cottonwoods. Vapors from the enfeebled storm floated round them,
and they were indeed far away; but I came inside and began rolling up my
blankets.
“You will not change your mind?” said the Virginian by the fire. “It is
thirty-five miles.”
I shook my head, feeling a certain shame that he should see how unnerved I
was.
He swallowed a hot cupful, and after it sat thinking; and presently he
passed his hand across his brow, shutting his eyes. Again he poured out a
cup, and emptying this, rose abruptly to his feet as if shaking himself
free from something.
“Let’s pack and quit here,” he said.
Our horses were in the corral and our belongings in the shelter of what
had been once the cabin at this forlorn place. He collected them in
silence while I saddled my own animal, and in silence we packed the two
packhorses, and threw the diamond hitch, and hauled tight the slack, damp
ropes. Soon we had mounted, and as we turned into the trail I gave a look
back at my last night’s lodging.
The Virginian noticed me. “Good-by forever!” he interpreted.
“By God, I hope so!”
“Same here,” he confessed. And these were our first natural words this
morning.
“This will go well,” said I, holding my flask out to him; and both of us
took some, and felt easier for it and the natural words.
For an hour we had been shirking real talk, holding fast to the weather,
or anything, and all the while that silent thing we were keeping off spoke
plainly in the air around us and in every syllable that we uttered. But
now we were going to get away from it; leave it behind in the stable, and
set ourselves free from it by talking it out. Already relief had begun to
stir in my spirits.
“You never did this before,” I said.
“No. I never had it to do.” He was riding beside me, looking down at his
saddle-horn.
“I do not think I should ever be able,” I pursued.
Defiance sounded in his answer. “I would do it again this morning.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that. It’s all right here. There’s no other way.”
“I would do it all over again the same this morning. Just the same.”
“Why, so should I—if I could do it at all.” I still thought he was
justifying their justice to me.
He made no answer as he rode along, looking all the while at his saddle.
But again he passed his hand over his forehead with that frown and
shutting of the eyes.
“I should like to be sure I should behave myself if I were condemned,” I
said next. For it now came to me—which should I resemble? Could I
read the newspaper, and be interested in county elections, and discuss
coming death as if I had lost a game of cards? Or would they have to drag
me out? That poor wretch in the gray flannel shirt—“It was bad in
the stable,” I said aloud. For an after-shiver of it went through me.
A third time his hand brushed his forehead, and I ventured some sympathy.
“I’m afraid your head aches.”
“I don’t want to keep seeing Steve,” he muttered.
“Steve!” I was astounded. “Why he—why all I saw of him was splendid.
Since it had to be. It was—”
“Oh, yes; Ed. You’re thinking about him. I’d forgot him. So you didn’t
enjoy Ed?”
At this I looked at him blankly. “It isn’t possible that—”
Again he cut me short with a laugh almost savage. “You needn’t to worry
about Steve. He stayed game.”
What then had been the matter that he should keep seeing Steve—that
his vision should so obliterate from him what I still shivered at, and so
shake him now? For he seemed to be growing more stirred as I grew less. I
asked him no further questions, however, and we went on for several
minutes, he brooding always in the same fashion, until he resumed with the
hard indifference that had before surprised me:— “So Ed gave you
feelings! Dumb ague and so forth.”
“No doubt we’re not made the same way,” I retorted.
He took no notice of this. “And you’d have been more comfortable if he’d
acted same as Steve did. It cert’nly was bad seeing Ed take it that way, I
reckon. And you didn’t see him when the time came for business. Well,
here’s what it is: a man may be such a confirmed miscreant that killing’s
the only cure for him; but still he’s your own species, and you don’t want
to have him fall around and grab your laigs and show you his fear naked.
It makes you feel ashamed. So Ed gave you feelings, and Steve made
everything right easy for you!” There was irony in his voice as he
surveyed me, but it fell away at once into sadness. “Both was miscreants.
But if Steve had played the coward, too, it would have been a whole heap
easier for me.” He paused before adding, “And Steve was not a miscreant
once.”
His voice had trembled, and I felt the deep emotion that seemed to gain
upon him now that action was over and he had nothing to do but think. And
his view was simple enough: you must die brave. Failure is a sort of
treason to the brotherhood, and forfeits pity. It was Steve’s perfect
bearing that had caught his heart so that he forgot even his scorn of the
other man.
But this was by no means all that was to come. He harked back to that
notion of a prisoner helping to make it easy for his executioner. “Easy
plumb to the end,” he pursued, his mind reviewing the acts of the morning.
“Why, he tried to give me your newspaper. I didn’t—”
“Oh, no,” I said hastily. “I had finished with it.”
“Well, he took dying as naturally as he took living. Like a man should.
Like I hope to.” Again he looked at the pictures in his mind. “No
play-acting nor last words. He just told good-by to the boys as we led his
horse under the limb—you needn’t to look so dainty,” he broke off.
“You ain’t going to get any more shocking particulars.”
“I know I’m white-livered,” I said with a species of laugh. “I never crowd
and stare when somebody is hurt in the street. I get away.”
He thought this over. “You don’t mean all of that. You’d not have spoke
just that way about crowding and staring if you thought well of them that
stare. Staring ain’t courage; it’s trashy curiosity. Now you did not have
this thing—”
He had stretched out his hand to point, but it fell, and his utterance
stopped, and he jerked his horse to a stand. My nerves sprang like a wire
at his suddenness, and I looked where he was looking. There were the
cottonwoods, close in front of us. As we had travelled and talked we had
forgotten them. Now they were looming within a hundred yards; and our
trail lay straight through them.
“Let’s go around them,” said the Virginian.
When we had come back from our circuit into the trail he continued: “You
did not have that thing to do. But a man goes through with his
responsibilities—and I reckon you could.”
“I hope so,” I answered. “How about Ed?”
“He was not a man, though we thought he was till this. Steve and I started
punching cattle together at the Bordeaux outfit, north of Cheyenne. We did
everything together in those days—work and play. Six years ago.
Steve had many good points onced.”
We must have gone two miles before he spoke again. “You prob’ly didn’t
notice Steve? I mean the way he acted to me?” It was a question, but he
did not wait for my answer. “Steve never said a word to me all through. He
shunned it. And you saw how neighborly he talked to the other boys.”
“Where have they all gone?” I asked.
He smiled at me. “It cert’nly is lonesome now, for a fact.”
“I didn’t know you felt it,” said I.
“Feel it!—they’ve went to the railroad. Three of them are witnesses
in a case at Evanston, and the Judge wants our outfit at Medicine Bow.
Steve shunned me. Did he think I was going back on him?”
“What if he did? You were not. And so nobody’s going to Wind River but
you?”
“No. Did you notice Steve would not give us any information about Shorty?
That was right. I would have acted that way, too.” Thus, each time, he
brought me back to the subject.
The sun was now shining warm during two or three minutes together, and
gulfs of blue opened in the great white clouds. These moved and met among
each other, and parted, like hands spread out, slowly weaving a spell of
sleep over the day after the wakeful night storm. The huge contours of the
earth lay basking and drying, and not one living creature, bird or beast,
was in sight. Quiet was returning to my revived spirits, but there was
none for the Virginian. And as he reasoned matters out aloud, his mood
grew more overcast.
“You have a friend, and his ways are your ways. You travel together, you
spree together confidentially, and you suit each other down to the ground.
Then one day you find him putting his iron on another man’s calf. You tell
him fair and square those ways have never been your ways and ain’t going
to be your ways. Well, that does not change him any, for it seems he’s
disturbed over getting rich quick and being a big man in the Territory.
And the years go on, until you are foreman of Judge Henry’s ranch and he—is
dangling back in the cottonwoods. What can he claim? Who made the choice?
He cannot say, ‘Here is my old friend that I would have stood by.’ Can he
say that?”
“But he didn’t say it,” I protested.
“No. He shunned me.”
“Listen,” I said. “Suppose while you were on guard he had whispered, ‘Get
me off’—would you have done it?”
“No, sir!” said the Virginian, hotly.
“Then what do you want?” I asked. “What did you want?”
He could not answer me—but I had not answered him, I saw; so I
pushed it farther. “Did you want indorsement from the man you were
hanging? That’s asking a little too much.”
But he had now another confusion. “Steve stood by Shorty,” he said
musingly. “It was Shorty’s mistake cost him his life, but all the same he
didn’t want us to catch—”
“You are mixing things,” I interrupted. “I never heard you mix things
before. And it was not Shorty’s mistake.”
He showed momentary interest. “Whose then?”
“The mistake of whoever took a fool into their enterprise.”
“That’s correct. Well, Trampas took Shorty in, and Steve would not tell on
him either.”
I still tried it, saying, “They were all in the same boat.” But logic was
useless; he had lost his bearings in a fog of sentiment. He knew, knew
passionately, that he had done right; but the silence of his old friend to
him through those last hours left a sting that no reasoning could assuage.
“He told good-by to the rest of the boys; but not to me.” And nothing that
I could point out in common sense turned him from the thread of his own
argument. He worked round the circle again to self-justification. “Was it
him I was deserting? Was not the deserting done by him the day I spoke my
mind about stealing calves? I have kept my ways the same. He is the one
that took to new ones. The man I used to travel with is not the man back
there. Same name, to be sure. And same body. But different in—and
yet he had the memory! You can’t never change your memory!”
He gave a sob. It was the first I had ever heard from him, and before I
knew what I was doing I had reined my horse up to his and put my arm
around his shoulders. I had no sooner touched him than he was utterly
overcome. “I knew Steve awful well,” he said.
Thus we had actually come to change places; for early in the morning he
had been firm while I was unnerved, while now it was I who attempted to
steady and comfort him.
I had the sense to keep silent, and presently he shook my hand, not
looking at me as he did so. He was always very shy of demonstration. And
he took to patting the neck of his pony. “You Monte hawss,” said he, “you
think you are wise, but there’s a lot of things you don’t savvy.” Then he
made a new beginning of talk between us.
“It is kind of pitiful about Shorty.”
“Very pitiful,” I said.
“Do you know about him?” the Virginian asked.
“I know there’s no real harm in him, and some real good, and that he has
not got the brains necessary to be a horse thief.”
“That’s so. That’s very true. Trampas has led him in deeper than his
stature can stand. Now back East you can be middling and get along. But if
you go to try a thing on in this Western country, you’ve got to do it
WELL. You’ve got to deal cyards WELL; you’ve got to steal WELL; and if you
claim to be quick with your gun, you must be quick, for you’re a public
temptation, and some man will not resist trying to prove he is the
quicker. You must break all the Commandments WELL in this Western country,
and Shorty should have stayed in Brooklyn, for he will be a novice his
livelong days. You don’t know about him? He has told me his circumstances.
He don’t remember his father, and it was like he could have claimed three
or four. And I expect his mother was not much interested in him before or
after he was born. He ran around, and when he was eighteen he got to be
help to a grocery man. But a girl he ran with kept taking all his pay and
teasing him for more, and so one day the grocery man caught Shorty robbing
his till, and fired him. There wasn’t no one to tell good-by to, for the
girl had to go to the country to see her aunt, she said. So Shorty hung
around the store and kissed the grocery cat good-by. He’d been used to
feeding the cat, and she’d sit in his lap and purr, he told me. He sends
money back to that girl now. This hyeh country is no country for Shorty,
for he will be a conspicuous novice all his days.”
“Perhaps he’ll prefer honesty after his narrow shave,” I said.
But the Virginian shook his head. “Trampas has got hold of him.”
The day was now all blue above, and all warm and dry beneath. We had begun
to wind in and rise among the first slopes of the foot-hills, and we had
talked ourselves into silence. At the first running water we made a long
nooning, and I slept on the bare ground. My body was lodged so fast and
deep in slumber that when the Virginian shook me awake I could not come
back to life at once; it was the clump of cottonwoods, small and far out
in the plain below us, that recalled me.
“It’ll not be watching us much longer,” said the Virginian. He made it a
sort of joke; but I knew that both of us were glad when presently we rode
into a steeper country, and among its folds and carvings lost all sight of
the plain. He had not slept, I found. His explanation was that the packs
needed better balancing, and after that he had gone up and down the stream
on the chance of trout. But his haunted eyes gave me the real reason—they
spoke of Steve, no matter what he spoke of; it was to be no short thing
with him.
XXXII. SUPERSTITION TRAIL
We did not make thirty-five miles that day, nor yet twenty-five, for he
had let me sleep. We made an early camp and tried some unsuccessful
fishing, over which he was cheerful, promising trout to-morrow when we
should be higher among the mountains. He never again touched or came near
the subject that was on his mind, but while I sat writing my diary, he
went off to his horse Monte, and I could hear that he occasionally talked
to that friend.
Next day we swung southward from what is known to many as the Conant
trail, and headed for that short cut through the Tetons which is known to
but a few. Bitch Creek was the name of the stream we now followed, and
here there was such good fishing that we idled; and the horses and I at
least enjoyed ourselves. For they found fresh pastures and shade in the
now plentiful woods; and the mountain odors and the mountain heights were
enough for me when the fish refused to rise. This road of ours now became
the road which the pursuit had taken before the capture. Going along, I
noticed the footprints of many hoofs, rain-blurred but recent, and these
were the tracks of the people I had met in the stable.
“You can notice Monte’s,” said the Virginian. “He is the only one that has
his hind feet shod. There’s several trails from this point down to where
we have come from.”
We mounted now over a long slant of rock, smooth and of wide extent. Above
us it went up easily into a little side canyon, but ahead, where our way
was, it grew so steep that we got off and led our horses. This brought us
to the next higher level of the mountain, a space of sagebrush more open,
where the rain-washed tracks appeared again in the softer ground.
“Some one has been here since the rain,” I called to the Virginian, who
was still on the rock, walking up behind the packhorses.
“Since the rain!” he exclaimed. “That’s not two days yet.” He came and
examined the footprints. “A man and a hawss,” he said, frowning. “Going
the same way we are. How did he come to pass us, and us not see him?”
“One of the other trails,” I reminded him.
“Yes, but there’s not many that knows them. They are pretty rough trails.”
“Worse than this one we’re taking?”
“Not much; only how does he come to know any of them? And why don’t he
take the Conant trail that’s open and easy and not much longer? One man
and a hawss. I don’t see who he is or what he wants here.”
“Probably a prospector,” I suggested.
“Only one outfit of prospectors has ever been here, and they claimed there
was no mineral-bearing rock in these parts.”
We got back into our saddles with the mystery unsolved. To the Virginian
it was a greater one, apparently, than to me; why should one have to
account for every stray traveller in the mountains?
“That’s queer, too,” said the Virginian. He was now riding in front of me,
and he stopped, looking down at the trail. “Don’t you notice?”
It did not strike me.
“Why, he keeps walking beside his hawss; he don’t get on him.”
Now we, of course, had mounted at the beginning of the better trail after
the steep rock, and that was quite half a mile back. Still, I had a
natural explanation. “He’s leading a packhorse. He’s a poor trapper, and
walks.”
“Packhorses ain’t usually shod before and behind,” said the Virginian; and
sliding to the ground he touched the footprints. “They are not four hours
old,” said he. “This bank’s in shadow by one o’clock, and the sun has not
cooked them dusty.”
We continued on our way; and although it seemed no very particular thing
to me that a man should choose to walk and lead his horse for a while,—I
often did so to limber my muscles,—nevertheless I began to catch the
Virginian’s uncertain feeling about this traveller whose steps had
appeared on our path in mid-journey, as if he had alighted from the
mid-air, and to remind myself that he had come over the great face of rock
from another trail and thus joined us, and that indigent trappers are to
be found owning but a single horse and leading him with their belongings
through the deepest solitudes of the mountains—none of this quite
brought back to me the comfort which had been mine since we left the
cottonwoods out of sight down in the plain. Hence I called out sharply,
“What’s the matter now?” when the Virginian suddenly stopped his horse
again.
He looked down at the trail, and then he very slowly turned round in his
saddle and stared back steadily at me. “There’s two of them,” he said.
“Two what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know whether it’s two horses or two men,” I said, almost
angrily.
But to this he made no answer, sitting quite still on his horse and
contemplating the ground. The silence was fastening on me like a spell,
and I spurred my horse impatiently forward to see for myself. The
footprints of two men were there in the trail.
“What do you say to that?” said the Virginian. “Kind of ridiculous, ain’t
it?”
“Very quaint,” I answered, groping for the explanation. There was no rock
here to walk over and step from into the softer trail. These second steps
came more out of the air than the first. And my brain played me the evil
trick of showing me a dead man in a gray flannel shirt.
“It’s two, you see, travelling with one hawss, and they take turns riding
him.”
“Why, of course!” I exclaimed; and we went along for a few paces.
“There you are,” said the Virginian, as the trail proved him right.
“Number one has got on. My God, what’s that?”
At a crashing in the woods very close to us we both flung round and caught
sight of a vanishing elk.
It left us confronted, smiling a little, and sounding each other with our
eyes. “Well, we didn’t need him for meat,” said the Virginian.
“A spike-horn, wasn’t it?” said I.
“Yes, just a spike-horn.”
For a while now as we rode we kept up a cheerful conversation about elk.
We wondered if we should meet many more close to the trail like this; but
it was not long before our words died away. We had come into a veritable
gulf of mountain peaks, sharp at their bare summits like teeth, holding
fields of snow lower down, and glittering still in full day up there,
while down among our pines and parks the afternoon was growing sombre. All
the while the fresh hoofprints of the horse and the fresh footprints of
the man preceded us. In the trees, and in the opens, across the levels,
and up the steeps, they were there. And so they were not four hours old!
Were they so much? Might we not, round some turn, come upon the makers of
them? I began to watch for this. And again my brain played me an evil
trick, against which I found myself actually reasoning thus: if they took
turns riding, then walking must tire them as it did me or any man. And
besides, there was a horse. With such thoughts I combated the fancy that
those footprints were being made immediately in front of us all the while,
and that they were the only sign of any presence which our eyes could see.
But my fancy overcame my thoughts. It was shame only which held me from
asking this question of the Virginian: Had one horse served in both cases
of Justice down at the cottonwoods? I wondered about this. One horse—or
had the strangling nooses dragged two saddles empty at the same signal?
Most likely; and therefore these people up here—Was I going back to
the nursery? I brought myself up short. And I told myself to be steady;
there lurked in this brain-process which was going on beneath my reason a
threat worse than the childish apprehensions it created. I reminded myself
that I was a man grown, twenty-five years old, and that I must not merely
seem like one, but feel like one. “You’re not afraid of the dark, I
suppose?” This I uttered aloud, unwittingly.
“What’s that?”
I started; but it was only the Virginian behind me. “Oh, nothing. The air
is getting colder up here.”
I had presently a great relief. We came to a place where again this trail
mounted so abruptly that we once more got off to lead our horses. So
likewise had our predecessors done; and as I watched the two different
sets of footprints, I observed something and hastened to speak of it.
“One man is much heavier than the other.”
“I was hoping I’d not have to tell you that,” said the Virginian.
“You’re always ahead of me! Well, still my education is progressing.”
“Why, yes. You’ll equal an Injun if you keep on.”
It was good to be facetious; and I smiled to myself as I trudged upward.
We came off the steep place, leaving the canyon beneath us, and took to
horseback. And as we proceeded over the final gentle slant up to the rim
of the great basin that was set among the peaks, the Virginian was jocular
once more.
“Pounds has got on,” said he, “and Ounces is walking.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, and he nodded as he fixed the
weather-beaten crimson handkerchief round his neck. Then he threw a stone
at a pack animal that was delaying on the trail. “Damn your buckskin
hide,” he drawled. “You can view the scenery from the top.”
He was so natural, sitting loose in the saddle, and cursing in his gentle
voice, that I laughed to think what visions I had been harboring. The two
dead men riding one horse through the mountains vanished, and I came back
to every day.
“Do you think we’ll catch up with those people?” I asked.
“Not likely. They’re travelling about the same gait we are.”
“Ounces ought to be the best walker.”
“Up hill, yes. But Pounds will go down a-foggin’.”
We gained the rim of the basin. It lay below us, a great cup of country,—rocks,
woods, opens, and streams. The tall peaks rose like spires around it,
magnificent and bare in the last of the sun; and we surveyed this upper
world, letting our animals get breath. Our bleak, crumbled rim ran like a
rampart between the towering tops, a half circle of five miles or six,
very wide in some parts, and in some shrinking to a scanty foothold, as
here. Here our trail crossed over it between two eroded and fantastic
shapes of stone, like mushrooms, or misshapen heads on pikes. Banks of
snow spread up here against the black rocks, but half an hour would see us
descended to the green and the woods. I looked down, both of us looked
down, but our forerunners were not there.
“They’ll be camping somewhere in this basin, though,” said the Virginian,
staring at the dark pines. “They have not come this trail by accident.”
A cold little wind blew down between our stone shapes, and upward again,
eddying. And round a corner upward with it came fluttering a leaf of
newspaper, and caught against an edge close to me.
“What’s the latest?” inquired the Virginian from his horse. For I had
dismounted, and had picked up the leaf.
“Seems to be interesting,” I next heard him say. “Can’t you tell a man
what’s making your eyes bug out so?”
“Yes,” my voice replied to him, and it sounded like some stranger speaking
lightly near by; “oh, yes! Decidedly interesting.” My voice mimicked his
pronunciation. “It’s quite the latest, I imagine. You had better read it
yourself.” And I handed it to him with a smile, watching his countenance,
while my brain felt as if clouds were rushing through it.
I saw his eyes quietly run the headings over. “Well?” he inquired, after
scanning it on both sides. “I don’t seem to catch the excitement. Fremont
County is going to hold elections. I see they claim Jake—”
“It’s mine,” I cut him off. “My own paper. Those are my pencil marks.”
I do not think that a microscope could have discerned a change in his
face. “Oh,” he commented, holding the paper, and fixing it with a critical
eye. “You mean this is the one you lent Steve, and he wanted to give me to
give back to you. And so them are your own marks.” For a moment more he
held it judicially, as I have seen men hold a contract upon whose terms
they were finally passing. “Well, you have got it back now, anyway.” And
he handed it to me.
“Only a piece of it!” I exclaimed, always lightly. And as I took it from
him his hand chanced to touch mine. It was cold as ice.
“They ain’t through readin’ the rest,” he explained easily. “Don’t you
throw it away! After they’ve taken such trouble.”
“That’s true,” I answered. “I wonder if it’s Pounds or Ounces I’m indebted
to.”
Thus we made further merriment as we rode down into the great basin.
Before us, the horse and boot tracks showed plain in the soft slough where
melted snow ran half the day.
“If it’s a paper chase,” said the Virginian, “they’ll drop no more along
here.”
“Unless it gets dark,” said I.
“We’ll camp before that. Maybe we’ll see their fire.”
We did not see their fire. We descended in the chill silence, while the
mushroom rocks grew far and the sombre woods approached. By a stream we
got off where two banks sheltered us; for a bleak wind cut down over the
crags now and then, making the pines send out a great note through the
basin, like breakers in a heavy sea. But we made cosey in the tent. We
pitched the tent this night, and I was glad to have it shut out the
mountain peaks. They showed above the banks where we camped; and in the
starlight their black shapes rose stark against the sky. They, with the
pines and the wind, were a bedroom too unearthly this night. And as soon
as our supper dishes were washed we went inside to our lantern and our
game of cribbage.
“This is snug,” said the Virginian, as we played. “That wind don’t get
down here.”
“Smoking is snug, too,” said I. And we marked our points for an hour, with
no words save about the cards.
“I’ll be pretty near glad when we get out of these mountains,” said the
Virginian. “They’re most too big.”
The pines had altogether ceased; but their silence was as tremendous as
their roar had been.
“I don’t know, though,” he resumed. “There’s times when the plains can be
awful big, too.”
Presently we finished a hand, and he said, “Let me see that paper.”
He sat reading it apparently through, while I arranged my blankets to make
a warm bed. Then, since the paper continued to absorb him, I got myself
ready, and slid between my blankets for the night. “You’ll need another
candle soon in that lantern,” said I.
He put the paper down. “I would do it all over again,” he began. “The
whole thing just the same. He knowed the customs of the country, and he
played the game. No call to blame me for the customs of the country. You
leave other folks’ cattle alone, or you take the consequences, and it was
all known to Steve from the start. Would he have me take the Judge’s wages
and give him the wink? He must have changed a heap from the Steve I knew
if he expected that. I don’t believe he expected that. He knew well enough
the only thing that would have let him off would have been a regular jury.
For the thieves have got hold of the juries in Johnson County. I would do
it all over, just the same.”
The expiring flame leaped in the lantern, and fell blue. He broke off in
his words as if to arrange the light, but did not, sitting silent instead,
just visible, and seeming to watch the death struggle of the flame. I
could find nothing to say to him, and I believed he was now winning his
way back to serenity by himself. He kept his outward man so nearly natural
that I forgot about that cold touch of his hand, and never guessed how far
out from reason the tide of emotion was even now whirling him. “I remember
at Cheyenne onced,” he resumed. And he told me of a Thanksgiving visit to
town that he had made with Steve. “We was just colts then,” he said. He
dwelt on their coltish doings, their adventures sought and wrought in the
perfect fellowship of youth. “For Steve and me most always hunted in
couples back in them gamesome years,” he explained. And he fell into the
elemental talk of sex, such talk as would be an elk’s or tiger’s; and
spoken so by him, simply and naturally, as we speak of the seasons, or of
death, or of any actuality, it was without offense. It would be offense
should I repeat it. Then, abruptly ending these memories of himself and
Steve, he went out of the tent, and I heard him dragging a log to the
fire. When it had blazed up, there on the tent wall was his shadow and
that of the log where he sat with his half-broken heart. And all the while
I supposed he was master of himself, and self-justified against Steve’s
omission to bid him good-by.
I must have fallen asleep before he returned, for I remember nothing
except waking and finding him in his blankets beside me. The fire shadow
was gone, and gray, cold light was dimly on the tent. He slept restlessly,
and his forehead was ploughed by lines of pain. While I looked at him he
began to mutter, and suddenly started up with violence. “No!” he cried
out; “no! Just the same!” and thus wakened himself, staring. “What’s the
matter?” he demanded. He was slow in getting back to where we were; and
full consciousness found him sitting up with his eyes fixed on mine. They
were more haunted than they had been at all, and his next speech came
straight from his dream. “Maybe you’d better quit me. This ain’t your
trouble.”
I laughed. “Why, what is the trouble?”
His eyes still intently fixed on mine. “Do you think if we changed our
trail we could lose them from us?”
I was framing a jocose reply about Ounces being a good walker, when the
sound of hoofs rushing in the distance stopped me, and he ran out of the
tent with his rifle. When I followed with mine he was up the bank, and all
his powers alert. But nothing came out of the dimness save our three
stampeded horses. They crashed over fallen timber and across the open to
where their picketed comrade grazed at the end of his rope. By him they
came to a stand, and told him, I suppose, what they had seen; for all four
now faced in the same direction, looking away into the mysterious dawn. We
likewise stood peering, and my rifle barrel felt cold in my hand. The dawn
was all we saw, the inscrutable dawn, coming and coming through the black
pines and the gray open of the basin. There above lifted the peaks, no sun
yet on them, and behind us our stream made a little tinkling.
“A bear, I suppose,” said I, at length.
His strange look fixed me again, and then his eyes went to the horses.
“They smell things we can’t smell,” said he, very slowly. “Will you prove
to me they don’t see things we can’t see?”
A chill shot through me, and I could not help a frightened glance where we
had been watching. But one of the horses began to graze and I had a
wholesome thought. “He’s tired of whatever he sees, then,” said I,
pointing.
A smile came for a moment in the Virginian’s face. “Must be a poor show,”
he observed. All the horses were grazing now, and he added, “It ain’t hurt
their appetites any.”
We made our own breakfast then. And what uncanny dread I may have been
touched with up to this time henceforth left me in the face of a real
alarm. The shock of Steve was working upon the Virginian. He was aware of
it himself; he was fighting it with all his might; and he was being
overcome. He was indeed like a gallant swimmer against whom both wind and
tide have conspired. And in this now foreboding solitude there was only
myself to throw him ropes. His strokes for safety were as bold as was the
undertow that ceaselessly annulled them.
“I reckon I made a fuss in the tent?” said he, feeling his way with me.
I threw him a rope. “Yes. Nightmare—indigestion—too much
newspaper before retiring.”
He caught the rope. “That’s correct! I had a hell of a foolish dream for a
growed-up man. You’d not think it of me.”
“Oh, yes, I should. I’ve had them after prolonged lobster and champagne.”
“Ah,” he murmured, “prolonged! Prolonged is what does it.” He glanced
behind him. “Steve came back—”
“In your lobster dream,” I put in.
But he missed this rope. “Yes,” he answered, with his eyes searching me.
“And he handed me the paper—”
“By the way, where is that?” I asked.
“I built the fire with it. But when I took it from him it was a
six-shooter I had hold of, and pointing at my breast. And then Steve
spoke. ‘Do you think you’re fit to live?’ Steve said; and I got hot at
him, and I reckon I must have told him what I thought of him. You heard
me, I expect?”
“Glad I didn’t. Your language sometimes is—”
He laughed out. “Oh, I account for all this that’s happening just like you
do. If we gave our explanations, they’d be pretty near twins.”
“The horses saw a bear, then?”
“Maybe a bear. Maybe “—but here the tide caught him again—“What’s
your idea about dreams?”
My ropes were all out. “Liver—nerves,” was the best I could do.
But now he swam strongly by himself.
“You may think I’m discreditable,” he said, “but I know I am. It ought to
take more than—well, men have lost their friendships before. Feuds
and wars have cloven a right smart of bonds in twain. And if my haid is
going to get shook by a little old piece of newspaper—I’m ashamed I
burned that. I’m ashamed to have been that weak.”
“Any man gets unstrung,” I told him. My ropes had become straws; and I
strove to frame some policy for the next hours.
We now finished breakfast and set forth to catch the horses. As we drove
them in I found that the Virginian was telling me a ghost story. “At
half-past three in the morning she saw her runaway daughter standing with
a babe in her arms; but when she moved it was all gone. Later they found
it was the very same hour the young mother died in Nogales. And she sent
for the child and raised it herself. I knowed them both back home. Do you
believe that?”
I said nothing.
“No more do I believe it,” he asserted. “And see here! Nogales time is
three hours different from Richmond. I didn’t know about that point then.”
Once out of these mountains, I knew he could right himself; but even I,
who had no Steve to dream about, felt this silence of the peaks was
preying on me.
“Her daughter and her might have been thinkin’ mighty hard about each
other just then,” he pursued. “But Steve is dead. Finished. You cert’nly
don’t believe there’s anything more?”
“I wish I could,” I told him.
“No, I’m satisfied. Heaven didn’t never interest me much. But if there was
a world of dreams after you went—” He stopped himself and turned his
searching eyes away from mine. “There’s a heap o’ darkness wherever you
try to step,” he said, “and I thought I’d left off wasting thoughts on the
subject. You see”—he dexterously roped a horse, and once more his
splendid sanity was turned to gold by his imagination—“I expect in
many growed-up men you’d call sensible there’s a little boy sleepin’—the
little kid they onced was—that still keeps his fear of the dark. You
mentioned the dark yourself yesterday. Well, this experience has woke up
that kid in me, and blamed if I can coax the little cuss to go to sleep
again! I keep a-telling him daylight will sure come, but he keeps a-crying
and holding on to me.”
Somewhere far in the basin there was a faint sound, and we stood still.
“Hush!” he said.
But it was like our watching the dawn; nothing more followed.
“They have shot that bear,” I remarked.
He did not answer, and we put the saddles on without talk. We made no
haste, but we were not over half an hour, I suppose, in getting off with
the packs. It was not a new thing to hear a shot where wild game was in
plenty; yet as we rode that shot sounded already in my mind different from
others. Perhaps I should not believe this to-day but for what I look back
to. To make camp last night we had turned off the trail, and now followed
the stream down for a while, taking next a cut through the wood. In this
way we came upon the tracks of our horses where they had been galloping
back to the camp after their fright. They had kicked up the damp and
matted pine needles very plainly all along.
“Nothing has been here but themselves, though,” said I.
“And they ain’t showing signs of remembering any scare,” said the
Virginian.
In a little while we emerged upon an open.
“Here’s where they was grazing,” said the Virginian; and the signs were
clear enough. “Here’s where they must have got their scare,” he pursued.
“You stay with them while I circle a little.” So I stayed; and certainly
our animals were very calm at visiting this scene. When you bring a horse
back to where he has recently encountered a wild animal his ears and his
nostrils are apt to be wide awake.
The Virginian had stopped and was beckoning to me.
“Here’s your bear,” said he, as I arrived. “Two-legged, you see. And he
had a hawss of his own.” There was a stake driven down where an animal had
been picketed for the night.
“Looks like Ounces,” I said, considering the footprints.
“It’s Ounces. And Ounces wanted another hawss very bad, so him and Pounds
could travel like gentlemen should.”
“But Pounds doesn’t seem to have been with him.”
“Oh, Pounds, he was making coffee, somewheres in yonder, when this
happened. Neither of them guessed there’d be other hawsses wandering here
in the night, or they both would have come.” He turned back to our pack
animals.
“Then you’ll not hunt for this camp to make sure?”
“I prefer making sure first. We might be expected at that camp.”
He took out his rifle from beneath his leg and set it across his saddle at
half-cock. I did the same; and thus cautiously we resumed our journey in a
slightly different direction. “This ain’t all we’re going to find out,”
said the Virginian. “Ounces had a good idea; but I reckon he made a bad
mistake later.”
We had found out a good deal without any more, I thought. Ounces had gone
to bring in their single horse, and coming upon three more in the pasture
had undertaken to catch one and failed, merely driving them where he
feared to follow.
“Shorty never could rope a horse alone,” I remarked.
The Virginian grinned. “Shorty? Well, Shorty sounds as well as Ounces. But
that ain’t the mistake I’m thinking he made.”
I knew that he would not tell me, but that was just like him. For the last
twenty minutes, having something to do, he had become himself again, had
come to earth from that unsafe country of the brain where beckoned a
spectral Steve. Nothing was left but in his eyes that question which pain
had set there; and I wondered if his friend of old, who seemed so brave
and amiable, would have dealt him that hurt at the solemn end had he known
what a poisoned wound it would be.
We came out on a ridge from which we could look down. “You always want to
ride on high places when there’s folks around whose intentions ain’t been
declared,” said the Virginian. And we went along our ridge for some
distance. Then, suddenly he turned down and guided us almost at once to
the trail. “That’s it,” he said. “See.”
The track of a horse was very fresh on the trail. But it was a galloping
horse now, and no bootprints were keeping up with it any more. No boots
could have kept up with it. The rider was making time to-day. Yesterday
that horse had been ridden up into the mountains at leisure. Who was on
him? There was never to be any certain answer to that. But who was not on
him? We turned back in our journey, back into the heart of that basin with
the tall peaks all rising like teeth in the cloudless sun, and the
snow-fields shining white.
“He was afraid of us,” said the Virginian. “He did not know how many of us
had come up here. Three hawsses might mean a dozen more around.”
We followed the backward trail in among the pines, and came after a time
upon their camp. And then I understood the mistake that Shorty had made.
He had returned after his failure, and had told that other man of the
presence of new horses. He should have kept this a secret; for haste had
to be made at once, and two cannot get away quickly upon one horse. But it
was poor Shorty’s last blunder. He lay there by their extinct fire, with
his wistful, lost-dog face upward, and his thick yellow hair unparted as
it had always been. The murder had been done from behind. We closed the
eyes.
“There was no natural harm in him,” said the Virginian. “But you must do a
thing well in this country.”
There was not a trace, not a clew, of the other man; and we found a place
where we could soon cover Shorty with earth. As we lifted him we saw the
newspaper that he had been reading. He had brought it from the clump of
cottonwoods where he and the other man had made a later visit than ours to
be sure of the fate of their friends—or possibly in hopes of another
horse. Evidently, when the party were surprised, they had been able to
escape with only one. All of the newspaper was there save the leaf I had
picked up—all and more, for this had pencil writing on it that was
not mine, nor did I at first take it in. I thought it might be a clew, and
I read it aloud. “Good-by, Jeff,” it said. “I could not have spoke to you
without playing the baby.”
“Who’s Jeff?” I asked. But it came over me when I looked at the Virginian.
He was standing beside me quite motionless; and then he put out his hand
and took the paper, and stood still, looking at the words. “Steve used to
call me Jeff,” he said, “because I was Southern. I reckon nobody else ever
did.”
He slowly folded the message from the dead, brought by the dead, and
rolled it in the coat behind his saddle. For a half-minute he stood
leaning his forehead down against the saddle. After this he came back and
contemplated Shorty’s face awhile. “I wish I could thank him,” he said. “I
wish I could.”
We carried Shorty over and covered him with earth, and on that laid a few
pine branches; then we took up our journey, and by the end of the forenoon
we had gone some distance upon our trail through the Teton Mountains. But
in front of us the hoofprints ever held their stride of haste, drawing
farther from us through the hours, until by the next afternoon somewhere
we noticed they were no longer to be seen; and after that they never came
upon the trail again.
XXXIII. THE SPINSTER LOSES SOME SLEEP
Somewhere at the eastern base of the Tetons did those hoofprints disappear
into a mountain sanctuary where many crooked paths have led. He that took
another man’s possessions, or he that took another man’s life, could
always run here if the law or popular justice were too hot at his heels.
Steep ranges and forests walled him in from the world on all four sides,
almost without a break; and every entrance lay through intricate
solitudes. Snake River came into the place through canyons and mournful
pines and marshes, to the north, and went out at the south between
formidable chasms. Every tributary to this stream rose among high peaks
and ridges, and descended into the valley by well-nigh impenetrable
courses: Pacific Creek from Two Ocean Pass, Buffalo Fork from no pass at
all, Black Rock from the To-wo-ge-tee Pass—all these, and many more,
were the waters of loneliness, among whose thousand hiding-places it was
easy to be lost. Down in the bottom was a spread of level land, broad and
beautiful, with the blue and silver Tetons rising from its chain of lakes
to the west, and other heights presiding over its other sides. And up and
down and in and out of this hollow square of mountains, where waters
plentifully flowed, and game and natural pasture abounded, there skulked a
nomadic and distrustful population. This in due time built cabins, took
wives, begot children, and came to speak of itself as “The honest settlers
of Jackson’s Hole.” It is a commodious title, and doubtless to-day more
accurate than it was once.
Into this place the hoofprints disappeared. Not many cabins were yet built
there; but the unknown rider of the horse knew well that he would find
shelter and welcome among the felons of his stripe. Law and order might
guess his name correctly, but there was no next step, for lack of
evidence; and he would wait, whoever he was, until the rage of popular
justice, which had been pursuing him and his brother thieves, should
subside. Then, feeling his way gradually with prudence, he would let
himself be seen again.
And now, as mysteriously as he had melted away, rumor passed over the
country. No tongue seemed to be heard telling the first news; the news was
there, one day, a matter of whispered knowledge. On Sunk Creek and on Bear
Creek, and elsewhere far and wide, before men talked men seemed secretly
to know that Steve, and Ed, and Shorty, would never again be seen. Riders
met each other in the road and drew rein to discuss the event, and its
bearing upon the cattle interests. In town saloons men took each other
aside, and muttered over it in corners.
Thus it reached the ears of Molly Wood, beginning in a veiled and harmless
shape.
A neighbor joined her when she was out riding by herself.
“Good morning,” said he. “Don’t you find it lonesome?” And when she
answered lightly, he continued, meaning well: “You’ll be having company
again soon now. He has finished his job. Wish he’d finished it MORE! Well,
good day.”
Molly thought these words over. She could not tell why they gave her a
strange feeling. To her Vermont mind no suspicion of the truth would come
naturally. But suspicion began to come when she returned from her ride.
For, entering the cabin of the Taylors’, she came upon several people who
all dropped their talk short, and were not skilful at resuming it. She sat
there awhile, uneasily aware that all of them knew something which she did
not know, and was not intended to know. A thought pierced her—had
anything happened to her lover? No; that was not it. The man she had met
on horseback spoke of her having company soon again. How soon? she
wondered. He had been unable to say when he should return, and now she
suddenly felt that a great silence had enveloped him lately: not the mere
silence of absence, of receiving no messages or letters, but another sort
of silence which now, at this moment, was weighing strangely upon her.
And then the next day it came out at the schoolhouse. During that interval
known as recess, she became aware through the open window that they were
playing a new game outside. Lusty screeches of delight reached her ears.
“Jump!” a voice ordered. “Jump!”
“I don’t want to,” returned another voice, uneasily.
“You said you would,” said several. “Didn’t he say he would? Ah, he said
he would. Jump now, quick!”
“But I don’t want to,” quavered the voice in a tone so dismal that Molly
went out to see.
They had got Bob Carmody on the top of the gate by a tree, with a rope
round his neck, the other end of which four little boys were joyously
holding. The rest looked on eagerly, three little girls clasping their
hands, and springing up and down with excitement.
“Why, children!” exclaimed Molly.
“He’s said his prayers and everything,” they all screamed out. “He’s a
rustler, and we’re lynchin’ him. Jump, Bob!”
“I don’t want—”
“Ah, coward, won’t take his medicine!”
“Let him go, boys,” said Molly. “You might really hurt him.” And so she
broke up this game, but not without general protest from Wyoming’s young
voice.
“He said he would,” Henry Dow assured her.
And George Taylor further explained: “He said he’d be Steve. But Steve
didn’t scare.” Then George proceeded to tell the schoolmarm, eagerly, all
about Steve and Ed, while the schoolmarm looked at him with a rigid face.
“You promised your mother you’d not tell,” said Henry Dow, after all had
been told. “You’ve gone and done it,” and Henry wagged his head in a
superior manner.
Thus did the New England girl learn what her cow-boy lover had done. She
spoke of it to nobody; she kept her misery to herself. He was not there to
defend his act. Perhaps in a way that was better. But these were hours of
darkness indeed to Molly Wood.
On that visit to Dunbarton, when at the first sight of her lover’s
photograph in frontier dress her aunt had exclaimed, “I suppose there are
days when he does not kill people,” she had cried in all good faith and
mirth, “He never killed anybody!” Later, when he was lying in her cabin
weak from his bullet wound, but each day stronger beneath her nursing, at
a certain word of his there had gone through her a shudder of doubt.
Perhaps in his many wanderings he had done such a thing in self-defence,
or in the cause of popular justice. But she had pushed the idea away from
her hastily, back into the days before she had ever seen him. If this had
ever happened, let her not know of it. Then, as a cruel reward for his
candor and his laying himself bare to her mother, the letters from
Bennington had used that very letter of his as a weapon against him. Her
sister Sarah had quoted from it. “He says with apparent pride,” wrote
Sarah, “that he has never killed for pleasure or profit.’ Those are his
exact words, and you may guess their dreadful effect upon mother. I
congratulate you, my dear, on having chosen a protector so scrupulous.”
Thus her elder sister had seen fit to write; and letters from less near
relatives made hints at the same subject. So she was compelled to accept
this piece of knowledge thrust upon her. Yet still, still, those events
had been before she knew him. They were remote, without detail or context.
He had been little more than a boy. No doubt it was to save his own life.
And so she bore the hurt of her discovery all the more easily because her
sister’s tone roused her to defend her cow-boy.
But now!
In her cabin, alone, after midnight, she arose from her sleepless bed, and
lighting the candle, stood before his photograph.
“It is a good face,” her great-aunt had said, after some study of it. And
these words were in her mind now. There his likeness stood at full length,
confronting her: the spurs on the boots, the fringed leathern chaparreros,
the coiled rope in hand, the pistol at hip, the rough flannel shirt, and
the scarf knotted at the throat—and then the grave eyes, looking at
her. It thrilled her to meet them, even so. She could read life into them.
She seemed to feel passion come from them, and then something like
reproach. She stood for a long while looking at him, and then, beating her
hands together suddenly, she blew out her light and went back into bed,
but not to sleep.
“You’re looking pale, deary,” said Mrs. Taylor to her, a few days later.
“Am I?”
“And you don’t eat anything.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” And Molly retired to her cabin.
“George,” said Mrs. Taylor, “you come here.”
It may seem severe—I think that it was severe. That evening when Mr.
Taylor came home to his family, George received a thrashing for
disobedience.
“And I suppose,” said Mrs. Taylor to her husband, “that she came out just
in time to stop ’em breaking Bob Carmody’s neck for him.”
Upon the day following Mrs. Taylor essayed the impossible. She took
herself over to Molly Wood’s cabin. The girl gave her a listless greeting,
and the dame sat slowly down, and surveyed the comfortable room.
“A very nice home, deary,” said she, “if it was a home. But you’ll fix
something like this in your real home, I have no doubt.”
Molly made no answer.
“What we’re going to do without you I can’t see,” said Mrs. Taylor. “But
I’d not have it different for worlds. He’ll be coming back soon, I
expect.”
“Mrs. Taylor,” said Molly, all at once, “please don’t say anything now. I
can’t stand it.” And she broke into wretched tears.
“Why, deary, he—”
“No; not a word. Please, please—I’ll go out if you do.”
The older woman went to the younger one, and then put her arms round her.
But when the tears were over, they had not done any good; it was not the
storm that clears the sky—all storms do not clear the sky. And Mrs.
Taylor looked at the pale girl and saw that she could do nothing to help
her toward peace of mind.
“Of course,” she said to her husband, after returning from her profitless
errand, “you might know she’d feel dreadful.
“What about?” said Taylor.
“Why, you know just as well as I do. And I’ll say for myself, I hope
you’ll never have to help hang folks.”
“Well,” said Taylor, mildly, “if I had to, I’d have to, I guess.”
“Well, I don’t want it to come. But that poor girl is eating her heart
right out over it.”
“What does she say?”
“It’s what she don’t say. She’ll not talk, and she’ll not let me talk, and
she sits and sits.”
“I’ll go talk some to her,” said the man.
“Well, Taylor, I thought you had more sense. You’d not get a word in.
She’ll be sick soon if her worry ain’t stopped someway, though.”
“What does she want this country to do?” inquired Taylor. “Does she expect
it to be like Vermont when it—”
“We can’t help what she expects,” his wife interrupted. “But I wish we
could help HER.”
They could not, however; and help came from another source. Judge Henry
rode by the next day. To him good Mrs. Taylor at once confided her
anxiety. The Judge looked grave.
“Must I meddle?” he said.
“Yes, Judge, you must,” said Mrs. Taylor.
“But why can’t I send him over here when he gets back? Then they’ll just
settle it between themselves.”
Mrs. Taylor shook her head. “That would unsettle it worse than it is,” she
assured him. “They mustn’t meet just now.”
The Judge sighed. “Well,” he said, “very well. I’ll sacrifice my
character, since you insist.”
Judge Henry sat thinking, waiting until school should be out. He did not
at all relish what lay before him. He would like to have got out of it. He
had been a federal judge; he had been an upright judge; he had met the
responsibilities of his difficult office not only with learning, which is
desirable, but also with courage and common sense besides, and these are
essential. He had been a stanch servant of the law. And now he was invited
to defend that which, at first sight, nay, even at second and third sight,
must always seem a defiance of the law more injurious than crime itself.
Every good man in this world has convictions about right and wrong. They
are his soul’s riches, his spiritual gold. When his conduct is at variance
with these, he knows that it is a departure, a falling; and this is a
simple and clear matter. If falling were all that ever happened to a good
man, all his days would be a simple matter of striving and repentance. But
it is not all. There come to him certain junctures, crises, when life,
like a highwayman, springs upon him, demanding that he stand and deliver
his convictions in the name of some righteous cause, bidding him do evil
that good may come. I cannot say that I believe in doing evil that good
may come. I do not. I think that any man who honestly justifies such
course deceives himself. But this I can say: to call any act evil,
instantly begs the question. Many an act that man does is right or wrong
according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context;
strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning.
Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! beware of
calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!
Do you fail to follow my meaning? Then here is an illustration. On Monday
I walk over my neighbor’s field; there is no wrong in such walking. By
Tuesday he has put up a sign that trespassers will be prosecuted according
to law. I walk again on Tuesday, and am a law-breaker. Do you begin to see
my point? or are you inclined to object to the illustration because the
walking on Tuesday was not WRONG, but merely ILLEGAL? Then here is another
illustration which you will find it a trifle more embarrassing to answer.
Consider carefully, let me beg you, the case of a young man and a young
woman who walk out of a door on Tuesday, pronounced man and wife by a
third party inside the door. It matters not that on Monday they were, in
their own hearts, sacredly vowed to each other. If they had omitted
stepping inside that door, if they had dispensed with that third party,
and gone away on Monday sacredly vowed to each other in their own hearts,
you would have scarcely found their conduct moral. Consider these things
carefully,—the sign-post and the third party,—and the
difference they make. And now, for a finish, we will return to the
sign-post.
Suppose that I went over my neighbor’s field on Tuesday, after the
sign-post was put up, because I saw a murder about to be committed in the
field, and therefore ran in and stopped it. Was I doing evil that good
might come? Do you not think that to stay out and let the murder be done
would have been the evil act in this case? To disobey the sign-post was
RIGHT; and I trust that you now perceive the same act may wear as many
different hues of right or wrong as the rainbow, according to the
atmosphere in which it is done. It is not safe to say of any man, “He did
evil that good might come.” Was the thing that he did, in the first place,
evil? That is the question.
Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist
should expect of his reader, and we will go back at once to Judge Henry
and his meditations about lynching.
He was well aware that if he was to touch at all upon this subject with
the New England girl, he could not put her off with mere platitudes and
humdrum formulas; not, at least, if he expected to do any good. She was
far too intelligent, and he was really anxious to do good. For her sake he
wanted the course of the girl’s true love to run more smoothly, and still
more did he desire this for the sake of his Virginian.
“I sent him myself on that business,” the Judge reflected uncomfortably.
“I am partly responsible for the lynching. It has brought him one great
unhappiness already through the death of Steve. If it gets running in this
girl’s mind, she may—dear me!” the Judge broke off, “what a
nuisance!” And he sighed. For as all men know, he also knew that many
things should be done in this world in silence, and that talking about
them is a mistake.
But when school was out, and the girl gone to her cabin, his mind had set
the subject in order thoroughly, and he knocked at her door, ready, as he
had put it, to sacrifice his character in the cause of true love.
“Well,” he said, coming straight to the point, “some dark things have
happened.” And when she made no answer to this, he continued: “But you
must not misunderstand us. We’re too fond of you for that.”
“Judge Henry,” said Molly Wood, also coming straight to the point, “have
you come to tell me that you think well of lynching?”
He met her. “Of burning Southern negroes in public, no. Of hanging Wyoming
cattle thieves in private, yes. You perceive there’s a difference, don’t
you?”
“Not in principle,” said the girl, dry and short.
“Oh—dear—me!” slowly exclaimed the Judge. “I am sorry that you
cannot see that, because I think that I can. And I think that you have
just as much sense as I have.” The Judge made himself very grave and very
good-humored at the same time. The poor girl was strung to a high pitch,
and spoke harshly in spite of herself.
“What is the difference in principle?” she demanded.
“Well,” said the Judge, easy and thoughtful, “what do you mean by
principle?”
“I didn’t think you’d quibble,” flashed Molly. “I’m not a lawyer myself.”
A man less wise than Judge Henry would have smiled at this, and then war
would have exploded hopelessly between them, and harm been added to what
was going wrong already. But the Judge knew that he must give to every
word that the girl said now his perfect consideration.
“I don’t mean to quibble,” he assured her. “I know the trick of escaping
from one question by asking another. But I don’t want to escape from
anything you hold me to answer. If you can show me that I am wrong, I want
you to do so. But,” and here the Judge smiled, “I want you to play fair,
too.”
“And how am I not?”
“I want you to be just as willing to be put right by me as I am to be put
right by you. And so when you use such a word as principle, you must help
me to answer by saying what principle you mean. For in all sincerity I see
no likeness in principle whatever between burning Southern negroes in
public and hanging Wyoming horse-thieves in private. I consider the
burning a proof that the South is semi-barbarous, and the hanging a proof
that Wyoming is determined to become civilized. We do not torture our
criminals when we lynch them. We do not invite spectators to enjoy their
death agony. We put no such hideous disgrace upon the United States. We
execute our criminals by the swiftest means, and in the quietest way. Do
you think the principle is the same?”
Molly had listened to him with attention. “The way is different,” she
admitted.
“Only the way?”
“So it seems to me. Both defy law and order.”
“Ah, but do they both? Now we’re getting near the principle.”
“Why, yes. Ordinary citizens take the law in their own hands.”
“The principle at last!” exclaimed the Judge.
“Now tell me some more things. Out of whose hands do they take the law?”
“The court’s.”
“What made the courts?”
“I don’t understand.”
“How did there come to be any courts?”
“The Constitution.”
“How did there come to be any Constitution? Who made it?”
“The delegates, I suppose.”
“Who made the delegates?”
“I suppose they were elected, or appointed, or something.”
“And who elected them?”
“Of course the people elected them.”
“Call them the ordinary citizens,” said the Judge. “I like your term. They
are where the law comes from, you see. For they chose the delegates who
made the Constitution that provided for the courts. There’s your
machinery. These are the hands into which ordinary citizens have put the
law. So you see, at best, when they lynch they only take back what they
once gave. Now we’ll take your two cases that you say are the same in
principle. I think that they are not. For in the South they take a negro
from jail where he was waiting to be duly hung. The South has never
claimed that the law would let him go. But in Wyoming the law has been
letting our cattle-thieves go for two years. We are in a very bad way, and
we are trying to make that way a little better until civilization can
reach us. At present we lie beyond its pale. The courts, or rather the
juries, into whose hands we have put the law, are not dealing the law.
They are withered hands, or rather they are imitation hands made for show,
with no life in them, no grip. They cannot hold a cattle-thief. And so
when your ordinary citizen sees this, and sees that he has placed justice
in a dead hand, he must take justice back into his own hands where it was
once at the beginning of all things. Call this primitive, if you will. But
so far from being a DEFIANCE of the law, it is an ASSERTION of it—the
fundamental assertion of self governing men, upon whom our whole social
fabric is based. There is your principle, Miss Wood, as I see it. Now can
you help me to see anything different?”
She could not.
“But perhaps you are of the same opinion still?” the Judge inquired.
“It is all terrible to me,” she said.
“Yes; and so is capital punishment terrible. And so is war. And perhaps
some day we shall do without them. But they are none of them so terrible
as unchecked theft and murder would be.”
After the Judge had departed on his way to Sunk Creek, no one spoke to
Molly upon this subject. But her face did not grow cheerful at once. It
was plain from her fits of silence that her thoughts were not at rest. And
sometimes at night she would stand in front of her lover’s likeness,
gazing upon it with both love and shrinking.
XXXIV. TO FIT HER FINGER
It was two rings that the Virginian wrote for when next I heard from him.
After my dark sight of what the Cattle Land could be, I soon had journeyed
home by way of Washakie and Rawlins. Steve and Shorty did not leave my
memory, nor will they ever, I suppose.
The Virginian had touched the whole thing the day I left him. He had
noticed me looking a sort of farewell at the plains and mountains.
“You will come back to it,” he said. “If there was a headstone for every
man that once pleasured in his freedom here, yu’d see one most every time
yu’ turned your head. It’s a heap sadder than a graveyard—but yu’
love it all the same.”
Sadness had passed from him—from his uppermost mood, at least, when
he wrote about the rings. Deep in him was sadness of course, as well as
joy. For he had known Steve, and he had covered Shorty with earth. He had
looked upon life with a marksman’s eyes, very close; and no one, if he
have a heart, can pass through this and not carry sadness in his spirit
with him forever. But he seldom shows it openly; it bides within him,
enriching his cheerfulness and rendering him of better service to his
fellow-men.
It was a commission of cheerfulness that he now gave, being distant from
where rings are to be bought. He could not go so far as the East to
procure what he had planned. Rings were to be had in Cheyenne, and a still
greater choice in Denver; and so far as either of these towns his affairs
would have permitted him to travel. But he was set upon having rings from
the East. They must come from the best place in the country; nothing short
of that was good enough “to fit her finger,” as he said. The wedding ring
was a simple matter. Let it be right, that was all: the purest gold that
could be used, with her initials and his together graven round the inside,
with the day of the month and the year.
The date was now set. It had come so far as this. July third was to be the
day. Then for sixty days and nights he was to be a bridegroom, free from
his duties at Sunk Creek, free to take his bride wheresoever she might
choose to go. And she had chosen.
Those voices of the world had more than angered her; for after the anger a
set purpose was left. Her sister should have the chance neither to come
nor to stay away. Had her mother even answered the Virginian’s letter,
there could have been some relenting. But the poor lady had been
inadequate in this, as in all other searching moments of her life: she had
sent messages,—kind ones, to be sure,—but only messages. If
this had hurt the Virginian, no one knew it in the world, least of all the
girl in whose heart it had left a cold, frozen spot. Not a good spirit in
which to be married, you will say. No; frozen spots are not good at any
time. But Molly’s own nature gave her due punishment. Through all these
days of her warm happiness a chill current ran, like those which interrupt
the swimmer’s perfect joy. The girl was only half as happy as her lover;
but she hid this deep from him,—hid it until that final, fierce hour
of reckoning that her nature had with her,—nay, was bound to have
with her, before the punishment was lifted, and the frozen spot melted at
length from her heart.
So, meanwhile, she made her decree against Bennington. Not Vermont, but
Wyoming, should be her wedding place. No world’s voices should be
whispering, no world’s eyes should be looking on, when she made her vow to
him and received his vow. Those voices should be spoken and that ring put
on in this wild Cattle Land, where first she had seen him ride into the
flooded river, and lift her ashore upon his horse. It was this open sky
which should shine down on them, and this frontier soil upon which their
feet should tread. The world should take its turn second.
After a month with him by stream and canyon, a month far deeper into the
mountain wilds than ever yet he had been free to take her, a month with
sometimes a tent and sometimes the stars above them, and only their horses
besides themselves—after such a month as this, she would take him to
her mother and to Bennington; and the old aunt over at Dunbarton would
look at him, and be once more able to declare that the Starks had always
preferred a man who was a man.
And so July third was to be engraved inside the wedding ring. Upon the
other ring the Virginian had spent much delicious meditation, all in his
secret mind. He had even got the right measure of her finger without her
suspecting the reason. But this step was the final one in his plan.
During the time that his thoughts had begun to be busy over the other
ring, by a chance he had learned from Mrs. Henry a number of old fancies
regarding precious stones. Mrs. Henry often accompanied the Judge in
venturesome mountain climbs, and sometimes the steepness of the rocks
required her to use her hands for safety. One day when the Virginian went
with them to help mark out certain boundary corners, she removed her rings
lest they should get scratched; and he, being just behind her, took them
during the climb.
“I see you’re looking at my topaz,” she had said, as he returned them. “If
I could have chosen, it would have been a ruby. But I was born in
November.”
He did not understand her in the least, but her words awakened exceeding
interest in him; and they had descended some five miles of mountain before
he spoke again. Then he became ingenious, for he had half worked out what
Mrs. Henry’s meaning must be; but he must make quite sure. Therefore,
according to his wild, shy nature, he became ingenious.
“Men wear rings,” he began. “Some of the men on the ranch do. I don’t see
any harm in a man’s wearin’ a ring. But I never have.”
“Well,” said the lady, not yet suspecting that he was undertaking to
circumvent her, “probably those men have sweethearts.”
“No, ma’am. Not sweethearts worth wearin’ rings for—in two cases,
anyway. They won ’em at cyards. And they like to see ’em shine. I never
saw a man wear a topaz.”
Mrs. Henry did not have any further remark to make.
“I was born in January myself,” pursued the Virginian, very thoughtfully.
Then the lady gave him one look, and without further process of mind
perceived exactly what he was driving at.
“That’s very extravagant for rings,” said she. “January is diamonds.”
“Diamonds,” murmured the Virginian, more and more thoughtfully. “Well, it
don’t matter, for I’d not wear a ring. And November is—what did yu’
say, ma’am?”
“Topaz.”
“Yes. Well, jewels are cert’nly pretty things. In the Spanish Missions
yu’ll see large ones now and again. And they’re not glass, I think. And so
they have got some jewel that kind of belongs to each month right around
the twelve?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Henry, smiling. “One for each month. But the opal is what
you want.”
He looked at her, and began to blush.
“October is the opal,” she added, and she laughed outright, for Miss
Wood’s birthday was on the fifteenth of that month.
The Virginian smiled guiltily at her through his crimson.
“I’ve no doubt you can beat around the bush very well with men,” said Mrs.
Henry. “But it’s perfectly transparent with us—in matters of
sentiment, at least.”
“Well, I am sorry,” he presently said. “I don’t want to give her an opal.
I have no superstition, but I don’t want to give her an opal. If her
mother did, or anybody like that, why, all right. But not from me. D’ yu’
understand, ma’am?”
Mrs. Henry did understand this subtle trait in the wild man, and she
rejoiced to be able to give him immediate reassurance concerning opals.
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “The opal is said to bring ill luck,
but not when it is your own month stone. Then it is supposed to be not
only deprived of evil influence, but to possess peculiarly fortunate
power. Let it be an opal ring.”
Then he asked her boldly various questions, and she showed him her rings,
and gave him advice about the setting. There was no special custom, she
told him, ruling such rings as this he desired to bestow. The gem might be
the lady’s favorite or the lover’s favorite; and to choose the lady’s
month stone was very well indeed.
Very well indeed, the Virginian thought. But not quite well enough for
him. His mind now busied itself with this lore concerning jewels, and soon
his sentiment had suggested something which he forthwith carried out.
When the ring was achieved, it was an opal, but set with four small
embracing diamonds. Thus was her month stone joined with his, that their
luck and their love might be inseparably clasped.
He found the size of her finger one day when winter had departed, and the
early grass was green. He made a ring of twisted grass for her, while she
held her hand for him to bind it. He made another for himself. Then, after
each had worn their grass ring for a while, he begged her to exchange. He
did not send his token away from him, but most carefully measured it. Thus
the ring fitted her well, and the lustrous flame within the opal thrilled
his heart each time he saw it. For now June was near its end; and that
other plain gold ring, which, for safe keeping, he cherished suspended
round his neck day and night, seemed to burn with an inward glow that was
deeper than the opal’s.
So in due course arrived the second of July. Molly’s punishment had got as
far as this: she longed for her mother to be near her at this time; but it
was too late.
XXXV. WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT
Town lay twelve straight miles before the lover and his sweetheart, when
they came to the brow of the last long hill. All beneath them was like a
map: neither man nor beast distinguishable, but the veined and tinted
image of a country, knobs and flats set out in order clearly, shining
extensive and motionless in the sun. It opened on the sight of the lovers
as they reached the sudden edge of the tableland, where since morning they
had ridden with the head of neither horse ever in advance of the other.
At the view of their journey’s end, the Virginian looked down at his girl
beside him, his eyes filled with a bridegroom’s light, and, hanging safe
upon his breast, he could feel the gold ring that he would slowly press
upon her finger to-morrow. He drew off the glove from her left hand, and
stooping, kissed the jewel in that other ring which he had given her. The
crimson fire in the opal seemed to mingle with that in his heart, and his
arm lifted her during a moment from the saddle as he held her to him. But
in her heart the love of him was troubled by that cold pang of loneliness
which had crept upon her like a tide as the day drew near. None of her own
people were waiting in that distant town to see her become his bride.
Friendly faces she might pass on the way; but all of them new friends,
made in this wild country: not a face of her childhood would smile upon
her; and deep within her, a voice cried for the mother who was far away in
Vermont. That she would see Mrs. Taylor’s kind face at her wedding was no
comfort now.
There lay the town in the splendor of Wyoming space. Around it spread the
watered fields, westward for a little way, eastward to a great distance,
making squares of green and yellow crops; and the town was but a poor rag
in the midst of this quilted harvest. After the fields to the east, the
tawny plain began; and with one faint furrow of river lining its
undulations, it stretched beyond sight. But west of the town rose the Bow
Leg Mountains, cool with their still unmelted snows and their dull blue
gulfs of pine. From three canyons flowed three clear forks which began the
river. Their confluence was above the town a good two miles; it looked but
a few paces from up here, while each side the river straggled the margin
cottonwoods, like thin borders along a garden walk. Over all this map hung
silence like a harmony, tremendous yet serene.
“How beautiful! how I love it!” whispered the girl. “But, oh, how big it
is!” And she leaned against her lover for an instant. It was her spirit
seeking shelter. To-day, this vast beauty, this primal calm, had in it for
her something almost of dread. The small, comfortable, green hills of home
rose before her. She closed her eyes and saw Vermont: a village street,
and the post-office, and ivy covering an old front door, and her mother
picking some yellow roses from a bush.
At a sound, her eyes quickly opened; and here was her lover turned in his
saddle, watching another horseman approach. She saw the Virginian’s hand
in a certain position, and knew that his pistol was ready. But the other
merely overtook and passed them, as they stood at the brow of the hill.
The man had given one nod to the Virginian, and the Virginian one to him;
and now he was already below them on the descending road. To Molly Wood he
was a stranger; but she had seen his eyes when he nodded to her lover, and
she knew, even without the pistol, that this was not enmity at first
sight. It was not indeed. Five years of gathered hate had looked out of
the man’s eyes. And she asked her lover who this was.
“Oh,” said he, easily, “just a man I see now and then.”
“Is his name Trampas?” said Molly Wood.
The Virginian looked at her in surprise. “Why, where have you seen him?”
he asked.
“Never till now. But I knew.”
“My gracious! Yu’ never told me yu’ had mind-reading powers.” And he
smiled serenely at her.
“I knew it was Trampas as soon as I saw his eyes.”
“My gracious!” her lover repeated with indulgent irony. “I must be mighty
careful of my eyes when you’re lookin’ at ’em.”
“I believe he did that murder,” said the girl.
“Whose mind are yu’ readin’ now?” he drawled affectionately.
But he could not joke her off the subject. She took his strong hand in
hers, tremulously, so much of it as her little hand could hold. “I know
something about that—that—last autumn,” she said, shrinking
from words more definite. “And I know that you only did—”
“What I had to,” he finished, very sadly, but sternly, too.
“Yes,” she asserted, keeping hold of his hand. “I suppose that—lynching—”
(she almost whispered the word) “is the only way. But when they had to die
just for stealing horses, it seems so wicked that this murderer—”
“Who can prove it?” asked the Virginian.
“But don’t you know it?”
“I know a heap o’ things inside my heart. But that’s not proving. There
was only the body, and the hoofprints—and what folks guessed.”
“He was never even arrested!” the girl said.
“No. He helped elect the sheriff in that county.”
Then Molly ventured a step inside the border of her lover’s reticence. “I
saw—” she hesitated, “just now, I saw what you did.”
He returned to his caressing irony. “You’ll have me plumb scared if you
keep on seein’ things.”
“You had your pistol ready for him.”
“Why, I believe I did. It was mighty unnecessary.” And the Virginian took
out the pistol again, and shook his head over it, like one who has been
caught in a blunder.
She looked at him, and knew that she must step outside his reticence
again. By love and her surrender to him their positions had been
exchanged.
He was not now, as through his long courting he had been, her
half-obeying, half-refractory worshipper. She was no longer his
half-indulgent, half-scornful superior. Her better birth and schooling
that had once been weapons to keep him at his distance, or bring her off
victorious in their encounters, had given way before the onset of the
natural man himself. She knew her cow-boy lover, with all that he lacked,
to be more than ever she could be, with all that she had. He was her
worshipper still, but her master, too. Therefore now, against the baffling
smile he gave her, she felt powerless. And once again a pang of yearning
for her mother to be near her to-day shot through the girl. She looked
from her untamed man to the untamed desert of Wyoming, and the town where
she was to take him as her wedded husband. But for his sake she would not
let him guess her loneliness.
He sat on his horse Monte, considering the pistol. Then he showed her a
rattlesnake coiled by the roots of some sage-brush. “Can I hit it?” he
inquired.
“You don’t often miss them,” said she, striving to be cheerful.
“Well, I’m told getting married unstrings some men.” He aimed, and the
snake was shattered. “Maybe it’s too early yet for the unstringing to
begin!” And with some deliberation he sent three more bullets into the
snake. “I reckon that’s enough,” said he.
“Was not the first one?”
“Oh, yes, for the snake.” And then, with one leg crooked cow-boy fashion
across in front of his saddle-horn, he cleaned his pistol, and replaced
the empty cartridges.
Once more she ventured near the line of his reticence. “Has—has
Trampas seen you much lately?”
“Why, no; not for a right smart while. But I reckon he has not missed me.”
The Virginian spoke this in his gentlest voice. But his rebuffed
sweetheart turned her face away, and from her eyes she brushed a tear.
He reined his horse Monte beside her, and upon her cheek she felt his
kiss. “You are not the only mind-reader,” said he, very tenderly. And at
this she clung to him, and laid her head upon his breast. “I had been
thinking,” he went on, “that the way our marriage is to be was the most
beautiful way.”
“It is the most beautiful,” she murmured.
He slowly spoke out his thought, as if she had not said this. “No folks to
stare, no fuss, no jokes and ribbons and best bonnets, no public eye nor
talkin’ of tongues when most yu’ want to hear nothing and say nothing.”
She answered by holding him closer.
“Just the bishop of Wyoming to join us, and not even him after we’re once
joined. I did think that would be ahead of all ways to get married I have
seen.”
He paused again, and she made no rejoinder.
“But we have left out your mother.”
She looked in his face with quick astonishment. It was as if his spirit
had heard the cry of her spirit.
“That is nowhere near right,” he said. “That is wrong.”
“She could never have come here,” said the girl.
“We should have gone there. I don’t know how I can ask her to forgive me.”
“But it was not you!” cried Molly.
“Yes. Because I did not object. I did not tell you we must go to her. I
missed the point, thinking so much about my own feelings. For you see—and
I’ve never said this to you until now—your mother did hurt me. When
you said you would have me after my years of waiting, and I wrote her that
letter telling her all about myself, and how my family was not like yours,
and—and—all the rest I told her, why you see it hurt me never
to get a word back from her except just messages through you. For I had
talked to her about my hopes and my failings. I had said more than ever
I’ve said to you, because she was your mother. I wanted her to forgive me,
if she could, and feel that maybe I could take good care of you after all.
For it was bad enough to have her daughter quit her home to teach school
out hyeh on Bear Creek. Bad enough without havin’ me to come along and
make it worse. I have missed the point in thinking of my own feelings.”
“But it’s not your doing!” repeated Molly.
With his deep delicacy he had put the whole matter as a hardship to her
mother alone. He had saved her any pain of confession or denial. “Yes, it
is my doing,” he now said. “Shall we give it up?”
“Give what—?” She did not understand.
“Why, the order we’ve got it fixed in. Plans are—well, they’re no
more than plans. I hate the notion of changing, but I hate hurting your
mother more. Or, anyway, I OUGHT to hate it more. So we can shift, if yu’
say so. It’s not too late.”
“Shift?” she faltered.
“I mean, we can go to your home now. We can start by the stage to-night.
Your mother can see us married. We can come back and finish in the
mountains instead of beginning in them. It’ll be just merely shifting, yu’
see.”
He could scarcely bring himself to say this at all; yet he said it almost
as if he were urging it. It implied a renunciation that he could hardly
bear to think of. To put off his wedding day, the bliss upon whose
threshold he stood after his three years of faithful battle for it, and
that wedding journey he had arranged: for there were the mountains in
sight, the woods and canyons where he had planned to go with her after the
bishop had joined them; the solitudes where only the wild animals would
be, besides themselves. His horses, his tent, his rifle, his rod, all were
waiting ready in the town for their start to-morrow. He had provided many
dainty things to make her comfortable. Well, he could wait a little more,
having waited three years. It would not be what his heart most desired:
there would be the “public eye and the talking of tongues”—but he
could wait. The hour would come when he could be alone with his bride at
last. And so he spoke as if he urged it.
“Never!” she cried. “Never, never!”
She pushed it from her. She would not brook such sacrifice on his part.
Were they not going to her mother in four weeks? If her family had warmly
accepted him—but they had not; and in any case, it had gone too far,
it was too late. She told her lover that she would not hear him, that if
he said any more she would gallop into town separately from him. And for
his sake she would hide deep from him this loneliness of hers, and the
hurt that he had given her in refusing to share with her his trouble with
Trampas, when others must know of it.
Accordingly, they descended the hill slowly together, lingering to spin
out these last miles long. Many rides had taught their horses to go side
by side, and so they went now: the girl sweet and thoughtful in her sedate
gray habit; and the man in his leathern chaps and cartridge belt and
flannel shirt, looking gravely into the distance with the level gaze of
the frontier.
Having read his sweetheart’s mind very plainly, the lover now broke his
dearest custom. It was his code never to speak ill of any man to any
woman. Men’s quarrels were not for women’s ears. In his scheme, good women
were to know only a fragment of men’s lives. He had lived many outlaw
years, and his wide knowledge of evil made innocence doubly precious to
him. But to-day he must depart from his code, having read her mind well.
He would speak evil of one man to one woman, because his reticence had
hurt her—and was she not far from her mother, and very lonely, do
what he could? She should know the story of his quarrel in language as
light and casual as he could veil it with.
He made an oblique start. He did not say to her: “I’ll tell you about
this. You saw me get ready for Trampas because I have been ready for him
any time these five years.” He began far off from the point with that
rooted caution of his—that caution which is shared by the primal
savage and the perfected diplomat.
“There’s cert’nly a right smart o’ difference between men and women,” he
observed.
“You’re quite sure?” she retorted.
“Ain’t it fortunate?—that there’s both, I mean.”
“I don’t know about fortunate. Machinery could probably do all the heavy
work for us without your help.”
“And who’d invent the machinery?”
She laughed. “We shouldn’t need the huge, noisy things you do. Our world
would be a gentle one.”
“Oh, my gracious!”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, my gracious! Get along, Monte! A gentle world all full of ladies!”
“Do you call men gentle?” inquired Molly.
“Now it’s a funny thing about that. Have yu’ ever noticed a joke about
fathers-in-law? There’s just as many fathers—as mothers-in-law; but
which side are your jokes?”
Molly was not vanquished. “That’s because the men write the comic papers,”
said she.
“Hear that, Monte? The men write ’em. Well, if the ladies wrote a comic
paper, I expect that might be gentle.”
She gave up this battle in mirth; and he resumed:— “But don’t you
really reckon it’s uncommon to meet a father-in-law flouncin’ around the
house? As for gentle—Once I had to sleep in a room next a ladies’
temperance meetin’. Oh, heavens! Well, I couldn’t change my room, and the
hotel man, he apologized to me next mawnin’. Said it didn’t surprise him
the husbands drank some.”
Here the Virginian broke down over his own fantastic inventions, and gave
a joyous chuckle in company with his sweetheart. “Yes, there’s a big heap
o’ difference between men and women,” he said. “Take that fello’ and
myself, now.”
“Trampas?” said Molly, quickly serious. She looked along the road ahead,
and discerned the figure of Trampas still visible on its way to town.
The Virginian did not wish her to be serious—more than could be
helped. “Why, yes,” he replied, with a waving gesture at Trampas. “Take
him and me. He don’t think much o’ me! How could he? And I expect he’ll
never. But yu’ saw just now how it was between us. We were not a bit like
a temperance meetin’.”
She could not help laughing at the twist he gave to his voice. And she
felt happiness warming her; for in the Virginian’s tone about Trampas was
something now that no longer excluded her. Thus he began his gradual
recital, in a cadence always easy, and more and more musical with the
native accent of the South. With the light turn he gave it, its pure
ugliness melted into charm.
“No, he don’t think anything of me. Once a man in the John Day Valley
didn’t think much, and by Cañada de Oro I met another. It will always be
so here and there, but Trampas beats ’em all. For the others have always
expressed themselves—got shut of their poor opinion in the open
air.”
“Yu’ see, I had to explain myself to Trampas a right smart while ago, long
before ever I laid my eyes on yu’. It was just nothing at all. A little
matter of cyards in the days when I was apt to spend my money and my
holidays pretty headlong. My gracious, what nonsensical times I have had!
But I was apt to win at cyards, ‘specially poker. And Trampas, he met me
one night, and I expect he must have thought I looked kind o’ young. So he
hated losin’ his money to such a young-lookin’ man, and he took his way of
sayin’ as much. I had to explain myself to him plainly, so that he learned
right away my age had got its growth.
“Well, I expect he hated that worse, having to receive my explanation with
folks lookin’ on at us publicly that-a-way, and him without further ideas
occurrin’ to him at the moment. That’s what started his poor opinion of
me, not havin’ ideas at the moment. And so the boys resumed their cyards.
“I’d most forgot about it. But Trampas’s mem’ry is one of his strong
points. Next thing—oh, it’s a good while later—he gets to
losin’ flesh because Judge Henry gave me charge of him and some other
punchers taking cattle—”
“That’s not next,” interrupted the girl.
“Not? Why—”
“Don’t you remember?” she said, timid, yet eager. “Don’t you?”
“Blamed if I do!”
“The first time we met?”
“Yes; my mem’ry keeps that—like I keep this.” And he brought from
his pocket her own handkerchief, the token he had picked up at a river’s
brink when he had carried her from an overturned stage.
“We did not exactly meet, then,” she said. “It was at that dance. I hadn’t
seen you yet; but Trampas was saying something horrid about me, and you
said—you said, ‘Rise on your legs, you pole cat, and tell them
you’re a liar.’ When I heard that, I think—I think it finished me.”
And crimson suffused Molly’s countenance.
“I’d forgot,” the Virginian murmured. Then sharply, “How did you hear it?”
“Mrs. Taylor—”
“Oh! Well, a man would never have told a woman that.”
Molly laughed triumphantly. “Then who told Mrs. Taylor?”
Being caught, he grinned at her. “I reckon husbands are a special kind of
man,” was all that he found to say. “Well, since you do know about that,
it was the next move in the game. Trampas thought I had no call to stop
him sayin’ what he pleased about a woman who was nothin’ to me—then.
But all women ought to be somethin’ to a man. So I had to give Trampas
another explanation in the presence of folks lookin’ on, and it was just
like the cyards. No ideas occurred to him again. And down goes his opinion
of me some more!
“Well, I have not been able to raise it. There has been this and that and
the other,—yu’ know most of the later doings yourself,—and
to-day is the first time I’ve happened to see the man since the doings
last autumn. Yu’ seem to know about them, too. He knows I can’t prove he
was with that gang of horse thieves. And I can’t prove he killed poor
Shorty. But he knows I missed him awful close, and spoiled his thieving
for a while. So d’ yu’ wonder he don’t think much of me? But if I had
lived to be twenty-nine years old like I am, and with all my chances made
no enemy, I’d feel myself a failure.”
His story was finished. He had made her his confidant in matters he had
never spoken of before, and she was happy to be thus much nearer to him.
It diminished a certain fear that was mingled with her love of him.
During the next several miles he was silent, and his silence was enough
for her. Vermont sank away from her thoughts, and Wyoming held less of
loneliness. They descended altogether into the map which had stretched
below them, so that it was a map no longer, but earth with growing things,
and prairie-dogs sitting upon it, and now and then a bird flying over it.
And after a while she said to him, “What are you thinking about?”
“I have been doing sums. Figured in hours it sounds right short. Figured
in minutes it boils up into quite a mess. Twenty by sixty is twelve
hundred. Put that into seconds, and yu’ get seventy-two thousand seconds.
Seventy-two thousand. Seventy-two thousand seconds yet before we get
married.”
“Seconds! To think of its having come to seconds!”
“I am thinkin’ about it. I’m choppin’ sixty of ’em off every minute.”
With such chopping time wears away. More miles of the road lay behind
them, and in the virgin wilderness the scars of new-scraped water ditches
began to appear, and the first wire fences. Next, they were passing cabins
and occasional fields, the outposts of habitation. The free road became
wholly imprisoned, running between unbroken stretches of barbed wire. Far
off to the eastward a flowing column of dust marked the approaching stage,
bringing the bishop, probably, for whose visit here they had timed their
wedding. The day still brimmed with heat and sunshine; but the great daily
shadow was beginning to move from the feet of the Bow Leg Mountains
outward toward the town. Presently they began to meet citizens. Some of
these knew them and nodded, while some did not, and stared. Turning a
corner into the town’s chief street, where stood the hotel, the bank, the
drug store, the general store, and the seven saloons, they were hailed
heartily. Here were three friends,—Honey Wiggin, Scipio Le Moyne,
and Lin McLean,—all desirous of drinking the Virginian’s health, if
his lady—would she mind? The three stood grinning, with their hats
off; but behind their gayety the Virginian read some other purpose.
“We’ll all be very good,” said Honey Wiggin.
“Pretty good,” said Lin.
“Good,” said Scipio.
“Which is the honest man?” inquired Molly, glad to see them.
“Not one!” said the Virginian. “My old friends scare me when I think of
their ways.”
“It’s bein’ engaged scares yu’,” retorted Mr. McLean. “Marriage restores
your courage, I find.”
“Well, I’ll trust all of you,” said Molly. “He’s going to take me to the
hotel, and then you can drink his health as much as you please.”
With a smile to them she turned to proceed, and he let his horse move with
hers; but he looked at his friends. Then Scipio’s bleached blue eyes
narrowed to a slit, and he said what they had all come out on the street
to say:— “Don’t change your clothes.”
“Oh!” protested Molly, “isn’t he rather dusty and countrified?”
But the Virginian had taken Scipio’s meaning. “DON’T CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES.”
Innocent Molly appreciated these words no more than the average reader who
reads a masterpiece, complacently unaware that its style differs from that
of the morning paper. Such was Scipio’s intention, wishing to spare her
from alarm.
So at the hotel she let her lover go with a kiss, and without a thought of
Trampas. She in her room unlocked the possessions which were there waiting
for her, and changed her dress.
Wedding garments, and other civilized apparel proper for a genuine
frontiersman when he comes to town, were also in the hotel, ready for the
Virginian to wear. It is only the somewhat green and unseasoned
cow-puncher who struts before the public in spurs and deadly weapons. For
many a year the Virginian had put away these childish things. He made a
sober toilet for the streets. Nothing but his face and bearing remained
out of the common when he was in a town. But Scipio had told him not to
change his clothes; therefore he went out with his pistol at his hip. Soon
he had joined his three friends.
“I’m obliged to yu’,” he said. “He passed me this mawnin’.”
“We don’t know his intentions,” said Wiggin.
“Except that he’s hangin’ around,” said McLean.
“And fillin’ up,” said Scipio, “which reminds me—”
They strolled into the saloon of a friend, where, unfortunately, sat some
foolish people. But one cannot always tell how much of a fool a man is, at
sight.
It was a temperate health-drinking that they made. “Here’s how,” they
muttered softly to the Virginian; and “How,” he returned softly, looking
away from them. But they had a brief meeting of eyes, standing and
lounging near each other, shyly; and Scipio shook hands with the
bridegroom. “Some day,” he stated, tapping himself; for in his vagrant
heart he began to envy the man who could bring himself to marry. And he
nodded again, repeating, “Here’s how.”
They stood at the bar, full of sentiment, empty of words, memory and
affection busy in their hearts. All of them had seen rough days together,
and they felt guilty with emotion.
“It’s hot weather,” said Wiggin.
“Hotter on Box Elder,” said McLean. “My kid has started teething.”
Words ran dry again. They shifted their positions, looked in their
glasses, read the labels on the bottles. They dropped a word now and then
to the proprietor about his trade, and his ornaments.
“Good head,” commented McLean.
“Big old ram,” assented the proprietor. “Shot him myself on Gray Bull last
fall.”
“Sheep was thick in the Tetons last fall,” said the Virginian.
On the bar stood a machine into which the idle customer might drop his
nickel. The coin then bounced among an arrangement of pegs, descending at
length into one or another of various holes. You might win as much as ten
times your stake, but this was not the most usual result; and with nickels
the three friends and the bridegroom now mildly sported for a while,
buying them with silver when their store ran out.
“Was it sheep you went after in the Tetons?” inquired the proprietor,
knowing it was horse thieves.
“Yes,” said the Virginian. “I’ll have ten more nickels.”
“Did you get all the sheep you wanted?” the proprietor continued.
“Poor luck,” said the Virginian.
“Think there’s a friend of yours in town this afternoon,” said the
proprietor.
“Did he mention he was my friend?”
The proprietor laughed. The Virginian watched another nickel click down
among the pegs.
Honey Wiggin now made the bridegroom a straight offer. “We’ll take this
thing off your hands,” said he.
“Any or all of us,” said Lin.
But Scipio held his peace. His loyalty went every inch as far as theirs,
but his understanding of his friend went deeper. “Don’t change your
clothes,” was the first and the last help he would be likely to give in
this matter. The rest must be as such matters must always be, between man
and man. To the other two friends, however, this seemed a very special
case, falling outside established precedent. Therefore they ventured
offers of interference.
“A man don’t get married every day,” apologized McLean. “We’ll just run
him out of town for yu’.”
“Save yu’ the trouble,” urged Wiggin. “Say the word.”
The proprietor now added his voice. “It’ll sober him up to spend his night
out in the brush. He’ll quit his talk then.”
But the Virginian did not say the word, or any word. He stood playing with
the nickels.
“Think of her,” muttered McLean.
“Who else would I be thinking of?” returned the Southerner. His face had
become very sombre. “She has been raised so different!” he murmured. He
pondered a little, while the others waited, solicitous.
A new idea came to the proprietor. “I am acting mayor of this town,” said
he. “I’ll put him in the calaboose and keep him till you get married and
away.”
“Say the word,” repeated Honey Wiggin.
Scipio’s eye met the proprietor’s, and he shook his head about a quarter
of an inch. The proprietor shook his to the same amount. They understood
each other. It had come to that point where there was no way out, save
only the ancient, eternal way between man and man. It is only the great
mediocrity that goes to law in these personal matters.
“So he has talked about me some?” said the Virginian.
“It’s the whiskey,” Scipio explained.
“I expect,” said McLean, “he’d run a mile if he was in a state to
appreciate his insinuations.”
“Which we are careful not to mention to yu’,” said Wiggin, “unless yu’
inquire for ’em.”
Some of the fools present had drawn closer to hear this interesting
conversation. In gatherings of more than six there will generally be at
least one fool; and this company must have numbered twenty men.
“This country knows well enough,” said one fool, who hungered to be
important, “that you don’t brand no calves that ain’t your own.”
The saturnine Virginian looked at him. “Thank yu’,” said he, gravely, “for
your indorsement of my character.” The fool felt flattered. The Virginian
turned to his friends. His hand slowly pushed his hat back, and he rubbed
his black head in thought.
“Glad to see yu’ve got your gun with you,” continued the happy fool. “You
know what Trampas claims about that affair of yours in the Tetons? He
claims that if everything was known about the killing of Shorty—”
“Take one on the house,” suggested the proprietor to him, amiably. “Your
news will be fresher.” And he pushed him the bottle. The fool felt less
important.
“This talk had went the rounds before it got to us,” said Scipio, “or we’d
have headed it off. He has got friends in town.”
Perplexity knotted the Virginian’s brows. This community knew that a man
had implied he was a thief and a murderer; it also knew that he knew it.
But the case was one of peculiar circumstances, assuredly. Could he avoid
meeting the man? Soon the stage would be starting south for the railroad.
He had already to-day proposed to his sweetheart that they should take it.
Could he for her sake leave unanswered a talking enemy upon the field? His
own ears had not heard the enemy.
Into these reflections the fool stepped once more. “Of course this country
don’t believe Trampas,” said he. “This country—”
But he contributed no further thoughts. From somewhere in the rear of the
building, where it opened upon the tin cans and the hinder purlieus of the
town, came a movement, and Trampas was among them, courageous with
whiskey.
All the fools now made themselves conspicuous. One lay on the floor,
knocked there by the Virginian, whose arm he had attempted to hold. Others
struggled with Trampas, and his bullet smashed the ceiling before they
could drag the pistol from him. “There now! there now!” they interposed;
“you don’t want to talk like that,” for he was pouring out a tide of hate
and vilification. Yet the Virginian stood quiet by the bar, and many an
eye of astonishment was turned upon him. “I’d not stand half that
language,” some muttered to each other. Still the Virginian waited
quietly, while the fools reasoned with Trampas. But no earthly foot can
step between a man and his destiny. Trampas broke suddenly free.
“Your friends have saved your life,” he rang out, with obscene epithets.
“I’ll give you till sundown to leave town.”
There was total silence instantly.
“Trampas,” spoke the Virginian, “I don’t want trouble with you.”
“He never has wanted it,” Trampas sneered to the bystanders. “He has been
dodging it five years. But I’ve got him coralled.”
Some of the Trampas faction smiled.
“Trampas,” said the Virginian again, “are yu’ sure yu’ really mean that?”
The whiskey bottle flew through the air, hurled by Trampas, and crashed
through the saloon window behind the Virginian.
“That was surplusage, Trampas,” said he, “if yu’ mean the other.”
“Get out by sundown, that’s all,” said Trampas. And wheeling, he went out
of the saloon by the rear, as he had entered.
“Gentlemen,” said the Virginian, “I know you will all oblige me.”
“Sure!” exclaimed the proprietor, heartily, “We’ll see that everybody lets
this thing alone.”
The Virginian gave a general nod to the company, and walked out into the
street.
“It’s a turruble shame,” sighed Scipio, “that he couldn’t have postponed
it.”
The Virginian walked in the open air with thoughts disturbed. “I am of two
minds about one thing,” he said to himself uneasily.
Gossip ran in advance of him; but as he came by, the talk fell away until
he had passed. Then they looked after him, and their words again rose
audibly. Thus everywhere a little eddy of silence accompanied his steps.
“It don’t trouble him much,” one said, having read nothing in the
Virginian’s face.
“It may trouble his girl some,” said another.
“She’ll not know,” said a third, “until it’s over.”
“He’ll not tell her?”
“I wouldn’t. It’s no woman’s business.”
“Maybe that’s so. Well, it would have suited me to have Trampas die
sooner.”
“How would it suit you to have him live longer?” inquired a member of the
opposite faction, suspected of being himself a cattle thief.
“I could answer your question, if I had other folks’ calves I wanted to
brand.” This raised both a laugh and a silence.
Thus the town talked, filling in the time before sunset.
The Virginian, still walking aloof in the open air, paused at the edge of
the town. “I’d sooner have a sickness than be undecided this way,” he
said, and he looked up and down. Then a grim smile came at his own
expense. “I reckon it would make me sick—but there’s not time.”
Over there in the hotel sat his sweetheart alone, away from her mother,
her friends, her home, waiting his return, knowing nothing. He looked into
the west. Between the sun and the bright ridges of the mountains was still
a space of sky; but the shadow from the mountains’ feet had drawn halfway
toward the town. “About forty minutes more,” he said aloud. “She has been
raised so different.” And he sighed as he turned back. As he went slowly,
he did not know how great was his own unhappiness. “She has been raised so
different,” he said again.
Opposite the post-office the bishop of Wyoming met him and greeted him.
His lonely heart throbbed at the warm, firm grasp of this friend’s hand.
The bishop saw his eyes glow suddenly, as if tears were close. But none
came, and no word more open than, “I’m glad to see you.”
But gossip had reached the bishop, and he was sorely troubled also. “What
is all this?” said he, coming straight to it.
The Virginian looked at the clergyman frankly. “Yu’ know just as much
about it as I do,” he said. “And I’ll tell yu’ anything yu’ ask.”
“Have you told Miss Wood?” inquired the bishop.
The eyes of the bridegroom fell, and the bishop’s face grew at once more
keen and more troubled. Then the bridegroom raised his eyes again, and the
bishop almost loved him. He touched his arm, like a brother. “This is hard
luck,” he said.
The bridegroom could scarce keep his voice steady. “I want to do right
to-day more than any day I have ever lived,” said he.
“Then go and tell her at once.”
“It will just do nothing but scare her.”
“Go and tell her at once.”
“I expected you was going to tell me to run away from Trampas. I can’t do
that, yu’ know.”
The bishop did know. Never before in all his wilderness work had he faced
such a thing. He knew that Trampas was an evil in the country, and that
the Virginian was a good. He knew that the cattle thieves—the
rustlers—were gaining, in numbers and audacity; that they led many
weak young fellows to ruin; that they elected their men to office, and
controlled juries; that they were a staring menace to Wyoming. His heart
was with the Virginian. But there was his Gospel, that he preached, and
believed, and tried to live. He stood looking at the ground and drawing a
finger along his eyebrow. He wished that he might have heard nothing about
all this. But he was not one to blink his responsibility as a Christian
server of the church militant.
“Am I right,” he now slowly asked, “in believing that you think I am a
sincere man?”
“I don’t believe anything about it. I know it.”
“I should run away from Trampas,” said the bishop.
“That ain’t quite fair, seh. We all understand you have got to do the
things you tell other folks to do. And you do them, seh. You never talk
like anything but a man, and you never set yourself above others. You can
saddle your own horses. And I saw yu’ walk unarmed into that White River
excitement when those two other parsons was a-foggin’ and a-fannin’ for
their own safety. Damn scoundrels!”
The bishop instantly rebuked such language about brothers of his cloth,
even though he disapproved both of them and their doctrines. “Every one
may be an instrument of Providence,” he concluded.
“Well,” said the Virginian, “if that is so, then Providence makes use of
instruments I’d not touch with a ten-foot pole. Now if you was me, seh,
and not a bishop, would you run away from Trampas?”
“That’s not quite fair, either!” exclaimed the bishop, with a smile.
“Because you are asking me to take another man’s convictions, and yet
remain myself.”
“Yes, seh. I am. That’s so. That don’t get at it. I reckon you and I can’t
get at it.”
“If the Bible,” said the bishop, “which I believe to be God’s word, was
anything to you—”
“It is something to me, seh. I have found fine truths in it.”
“’Thou shalt not kill,’” quoted the bishop. “That is plain.”
The Virginian took his turn at smiling. “Mighty plain to me, seh. Make it
plain to Trampas, and there’ll be no killin’. We can’t get at it that
way.”
Once more the bishop quoted earnestly. “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay,
saith the Lord.’”
“How about instruments of Providence, seh? Why, we can’t get at it that
way. If you start usin’ the Bible that way, it will mix you up mighty
quick, seh.”
“My friend,” the bishop urged, and all his good, warm heart was in it, “my
dear fellow—go away for the one night. He’ll change his mind.”
The Virginian shook his head. “He cannot change his word, seh. Or at least
I must stay around till he does. Why, I have given him the say-so. He’s
got the choice. Most men would not have took what I took from him in the
saloon. Why don’t you ask him to leave town?”
The good bishop was at a standstill. Of all kicking against the pricks
none is so hard as this kick of a professing Christian against the whole
instinct of human man.
“But you have helped me some,” said the Virginian. “I will go and tell
her. At least, if I think it will be good for her, I will tell her.”
The bishop thought that he saw one last chance to move him.
“You’re twenty-nine,” he began.
“And a little over,” said the Virginian.
“And you were fourteen when you ran away from your family.”
“Well, I was weary, yu’ know, of havin’ elder brothers lay down my law
night and mawnin’.”
“Yes, I know. So that your life has been your own for fifteen years. But
it is not your own now. You have given it to a woman.”
“Yes; I have given it to her. But my life’s not the whole of me. I’d give
her twice my life—fifty—a thousand of ’em. But I can’t give
her—her nor anybody in heaven or earth—I can’t give my—my—we’ll
never get at it, seh! There’s no good in words. Good-by.” The Virginian
wrung the bishop’s hand and left him.
“God bless him!” said the bishop. “God bless him!”
The Virginian unlocked the room in the hotel where he kept stored his
tent, his blankets, his pack-saddles, and his many accoutrements for the
bridal journey in the mountains. Out of the window he saw the mountains
blue in shadow, but some cottonwoods distant in the flat between were
still bright green in the sun. From among his possessions he took quickly
a pistol, wiping and loading it. Then from its holster he removed the
pistol which he had tried and made sure of in the morning. This, according
to his wont when going into a risk, he shoved between his trousers and his
shirt in front. The untried weapon he placed in the holster, letting it
hang visibly at his hip. He glanced out of the window again, and saw the
mountains of the same deep blue. But the cottonwoods were no longer in the
sunlight. The shadow had come past them, nearer the town; for fifteen of
the forty minutes were gone. “The bishop is wrong,” he said. “There is no
sense in telling her.” And he turned to the door, just as she came to it
herself.
“Oh!” she cried out at once, and rushed to him.
He swore as he held her close. “The fools!” he said. “The fools!”
“It has been so frightful waiting for you,” said she, leaning her head
against him.
“Who had to tell you this?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Somebody just came and said it.”
“This is mean luck,” he murmured, patting her. “This is mean luck.”
She went on: “I wanted to run out and find you; but I didn’t! I didn’t! I
stayed quiet in my room till they said you had come back.”
“It is mean luck. Mighty mean,” he repeated.
“How could you be so long?” she asked. “Never mind, I’ve got you now. It
is over.”
Anger and sorrow filled him. “I might have known some fool would tell
you,” he said.
“It’s all over. Never mind.” Her arms tightened their hold of him. Then
she let him go. “What shall we do?” she said. “What now?”
“Now?” he answered. “Nothing now.”
She looked at him without understanding.
“I know it is a heap worse for you,” he pursued, speaking slowly. “I knew
it would be.”
“But it is over!” she exclaimed again.
He did not understand her now. He kissed her. “Did you think it was over?”
he said simply. “There is some waiting still before us. I wish you did not
have to wait alone. But it will not be long.” He was looking down, and did
not see the happiness grow chilled upon her face, and then fade into
bewildered fear. “I did my best,” he went on. “I think I did. I know I
tried. I let him say to me before them all what no man has ever said, or
ever will again. I kept thinking hard of you—with all my might, or I
reckon I’d have killed him right there. And I gave him a show to change
his mind. I gave it to him twice. I spoke as quiet as I am speaking to you
now. But he stood to it. And I expect he knows he went too far in the
hearing of others to go back on his threat. He will have to go on to the
finish now.”
“The finish?” she echoed, almost voiceless.
“Yes,” he answered very gently.
Her dilated eyes were fixed upon him. “But—” she could scarce form
utterance, “but you?”
“I have got myself ready,” he said. “Did you think—why, what did you
think?”
She recoiled a step. “What are you going—” She put her two hands to
her head. “Oh, God!” she almost shrieked, “you are going—” He made a
step, and would have put his arm round her, but she backed against the
wall, staring speechless at him.
“I am not going to let him shoot me,” he said quietly.
“You mean—you mean—but you can come away!” she cried. “It’s
not too late yet. You can take yourself out of his reach. Everybody knows
that you are brave. What is he to you? You can leave him in this place.
I’ll go with you anywhere. To any house, to the mountains, to anywhere
away. We’ll leave this horrible place together and—and—oh,
won’t you listen to me?” She stretched her hands to him. “Won’t you
listen?”
He took her hands. “I must stay here.”
Her hands clung to his. “No, no, no. There’s something else. There’s
something better than shedding blood in cold blood. Only think what it
means! Only think of having to remember such a thing! Why, it’s what they
hang people for! It’s murder!”
He dropped her hands. “Don’t call it that name,” he said sternly.
“When there was the choice!” she exclaimed, half to herself, like a person
stunned and speaking to the air. “To get ready for it when you have the
choice!”
“He did the choosing,” answered the Virginian. “Listen to me. Are you
listening?” he asked, for her gaze was dull.
She nodded.
“I work hyeh. I belong hyeh. It’s my life. If folks came to think I was a
coward—”
“Who would think you were a coward?”
“Everybody. My friends would be sorry and ashamed, and my enemies would
walk around saying they had always said so. I could not hold up my head
again among enemies or friends.”
“When it was explained—”
“There’d be nothing to explain. There’d just be the fact.” He was nearly
angry.
“There is a higher courage than fear of outside opinion,” said the New
England girl.
Her Southern lover looked at her. “Cert’nly there is. That’s what I’m
showing in going against yours.”
“But if you know that you are brave, and if I know that you are brave, oh,
my dear, my dear! what difference does the world make? How much higher
courage to go your own course—”
“I am goin’ my own course,” he broke in. “Can’t yu’ see how it must be
about a man? It’s not for their benefit, friends or enemies, that I have
got this thing to do. If any man happened to say I was a thief and I heard
about it, would I let him go on spreadin’ such a thing of me? Don’t I owe
my own honesty something better than that? Would I sit down in a corner
rubbin’ my honesty and whisperin’ to it, ‘There! there! I know you ain’t a
thief?’ No, seh; not a little bit! What men say about my nature is not
just merely an outside thing. For the fact that I let ’em keep on sayin’
it is a proof I don’t value my nature enough to shield it from their
slander and give them their punishment. And that’s being a poor sort of a
jay.”
She had grown very white.
“Can’t yu’ see how it must be about a man?” he repeated.
“I cannot,” she answered, in a voice that scarcely seemed her own. “If I
ought to, I cannot. To shed blood in cold blood. When I heard about that
last fall,—about the killing of those cattle thieves,—I kept
saying to myself: ‘He had to do it. It was a public duty.’ And lying
sleepless I got used to Wyoming being different from Vermont. But this—”
she gave a shudder—“when I think of to-morrow, of you and me, and of—
If you do this, there can be no to-morrow for you and me.”
At these words he also turned white.
“Do you mean—” he asked, and could go no farther.
Nor could she answer him, but turned her head away.
“This would be the end?” he asked.
Her head faintly moved to signify yes.
He stood still, his hand shaking a little. “Will you look at me and say
that?” he murmured at length. She did not move. “Can you do it?” he said.
His sweetness made her turn, but could not pierce her frozen resolve. She
gazed at him across the great distance of her despair.
“Then it is really so?” he said.
Her lips tried to form words, but failed.
He looked out of the window, and saw nothing but shadow. The blue of the
mountains was now become a deep purple. Suddenly his hand closed hard.
“Good-by, then,” he said.
At that word she was at his feet, clutching him. “For my sake,” she begged
him. “For my sake.”
A tremble passed through his frame. She felt his legs shake as she held
them, and, looking up, she saw that his eyes were closed with misery. Then
he opened them, and in their steady look she read her answer. He unclasped
her hands from holding him, and raised her to her feet.
“I have no right to kiss you any more,” he said. And then, before his
desire could break him down from this, he was gone, and she was alone.
She did not fall, or totter, but stood motionless. And next—it
seemed a moment and it seemed eternity—she heard in the distance a
shot, and then two shots. Out of the window she saw people beginning to
run. At that she turned and fled to her room, and flung herself face
downward upon the floor.
Trampas had departed into solitude from the saloon, leaving behind him his
ULTIMATUM. His loud and public threat was town knowledge already, would
very likely be county knowledge to-night. Riders would take it with them
to entertain distant cabins up the river and down the river; and by dark
the stage would go south with the news of it—and the news of its
outcome. For everything would be over by dark. After five years, here was
the end coming—coming before dark. Trampas had got up this morning
with no such thought. It seemed very strange to look back upon the
morning; it lay so distant, so irrevocable. And he thought of how he had
eaten his breakfast. How would he eat his supper? For supper would come
afterward. Some people were eating theirs now, with nothing like this
before them. His heart ached and grew cold to think of them, easy and
comfortable with plates and cups of coffee.
He looked at the mountains, and saw the sun above their ridges, and the
shadow coming from their feet. And there close behind him was the morning
he could never go back to. He could see it clearly; his thoughts reached
out like arms to touch it once more, and be in it again. The night that
was coming he could not see, and his eyes and his thoughts shrank from it.
He had given his enemy until sundown. He could not trace the path which
had led him to this. He remembered their first meeting—five years
back, in Medicine Bow, and the words which at once began his hate. No, it
was before any words; it was the encounter of their eyes. For out of the
eyes of every stranger looks either a friend or an enemy, waiting to be
known. But how had five years of hate come to play him such a trick,
suddenly, to-day? Since last autumn he had meant sometime to get even with
this man who seemed to stand at every turn of his crookedness, and rob him
of his spoils. But how had he come to choose such a way of getting even as
this, face to face? He knew many better ways; and now his own rash
proclamation had trapped him. His words were like doors shutting him in to
perform his threat to the letter, with witnesses at hand to see that he
did so.
Trampas looked at the sun and the shadow again. He had till sundown. The
heart inside him was turning it round in this opposite way: it was to
HIMSELF that in his rage he had given this lessening margin of grace. But
he dared not leave town in all the world’s sight after all the world had
heard him. Even his friends would fall from him after such an act. Could
he—the thought actually came to him—could he strike before the
time set? But the thought was useless. Even if his friends could harbor
him after such a deed, his enemies would find him, and his life would be
forfeit to a certainty. His own trap was closing upon him.
He came upon the main street, and saw some distance off the Virginian
standing in talk with the bishop. He slunk between two houses, and cursed
both of them. The sight had been good for him, bringing some warmth of
rage back to his desperate heart. And he went into a place and drank some
whiskey.
“In your shoes,” said the barkeeper, “I’d be afraid to take so much.”
But the nerves of Trampas were almost beyond the reach of intoxication,
and he swallowed some more, and went out again. Presently he fell in with
some of his brothers in cattle stealing, and walked along with them for a
little.
“Well, it will not be long now,” they said to him. And he had never heard
words so desolate.
“No,” he made out to say; “soon now.” Their cheerfulness seemed unearthly
to him, and his heart almost broke beneath it.
“We’ll have one to your success,” they suggested.
So with them he repaired to another place; and the sight of a man leaning
against the bar made him start so that they noticed him. Then he saw that
the man was a stranger whom he had never laid eyes on till now.
“It looked like Shorty,” he said, and could have bitten his tongue off.
“Shorty is quiet up in the Tetons,” said a friend. “You don’t want to be
thinking about him. Here’s how!”
Then they clapped him on the back and he left them. He thought of his
enemy and his hate, beating his rage like a failing horse, and treading
the courage of his drink. Across a space he saw Wiggin, walking with
McLean and Scipio. They were watching the town to see that his friends
made no foul play.
“We’re giving you a clear field,” said Wiggin.
“This race will not be pulled,” said McLean.
“Be with you at the finish,” said Scipio.
And they passed on. They did not seem like real people to him.
Trampas looked at the walls and windows of the houses. Were they real? Was
he here, walking in this street? Something had changed. He looked
everywhere, and feeling it everywhere, wondered what this could be. Then
he knew: it was the sun that had gone entirely behind the mountains, and
he drew out his pistol.
The Virginian, for precaution, did not walk out of the front door of the
hotel. He went through back ways, and paused once. Against his breast he
felt the wedding ring where he had it suspended by a chain from his neck.
His hand went up to it, and he drew it out and looked at it. He took it
off the chain, and his arm went back to hurl it from him as far as he
could. But he stopped and kissed it with one sob, and thrust it in his
pocket. Then he walked out into the open, watching. He saw men here and
there, and they let him pass as before, without speaking. He saw his three
friends, and they said no word to him. But they turned and followed in his
rear at a little distance, because it was known that Shorty had been found
shot from behind. The Virginian gained a position soon where no one could
come at him except from in front; and the sight of the mountains was
almost more than he could endure, because it was there that he had been
going to-morrow.
“It is quite a while after sunset,” he heard himself say.
A wind seemed to blow his sleeve off his arm, and he replied to it, and
saw Trampas pitch forward. He saw Trampas raise his arm from the ground
and fall again, and lie there this time, still. A little smoke was rising
from the pistol on the ground, and he looked at his own, and saw the smoke
flowing upward out of it.
“I expect that’s all,” he said aloud.
But as he came nearer Trampas, he covered him with his weapon. He stopped
a moment, seeing the hand on the ground move. Two fingers twitched, and
then ceased; for it was all. The Virginian stood looking down at Trampas.
“Both of mine hit,” he said, once more aloud. “His must have gone mighty
close to my arm. I told her it would not be me.”
He had scarcely noticed that he was being surrounded and congratulated.
His hand was being shaken, and he saw it was Scipio in tears. Scipio’s joy
made his heart like lead within him. He was near telling his friend
everything, but he did not.
“If anybody wants me about this,” he said, “I will be at the hotel.”
“Who’ll want you?” said Scipio. “Three of us saw his gun out.” And he
vented his admiration. “You were that cool! That quick!”
“I’ll see you boys again,” said the Virginian, heavily; and he walked
away.
Scipio looked after him, astonished. “Yu’ might suppose he was in poor
luck,” he said to McLean.
The Virginian walked to the hotel, and stood on the threshold of his
sweetheart’s room. She had heard his step, and was upon her feet. Her lips
were parted, and her eyes fixed on him, nor did she move, or speak.
“Yu’ have to know it,” said he. “I have killed Trampas.”
“Oh, thank God!” she said; and he found her in his arms. Long they
embraced without speaking, and what they whispered then with their kisses,
matters not.
Thus did her New England conscience battle to the end, and, in the end,
capitulate to love. And the next day, with the bishop’s blessing, and Mrs.
Taylor’s broadest smile, and the ring on her finger, the Virginian
departed with his bride into the mountains.
XXXVI. AT DUNBARTON
For their first bridal camp he chose an island. Long weeks beforehand he
had thought of this place, and set his heart upon it. Once established in
his mind, the thought became a picture that he saw waking and sleeping. He
had stopped at the island many times alone, and in all seasons; but at
this special moment of the year he liked it best. Often he had added
several needless miles to his journey that he might finish the day at this
point, might catch the trout for his supper beside a certain rock upon its
edge, and fall asleep hearing the stream on either side of him.
Always for him the first signs that he had gained the true world of the
mountains began at the island. The first pine trees stood upon it; the
first white columbine grew in their shade; and it seemed to him that he
always met here the first of the true mountain air—the coolness and
the new fragrance. Below, there were only the cottonwoods, and the knolls
and steep foot-hills with their sage-brush, and the great warm air of the
plains; here at this altitude came the definite change. Out of the lower
country and its air he would urge his horse upward, talking to him aloud,
and promising fine pasture in a little while.
Then, when at length he had ridden abreast of the island pines, he would
ford to the sheltered circle of his camp-ground, throw off the saddle and
blanket from the horse’s hot, wet back, throw his own clothes off, and,
shouting, spring upon the horse bare, and with a rope for bridle, cross
with him to the promised pasture. Here there was a pause in the mountain
steepness, a level space of open, green with thick grass. Riding his horse
to this, he would leap off him, and with the flat of his hand give him a
blow that cracked sharp in the stillness and sent the horse galloping and
gambolling to his night’s freedom. And while the animal rolled in the
grass, often his master would roll also, and stretch, and take the grass
in his two hands, and so draw his body along, limbering his muscles after
a long ride. Then he would slide into the stream below his fishing place,
where it was deep enough for swimming, and cross back to his island, and
dressing again, fit his rod together and begin his casting. After the
darkness had set in, there would follow the lying drowsily with his head
upon his saddle, the camp-fire sinking as he watched it, and sleep
approaching to the murmur of the water on either side of him.
So many visits to this island had he made, and counted so many hours of
revery spent in its haunting sweetness, that the spot had come to seem his
own. It belonged to no man, for it was deep in the unsurveyed and virgin
wilderness; neither had he ever made his camp here with any man, nor
shared with any the intimate delight which the place gave him. Therefore
for many weeks he had planned to bring her here after their wedding, upon
the day itself, and show her and share with her his pines and his fishing
rock. He would bid her smell the first true breath of the mountains, would
watch with her the sinking camp-fire, and with her listen to the water as
it flowed round the island.
Until this wedding plan, it had by no means come home to him how deep a
hold upon him the island had taken. He knew that he liked to go there, and
go alone; but so little was it his way to scan himself, his mind, or his
feelings (unless some action called for it), that he first learned his
love of the place through his love of her. But he told her nothing of it.
After the thought of taking her there came to him, he kept his island as
something to let break upon her own eyes, lest by looking forward she
should look for more than the reality.
Hence, as they rode along, when the houses of the town were shrunk to dots
behind them, and they were nearing the gates of the foot-hills, she asked
him questions. She hoped they would find a camp a long way from the town.
She could ride as many miles as necessary. She was not tired. Should they
not go on until they found a good place far enough within the solitude?
Had he fixed upon any? And at the nod and the silence that he gave her for
reply, she knew that he had thoughts and intentions which she must wait to
learn.
They passed through the gates of the foot-hills, following the stream up
among them. The outstretching fences and the widely trodden dust were no
more. Now and then they rose again into view of the fields and houses down
in the plain below. But as the sum of the miles and hours grew, they were
glad to see the road less worn with travel, and the traces of men passing
from sight. The ploughed and planted country, that quilt of many-colored
harvests which they had watched yesterday, lay in another world from this
where they rode now. No hand but nature’s had sown these crops of yellow
flowers, these willow thickets and tall cottonwoods. Somewhere in a
passage of red rocks the last sign of wagon wheels was lost, and after
this the trail became a wild mountain trail. But it was still the warm air
of the plains, bearing the sage-brush odor and not the pine, that they
breathed; nor did any forest yet cloak the shapes of the tawny hills among
which they were ascending. Twice the steepness loosened the pack ropes,
and he jumped down to tighten them, lest the horses should get sore backs.
And twice the stream that they followed went into deep canyons, so that
for a while they parted from it. When they came back to its margin for the
second time, he bade her notice how its water had become at last wholly
clear. To her it had seemed clear enough all along, even in the plain
above the town. But now she saw that it flowed lustrously with flashes;
and she knew the soil had changed to mountain soil. Lower down, the water
had carried the slightest cloud of alkali, and this had dulled the keen
edge of its transparence. Full solitude was around them now, so that their
words grew scarce, and when they spoke it was with low voices. They began
to pass nooks and points favorable for camping, with wood and water at
hand, and pasture for the horses. More than once as they reached such
places, she thought he must surely stop; but still he rode on in advance
of her (for the trail was narrow) until, when she was not thinking of it,
he drew rein and pointed.
“What?” she asked timidly.
“The pines,” he answered.
She looked, and saw the island, and the water folding it with ripples and
with smooth spaces. The sun was throwing upon the pine boughs a light of
deepening red gold, and the shadow of the fishing rock lay over a little
bay of quiet water and sandy shore. In this forerunning glow of the
sunset, the pasture spread like emerald; for the dry touch of summer had
not yet come near it. He pointed upward to the high mountains which they
had approached, and showed her where the stream led into their first
unfoldings.
“To-morrow we shall be among them,” said he.
“Then,” she murmured to him, “to-night is here?”
He nodded for answer, and she gazed at the island and understood why he
had not stopped before; nothing they had passed had been so lovely as this
place.
There was room in the trail for them to go side by side; and side by side
they rode to the ford and crossed, driving the packhorses in front of
them, until they came to the sheltered circle, and he helped her down
where the soft pine needles lay. They felt each other tremble, and for a
moment she stood hiding her head upon his breast. Then she looked round at
the trees, and the shores, and the flowing stream, and he heard her
whispering how beautiful it was.
“I am glad,” he said, still holding her. “This is how I have dreamed it
would happen. Only it is better than my dreams.” And when she pressed him
in silence, he finished, “I have meant we should see our first sundown
here, and our first sunrise.”
She wished to help him take the packs from their horses, to make the camp
together with him, to have for her share the building of the fire, and the
cooking. She bade him remember his promise to her that he would teach her
how to loop and draw the pack-ropes, and the swing-ropes on the
pack-saddles, and how to pitch a tent. Why might not the first lesson be
now? But he told her that this should be fulfilled later. This night he
was to do all himself. And he sent her away until he should have camp
ready for them. He bade her explore the island, or take her horse and ride
over to the pasture, where she could see the surrounding hills and the
circle of seclusion that they made.
“The whole world is far from here,” he said. And so she obeyed him, and
went away to wander about in their hiding-place; nor was she to return, he
told her, until he called her.
Then at once, as soon as she was gone, he fell to. The packs and saddles
came off the horses, which he turned loose upon the pasture on the main
land. The tent was unfolded first. He had long seen in his mind where it
should go, and how its white shape would look beneath the green of the
encircling pines. The ground was level in the spot he had chosen, without
stones or roots, and matted with the fallen needles of the pines. If there
should come any wind, or storm of rain, the branches were thick overhead,
and around them on three sides tall rocks and undergrowth made a barrier.
He cut the pegs for the tent, and the front pole, stretching and
tightening the rope, one end of it pegged down and one round a pine tree.
When the tightening rope had lifted the canvas to the proper height from
the ground, he spread and pegged down the sides and back, leaving the
opening so that they could look out upon the fire and a piece of the
stream beyond. He cut tufts of young pine and strewed them thickly for a
soft floor in the tent, and over them spread the buffalo hide and the
blankets. At the head he placed the neat sack of her belongings. For his
own he made a shelter with crossed poles and a sheet of canvas beyond the
first pines. He built the fire where its smoke would float outward from
the trees and the tent, and near it he stood the cooking things and his
provisions, and made this first supper ready in the twilight. He had
brought much with him; but for ten minutes he fished, catching trout
enough. When at length she came riding over the stream at his call, there
was nothing for her to do but sit and eat at the table he had laid. They
sat together, watching the last of the twilight and the gentle oncoming of
the dusk. The final after-glow of day left the sky, and through the purple
which followed it came slowly the first stars, bright and wide apart. They
watched the spaces between them fill with more stars, while near them the
flames and embers of their fire grew brighter. Then he sent her to the
tent while he cleaned the dishes and visited the horses to see that they
did not stray from the pasture. Some while after the darkness was fully
come, he rejoined her. All had been as he had seen it in his thoughts
beforehand: the pines with the setting sun upon them, the sinking
camp-fire, and now the sound of the water as it flowed murmuring by the
shores of the island.
The tent opened to the east, and from it they watched together their first
sunrise. In his thoughts he had seen this morning beforehand also: the
waking, the gentle sound of the water murmuring ceaselessly, the growing
day, the vision of the stream, the sense that the world was shut away far
from them. So did it all happen, except that he whispered to her again:—
“Better than my dreams.”
They saw the sunlight begin upon a hilltop; and presently came the sun
itself, and lakes of warmth flowed into the air, slowly filling the green
solitude. Along the island shores the ripples caught flashes from the sun.
“I am going into the stream,” he said to her; and rising, he left her in
the tent. This was his side of the island, he had told her last night; the
other was hers, where he had made a place for her to bathe. When he was
gone, she found it, walking through the trees and rocks to the water’s
edge. And so, with the island between them, the two bathed in the cold
stream. When he came back, he found her already busy at their camp. The
blue smoke of the fire was floating out from the trees, loitering
undispersed in the quiet air, and she was getting their breakfast. She had
been able to forestall him because he had delayed long at his dressing,
not willing to return to her unshaven. She looked at his eyes that were
clear as the water he had leaped into, and at his soft silk neckerchief,
knotted with care.
“Do not let us ever go away from here!” she cried, and ran to him as he
came. They sat long together at breakfast, breathing the morning breath of
the earth that was fragrant with woodland moisture and with the pines.
After the meal he could not prevent her helping him make everything clean.
Then, by all customs of mountain journeys, it was time they should break
camp and be moving before the heat of the day. But first, they delayed for
no reason, save that in these hours they so loved to do nothing. And next,
when with some energy he got upon his feet and declared he must go and
drive the horses in, she asked, Why? Would it not be well for him to fish
here, that they might be sure of trout at their nooning? And though he
knew that where they should stop for noon, trout would be as sure as here,
he took this chance for more delay.
She went with him to his fishing rock, and sat watching him. The rock was
tall, higher than his head when he stood. It jutted out halfway across the
stream, and the water flowed round it in quick foam, and fell into a pool.
He caught several fish; but the sun was getting high, and after a time it
was plain the fish had ceased to rise.
Yet still he stood casting in silence, while she sat by and watched him.
Across the stream, the horses wandered or lay down in their pasture. At
length he said with half a sigh that perhaps they ought to go.
“Ought?” she repeated softly.
“If we are to get anywhere to-day,” he answered.
“Need we get anywhere?” she asked.
Her question sent delight through him like a flood. “Then you do not want
to move camp to-day?” said he.
She shook her head.
At this he laid down his rod and came and sat by her. “I am very glad we
shall not go till to-morrow,” he murmured.
“Not to-morrow,” she said. “Nor next day. Nor any day until we must.” And
she stretched her hands out to the island and the stream exclaiming,
“Nothing can surpass this!”
He took her in his arms. “You feel about it the way I do,” he almost
whispered. “I could not have hoped there’d be two of us to care so much.”
Presently, while they remained without speaking by the pool, came a little
wild animal swimming round the rock from above. It had not seen them, nor
suspected their presence. They held themselves still, watching its alert
head cross through the waves quickly and come down through the pool, and
so swim to the other side. There it came out on a small stretch of sand,
turned its gray head and its pointed black nose this way and that, never
seeing them, and then rolled upon its back in the warm dry sand. After a
minute of rolling, it got on its feet again, shook its fur, and trotted
away.
Then the bridegroom husband opened his shy heart deep down.
“I am like that fellow,” he said dreamily. “I have often done the same.”
And stretching slowly his arms and legs, he lay full length upon his back,
letting his head rest upon her. “If I could talk his animal language, I
could talk to him,” he pursued. “And he would say to me: ‘Come and roll on
the sands. Where’s the use of fretting? What’s the gain in being a man?
Come roll on the sands with me.’ That’s what he would say.” The Virginian
paused. “But,” he continued, “the trouble is, I am responsible. If that
could only be forgot forever by you and me!” Again he paused and went on,
always dreamily. “Often when I have camped here, it has made me want to
become the ground, become the water, become the trees, mix with the whole
thing. Not know myself from it. Never unmix again. Why is that?” he
demanded, looking at her. “What is it? You don’t know, nor I don’t. I
wonder would everybody feel that way here?”
“I think not everybody,” she answered.
“No; none except the ones who understand things they can’t put words to.
But you did!” He put up a hand and touched her softly. “You understood
about this place. And that’s what makes it—makes you and me as we
are now—better than my dreams. And my dreams were pretty good.”
He sighed with supreme quiet and happiness, and seemed to stretch his
length closer to the earth. And so he lay, and talked to her as he had
never talked to any one, not even to himself. Thus she learned secrets of
his heart new to her: his visits here, what they were to him, and why he
had chosen it for their bridal camp. “What I did not know at all,” he
said, “was the way a man can be pining for—for this—and never
guess what is the matter with him.”
When he had finished talking, still he lay extended and serene; and she
looked down at him and the wonderful change that had come over him, like a
sunrise. Was this dreamy boy the man of two days ago? It seemed a distance
immeasurable; yet it was two days only since that wedding eve when she had
shrunk from him as he stood fierce and implacable. She could look back at
that dark hour now, although she could not speak of it. She had seen
destruction like sharp steel glittering in his eyes. Were these the same
eyes? Was this youth with his black head of hair in her lap the creature
with whom men did not trifle, whose hand knew how to deal death? Where had
the man melted away to in this boy? For as she looked at him, he might
have been no older than nineteen to-day. Not even at their first meeting—that
night when his freakish spirit was uppermost—had he looked so young.
This change their hours upon the island had wrought, filling his face with
innocence.
By and by they made their nooning. In the afternoon she would have
explored the nearer woods with him, or walked up the stream. But since
this was to be their camp during several days, he made it more complete.
He fashioned a rough bench and a table; around their tent he built a tall
wind-break for better shelter in case of storm; and for the fire he
gathered and cut much wood, and piled it up. So they were provided for,
and so for six days and nights they stayed, finding no day or night long
enough.
Once his hedge of boughs did them good service, for they had an afternoon
of furious storm. The wind rocked the pines and ransacked the island, the
sun went out, the black clouds rattled, and white bolts of lightning fell
close by. The shower broke through the pine branches and poured upon the
tent. But he had removed everything inside from where it could touch the
canvas and so lead the water through, and the rain ran off into the ditch
he had dug round the tent. While they sat within, looking out upon the
bounding floods and the white lightning, she saw him glance at her
apprehensively, and at once she answered his glance.
“I am not afraid,” she said. “If a flame should consume us together now,
what would it matter?”
And so they sat watching the storm till it was over, he with his face
changed by her to a boy’s, and she leavened with him.
When at last they were compelled to leave the island, or see no more of
the mountains, it was not a final parting. They would come back for the
last night before their journey ended. Furthermore, they promised each
other like two children to come here every year upon their wedding day,
and like two children they believed that this would be possible. But in
after years they did come, more than once, to keep their wedding day upon
the island, and upon each new visit were able to say to each other,
“Better than our dreams.”
For thirty days by the light of the sun and the camp-fire light they saw
no faces except their own; and when they were silent it was all stillness,
unless the wind passed among the pines, or some flowing water was near
them. Sometimes at evening they came upon elk, or black-tailed deer,
feeding out in the high parks of the mountains; and once from the edge of
some concealing timber he showed her a bear, sitting with an old log
lifted in its paws. She forbade him to kill the bear, or any creature that
they did not require. He took her upward by trail and canyon, through the
unfooted woods and along dwindling streams to their headwaters, lakes
lying near the summit of the range, full of trout, with meadows of long
grass and a thousand flowers, and above these the pinnacles of rock and
snow.
They made their camps in many places, delaying several days here, and one
night there, exploring the high solitudes together, and sinking deep in
their romance. Sometimes when he was at work with their horses, or intent
on casting his brown hackle for a fish, she would watch him with eyes that
were fuller of love than of understanding. Perhaps she never came wholly
to understand him; but in her complete love for him she found enough. He
loved her with his whole man’s power. She had listened to him tell her in
words of transport, “I could enjoy dying”; yet she loved him more than
that. He had come to her from a smoking pistol, able to bid her farewell—and
she could not let him go. At the last white-hot edge of ordeal, it was she
who renounced, and he who had his way. Nevertheless she found much more
than enough, in spite of the sigh that now and again breathed through her
happiness when she would watch him with eyes fuller of love than of
understanding.
They could not speak of that grim wedding eve for a long while after; but
the mountains brought them together upon all else in the world and their
own lives. At the end they loved each other doubly more than at the
beginning, because of these added confidences which they exchanged and
shared. It was a new bliss to her to know a man’s talk and thoughts, to be
given so much of him; and to him it was a bliss still greater to melt from
that reserve his lonely life had bred in him. He never would have guessed
so much had been stored away in him, unexpressed till now. They did not
want to go to Vermont and leave these mountains, but the day came when
they had to turn their backs upon their dream. So they came out into the
plains once more, well established in their familiarity, with only the
journey still lying between themselves and Bennington.
“If you could,” she said, laughing. “If only you could ride home like
this.”
“With Monte and my six-shooter?” he asked. “To your mother?”
“I don’t think mother could resist the way you look on a horse.”
But he said, “It’s this way she’s fearing I will come.”
“I have made one discovery,” she said. “You are fonder of good clothes
than I am.”
He grinned. “I cert’nly like ’em. But don’t tell my friends. They would
say it was marriage. When you see what I have got for Bennington’s special
benefit, you—why, you’ll just trust your husband more than ever.”
She undoubtedly did. After he had put on one particular suit, she arose
and kissed him where he stood in it.
“Bennington will be sorrowful,” he said. “No wild-west show, after all.
And no ready-made guy, either.” And he looked at himself in the glass with
unbidden pleasure.
“How did you choose that?” she asked. “How did you know that homespun was
exactly the thing for you?”
“Why, I have been noticing. I used to despise an Eastern man because his
clothes were not Western. I was very young then, or maybe not so very
young, as very—as what you saw I was when you first came to Bear
Creek. A Western man is a good thing. And he generally knows that. But he
has a heap to learn. And he generally don’t know that. So I took to
watching the Judge’s Eastern visitors. There was that Mr. Ogden
especially, from New Yawk—the gentleman that was there the time when
I had to sit up all night with the missionary, yu’ know. His clothes
pleased me best of all. Fit him so well, and nothing flash. I got my
ideas, and when I knew I was going to marry you, I sent my measure East—and
I and the tailor are old enemies now.”
Bennington probably was disappointed. To see get out of the train merely a
tall man with a usual straw hat, and Scotch homespun suit of a rather
better cut than most in Bennington—this was dull. And his
conversation—when he indulged in any—seemed fit to come inside
the house.
Mrs. Flynt took her revenge by sowing broadcast her thankfulness that poor
Sam Bannett had been Molly’s rejected suitor. He had done so much better
for himself. Sam had married a rich Miss Van Scootzer, of the second
families of Troy; and with their combined riches this happy couple still
inhabit the most expensive residence in Hoosic Falls.
But most of Bennington soon began to say that Molly’s cow-boy could be
invited anywhere and hold his own. The time came when they ceased to speak
of him as a cow-boy, and declared that she had shown remarkable sense. But
this was not quite yet.
Did this bride and groom enjoy their visit to her family? Well—well,
they did their best. Everybody did their best, even Sarah Bell. She said
that she found nothing to object to in the Virginian; she told Molly so.
Her husband Sam did better than that. He told Molly he considered that she
was in luck. And poor Mrs. Wood, sitting on the sofa, conversed
scrupulously and timidly with her novel son-in-law, and said to Molly that
she was astonished to find him so gentle. And he was undoubtedly
fine-looking; yes, very handsome. She believed that she would grow to like
the Southern accent. Oh, yes! Everybody did their best; and, dear reader,
if ever it has been your earthly portion to live with a number of people
who were all doing their best, you do not need me to tell you what a
heavenly atmosphere this creates.
And then the bride and groom went to see the old great-aunt over at
Dunbarton.
Their first arrival, the one at Bennington, had been thus: Sam Bell had
met them at the train, and Mrs. Wood, waiting in her parlor, had embraced
her daughter and received her son-in-law. Among them they had managed to
make the occasion as completely mournful as any family party can be, with
the window blinds up. “And with you present, my dear,” said Sam Bell to
Sarah, “the absence of a coffin was not felt.”
But at Dunbarton the affair went off differently. The heart of the ancient
lady had taught her better things. From Bennington to Dunbarton is the
good part of a day’s journey, and they drove up to the gate in the
afternoon. The great-aunt was in her garden, picking some August flowers,
and she called as the carriage stopped, “Bring my nephew here, my dear,
before you go into the house.”
At this, Molly, stepping out of the carriage, squeezed her husband’s hand.
“I knew that she would be lovely,” she whispered to him. And then she ran
to her aunt’s arms, and let him follow. He came slowly, hat in hand.
The old lady advanced to meet him, trembling a little, and holding out her
hand to him. “Welcome, nephew,” she said. “What a tall fellow you are, to
be sure. Stand off, sir, and let me look at you.”
The Virginian obeyed, blushing from his black hair to his collar.
Then his new relative turned to her niece, and gave her a flower. “Put
this in his coat, my dear,” she said. “And I think I understand why you
wanted to marry him.”
After this the maid came and showed them to their rooms. Left alone in her
garden, the great-aunt sank on a bench and sat there for some time; for
emotion had made her very weak.
Upstairs, Molly, sitting on the Virginian’s knee, put the flower in his
coat, and then laid her head upon his shoulder.
“I didn’t know old ladies could be that way,” he said. “D’ yu’ reckon
there are many?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the girl. “I’m so happy!”
Now at tea, and during the evening, the great-aunt carried out her plans
still further. At first she did the chief part of the talking herself. Nor
did she ask questions about Wyoming too soon. She reached that in her own
way, and found out the one thing that she desired to know. It was through
General Stark that she led up to it.
“There he is,” she said, showing the family portrait. “And a rough time he
must have had of it now and then. New Hampshire was full of fine young men
in those days. But nowadays most of them have gone away to seek their
fortunes in the West. Do they find them, I wonder?”
“Yes, ma’am. All the good ones do.”
“But you cannot all be—what is the name?—Cattle Kings.”
“That’s having its day, ma’am, right now. And we are getting ready for the
change—some of us are.”
“And what may be the change, and when is it to come?”
“When the natural pasture is eaten off,” he explained. “I have seen that
coming a long while. And if the thieves are going to make us drive our
stock away, we’ll drive it. If they don’t, we’ll have big pastures fenced,
and hay and shelter ready for winter. What we’ll spend in improvements,
we’ll more than save in wages. I am well fixed for the new conditions. And
then, when I took up my land, I chose a place where there is coal. It will
not be long before the new railroad needs that.”
Thus the old lady learned more of her niece’s husband in one evening than
the Bennington family had ascertained during his whole sojourn with them.
For by touching upon Wyoming and its future, she roused him to talk. He
found her mind alive to Western questions: irrigation, the Indians, the
forests; and so he expanded, revealing to her his wide observation and his
shrewd intelligence. He forgot entirely to be shy. She sent Molly to bed,
and kept him talking for an hour. Then she showed him old things that she
was proud of, “because,” she said, “we, too, had something to do with
making our country. And now go to Molly, or you’ll both think me a
tiresome old lady.”
“I think—” he began, but was not quite equal to expressing what he
thought, and suddenly his shyness flooded him again.
“In that case, nephew,” said she, “I’m afraid you’ll have to kiss me good
night.”
And so she dismissed him to his wife, and to happiness greater than either
of them had known since they had left the mountains and come to the East.
“He’ll do,” she said to herself, nodding.
Their visit to Dunbarton was all happiness and reparation for the doleful
days at Bennington. The old lady gave much comfort and advice to her niece
in private, and when they came to leave, she stood at the front door
holding both their hands a moment.
“God bless you, my dears,” she told them. “And when you come next time,
I’ll have the nursery ready.”
And so it happened that before she left this world, the great-aunt was
able to hold in her arms the first of their many children.
Judge Henry at Sunk Creek had his wedding present ready. His growing
affairs in Wyoming needed his presence in many places distant from his
ranch, and he made the Virginian his partner. When the thieves prevailed
at length, as they did, forcing cattle owners to leave the country or be
ruined, the Virginian had forestalled this crash. The herds were driven
away to Montana. Then, in 1889, came the cattle war, when, after putting
their men in office, and coming to own some of the newspapers, the thieves
brought ruin on themselves as well. For in a broken country there is
nothing left to steal.
But the railroad came, and built a branch to that land of the Virginian’s
where the coal was. By that time he was an important man, with a strong
grip on many various enterprises, and able to give his wife all and more
than she asked or desired.
Sometimes she missed the Bear Creek days, when she and he had ridden
together, and sometimes she declared that his work would kill him. But it
does not seem to have done so. Their eldest boy rides the horse Monte;
and, strictly between ourselves, I think his father is going to live a
long while.