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THE VIRGINIAN
A Horseman Of The Plains
By Owen Wister
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 cowpuncher, 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 cowpuncher 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
By Owen Wister
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 other 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 cowpuncher. "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 scathless 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 cowpuncher. "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 over hear
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 cowpuncher 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 decollete, 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 cowpuncher.
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
Canada 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 cowpunchers 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 cowpuncher
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?"
Len 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 up lifted; 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 hangs.
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 mere 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," unsevered 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 rosin' 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 slogs
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. Mac
Bride."
"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. Mac
Bride 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 canyons.
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. Mac Bride. 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 ego.
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 an
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 going 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
trim; 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 thei | |
