The Virginian, A Horseman Of The Plainsr
by
Owen Wister
Part 8 out of 8
distinguishable, but the veined and tinted image of a country,
knobs and flats set out in order clearly, shining extensive and
motionless in the sun. It opened on the sight of the lovers as
they reached the sudden edge of the tableland, where since
morning they had ridden with the head of neither horse ever in
advance of the other.
At the view of their journey's end, the Virginian looked down at
his girl beside him, his eyes filled with a bridegroom's light,
and, hanging safe upon his breast, he could feel the gold ring
that he would slowly press upon her finger to-morrow. He drew off
the glove from her left hand, and stooping, kissed the jewel in
that other ring which he had given her. The crimson fire in the
opal seemed to mingle with that in his heart, and his arm lifted
her during a moment from the saddle as he held her to him. But in
her heart the love of him was troubled by that cold pang of
loneliness which had crept upon her like a tide as the day drew
near. None of her own people were waiting in that distant town to
see her become his bride. Friendly faces she might pass on the
way; but all of them new friends, made in this wild country: not
a face of her childhood would smile upon her; and deep within
her, a voice cried for the mother who was far away in Vermont.
That she would see Mrs. Taylor's kind face at her wedding was no
comfort now.
There lay the town in the splendor of Wyoming space. Around it
spread the watered fields, westward for a little way, eastward to
a great distance, making squares of green and yellow crops; and
the town was but a poor rag in the midst of this quilted harvest.
After the fields to the east, the tawny plain began; and with one
faint furrow of river lining its undulations, it stretched beyond
sight. But west of the town rose the Bow Leg Mountains, cool with
their still unmelted snows and their dull blue gulfs of pine.
>From three canyons flowed three clear forks which began the
river. Their confluence was above the town a good two miles; it
looked but a few paces from up here, while each side the river
straggled the margin cottonwoods, like thin borders along a
garden walk. Over all this map hung silence like a harmony,
tremendous yet serene.
"How beautiful! how I love it!" whispered the girl. "But, oh, how
big it is!" And she leaned against her lover for an instant. It
was her spirit seeking shelter. To-day, this vast beauty, this
primal calm, had in it for her something almost of dread. The
small, comfortable, green hills of home rose before her. She
closed her eyes and saw Vermont: a village street, and the
post-office, and ivy covering an old front door, and her mother
picking some yellow roses from a bush.
At a sound, her eyes quickly opened; and here was her lover
turned in his saddle, watching another horseman approach. She saw
the Virginian's hand in a certain position, and knew that his
pistol was ready. But the other merely overtook and passed them,
as they stood at the brow of the hill.
The man had given one nod to the Virginian, and the Virginian one
to him; and now he was already below them on the descending road.
To Molly Wood he was a stranger; but she had seen his eyes when
he nodded to her lover, and she knew, even without the pistol,
that this was not enmity at first sight. It was not indeed. Five
years of gathered hate had looked out of the man's eyes. And she
asked her lover who this was.
"Oh," said he, easily, "just a man I see now and then."
"Is his name Trampas?" said Molly Wood.
The Virginian looked at her in surprise. "Why, where have you
seen him?" he asked.
"Never till now. But I knew."
"My gracious! Yu' never told me yu' had mind-reading powers." And
he smiled serenely at her.
"I knew it was Trampas as soon as I saw his eyes."
"My gracious!" her lover repeated with indulgent irony. "I must
be mighty careful of my eyes when you're lookin' at 'em."
"I believe he did that murder," said the girl.
"Whose mind are yu' readin' now?" he drawled affectionately.
But he could not joke her off the subject. She took his strong
hand in hers, tremulously, so much of it as her little hand could
hold. "I know something about that--that--last autumn," she said,
shrinking from words more definite. "And I know that you only
did--"
"What I had to," he finished, very sadly, but sternly, too.
"Yes," she asserted, keeping hold of his hand. "I suppose
that--lynching--" (she almost whispered the word) "is the only
way. But when they had to die just for stealing horses, it seems
so wicked that this murderer--"
"Who can prove it?" asked the Virginian.
"But don't you know it?"
"I know a heap o' things inside my heart. But that's not proving.
There was only the body, and the hoofprints--and what folks
guessed."
"He was never even arrested!" the girl said.
"No. He helped elect the sheriff in that county."
Then Molly ventured a step inside the border of her lover's
reticence. "I saw--" she hesitated, "just now, I saw what you
did."
He returned to his caressing irony. "You'll have me plumb scared
if you keep on seein' things."
"You had your pistol ready for him."
"Why, I believe I did. It was mighty unnecessary." And the
Virginian took out the pistol again, and shook his head over it,
like one who has been caught in a blunder.
She looked at him, and knew that she must step outside his
reticence again. By love and her surrender to him their positions
had been exchanged.
He was not now, as through his long courting he had been, her
half-obeying, half-refractory worshipper. She was no longer his
half-indulgent, half-scornful superior. Her better birth and
schooling that had once been weapons to keep him at his distance,
or bring her off victorious in their encounters, had given way
before the onset of the natural man himself. She knew her cow-boy
lover, with all that he lacked, to be more than ever she could
be, with all that she had. He was her worshipper still, but her
master, too. Therefore now, against the baffling smile he gave
her, she felt powerless. And once again a pang of yearning for
her mother to be near her to-day shot through the girl. She
looked from her untamed man to the untamed desert of Wyoming, and
the town where she was to take him as her wedded husband. But for
his sake she would not let him guess her loneliness.
He sat on his horse Monte, considering the pistol. Then he showed
her a rattlesnake coiled by the roots of some sage-brush. "Can I
hit it?" he inquired.
"You don't often miss them," said she, striving to be cheerful.
"Well, I'm told getting married unstrings some men." He aimed,
and the snake was shattered. "Maybe it's too early yet for the
unstringing to begin!" And with some deliberation he sent three
more bullets into the snake. "I reckon that's enough," said he.
"Was not the first one?"
"Oh, yes, for the snake." And then, with one leg crooked cow-boy
fashion across in front of his saddle-horn, he cleaned his
pistol, and replaced the empty cartridges.
Once more she ventured near the line of his reticence. "Has--has
Trampas seen you much lately?"
"Why, no; not for a right smart while. But I reckon he has not
missed me."
The Virginian spoke this in his gentlest voice. But his rebuffed
sweetheart turned her face away, and from her eyes she brushed a
tear.
He reined his horse Monte beside her, and upon her cheek she felt
his kiss. "You are not the only mind-reader," said he, very
tenderly. And at this she clung to him, and laid her head upon
his breast. "I had been thinking," he went on, "that the way our
marriage is to be was the most beautiful way."
"It is the most beautiful," she murmured.
He slowly spoke out his thought, as if she had not said this. "No
folks to stare, no fuss, no jokes and ribbons and best bonnets,
no public eye nor talkin' of tongues when most yu' want to hear
nothing and say nothing."
She answered by holding him closer.
"Just the bishop of Wyoming to join us, and not even him after
we're once joined. I did think that would be ahead of all ways to
get married I have seen."
He paused again, and she made no rejoinder.
"But we have left out your mother."
She looked in his face with quick astonishment. It was as if his
spirit had heard the cry of her spirit.
"That is nowhere near right," he said. "That is wrong."
"She could never have come here," said the girl.
"We should have gone there. I don't know how I can ask her to
forgive me."
"But it was not you!" cried Molly.
"Yes. Because I did not object. I did not tell you we must go to
her. I missed the point, thinking so much about my own feelings.
For you see--and I've never said this to you until now--your
mother did hurt me. When you said you would have me after my
years of waiting, and I wrote her that letter telling her all
about myself, and how my family was not like yours, and--and--all
the rest I told her, why you see it hurt me never to get a word
back from her except just messages through you. For I had talked
to her about my hopes and my failings. I had said more than ever
I've said to you, because she was your mother. I wanted her to
forgive me, if she could, and feel that maybe I could take good
care of you after all. For it was bad enough to have her daughter
quit her home to teach school out hyeh on Bear Creek. Bad enough
without havin' me to come along and make it worse. I have missed
the point in thinking of my own feelings."
"But it's not your doing!" repeated Molly.
With his deep delicacy he had put the whole matter as a hardship
to her mother alone. He had saved her any pain of confession or
denial. "Yes, it is my doing," he now said. "Shall we give it
up?"
"Give what--?" She did not understand.
"Why, the order we've got it fixed in. Plans are--well, they're
no more than plans. I hate the notion of changing, but I hate
hurting your mother more. Or, anyway, I OUGHT to hate it more. So
we can shift, if yu' say so. It's not too late."
"Shift?" she faltered.
"I mean, we can go to your home now. We can start by the stage
to-night. Your mother can see us married. We can come back and
finish in the mountains instead of beginning in them. It'll be
just merely shifting, yu' see."
He could scarcely bring himself to say this at all; yet he said
it almost as if he were urging it. It implied a renunciation that
he could hardly bear to think of. To put off his wedding day, the
bliss upon whose threshold he stood after his three years of
faithful battle for it, and that wedding journey he had arranged:
for there were the mountains in sight, the woods and canyons
where he had planned to go with her after the bishop had joined
them; the solitudes where only the wild animals would be, besides
themselves. His horses, his tent, his rifle, his rod, all were
waiting ready in the town for their start to-morrow. He had
provided many dainty things to make her comfortable. Well, he
could wait a little more, having waited three years. It would not
be what his heart most desired: there would be the "public eye
and the talking of tongues" --but he could wait. The hour would
come when he could be alone with his bride at last. And so he
spoke as if he urged it.
"Never!" she cried. "Never, never!"
She pushed it from her. She would not brook such sacrifice on his
part. Were they not going to her mother in four weeks? If her
family had warmly accepted him--but they had not; and in any
case, it had gone too far, it was too late. She told her lover
that she would not hear him, that if he said any more she would
gallop into town separately from him. And for his sake she would
hide deep from him this loneliness of hers, and the hurt that he
had given her in refusing to share with her his trouble with
Trampas, when others must know of it.
Accordingly, they descended the hill slowly together, lingering
to spin out these last miles long. Many rides had taught their
horses to go side by side, and so they went now: the girl sweet
and thoughtful in her sedate gray habit; and the man in his
leathern chaps and cartridge belt and flannel shirt, looking
gravely into the distance with the level gaze of the frontier.
Having read his sweetheart's mind very plainly, the lover now
broke his dearest custom. It was his code never to speak ill of
any man to any woman. Men's quarrels were not for women's ears.
In his scheme, good women were to know only a fragment of men's
lives. He had lived many outlaw years, and his wide knowledge of
evil made innocence doubly precious to him. But to-day he must
depart from his code, having read her mind well. He would speak
evil of one man to one woman, because his reticence had hurt
her--and was she not far from her mother, and very lonely, do
what he could? She should know the story of his quarrel in
language as light and casual as he could veil it with.
He made an oblique start. He did not say to her: "I'll tell you
about this. You saw me get ready for Trampas because I have been
ready for him any time these five years." He began far off from
the point with that rooted caution of his--that caution which is
shared by the primal savage and the perfected diplomat.
"There's cert'nly a right smart o' difference between men and
women," he observed.
"You're quite sure?" she retorted.
"Ain't it fortunate?--that there's both, I mean."
"I don't know about fortunate. Machinery could probably do all
the heavy work for us without your help."
"And who'd invent the machinery?"
She laughed. "We shouldn't need the huge, noisy things you do.
Our world would be a gentle one."
"Oh, my gracious!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, my gracious! Get along, Monte! A gentle world all full of
ladies!"
"Do you call men gentle?" inquired Molly.
"Now it's a funny thing about that. Have yu' ever noticed a joke
about fathers-in-law? There's just as many fathers- as
mothers-in-law; but which side are your jokes?"
Molly was not vanquished. "That's because the men write the comic
papers," said she.
"Hear that, Monte? The men write 'em. Well, if the ladies wrote a
comic paper, I expect that might be gentle."
She gave up this battle in mirth; and he resumed:- "But don't you
really reckon it's uncommon to meet a father-in-law flouncin'
around the house? As for gentle--Once I had to sleep in a room
next a ladies' temperance meetin'. Oh, heavens! Well, I couldn't
change my room, and the hotel man, he apologized to me next
mawnin'. Said it didn't surprise him the husbands drank some."
Here the Virginian broke down over his own fantastic inventions,
and gave a joyous chuckle in company with his sweetheart. "Yes,
there's a big heap o' difference between men and women," he said.
"Take that fello' and myself, now."
"Trampas?" said Molly, quickly serious. She looked along the road
ahead, and discerned the figure of Trampas still visible on its
way to town.
The Virginian did not wish her to be serious--more than could be
helped. "Why, yes," he replied, with a waving gesture at Trampas.
"Take him and me. He don't think much o' me! How could he? And I
expect he'll never. But yu' saw just now how it was between us.
We were not a bit like a temperance meetin'."
She could not help laughing at the twist he gave to his voice.
And she felt happiness warming her; for in the Virginian's tone
about Trampas was something now that no longer excluded her. Thus
he began his gradual recital, in a cadence always easy, and more
and more musical with the native accent of the South. With the
light turn he gave it, its pure ugliness melted into charm.
"No, he don't think anything of me. Once a man in the John Day
Valley didn't think much, and by Canada de Oro I met another. It
will always be so here and there, but Trampas beats 'em all. For
the others have always expressed themselves--got shut of their
poor opinion in the open air."
"Yu' see, I had to explain myself to Trampas a right smart while
ago, long before ever I laid my eyes on yu'. It was just nothing
at all. A little matter of cyards in the days when I was apt to
spend my money and my holidays pretty headlong. My gracious, what
nonsensical times I have had! But I was apt to win at cyards,
'specially poker. And Trampas, he met me one night, and I expect
he must have thought I looked kind o' young. So he hated losin'
his money to such a young-lookin' man, and he took his way of
sayin' as much. I had to explain myself to him plainly, so that
he learned right away my age had got its growth.
"Well, I expect he hated that worse, having to receive my
explanation with folks lookin' on at us publicly that-a-way, and
him without further ideas occurrin' to him at the moment. That's
what started his poor opinion of me, not havin' ideas at the
moment. And so the boys resumed their cyards.
"I'd most forgot about it. But Trampas's mem'ry is one of his
strong points. Next thing--oh, it's a good while later--he gets
to losin' flesh because Judge Henry gave me charge of him and
some other punchers taking cattle--"
"That's not next," interrupted the girl.
"Not? Why--"
"Don't you remember?" she said, timid, yet eager. "Don't you?"
"Blamed if I do!"
"The first time we met?"
"Yes; my mem'ry keeps that--like I keep this." And he brought
from his pocket her own handkerchief, the token he had picked up
at a river's brink when he had carried her from an overturned
stage.
"We did not exactly meet, then," she said. "It was at that dance.
I hadn't seen you yet; but Trampas was saying something horrid
about me, and you said--you said, 'Rise on your legs, you pole
cat, and tell them you're a liar.' When I heard that, I think--I
think it finished me." And crimson suffused Molly's countenance.
"I'd forgot," the Virginian murmured. Then sharply, "How did you
hear it?"
"Mrs. Taylor--"
"Oh! Well, a man would never have told a woman that."
Molly laughed triumphantly. "Then who told Mrs. Taylor?"
Being caught, he grinned at her. "I reckon husbands are a special
kind of man," was all that he found to say. "Well, since you do
know about that, it was the next move in the game. Trampas
thought I had no call to stop him sayin' what he pleased about a
woman who was nothin' to me--then. But all women ought to be
somethin' to a man. So I had to give Trampas another explanation
in the presence of folks lookin' on, and it was just like the
cyards. No ideas occurred to him again. And down goes his opinion
of me some more!
"Well, I have not been able to raise it. There has been this and
that and the other,--yu' know most of the later doings
yourself,--and to-day is the first time I've happened to see the
man since the doings last autumn. Yu' seem to know about them,
too. He knows I can't prove he was with that gang of horse
thieves. And I can't prove he killed poor Shorty. But he knows I
missed him awful close, and spoiled his thieving for a while. So
d' yu' wonder he don't think much of me? But if I had lived to be
twenty-nine years old like I am, and with all my chances made no
enemy, I'd feel myself a failure."
His story was finished. He had made her his confidant in matters
he had never spoken of before, and she was happy to be thus much
nearer to him. It diminished a certain fear that was mingled with
her love of him.
During the next several miles he was silent, and his silence was
enough for her. Vermont sank away from her thoughts, and Wyoming
held less of loneliness. They descended altogether into the map
which had stretched below them, so that it was a map no longer,
but earth with growing things, and prairie-dogs sitting upon it,
and now and then a bird flying over it. And after a while she
said to him, "What are you thinking about?"
"I have been doing sums. Figured in hours it sounds right short.
Figured in minutes it boils up into quite a mess. Twenty by sixty
is twelve hundred. Put that into seconds, and yu' get seventy-two
thousand seconds. Seventy-two thousand. Seventy-two thousand
seconds yet before we get married."
"Seconds! To think of its having come to seconds!"
"I am thinkin' about it. I'm choppin' sixty of 'em off every
minute."
With such chopping time wears away. More miles of the road lay
behind them, and in the virgin wilderness the scars of
new-scraped water ditches began to appear, and the first wire
fences. Next, they were passing cabins and occasional fields, the
outposts of habitation. The free road became wholly imprisoned,
running between unbroken stretches of barbed wire. Far off to the
eastward a flowing column of dust marked the approaching stage,
bringing the bishop, probably, for whose visit here they had
timed their wedding. The day still brimmed with heat and
sunshine; but the great daily shadow was beginning to move from
the feet of the Bow Leg Mountains outward toward the town.
Presently they began to meet citizens. Some of these knew them
and nodded, while some did not, and stared. Turning a corner into
the town's chief street, where stood the hotel, the bank, the
drug store, the general store, and the seven saloons, they were
hailed heartily. Here were three friends,--Honey Wiggin, Scipio
Le Moyne, and Lin McLean,--all desirous of drinking the
Virginian's health, if his lady--would she mind? The three stood
grinning, with their hats off; but behind their gayety the
Virginian read some other purpose.
"We'll all be very good," said Honey Wiggin.
"Pretty good," said Lin.
"Good," said Scipio.
"Which is the honest man?" inquired Molly, glad to see them.
"Not one!" said the Virginian. "My old friends scare me when I
think of their ways."
"It's bein' engaged scares yu'," retorted Mr. McLean. "Marriage
restores your courage, I find."
"Well, I'll trust all of you," said Molly. "He's going to take me
to the hotel, and then you can drink his health as much as you
please."
With a smile to them she turned to proceed, and he let his horse
move with hers; but he looked at his friends. Then Scipio's
bleached blue eyes narrowed to a slit, and he said what they had
all come out on the street to say:- "Don't change your clothes."
"Oh!" protested Molly, "isn't he rather dusty and countrified?"
But the Virginian had taken Scipio's meaning. "DON'T CHANGE YOURS
CLOTHES." Innocent Molly appreciated these words no more than the
average reader who reads a masterpiece, complacently unaware that
its style differs from that of the morning paper. Such was
Scipio's intention, wishing to spare her from alarm
So at the hotel she let her lover go with a kiss, and without a
thought of Trampas. She in her room unlocked the possessions
which were there waiting for her, and changed her dress.
Wedding garments, and other civilized apparel proper for a
genuine frontiersman when he comes to town, were also in the
hotel, ready for the Virginian to wear. It is only the somewhat
green and unseasoned cow-puncher who struts before the public in
spurs and deadly weapons. For many a year the Virginian had put
away these childish things. He made a sober toilet for the
streets. Nothing but his face and bearing remained out of the
common when he was in a town. But Scipio had told him not to
change his clothes; therefore he went out with his pistol at his
hip. Soon he had joined his three friends.
"I'm obliged to yu'," he said. "He passed me this mawnin'."
"We don't know his intentions," said Wiggin.
"Except that he's hangin' around," said McLean.
"And fillin' up," said Scipio, "which reminds me--"
They strolled into the saloon of a friend, where, unfortunately,
sat some foolish people. But one cannot always tell how much of a
fool a man is, at sight.
It was a temperate health-drinking that they made. "Here's how,"
they muttered softly to the Virginian; and "How," he returned
softly, looking away from them. But they had a brief meeting of
eyes, standing and lounging near each other, shyly; and Scipio
shook hands with the bridegroom. "Some day," he stated, tapping
himself; for in his vagrant heart he began to envy the man who
could bring himself to marry. And he nodded again, repeating,
"Here's how."
They stood at the bar, full of sentiment, empty of words, memory
and affection busy in their hearts. All of them had seen rough
days together, and they felt guilty with emotion.
"It's hot weather," said Wiggin.
"Hotter on Box Elder," said McLean. "My kid has started
teething."
Words ran dry again. They shifted their positions, looked in
their glasses, read the labels on the bottles. They dropped a
word now and then to the proprietor about his trade, and his
ornaments.
"Good head," commented McLean.
"Big old ram," assented the proprietor. "Shot him myself on Gray
Bull last fall."
"Sheep was thick in the Tetons last fall," said the Virginian.
On the bar stood a machine into which the idle customer might
drop his nickel. The coin then bounced among an arrangement of
pegs, descending at length into one or another of various holes.
You might win as much as ten times your stake, but this was not
the most usual result; and with nickels the three friends and the
bridegroom now mildly sported for a while, buying them with
silver when their store ran out.
"Was it sheep you went after in the Tetons?" inquired the
proprietor, knowing it was horse thieves.
"Yes," said the Virginian. "I'll have ten more nickels."
"Did you get all the sheep you wanted?" the proprietor continued.
"Poor luck," said the Virginian.
"Think there's a friend of yours in town this afternoon," said
the proprietor.
"Did he mention he was my friend?"
The proprietor laughed. The Virginian watched another nickel
click down among the pegs.
Honey Wiggin now made the bridegroom a straight offer. "We'll
take this thing off your hands," said he.
"Any or all of us," said Lin.
But Scipio held his peace. His loyalty went every inch as far as
theirs, but his understanding of his friend went deeper. "Don't
change your clothes," was the first and the last help he would be
likely to give in this matter. The rest must be as such matters
must always be, between man and man. To the other two friends,
however, this seemed a very special case, falling outside
established precedent. Therefore they ventured offers of
interference.
"A man don't get married every day," apologized McLean. "We'll
just run him out of town for yu'."
"Save yu' the trouble," urged Wiggin. "Say the word."
The proprietor now added his voice. "It'll sober him up to spend
his night out in the brush. He'll quit his talk then."
But the Virginian did not say the word, or any word. He stood
playing with the nickels.
"Think of her," muttered McLean.
"Who else would I be thinking of?" returned the Southerner. His
face had become very sombre. "She has been raised so different!"
he murmured. He pondered a little, while the others waited,
solicitous.
A new idea came to the proprietor. "I am acting mayor of this
town," said he. "I'll put him in the calaboose and keep him till
you get married and away."
"Say the word," repeated Honey Wiggin.
Scipio's eye met the proprietor's, and he shook his head about a
quarter of an inch. The proprietor shook his to the same amount.
They understood each other. It had come to that point where there
was no way out, save only the ancient, eternal way between man
and man. It is only the great mediocrity that goes to law in
these personal matters.
"So he has talked about me some?" said the Virginian.
"It's the whiskey," Scipio explained.
"I expect," said McLean, "he'd run a mile if he was in a state to
appreciate his insinuations."
"Which we are careful not to mention to yu'," said Wiggin,
"unless yu' inquire for 'em."
Some of the fools present had drawn closer to hear this
interesting conversation. In gatherings of more than six there
will generally be at least one fool; and this company must have
numbered twenty men.
"This country knows well enough," said one fool, who hungered to
be important, "that you don't brand no calves that ain't your
own."
The saturnine Virginian looked at him. "Thank yu'," said he,
gravely, "for your indorsement of my character." The fool felt
flattered. The Virginian turned to his friends. His hand slowly
pushed his hat back, and he rubbed his black head in thought.
"Glad to see yu've got your gun with you," continued the happy
fool. "You know what Trampas claims about that affair of yours in
the Tetons? He claims that if everything was known about the
killing of Shorty--"
"Take one on the house," suggested the proprietor to him,
amiably. "Your news will be fresher." And he pushed him the
bottle. The fool felt less important.
"This talk had went the rounds before it got to us," said Scipio,
"or we'd have headed it off. He has got friends in town."
Perplexity knotted the Virginian's brows. This community knew
that a man had implied he was a thief and a murderer; it also
knew that he knew it. But the case was one of peculiar
circumstances, assuredly. Could he avoid meeting the man? Soon
the stage would be starting south for the railroad. He had
already to-day proposed to his sweetheart that they should take
it. Could he for her sake leave unanswered a talking enemy upon
the field? His own ears had not heard the enemy.
Into these reflections the fool stepped once more. "Of course
this country don't believe Trampas," said he. "This country--"
But he contributed no further thoughts. From somewhere in the
rear of the building, where it opened upon the tin cans and the
hinder purlieus of the town, came a movement, and Trampas was
among them, courageous with whiskey.
All the fools now made themselves conspicuous. One lay on the
floor, knocked there by the Virginian, whose arm he had attempted
to hold. Others struggled with Trampas, and his bullet smashed
the ceiling before they could drag the pistol from him. "There
now! there now!" they interposed; "you don't want to talk like
that," for he was pouring out a tide of hate and vilification.
Yet the Virginian stood quiet by the bar, and many an eye of
astonishment was turned upon him. "I'd not stand half that
language," some muttered to each other. Still the Virginian
waited quietly, while the fools reasoned with Trampas. But no
earthly foot can step between a man and his destiny. Trampas
broke suddenly free.
"Your friends have saved your life," he rang out, with obscene
epithets. "I'll give you till sundown to leave town."
There was total silence instantly.
"Trampas," spoke the Virginian, "I don't want trouble with you."
"He never has wanted it," Trampas sneered to the bystanders. "He
has been dodging it five years. But I've got him coralled."
Some of the Trampas faction smiled.
"Trampas," said the Virginian again, "are yu' sure yu' really
mean that?"
The whiskey bottle flew through the air, hurled by Trampas, and
crashed through the saloon window behind the Virginian.
"That was surplusage, Trampas," said he, "if yu' mean the other."
"Get out by sundown, that's all," said Trampas. And wheeling, he
went out of the saloon by the rear, as he had entered.
"Gentlemen," said the Virginian, "I know you will all oblige me."
"Sure!" exclaimed the proprietor, heartily, "We'll see that
everybody lets this thing alone."
The Virginian gave a general nod to the company, and walked out
into the street.
"It's a turruble shame," sighed Scipio, "that he couldn't have
postponed it."
The Virginian walked in the open air with thoughts disturbed. "I
am of two minds about one thing," he said to himself uneasily.
Gossip ran in advance of him; but as he came by, the talk fell
away until he had passed. Then they looked after him, and their
words again rose audibly. Thus everywhere a little eddy of
silence accompanied his steps.
"It don't trouble him much," one said, having read nothing in the
Virginian's face.
"It may trouble his girl some," said another.
"She'll not know," said a third, "until it's over."
"He'll not tell her?"
"I wouldn't. It's no woman's business."
"Maybe that's so. Well, it would have suited me to have Trampas
die sooner."
"How would it suit you to have him live longer?" inquired a
member of the opposite faction, suspected of being himself a
cattle thief.
"I could answer your question, if I had other folks' calves I
wanted to brand." This raised both a laugh and a silence.
Thus the town talked, filling in the time before sunset.
The Virginian, still walking aloof in the open air, paused at the
edge of the town. "I'd sooner have a sickness than be undecided
this way," he said, and he looked up and down. Then a grim smile
came at his own expense. "I reckon it would make me sick--but
there's not time."
Over there in the hotel sat his sweetheart alone, away from her
mother, her friends, her home, waiting his return, knowing
nothing. He looked into the west. Between the sun and the bright
ridges of the mountains was still a space of sky; but the shadow
from the mountains' feet had drawn halfway toward the town.
"About forty minutes more," he said aloud. "She has been raised
so different." And he sighed as he turned back. As he went
slowly, he did not know how great was his own unhappiness. "She
has been raised so different," he said again.
Opposite the post-office the bishop of Wyoming met him and
greeted him. His lonely heart throbbed at the warm, firm grasp of
this friend's hand. The bishop saw his eyes glow suddenly, as if
tears were close. But none came, and no word more open than, "I'm
glad to see you."
But gossip had reached the bishop, and he was sorely troubled
also. "What is all this?" said he, coming straight to it.
The Virginian looked at the clergyman frankly. 'Yu' know just as
much about it as I do," he said. "And I'll tell yu' anything yu'
ask."
"Have you told Miss Wood?" inquired the bishop.
The eyes of the bridegroom fell, and the bishop's face grew at
once more keen and more troubled. Then the bridegroom raised his
eyes again, and the bishop almost loved him. He touched his arm,
like a brother. "This is hard luck," he said.
The bridegroom could scarce keep his voice steady. "I want to do
right to-day more than any day I have ever lived," said he.
"Then go and tell her at once."
"It will just do nothing but scare her."
"Go and tell her at once."
"I expected you was going to tell me to run away from Trampas. I
can't do that, yu' know."
The bishop did know. Never before in all his wilderness work had
he faced such a thing. He knew that Trampas was an evil in the
country, and that the Virginian was a good. He knew that the
cattle thieves--the rustlers--were gaining, in numbers and
audacity; that they led many weak young fellows to ruin; that
they elected their men to office, and controlled juries; that
they were a staring menace to Wyoming. His heart was with the
Virginian. But there was his Gospel, that he preached, and
believed, and tried to live. He stood looking at the ground and
drawing a finger along his eyebrow. He wished that he might have
heard nothing about all this. But he was not one to blink his
responsibility as a Christian server of the church militant.
"Am I right," he now slowly asked, "in believing that you think I
am a sincere man?"
"I don't believe anything about it. I know it."
"I should run away from Trampas," said the bishop.
"That ain't quite fair, seh. We all understand you have got to do
the things you tell other folks to do. And you do them, seh. You
never talk like anything but a man, and you never set yourself
above others. You can saddle your own horses. And I saw yu' walk
unarmed into that White River excitement when those two other
parsons was a-foggin' and a-fannin' for their own safety. Damn
scoundrels!"
The bishop instantly rebuked such language about brothers of his
cloth, even though he disapproved both of them and their
doctrines. "Every one may be an instrument of Providence," he
concluded.
"Well," said the Virginian, "if that is so, then Providence makes
use of instruments I'd not touch with a ten-foot pole. Now if you
was me, seh, and not a bishop, would you run away from Trampas?"
"That's not quite fair, either!" exclaimed the bishop, with a
smile. "Because you are asking me to take another man's
convictions, and yet remain myself."
"Yes, seh. I am. That's so. That don't get at it. I reckon you
and I can't get at it."
"If the Bible," said the bishop, "which I believe to be God's
word, was anything to you--"
"It is something to me, seh. I have found fine truths in it."
"'Thou shalt not kill,'" quoted the bishop. "That is plain."
The Virginian took his turn at smiling. "Mighty plain to me, seh.
Make it plain to Trampas, and there'll be no killin'. We can't
get at it that way."
Once more the bishop quoted earnestly. "'Vengeance is mine, I
will repay, saith the Lord.'"
"How about instruments of Providence, seh? Why, we can't get at
it that way. If you start usin' the Bible that way, it will mix
you up mighty quick, seh."
"My friend," the bishop urged, and all his good, warm heart was
in it, "my dear fellow--go away for the one night. He'll change
his mind."
The Virginian shook his head. "He cannot change his word, seh. Or
at least I must stay around till he does. Why, I have given him
the say-so. He's got the choice. Most men would not have took
what I took from him in the saloon. Why don't you ask him to
leave town?"
The good bishop was at a standstill. Of all kicking against the
pricks none is so hard as this kick of a professing Christian
against the whole instinct of human man.
"But you have helped me some," said the Virginian. "I will go and
tell her. At least, if I think it will be good for her, I will
tell her."
The bishop thought that he saw one last chance to move him.
"You're twenty-nine," he began.
"And a little over," said the Virginian.
"And you were fourteen when you ran away from your family."
"Well, I was weary, yu' know, of havin' elder brothers lay down
my law night and mawnin'."
"Yes, I know. So that your life has been your own for fifteen
years. But it is not your own now. You have given it to a woman."
"Yes; I have given it to her. But my life's not the whole of me.
I'd give her twice my life--fifty--a thousand of 'em. But I can't
give her--her nor anybody in heaven or earth--I can't give
my--my--we'll never get at it, seh! There's no good in words.
Good-by." The Virginian wrung the bishop's hand and left him.
"God bless him!" said the bishop. "God bless him!"
The Virginian unlocked the room in the hotel where he kept stored
his tent, his blankets, his pack-saddles, and his many
accoutrements for the bridal journey in the mountains. Out of the
window he saw the mountains blue in shadow, but some cottonwoods
distant in the flat between were still bright green in the sun.
>From among his possessions he took quickly a pistol, wiping and
loading it. Then from its holster he removed the pistol which he
had tried and made sure of in the morning. This, according to his
wont when going into a risk, he shoved between his trousers and
his shirt in front. The untried weapon he placed in the holster,
letting it hang visibly at his hip. He glanced out of the window
again, and saw the mountains of the same deep blue. But the
cottonwoods were no longer in the sunlight. The shadow had come
past them, nearer the town; for fifteen of the forty minutes were
gone. "The bishop is wrong," he said. "There is no sense in
telling her." And he turned to the door, just as she came to it
herself.
"Oh!" she cried out at once, and rushed to him.
He swore as he held her close. "The fools!" he said. "The fools!"
"It has been so frightful waiting for you," said she, leaning her
head against him.
"Who had to tell you this?" he demanded.
"I don't know. Somebody just came and said it."
"This is mean luck," he murmured, patting her. "This is mean
luck."
She went on: "I wanted to run out and find you; but I didn't! I
didn't! I stayed quiet in my room till they said you had come
back."
"It is mean luck. Mighty mean," he repeated.
"How could you be so long?" she asked. "Never mind, I've got you
now. It is over."
Anger and sorrow filled him. "I might have known some fool would
tell you," he said.
"It's all over. Never mind." Her arms tightened their hold of
him. Then she let him go. "What shall we do?" she said. "What
now?"
"Now?" he answered. "Nothing now."
She looked at him without understanding.
"I know it is a heap worse for you," he pursued, speaking slowly.
"I knew it would be."
"But it is over!" she exclaimed again.
He did not understand her now. He kissed her. "Did you think it
was over?" he said simply. "There is some waiting still before
us. I wish you did not have to wait alone. But it will not be
long." He was looking down, and did not see the happiness grow
chilled upon her face, and then fade into bewildered fear. "I did
my best, he went on. "I think I did. I know I tried. I let him
say to me before them all what no man has ever said, or ever will
again. I kept thinking hard of you--with all my might, or I
reckon I'd have killed him right there. And I gave him a show to
change his mind. I gave it to him twice. I spoke as quiet as I am
speaking to you now. But he stood to it. And I expect he knows he
went too far in the hearing of others to go back on his threat.
He will have to go on to the finish now."
"The finish?" she echoed, almost voiceless.
"Yes," he answered very gently.
Her dilated eves were fixed upon him. "But--" she could scarce
form utterance, "but you?"
"I have got myself ready," he said. "Did you think--why, what did
you think?"
She recoiled a step. "What are you going--" She put her two hands
to her head. "Oh, God!" she almost shrieked, "you are going--" He
made a step, and would have put his arm round her, but she backed
against the wall, staring speechless at him.
"I am not going to let him shoot me," he said quietly.
"You mean--you mean--but you can come away!" she cried. "It's not
too late yet. You can take yourself out of his reach. Everybody
knows that you are brave. What is he to you? You can leave him in
this place. I'll go with you anywhere. To any house, to the
mountains, to anywhere away. We'll leave this horrible place
together and--and--oh, won't you listen to me?" She stretched her
hands to him. "Won't you listen?"
He took her hands. "I must stay here."
Her hands clung to his. "No, no, no. There's something else.
There's something better than shedding blood in cold blood. Only
think what it means! Only think of having to remember such a
thing! Why, it's what they hang people for! It's murder!"
He dropped her hands. "Don't call it that name," he said sternly.
"When there was the choice!" she exclaimed, half to herself, like
a person stunned and speaking to the air. "To get ready for it
when you have the choice!"
"He did the choosing," answered the Virginian. "Listen to me. Are
you listening?" he asked, for her gaze was dull.
She nodded.
"I work hyeh. I belong hyeh. It's my life. If folks came to think
I was a coward--"
"Who would think you were a coward?"
"Everybody. My friends would be sorry and ashamed, and my enemies
would walk around saying they had always said so. I could not
hold up my head again among enemies or friends."
"When it was explained--"
"There'd be nothing to explain. There'd just be the fact." He was
nearly angry.
"There is a higher courage than fear of outside opinion," said
the New England girl.
Her Southern lover looked at her. "Cert'nly there is. That's what
I'm showing in going against yours."
"But if you know that you are brave, and if I know that you are
brave, oh, my dear, my dear! what difference does the world make?
How much higher courage to go your own course--"
"I am goin' my own course," he broke in. "Can't yu' see how it
must be about a man? It's not for their benefit, friends or
enemies, that I have got this thing to do. If any man happened to
say I was a thief and I heard about it, would I let him go on
spreadin' such a thing of me? Don't I owe my own honesty
something better than that? Would I sit down in a corner rubbin'
my honesty and whisperin' to it, 'There! there! I know you ain't
a thief"? No, seh; not a little bit! What men say about my nature
is not just merely an outside thing. For the fact that I let 'em
keep on sayin' it is a proof I don't value my nature enough to
shield it from their slander and give them their punishment. And
that's being a poor sort of a jay."
She had grown very white.
"Can't yu' see how it must be about a man?" he repeated.
"I cannot," she answered, in a voice that scarcely seemed her
own. "If I ought to, I cannot. To shed blood in cold blood. When
I heard about that last fall,--about the killing of those cattle
thieves,--I kept saying to myself: 'He had to do it. It was a
public duty.' And lying sleepless I got used to Wyoming being
different from Vermont. But this--" she gave a shudder-- "when I
think of to-morrow, of you and me, and of--If you do this, there
can be no to-morrow for you and me."
At these words he also turned white.
"Do you mean--" he asked, and could go no farther.
Nor could she answer him, but turned her head away.
"This would be the end?" he asked.
Her head faintly moved to signify yes.
He stood still, his hand shaking a little. "Will you look at me
and say that?" he murmured at length. She did not move. "Can you
do it?" he said.
His sweetness made her turn, but could not pierce her frozen
resolve. She gazed at him across the great distance of her
despair.
"Then it is really so?" he said.
Her lips tried to form words, but failed.
He looked out of the window, and saw nothing but shadow. The blue
of the mountains was now become a deep purple. Suddenly his hand
closed hard.
"Good-by, then," he said.
At that word she was at his feet, clutching him. "For my sake,"
she begged him. "For my sake."
A tremble passed through his frame. She felt his legs shake as
she held them, and, looking up, she saw that his eyes were closed
with misery. Then he opened them, and in their steady look she
read her answer. He unclasped her hands from holding him, and
raised her to her feet.
"I have no right to kiss you any more," he said. And then, before
his desire could break him down from this, he was gone, and she
was alone.
She did not fall, or totter, but stood motionless. And next--it
seemed a moment and it seemed eternity--she heard in the distance
a shot, and then two shots. Out of the window she saw people
beginning to run. At that she turned and fled to her room, and
flung herself face downward upon the floor.
Trampas had departed into solitude from the saloon, leaving
behind him his ULTIMATUM. His loud and public threat was town
knowledge already, would very likely be county knowledge
to-night. Riders would take it with them to entertain distant
cabins up the river and down the river; and by dark the stage
would go south with the news of it--and the news of its outcome.
For everything would be over by dark. After five years, here was
the end coming--coming before dark. Trampas had got up this
morning with no such thought. It seemed very strange to look back
upon the morning; it lay so distant, so irrevocable. And he
thought of how he had eaten his breakfast. How would he eat his
supper? For supper would come afterward. Some people were eating
theirs now, with nothing like this before them. His heart ached
and grew cold to think of them, easy and comfortable with plates
and cups of coffee.
He looked at the mountains, and saw the sun above their ridges,
and the shadow coming from their feet. And there close behind him
was the morning he could never go back to. He could see it
clearly; his thoughts reached out like arms to touch it once
more, and be in it again. The night that was coming he could not
see, and his eyes and his thoughts shrank from it. He had given
his enemy until sundown. He could not trace the path which had
led him to this. He remembered their first meeting--five years
back, in Medicine Bow, and the words which at once began his
hate. No, it was before any words; it was the encounter of their
eyes. For out of the eyes of every stranger looks either a friend
or an enemy, waiting to be known. But how had five years of hate
come to play him such a trick, suddenly, today? Since last autumn
he had meant sometime to get even with this man who seemed to
stand at every turn of his crookedness, and rob him of his
spoils. But how had he come to choose such a way of getting even
as this, face to face? He knew many better ways; and now his own
rash proclamation had trapped him. His words were like doors
shutting him in to perform his threat to the letter, with
witnesses at hand to see that he did so.
Trampas looked at the sun and the shadow again. He had till
sundown. The heart inside him was turning it round in this
opposite way: it was to HIMSELF that in his rage he had given
this lessening margin of grace. But he dared not leave town in
all the world's sight after all the world had heard him. Even his
friends would fall from him after such an act. Could he--the
thought actually came to him--could he strike before the time
set? But the thought was useless. Even if his friends could
harbor him after such a deed, his enemies would find him, and his
life would be forfeit to a certainty. His own trap was closing
upon him.
He came upon the main street, and saw some distance off the
Virginian standing in talk with the bishop. He slunk between two
houses, and cursed both of them. The sight had been good for him,
bringing some warmth of rage back to his desperate heart. And he
went into a place and drank some whiskey.
"In your shoes," said the barkeeper, "I'd be afraid to take so
much."
But the nerves of Trampas were almost beyond the reach of
intoxication, and he swallowed some more, and went out again.
Presently he fell in with some of his brothers in cattle
stealing, and walked along with them for a little.
"Well, it will not be long now," they said to him. And he had
never heard words so desolate.
"No," he made out to say; "soon now." Their cheerfulness seemed
unearthly to him, and his heart almost broke beneath it.
"We'll have one to your success," they suggested.
So with them he repaired to another place; and the sight of a man
leaning against the bar made him start so that they noticed him.
Then he saw that the man was a stranger whom he had never laid
eyes on till now.
"It looked like Shorty," he said, and could have bitten his
tongue off.
"Shorty is quiet up in the Tetons," said a friend. "You don't
want to be thinking about him. Here's how!"
Then they clapped him on the back and he left them. He thought of
his enemy and his hate, beating his rage like a failing horse,
and treading the courage of his drink. Across a space he saw
Wiggin, walking with McLean and Scipio. They were watching the
town to see that his friends made no foul play.
"We're giving you a clear field," said Wiggin.
"This race will not be pulled," said McLean.
"Be with you at the finish," said Scipio.
And they passed on. They did not seem like real people to him.
Trampas looked at the walls and windows of the houses. Were they
real? Was he here, walking in this street? Something had changed.
He looked everywhere, and feeling it everywhere, wondered what
this could be. Then he knew: it was the sun that had gone
entirely behind the mountains, and he drew out his pistol.
The Virginian, for precaution, did not walk out of the front door
of the hotel. He went through back ways, and paused once. Against
his breast he felt the wedding ring where he had it suspended by
a chain from his neck. His hand went up to it, and he drew it out
and looked at it. He took it off the chain, and his arm went back
to hurl it from him as far as he could. But he stopped and kissed
it with one sob, and thrust it in his pocket. Then he walked out
into the open, watching. He saw men here and there, and they let
him pass as before, without speaking. He saw his three friends,
and they said no word to him. But they turned and followed in his
rear at a little distance, because it was known that Shorty had
been found shot from behind. The Virginian gained a position soon
where no one could come at him except from in front; and the
sight of the mountains was almost more than he could endure,
because it was there that he had been going to-morrow.
"It is quite a while after sunset," he heard himself say.
A wind seemed to blow his sleeve off his arm, and he replied to
it, and saw Trampas pitch forward. He saw Trampas raise his arm
from the ground and fall again, and lie there this time, still. A
little smoke was rising from the pistol on the ground, and he
looked at his own, and saw the smoke flowing upward out of it.
"I expect that's all," he said aloud.
But as he came nearer Trampas, he covered him with his weapon. He
stopped a moment, seeing the hand on the ground move. Two fingers
twitched, and then ceased; for it was all. The Virginian stood
looking down at Trampas.
"Both of mine hit," he said, once more aloud. "His must have gone
mighty close to my arm. I told her it would not be me."
He had scarcely noticed that he was being surrounded and
congratulated. His hand was being shaken, and he saw it was
Scipio in tears. Scipio's joy made his heart like lead within
him. He was near telling his friend everything, but he did not.
"If anybody wants me about this," he said, "I will be at the
hotel."
"Who'll want you?" said Scipio. "Three of us saw his gun out."
And he vented his admiration. "You were that cool! That quick!"
"I'll see you boys again," said the Virginian, heavily; and he
walked away.
Scipio looked after him, astonished. "Yu' might suppose he was in
poor luck," he said to McLean.
The Virginian walked to the hotel, and stood on the threshold of
his sweetheart's room. She had heard his step, and was upon her
feet. Her lips were parted, and her eyes fixed on him, nor did
she move, or speak.
"Yu' have to know it," said he. "I have killed Trampas."
"Oh, thank God!" she said; and he found her in his arms. Long
they embraced without speaking, and what they whispered then with
their kisses, matters not.
Thus did her New England conscience battle to the end, and, in
the end, capitulate to love. And the next day, with the bishop's
blessing, and Mrs. Taylor's broadest smile, and the ring on her
finger, the Virginian departed with his bride into the mountains.
XXXVI. AT DUNBARTON
For their first bridal camp he chose an island. Long weeks
beforehand he had thought of this place, and set his heart upon
it. Once established in his mind, the thought became a picture
that he saw waking and sleeping. He had stopped at the island
many times alone, and in all seasons; but at this special moment
of the year he liked it best. Often he had added several needless
miles to his journey that he might finish the day at this point,
might catch the trout for his supper beside a certain rock upon
its edge, and fall asleep hearing the stream on either side of
him.
Always for him the first signs that he had gained the true world
of the mountains began at the island. The first pine trees stood
upon it; the first white columbine grew in their shade; and it
seemed to him that he always met here the first of the true
mountain air--the coolness and the new fragrance. Below, there
were only the cottonwoods, and the knolls and steep foot-hills
with their sage-brush, and the great warm air of the plains; here
at this altitude came the definite change. Out of the lower
country and its air he would urge his horse upward, talking to
him aloud, and promising fine pasture in a little while.
Then, when at length he had ridden abreast of the island pines,
he would ford to the sheltered circle of his camp-ground, throw
off the saddle and blanket from the horse's hot, wet back, throw
his own clothes off, and, shouting, spring upon the horse bare,
and with a rope for bridle, cross with him to the promised
pasture. Here there was a pause in the mountain steepness, a
level space of open, green with thick grass. Riding his horse to
this, he would leap off him, and with the flat of his hand give
him a blow that cracked sharp in the stillness and sent the horse
galloping and gambolling to his night's freedom. And while the
animal rolled in the grass, often his master would roll also, and
stretch, and take the grass in his two hands, and so draw his
body along, limbering his muscles after a long ride. Then he
would slide into the stream below his fishing place, where it was
deep enough for swimming, and cross back to his island, and
dressing again, fit his rod together and begin his casting. After
the darkness had set in, there would follow the lying drowsily
with his head upon his saddle, the camp-fire sinking as he
watched it, and sleep approaching to the murmur of the water on
either side of him.
So many visits to this island had he made, and counted so many
hours of revery spent in its haunting sweetness, that the spot
had come to seem his own. It belonged to no man, for it was deep
in the unsurveyed and virgin wilderness; neither had he ever made
his camp here with any man, nor shared with any the intimate
delight which the place gave him. Therefore for many weeks he had
planned to bring her here after their wedding, upon the day
itself, and show her and share with her his pines and his fishing
rock. He would bid her smell the first true breath of the
mountains, would watch with her the sinking camp-fire, and with
her listen to the water as it flowed round the island.
Until this wedding plan, it had by no means come home to him how
deep a hold upon him the island had taken. He knew that he liked
to go there, and go alone; but so little was it his way to scan
himself, his mind, or his feelings (unless some action called for
it), that he first learned his love of the place through his love
of her. But he told her nothing of it. After the thought of
taking her there came to him, he kept his island as something to
let break upon her own eyes, lest by looking forward she should
look for more than the reality.
Hence, as they rode along, when the houses of the town were
shrunk to dots behind them, and they were nearing the gates of
the foot-hills, she asked him questions. She hoped they would
find a camp a long way from the town. She could ride as many
miles as necessary. She was not tired. Should they not go on
until they found a good place far enough within the solitude? Had
he fixed upon any? And at the nod and the silence that he gave
her for reply, she knew that he had thoughts and intentions which
she must wait to learn.
They passed through the gates of the foot-hills, following the
stream up among them. The outstretching fences and the widely
trodden dust were no more. Now and then they rose again into view
of the fields and houses down in the plain below. But as the sum
of the miles and hours grew, they were glad to see the road less
worn with travel, and the traces of men passing from sight. The
ploughed and planted country, that quilt of many-colored harvests
which they had watched yesterday, lay in another world from this
where they rode now. No hand but nature's had sown these crops of
yellow flowers, these willow thickets and tall cottonwoods.
Somewhere in a passage of red rocks the last sign of wagon wheels
was lost, and after this the trail became a wild mountain trail.
But it was still the warm air of the plains, bearing the
sage-brush odor and not the pine, that they breathed; nor did any
forest yet cloak the shapes of the tawny hills among which they
were ascending. Twice the steepness loosened the pack ropes, and
he jumped down to tighten them, lest the horses should get sore
backs. And twice the stream that they followed went into deep
canyons, so that for a while they parted from it. When they came
back to its margin for the second time, he bade her notice how
its water had become at last wholly clear. To her it had seemed
clear enough all along, even in the plain above the town. But now
she saw that it flowed lustrously with flashes; and she knew the
soil had changed to mountain soil. Lower down, the water had
carried the slightest cloud of alkali, and this had dulled the
keen edge of its transparence. Full solitude was around them now,
so that their words grew scarce, and when they spoke it was with
low voices. They began to pass nooks and points favorable for
camping, with wood and water at hand, and pasture for the horses.
More than once as they reached such places, she thought he must
surely stop; but still he rode on in advance of her (for the
trail was narrow) until, when she was not thinking of it, he drew
rein and pointed.
"What?" she asked timidly.
"The pines," he answered.
She looked, and saw the island, and the water folding it with
ripples and with smooth spaces The sun was throwing upon the pine
boughs a light of deepening red gold, and the shadow of the
fishing rock lay over a little bay of quiet water and sandy
shore. In this forerunning glow of the sunset, the pasture spread
like emerald; for the dry touch of summer had not yet come near
it. He pointed upward to the high mountains which they had
approached, and showed her where the stream led into their first
unfoldings.
"To-morrow we shall be among them," said he.
"Then," she murmured to him, "to-night is here?"
He nodded for answer, and she gazed at the island and understood
why he had not stopped before; nothing they had passed had been
so lovely as this place.
There was room in the trail for them to go side by side; and side
by side they rode to the ford and crossed, driving the packhorses
in front of them, until they came to the sheltered circle, and he
helped her down where the soft pine needles lay. They felt each
other tremble, and for a moment she stood hiding her head upon
his breast. Then she looked round at the trees, and the shores,
and the flowing stream, and he heard her whispering how beautiful
it was.
"I am glad," he said, still holding her. "This is how I have
dreamed it would happen. Only it is better than my dreams." And
when she pressed him in silence, he finished, "I have meant we
should see our first sundown here, and our first sunrise."
She wished to help him take the packs from their horses, to make
the camp together with him, to have for her share the building of
the fire, and the cooking. She bade him remember his promise to
her that he would teach her how to loop and draw the pack-ropes,
and the swing-ropes on the pack-saddles, and how to pitch a tent.
Why might not the first lesson be now? But he told her that this
should be fulfilled later. This night he was to do all himself.
And he sent her away until he should have camp ready for them. He
bade her explore the island, or take her horse and ride over to
the pasture, where she could see the surrounding hills and the
circle of seclusion that they made.
"The whole world is far from here," he said. And so she obeyed
him, and went away to wander about in their hiding-place; nor was
she to return, he told her, until he called her.
Then at once, as soon as she was gone, he fell to. The packs and
saddles came off the horses, which he turned loose upon the
pasture on the main land. The tent was unfolded first. He had
long seen in his mind where it should go, and how its white shape
would look beneath the green of the encircling pines. The ground
was level in the spot he had chosen, without stones or roots, and
matted with the fallen needles of the pines. If there should come
any wind, or storm of rain, the branches were thick overhead, and
around them on three sides tall rocks and undergrowth made a
barrier. He cut the pegs for the tent, and the front pole,
stretching and tightening the rope, one end of it pegged down and
one round a pine tree. When the tightening rope had lifted the
canvas to the proper height from the ground, he spread and pegged
down the sides and back, leaving the opening so that they could
look out upon the fire and a piece of the stream beyond. He cut
tufts of young pine and strewed them thickly for a soft floor in
the tent, and over them spread the buffalo hide and the blankets.
At the head he placed the neat sack of her belongings. For his
own he made a shelter with crossed poles and a sheet of canvas
beyond the first pines. He built the fire where its smoke would
float outward from the trees and the tent, and near it he stood
the cooking things and his provisions, and made this first supper
ready in the twilight. He had brought much with him; but for ten
minutes he fished, catching trout enough. When at length she came
riding over the stream at his call, there was nothing for her to
do but sit and eat at the table he had laid. They sat together,
watching the last of the twilight and the gentle oncoming of the
dusk. The final after-glow of day left the sky, and through the
purple which followed it came slowly the first stars, bright and
wide apart. They watched the spaces between them fill with more
stars, while near them the flames and embers of their fire grew
brighter. Then he sent her to the tent while he cleaned the
dishes and visited the horses to see that they did not stray from
the pasture. Some while after the darkness was fully come, he
rejoined her. All had been as he had seen it in his thoughts
beforehand: the pines with the setting sun upon them, the sinking
camp-fire, and now the sound of the water as it flowed murmuring
by the shores of the island.
The tent opened to the east, and from it they watched together
their first sunrise. In his thoughts he had seen this morning
beforehand also: the waking, the gentle sound of the water
murmuring ceaselessly, the growing day, the vision of the stream,
the sense that the world was shut away far from them. So did it
all happen, except that he whispered to her again:- "Better than
my dreams."
They saw the sunlight begin upon a hilltop; and presently came
the sun itself, and lakes of warmth flowed into the air, slowly
filling the green solitude. Along the island shores the ripples
caught flashes from the sun.
"I am going into the stream," he said to her; and rising, he left
her in the tent. This was his side of the island, he had told her
last night; the other was hers, where he had made a place for her
to bathe. When he was gone, she found it, walking through the
trees and rocks to the water's edge. And so, with the island
between them, the two bathed in the cold stream. When he came
back, he found her already busy at their camp. The blue smoke of
the fire was floating out from the trees, loitering undispersed
in the quiet air, and she was getting their breakfast. She had
been able to forestall him because he had delayed long at his
dressing, not willing to return to her unshaven. She looked at
his eyes that were clear as the water he had leaped into, and at
his soft silk neckerchief, knotted with care.
"Do not let us ever go away from here!" she cried, and ran to him
as he came.They sat long together at breakfast, breathing the
morning breath of the earth that was fragrant with woodland
moisture and with the pines. After the meal he could not prevent
her helping him make everything clean. Then, by all customs of
mountain journeys, it was time they should break camp and be
moving before the heat of the day. But first, they delayed for no
reason, save that in these hours they so loved to do nothing. And
next, when with some energy he got upon his feet and declared he
must go and drive the horses in, she asked, Why? Would it not be
well for him to fish here, that they might be sure of trout at
their nooning? And though he knew that where they should stop for
noon, trout would be as sure as here, he took this chance for
more delay.
She went with him to his fishing rock, and sat watching him. The
rock was tall, higher than his head when he stood. It jutted out
halfway across the stream, and the water flowed round it in quick
foam, and fell into a pool. He caught several fish; but the sun
was getting high, and after a time it was plain the fish had
ceased to rise.
Yet still he stood casting in silence, while she sat by and
watched him. Across the stream, the horses wandered or lay down
in their pasture. At length he said with half a sigh that perhaps
they ought to go.
"Ought?" she repeated softly.
"If we are to get anywhere to-day," he answered.
"Need we get anywhere?" she asked.
Her question sent delight through him like a flood. "Then you do
not want to move camp to-day?" said he.
She shook her head.
At this he laid down his rod and came and sat by her. "I am very
glad we shall not go till tomorrow," he murmured.
"Not to-morrow," she said. "Nor next day. Nor any day until we
must." And she stretched her hands out to the island and the
stream exclaiming, "Nothing can surpass this!"
He took her in his arms. "You feel about it the way I do," he
almost whispered. "I could not have hoped there'd be two of us to
care so much."
Presently, while they remained without speaking by the pool, came
a little wild animal swimming round the rock from above. It had
not seen them, nor suspected their presence. They held themselves
still, watching its alert head cross through the waves quickly
and come down through the pool, and so swim to the other side.
There it came out on a small stretch of sand, turned its gray
head and its pointed black nose this way and that, never seeing
them, and then rolled upon its back in the warm dry sand. After a
minute of rolling, it got on its feet again, shook its fur, and
trotted away.
Then the bridegroom husband opened his shy heart deep down.
"I am like that fellow," he said dreamily. "I have often done the
same." And stretching slowly his arms and legs, he lay full
length upon his back, letting his head rest upon her. "If I could
talk his animal language, I could talk to him," he pursued. "And
he would say to me: 'Come and roll on the sands. Where's the use
of fretting? What's the gain in being a man? Come roll on the
sands with me.' That's what he would say." The Virginian paused.
"But," he continued, "the trouble is, I am responsible. If that
could only be forgot forever by you and me!" Again he paused and
went on, always dreamily. "Often when I have camped here, it has
made me want to become the ground, become the water, become the
trees, mix with the whole thing. Not know myself from it. Never
unmix again. Why is that?" he demanded, looking at her. "What is
it? You don't know, nor I don't. I wonder would everybody feel
that way here?"
"I think not everybody," she answered.
"No; none except the ones who understand things they can't put
words to. But you did!" He put up a hand and touched her softly.
"You understood about this place. And that's what makes it--makes
you and me as we are now--better than my dreams. And my dreams
were pretty good."
He sighed with supreme quiet and happiness, and seemed to stretch
his length closer to the earth. And so he lay, and talked to her
as he had never talked to any one, not even to himself. Thus she
learned secrets of his heart new to her: his visits here, what
they were to him, and why he had chosen it for their bridal camp.
"What I did not know at all," he said, "was the way a man can be
pining for--for this--and never guess what is the matter with
him."
When he had finished talking, still he lay extended and serene;
and she looked down at him and the wonderful change that had come
over him, like a sunrise. Was this dreamy boy the man of two days
ago? It seemed a distance immeasurable; yet it was two days only
since that wedding eve when she had shrunk from him as he stood
fierce and implacable. She could look back at that dark hour now,
although she could not speak of it. She had seen destruction like
sharp steel glittering in his eyes. Were these the same eyes? Was
this youth with his black head of hair in her lap the creature
with whom men did not trifle, whose hand knew how to deal death?
Where had the man melted away to in this boy? For as she looked
at him, he might have been no older than nineteen to-day. Not
even at their first meeting--that night when his freakish spirit
was uppermost--had he looked so young. This change their hours
upon the island had wrought, filling his face with innocence.
By and by they made their nooning. In the afternoon she would
have explored the nearer woods with him, or walked up the stream.
But since this was to be their camp during several days, he made
it more complete. He fashioned a rough bench and a table; around
their tent he built a tall wind-break for better shelter in case
of storm; and for the fire he gathered and cut much wood, and
piled it up. So they were provided for, and so for six days and
nights they stayed, finding no day or night long enough.
Once his hedge of boughs did them good service, for they had an
afternoon of furious storm. The wind rocked the pines and
ransacked the island, the sun went out, the black clouds rattled,
and white bolts of lightning fell close by. The shower broke
through the pine branches and poured upon the tent. But he had
removed everything inside from where it could touch the canvas
and so lead the water through, and the rain ran off into the
ditch he had dug round the tent. While they sat within, looking
out upon the bounding floods and the white lightning, she saw him
glance at her apprehensively, and at once she answered his
glance.
"I am not afraid," she said. "If a flame should consume us
together now, what would it matter?"
And so they sat watching the storm till it was over, he with his
face changed by her to a boy's, and she leavened with him.
When at last they were compelled to leave the island, or see no
more of the mountains, it was not a final parting. They would
come back for the last night before their journey ended.
Furthermore, they promised each other like two children to come
here every year upon their wedding day, and like two children
they believed that this would be possible. But in after years
they did come, more than once, to keep their wedding day upon the
island, and upon each new visit were able to say to each other,
"Better than our dreams."
For thirty days by the light of the sun and the camp-fire light
they saw no faces except their own; and when they were silent it
was all stillness, unless the wind passed among the pines, or
some flowing water was near them. Sometimes at evening they came
upon elk, or black-tailed deer, feeding out in the high parks of
the mountains; and once from the edge of some concealing timber
he showed her a bear, sitting with an old log lifted in its paws.
She forbade him to kill the bear, or any creature that they did
not require. He took her upward by trail and canyon, through the
unfooted woods and along dwindling streams to their headwaters,
lakes lying near the summit of the range, full of trout, with
meadows of long grass and a thousand flowers, and above these the
pinnacles of rock and snow.
They made their camps in many places, delaying several days here,
and one night there, exploring the high solitudes together, and
sinking deep in their romance. Sometimes when he was at work with
their horses, or intent on casting his brown hackle for a fish,
she would watch him with eyes that were fuller of love than of
understanding. Perhaps she never came wholly to understand him;
but in her complete love for him she found enough. He loved her
with his whole man's power. She had listened to him tell her in
words of transport, "I could enjoy dying"; yet she loved him more
than that. He had come to her from a smoking pistol, able to bid
her farewell--and she could not let him go. At the last white-hot
edge of ordeal, it was she who renounced, and he who had his way.
Nevertheless she found much more than enough, in spite of the
sigh that now and again breathed through her happiness when she
would watch him with eyes fuller of love than of understanding.
They could not speak of that grim wedding eve for a long while
after; but the mountains brought them together upon all else in
the world and their own lives. At the end they loved each other
doubly more than at the beginning, because of these added
confidences which they exchanged and shared. It was a new bliss
to her to know a man's talk and thoughts, to be given so much of
him; and to him it was a bliss still greater to melt from that
reserve his lonely life had bred in him. He never would have
guessed so much had been stored away in him, unexpressed till
now. They did not want to go to Vermont and leave these
mountains, but the day came when they had to turn their backs
upon their dream. So they came out into the plains once more,
well established in their familiarity, with only the journey
still lying between themselves and Bennington.
"If you could," she said, laughing. "If only you could ride home
like this."
"With Monte and my six-shooter?" he asked. "To your mother?"
"I don't think mother could resist the way you look on a horse."
But he said "It this way she's fearing I will come."
"I have made one discovery," she said. "You are fonder of good
clothes than I am."
He grinned. "I cert'nly like 'em. But don't tell my friends. They
would say it was marriage. When you see what I have got for
Bennington's special benefit, you--why, you'll just trust your
husband more than ever."
She undoubtedly did. After he had put on one particular suit, she
arose and kissed him where he stood in it.
"Bennington will be sorrowful," he said. "No wild-west show,
after all. And no ready-made guy, either." And he looked at
himself in the glass with unbidden pleasure.
"How did you choose that?" she asked. "How did you know that
homespun was exactly the thing for you?"
"Why, I have been noticing. I used to despise an Eastern man
because his clothes were not Western. I was very young then, or
maybe not so very young, as very--as what you saw I was when you
first came to Bear Creek. A Western man is a good thing. And he
generally knows that. But he has a heap to learn. And he
generally don't know that. So I took to watching the Judge's
Eastern visitors. There was that Mr. Ogden especially, from New
Yawk--the gentleman that was there the time when I had to sit up
all night with the missionary, yu' know. His clothes pleased me
best of all. Fit him so well, and nothing flash. I got my ideas,
and when I knew I was going to marry you, I sent my measure
East--and I and the tailor are old enemies now."
Bennington probably was disappointed. To see get out of the train
merely a tall man with a usual straw hat, and Scotch homespun
suit of a rather better cut than most in Bennington--this was
dull. And his conversation--when he indulged in any--seemed fit
to come inside the house.
Mrs. Flynt took her revenge by sowing broadcast her thankfulness
that poor Sam Bannett had been Molly's rejected suitor. He had
done so much better for himself. Sam had married a rich Miss Van
Scootzer, of the second families of Troy; and with their combined
riches this happy couple still inhabit the most expensive
residence in Hoosic Falls.
But most of Bennington soon began to say that Molly s cow-boy
could be invited anywhere and hold his own. The time came when
they ceased to speak of him as a cow-boy, and declared that she
had shown remarkable sense. But this was not quite yet.
Did this bride and groom enjoy their visit to her family?
Well--well, they did their best. Everybody did their best, even
Sarah Bell. She said that she found nothing to object to in the
Virginian; she told Molly so. Her husband Sam did better than
that. He told Molly he considered that she was in luck. And poor
Mrs. Wood, sitting on the sofa, conversed scrupulously and
timidly with her novel son-in-law, and said to Molly that she was
astonished to find him so gentle. And he was undoubtedly
fine-looking; yes, very handsome. She believed that she would
grow to like the Southern accent. Oh, yes! Everybody did their
best; and, dear reader, if ever it has been your earthly portion
to live with a number of people who were all doing their best,
you do not need me to tell you what a heavenly atmosphere this
creates.
And then the bride and groom went to see the old great-aunt over
at Dunbarton.
Their first arrival, the one at Bennington, had been thus: Sam
Bell had met them at the train, and Mrs. Wood, waiting in her
parlor, had embraced her daughter and received her son-in-law.
Among them they had managed to make the occasion as completely
mournful as any family party can be, with the window blinds up.
"And with you present, my dear," said Sam Bell to Sarah, "the
absence of a coffin was not felt."
But at Dunbarton the affair went off differently. The heart of
the ancient lady had taught her better things. From Bennington to
Dunbarton is the good part of a day's journey, and they drove up
to the gate in the afternoon. The great-aunt was in her garden,
picking some August flowers, and she called as the carriage
stopped, "Bring my nephew here, my dear, before you go into the
house."
At this, Molly, stepping out of the carriage, squeezed her
husband's hand. "I knew that she would be lovely," she whispered
to him. And then she ran to her aunt's arms, and let him follow.
He came slowly, hat in hand.
The old lady advanced to meet him, trembling a little, and
holding out her hand to him. "Welcome, nephew," she said. "What a
tall fellow you are, to be sure. Stand off, sir, and let me look
at you."
The Virginian obeyed, blushing from his black hair to his collar.
Then his new relative turned to her niece, and gave her a flower.
"Put this in his coat, my dear," she said. "And I think I
understand why you wanted to marry him."
After this the maid came and showed them to their rooms. Left
alone in her garden, the great-aunt sank on a bench and sat there
for some time; for emotion had made her very weak.
Upstairs, Molly, sitting on the Virginian's knee, put the flower
in his coat, and then laid her head upon his shoulder.
"I didn't know old ladies could be that way," he said. "D' yu'
reckon there are many?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the girl. "I'm so happy!"
Now at tea, and during the evening, the great-aunt carried out
her plans still further. At first she did the chief part of the
talking herself. Nor did she ask questions about Wyoming too
soon. She reached that in her own way, and found out the one
thing that she desired to know. It was through General Stark that
she led up to it.
"There he is," she said, showing the family portrait. "And a
rough time he must have had of it now and then. New Hampshire was
full of fine young men in those days. But nowadays most of them
have gone away to seek their fortunes in the West. Do they find
them, I wonder?"
"Yes, ma'am. All the good ones do."
"But you cannot all be--what is the name?--Cattle Kings."
"That's having its day, ma'am, right now. And we are getting
ready for the change--some of us are."
"And what may be the change, and when is it to come?"
"When the natural pasture is eaten off," he explained. "I have
seen that coming a long while. And if the thieves are going to
make us drive our stock away, we'll drive it. If they don't,
we'll have big pastures fenced, and hay and shelter ready for
winter. What we'll spend in improvements, we'll more than save in
wages. I am well fixed for the new conditions. And then, when I
took up my land, I chose a place where there is coal. It will not
be long before the new railroad needs that."
Thus the old lady learned more of her niece's husband in one
evening than the Bennington family had ascertained during his
whole sojourn with them. For by touching upon Wyoming and its
future, she roused him to talk. He found her mind alive to
Western questions: irrigation, the Indians, the forests; and so
he expanded, revealing to her his wide observation and his shrewd
intelligence. He forgot entirely to be shy. She sent Molly to
bed, and kept him talking for an hour. Then she showed him old
things that she was proud of, "because," she said, "we, too, had
something to do with making our country. And now go to Molly, or
you'll both think me a tiresome old lady."
"I think--" he began, but was not quite equal to expressing what
he thought, and suddenly his shyness flooded him again.
"In that case, nephew," said she, "I'm afraid you'll have to kiss
me good night."
And so she dismissed him to his wife, and to happiness greater
than either of them had known since they had left the mountains
and come to the East. "He'll do," she said to herself, nodding.
Their visit to Dunbarton was all happiness and reparation for the
doleful days at Bennington The old lady gave much comfort and
advice to her niece in private, and when they came to leave, she
stood at the front door holding both their hands a moment.
"God bless you, my dears," she told them. "And when you come next
time, I'll have the nursery ready."
And so it happened that before she left this world, the
great-aunt was able to hold in her arms the first of their many
children.
Judge Henry at Sunk Creek had his wedding present ready. His
growing affairs in Wyoming needed his presence in many places
distant from his ranch, and he made the Virginian his partner.
When the thieves prevailed at length, as they did, forcing cattle
owners to leave the country or be ruined, the Virginian had
forestalled this crash. The herds were driven away to Montana.
Then, in 1889, came the cattle war, when, after putting their men
in office, and coming to own some of the newspapers, the thieves
brought ruin on themselves as well. For in a broken country there
is nothing left to steal.
But the railroad came, and built a branch to that land of the
Virginian's where the coal was. By that time he was an important
man, with a strong grip on many various enterprises, and able to
give his wife all and more than she asked or desired.
Sometimes she missed the Bear Creek days, when she and he had
ridden together, and sometimes she declared that his work would
kill him. But it does not seem to have done so. Their eldest boy
rides the horse Monte; and, strictly between ourselves, I think
his father is going to live a long while.
Back to Full Books
|