The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
“Nebrasky and the boys was tellin’ me they’d missed yu’ off the range,”
again interposed Wiggin. “Say, Nebrasky, who have yu’ offered your
canary to the schoolmarm said you mustn’t give her?”
Nebrasky grinned wretchedly.
“Well, she’s a lady, and she’s square, not takin’ a man’s gift when she
don’t take the man. But you’d ought to get back all them letters yu’
wrote her. Yu’ sure ought to ask her for them tell-tales.”
“Ah, pshaw, Honey!” protested the youth. It was well known that he could
not write his name.
“Why, if here ain’t Bokay Baldy!” cried the agile Wiggin, stooping to
fresh prey. “Found them slippers yet, Baldy? Tell yu’ boys, that was
turruble sad luck Baldy had. Did yu’ hear about that? Baldy, yu’ know,
he can stay on a tame horse most as well as the schoolmarm. But just you
give him a pair of young knittin’-needles and see him make ’em sweat!
He worked an elegant pair of slippers with pink cabbages on ’em for Miss
Wood.”
“I bought ’em at Medicine Bow,” blundered Baldy.
“So yu’ did!” assented the skilful comedian. “Baldy he bought ’em. And
on the road to her cabin there at the Taylors’ he got thinkin’ they
might be too big, and he got studyin’ what to do. And he fixed up to
tell her about his not bein’ sure of the size, and how she was to let
him know if they dropped off her, and he’d exchange ’em, and when he
got right near her door, why, he couldn’t find his courage. And so he
slips the parcel under the fence and starts serenadin’ her. But she
ain’t inside her cabin at all. She’s at supper next door with the
Taylors, and Baldy singin’ ‘Love has conqwered pride and angwer’ to a
lone house. Lin McLean was comin’ up by Taylor’s corral, where Taylor’s
Texas bull was. Well, it was turruble sad. Baldy’s pants got tore, but
he fell inside the fence, and Lin druv the bull back and somebody stole
them Medicine Bow galoshes. Are you goin’ to knit her some more, Bokay?”
“About half that ain’t straight,” Baldy commented, with mildness.
“The half that was tore off yer pants? Well, never mind, Baldy; Lin will
get left too, same as all of yu’.”
“Is there many?” inquired the Virginian. He was still stretched on his
back, looking up at the sky.
“I don’t know how many she’s been used to where she was raised,” Wiggin
answered. “A kid stage-driver come from Point of Rocks one day and went
back the next. Then the foreman of the 76 outfit, and the horse-wrangler
from the Bar-Circle-L, and two deputy marshals, with punchers, stringin’
right along,--all got their tumble. Old Judge Burrage from Cheyenne come
up in August for a hunt and stayed round here and never hunted at all.
There was that horse thief--awful good-lookin’. Taylor wanted to warn
her about him, but Mrs. Taylor said she’d look after her if it was
needed. Mr. Horse-thief gave it up quicker than most; but the schoolmarm
couldn’t have knowed he had a Mrs. Horse-thief camped on Poison Spider
till afterwards. She wouldn’t go ridin’ with him. She’ll go with some,
takin’ a kid along.”
“Bah!” said Trampas.
The Virginian stopped looking at the sky, and watched Trampas from where
he lay.
“I think she encourages a man some,” said poor Nebrasky.
“Encourages? Because she lets yu’ teach her how to shoot,” said Wiggin.
“Well--I don’t guess I’m a judge. I’ve always kind o’ kep’ away from
them good women. Don’t seem to think of anything to chat about to ’em.
The only folks I’d say she encourages is the school kids. She kisses
them.”
“Riding and shooting and kissing the kids,” sneered Trampas. “That’s a
heap too pussy-kitten for me.”
They laughed. The sage-brush audience is readily cynical.
“Look for the man, I say,” Trampas pursued. “And ain’t he there? She
leaves Baldy sit on the fence while she and Lin McLean--”
They laughed loudly at the blackguard picture which he drew; and the
laugh stopped short, for the Virginian stood over Trampas.
“You can rise up now, and tell them you lie,” he said.
The man was still for a moment in the dead silence. “I thought you
claimed you and her wasn’t acquainted,” said he then.
“Stand on your laigs, you polecat, and say you’re a liar!”
Trampas’s hand moved behind him.
“Quit that,” said the Southerner, “or I’ll break your neck!”
The eye of a man is the prince of deadly weapons. Trampas looked in the
Virginian’s, and slowly rose. “I didn’t mean--” he began, and paused,
his face poisonously bloated.
“Well, I’ll call that sufficient. Keep a-standin’ still. I ain’ going
to trouble yu’ long. In admittin’ yourself to be a liar you have spoke
God’s truth for onced. Honey Wiggin, you and me and the boys have hit
town too frequent for any of us to play Sunday on the balance of
the gang.” He stopped and surveyed Public Opinion, seated around in
carefully inexpressive attention. “We ain’t a Christian outfit a little
bit, and maybe we have most forgotten what decency feels like. But I
reckon we haven’t forgot what it means. You can sit down now, if you
want.”
The liar stood and sneered experimentally, looking at Public Opinion.
But this changeful deity was no longer with him, and he heard it
variously assenting, “That’s so,” and “She’s a lady,” and otherwise
excellently moralizing. So he held his peace. When, however, the
Virginian had departed to the roasting steer, and Public Opinion relaxed
into that comfort which we all experience when the sermon ends, Trampas
sat down amid the reviving cheerfulness, and ventured again to be
facetious.
“Shut your rank mouth,” said Wiggin to him, amiably. “I don’t care
whether he knows her or if he done it on principle. I’ll accept the
roundin’ up he gave us--and say! You’ll swallo’ your dose, too! Us
boys’ll stand in with him in this.”
So Trampas swallowed. And what of the Virginian?
He had championed the feeble, and spoken honorably in meeting, and
according to all the constitutions and by-laws of morality, he should
have been walking in virtue’s especial calm. But there it was! he had
spoken; he had given them a peep through the key-hole at his inner
man; and as he prowled away from the assemblage before whom he stood
convicted of decency, it was vicious rather than virtuous that he felt.
Other matters also disquieted him--so Lin McLean was hanging round that
schoolmarm! Yet he joined Ben Swinton in a seemingly Christian spirit.
He took some whiskey and praised the size of the barrel, speaking with
his host like this: “There cert’nly ain’ goin’ to be trouble about a
second helpin’.”
“Hope not. We’d ought to have more trimmings, though. We’re shy on
ducks.”
“Yu’ have the barrel. Has Lin McLean seen that?”
“No. We tried for ducks away down as far as the Laparel outfit. A real
barbecue--”
“There’s large thirsts on Bear Creek. Lin McLean will pass on ducks.”
“Lin’s not thirsty this month.”
“Signed for one month, has he?”
“Signed! He’s spooning our schoolmarm!”
“They claim she’s a right sweet-faced girl.”
“Yes; yes; awful agreeable. And next thing you’re fooled clean through.”
“Yu’ don’t say!”
“She keeps a-teaching the darned kids, and it seems like a good
growed-up man can’t interest her.”
“YU’ DON’T SAY!”
“There used to be all the ducks you wanted at the Laparel, but their
fool cook’s dead stuck on raising turkeys this year.”
“That must have been mighty close to a drowndin’ the schoolmarm got at
South Fork.”
“Why, I guess not. When? She’s never spoken of any such thing--that I’ve
heard.”
“Mos’ likely the stage-driver got it wrong, then.”
“Yes. Must have drownded somebody else. Here they come! That’s her
ridin’ the horse. There’s the Westfalls. Where are you running to?”
“To fix up. Got any soap around hyeh?”
“Yes,” shouted Swinton, for the Virginian was now some distance away;
“towels and everything in the dugout.” And he went to welcome his first
formal guests.
The Virginian reached his saddle under a shed. “So she’s never mentioned
it,” said he, untying his slicker for the trousers and scarf. “I
didn’t notice Lin anywheres around her.” He was over in the dugout now,
whipping off his overalls; and soon he was excellently clean and ready,
except for the tie in his scarf and the part in his hair. “I’d have
knowed her in Greenland,” he remarked. He held the candle up and down at
the looking-glass, and the looking-glass up and down at his head. “It’s
mighty strange why she ain’t mentioned that.” He worried the scarf a
fold or two further, and at length, a trifle more than satisfied with
his appearance, he proceeded most serenely toward the sound of the
tuning fiddles. He passed through the store-room behind the kitchen,
stepping lightly lest he should rouse the ten or twelve babies that lay
on the table or beneath it. On Bear Creek babies and children always
went with their parents to a dance, because nurses were unknown. So
little Alfred and Christopher lay there among the wraps, parallel and
crosswise with little Taylors, and little Carmodys, and Lees, and all
the Bear Creek offspring that was not yet able to skip at large and
hamper its indulgent elders in the ball-room.
“Why, Lin ain’t hyeh yet!” said the Virginian, looking in upon the
people. There was Miss Wood, standing up for the quadrille. “I didn’t
remember her hair was that pretty,” said he. “But ain’t she a little,
little girl!”
Now she was in truth five feet three; but then he could look away down
on the top of her head.
“Salute your honey!” called the first fiddler. All partners bowed to
each other, and as she turned, Miss Wood saw the man in the doorway.
Again, as it had been at South Fork that day, his eyes dropped from
hers, and she divining instantly why he had come after half a year,
thought of the handkerchief and of that scream of hers in the river, and
became filled with tyranny and anticipation; for indeed he was fine to
look upon. So she danced away, carefully unaware of his existence.
“First lady, centre!” said her partner, reminding her of her turn. “Have
you forgotten how it goes since last time?”
Molly Wood did not forget again, but quadrilled with the most sprightly
devotion.
“I see some new faces to-night,” said she, presently.
“Yu’ always do forget our poor faces,” said her partner.
“Oh, no! There’s a stranger now. Who is that black man?”
“Well--he’s from Virginia, and he ain’t allowin’ he’s black.”
“He’s a tenderfoot, I suppose?”
“Ha, ha, ha! That’s rich, too!” and so the simple partner explained a
great deal about the Virginian to Molly Wood. At the end of the set she
saw the man by the door take a step in her direction.
“Oh,” said she, quickly, to the partner, “how warm it is! I must see
how those babies are doing.” And she passed the Virginian in a breeze of
unconcern.
His eyes gravely lingered where she had gone. “She knowed me right
away,” said he. He looked for a moment, then leaned against the door.
“‘How warm it is!’ said she. Well, it ain’t so screechin’ hot hyeh; and
as for rushin’ after Alfred and Christopher, when their natural motheh
is bumpin’ around handy--she cert’nly can’t be offended?” he broke
off, and looked again where she had gone. And then Miss Wood passed him
brightly again, and was dancing the schottische almost immediately.
“Oh, yes, she knows me,” the swarthy cow-puncher mused. “She has to
take trouble not to see me. And what she’s a-fussin’ at is mighty
interestin’. Hello!”
“Hello!” returned Lin McLean, sourly. He had just looked into the
kitchen.
“Not dancin’?” the Southerner inquired.
“Don’t know how.”
“Had scyarlet fever and forgot your past life?”
Lin grinned.
“Better persuade the schoolmarm to learn it. She’s goin’ to give me
instruction.”
“Huh!” went Mr. McLean, and skulked out to the barrel.
“Why, they claimed you weren’t drinkin’ this month!” said his friend,
following.