The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
“Well, I am. Here’s luck!” The two pledged in tin cups. “But I’m not
waltzin’ with her,” blurted Mr. McLean grievously. “She called me an
exception.”
“Waltzin’,” repeated the Virginian quickly, and hearing the fiddles he
hastened away.
Few in the Bear Creek Country could waltz, and with these few it
was mostly an unsteered and ponderous exhibition; therefore was the
Southerner bent upon profiting by his skill. He entered the room,
and his lady saw him come where she sat alone for the moment, and her
thoughts grew a little hurried.
“Will you try a turn, ma’am?”
“I beg your pardon?” It was a remote, well-schooled eye that she lifted
now upon him.
“If you like a waltz, ma’am, will you waltz with me?”
“You’re from Virginia, I understand?” said Molly Wood, regarding him
politely, but not rising. One gains authority immensely by keeping one’s
seat. All good teachers know this.
“Yes, ma’am, from Virginia.”
“I’ve heard that Southerners have such good manners.”
“That’s correct.” The cow-puncher flushed, but he spoke in his
unvaryingly gentle voice.
“For in New England, you know,” pursued Miss Molly, noting his scarf and
clean-shaven chin, and then again steadily meeting his eye, “gentlemen
ask to be presented to ladies before they ask them to waltz.”
He stood a moment before her, deeper and deeper scarlet; and the more
she saw his handsome face, the keener rose her excitement. She waited
for him to speak of the river; for then she was going to be surprised,
and gradually to remember, and finally to be very nice to him. But he
did not wait. “I ask your pardon, lady,” said he, and bowing, walked
off, leaving her at once afraid that he might not come back. But she had
altogether mistaken her man. Back he came serenely with Mr. Taylor, and
was duly presented to her. Thus were the conventions vindicated.
It can never be known what the cow-puncher was going to say next; for
Uncle Hughey stepped up with a glass of water which he had left Wood to
bring, and asking for a turn, most graciously received it. She danced
away from a situation where she began to feel herself getting the
worst of it. One moment the Virginian stared at his lady as she lightly
circulated, and then he went out to the barrel.
Leave him for Uncle Hershey! Jealousy is a deep and delicate thing, and
works its spite in many ways. The Virginian had been ready to look at
Lin McLean with a hostile eye; but finding him now beside the barrel, he
felt a brotherhood between himself and Lin, and his hostility had taken
a new and whimsical direction.
“Here’s how!” said he to McLean. And they pledged each other in the tin
cups.
“Been gettin’ them instructions?” said Mr. McLean, grinning. “I thought
I saw yu’ learning your steps through the window.”
“Here’s your good health,” said the Southerner. Once more they pledged
each other handsomely.
“Did she call you an exception, or anything?” said Lin.
“Well, it would cipher out right close in that neighborhood.”
“Here’s how, then!” cried the delighted Lin, over his cup.
“Jest because yu’ happen to come from Vermont,” continued Mr. McLean,
“is no cause for extra pride. Shoo! I was raised in Massachusetts
myself, and big men have been raised there, too,--Daniel Webster and
Israel Putnam: and a lot of them politicians.”
“Virginia is a good little old state,” observed the Southerner.
“Both of ’em’s a sight ahead of Vermont. She told me I was the first
exception she’d struck.”
“What rule were you provin’ at the time, Lin?”
“Well yu’ see, I started to kiss her.”
“Yu’ didn’t!”
“Shucks! I didn’t mean nothin’.”
“I reckon yu’ stopped mighty sudden?”
“Why, I’d been ridin’ out with her--ridin’ to school, ridin’ from
school, and a-comin’ and a-goin’, and she chattin’ cheerful and askin’
me a heap o’ questions all about myself every day, and I not lyin’ much
neither. And so I figured she wouldn’t mind. Lots of ’em like it. But
she didn’t, you bet!”
“No,” said the Virginian, deeply proud of his lady who had slighted him.
He had pulled her out of the water once, and he had been her unrewarded
knight even to-day, and he felt his grievance; but he spoke not of it
to Lin; for he felt also, in memory, her arms clinging round him as he
carried her ashore upon his horse. But he muttered, “Plumb ridiculous!”
as her injustice struck him afresh, while the outraged McLean told his
tale.
“Trample is what she has done on me to-night, and without notice. We was
startin’ to come here; Taylor and Mrs. were ahead in the buggy, and I
was holdin’ her horse, and helpin’ her up in the saddle, like I done for
days and days. Who was there to see us? And I figured she’d not mind,
and she calls me an exception! Yu’d ought to’ve just heard her about
Western men respectin’ women. So that’s the last word we’ve spoke.
We come twenty-five miles then, she scootin’ in front, and her horse
kickin’ the sand in my face. Mrs. Taylor, she guessed something was up,
but she didn’t tell.”
“Miss Wood did not tell?”
“Not she! She’ll never open her head. She can take care of herself, you
bet!” The fiddles sounded hilariously in the house, and the feet also.
They had warmed up altogether, and their dancing figures crossed the
windows back and forth. The two cow-punchers drew near to a window and
looked in gloomily.
“There she goes,” said Lin.
“With Uncle Hughey again,” said the Virginian, sourly. “Yu’ might
suppose he didn’t have a wife and twins, to see the way he goes
gambollin’ around.”
“Westfall is takin’ a turn with her now,” said McLean.
“James!” exclaimed the Virginian. “He’s another with a wife and fam’ly,
and he gets the dancin’, too.”
“There she goes with Taylor,” said Lin, presently.
“Another married man!” the Southerner commented. They prowled round to
the store-room, and passed through the kitchen to where the dancers were
robustly tramping. Miss Wood was still the partner of Mr. Taylor. “Let’s
have some whiskey,” said the Virginian. They had it, and returned, and
the Virginian’s disgust and sense of injury grew deeper. “Old Carmody
has got her now,” he drawled. “He polkas like a landslide. She learns
his monkey-faced kid to spell dog and cow all the mawnin’. He’d ought to
be tucked up cosey in his bed right now, old Carmody ought.”
They were standing in that place set apart for the sleeping children;
and just at this moment one of two babies that were stowed beneath
a chair uttered a drowsy note. A much louder cry, indeed a chorus of
lament, would have been needed to reach the ears of the parents in the
room beyond, such was the noisy volume of the dance. But in this quiet
place the light sound caught Mr. McLean’s attention, and he turned to
see if anything were wrong. But both babies were sleeping peacefully.
“Them’s Uncle Hughey’s twins,” he said.
“How do you happen to know that?” inquired the Virginian, suddenly
interested.
“Saw his wife put ’em under the chair so she could find ’em right off
when she come to go home.”
“Oh,” said the Virginian, thoughtfully. “Oh, find ’em right off. Yes.
Uncle Hughey’s twins.” He walked to a spot from which he could view the
dance. “Well,” he continued, returning, “the schoolmarm must have taken
quite a notion to Uncle Hughey. He has got her for this quadrille.” The
Virginian was now speaking without rancor; but his words came with a
slightly augmented drawl, and this with him was often a bad omen. He
now turned his eyes upon the collected babies wrapped in various
colored shawls and knitted work. “Nine, ten, eleven, beautiful sleepin’
strangers,” he counted, in a sweet voice. “Any of ’em your’n, Lin?”
“Not that I know of,” grinned Mr. McLean.
“Eleven, twelve. This hyeh is little Christopher in the blue-stripe
quilt--or maybe that other yello’-head is him. The angels have commenced
to drop in on us right smart along Bear Creek, Lin.”
“What trash are yu’ talkin’ anyway?”
“If they look so awful alike in the heavenly gyarden,” the gentle
Southerner continued, “I’d just hate to be the folks that has the
cuttin’ of ’em out o’ the general herd. And that’s a right quaint notion
too,” he added softly. “Them under the chair are Uncle Hughey’s, didn’t
you tell me?” And stooping, he lifted the torpid babies and placed them
beneath a table. “No, that ain’t thorough,” he murmured. With wonderful
dexterity and solicitude for their wellfare, he removed the loose wrap
which was around them, and this soon led to an intricate process of
exchange. For a moment Mr. McLean had been staring at the Virginian,
puzzled. Then, with a joyful yelp of enlightenment, he sprang to abet
him.
And while both busied themselves with the shawls and quilts, the
unconscious parents went dancing vigorously on, and the small,
occasional cries of their progeny did not reach them.
XI. “YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE ME BEFORE WE GET THROUGH”
The Swinton barbecue was over. The fiddles were silent, the steer was
eaten, the barrel emptied, or largely so, and the tapers extinguished;
round the house and sunken fire all movement of guests was quiet;
the families were long departed homeward, and after their hospitable
turbulence, the Swintons slept.
Mr. and Mrs. Westfall drove through the night, and as they neared their
cabin there came from among the bundled wraps a still, small voice.
“Jim,” said his wife, “I said Alfred would catch cold.”
“Bosh! Lizzie, don’t you fret. He’s a little more than a yearlin’, and
of course he’ll snuffle.” And young James took a kiss from his love.
“Well, how you can speak of Alfred that way, calling him a yearling, as
if he was a calf, and he just as much your child as mine, I don’t see,
James Westfall!”
“Why, what under the sun do you mean?”
“There he goes again! Do hurry up home, Jim. He’s got a real strange
cough.”
So they hurried home. Soon the nine miles were finished, and good
James was unhitching by his stable lantern, while his wife in the house
hastened to commit their offspring to bed. The traces had dropped, and
each horse marched forward for further unbuckling, when James heard
himself called. Indeed, there was that in his wife’s voice which made
him jerk out his pistol as he ran. But it was no bear or Indian--only
two strange children on the bed. His wife was glaring at them.
He sighed with relief and laid down the pistol.
“Put that on again, James Westfall. You’ll need it. Look here!”
“Well, they won’t bite. Whose are they? Where have you stowed ourn?”
“Where have I--” Utterance forsook this mother for a moment. “And you
ask me!” she continued. “Ask Lin McLean. Ask him that sets bulls on
folks and steals slippers, what he’s done with our innocent lambs,
mixing them up with other people’s coughing, unhealthy brats. That’s
Charlie Taylor in Alfred’s clothes, and I know Alfred didn’t cough like
that, and I said to you it was strange; and the other one that’s been
put in Christopher’s new quilts is not even a bub--bub--boy!”
As this crime against society loomed clear to James Westfall’s
understanding, he sat down on the nearest piece of furniture, and
heedless of his wife’s tears and his exchanged children, broke into
unregenerate laughter. Doubtless after his sharp alarm about the bear,
he was unstrung. His lady, however, promptly restrung him; and by the
time they had repacked the now clamorous changelings, and were rattling
on their way to the Taylors’, he began to share her outraged feelings
properly, as a husband and a father should; but when he reached the
Taylors’ and learned from Miss Wood that at this house a child had
been unwrapped whom nobody could at all identify, and that Mr. and Mrs.
Taylor were already far on the road to the Swintons’, James Westfall
whipped up his horses and grew almost as thirsty for revenge as was his
wife.