The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
outstripped him and came desperately to the empty track. There went the
train. Even still its puffs were the separated puffs of starting, that
bitten-off, snorty kind, and sweat and our true natures broke freely
forth.
I kicked my valise, and then sat on it, dumb.
Shorty yielded himself up aloud. All his humble secrets came out of
him. He walked aimlessly round, lamenting. He had lost his job, and he
mentioned the ranch. He had played cards, and he mentioned the man. He
had sold his horse and saddle to catch a friend on this train, and he
mentioned what the friend had been going to do for him. He told a string
of griefs and names to the air, as if the air knew.
Meanwhile Scipio arrived with extreme leisure at the rails. He stuck
his hands into his pockets and his head out at the very small train.
His bleached blue eyes shut to slits as he watched the rear car in its
smoke-blur ooze away westward among the mounded bluffs. “Lucky it’s out
of range,” I thought. But now Scipio spoke to it.
“Why, you seem to think you’ve left me behind,” he began easily, in
fawning tones. “You’re too much of a kid to have such thoughts. Age
some.” His next remark grew less wheedling. “I wouldn’t be a bit proud
to meet yu’. Why, if I was seen travellin’ with yu’, I’d have to explain
it to my friends! Think you’ve got me left, do yu’? Just because yu’
ride through this country on a rail, do yu’ claim yu’ can find your way
around? I could take yu’ out ten yards in the brush and lose yu’ in
ten seconds, you spangle-roofed hobo! Leave ME behind? you recent
blanket-mortgage yearlin’! You plush-lined, nickel-plated, whistlin’
wash room, d’ yu’ figure I can’t go east just as soon as west? Or I’ll
stay right here if it suits me, yu’ dude-inhabited hot-box! Why, yu’
coon-bossed face-towel--” But from here he rose in flights of novelty
that appalled and held me spellbound, and which are not for me to say
to you. Then he came down easily again, and finished with expressions of
sympathy for it because it could never have known a mother.
“Do you expaict it could show a male parent offhand?” inquired a slow
voice behind us. I jumped round, and there was the Virginian.
“Male parent!” scoffed the prompt Scipio. “Ain’t you heard about THEM
yet?”
“Them? Was there two?”
“Two? The blamed thing was sired by a whole doggone Dutch syndicate.”
“Why, the piebald son of a gun!” responded the Virginian, sweetly. “I
got them steers through all right,” he added to me. “Sorry to see yu’
get so out o’ breath afteh the train. Is your valise sufferin’ any?”
“Who’s he?” inquired Scipio, curiously, turning to me.
The Southerner sat with a newspaper on the rear platform of a caboose.
The caboose stood hitched behind a mile or so of freight train, and
the train was headed west. So here was the deputy foreman, his steers
delivered in Chicago, his men (I could hear them) safe in the caboose,
his paper in his lap, and his legs dangling at ease over the railing. He
wore the look of a man for whom things are going smooth. And for me the
way to Billings was smooth now, also.
“Who’s he?” Scipio repeated.
But from inside the caboose loud laughter and noise broke on us. Some
one was reciting “And it’s my night to howl.”
“We’ll all howl when we get to Rawhide,” said some other one; and they
howled now.
“These hyeh steam cyars,” said the Virginian to Scipio, “make a man’s
language mighty nigh as speedy as his travel.” Of Shorty he took no
notice whatever--no more than of the manifestations in the caboose.
“So yu’ heard me speakin’ to the express,” said Scipio. “Well, I guess,
sometimes I--See here,” he exclaimed, for the Virginian was gravely
considering him, “I may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You
didn’t catch ME squandering no speed. Soon as--”
“I noticed,” said the Virginian, “thinkin’ came quicker to yu’ than
runnin’.”
I was glad I was not Shorty, to have my measure taken merely by my
way of missing a train. And of course I was sorry that I had kicked my
valise.
“Oh, I could tell yu’d been enjoyin’ us!” said Scipio. “Observin’
somebody else’s scrape always kind o’ rests me too. Maybe you’re a
philosopher, but maybe there’s a pair of us drawd in this deal.”
Approval now grew plain upon the face of the Virginian. “By your laigs,”
said he, “you are used to the saddle.”
“I’d be called used to it, I expect.”
“By your hands,” said the Southerner, again, “you ain’t roped many
steers lately. Been cookin’ or something?”
“Say,” retorted Scipio, “tell my future some now. Draw a conclusion from
my mouth.”
“I’m right distressed,” answered the gentle Southerner, “we’ve not a
drop in the outfit.”
“Oh, drink with me uptown!” cried Scipio. “I’m pleased to death with
yu’.”
The Virginian glanced where the saloons stood just behind the station,
and shook his head.
“Why, it ain’t a bit far to whiskey from here!” urged the other,
plaintively. “Step down, now. Scipio le Moyne’s my name. Yes, you’re
lookin’ for my brass ear-rings. But there ain’t no ear-rings on me. I’ve
been white for a hundred years. Step down. I’ve a forty-dollar thirst.”
“You’re certainly white,” began the Virginian. “But--”
Here the caboose resumed:
“I’m wild, and woolly, and full of peas;
I’m hard to curry above the knees;
I’m a she-wolf from Bitter Creek, and
It’s my night to ho-o-wl--”
And as they howled and stamped, the wheels of the caboose began to turn
gently and to murmur.
The Virginian rose suddenly. “Will yu’ save that thirst and take a
forty-dollar job?”
“Missin’ trains, profanity, or what?” said Scipio.
“I’ll tell yu’ soon as I’m sure.”
At this Scipio looked hard at the Virginian. “Why, you’re talkin’
business!” said he, and leaped on the caboose, where I was already. “I
WAS thinkin’ of Rawhide,” he added, “but I ain’t any more.”
“Well, good luck!” said Shorty, on the track behind us.
“Oh, say!” said Scipio, “he wanted to go on that train, just like me.”
“Get on,” called the Virginian. “But as to getting a job, he ain’t just
like you.” So Shorty came, like a lost dog when you whistle to him.
Our wheels clucked over the main-line switch. A train-hand threw it shut
after us, jumped aboard, and returned forward over the roofs. Inside the
caboose they had reached the third howling of the she-wolf.
“Friends of yourn?” said Scipio.
“My outfit,” drawled the Virginian.
“Do yu’ always travel outside?” inquired Scipio.
“It’s lonesome in there,” returned the deputy foreman. And here one of
them came out, slamming the door.
“Hell!” he said, at sight of the distant town. Then, truculently, to the
Virginian, “I told you I was going to get a bottle here.”
“Have your bottle, then,” said the deputy foreman, and kicked him off
into Dakota. (It was not North Dakota yet; they had not divided it.)
The Virginian had aimed his pistol at about the same time with his
boot. Therefore the man sat in Dakota quietly, watching us go away into
Montana, and offering no objections. Just before he became too small to
make out, we saw him rise and remove himself back toward the saloons.
XV. THE GAME AND THE NATION--ACT SECOND
“That is the only step I have had to take this whole trip,” said the
Virginian. He holstered his pistol with a jerk. “I have been fearing
he would force it on me.” And he looked at empty, receding Dakota with
disgust. “So nyeh back home!” he muttered.
“Known your friend long?” whispered Scipio to me.
“Fairly,” I answered.
Scipio’s bleached eyes brightened with admiration as he considered the
Southerner’s back. “Well,” he stated judicially, “start awful early when
yu’ go to fool with him, or he’ll make you feel unpunctual.”
“I expaict I’ve had them almost all of three thousand miles,” said the
Virginian, tilting his head toward the noise in the caboose. “And I’ve
strove to deliver them back as I received them. The whole lot. And I
would have. But he has spoiled my hopes.” The deputy foreman looked
again at Dakota. “It’s a disappointment,” he added. “You may know what I
mean.”
I had known a little, but not to the very deep, of the man’s pride and
purpose in this trust. Scipio gave him sympathy. “There must be quite a
balance of ’em left with yu’ yet,” said Scipio, cheeringly.
“I had the boys plumb contented,” pursued the deputy foreman, hurt
into open talk of himself. “Away along as far as Saynt Paul I had them
reconciled to my authority. Then this news about gold had to strike us.”
“And they’re a-dreamin’ nuggets and Parisian bowleyvards,” suggested
Scipio.
The Virginian smiled gratefully at him.
“Fortune is shinin’ bright and blindin’ to their delicate young eyes,”
he said, regaining his usual self.
We all listened a moment to the rejoicings within.
“Energetic, ain’t they?” said the Southerner. “But none of ’em was
whelped savage enough to sing himself bloodthirsty. And though they’re
strainin’ mighty earnest not to be tame, they’re goin’ back to Sunk
Creek with me accordin’ to the Judge’s awders. Never a calf of them will
desert to Rawhide, for all their dangerousness; nor I ain’t goin’ to
have any fuss over it. Only one is left now that don’t sing. Maybe I
will have to make some arrangements about him. The man I have parted
with,” he said, with another glance at Dakota, “was our cook, and I will
ask yu’ to replace him, Colonel.”
Scipio gaped wide. “Colonel! Say!” He stared at the Virginian. “Did I
meet yu’ at the palace?”
“Not exackly meet,” replied the Southerner. “I was present one mawnin’
las’ month when this gentleman awdehed frawgs’ laigs.”
“Sakes and saints, but that was a mean position!” burst out Scipio. “I
had to tell all comers anything all day. Stand up and jump language hot
off my brain at ’em. And the pay don’t near compensate for the drain on
the system. I don’t care how good a man is, you let him keep a-tappin’
his presence of mind right along, without takin’ a lay-off, and you’ll
have him sick. Yes, sir. You’ll hit his nerves. So I told them they
could hire some fresh man, for I was goin’ back to punch cattle or fight
Indians, or take a rest somehow, for I didn’t propose to get jaded,
and me only twenty-five years old. There ain’t no regular Colonel
Cyrus Jones any more, yu’ know. He met a Cheyenne telegraph pole in
seventy-four, and was buried. But his palace was doin’ big business, and
he had been a kind of attraction, and so they always keep a live bear
outside, and some poor fello’, fixed up like the Colonel used to be,
inside. And it’s a turruble mean position. Course I’ll cook for yu’.
Yu’ve a dandy memory for faces!”
“I wasn’t right convinced till I kicked him off and you gave that shut
to your eyes again,” said the Virginian.
Once more the door opened. A man with slim black eyebrows, slim black
mustache, and a black shirt tied with a white handkerchief was looking
steadily from one to the other of us.
“Good day!” he remarked generally and without enthusiasm; and to the
Virginian, “Where’s Schoffner?”
“I expaict he’ll have got his bottle by now, Trampas.”
Trampas looked from one to the other of us again. “Didn’t he say he was
coming back?”
“He reminded me he was going for a bottle, and afteh that he didn’t wait
to say a thing.”
Trampas looked at the platform and the railing and the steps. “He told
me he was coming back,” he insisted.
“I don’t reckon he has come, not without he clumb up ahaid somewhere.
An’ I mus’ say, when he got off he didn’t look like a man does when he
has the intention o’ returnin’.”
At this Scipio coughed, and pared his nails attentively. We had already
been avoiding each other’s eye. Shorty did not count. Since he got
aboard, his meek seat had been the bottom step.
The thoughts of Trampas seemed to be in difficulty. “How long’s this