The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
Virginian to a man loafing near the caboose.
“Bet your life!” said the man. “First lot has been stuck here four
days.”
“Plumb starved, ain’t they?” inquired the Virginian.
“Bet your life! They’ve eat up their dining cars and they’ve eat up this
town.”
“Well,” said the Virginian, looking at the town, “I expaict the
dining-cyars contained more nourishment.”
“Say, you’re about right there!” said the man. He walked beside the
caboose as we puffed slowly forward from the water-tank to our siding.
“Fine business here if we’d only been ready,” he continued. “And the
Crow agent has let his Indians come over from the reservation. There has
been a little beef brought in, and game, and fish. And big money in it,
bet your life! Them Eastern passengers has just been robbed. I wisht I
had somethin’ to sell!”
“Anything starting for Rawhide this afternoon?” said Trampas, out of the
caboose door.
“Not until morning,” said the man. “You going to the mines?” he resumed
to the Virginian.
“Why,” answered the Southerner, slowly and casually, and addressing
himself strictly to the man, while Trampas, on his side, paid obvious
inattention, “this hyeh delay, yu’ see, may unsettle our plans some.
But it’ll be one of two ways,--we’re all goin’ to Rawhide, or we’re all
goin’ to Billings. We’re all one party, yu’ see.”
Trampas laughed audibly inside the door as he rejoined his men. “Let him
keep up appearances,” I heard him tell them. “It don’t hurt us what he
says to strangers.”
“But I’m goin’ to eat hearty either way,” continued the Virginian. “And
I ain’ goin’ to be robbed. I’ve been kind o’ promisin’ myself a treat if
we stopped hyeh.”
“Town’s eat clean out,” said the man.
“So yu’ tell me. But all you folks has forgot one source of revenue that
yu’ have right close by, mighty handy. If you have got a gunny sack,
I’ll show you how to make some money.”
“Bet your life!” said the man.
“Mr. Le Moyne,” said the Virginian, “the outfit’s cookin’ stuff is
aboard, and if you’ll get the fire ready, we’ll try how frawgs’ laigs go
fried.” He walked off at once, the man following like a dog. Inside the
caboose rose a gust of laughter.
“Frogs!” muttered Scipio. And then turning a blank face to me, “Frogs?”
“Colonel Cyrus Jones had them on his bill of fare,” I said. “‘FROGS’
LEGS A LA DELMONICO.’”
“Shoo! I didn’t get up that thing. They had it when I came. Never looked
at it. Frogs?” He went down the steps very slowly, with a long frown.
Reaching the ground, he shook his head. “That man’s trail is surely
hard to anticipate,” he said. “But I must hurry up that fire. For his
appearance has given me encouragement,” Scipio concluded, and became
brisk. Shorty helped him, and I brought wood. Trampas and the other
people strolled off to the station, a compact band.
Our little fire was built beside the caboose, so the cooking things
might be easily reached and put back. You would scarcely think such
operations held any interest, even for the hungry, when there seemed
to be nothing to cook. A few sticks blazing tamely in the dust, a
frying-pan, half a tin bucket of lard, some water, and barren plates and
knives and forks, and three silent men attending to them--that was all.
But the travellers came to see. These waifs drew near us, and stood, a
sad, lone, shifting fringe of audience; four to begin with; and then two
wandered away; and presently one of these came back, finding it worse
elsewhere. “Supper, boys?” said he. “Breakfast,” said Scipio, crossly.
And no more of them addressed us. I heard them joylessly mention Wall
Street to each other, and Saratoga; I even heard the name Bryn Mawr,
which is near Philadelphia. But these fragments of home dropped in the
wilderness here in Montana beside a freight caboose were of no interest
to me now.
“Looks like frogs down there, too,” said Scipio. “See them marshy sloos
full of weeds?” We took a little turn and had a sight of the Virginian
quite active among the ponds. “Hush! I’m getting some thoughts,”
continued Scipio. “He wasn’t sorry enough. Don’t interrupt me.”
“I’m not,” said I.
“No. But I’d ’most caught a-hold.” And Scipio muttered to himself again,
“He wasn’t sorry enough.” Presently he swore loud and brilliantly.
“Tell yu’!” he cried. “What did he say to Trampas after that play they
exchanged over railroad improvements and Trampas put the josh on him?
Didn’t he say, ‘Trampas, I thought you’d be afraid to do it?’ Well, sir,
Trampas had better have been afraid. And that’s what he meant. There’s
where he was bringin’ it to. Trampas made an awful bad play then. You
wait. Glory, but he’s a knowin’ man! Course he wasn’t sorry. I guess he
had the hardest kind of work to look as sorry as he did. You wait.”
“Wait? What for? Go on, man! What for?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! Whatever hand he’s been holdin’ up, this is
the show-down. He’s played for a show-down here before the caboose gets
off the bridge. Come back to the fire, or Shorty’ll be leavin’ it
go out. Grow happy some, Shorty!” he cried on arriving, and his hand
cracked on Shorty’s shoulder. “Supper’s in sight, Shorty. Food for
reflection.”
“None for the stomach?” asked the passenger who had spoken once before.
“We’re figuring on that too,” said Scipio. His crossness had melted
entirely away.
“Why, they’re cow-boys!” exclaimed another passenger; and he moved
nearer.
From the station Trampas now came back, his herd following him less
compactly. They had found famine, and no hope of supplies until the
next train from the East. This was no fault of Trampas’s; but they were
following him less compactly. They carried one piece of cheese, the
size of a fist, the weight of a brick, the hue of a corpse. And the
passengers, seeing it, exclaimed, “There’s Old Faithful again!” and took
off their hats.
“You gentlemen met that cheese before, then?” said Scipio, delighted.
“It’s been offered me three times a day for four days,” said the
passenger. “Did he want a dollar or a dollar and a half?”
“Two dollars!” blurted out the enthusiast. And all of us save Trampas
fell into fits of imbecile laughter.
“Here comes our grub, anyway,” said Scipio, looking off toward the
marshes. And his hilarity sobered away in a moment.
“Well, the train will be in soon,” stated Trampas. “I guess we’ll get a
decent supper without frogs.”
All interest settled now upon the Virginian. He was coming with his man
and his gunny sack, and the gunny sack hung from his shoulder heavily,
as a full sack should. He took no notice of the gathering, but sat down
and partly emptied the sack. “There,” said he, very businesslike, to his
assistant, “that’s all we’ll want. I think you’ll find a ready market
for the balance.”
“Well, my gracious!” said the enthusiast. “What fool eats a frog?”
“Oh, I’m fool enough for a tadpole!” cried the passenger. And they began
to take out their pocket-books.
“You can cook yours right hyeh, gentlemen,” said the Virginian, with
his slow Southern courtesy. “The dining-cyars don’t look like they were
fired up.”
“How much will you sell a couple for?” inquired the enthusiast.
The Virginian looked at him with friendly surprise. “Why, help yourself!
We’re all together yet awhile. Help yourselves,” he repeated, to Trampas
and his followers. These hung back a moment, then, with a slinking
motion, set the cheese upon the earth and came forward nearer the fire
to receive some supper.
“It won’t scarcely be Delmonico style,” said the Virginian to the
passengers, “nor yet Saynt Augustine.” He meant the great Augustin, the
traditional chef of Philadelphia, whose history I had sketched for him
at Colonel Cyrus Jones’s eating palace.
Scipio now officiated. His frying-pan was busy, and prosperous odors
rose from it.
“Run for a bucket of fresh water, Shorty,” the Virginian continued,
beginning his meal. “Colonel, yu’ cook pretty near good. If yu’ had sold
’em as advertised, yu’d have cert’nly made a name.”
Several were now eating with satisfaction, but not Scipio. It was all
that he could do to cook straight. The whole man seemed to glisten.
His eye was shut to a slit once more, while the innocent passengers
thankfully swallowed.
“Now, you see, you have made some money,” began the Virginian to the
native who had helped him get the frogs.
“Bet your life!” exclaimed the man. “Divvy, won’t you?” And he held out
half his gains.
“Keep ’em,” returned the Southerner. “I reckon we’re square. But I
expaict they’ll not equal Delmonico’s, seh?” he said to a passenger.
“Don’t trust the judgment of a man as hungry as I am!” exclaimed the
traveller, with a laugh. And he turned to his fellow-travellers. “Did
you ever enjoy supper at Delmonico’s more than this?”
“Never!” they sighed.
“Why, look here,” said the traveller, “what fools the people of this
town are! Here we’ve been all these starving days, and you come and get
ahead of them!”
“That’s right easy explained,” said the Virginian. “I’ve been where
there was big money in frawgs, and they ’ain’t been. They’re all cattle
hyeh. Talk cattle, think cattle, and they’re bankrupt in consequence.
Fallen through. Ain’t that so?” he inquired of the native.
“That’s about the way,” said the man.
“It’s mighty hard to do what your neighbors ain’t doin’,” pursued the
Virginian. “Montana is all cattle, an’ these folks must be cattle,
an’ never notice the country right hyeh is too small for a range, an’
swampy, anyway, an’ just waitin’ to be a frawg ranch.”
At this, all wore a face of careful reserve.
“I’m not claimin’ to be smarter than you folks hyeh,” said the
Virginian, deprecatingly, to his assistant. “But travellin’ learns a
man many customs. You wouldn’t do the business they done at Tulare,
California, north side o’ the lake. They cert’nly utilized them hopeless
swamps splendid. Of course they put up big capital and went into it
scientific, gettin’ advice from the government Fish Commission, an’ such
like knowledge. Yu’ see, they had big markets for their frawgs,--San
Francisco, Los Angeles, and clear to New York afteh the Southern Pacific
was through. But up hyeh yu’ could sell to passengers every day like yu’
done this one day. They would get to know yu’ along the line. Competing
swamps are scarce. The dining-cyars would take your frawgs, and yu’
would have the Yellowstone Park for four months in the year. Them hotels
are anxious to please, an’ they would buy off yu’ what their Eastern
patrons esteem as fine-eatin’. And you folks would be sellin’ something
instead o’ nothin’.”
“That’s a practical idea,” said a traveller. “And little cost.”
“And little cost,” said the Virginian.
“Would Eastern people eat frogs?” inquired the man.
“Look at us!” said the traveller.
“Delmonico doesn’t give yu’ such a treat!” said the Virginian.
“Not exactly!” the traveller exclaimed.
“How much would be paid for frogs?” said Trampas to him. And I saw
Scipio bend closer to his cooking.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the traveller. “We’ve paid pretty well, you
see.”
“You’re late for Tulare, Trampas,” said the Virginian.
“I was not thinking of Tulare,” Trampas retorted. Scipio’s nose was in
the frying-pan.
“Mos’ comical spot you ever struck!” said the Virginian, looking round
upon the whole company. He allowed himself a broad smile of retrospect.
“To hear ’em talk frawgs at Tulare! Same as other folks talks hawsses or
steers or whatever they’re raising to sell. Yu’d fall into it yourselves
if yu’ started the business. Anything a man’s bread and butter depends
on, he’s going to be earnest about. Don’t care if it is a frawg.”
“That’s so,” said the native. “And it paid good?”
“The only money in the county was right there,” answered the Virginian.
“It was a dead county, and only frawgs was movin’. But that business was