The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
descendant, the angry girl with her hand on an open box-lid, made a sort
of couple in the loneliness: she on the wall sweet and serene, she by
the box sweet and stormy. The picture was her final treasure waiting to
be packed for the journey. In whatever room she had called her own
since childhood, there it had also lived and looked at her, not quite
familiar, not quite smiling, but in its prim colonial hues delicate as
some pressed flower. Its pale oval, of color blue and rose and
flaxen, in a battered, pretty gold frame, unconquerably pervaded any
surroundings with a something like last year’s lavender. Till yesterday
a Crow Indian war-bonnet had hung next it, a sumptuous cascade of
feathers; on the other side a bow with arrows had dangled; opposite had
been the skin of a silver fox; over the door had spread the antlers of
a black-tail deer; a bearskin stretched beneath it. Thus had the whole
cosey log cabin been upholstered, lavish with trophies of the frontier;
and yet it was in front of the miniature that the visitors used to stop.
Shining quietly now in the cabin’s blackness this summer day, the
heirloom was presiding until the end. And as Molly Wood’s eyes fell upon
her ancestress of Bennington, 1777, there flashed a spark of steel in
them, alone here in the room that she was leaving forever. She was not
going to teach school any more on Bear Creek, Wyoming; she was going
home to Bennington, Vermont. When time came for school to open again,
there should be a new schoolmarm.
This was the momentous result of that visit which the Virginian had paid
her. He had told her that he was coming for his hour soon. From that
hour she had decided to escape. She was running away from her own heart.
She did not dare to trust herself face to face again with her potent,
indomitable lover. She longed for him, and therefore she would never see
him again. No great-aunt at Dunbarton, or anybody else that knew her and
her family, should ever say that she had married below her station, had
been an unworthy Stark! Accordingly, she had written to the Virginian,
bidding him good-by, and wishing him everything in the world. As she
happened to be aware that she was taking everything in the world away
from him, this letter was not the most easy of letters to write. But
she had made the language very kind. Yes; it was a thoroughly kind
communication. And all because of that momentary visit, when he had
brought back to her two novels, EMMA and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.
“How do you like them?” she had then inquired; and he had smiled slowly
at her. “You haven’t read them!” she exclaimed.
“No.”
“Are you going to tell me there has been no time?”
“No.”
Then Molly had scolded her cow-puncher, and to this he had listened with
pleasure undisguised, as indeed he listened to every word that she said.
“Why, it has come too late,” he had told her when the scolding was over.
“If I was one of your little scholars hyeh in Bear Creek schoolhouse,
yu’ could learn me to like such frillery I reckon. But I’m a mighty
ignorant, growed-up man.”
“So much the worse for you!” said Molly.
“No. I am pretty glad I am a man. Else I could not have learned the
thing you have taught me.”
But she shut her lips and looked away. On the desk was a letter written
from Vermont. “If you don’t tell me at once when you decide,” had said
the arch writer, “never hope to speak to me again. Mary Wood, seriously,
I am suspicious. Why do you never mention him nowadays? How exciting
to have you bring a live cow-boy to Bennington! We should all come
to dinner. Though of course I understand now that many of them have
excellent manners. But would he wear his pistol at table?” So the letter
ran on. It recounted the latest home gossip and jokes. In answering it
Molly Wood had taken no notice of its childish tone here and there.
“Hyeh’s some of them cactus blossoms yu’ wanted,” said the Virginian.
His voice recalled the girl with almost a start. “I’ve brought a good
hawss I’ve gentled for yu’, and Taylor’ll keep him till I need him.”
“Thank you so much! but I wish--”
“I reckon yu’ can’t stop me lendin’ Taylor a hawss. And you cert’nly’ll
get sick schoolteachin’ if yu’ don’t keep outdoors some. Good-by--till
that next time.”
“Yes; there’s always a next time,” she answered, as lightly as she
could.
“There always will be. Don’t yu’ know that?”
She did not reply.
“I have discouraged spells,” he pursued, “but I down them. For I’ve told
yu’ you were going to love me. You are goin’ to learn back the thing you
have taught me. I’m not askin’ anything now; I don’t want you to speak a
word to me. But I’m never goin’ to quit till ‘next time’ is no more, and
it’s ‘all the time’ for you and me.”
With that he had ridden away, not even touching her hand. Long after
he had gone she was still in her chair, her eyes lingering upon his
flowers, those yellow cups of the prickly pear. At length she had
risen impatiently, caught up the flowers, gone with them to the open
window,--and then, after all, set them with pains in water.
But to-day Bear Creek was over. She was going home now. By the week’s
end she would be started. By the time the mail brought him her good-by
letter she would be gone. She had acted.
To Bear Creek, the neighborly, the friendly, the not comprehending, this
move had come unlooked for, and had brought regret. Only one hard word
had been spoken to Molly, and that by her next-door neighbor and kindest
friend. In Mrs. Taylor’s house the girl had daily come and gone as
a daughter, and that lady reached the subject thus:-- “When I took
Taylor,” said she, sitting by as Robert Browning and Jane Austen were
going into their box, “I married for love.”
“Do you wish it had been money?” said Molly, stooping to her industries.
“You know both of us better than that, child.”
“I know I’ve seen people at home who couldn’t possibly have had any
other reason. They seemed satisfied, too.”
“Maybe the poor ignorant things were!”
“And so I have never been sure how I might choose.”
“Yes, you are sure, deary. Don’t you think I know you? And when it comes
over Taylor once in a while, and he tells me I’m the best thing in his
life, and I tell him he ain’t merely the best thing but the only thing
in mine,--him and the children,--why, we just agree we’d do it all over
the same way if we had the chance.”
Molly continued to be industrious.
“And that’s why,” said Mrs. Taylor, “I want every girl that’s anything
to me to know her luck when it comes. For I was that near telling Taylor
I wouldn’t!”
“If ever my luck comes,” said Molly, with her back to her friend, “I
shall say ‘I will’ at once.”
“Then you’ll say it at Bennington next week.”
Molly wheeled round.
“Why, you surely will. Do you expect he’s going to stay here, and you in
Bennington?” And the campaigner sat back in her chair.
“He? Goodness! Who is he?”
“Child, child, you’re talking cross to-day because you’re at outs with
yourself. You’ve been at outs ever since you took this idea of leaving
the school and us and everything this needless way. You have not treated
him right. And why, I can’t make out to save me. What have you found out
all of a sudden? If he was not good enough for you, I--But, oh, it’s a
prime one you’re losing, Molly. When a man like that stays faithful to a
girl ’spite all the chances he gets, her luck is come.”
“Oh, my luck! People have different notions of luck.”
“Notions!”
“He has been very kind.”
“Kind!” And now without further simmering, Mrs. Taylor’s wrath boiled
up and poured copiously over Molly Wood. “Kind! There’s a word you
shouldn’t use, my dear. No doubt you can spell it. But more than its
spelling I guess you don’t know. The children can learn what it means
from some of the rest of us folks that don’t spell so correct, maybe.”
“Mrs. Taylor, Mrs. Taylor--”
“I can’t wait, deary. Since the roughness looks bigger to you than the
diamond, you had better go back to Vermont. I expect you’ll find better
grammar there, deary.”
The good dame stalked out, and across to her own cabin, and left the
angry girl among her boxes. It was in vain she fell to work upon them.
Presently something had to be done over again, and when it was the box
held several chattels less than before the readjustment. She played a
sort of desperate dominos to fit these objects in the space, but here
were a paper-weight, a portfolio, with two wretched volumes that no
chink would harbor; and letting them fall all at once, she straightened
herself, still stormy with revolt, eyes and cheeks still hot from
the sting of long-parried truth. There, on her wall still, was the
miniature, the little silent ancestress; and upon this face the girl’s
glance rested. It was as if she appealed to Grandmother Stark for
support and comfort across the hundred years which lay between them. So
the flaxen girl on the wall and she among the boxes stood a moment face
to face in seeming communion, and then the descendant turned again to
her work. But after a desultory touch here and there she drew a long
breath and walked to the open door. What use was in finishing to-day,
when she had nearly a week? This first spurt of toil had swept the cabin
bare of all indwelling charm, and its look was chill. Across the lane
his horse, the one he had “gentled” for her, was grazing idly. She
walked there and caught him, and led him to her gate. Mrs. Taylor saw
her go in, and soon come out in riding-dress; and she watched the girl
throw the saddle on with quick ease--the ease he had taught her. Mrs.
Taylor also saw the sharp cut she gave the horse, and laughed grimly
to herself in her window as horse and rider galloped into the beautiful
sunny loneliness.
To the punished animal this switching was new! and at its third
repetition he turned his head in surprise, but was no more heeded than
were the bluffs and flowers where he was taking his own undirected
choice of way. He carried her over ground she knew by heart--Corncliff
Mesa, Crowheart Butte, Westfall’s Crossing, Upper Canyon; open land and
woodland, pines and sage-brush, all silent and grave and lustrous in the
sunshine. Once and again a ranchman greeted her, and wondered if she
had forgotten who he was; once she passed some cow-punchers with a small
herd of steers, and they stared after her too. Bear Creek narrowed, its
mountain-sides drew near, its little falls began to rush white in midday
shadow, and the horse suddenly pricked his ears. Unguided, he was taking
this advantage to go home. Though he had made but little way--a mere
beginning yet--on this trail over to Sunk Creek, here was already a
Sunk Creek friend whinnying good day to him, so he whinnied back and
quickened his pace, and Molly started to life. What was Monte doing
here? She saw the black horse she knew also, saddled, with reins
dragging on the trail as the rider had dropped them to dismount. A cold
spring bubbled out beyond the next rock, and she knew her lover’s horse
was waiting for him while he drank. She pulled at the reins, but loosed
them, for to turn and escape now was ridiculous; and riding boldly round
the rock, she came upon him by the spring. One of his arms hung up to
its elbow in the pool, the other was crooked beside his head, but the
face was sunk downward against the shelving rock, so that she saw only
his black, tangled hair. As her horse snorted and tossed his head she
looked swiftly at Monte, as if to question him. Seeing now the sweat
matted on his coat, and noting the white rim of his eye, she sprang and
ran to the motionless figure. A patch of blood at his shoulder behind
stained the soft flannel shirt, spreading down beneath his belt, and the
man’s whole strong body lay slack and pitifully helpless.