The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist
should expect of his reader, and we will go back at once to Judge Henry
and his meditations about lynching.
He was well aware that if he was to touch at all upon this subject with
the New England girl, he could not put her off with mere platitudes and
humdrum formulas; not, at least, if he expected to do any good. She was
far too intelligent, and he was really anxious to do good. For her sake
he wanted the course of the girl’s true love to run more smoothly, and
still more did he desire this for the sake of his Virginian.
“I sent him myself on that business,” the Judge reflected uncomfortably.
“I am partly responsible for the lynching. It has brought him one great
unhappiness already through the death of Steve. If it gets running
in this girl’s mind, she may--dear me!” the Judge broke off, “what a
nuisance!” And he sighed. For as all men know, he also knew that many
things should be done in this world in silence, and that talking about
them is a mistake.
But when school was out, and the girl gone to her cabin, his mind had
set the subject in order thoroughly, and he knocked at her door, ready,
as he had put it, to sacrifice his character in the cause of true love.
“Well,” he said, coming straight to the point, “some dark things have
happened.” And when she made no answer to this, he continued: “But you
must not misunderstand us. We’re too fond of you for that.”
“Judge Henry,” said Molly Wood, also coming straight to the point, “have
you come to tell me that you think well of lynching?”
He met her. “Of burning Southern negroes in public, no. Of hanging
Wyoming cattle thieves in private, yes. You perceive there’s a
difference, don’t you?”
“Not in principle,” said the girl, dry and short.
“Oh--dear--me!” slowly exclaimed the Judge. “I am sorry that you cannot
see that, because I think that I can. And I think that you have just
as much sense as I have.” The Judge made himself very grave and very
good-humored at the same time. The poor girl was strung to a high pitch,
and spoke harshly in spite of herself.
“What is the difference in principle?” she demanded.
“Well,” said the Judge, easy and thoughtful, “what do you mean by
principle?”
“I didn’t think you’d quibble,” flashed Molly. “I’m not a lawyer
myself.”
A man less wise than Judge Henry would have smiled at this, and then war
would have exploded hopelessly between them, and harm been added to what
was going wrong already. But the Judge knew that he must give to every
word that the girl said now his perfect consideration.
“I don’t mean to quibble,” he assured her. “I know the trick of escaping
from one question by asking another. But I don’t want to escape from
anything you hold me to answer. If you can show me that I am wrong, I
want you to do so. But,” and here the Judge smiled, “I want you to play
fair, too.”
“And how am I not?”
“I want you to be just as willing to be put right by me as I am to be
put right by you. And so when you use such a word as principle, you
must help me to answer by saying what principle you mean. For in all
sincerity I see no likeness in principle whatever between burning
Southern negroes in public and hanging Wyoming horse-thieves in private.
I consider the burning a proof that the South is semi-barbarous, and the
hanging a proof that Wyoming is determined to become civilized. We
do not torture our criminals when we lynch them. We do not invite
spectators to enjoy their death agony. We put no such hideous disgrace
upon the United States. We execute our criminals by the swiftest means,
and in the quietest way. Do you think the principle is the same?”
Molly had listened to him with attention. “The way is different,” she
admitted.
“Only the way?”
“So it seems to me. Both defy law and order.”
“Ah, but do they both? Now we’re getting near the principle.”
“Why, yes. Ordinary citizens take the law in their own hands.”
“The principle at last!” exclaimed the Judge.
“Now tell me some more things. Out of whose hands do they take the law?”
“The court’s.”
“What made the courts?”
“I don’t understand.”
“How did there come to be any courts?”
“The Constitution.”
“How did there come to be any Constitution? Who made it?”
“The delegates, I suppose.”
“Who made the delegates?”
“I suppose they were elected, or appointed, or something.”
“And who elected them?”
“Of course the people elected them.”
“Call them the ordinary citizens,” said the Judge. “I like your term.
They are where the law comes from, you see. For they chose the delegates
who made the Constitution that provided for the courts. There’s your
machinery. These are the hands into which ordinary citizens have put the
law. So you see, at best, when they lynch they only take back what they
once gave. Now we’ll take your two cases that you say are the same in
principle. I think that they are not. For in the South they take a negro
from jail where he was waiting to be duly hung. The South has never
claimed that the law would let him go. But in Wyoming the law has been
letting our cattle-thieves go for two years. We are in a very bad way,
and we are trying to make that way a little better until civilization
can reach us. At present we lie beyond its pale. The courts, or rather
the juries, into whose hands we have put the law, are not dealing the
law. They are withered hands, or rather they are imitation hands
made for show, with no life in them, no grip. They cannot hold a
cattle-thief. And so when your ordinary citizen sees this, and sees that
he has placed justice in a dead hand, he must take justice back into his
own hands where it was once at the beginning of all things. Call this
primitive, if you will. But so far from being a DEFIANCE of the law, it
is an ASSERTION of it--the fundamental assertion of self governing men,
upon whom our whole social fabric is based. There is your principle,
Miss Wood, as I see it. Now can you help me to see anything different?”
She could not.
“But perhaps you are of the same opinion still?” the Judge inquired.
“It is all terrible to me,” she said.
“Yes; and so is capital punishment terrible. And so is war. And perhaps
some day we shall do without them. But they are none of them so terrible
as unchecked theft and murder would be.”
After the Judge had departed on his way to Sunk Creek, no one spoke to
Molly upon this subject. But her face did not grow cheerful at once. It
was plain from her fits of silence that her thoughts were not at rest.
And sometimes at night she would stand in front of her lover’s likeness,
gazing upon it with both love and shrinking.
XXXIV. TO FIT HER FINGER
It was two rings that the Virginian wrote for when next I heard from
him.
After my dark sight of what the Cattle Land could be, I soon had
journeyed home by way of Washakie and Rawlins. Steve and Shorty did not
leave my memory, nor will they ever, I suppose.
The Virginian had touched the whole thing the day I left him. He had
noticed me looking a sort of farewell at the plains and mountains.
“You will come back to it,” he said. “If there was a headstone for every
man that once pleasured in his freedom here, yu’d see one most every
time yu’ turned your head. It’s a heap sadder than a graveyard--but yu’
love it all the same.”
Sadness had passed from him--from his uppermost mood, at least, when
he wrote about the rings. Deep in him was sadness of course, as well as
joy. For he had known Steve, and he had covered Shorty with earth. He
had looked upon life with a marksman’s eyes, very close; and no one,
if he have a heart, can pass through this and not carry sadness in his
spirit with him forever. But he seldom shows it openly; it bides within
him, enriching his cheerfulness and rendering him of better service to
his fellow-men.
It was a commission of cheerfulness that he now gave, being distant
from where rings are to be bought. He could not go so far as the East
to procure what he had planned. Rings were to be had in Cheyenne, and a
still greater choice in Denver; and so far as either of these towns his
affairs would have permitted him to travel. But he was set upon having
rings from the East. They must come from the best place in the country;
nothing short of that was good enough “to fit her finger,” as he said.
The wedding ring was a simple matter. Let it be right, that was all:
the purest gold that could be used, with her initials and his together
graven round the inside, with the day of the month and the year.
The date was now set. It had come so far as this. July third was to be
the day. Then for sixty days and nights he was to be a bridegroom, free
from his duties at Sunk Creek, free to take his bride wheresoever she
might choose to go. And she had chosen.
Those voices of the world had more than angered her; for after the anger
a set purpose was left. Her sister should have the chance neither to
come nor to stay away. Had her mother even answered the Virginian’s
letter, there could have been some relenting. But the poor lady had been
inadequate in this, as in all other searching moments of her life: she
had sent messages,--kind ones, to be sure,--but only messages. If this
had hurt the Virginian, no one knew it in the world, least of all the
girl in whose heart it had left a cold, frozen spot. Not a good spirit
in which to be married, you will say. No; frozen spots are not good at
any time. But Molly’s own nature gave her due punishment. Through all
these days of her warm happiness a chill current ran, like those which
interrupt the swimmer’s perfect joy. The girl was only half as happy
as her lover; but she hid this deep from him,--hid it until that final,
fierce hour of reckoning that her nature had with her,--nay, was bound
to have with her, before the punishment was lifted, and the frozen spot
melted at length from her heart.
So, meanwhile, she made her decree against Bennington. Not Vermont,
but Wyoming, should be her wedding place. No world’s voices should be
whispering, no world’s eyes should be looking on, when she made her vow
to him and received his vow. Those voices should be spoken and that ring
put on in this wild Cattle Land, where first she had seen him ride into
the flooded river, and lift her ashore upon his horse. It was this open
sky which should shine down on them, and this frontier soil upon which
their feet should tread. The world should take its turn second.
After a month with him by stream and canyon, a month far deeper into the
mountain wilds than ever yet he had been free to take her, a month with
sometimes a tent and sometimes the stars above them, and only their
horses besides themselves--after such a month as this, she would take
him to her mother and to Bennington; and the old aunt over at Dunbarton
would look at him, and be once more able to declare that the Starks had
always preferred a man who was a man.
And so July third was to be engraved inside the wedding ring. Upon the
other ring the Virginian had spent much delicious meditation, all in his
secret mind. He had even got the right measure of her finger without her
suspecting the reason. But this step was the final one in his plan.
During the time that his thoughts had begun to be busy over the other
ring, by a chance he had learned from Mrs. Henry a number of old fancies
regarding precious stones. Mrs. Henry often accompanied the Judge in
venturesome mountain climbs, and sometimes the steepness of the rocks
required her to use her hands for safety. One day when the Virginian
went with them to help mark out certain boundary corners, she removed
her rings lest they should get scratched; and he, being just behind her,
took them during the climb.