The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
“I see you’re looking at my topaz,” she had said, as he returned them.
“If I could have chosen, it would have been a ruby. But I was born in
November.”
He did not understand her in the least, but her words awakened exceeding
interest in him; and they had descended some five miles of mountain
before he spoke again. Then he became ingenious, for he had half worked
out what Mrs. Henry’s meaning must be; but he must make quite sure.
Therefore, according to his wild, shy nature, he became ingenious.
“Men wear rings,” he began. “Some of the men on the ranch do. I don’t
see any harm in a man’s wearin’ a ring. But I never have.”
“Well,” said the lady, not yet suspecting that he was undertaking to
circumvent her, “probably those men have sweethearts.”
“No, ma’am. Not sweethearts worth wearin’ rings for--in two cases,
anyway. They won ’em at cyards. And they like to see ’em shine. I never
saw a man wear a topaz.”
Mrs. Henry did not have any further remark to make.
“I was born in January myself,” pursued the Virginian, very
thoughtfully.
Then the lady gave him one look, and without further process of mind
perceived exactly what he was driving at.
“That’s very extravagant for rings,” said she. “January is diamonds.”
“Diamonds,” murmured the Virginian, more and more thoughtfully. “Well,
it don’t matter, for I’d not wear a ring. And November is--what did yu’
say, ma’am?”
“Topaz.”
“Yes. Well, jewels are cert’nly pretty things. In the Spanish Missions
yu’ll see large ones now and again. And they’re not glass, I think. And
so they have got some jewel that kind of belongs to each month right
around the twelve?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Henry, smiling. “One for each month. But the opal is
what you want.”
He looked at her, and began to blush.
“October is the opal,” she added, and she laughed outright, for Miss
Wood’s birthday was on the fifteenth of that month.
The Virginian smiled guiltily at her through his crimson.
“I’ve no doubt you can beat around the bush very well with men,” said
Mrs. Henry. “But it’s perfectly transparent with us--in matters of
sentiment, at least.”
“Well, I am sorry,” he presently said. “I don’t want to give her an
opal. I have no superstition, but I don’t want to give her an opal. If
her mother did, or anybody like that, why, all right. But not from me.
D’ yu’ understand, ma’am?”
Mrs. Henry did understand this subtle trait in the wild man, and she
rejoiced to be able to give him immediate reassurance concerning opals.
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “The opal is said to bring ill luck,
but not when it is your own month stone. Then it is supposed to be not
only deprived of evil influence, but to possess peculiarly fortunate
power. Let it be an opal ring.”
Then he asked her boldly various questions, and she showed him her
rings, and gave him advice about the setting. There was no special
custom, she told him, ruling such rings as this he desired to bestow.
The gem might be the lady’s favorite or the lover’s favorite; and to
choose the lady’s month stone was very well indeed.
Very well indeed, the Virginian thought. But not quite well enough for
him. His mind now busied itself with this lore concerning jewels, and
soon his sentiment had suggested something which he forthwith carried
out.
When the ring was achieved, it was an opal, but set with four small
embracing diamonds. Thus was her month stone joined with his, that their
luck and their love might be inseparably clasped.
He found the size of her finger one day when winter had departed, and
the early grass was green. He made a ring of twisted grass for her,
while she held her hand for him to bind it. He made another for himself.
Then, after each had worn their grass ring for a while, he begged her
to exchange. He did not send his token away from him, but most carefully
measured it. Thus the ring fitted her well, and the lustrous flame
within the opal thrilled his heart each time he saw it. For now June was
near its end; and that other plain gold ring, which, for safe keeping,
he cherished suspended round his neck day and night, seemed to burn with
an inward glow that was deeper than the opal’s.
So in due course arrived the second of July. Molly’s punishment had got
as far as this: she longed for her mother to be near her at this time;
but it was too late.
XXXV. WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT
Town lay twelve straight miles before the lover and his sweetheart, when
they came to the brow of the last long hill. All beneath them was like
a map: neither man nor beast distinguishable, but the veined and tinted
image of a country, knobs and flats set out in order clearly, shining
extensive and motionless in the sun. It opened on the sight of the
lovers as they reached the sudden edge of the tableland, where since
morning they had ridden with the head of neither horse ever in advance
of the other.
At the view of their journey’s end, the Virginian looked down at his
girl beside him, his eyes filled with a bridegroom’s light, and, hanging
safe upon his breast, he could feel the gold ring that he would slowly
press upon her finger to-morrow. He drew off the glove from her left
hand, and stooping, kissed the jewel in that other ring which he had
given her. The crimson fire in the opal seemed to mingle with that in
his heart, and his arm lifted her during a moment from the saddle as he
held her to him. But in her heart the love of him was troubled by that
cold pang of loneliness which had crept upon her like a tide as the day
drew near. None of her own people were waiting in that distant town to
see her become his bride. Friendly faces she might pass on the way; but
all of them new friends, made in this wild country: not a face of her
childhood would smile upon her; and deep within her, a voice cried for
the mother who was far away in Vermont. That she would see Mrs. Taylor’s
kind face at her wedding was no comfort now.
There lay the town in the splendor of Wyoming space. Around it spread
the watered fields, westward for a little way, eastward to a great
distance, making squares of green and yellow crops; and the town was but
a poor rag in the midst of this quilted harvest. After the fields to the
east, the tawny plain began; and with one faint furrow of river lining
its undulations, it stretched beyond sight. But west of the town rose
the Bow Leg Mountains, cool with their still unmelted snows and their
dull blue gulfs of pine. From three canyons flowed three clear forks
which began the river. Their confluence was above the town a good two
miles; it looked but a few paces from up here, while each side the river
straggled the margin cottonwoods, like thin borders along a garden walk.
Over all this map hung silence like a harmony, tremendous yet serene.
“How beautiful! how I love it!” whispered the girl. “But, oh, how big it
is!” And she leaned against her lover for an instant. It was her spirit
seeking shelter. To-day, this vast beauty, this primal calm, had in it
for her something almost of dread. The small, comfortable, green hills
of home rose before her. She closed her eyes and saw Vermont: a village
street, and the post-office, and ivy covering an old front door, and her
mother picking some yellow roses from a bush.
At a sound, her eyes quickly opened; and here was her lover turned in
his saddle, watching another horseman approach. She saw the Virginian’s
hand in a certain position, and knew that his pistol was ready. But the
other merely overtook and passed them, as they stood at the brow of the
hill.
The man had given one nod to the Virginian, and the Virginian one to
him; and now he was already below them on the descending road. To Molly
Wood he was a stranger; but she had seen his eyes when he nodded to her
lover, and she knew, even without the pistol, that this was not enmity
at first sight. It was not indeed. Five years of gathered hate had
looked out of the man’s eyes. And she asked her lover who this was.
“Oh,” said he, easily, “just a man I see now and then.”
“Is his name Trampas?” said Molly Wood.
The Virginian looked at her in surprise. “Why, where have you seen him?”
he asked.
“Never till now. But I knew.”
“My gracious! Yu’ never told me yu’ had mind-reading powers.” And he
smiled serenely at her.
“I knew it was Trampas as soon as I saw his eyes.”
“My gracious!” her lover repeated with indulgent irony. “I must be
mighty careful of my eyes when you’re lookin’ at ’em.”
“I believe he did that murder,” said the girl.
“Whose mind are yu’ readin’ now?” he drawled affectionately.
But he could not joke her off the subject. She took his strong hand in
hers, tremulously, so much of it as her little hand could hold. “I know
something about that--that--last autumn,” she said, shrinking from words
more definite. “And I know that you only did--”
“What I had to,” he finished, very sadly, but sternly, too.
“Yes,” she asserted, keeping hold of his hand. “I suppose
that--lynching--” (she almost whispered the word) “is the only way. But
when they had to die just for stealing horses, it seems so wicked that
this murderer--”
“Who can prove it?” asked the Virginian.
“But don’t you know it?”
“I know a heap o’ things inside my heart. But that’s not proving. There
was only the body, and the hoofprints--and what folks guessed.”
“He was never even arrested!” the girl said.
“No. He helped elect the sheriff in that county.”
Then Molly ventured a step inside the border of her lover’s reticence.
“I saw--” she hesitated, “just now, I saw what you did.”
He returned to his caressing irony. “You’ll have me plumb scared if you
keep on seein’ things.”
“You had your pistol ready for him.”
“Why, I believe I did. It was mighty unnecessary.” And the Virginian
took out the pistol again, and shook his head over it, like one who has
been caught in a blunder.
She looked at him, and knew that she must step outside his reticence
again. By love and her surrender to him their positions had been
exchanged.
He was not now, as through his long courting he had been, her
half-obeying, half-refractory worshipper. She was no longer his
half-indulgent, half-scornful superior. Her better birth and schooling
that had once been weapons to keep him at his distance, or bring her off
victorious in their encounters, had given way before the onset of
the natural man himself. She knew her cow-boy lover, with all that he
lacked, to be more than ever she could be, with all that she had. He was
her worshipper still, but her master, too. Therefore now, against the
baffling smile he gave her, she felt powerless. And once again a pang of
yearning for her mother to be near her to-day shot through the girl. She
looked from her untamed man to the untamed desert of Wyoming, and the
town where she was to take him as her wedded husband. But for his sake
she would not let him guess her loneliness.
He sat on his horse Monte, considering the pistol. Then he showed her a
rattlesnake coiled by the roots of some sage-brush. “Can I hit it?” he
inquired.
“You don’t often miss them,” said she, striving to be cheerful.
“Well, I’m told getting married unstrings some men.” He aimed, and the
snake was shattered. “Maybe it’s too early yet for the unstringing to
begin!” And with some deliberation he sent three more bullets into the
snake. “I reckon that’s enough,” said he.
“Was not the first one?”
“Oh, yes, for the snake.” And then, with one leg crooked cow-boy fashion
across in front of his saddle-horn, he cleaned his pistol, and replaced
the empty cartridges.
Once more she ventured near the line of his reticence. “Has--has Trampas
seen you much lately?”
“Why, no; not for a right smart while. But I reckon he has not missed
me.”