The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
The Virginian spoke this in his gentlest voice. But his rebuffed
sweetheart turned her face away, and from her eyes she brushed a tear.
He reined his horse Monte beside her, and upon her cheek she felt his
kiss. “You are not the only mind-reader,” said he, very tenderly. And
at this she clung to him, and laid her head upon his breast. “I had been
thinking,” he went on, “that the way our marriage is to be was the most
beautiful way.”
“It is the most beautiful,” she murmured.
He slowly spoke out his thought, as if she had not said this. “No folks
to stare, no fuss, no jokes and ribbons and best bonnets, no public
eye nor talkin’ of tongues when most yu’ want to hear nothing and say
nothing.”
She answered by holding him closer.
“Just the bishop of Wyoming to join us, and not even him after we’re
once joined. I did think that would be ahead of all ways to get married
I have seen.”
He paused again, and she made no rejoinder.
“But we have left out your mother.”
She looked in his face with quick astonishment. It was as if his spirit
had heard the cry of her spirit.
“That is nowhere near right,” he said. “That is wrong.”
“She could never have come here,” said the girl.
“We should have gone there. I don’t know how I can ask her to forgive
me.”
“But it was not you!” cried Molly.
“Yes. Because I did not object. I did not tell you we must go to her.
I missed the point, thinking so much about my own feelings. For you
see--and I’ve never said this to you until now--your mother did hurt me.
When you said you would have me after my years of waiting, and I wrote
her that letter telling her all about myself, and how my family was not
like yours, and--and--all the rest I told her, why you see it hurt me
never to get a word back from her except just messages through you. For
I had talked to her about my hopes and my failings. I had said more
than ever I’ve said to you, because she was your mother. I wanted her to
forgive me, if she could, and feel that maybe I could take good care of
you after all. For it was bad enough to have her daughter quit her home
to teach school out hyeh on Bear Creek. Bad enough without havin’ me to
come along and make it worse. I have missed the point in thinking of my
own feelings.”
“But it’s not your doing!” repeated Molly.
With his deep delicacy he had put the whole matter as a hardship to her
mother alone. He had saved her any pain of confession or denial. “Yes,
it is my doing,” he now said. “Shall we give it up?”
“Give what--?” She did not understand.
“Why, the order we’ve got it fixed in. Plans are--well, they’re no
more than plans. I hate the notion of changing, but I hate hurting your
mother more. Or, anyway, I OUGHT to hate it more. So we can shift, if
yu’ say so. It’s not too late.”
“Shift?” she faltered.
“I mean, we can go to your home now. We can start by the stage to-night.
Your mother can see us married. We can come back and finish in the
mountains instead of beginning in them. It’ll be just merely shifting,
yu’ see.”
He could scarcely bring himself to say this at all; yet he said it
almost as if he were urging it. It implied a renunciation that he could
hardly bear to think of. To put off his wedding day, the bliss upon
whose threshold he stood after his three years of faithful battle
for it, and that wedding journey he had arranged: for there were the
mountains in sight, the woods and canyons where he had planned to go
with her after the bishop had joined them; the solitudes where only the
wild animals would be, besides themselves. His horses, his tent, his
rifle, his rod, all were waiting ready in the town for their start
to-morrow. He had provided many dainty things to make her comfortable.
Well, he could wait a little more, having waited three years. It would
not be what his heart most desired: there would be the “public eye and
the talking of tongues”--but he could wait. The hour would come when he
could be alone with his bride at last. And so he spoke as if he urged
it.
“Never!” she cried. “Never, never!”
She pushed it from her. She would not brook such sacrifice on his part.
Were they not going to her mother in four weeks? If her family had
warmly accepted him--but they had not; and in any case, it had gone too
far, it was too late. She told her lover that she would not hear him,
that if he said any more she would gallop into town separately from him.
And for his sake she would hide deep from him this loneliness of hers,
and the hurt that he had given her in refusing to share with her his
trouble with Trampas, when others must know of it.
Accordingly, they descended the hill slowly together, lingering to spin
out these last miles long. Many rides had taught their horses to go
side by side, and so they went now: the girl sweet and thoughtful in her
sedate gray habit; and the man in his leathern chaps and cartridge belt
and flannel shirt, looking gravely into the distance with the level gaze
of the frontier.
Having read his sweetheart’s mind very plainly, the lover now broke his
dearest custom. It was his code never to speak ill of any man to any
woman. Men’s quarrels were not for women’s ears. In his scheme, good
women were to know only a fragment of men’s lives. He had lived many
outlaw years, and his wide knowledge of evil made innocence doubly
precious to him. But to-day he must depart from his code, having read
her mind well. He would speak evil of one man to one woman, because his
reticence had hurt her--and was she not far from her mother, and very
lonely, do what he could? She should know the story of his quarrel in
language as light and casual as he could veil it with.
He made an oblique start. He did not say to her: “I’ll tell you about
this. You saw me get ready for Trampas because I have been ready for him
any time these five years.” He began far off from the point with that
rooted caution of his--that caution which is shared by the primal savage
and the perfected diplomat.
“There’s cert’nly a right smart o’ difference between men and women,” he
observed.
“You’re quite sure?” she retorted.
“Ain’t it fortunate?--that there’s both, I mean.”
“I don’t know about fortunate. Machinery could probably do all the heavy
work for us without your help.”
“And who’d invent the machinery?”
She laughed. “We shouldn’t need the huge, noisy things you do. Our world
would be a gentle one.”
“Oh, my gracious!”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, my gracious! Get along, Monte! A gentle world all full of ladies!”
“Do you call men gentle?” inquired Molly.
“Now it’s a funny thing about that. Have yu’ ever noticed a joke about
fathers-in-law? There’s just as many fathers--as mothers-in-law; but
which side are your jokes?”
Molly was not vanquished. “That’s because the men write the comic
papers,” said she.
“Hear that, Monte? The men write ’em. Well, if the ladies wrote a comic
paper, I expect that might be gentle.”
She gave up this battle in mirth; and he resumed:-- “But don’t you
really reckon it’s uncommon to meet a father-in-law flouncin’ around
the house? As for gentle--Once I had to sleep in a room next a ladies’
temperance meetin’. Oh, heavens! Well, I couldn’t change my room, and
the hotel man, he apologized to me next mawnin’. Said it didn’t surprise
him the husbands drank some.”
Here the Virginian broke down over his own fantastic inventions, and
gave a joyous chuckle in company with his sweetheart. “Yes, there’s
a big heap o’ difference between men and women,” he said. “Take that
fello’ and myself, now.”
“Trampas?” said Molly, quickly serious. She looked along the road ahead,
and discerned the figure of Trampas still visible on its way to town.
The Virginian did not wish her to be serious--more than could be helped.
“Why, yes,” he replied, with a waving gesture at Trampas. “Take him and
me. He don’t think much o’ me! How could he? And I expect he’ll never.
But yu’ saw just now how it was between us. We were not a bit like a
temperance meetin’.”
She could not help laughing at the twist he gave to his voice. And she
felt happiness warming her; for in the Virginian’s tone about Trampas
was something now that no longer excluded her. Thus he began his gradual
recital, in a cadence always easy, and more and more musical with the
native accent of the South. With the light turn he gave it, its pure
ugliness melted into charm.
“No, he don’t think anything of me. Once a man in the John Day Valley
didn’t think much, and by Cañada de Oro I met another. It will always be
so here and there, but Trampas beats ’em all. For the others have always
expressed themselves--got shut of their poor opinion in the open air.”
“Yu’ see, I had to explain myself to Trampas a right smart while ago,
long before ever I laid my eyes on yu’. It was just nothing at all. A
little matter of cyards in the days when I was apt to spend my money and
my holidays pretty headlong. My gracious, what nonsensical times I have
had! But I was apt to win at cyards, ’specially poker. And Trampas, he
met me one night, and I expect he must have thought I looked kind o’
young. So he hated losin’ his money to such a young-lookin’ man, and he
took his way of sayin’ as much. I had to explain myself to him plainly,
so that he learned right away my age had got its growth.
“Well, I expect he hated that worse, having to receive my explanation
with folks lookin’ on at us publicly that-a-way, and him without further
ideas occurrin’ to him at the moment. That’s what started his poor
opinion of me, not havin’ ideas at the moment. And so the boys resumed
their cyards.
“I’d most forgot about it. But Trampas’s mem’ry is one of his strong
points. Next thing--oh, it’s a good while later--he gets to losin’ flesh
because Judge Henry gave me charge of him and some other punchers taking
cattle--”
“That’s not next,” interrupted the girl.
“Not? Why--”
“Don’t you remember?” she said, timid, yet eager. “Don’t you?”
“Blamed if I do!”
“The first time we met?”
“Yes; my mem’ry keeps that--like I keep this.” And he brought from his
pocket her own handkerchief, the token he had picked up at a river’s
brink when he had carried her from an overturned stage.
“We did not exactly meet, then,” she said. “It was at that dance. I
hadn’t seen you yet; but Trampas was saying something horrid about me,
and you said--you said, ‘Rise on your legs, you pole cat, and tell them
you’re a liar.’ When I heard that, I think--I think it finished me.” And
crimson suffused Molly’s countenance.
“I’d forgot,” the Virginian murmured. Then sharply, “How did you hear
it?”
“Mrs. Taylor--”
“Oh! Well, a man would never have told a woman that.”
Molly laughed triumphantly. “Then who told Mrs. Taylor?”
Being caught, he grinned at her. “I reckon husbands are a special kind
of man,” was all that he found to say. “Well, since you do know about
that, it was the next move in the game. Trampas thought I had no call
to stop him sayin’ what he pleased about a woman who was nothin’ to
me--then. But all women ought to be somethin’ to a man. So I had to give
Trampas another explanation in the presence of folks lookin’ on, and it
was just like the cyards. No ideas occurred to him again. And down goes
his opinion of me some more!
“Well, I have not been able to raise it. There has been this and that
and the other,--yu’ know most of the later doings yourself,--and to-day
is the first time I’ve happened to see the man since the doings last
autumn. Yu’ seem to know about them, too. He knows I can’t prove he
was with that gang of horse thieves. And I can’t prove he killed poor
Shorty. But he knows I missed him awful close, and spoiled his thieving
for a while. So d’ yu’ wonder he don’t think much of me? But if I had