The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
The whiskey bottle flew through the air, hurled by Trampas, and crashed
through the saloon window behind the Virginian.
“That was surplusage, Trampas,” said he, “if yu’ mean the other.”
“Get out by sundown, that’s all,” said Trampas. And wheeling, he went
out of the saloon by the rear, as he had entered.
“Gentlemen,” said the Virginian, “I know you will all oblige me.”
“Sure!” exclaimed the proprietor, heartily, “We’ll see that everybody
lets this thing alone.”
The Virginian gave a general nod to the company, and walked out into the
street.
“It’s a turruble shame,” sighed Scipio, “that he couldn’t have postponed
it.”
The Virginian walked in the open air with thoughts disturbed. “I am of
two minds about one thing,” he said to himself uneasily.
Gossip ran in advance of him; but as he came by, the talk fell away
until he had passed. Then they looked after him, and their words again
rose audibly. Thus everywhere a little eddy of silence accompanied his
steps.
“It don’t trouble him much,” one said, having read nothing in the
Virginian’s face.
“It may trouble his girl some,” said another.
“She’ll not know,” said a third, “until it’s over.”
“He’ll not tell her?”
“I wouldn’t. It’s no woman’s business.”
“Maybe that’s so. Well, it would have suited me to have Trampas die
sooner.”
“How would it suit you to have him live longer?” inquired a member of
the opposite faction, suspected of being himself a cattle thief.
“I could answer your question, if I had other folks’ calves I wanted to
brand.” This raised both a laugh and a silence.
Thus the town talked, filling in the time before sunset.
The Virginian, still walking aloof in the open air, paused at the edge
of the town. “I’d sooner have a sickness than be undecided this way,”
he said, and he looked up and down. Then a grim smile came at his own
expense. “I reckon it would make me sick--but there’s not time.”
Over there in the hotel sat his sweetheart alone, away from her mother,
her friends, her home, waiting his return, knowing nothing. He looked
into the west. Between the sun and the bright ridges of the mountains
was still a space of sky; but the shadow from the mountains’ feet had
drawn halfway toward the town. “About forty minutes more,” he said
aloud. “She has been raised so different.” And he sighed as he
turned back. As he went slowly, he did not know how great was his own
unhappiness. “She has been raised so different,” he said again.
Opposite the post-office the bishop of Wyoming met him and greeted him.
His lonely heart throbbed at the warm, firm grasp of this friend’s hand.
The bishop saw his eyes glow suddenly, as if tears were close. But none
came, and no word more open than, “I’m glad to see you.”
But gossip had reached the bishop, and he was sorely troubled also.
“What is all this?” said he, coming straight to it.
The Virginian looked at the clergyman frankly. “Yu’ know just as much
about it as I do,” he said. “And I’ll tell yu’ anything yu’ ask.”
“Have you told Miss Wood?” inquired the bishop.
The eyes of the bridegroom fell, and the bishop’s face grew at once more
keen and more troubled. Then the bridegroom raised his eyes again, and
the bishop almost loved him. He touched his arm, like a brother. “This
is hard luck,” he said.
The bridegroom could scarce keep his voice steady. “I want to do right
to-day more than any day I have ever lived,” said he.
“Then go and tell her at once.”
“It will just do nothing but scare her.”
“Go and tell her at once.”
“I expected you was going to tell me to run away from Trampas. I can’t
do that, yu’ know.”
The bishop did know. Never before in all his wilderness work had he
faced such a thing. He knew that Trampas was an evil in the country,
and that the Virginian was a good. He knew that the cattle thieves--the
rustlers--were gaining, in numbers and audacity; that they led many
weak young fellows to ruin; that they elected their men to office, and
controlled juries; that they were a staring menace to Wyoming. His heart
was with the Virginian. But there was his Gospel, that he preached, and
believed, and tried to live. He stood looking at the ground and drawing
a finger along his eyebrow. He wished that he might have heard nothing
about all this. But he was not one to blink his responsibility as a
Christian server of the church militant.
“Am I right,” he now slowly asked, “in believing that you think I am a
sincere man?”
“I don’t believe anything about it. I know it.”
“I should run away from Trampas,” said the bishop.
“That ain’t quite fair, seh. We all understand you have got to do the
things you tell other folks to do. And you do them, seh. You never talk
like anything but a man, and you never set yourself above others. You
can saddle your own horses. And I saw yu’ walk unarmed into that
White River excitement when those two other parsons was a-foggin’ and
a-fannin’ for their own safety. Damn scoundrels!”
The bishop instantly rebuked such language about brothers of his cloth,
even though he disapproved both of them and their doctrines. “Every one
may be an instrument of Providence,” he concluded.
“Well,” said the Virginian, “if that is so, then Providence makes use of
instruments I’d not touch with a ten-foot pole. Now if you was me, seh,
and not a bishop, would you run away from Trampas?”
“That’s not quite fair, either!” exclaimed the bishop, with a smile.
“Because you are asking me to take another man’s convictions, and yet
remain myself.”
“Yes, seh. I am. That’s so. That don’t get at it. I reckon you and I
can’t get at it.”
“If the Bible,” said the bishop, “which I believe to be God’s word, was
anything to you--”
“It is something to me, seh. I have found fine truths in it.”
“‘Thou shalt not kill,’” quoted the bishop. “That is plain.”
The Virginian took his turn at smiling. “Mighty plain to me, seh. Make
it plain to Trampas, and there’ll be no killin’. We can’t get at it that
way.”
Once more the bishop quoted earnestly. “‘Vengeance is mine, I will
repay, saith the Lord.’”
“How about instruments of Providence, seh? Why, we can’t get at it that
way. If you start usin’ the Bible that way, it will mix you up mighty
quick, seh.”
“My friend,” the bishop urged, and all his good, warm heart was in it,
“my dear fellow--go away for the one night. He’ll change his mind.”
The Virginian shook his head. “He cannot change his word, seh. Or at
least I must stay around till he does. Why, I have given him the say-so.
He’s got the choice. Most men would not have took what I took from him
in the saloon. Why don’t you ask him to leave town?”
The good bishop was at a standstill. Of all kicking against the pricks
none is so hard as this kick of a professing Christian against the whole
instinct of human man.
“But you have helped me some,” said the Virginian. “I will go and tell
her. At least, if I think it will be good for her, I will tell her.”
The bishop thought that he saw one last chance to move him.
“You’re twenty-nine,” he began.
“And a little over,” said the Virginian.
“And you were fourteen when you ran away from your family.”
“Well, I was weary, yu’ know, of havin’ elder brothers lay down my law
night and mawnin’.”
“Yes, I know. So that your life has been your own for fifteen years. But
it is not your own now. You have given it to a woman.”
“Yes; I have given it to her. But my life’s not the whole of me. I’d
give her twice my life--fifty--a thousand of ’em. But I can’t give
her--her nor anybody in heaven or earth--I can’t give my--my--we’ll
never get at it, seh! There’s no good in words. Good-by.” The Virginian
wrung the bishop’s hand and left him.
“God bless him!” said the bishop. “God bless him!”
The Virginian unlocked the room in the hotel where he kept stored his
tent, his blankets, his pack-saddles, and his many accoutrements for the
bridal journey in the mountains. Out of the window he saw the mountains
blue in shadow, but some cottonwoods distant in the flat between were
still bright green in the sun. From among his possessions he took
quickly a pistol, wiping and loading it. Then from its holster he
removed the pistol which he had tried and made sure of in the morning.
This, according to his wont when going into a risk, he shoved between
his trousers and his shirt in front. The untried weapon he placed in
the holster, letting it hang visibly at his hip. He glanced out of
the window again, and saw the mountains of the same deep blue. But the
cottonwoods were no longer in the sunlight. The shadow had come past
them, nearer the town; for fifteen of the forty minutes were gone. “The
bishop is wrong,” he said. “There is no sense in telling her.” And he
turned to the door, just as she came to it herself.
“Oh!” she cried out at once, and rushed to him.
He swore as he held her close. “The fools!” he said. “The fools!”
“It has been so frightful waiting for you,” said she, leaning her head
against him.
“Who had to tell you this?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. Somebody just came and said it.”
“This is mean luck,” he murmured, patting her. “This is mean luck.”
She went on: “I wanted to run out and find you; but I didn’t! I didn’t!
I stayed quiet in my room till they said you had come back.”
“It is mean luck. Mighty mean,” he repeated.
“How could you be so long?” she asked. “Never mind, I’ve got you now. It
is over.”
Anger and sorrow filled him. “I might have known some fool would tell
you,” he said.
“It’s all over. Never mind.” Her arms tightened their hold of him. Then
she let him go. “What shall we do?” she said. “What now?”
“Now?” he answered. “Nothing now.”
She looked at him without understanding.
“I know it is a heap worse for you,” he pursued, speaking slowly. “I
knew it would be.”
“But it is over!” she exclaimed again.
He did not understand her now. He kissed her. “Did you think it was
over?” he said simply. “There is some waiting still before us. I wish
you did not have to wait alone. But it will not be long.” He was looking
down, and did not see the happiness grow chilled upon her face, and then
fade into bewildered fear. “I did my best,” he went on. “I think I did.
I know I tried. I let him say to me before them all what no man has
ever said, or ever will again. I kept thinking hard of you--with all
my might, or I reckon I’d have killed him right there. And I gave him a
show to change his mind. I gave it to him twice. I spoke as quiet as
I am speaking to you now. But he stood to it. And I expect he knows he
went too far in the hearing of others to go back on his threat. He will
have to go on to the finish now.”
“The finish?” she echoed, almost voiceless.
“Yes,” he answered very gently.
Her dilated eyes were fixed upon him. “But--” she could scarce form
utterance, “but you?”
“I have got myself ready,” he said. “Did you think--why, what did you
think?”
She recoiled a step. “What are you going--” She put her two hands to her
head. “Oh, God!” she almost shrieked, “you are going--” He made a step,
and would have put his arm round her, but she backed against the wall,
staring speechless at him.
“I am not going to let him shoot me,” he said quietly.
“You mean--you mean--but you can come away!” she cried. “It’s not too
late yet. You can take yourself out of his reach. Everybody knows that
you are brave. What is he to you? You can leave him in this place. I’ll
go with you anywhere. To any house, to the mountains, to anywhere away.
We’ll leave this horrible place together and--and--oh, won’t you listen
to me?” She stretched her hands to him. “Won’t you listen?”
He took her hands. “I must stay here.”
Her hands clung to his. “No, no, no. There’s something else. There’s
something better than shedding blood in cold blood. Only think what it