The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
means! Only think of having to remember such a thing! Why, it’s what
they hang people for! It’s murder!”
He dropped her hands. “Don’t call it that name,” he said sternly.
“When there was the choice!” she exclaimed, half to herself, like a
person stunned and speaking to the air. “To get ready for it when you
have the choice!”
“He did the choosing,” answered the Virginian. “Listen to me. Are you
listening?” he asked, for her gaze was dull.
She nodded.
“I work hyeh. I belong hyeh. It’s my life. If folks came to think I was
a coward--”
“Who would think you were a coward?”
“Everybody. My friends would be sorry and ashamed, and my enemies would
walk around saying they had always said so. I could not hold up my head
again among enemies or friends.”
“When it was explained--”
“There’d be nothing to explain. There’d just be the fact.” He was nearly
angry.
“There is a higher courage than fear of outside opinion,” said the New
England girl.
Her Southern lover looked at her. “Cert’nly there is. That’s what I’m
showing in going against yours.”
“But if you know that you are brave, and if I know that you are brave,
oh, my dear, my dear! what difference does the world make? How much
higher courage to go your own course--”
“I am goin’ my own course,” he broke in. “Can’t yu’ see how it must be
about a man? It’s not for their benefit, friends or enemies, that I have
got this thing to do. If any man happened to say I was a thief and I
heard about it, would I let him go on spreadin’ such a thing of me?
Don’t I owe my own honesty something better than that? Would I sit down
in a corner rubbin’ my honesty and whisperin’ to it, ‘There! there! I
know you ain’t a thief?’ No, seh; not a little bit! What men say about
my nature is not just merely an outside thing. For the fact that I
let ’em keep on sayin’ it is a proof I don’t value my nature enough to
shield it from their slander and give them their punishment. And that’s
being a poor sort of a jay.”
She had grown very white.
“Can’t yu’ see how it must be about a man?” he repeated.
“I cannot,” she answered, in a voice that scarcely seemed her own. “If I
ought to, I cannot. To shed blood in cold blood. When I heard about that
last fall,--about the killing of those cattle thieves,--I kept saying to
myself: ‘He had to do it. It was a public duty.’ And lying sleepless I
got used to Wyoming being different from Vermont. But this--” she gave
a shudder--“when I think of to-morrow, of you and me, and of-- If you do
this, there can be no to-morrow for you and me.”
At these words he also turned white.
“Do you mean--” he asked, and could go no farther.
Nor could she answer him, but turned her head away.
“This would be the end?” he asked.
Her head faintly moved to signify yes.
He stood still, his hand shaking a little. “Will you look at me and
say that?” he murmured at length. She did not move. “Can you do it?” he
said.
His sweetness made her turn, but could not pierce her frozen resolve.
She gazed at him across the great distance of her despair.
“Then it is really so?” he said.
Her lips tried to form words, but failed.
He looked out of the window, and saw nothing but shadow. The blue of the
mountains was now become a deep purple. Suddenly his hand closed hard.
“Good-by, then,” he said.
At that word she was at his feet, clutching him. “For my sake,” she
begged him. “For my sake.”
A tremble passed through his frame. She felt his legs shake as she held
them, and, looking up, she saw that his eyes were closed with misery.
Then he opened them, and in their steady look she read her answer. He
unclasped her hands from holding him, and raised her to her feet.
“I have no right to kiss you any more,” he said. And then, before his
desire could break him down from this, he was gone, and she was alone.
She did not fall, or totter, but stood motionless. And next--it seemed
a moment and it seemed eternity--she heard in the distance a shot, and
then two shots. Out of the window she saw people beginning to run. At
that she turned and fled to her room, and flung herself face downward
upon the floor.
Trampas had departed into solitude from the saloon, leaving behind him
his ULTIMATUM. His loud and public threat was town knowledge already,
would very likely be county knowledge to-night. Riders would take it
with them to entertain distant cabins up the river and down the river;
and by dark the stage would go south with the news of it--and the news
of its outcome. For everything would be over by dark. After five years,
here was the end coming--coming before dark. Trampas had got up this
morning with no such thought. It seemed very strange to look back upon
the morning; it lay so distant, so irrevocable. And he thought of how he
had eaten his breakfast. How would he eat his supper? For supper would
come afterward. Some people were eating theirs now, with nothing like
this before them. His heart ached and grew cold to think of them, easy
and comfortable with plates and cups of coffee.
He looked at the mountains, and saw the sun above their ridges, and
the shadow coming from their feet. And there close behind him was the
morning he could never go back to. He could see it clearly; his thoughts
reached out like arms to touch it once more, and be in it again. The
night that was coming he could not see, and his eyes and his thoughts
shrank from it. He had given his enemy until sundown. He could not
trace the path which had led him to this. He remembered their first
meeting--five years back, in Medicine Bow, and the words which at once
began his hate. No, it was before any words; it was the encounter of
their eyes. For out of the eyes of every stranger looks either a friend
or an enemy, waiting to be known. But how had five years of hate come to
play him such a trick, suddenly, to-day? Since last autumn he had meant
sometime to get even with this man who seemed to stand at every turn
of his crookedness, and rob him of his spoils. But how had he come to
choose such a way of getting even as this, face to face? He knew many
better ways; and now his own rash proclamation had trapped him. His
words were like doors shutting him in to perform his threat to the
letter, with witnesses at hand to see that he did so.
Trampas looked at the sun and the shadow again. He had till sundown. The
heart inside him was turning it round in this opposite way: it was to
HIMSELF that in his rage he had given this lessening margin of grace.
But he dared not leave town in all the world’s sight after all the world
had heard him. Even his friends would fall from him after such an act.
Could he--the thought actually came to him--could he strike before the
time set? But the thought was useless. Even if his friends could harbor
him after such a deed, his enemies would find him, and his life would be
forfeit to a certainty. His own trap was closing upon him.
He came upon the main street, and saw some distance off the Virginian
standing in talk with the bishop. He slunk between two houses, and
cursed both of them. The sight had been good for him, bringing some
warmth of rage back to his desperate heart. And he went into a place and
drank some whiskey.
“In your shoes,” said the barkeeper, “I’d be afraid to take so much.”
But the nerves of Trampas were almost beyond the reach of intoxication,
and he swallowed some more, and went out again. Presently he fell in
with some of his brothers in cattle stealing, and walked along with them
for a little.
“Well, it will not be long now,” they said to him. And he had never
heard words so desolate.
“No,” he made out to say; “soon now.” Their cheerfulness seemed
unearthly to him, and his heart almost broke beneath it.
“We’ll have one to your success,” they suggested.
So with them he repaired to another place; and the sight of a man
leaning against the bar made him start so that they noticed him. Then he
saw that the man was a stranger whom he had never laid eyes on till now.
“It looked like Shorty,” he said, and could have bitten his tongue off.
“Shorty is quiet up in the Tetons,” said a friend. “You don’t want to be
thinking about him. Here’s how!”
Then they clapped him on the back and he left them. He thought of his
enemy and his hate, beating his rage like a failing horse, and treading
the courage of his drink. Across a space he saw Wiggin, walking with
McLean and Scipio. They were watching the town to see that his friends
made no foul play.
“We’re giving you a clear field,” said Wiggin.
“This race will not be pulled,” said McLean.
“Be with you at the finish,” said Scipio.
And they passed on. They did not seem like real people to him.
Trampas looked at the walls and windows of the houses. Were they real?
Was he here, walking in this street? Something had changed. He looked
everywhere, and feeling it everywhere, wondered what this could be. Then
he knew: it was the sun that had gone entirely behind the mountains, and
he drew out his pistol.
The Virginian, for precaution, did not walk out of the front door of the
hotel. He went through back ways, and paused once. Against his breast
he felt the wedding ring where he had it suspended by a chain from his
neck. His hand went up to it, and he drew it out and looked at it. He
took it off the chain, and his arm went back to hurl it from him as far
as he could. But he stopped and kissed it with one sob, and thrust it in
his pocket. Then he walked out into the open, watching. He saw men here
and there, and they let him pass as before, without speaking. He saw
his three friends, and they said no word to him. But they turned and
followed in his rear at a little distance, because it was known that
Shorty had been found shot from behind. The Virginian gained a position
soon where no one could come at him except from in front; and the sight
of the mountains was almost more than he could endure, because it was
there that he had been going to-morrow.
“It is quite a while after sunset,” he heard himself say.
A wind seemed to blow his sleeve off his arm, and he replied to it, and
saw Trampas pitch forward. He saw Trampas raise his arm from the ground
and fall again, and lie there this time, still. A little smoke was
rising from the pistol on the ground, and he looked at his own, and saw
the smoke flowing upward out of it.
“I expect that’s all,” he said aloud.
But as he came nearer Trampas, he covered him with his weapon. He
stopped a moment, seeing the hand on the ground move. Two fingers
twitched, and then ceased; for it was all. The Virginian stood looking
down at Trampas.
“Both of mine hit,” he said, once more aloud. “His must have gone mighty
close to my arm. I told her it would not be me.”
He had scarcely noticed that he was being surrounded and congratulated.
His hand was being shaken, and he saw it was Scipio in tears. Scipio’s
joy made his heart like lead within him. He was near telling his friend
everything, but he did not.
“If anybody wants me about this,” he said, “I will be at the hotel.”
“Who’ll want you?” said Scipio. “Three of us saw his gun out.” And he
vented his admiration. “You were that cool! That quick!”
“I’ll see you boys again,” said the Virginian, heavily; and he walked
away.
Scipio looked after him, astonished. “Yu’ might suppose he was in poor
luck,” he said to McLean.
The Virginian walked to the hotel, and stood on the threshold of his
sweetheart’s room. She had heard his step, and was upon her feet. Her
lips were parted, and her eyes fixed on him, nor did she move, or speak.
“Yu’ have to know it,” said he. “I have killed Trampas.”
“Oh, thank God!” she said; and he found her in his arms. Long they
embraced without speaking, and what they whispered then with their
kisses, matters not.