The Virginian-a Horseman of the Plains

by Owen Wister

  "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 Canada 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 fo
rgot," 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 lived to be twenty-nine years old like I am, and with all my chances made no enemy, I'd feel myself a failure."

  His story was finished. He had made her his confidant in matters he had never spoken of before, and she was happy to be thus much nearer to him. It diminished a certain fear that was mingled with her love of him.

  During the next several miles he was silent, and his silence was enough for her. Vermont sank away from her thoughts, and Wyoming held less of loneliness. They descended altogether into the map which had stretched below them, so that it was a map no longer, but earth with growing things, and prairie-dogs sitting upon it, and now and then a bird flying over it. And after a while she said to him, "What are you thinking about?"

  "I have been doing sums. Figured in hours it sounds right short. Figured in minutes it boils up into quite a mess. Twenty by sixty is twelve hundred. Put that into seconds, and yu' get seventy-two thousand seconds. Seventy-two thousand. Seventy-two thousand seconds yet before we get married."

  "Seconds! To think of its having come to seconds!"

  "I am thinkin' about it. I'm choppin' sixty of 'em off every minute."

  With such chopping time wears away. More miles of the road lay behind them, and in the virgin wilderness the scars of new-scraped water ditches began to appear, and the first wire fences. Next, they were passing cabins and occasional fields, the outposts of habitation. The free road became wholly imprisoned, running between unbroken stretches of barbed wire. Far off to the eastward a flowing column of dust marked the approaching stage, bringing the bishop, probably, for whose visit here they had timed their wedding. The day still brimmed with heat and sunshine; but the great daily shadow was beginning to move from the feet of the Bow Leg Mountains outward toward the town. Presently they began to meet citizens. Some of these knew them and nodded, while some did not, and stared. Turning a corner into the town's chief street, where stood the hotel, the bank, the drug store, the general store, and the seven saloons, they were hailed heartily. Here were three friends,—Honey Wiggin, Scipio Le Moyne, and Lin McLean,—all desirous of drinking the Virginian's health, if his lady—would she mind? The three stood grinning, with their hats off; but behind their gayety the Virginian read some other purpose.

  "We'll all be very good," said Honey Wiggin.

  "Pretty good," said Lin.

  "Good," said Scipio.

  "Which is the honest man?" inquired Molly, glad to see them.

  "Not one!" said the Virginian. "My old friends scare me when I think of their ways."

  "It's bein' engaged scares yu'," retorted Mr. McLean. "Marriage restores your courage, I find."

  "Well, I'll trust all of you," said Molly. "He's going to take me to the hotel, and then you can drink his health as much as you please."

  With a smile to them she turned to proceed, and he let his horse move with hers; but he looked at his friends. Then Scipio's bleached blue eyes narrowed to a slit, and he said what they had all come out on the street to say:— "Don't change your clothes."

  "Oh!" protested Molly, "isn't he rather dusty and countrified?"

  But the Virginian had taken Scipio's meaning. "DON'T CHANGE YOURS CLOTHES." Innocent Molly appreciated these words no more than the average reader who reads a masterpiece, complacently unaware that its style differs from that of the morning paper. Such was Scipio's intention, wishing to spare her from alarm.

  So at the hotel she let her lover go with a kiss, and without a thought of Trampas. She in her room unlocked the possessions which were there waiting for her, and changed her dress.

  Wedding garments, and other civilized apparel proper for a genuine frontiersman when he comes to town, were also in the hotel, ready for the Virginian to wear. It is only the somewhat green and unseasoned cow-puncher who struts before the public in spurs and deadly weapons. For many a year the Virginian had put away these childish things. He made a sober toilet for the streets. Nothing but his face and bearing remained out of the common when he was in a town. But Scipio had told him not to change his clothes; therefore he went out with his pistol at his hip. Soon he had joined his three friends.

  "I'm obliged to yu'," he said. "He passed me this mawnin'."

  "We don't know his intentions," said Wiggin.

  "Except that he's hangin' around," said McLean.

  "And fillin' up," said Scipio, "which reminds me—"

  They strolled into the saloon of a friend, where, unfortunately, sat some foolish people. But one cannot always tell how much of a fool a man is, at sight.

  It was a temperate health-drinking that they made. "Here's how," they muttered softly to the Virginian; and "How," he returned softly, looking away from them. But they had a brief meeting of eyes, standing and lounging near each other, shyly; and Scipio shook hands with the bridegroom. "Some day," he stated, tapping himself; for in his vagrant heart he began to envy the man who could bring himself to marry. And he nodded again, repeating, "Here's how."

  They stood at the bar, full of sentiment, empty of words, memory and affection busy in their hearts. All of them had seen rough days together, and they felt guilty with emotion.

  "It's hot weather," said Wiggin.

  "Hotter on Box Elder," said McLean. "My kid has started teething."

  Words ran dry again. They shifted their positions, looked in their glasses, read the labels on the bottles. They dropped a word now and then to the proprietor about his trade, and his ornaments.

  "Good head," commented McLean.

  "Big old ram," assented the proprietor. "Shot him myself on Gray Bull last fall."

  "Sheep was thick in the Tetons last fall," said the Virginian.

  On the bar stood a machine into which the idle customer might drop his nickel. The coin then bounced among an arrangement of pegs, descending at length into one or another of various holes. You might win as much as ten times your stake, but this was not the most usual result; and with nickels the three friends and the bridegroom now mildly sported for a while, buying them with silver when their store ran out.

  "Was it sheep you went after in the Tetons?" inquired the proprietor, knowing it was horse thieves.

  "Yes," said the Virginian. "I'll have ten more nickels."

  "Did you get all the sheep you wanted?" the proprietor continued.

  "Poor luck," said the Virginian.

  "Think there's a friend of yours in town this afternoon," said the proprietor.

  "Did he mention he was my friend?"

  The proprietor laughed. The Virginian watched another nickel click down among the pegs.

  Honey Wiggin now made the bridegroom a straight offer. "We'll take this thing off your hands," said he.

  "Any or all of us," said Lin.

  But Scipio held his peace. His loyalty went every inch as far as theirs, but his understanding of his friend went deeper. "Don't change your clot
hes," was the first and the last help he would be likely to give in this matter. The rest must be as such matters must always be, between man and man. To the other two friends, however, this seemed a very special case, falling outside established precedent. Therefore they ventured offers of interference.

  "A man don't get married every day," apologized McLean. "We'll just run him out of town for yu'."

  "Save yu' the trouble," urged Wiggin. "Say the word."

  The proprietor now added his voice. "It'll sober him up to spend his night out in the brush. He'll quit his talk then."

  But the Virginian did not say the word, or any word. He stood playing with the nickels.

  "Think of her," muttered McLean.

  "Who else would I be thinking of?" returned the Southerner. His face had become very sombre. "She has been raised so different!" he murmured. He pondered a little, while the others waited, solicitous.

  A new idea came to the proprietor. "I am acting mayor of this town," said he. "I'll put him in the calaboose and keep him till you get married and away."

  "Say the word," repeated Honey Wiggin.

  Scipio's eye met the proprietor's, and he shook his head about a quarter of an inch. The proprietor shook his to the same amount. They understood each other. It had come to that point where there was no way out, save only the ancient, eternal way between man and man. It is only the great mediocrity that goes to law in these personal matters.

  "So he has talked about me some?" said the Virginian.

  "It's the whiskey," Scipio explained.

  "I expect," said McLean, "he'd run a mile if he was in a state to appreciate his insinuations."