The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains

by Owen Wister

  XIII. THE GAME AND THE NATION--ACT FIRST

  There can be no doubt of this: All America is divided into twoclasses,--the quality and the equality.

  The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Bothwill be with us until our women bear nothing but kings.

  It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americansacknowledged the ETERNAL INEQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished acut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held upin high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, andour own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature.Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equalliberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged andgave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoeverhe is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is truedemocracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the samething. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight.

  The above reflections occurred to me before reaching Billings, Montana,some three weeks after I had unexpectedly met the Virginian at Omaha,Nebraska. I had not known of that trust given to him by Judge Henry,which was taking him East. I was looking to ride with him before longamong the clean hills of Sunk Creek. I supposed he was there. But I cameupon him one morning in Colonel Cyrus Jones's eating palace.

  Did you know the palace? It stood in Omaha, near the trains, and it wasten years old (which is middle-aged in Omaha) when I first saw it. Itwas a shell of wood, painted with golden emblems,--the steamboat, theeagle, the Yosemite,--and a live bear ate gratuities at its entrance.Weather permitting, it opened upon the world as a stage upon theaudience. You sat in Omaha's whole sight and dined, while Omaha's dustcame and settled upon the refreshments. It is gone the way of the Indianand the buffalo, for the West is growing old. You should have seen thepalace and sat there. In front of you passed rainbows of men,--Chinese,Indian chiefs, Africans, General Miles, younger sons, Austrian nobility,wide females in pink. Our continent drained prismatically through Omahaonce.

  So I was passing that way also, walking for the sake of ventilation froma sleeping-car toward a bath, when the language of Colonel Cyrus Jonescame out to me. The actual colonel I had never seen before. He stoodat the rear of his palace in gray flowery mustaches and a Confederateuniform, telling the wishes of his guests to the cook through a hole.You always bought meal tickets at once, else you became unwelcome.Guests here had foibles at times, and a rapid exit was too easy.Therefore I bought a ticket. It was spring and summer since I had heardanything like the colonel. The Missouri had not yet flowed into New Yorkdialect freely, and his vocabulary met me like the breeze of the plains.So I went in to be fanned by it, and there sat the Virginian at a table,alone.

  His greeting was up to the code of indifference proper on the plains;but he presently remarked, "I'm right glad to see somebody," which was agood deal to say. "Them that comes hyeh," he observed next, "don't eat.They feed." And he considered the guests with a sombre attention."D' yu' reckon they find joyful digestion in this swallo'-an'-get-outtrough?"

  "What are you doing here, then?" said I.

  "Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose whatyou have." And he took the bill-of-fare. I began to know that he hadsomething on his mind, so I did not trouble him further.

  Meanwhile he sat studying the bill-of-fare.

  "Ever heard o' them?" he inquired, shoving me the spotted document.

  Most improbable dishes were there,--salmis, canapes, supremes,--allperfectly spelt and absolutely transparent. It was the old trick ofcopying some metropolitan menu to catch travellers of the third and lastdimension of innocence; and whenever this is done the food is of thethird and last dimension of awfulness, which the cow-puncher knew aswell as anybody.

  "So they keep that up here still," I said.

  "But what about them?" he repeated. His finger was at a special item,FROGS' LEGS A LA DELMONICO. "Are they true anywheres?" he asked. And Itold him, certainly. I also explained to him about Delmonico of New Yorkand about Augustin of Philadelphia.

  "There's not a little bit o' use in lyin' to me this mawnin'," he said,with his engaging smile. "I ain't goin' to awdeh anything's laigs."

  "Well, I'll see how he gets out of it," I said, remembering the oddTexas legend. (The traveller read the bill-of-fare, you know, and calledfor a vol-au-vent. And the proprietor looked at the traveller, andrunning a pistol into his ear, observed, "You'll take hash.") I wasthinking of this and wondering what would happen to me. So I took thestep.

  "Wants frogs' legs, does he?" shouted Colonel Cyrus Jones. He fixedhis eye upon me, and it narrowed to a slit. "Too many brain workersbreakfasting before yu' came in, professor," said he. "Missionary atethe last leg off me just now. Brown the wheat!" he commanded, throughthe hole to the cook, for some one had ordered hot cakes.

  "I'll have fried aiggs," said the Virginian. "Cooked both sides."

  "White wings!" sang the colonel through the hole. "Let 'em fly up anddown."

  "Coffee an' no milk," said the Virginian.

  "Draw one in the dark!" the colonel roared.

  "And beefsteak, rare."

  "One slaughter in the pan, and let the blood drip!"

  "I should like a glass of water, please," said I. The colonel threw me alook of pity.

  "One Missouri and ice for the professor!" he said.

  "That fello's a right live man," commented the Virginian. But he seemedthoughtful. Presently he inquired, "Yu' say he was a foreigner, an'learned fancy cookin' to New Yawk?"

  That was this cow-puncher's way. Scarcely ever would he let drop a thingnew to him until he had got from you your whole information about it.So I told him the history of Lorenzo Delmonico and his pioneer work, asmuch as I knew, and the Southerner listened intently.

  "Mighty inter-estin'," he said--"mighty. He could just take littleold o'rn'ry frawgs, and dandy 'em up to suit the bloods. Mightyinter-estin'. I expaict, though, his cookin' would give an outraigedstomach to a plain-raised man."

  "If you want to follow it up," said I, by way of a sudden experiment,"Miss Molly Wood might have some book about French dishes."

  But the Virginian did not turn a hair. "I reckon she wouldn't," heanswered. "She was raised in Vermont. They don't bother overly abouttheir eatin' up in Vermont. Hyeh's what Miss Wood recommended the las'time I was seein' her," the cow-puncher added, bringing Kenilworth fromhis pocket. "Right fine story. That Queen Elizabeth must have cert'nlybeen a competent woman."

  "She was," said I. But talk came to an end here. A dusty crew, mostevidently from the plains, now entered and drifted to a table; and eachman of them gave the Virginian about a quarter of a slouchy nod. Hisgreeting to them was very serene. Only, Kenilworth went back into hispocket, and he breakfasted in silence. Among those who had greeted him Inow recognized a face.

  "Why, that's the man you played cards with at Medicine Bow!" I said.

  "Yes. Trampas. He's got a job at the ranch now." The Virginian said nomore, but went on with his breakfast.

  His appearance was changed. Aged I would scarcely say, for thiswould seem as if he did not look young. But I think that the boy wasaltogether gone from his face--the boy whose freak with Steve had turnedMedicine Bow upside down, whose other freak with the babies had outragedBear Creek, the boy who had loved to jingle his spurs. But manhood hadonly trained, not broken, his youth. It was all there, only obedient tothe rein and curb.

  Presently we went together to the railway yard.

  "The Judge is doing a right smart o' business this year," he began, verycasually indeed, so that I knew this was important. Besides bells andcoal smoke, the smell and crowded sounds of cattle rose in the airaround us. "Hyeh's our first gather o' beeves on the ranch," continuedthe Virginian. "The whole lot's shipped through to Chicago in twosections over the Burlington. The Judge is fighting the Elkhorn road."We passed slowly along the two trains,--twenty cars, each car packedwith huddled, round-eyed, ga
zing steers. He examined to see if anyanimals were down. "They ain't ate or drank anything to speak of," hesaid, while the terrified brutes stared at us through their slats. "Notsince they struck the railroad they've not drank. Yu' might supposethey know somehow what they're travellin' to Chicago for." And casually,always casually, he told me the rest. Judge Henry could not spare hisforeman away from the second gather of beeves. Therefore these twoten-car trains with their double crew of cow-boys had been given to theVirginian's charge. After Chicago, he was to return by St. Paul overthe Northern Pacific; for the Judge had wished him to see certain of theroad's directors and explain to them persuasively how good a thing itwould be for them to allow especially cheap rates to the Sunk Creekoutfit henceforth. This was all the Virginian told me; and it containedthe whole matter, to be sure.

  "So you're acting foreman," said I.

  "Why, somebody has to have the say, I reckon."

  "And of course you hated the promotion?"

  "I don't know about promotion," he replied. "The boys have been usedto seein' me one of themselves. Why don't you come along with us far asPlattsmouth?" Thus he shifted the subject from himself, and called to mynotice the locomotives backing up to his cars, and reminded me that fromPlattsmouth I had the choice of two trains returning. But he could nothide or belittle this confidence of his employer in him. It was the careof several thousand perishable dollars and the control of men. It was acompliment. There were more steers than men to be responsible for; butnone of the steers had been suddenly picked from the herd and set abovehis fellows. Moreover, Chicago finished up the steers; but the new-madedeputy foreman had then to lead his six highly unoccupied brethren awayfrom towns, and back in peace to the ranch, or disappoint the Judge, whoneeded their services. These things sometimes go wrong in a land wherethey say you are all born equal; and that quarter of a nod in ColonelCyrus Jones's eating palace held more equality than any whole nod youcould see. But the Virginian did not see it, there being a time for allthings.

  We trundled down the flopping, heavy-eddied Missouri to Plattsmouth,and there they backed us on to a siding, the Christian Endeavor beingexpected to pass that way. And while the equality absorbed themselves ina deep but harmless game of poker by the side of the railway line,the Virginian and I sat on the top of a car, contemplating the sandyshallows of the Platte.

  "I should think you'd take a hand," said I.

  "Poker? With them kittens?" One flash of the inner man lightened in hiseyes and died away, and he finished with his gentle drawl, "When I play,I want it to be interestin'." He took out Sir Walter's Kenilworth oncemore, and turned the volume over and over slowly, without opening it.You cannot tell if in spirit he wandered on Bear Creek with the girlwhose book it was. The spirit will go one road, and the thought another,and the body its own way sometimes. "Queen Elizabeth would have played amighty pow'ful game," was his next remark.

  "Poker?" said I.

  "Yes, seh. Do you expaict Europe has got any queen equal to her atpresent?"

  I doubted it.

  "Victoria'd get pretty nigh slain sliding chips out agaynst Elizabeth.Only mos' prob'ly Victoria she'd insist on a half-cent limit. You haveread this hyeh Kenilworth? Well, deal Elizabeth ace high, an' she couldscare Robert Dudley with a full house plumb out o' the bettin'."

  I said that I believed she unquestionably could.

  "And," said the Virginian, "if Essex's play got next her too near, Ireckon she'd have stacked the cyards. Say, d' yu' remember Shakespeare'sfat man?"

  "Falstaff? Oh, yes, indeed."

  "Ain't that grand? Why, he makes men talk the way they do in life.I reckon he couldn't get printed to-day. It's a right down shameShakespeare couldn't know about poker. He'd have had Falstaff playingall day at that Tearsheet outfit. And the Prince would have beat him."

  "The Prince had the brains," said I.

  "Brains?"

  "Well, didn't he?"

  "I neveh thought to notice. Like as not he did."

  "And Falstaff didn't, I suppose?"

  "Oh, yes, seh! Falstaff could have played whist."

  "I suppose you know what you're talking about; I don't," said I, for hewas drawling again.

  The cow-puncher's eye rested a moment amiably upon me. "You can playwhist with your brains," he mused,--"brains and cyards. Now cyards areonly one o' the manifestations of poker in this hyeh world. One o' theshapes yu fool with it in when the day's work is oveh. If a man is builtlike that Prince boy was built (and it's away down deep beyond brains),he'll play winnin' poker with whatever hand he's holdin' when thetrouble begins. Maybe it will be a mean, triflin' army, or an emptysix-shooter, or a lame hawss, or maybe just nothin' but his naturalcountenance. 'Most any old thing will do for a fello' like that Princeboy to play poker with."

  "Then I'd be grateful for your definition of poker," said I.

  Again the Virginian looked me over amiably. "You put up a mighty prettygame o' whist yourself," he remarked. "Don't that give you the contentedspirit?" And before I had any reply to this, the Christian Endeavorbegan to come over the bridge. Three instalments crossed the Missourifrom Pacific Junction, bound for Pike's Peak, every car swathed inbright bunting, and at each window a Christian with a handkerchief,joyously shrieking. Then the cattle trains got the open signal, and Ijumped off. "Tell the Judge the steers was all right this far," said theVirginian.

  That was the last of the deputy foreman for a while.