The Virginian
XXXV
WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT
Town lay twelve straight miles before the lover and his sweetheart, when they
came to the brow of the last long hill. All beneath them was like a map: neither
man nor beast distinguishable, but the veined and tinted image of a country,
knobs and flats set out in order clearly, shining extensive and motionless in
the sun. It opened on the sight of the lovers as they reached the sudden edge of
the tableland, where since morning they had ridden with the head of neither
horse ever in advance of the other.
At the view of their journey's end, the Virginian looked down at his girl
beside him, his eyes filled with a bridegroom's light, and, hanging safe upon
his breast, he could feel the gold ring that he would slowly press upon her
finger to-morrow. He drew off the glove from her left hand, and stooping, kissed
the jewel in that other ring which he had given her. The crimson fire in the
opal seemed to mingle with that in his heart, and his arm lifted her during a
moment from the saddle as he held her to him. But in her heart the love of him
was troubled by that cold pang of loneliness which had crept upon her like a
tide as the day drew near. None of her own people were waiting in that distant
town to see her become his bride. Friendly faces she might pass on the way; but
all of them new friends, made in this wild country: not a face of her childhood
would smile upon her; and deep within her, a voice cried for the mother who was
far away in Vermont. That she would see Mrs. Taylor's kind face at her wedding
was no comfort now.
There lay the town in the splendor of Wyoming space. Around it spread the
watered fields, westward for a little way, eastward to a great distance, making
squares of green and yellow crops; and the town was but a poor rag in the midst
of this quilted harvest. After the fields to the east, the tawny plain began;
and with one faint furrow of river lining its undulations, it stretched beyond
sight. But west of the town rose the Bow Leg Mountains, cool with their still
unmelted snows and their dull blue gulfs of pine. From three canyons flowed
three clear forks which began the river. Their confluence was above the town a
good two miles; it looked but a few paces from up here, while each side the
river straggled the margin cottonwoods, like thin borders along a garden walk.
Over all this map hung silence like a harmony, tremendous yet serene.
"How beautiful! how I love it!" whispered the girl. "But, oh, how big it is!"
And she leaned against her lover for an instant. It was her spirit seeking
shelter. To-day, this vast beauty, this primal calm, had in it for her something
almost of dread. The small, comfortable, green hills of home rose before her.
She closed her eyes and saw Vermont: a village street, and the post-office, and
ivy covering an old front door, and her mother picking some yellow roses from a
bush.
At a sound, her eyes quickly opened; and here was her lover turned in his
saddle, watching another horseman approach. She saw the Virginian's hand in a
certain position, and knew that his pistol was ready. But the other merely
overtook and passed them, as they stood at the brow of the hill.
The man had given one nod to the Virginian, and the Virginian one to him; and
now he was already below them on the descending road. To Molly Wood he was a
stranger; but she had seen his eyes when he nodded to her lover, and she knew,
even without the pistol, that this was not enmity at first sight. It was not
indeed. Five years of gathered hate had looked out of the man's eyes. And she
asked her lover who this was.
"Oh," said he, easily, "just a man I see now and then."
"Is his name Trampas?" said Molly Wood.
The Virginian looked at her in surprise. "Why, where have you seen him?" he
asked.
"Never till now. But I knew."
"My gracious! Yu' never told me yu' had mind-reading powers." And he smiled
serenely at her.
"I knew it was Trampas as soon as I saw his eyes."
"My gracious!" her lover repeated with indulgent irony. "I must be mighty
careful of my eyes when you're lookin' at 'em."
"I believe he did that murder," said the girl.
"Whose mind are yu' readin' now?" he drawled affectionately.
But he could not joke her off the subject. She took his strong hand in hers,
tremulously, so much of it as her little hand could hold. "I know something
about that—that—last autumn," she said, shrinking from words more definite. "And
I know that you only did—"
"What I had to," he finished, very sadly, but sternly, too.
"Yes," she asserted, keeping hold of his hand. "I suppose that—lynching—"
(she almost whispered the word) "is the only way. But when they had to die just
for stealing horses, it seems so wicked that this murderer—"
"Who can prove it?" asked the Virginian.
"But don't you know it?"
"I know a heap o' things inside my heart. But that's not proving. There was
only the body, and the hoofprints—and what folks guessed."
"He was never even arrested!" the girl said.
"No. He helped elect the sheriff in that county."
Then Molly ventured a step inside the border of her lover's reticence. "I
saw—" she hesitated, "just now, I saw what you did."
He returned to his caressing irony. "You'll have me plumb scared if you keep
on seein' things."
"You had your pistol ready for him."
"Why, I believe I did. It was mighty unnecessary." And the Virginian took out
the pistol again, and shook his head over it, like one who has been caught in a
blunder.
She looked at him, and knew that she must step outside his reticence again.
By love and her surrender to him their positions had been exchanged.
He was not now, as through his long courting he had been, her half-obeying,
half-refractory worshipper. She was no longer his half-indulgent, half-scornful
superior. Her better birth and schooling that had once been weapons to keep him
at his distance, or bring her off victorious in their encounters, had given way
before the onset of the natural man himself. She knew her cow-boy lover, with
all that he lacked, to be more than ever she could be, with all that she had. He
was her worshipper still, but her master, too. Therefore now, against the
baffling smile he gave her, she felt powerless. And once again a pang of
yearning for her mother to be near her to-day shot through the girl. She looked
from her untamed man to the untamed desert of Wyoming, and the town where she
was to take him as her wedded husband. But for his sake she would not let him
guess her loneliness.
He sat on his horse Monte, considering the pistol. Then he showed her a
rattlesnake coiled by the roots of some sage-brush. "Can I hit it?" he inquired.
"You don't often miss them," said she, striving to be cheerful.
"Well, I'm told getting married unstrings some men." He aimed, and the snake
was shattered. "Maybe it's too early yet for the unstringing to begin!" And with
some deliberation he sent three more bullets into the snake. "I reckon that's
enough," said he.
"Was not the first one?"
"Oh, yes, for the snake." And then, with one leg crooked cow-boy fashion
across in front of his saddle-horn, he cleaned his pistol, and replaced the
empty cartridges.
Once more she ventured near the line of his reticence. "Has—has Trampas seen
you much lately?"
"Why, no; not for a right smart while. But I reckon he has not missed me."
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 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 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 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 clothes," 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."
"Which we are careful not to mention to yu'," said Wiggin, "unless yu'
inquire for 'em."
Some of the fools present had drawn closer to hear this interesting
conversation. In gatherings of more than six there will generally be at least
one fool; and this company must have numbered twenty men.
"This country knows well enough," said one fool, who hungered to be
important, "that you don't brand no calves that ain't your own."
The saturnine Virginian looked at him. "Thank yu'," said he, gravely, "for
your indorsement of my character." The fool felt flattered. The Virginian turned
to his friends. His hand slowly pushed his hat back, and he rubbed his black
head in thought.
"Glad to see yu've got your gun with you," continued the happy fool. "You
know what Trampas claims about that affair of yours in the Tetons? He claims
that if everything was known about the killing of Shorty—"
"Take one on the house," suggested the proprietor to him, amiably. "Your news
will be fresher." And he pushed him the bottle. The fool felt less important.
"This talk had went the rounds before it got to us," said Scipio, "or we'd
have headed it off. He has got friends in town."
Perplexity knotted the Virginian's brows. This community knew that a man had
implied he was a thief and a murderer; it also knew that he knew it. But the
case was one of peculiar circumstances, assuredly. Could he avoid meeting the
man? Soon the stage would be starting south for the railroad. He had already
to-day proposed to his sweetheart that they should take it. Could he for her
sake leave unanswered a talking enemy upon the field? His own ears had not heard
the enemy.
Into these reflections the fool stepped once more. "Of course this country
don't believe Trampas," said he. "This country—"
But he contributed no further thoughts. From somewhere in the rear of the
building, where it opened upon the tin cans and the hinder purlieus of the town,
came a movement, and Trampas was among them, courageous with whiskey.
All the fools now made themselves conspicuous. One lay on the floor, knocked
there by the Virginian, whose arm he had attempted to hold. Others struggled
with Trampas, and his bullet smashed the ceiling before they could drag the
pistol from him. "There now! there now!" they interposed; "you don't want to
talk like that," for he was pouring out a tide of hate and vilification. Yet the
Virginian stood quiet by the bar, and many an eye of astonishment was turned
upon him. "I'd not stand half that language," some muttered to each other. Still
the Virginian waited quietly, while the fools reasoned with Trampas. But no
earthly foot can step between a man and his destiny. Trampas broke suddenly
free.
"Your friends have saved your life," he rang out, with obscene epithets.
"I'll give you till sundown to leave town."
There was total silence instantly.
"Trampas," spoke the Virginian, "I don't want trouble with you."
"He never has wanted it," Trampas sneered to the bystanders. "He has been
dodging it five years. But I've got him coralled."
Some of the Trampas faction smiled.
"Trampas," said the Virginian again, "are yu' sure yu' really mean that?"
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 eves 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 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.
Thus did her New England conscience battle to the end, and, in the end,
capitulate to love. And the next day, with the bishop's blessing, and Mrs.
Taylor's broadest smile, and the ring on her finger, the Virginian departed with
his bride into the mountains.