The Swinton barbecue was over. The fiddles were silent, the steer was eaten, the barrel emptied, or largely so, and the tapers extinguished; round the house and sunken fire all movement of guests was quiet; the families were long departed homeward, and after their hospitable turbulence, the Swintons slept.
Mr. and Mrs. Westfall drove through the night, and as they neared their cabin there came from among the bundled wraps a still, small voice.
“Jim,” said his wife, “I said Alfred would catch cold.”
“Bosh! Lizzie, don't you fret. He's a little more than a yearlin', and of course he'll snuffle.” And young James took a kiss from his love.
“Well, how you can speak of Alfred that way, calling him a yearling, as if he was a calf, and he just as much your child as mine, I don't see, James Westfall!”
“Why, what under the sun do you mean?”
“There he goes again! Do hurry up home, Jim. He's got a real strange cough.”
So they hurried home. Soon the nine miles were finished, and good James was unhitching by his stable lantern, while his wife in the house hastened to commit their offspring to bed. The traces had dropped, and each horse marched forward for further unbuckling, when James heard himself called. Indeed, there was that in his wife's voice which made him jerk out his pistol as he ran. But it was no bear or Indian—only two strange children on the bed. His wife was glaring at them.
He sighed with relief and laid down the pistol.
“Put that on again, James Westfall. You'll need it. Look here!”
“Well, they won't bite. Whose are they? Where have you stowed ourn?”
“Where have I—” Utterance forsook this mother for a moment. “And you ask me!” she continued. “Ask Lin McLean. Ask him that sets bulls on folks and steals slippers, what he's done with our innocent lambs, mixing them up with other people's coughing, unhealthy brats. That's Charlie Taylor in Alfred's clothes, and I know Alfred didn't cough like that, and I said to you it was strange; and the other one that's been put in Christopher's new quilts is not even a bub—bub—boy!”
As this crime against society loomed clear to James Westfall's understanding, he sat down on the nearest piece of furniture, and heedless of his wife's tears and his exchanged children, broke into unregenerate laughter. Doubtless after his sharp alarm about the bear, he was unstrung. His lady, however, promptly restrung him; and by the time they had repacked the now clamorous changelings, and were rattling on their way to the Taylors', he began to share her outraged feelings properly, as a husband and a father should; but when he reached the Taylors' and learned from Miss Wood that at this house a child had been unwrapped whom nobody could at all identify, and that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were already far on the road to the Swintons', James Westfall whipped up his horses and grew almost as thirsty for revenge as was his wife.
Where the steer had been roasted, the powdered ashes were now cold white, and Mr. McLean, feeling through his dreams the change of dawn come over the air, sat up cautiously among the outdoor slumberers and waked his neighbor.
“Day will be soon,” he whispered, “and we must light out of this. I never suspicioned yu' had that much of the devil in you before.”
“I reckon some of the fellows will act haidstrong,” the Virginian murmured luxuriously, among the warmth of his blankets.
“I tell yu' we must skip,” said Lin, for the second time; and he rubbed the Virginian's black head, which alone was visible.
“Skip, then, you,” came muffled from within, “and keep you'self mighty sca'ce till they can appreciate our frolic.”
The Southerner withdrew deeper into his bed, and Mr. McLean, informing him that he was a fool, arose and saddled his horse. From the saddle-bag, he brought a parcel, and lightly laying this beside Bokay Baldy, he mounted and was gone. When Baldy awoke later, he found the parcel to be a pair of flowery slippers.
In selecting the inert Virginian as the fool, Mr. McLean was scarcely wise; it is the absent who are always guilty.
Before ever Lin could have been a mile in retreat, the rattle of the wheels roused all of them, and here came the Taylors. Before the Taylors' knocking had brought the Swintons to their door, other wheels sounded, and here were Mr. and Mrs. Carmody, and Uncle Hughey with his wife, and close after them Mr. Dow, alone, who told how his wife had gone into one of her fits—she upon whom Dr. Barker at Drybone had enjoined total abstinence from all excitement. Voices of women and children began to be uplifted; the Westfalls arrived in a lather, and the Thomases; and by sunrise, what with fathers and mothers and spectators and loud offspring, there was gathered such a meeting as has seldom been before among the generations of speaking men. To-day you can hear legends of it from Texas to Montana; but I am giving you the full particulars.
Of course they pitched upon poor Lin. Here was the Virginian doing his best, holding horses and helping ladies descend, while the name of McLean began to be muttered with threats. Soon a party led by Mr. Dow set forth in search of him, and the Southerner debated a moment if he had better not put them on a wrong track. But he concluded that they might safely go on searching.
Mrs. Westfall found Christopher at once in the green shawl of Anna Maria Dow, but all was not achieved thus in the twinkling of an eye. Mr. McLean had, it appeared, as James Westfall lugubriously pointed out, not merely “swapped the duds; he had shuffled the whole doggone deck;” and they cursed this Satanic invention. The fathers were but of moderate assistance; it was the mothers who did the heavy work; and by ten o'clock some unsolved problems grew so delicate that a ladies' caucus was organized in a private room,—no admittance for men,—and what was done there I can only surmise.
During its progress the search party returned. It had not found Mr. McLean. It had found a tree with a notice pegged upon it, reading, “God bless our home!” This was captured.
But success attended the caucus; each mother emerged, satisfied that she had received her own, and each sire, now that his family was itself again, began to look at his neighbor sideways. After a man has been angry enough to kill another man, after the fire of righteous slaughter has raged in his heart as it had certainly raged for several hours in the hearts of these fathers, the flame will usually burn itself out. This will be so in a generous nature, unless the cause of the anger is still unchanged. But the children had been identified; none had taken hurt. All had been humanely given their nourishment. The thing was over. The day was beautiful. A tempting feast remained from the barbecue. These Bear Creek fathers could not keep their ire at red heat. Most of them, being as yet more their wives' lovers than their children's parents, began to see the mirthful side of the adventure; and they ceased to feel very severely toward Lin McLean.
Not so the women. They cried for vengeance; but they cried in vain, and were met with smiles.
Mrs. Westfall argued long that punishment should be dealt the offender. “Anyway,” she persisted, “it was real defiant of him putting that up on the tree. I might forgive him but for that.”
“Yes,” spoke the Virginian in their midst, “that wasn't sort o' right. Especially as I am the man you're huntin'.”
They sat dumb at his assurance.
“Come and kill me,” he continued, round upon the party. “I'll not resist.”
But they could not resist the way in which he had looked round upon them. He had chosen the right moment for his confession, as a captain of a horse awaits the proper time for a charge. Some rebukes he did receive; the worst came from the mothers. And all that he could say for himself was, “I am getting off too easy.”
“But what was your point?” said Westfall.
“Blamed if I know any more. I expect it must have been the whiskey.”
“I would mind it less,” said Mrs. Westfall, “if you looked a bit sorry or ashamed.”
The Virginian shook his head at her penitently. “I'm tryin' to,” he said.
And thus he sat disarming his accusers until they began to lunch upon the copious remnants of the barbecue. He did not join them at this meal. In telling you that Mrs. Dow was the only lady absent upon this historic morning, I was guilty of an inadvertence. There was one other.
The Virginian rode away sedately through the autumn sunshine; and as he went he asked his Monte horse a question. “Do yu' reckon she'll have forgotten you too, you pie-biter?” said he. Instead of the new trousers, the cow-puncher's leathern chaps were on his legs. But he had the new scarf knotted at his neck. Most men would gladly have equalled him in appearance. “You Monte,” said he, “will she be at home?”
It was Sunday, and no school day, and he found her in her cabin that stood next the Taylors' house. Her eyes were very bright.
“I'd thought I'd just call,” said he.
“Why, that's such a pity! Mr. and Mrs. Taylor are away.”
“Yes; they've been right busy. That's why I thought I'd call. Will yu' come for a ride, ma'am?”
“Dear me! I—”
“You can ride my hawss. He's gentle.”
“What! And you walk?”
“No, ma'am. Nor the two of us ride him THIS time, either.” At this she turned entirely pink, and he, noticing, went on quietly: “I'll catch up one of Taylor's hawsses. Taylor knows me.”
“No. I don't really think I could do that. But thank you. Thank you very much. I must go now and see how Mrs. Taylor's fire is.”
“I'll look after that, ma'am. I'd like for yu' to go ridin' mighty well. Yu' have no babies this mawnin' to be anxious after.”
At this shaft, Grandmother Stark flashed awake deep within the spirit of her descendant, and she made a haughty declaration of war. “I don't know what you mean, sir,” she said.
Now was his danger; for it was easy to fall into mere crude impertinence and ask her why, then, did she speak thus abruptly? There were various easy things of this kind for him to say. And any rudeness would have lost him the battle. But the Virginian was not the man to lose such a battle in such a way. His shaft had hit. She thought he referred to those babies about whom last night she had shown such superfluous solicitude. Her conscience was guilty. This was all that he had wished to make sure of before he began operations.
“Why, I mean,” said he, easily, sitting down near the door, “that it's Sunday. School don't hinder yu' from enjoyin' a ride to-day. You'll teach the kids all the better for it to-morro', ma'am. Maybe it's your duty.” And he smiled at her.
“My duty! It's quite novel to have strangers—”
“Am I a stranger?” he cut in, firing his first broadside. “I was introduced, ma'am,” he continued, noting how she had flushed again. “And I would not be oversteppin' for the world. I'll go away if yu' want.” And hereupon he quietly rose, and stood, hat in hand.
Molly was flustered. She did not at all want him to go. No one of her admirers had ever been like this creature. The fringed leathern chaparreros, the cartridge belt, the flannel shirt, the knotted scarf at the neck, these things were now an old story to her. Since her arrival she had seen young men and old in plenty dressed thus. But worn by this man now standing by her door, they seemed to radiate romance. She did not want him to go—and she wished to win her battle. And now in her agitation she became suddenly severe, as she had done at Hoosic Junction. He should have a punishment to remember!
“You call yourself a man, I suppose,” she said.
But he did not tremble in the least. Her fierceness filled him with delight, and the tender desire of ownership flooded through him.
“A grown-up, responsible man,” she repeated.
“Yes, ma'am. I think so.” He now sat down again.
“And you let them think that—that Mr. McLean—You dare not look me in the face and say that Mr. McLean did that last night!”
“I reckon I dassent.”
“There! I knew it! I said so from the first!”
“And me a stranger to you!” he murmured.
It was his second broadside. It left her badly crippled. She was silent.
“Who did yu' mention it to, ma'am?”
She hoped she had him. “Why, are you afraid?” And she laughed lightly.
“I told 'em myself. And their astonishment seemed so genu-wine I'd just hate to think they had fooled me that thorough when they knowed it all along from you seeing me.”
“I did not see you. I knew it must—of course I did not tell any one. When I said I said so from the first, I meant—you can understand perfectly what I meant.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Poor Molly was near stamping her foot. “And what sort of a trick,” she rushed on, “was that to play? Do you call it a manly thing to frighten and distress women because you—for no reason at all? I should never have imagined it could be the act of a person who wears a big pistol and rides a big horse. I should be afraid to go riding with such an immature protector.”
“Yes; that was awful childish. Your words do cut a little; for maybe there's been times when I have acted pretty near like a man. But I cert'nly forgot to be introduced before I spoke to yu' last night. Because why? You've found me out dead in one thing. Won't you take a guess at this too?”
“I cannot sit guessing why people do not behave themselves—who seem to know better.”
“Well, ma'am, I've played square and owned up to yu'. And that's not what you're doin' by me. I ask your pardon if I say what I have a right to say in language not as good as I'd like to talk to yu' with. But at South Fork Crossin' who did any introducin'? Did yu' complain I was a stranger then?”
“I—no!” she flashed out; then, quite sweetly, “The driver told me it wasn't REALLY so dangerous there, you know.”
“That's not the point I'm makin'. You are a grown-up woman, a responsible woman. You've come ever so far, and all alone, to a rough country to instruct young children that play games,—tag, and hide-and-seek, and fooleries they'll have to quit when they get old. Don't you think pretendin' yu' don't know a man,—his name's nothin', but him,—a man whom you were glad enough to let assist yu' when somebody was needed,—don't you think that's mighty close to hide-and-seek them children plays? I ain't so sure but what there's a pair of us children in this hyeh room.”
Molly Wood was regarding him saucily. “I don't think I like you,” said she.
“That's all square enough. You're goin' to love me before we get through. I wish yu'd come a-ridin, ma'am.”
“Dear, dear, dear! So I'm going to love you? How will you do it? I know men think that they only need to sit and look strong and make chests at a girl—”
“Goodness gracious! I ain't makin' any chests at yu'!” Laughter overcame him for a moment, and Miss Wood liked his laugh very much. “Please come a-ridin',” he urged. “It's the prettiest kind of a day.”
She looked at him frankly, and there was a pause. “I will take back two things that I said to you,” she then answered him. “I believe that I do like you. And I know that if I went riding with you, I should not have an immature protector.” And then, with a final gesture of acknowledgment, she held out her hand to him. “And I have always wanted,” she said, “to thank you for what you did at the river.”
He took her hand, and his heart bounded. “You're a gentleman!” he exclaimed.
It was now her turn to be overcome with merriment. “I've always wanted to be a man,” she said.
“I am mighty glad you ain't,” said he, looking at her.
But Molly had already received enough broadsides for one day. She could allow no more of them, and she took herself capably in hand. “Where did you learn to make such pretty speeches?” she asked. “Well, never mind that. One sees that you have had plenty of practice for one so young.”
“I am twenty-seven,” blurted the Virginian, and knew instantly that he had spoken like a fool.
“Who would have dreamed it!” said Molly, with well-measured mockery. She knew that she had scored at last, and that this day was hers. “Don't be too sure you are glad I'm not a man,” she now told him. There was something like a challenge in her voice.
“I risk it,” he remarked.
“For I am almost twenty-three myself,” she concluded. And she gave him a look on her own account.
“And you'll not come a-ridin'?” he persisted.
“No,” she answered him; “no.” And he knew that he could not make her.
“Then I will tell yu' good-by,” said he. “But I am comin' again. And next time I'll have along a gentle hawss for yu'.”
“Next time! Next time! Well, perhaps I will go with you. Do you live far?”
“I live on Judge Henry's ranch, over yondeh.” He pointed across the mountains. “It's on Sunk Creek. A pretty rough trail; but I can come hyeh to see you in a day, I reckon. Well, I hope you'll cert'nly enjoy good health, ma'am.”
“Oh, there's one thing!” said Molly Wood, calling after him rather quickly. “I—I'm not at all afraid of horses. You needn't bring such a gentle one. I—was very tired that day, and—and I don't scream as a rule.”
He turned and looked at her so that she could not meet his glance. “Bless your heart!” said he. “Will yu' give me one o' those flowers?”
“Oh, certainly! I'm always so glad when people like them.”
“They're pretty near the color of your eyes.”
“Never mind my eyes.”
“Can't help it, ma'am. Not since South Fork.”
He put the flower in the leather band of his hat, and rode away on his Monte horse. Miss Wood lingered a moment, then made some steps toward her gate, from which he could still be seen; and then, with something like a toss of the head, she went in and shut her door.
Later in the day the Virginian met Mr. McLean, who looked at his hat and innocently quoted, “'My Looloo picked a daisy.'”
“Don't yu', Lin,” said the Southerner.
“Then I won't,” said Lin.
Thus, for this occasion, did the Virginian part from his lady—and nothing said one way or another about the handkerchief that had disappeared during the South Fork incident.
As we fall asleep at night, our thoughts will often ramble back and forth between the two worlds.
“What color were his eyes?” wondered Molly on her pillow. “His mustache is not bristly like so many of them. Sam never gave me such a look at Hoosic Junction. No.... You can't come with me.... Get off your horse.... The passengers are all staring....”
And while Molly was thus dreaming that the Virginian had ridden his horse into the railroad car, and sat down beside her, the fire in the great stone chimney of her cabin flickered quietly, its gleams now and again touching the miniature of Grandmother Stark upon the wall.
Camped on the Sunk Creek trail, the Virginian was telling himself in his blankets: “I ain't too old for education. Maybe she will lend me books. And I'll watch her ways and learn...stand still, Monte. I can learn a lot more than the kids on that. There's Monte...you pie-biter, stop.... He has ate up your book, ma'am, but I'll get yu'....”
And then the Virginian was fast asleep.
To the circle at Bennington, a letter from Bear Creek was always a welcome summons to gather and hear of doings very strange to Vermont. And when the tale of the changed babies arrived duly by the post, it created a more than usual sensation, and was read to a large number of pleased and scandalized neighbors. “I hate her to be where such things can happen,” said Mrs. Wood.
“I wish I could have been there,” said her son-in-law, Andrew Bell.
“She does not mention who played the trick,” said Mrs. Andrew Bell.
“We shouldn't be any wiser if she did,” said Mrs. Wood.
“I'd like to meet the perpetrator,” said Andrew.
“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Wood. “They're all horrible.”
And she wrote at once, begging her daughter to take good care of herself, and to see as much of Mrs. Balaam as possible. “And of any other ladies that are near you. For you seem to me to be in a community of roughs. I wish you would give it all up. Did you expect me to laugh about the babies?”
Mrs. Flynt, when this story was repeated to her (she had not been invited in to hear the letter), remarked that she had always felt that Molly Wood must be a little vulgar, ever since she began to go about giving music lessons like any ordinary German.
But Mrs. Wood was considerably relieved when the next letter arrived. It contained nothing horrible about barbecues or babies. It mentioned the great beauty of the weather, and how well and strong the fine air was making the writer feel. And it asked that books might be sent, many books of all sorts, novels, poetry, all the good old books and any good new ones that could be spared. Cheap editions, of course.
“Indeed she shall have them!” said Mrs. Wood. “How her mind must be starving in that dreadful place!” The letter was not a long one, and, besides the books, spoke of little else except the fine weather and the chances for outdoor exercise that this gave. “You have no idea,” it said, “how delightful it is to ride, especially on a spirited horse, which I can do now quite well.”
“How nice that is!” said Mrs. Wood, putting down the letter. “I hope the horse is not too spirited.”
“Who does she go riding with?” asked Mrs. Bell.
“She doesn't say, Sarah. Why?”
“Nothing. She has a queer way of not mentioning things, now and then.”
“Sarah!” exclaimed Mrs. Wood, reproachfully. “Oh, well, mother, you know just as well as I do that she can be very independent and unconventional.”
“Yes; but not in that way. She wouldn't ride with poor Sam Bannett, and after all he is a suitable person.”
Nevertheless, in her next letter, Mrs. Wood cautioned her daughter about trusting herself with any one of whom Mrs. Balaam did not thoroughly approve. The good lady could never grasp that Mrs. Balaam lived a long day's journey from Bear Creek, and that Molly saw her about once every three months. “We have sent your books,” the mother wrote; “everybody has contributed from their store,—Shakespeare, Tennyson, Browning, Longfellow; and a number of novels by Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot, Hawthorne, and lesser writers; some volumes of Emerson; and Jane Austen complete, because you admire her so particularly.”
This consignment of literature reached Bear Creek about a week before Christmas time.
By New Year's Day, the Virginian had begun his education.
“Well, I have managed to get through 'em,” he said, as he entered Molly's cabin in February. And he laid two volumes upon her table.
“And what do you think of them?” she inquired.
“I think that I've cert'nly earned a good long ride to-day.”
“Georgie Taylor has sprained his ankle.”
“No, I don't mean that kind of a ride. I've earned a ride with just us two alone. I've read every word of both of 'em, yu' know.”
“I'll think about it. Did you like them?”
“No. Not much. If I'd knowed that one was a detective story, I'd have got yu' to try something else on me. Can you guess the murderer, or is the author too smart for yu'? That's all they amount to. Well, he was too smart for me this time, but that didn't distress me any. That other book talks too much.”
Molly was scandalized, and she told him it was a great work.
“Oh, yes, yes. A fine book. But it will keep up its talkin'. Don't let you alone.”
“Didn't you feel sorry for poor Maggie Tulliver?”
“Hmp. Yes. Sorry for her, and for Tawmmy, too. But the man did right to drownd 'em both.”
“It wasn't a man. A woman wrote that.”
“A woman did! Well, then, o' course she talks too much.”
“I'll not go riding with you!” shrieked Molly.
But she did. And he returned to Sunk Creek, not with a detective story, but this time with a Russian novel.
It was almost April when he brought it back to her—and a heavy sleet storm lost them their ride. So he spent his time indoors with her, not speaking a syllable of love. When he came to take his departure, he asked her for some other book by this same Russian. But she had no more.
“I wish you had,” he said. “I've never saw a book could tell the truth like that one does.”
“Why, what do you like about it?” she exclaimed. To her it had been distasteful.
“Everything,” he answered. “That young come-outer, and his fam'ly that can't understand him—for he is broad gauge, yu' see, and they are narro' gauge.” The Virginian looked at Molly a moment almost shyly. “Do you know,” he said, and a blush spread over his face, “I pretty near cried when that young come-outer was dyin', and said about himself, 'I was a giant.' Life made him broad gauge, yu' see, and then took his chance away.”
Molly liked the Virginian for his blush. It made him very handsome. But she thought that it came from his confession about “pretty near crying.” The deeper cause she failed to divine,—that he, like the dying hero in the novel, felt himself to be a giant whom life had made “broad gauge,” and denied opportunity. Fecund nature begets and squanders thousands of these rich seeds in the wilderness of life.
He took away with him a volume of Shakespeare. “I've saw good plays of his,” he remarked.
Kind Mrs. Taylor in her cabin next door watched him ride off in the sleet, bound for the lonely mountain trail.
“If that girl don't get ready to take him pretty soon,” she observed to her husband, “I'll give her a piece of my mind.”
Taylor was astonished. “Is he thinking of her?” he inquired.
“Lord, Mr. Taylor, and why shouldn't he?”
Mr. Taylor scratched his head and returned to his newspaper.
It was warm—warm and beautiful upon Bear Creek. Snow shone upon the peaks of the Bow Leg range; lower on their slopes the pines were stirring with a gentle song; and flowers bloomed across the wide plains at their feet.
Molly and her Virginian sat at a certain spring where he had often ridden with her. On this day he was bidding her farewell before undertaking the most important trust which Judge Henry had as yet given him. For this journey she had provided him with Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth. Shakespeare he had returned to her. He had bought Shakespeare for himself. “As soon as I got used to readin' it,” he had told her, “I knowed for certain that I liked readin' for enjoyment.”
But it was not of books that he had spoken much to-day. He had not spoken at all. He had bade her listen to the meadow-lark, when its song fell upon the silence like beaded drops of music. He had showed her where a covey of young willow-grouse were hiding as their horses passed. And then, without warning, as they sat by the spring, he had spoken potently of his love.
She did not interrupt him. She waited until he was wholly finished.
“I am not the sort of wife you want,” she said, with an attempt of airiness.
He answered roughly, “I am the judge of that.” And his roughness was a pleasure to her, yet it made her afraid of herself. When he was absent from her, and she could sit in her cabin and look at Grandmother Stark, and read home letters, then in imagination she found it easy to play the part which she had arranged to play regarding him—the part of the guide, and superior, and indulgent companion. But when he was by her side, that part became a difficult one. Her woman's fortress was shaken by a force unknown to her before. Sam Bannett did not have it in him to look as this man could look, when the cold lustre of his eyes grew hot with internal fire. What color they were baffled her still. “Can it possibly change?” she wondered. It seemed to her that sometimes when she had been looking from a rock straight down into clear sea water, this same color had lurked in its depths. “Is it green, or is it gray?” she asked herself, but did not turn just now to see. She kept her face toward the landscape.
“All men are born equal,” he now remarked slowly.
“Yes,” she quickly answered, with a combative flash. “Well?”
“Maybe that don't include women?” he suggested.
“I think it does.”
“Do yu' tell the kids so?”
“Of course I teach them what I believe!”
He pondered. “I used to have to learn about the Declaration of Independence. I hated books and truck when I was a kid.”
“But you don't any more.”
“No. I cert'nly don't. But I used to get kep' in at recess for bein' so dumb. I was most always at the tail end of the class. My brother, he'd be head sometimes.”
“Little George Taylor is my prize scholar,” said Molly.
“Knows his tasks, does he?”
“Always. And Henry Dow comes next.”
“Who's last?”
“Poor Bob Carmody. I spend more time on him than on all the rest put together.”
“My!” said the Virginian. “Ain't that strange!”
She looked at him, puzzled by his tone. “It's not strange when you know Bob,” she said.
“It's very strange,” drawled the Virginian. “Knowin' Bob don't help it any.”
“I don't think that I understand you,” said Molly, sticky.
“Well, it is mighty confusin'. George Taylor, he's your best scholar, and poor Bob, he's your worst, and there's a lot in the middle—and you tell me we're all born equal!”
Molly could only sit giggling in this trap he had so ingeniously laid for her.
“I'll tell you what,” pursued the cow-puncher, with slow and growing intensity, “equality is a great big bluff. It's easy called.”
“I didn't mean—” began Molly.
“Wait, and let me say what I mean.” He had made an imperious gesture with his hand. “I know a man that mostly wins at cyards. I know a man that mostly loses. He says it is his luck. All right. Call it his luck. I know a man that works hard and he's gettin' rich, and I know another that works hard and is gettin' poor. He says it is his luck. All right. Call it his luck. I look around and I see folks movin' up or movin' down, winners or losers everywhere. All luck, of course. But since folks can be born that different in their luck, where's your equality? No, seh! call your failure luck, or call it laziness, wander around the words, prospect all yu' mind to, and yu'll come out the same old trail of inequality.” He paused a moment and looked at her. “Some holds four aces,” he went on, “and some holds nothin', and some poor fello' gets the aces and no show to play 'em; but a man has got to prove himself my equal before I'll believe him.”
Molly sat gazing at him, silent.
“I know what yu' meant,” he told her now, “by sayin' you're not the wife I'd want. But I am the kind that moves up. I am goin' to be your best scholar.” He turned toward her, and that fortress within her began to shake.
“Don't,” she murmured. “Don't, please.”
“Don't what?”
“Why—spoil this.”
“Spoil it?”
“These rides—I don't love you—I can't—but these rides are—”
“What are they?”
“My greatest pleasure. There! And, please, I want them to go on so.”
“Go on so! I don't reckon yu' know what you're sayin'. Yu' might as well ask fruit to stay green. If the way we are now can keep bein' enough for you, it can't for me. A pleasure to you, is it? Well, to me it is—I don't know what to call it. I come to yu' and I hate it, and I come again and I hate it, and I ache and grieve all over when I go. No! You will have to think of some other way than just invitin' me to keep green.”
“If I am to see you—” began the girl.
“You're not to see me. Not like this. I can stay away easier than what I am doin'.”
“Will you do me a favor, a great one?” said she, now.
“Make it as impossible as you please!” he cried. He thought it was to be some action.
“Go on coming. But don't talk to me about—don't talk in that way—if you can help it.”
He laughed out, not permitting himself to swear.
“But,” she continued, “if you can't help talking that way—sometimes—I promise I will listen. That is the only promise I make.”
“That is a bargain,” he said.
Then he helped her mount her horse, restraining himself like a Spartan, and they rode home to her cabin.
“You have made it pretty near impossible,” he said, as he took his leave. “But you've been square to-day, and I'll show you I can be square when I come back. I'll not do more than ask you if your mind's the same. And now I'll not see you for quite a while. I am going a long way. But I'll be very busy. And bein' busy always keeps me from grievin' too much about you.”
Strange is woman! She would rather have heard some other last remark than this.
“Oh, very well!” she said. “I'll not miss you either.”
He smiled at her. “I doubt if yu' can help missin' me,” he remarked. And he was gone at once, galloping on his Monte horse.
Which of the two won a victory this day?
There can be no doubt of this: All America is divided into two classes,—the quality and the equality.
The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear nothing but kings.
It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the ETERNAL INEQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, “Let the best man win, whoever he is.” Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. 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 long among the clean hills of Sunk Creek. I supposed he was there. But I came upon him one morning in Colonel Cyrus Jones's eating palace.
Did you know the palace? It stood in Omaha, near the trains, and it was ten years old (which is middle-aged in Omaha) when I first saw it. It was a shell of wood, painted with golden emblems,—the steamboat, the eagle, the Yosemite,—and a live bear ate gratuities at its entrance. Weather permitting, it opened upon the world as a stage upon the audience. You sat in Omaha's whole sight and dined, while Omaha's dust came and settled upon the refreshments. It is gone the way of the Indian and the buffalo, for the West is growing old. You should have seen the palace 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 Omaha once.
So I was passing that way also, walking for the sake of ventilation from a sleeping-car toward a bath, when the language of Colonel Cyrus Jones came out to me. The actual colonel I had never seen before. He stood at the rear of his palace in gray flowery mustaches and a Confederate uniform, 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 heard anything like the colonel. The Missouri had not yet flowed into New York dialect 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 a good 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-out trough?”
“What are you doing here, then?” said I.
“Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have.” And he took the bill-of-fare. I began to know that he had something 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,—all perfectly spelt and absolutely transparent. It was the old trick of copying some metropolitan menu to catch travellers of the third and last dimension of innocence; and whenever this is done the food is of the third and last dimension of awfulness, which the cow-puncher knew as well 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 I told him, certainly. I also explained to him about Delmonico of New York and 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 odd Texas legend. (The traveller read the bill-of-fare, you know, and called for a vol-au-vent. And the proprietor looked at the traveller, and running a pistol into his ear, observed, “You'll take hash.”) I was thinking of this and wondering what would happen to me. So I took the step.
“Wants frogs' legs, does he?” shouted Colonel Cyrus Jones. He fixed his eye upon me, and it narrowed to a slit. “Too many brain workers breakfasting before yu' came in, professor,” said he. “Missionary ate the last leg off me just now. Brown the wheat!” he commanded, through the 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 and down.”
“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 a look of pity.
“One Missouri and ice for the professor!” he said.
“That fello's a right live man,” commented the Virginian. But he seemed thoughtful. 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 thing new 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, as much as I knew, and the Southerner listened intently.
“Mighty inter-estin',” he said—“mighty. He could just take little old o'rn'ry frawgs, and dandy 'em up to suit the bloods. Mighty inter-estin'. I expaict, though, his cookin' would give an outraiged stomach 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,” he answered. “She was raised in Vermont. They don't bother overly about their eatin' up in Vermont. Hyeh's what Miss Wood recommended the las' time I was seein' her,” the cow-puncher added, bringing Kenilworth from his pocket. “Right fine story. That Queen Elizabeth must have cert'nly been a competent woman.”
“She was,” said I. But talk came to an end here. A dusty crew, most evidently from the plains, now entered and drifted to a table; and each man of them gave the Virginian about a quarter of a slouchy nod. His greeting to them was very serene. Only, Kenilworth went back into his pocket, and he breakfasted in silence. Among those who had greeted him I now 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 no more, but went on with his breakfast.
His appearance was changed. Aged I would scarcely say, for this would seem as if he did not look young. But I think that the boy was altogether gone from his face—the boy whose freak with Steve had turned Medicine Bow upside down, whose other freak with the babies had outraged Bear Creek, the boy who had loved to jingle his spurs. But manhood had only trained, not broken, his youth. It was all there, only obedient to the rein and curb.
Presently we went together to the railway yard.
“The Judge is doing a right smart o' business this year,” he began, very casually indeed, so that I knew this was important. Besides bells and coal smoke, the smell and crowded sounds of cattle rose in the air around us. “Hyeh's our first gather o' beeves on the ranch,” continued the Virginian. “The whole lot's shipped through to Chicago in two sections over the Burlington. The Judge is fighting the Elkhorn road.” We passed slowly along the two trains,—twenty cars, each car packed with huddled, round-eyed, gazing steers. He examined to see if any animals were down. “They ain't ate or drank anything to speak of,” he said, while the terrified brutes stared at us through their slats. “Not since they struck the railroad they've not drank. Yu' might suppose they know somehow what they're travellin' to Chicago for.” And casually, always casually, he told me the rest. Judge Henry could not spare his foreman away from the second gather of beeves. Therefore these two ten-car trains with their double crew of cow-boys had been given to the Virginian's charge. After Chicago, he was to return by St. Paul over the Northern Pacific; for the Judge had wished him to see certain of the road's directors and explain to them persuasively how good a thing it would be for them to allow especially cheap rates to the Sunk Creek outfit henceforth. This was all the Virginian told me; and it contained the 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 used to seein' me one of themselves. Why don't you come along with us far as Plattsmouth?” Thus he shifted the subject from himself, and called to my notice the locomotives backing up to his cars, and reminded me that from Plattsmouth I had the choice of two trains returning. But he could not hide or belittle this confidence of his employer in him. It was the care of several thousand perishable dollars and the control of men. It was a compliment. There were more steers than men to be responsible for; but none of the steers had been suddenly picked from the herd and set above his fellows. Moreover, Chicago finished up the steers; but the new-made deputy foreman had then to lead his six highly unoccupied brethren away from towns, and back in peace to the ranch, or disappoint the Judge, who needed their services. These things sometimes go wrong in a land where they say you are all born equal; and that quarter of a nod in Colonel Cyrus Jones's eating palace held more equality than any whole nod you could see. But the Virginian did not see it, there being a time for all things.
We trundled down the flopping, heavy-eddied Missouri to Plattsmouth, and there they backed us on to a siding, the Christian Endeavor being expected to pass that way. And while the equality absorbed themselves in a 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 sandy shallows 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 his eyes 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 once more, and turned the volume over and over slowly, without opening it. You cannot tell if in spirit he wandered on Bear Creek with the girl whose 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 a mighty pow'ful game,” was his next remark.
“Poker?” said I.
“Yes, seh. Do you expaict Europe has got any queen equal to her at present?”
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 have read this hyeh Kenilworth? Well, deal Elizabeth ace high, an' she could scare 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, I reckon she'd have stacked the cyards. Say, d' yu' remember Shakespeare's fat 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 shame Shakespeare couldn't know about poker. He'd have had Falstaff playing all 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 he was drawling again.
The cow-puncher's eye rested a moment amiably upon me. “You can play whist with your brains,” he mused,—“brains and cyards. Now cyards are only one o' the manifestations of poker in this hyeh world. One o' the shapes yu fool with it in when the day's work is oveh. If a man is built like 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 the trouble begins. Maybe it will be a mean, triflin' army, or an empty six-shooter, or a lame hawss, or maybe just nothin' but his natural countenance. 'Most any old thing will do for a fello' like that Prince boy 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 pretty game o' whist yourself,” he remarked. “Don't that give you the contented spirit?” And before I had any reply to this, the Christian Endeavor began to come over the bridge. Three instalments crossed the Missouri from Pacific Junction, bound for Pike's Peak, every car swathed in bright bunting, and at each window a Christian with a handkerchief, joyously shrieking. Then the cattle trains got the open signal, and I jumped off. “Tell the Judge the steers was all right this far,” said the Virginian.
That was the last of the deputy foreman for a while.