Virginian (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (42 page)

On it were a few words crossed out. This was all she had to show. At this set task in letter-writing, the cow-puncher had greatly excelled the schoolmarm!

But that night, while he lay quite fast asleep in his bed, she was keeping vigil in her room at Mrs. Taylor’s.

Accordingly, the next day, those three letters departed for the mail, and Mrs. Taylor consequently made her exclamation, “It’s come!”

On the day before the Virginian returned to take up his work at Judge Henry’s ranch, he and Molly announced their news. What Molly said to Mrs. Taylor and what Mrs. Taylor said to her, is of no interest to us, though it was of much to them.

But Mr. McLean happened to make a call quite early in the morning to inquire for his friend’s health.

“Lin,” began the Virginian, “there is no harm in you knowing an hour or so before the rest. I am—”

“Lord!” said Mr. McLean, indulgently. “Everybody has knowed that since the day she found yu’ at the spring.”

“It was not so, then,” said the Virginian, crossly.

“Lord! Everybody has knowed it right along.”

“Hmp!” said the Virginian. “I don’t know this country was that rank with gossips.”

Mr. McLean laughed mirthfully at the lover. “Well,” he said, “Mrs. McLean will be glad. She told me to give yu’ her congratulations quite awhile ago. I was to have ‘em ready just as soon as ever yu’ asked for ’em yourself.” Lin had been made a happy man some twelve months previous to this. And now, by way of an exchange of news, he added: “We’re expectin’ a little McLean down on Box Elder. That’s what you’ll be expectin’ some of these days, I hope.”

“Yes,” murmured the Virginian, “I hope so too.”

“And I don’t guess,” said Lin, “that you and I will do much shufflin’ of other folks’ children any more.”

Whereupon he and the Virginian shook hands silently, and understood each other very well.

On the day that the Virginian parted with Molly, besides the weight of farewell which lay heavy on his heart, his thoughts were also grave with news. The cattle thieves had grown more audacious. Horses and cattle both were being missed, and each man began almost to doubt his neighbor.

“Steps will have to be taken soon by somebody, I reckon,” said the lover.

“By you?” she asked quickly.

“Most likely I’ll get mixed up with it.”

“What will you have to do?”

“Can’t say. I’ll tell yu’ when I come back.”

So did he part from her, leaving her more kisses than words to remember.

And what was doing at Bennington, meanwhile, and at Dunbarton? Those three letters, which by their mere outside had so moved Mrs. Taylor, produced by their contents much painful disturbance.

It will be remembered that Molly wrote to her mother, and to her great-aunt. That announcement to her mother was undertaken first. Its composition occupied three hours and a half, and it filled eleven pages, not counting a postscript upon the twelfth. The letter to the great-aunt took only ten minutes. I cannot pretend to explain why this one was so greatly superior to the other; but such is the remarkable fact. Its beginning, to be sure, did give the old lady a start; she had dismissed the cow-boy from her probabilities.

“Tut, tut, tut!” she exclaimed out loud in her bedroom. “She has thrown herself away on that fellow!”

But some sentences at the end made her pause and sit still for a long while. The severity upon her face changed to tenderness, gradually. “Ah, me,” she sighed. “If marriage were as simple as love!” Then she went slowly downstairs, and out into her garden, where she walked long between the box borders. “But if she has found a great love,” said the old lady at length. And she returned to her bedroom, and opened an old desk, and read some old letters.

There came to her the next morning a communication from Bennington. This had been penned frantically by poor Mrs. Wood. As soon as she had been able to gather her senses after the shock of her daughter’s eleven pages and the postscript, the mother had poured out eight pages herself to the eldest member of the family. There had been, indeed, much excuse for the poor lady. To begin with, Molly had constructed her whole opening page with the express and merciful intention of preparing her mother. Consequently, it made no sense whatever. Its effect was the usual effect of remarks designed to break a thing gently. It merely made Mrs. Wood’s head swim, and filled her with a sickening dread. “Oh, mercy, Sarah,” she had cried, “come here. What does this mean?” And then, fortified by her elder daughter, she had turned over that first page and found what it meant on the top of the second. “A savage with knives and pistols!” she wailed.—“Well, mother, I always told you so,” said her daughter Sarah.—“What is a foreman?” exclaimed the mother. “And who is Judge Henry?”—“She has taken a sort of upper servant,” said Sarah. “If it is allowed to go as far as a wedding, I doubt if I can bring myself to be present.” (This threat she proceeded to make to Molly, with results that shall be set forth in their proper place.) “The man appears to have written to me himself,” said Mrs. Wood.—“He knows no better,” said Sarah.—“Bosh!” said Sarah’s husband later. “It was a very manly thing to do.” Thus did consternation rage in the house at Bennington. Molly might have spared herself the many assurances that she gave concerning the universal esteem in which her cow-puncher was held, and the fair prospects which were his. So, in the first throes of her despair, Mrs. Wood wrote those eight not maturely considered pages to the great-aunt.

“Tut, tut, tut!” said the great-aunt as she read them. Her face was much more severe to-day. “You’d suppose,” she said, “that the girl had been kidnapped! Why, she has kept him waiting three years!” And then she read more, but soon put the letter down with laughter. For Mrs. Wood had repeated in writing that early outburst of hers about a savage with knives and pistols. “Law!” said the great-aunt. “Law, what a fool Lizzie is!”

So she sat down and wrote to Mrs. Wood a wholesome reply about putting a little more trust in her own flesh and blood, and reminding her among other things that General Stark had himself been wont to carry knives and pistols owing to the necessities of his career, but that he had occasionally taken them off, as did probably this young man in Wyoming. “You had better send me the letter he has written you,” she concluded. “I shall know much better what to think after I have seen that.”

It is not probable that Mrs. Wood got much comfort from this communication; and her daughter Sarah was actually enraged by it. “She grows more perverse as she nears her dotage,” said Sarah. But the Virginian’s letter was sent to Dunbarton, where the old lady sat herself down to read it with much attention.

Here is what the Virginian had said to the unknown mother of his sweetheart.

“Indeed!” snorted the great-aunt. “Well, he would be right, if I had not had a good deal more to do with her ‘raising’ than ever Lizzie had.” And she went on with the letter.

But at this point in the Virginian’s letter, the old great-aunt could read no more. She rose, and went over to that desk where lay those faded letters of her own. She laid her head down upon the package; and as her tears flowed quietly upon it, “O dear,” she whispered, “O dear! And this is what I lost!”

To her girl upon Bear Creek she wrote the next day. And this word from Dunbarton was like balm among the harsh stings Molly was receiving. The voices of the world reached her in gathering numbers, and not one of them save that great-aunt’s was sweet. Her days were full of hurts, and there was no one by to kiss the hurts away. Nor did she even hear from her lover any more now. She only knew he had gone into lonely regions upon his errand.

That errand took him far:—

Across the Basin, among the secret places of Owl Creek, past the Washakie Needles, over the Divide to Gros Ventre,
¹
and so through a final barrier of peaks into the borders of East Idaho. There, by reason of his bidding me, I met him, and came to share in a part of his errand.

It was with no guide that I travelled to him. He had named a little station on the railroad, and from thence he had charted my route by means of landmarks. Did I believe in omens, the black storm that I set out in upon my horse would seem like one to-day. But I had been living in cities and smoke; and Idaho, even with rain, was delightful to me.

—30—

A STABLE ON THE FLAT

WHEN THE FIRST LANDMARK, the lone clump of cotton-woods, came at length in sight, dark and blurred in the gentle rain, standing out perhaps a mile beyond the distant buildings, my whole weary body hailed the approach of repose. Saving the noon hour, I had been in the saddle since six, and now six was come round again. The ranch, my resting-place for this night, was a ruin—cabin, stable, and corral. Yet after the twelve hours of pushing on and on through silence, still to have silence, still to eat and go to sleep in it, perfectly fitted the mood of both my flesh and spirit. At noon, when for a while I had thrown off my long oilskin coat, merely the sight of the newspaper half crowded into my pocket had been a displeasing reminder of the railway, and cities, and affairs. But for its possible help to build fires, it would have come no farther with me. The great levels around me lay cooled and freed of dust by the wet weather, and full of sweet airs. Far in front the foothills rose through the rain, indefinite and mystic. I wanted no speech with any one, nor to be near human beings at all. I was steeped in a revery as of the primal earth; even thoughts themselves had almost ceased motion. To lie down with wild animals, with elk and deer, would have made my waking dream complete; and since such dream could not be, the cattle around the deserted buildings, mere dots as yet across separating space, were my proper companions for this evening.

To-morrow night I should probably be camping with the Virginian in the foot-hills. At his letter’s bidding I had come eastward across Idaho, abandoning my hunting in the Saw Tooth Range to make this journey with him back through the Tetons. It was a trail known to him, and not to many other honest men. Horse Thief Pass was the name his letter gave it. Business (he was always brief) would call him over there at this time. Returning, he must attend to certain matters in the Wind River country. There I could leave by stage for the railroad, or go on with him the whole way back to Sunk Creek. He designated for our meeting the forks of a certain little stream in the foot-hills which to-day’s ride had brought in sight. There would be no chance for him to receive an answer from me in the intervening time. If by a certain day—which was four days off still—I had not reached the forks, he would understand I had other plans. To me it was like living back in ages gone, this way of meeting my friend, this choice of a stream so far and lonely that its very course upon the maps was wrongly traced. And to leave behind all noise and mechanisms, and set out at ease, slowly, with one packhorse, into the wilderness, made me feel that the ancient earth was indeed my mother and that I had found her again after being lost among houses, customs, and restraints. I should arrive three days early at the forks—three days of margin seeming to me a wise precaution against delays unforeseen. If the Virginian was not there, good; I could fish and be happy. If he were there but not ready to start, good; I could still fish and be happy. And remembering my Eastern helplessness in the year when we had met first, I enjoyed thinking how I had come to be trusted. In those days I had not been allowed to go from the ranch for so much as an afternoon’s ride unless tied to him by a string, so to speak; now I was crossing unmapped spaces with no guidance. The man who could do this was scarce any longer a “tenderfoot.”