The Virginian-a Horseman of the Plains

by Owen Wister

  Perhaps we failed to catch the train's attention, though the theory seems monstrous. As it moved off in our faces, smooth and easy and insulting, Scipio dropped instantly to a walk, and we two others outstripped him and came desperately to the empty track. There went the train. Even still its puffs were the separated puffs of starting, that bitten-off, snorty kind, and sweat and our true natures broke freely forth.

  I kicked my valise, and then sat on it, dumb.

  Shorty yielded himself up aloud. All his humble secrets came out of him. He walked aimlessly round, lamenting. He had lost his job, and he mentioned the ranch. He had played cards, and he mentioned the man. He had sold his horse and saddle to catch a friend on this train, and he mentioned what the friend had been going to do for him. He told a string of griefs and names to the air, as if the air knew.

  Meanwhile Scipio arrived with extreme leisure at the rails. He stuck his hands into his pockets and his head out at the very small train. His bleached blue eyes shut to slits as he watched the rear car in its smoke-blur ooze away westward among the mounded bluffs. "Lucky it's out of range," I thought. But now Scipio spoke to it.

  "Why, you seem to think you've left me behind," he began easily, in fawning tones. "You're too much of a kid to have such thoughts. Age some." His next remark grew less wheedling. "I wouldn't be a bit proud to meet yu'. Why, if I was seen travellin' with yu', I'd have to explain it to my friends! Think you've got me left, do yu'? Just because yu' ride through this country on a rail, do yu' claim yu' can find your way around? I could take yu' out ten yards in the brush and lose yu' in ten seconds, you spangle-roofed hobo! Leave ME behind? you recent blanket-mortgage yearlin'! You plush-lined, nickel-plated, whistlin' wash room, d' yu' figure I can't go east just as soon as west? Or I'll stay right here if it suits me, yu' dude-inhabited hot-box! Why, yu' coon-bossed face-towel—" But from here he rose in flights of novelty that appalled and held me spellbound, and which are not for me to say to you. Then he came down easily again, and finished with expressions of sympathy for it because it could never have known a mother.

  "Do you expaict it could show a male parent offhand?" inquired a slow voice behind us. I jumped round, and there was the Virginian.

  "Male parent!" scoffed the prompt Scipio. "Ain't you heard about THEM yet?"

  "Them? Was there two?"

  "Two? The blamed thing was sired by a whole doggone Dutch syndicate."

  "Why, the piebald son of a gun!" responded the Virginian, sweetly. "I got them steers through all right," he added to me. "Sorry to see yu' get so out o' breath afteh the train. Is your valise sufferin' any?"

  "Who's he?" inquired Scipio, curiously, turning to me.

  The Southerner sat with a newspaper on the rear platform of a caboose. The caboose stood hitched behind a mile or so of freight train, and the train was headed west. So here was the deputy foreman, his steers delivered in Chicago, his men (I could hear them) safe in the caboose, his paper in his lap, and his legs dangling at ease over the railing. He wore the look of a man for whom things are going smooth. And for me the way to Billings was smooth now, also.

  "Who's he?" Scipio repeated.

  But from inside the caboose loud laughter and noise broke on us. Some one was reciting "And it's my night to howl."

  "We'll all howl when we get to Rawhide," said some other one; and they howled now.

  "These hyeh steam cyars," said the Virginian to Scipio, "make a man's language mighty nigh as speedy as his travel." Of Shorty he took no notice whatever—no more than of the manifestations in the caboose.

  "So yu' heard me speakin' to the express," said Scipio. "Well, I guess, sometimes I—See here," he exclaimed, for the Virginian was gravely considering him, "I may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You didn't catch ME squandering no speed. Soon as—"

  "I noticed," said the Virginian, "thinkin' came quicker to yu' than runnin'."

  I was glad I was not Shorty, to have my measure taken merely by my way of missing a train. And of course I was sorry that I had kicked my valise.

  "Oh, I could tell yu'd been enjoyin' us!" said Scipio. "Observin' somebody else's scrape always kind o' rests me too. Maybe you're a philosopher, but maybe there's a pair of us drawd in this deal."

  Approval now grew plain upon the face of the Virginian. "By your laigs," said he, "you are used to the saddle."

  "I'd be called used to it, I expect."

  "By your hands," said the Southerner, again, "you ain't roped many steers lately. Been cookin' or something?"

  "Say," retorted Scipio, "tell my future some now. Draw a conclusion from my mouth."

  "I'm right distressed," unsevered the gentle Southerner, "we've not a drop in the outfit."

  "Oh, drink with me uptown!" cried Scipio "I'm pleased to death with yu'."

  The Virginian glanced where the saloons stood just behind the station, and shook his head.

  "Why, it ain't a bit far to whiskey from here!" urged the other, plaintively. "Step down, now. Scipio le Moyne's my name. Yes, you're lookin' for my brass ear-rings. But there ain't no ear-rings on me. I've been white for a hundred years. Step down. I've a forty-dollar thirst."

  "You're certainly white," began the Virginian. "But—"

  Here the caboose resumed:

  "I'm wild, and woolly, and full of peas;

  I'm hard to curry above the knees;

  I'm a she-wolf from Bitter Creek, and

  It's my night to ho-o-wl—"

  And as they howled and stamped, the wheels of the caboose began to turn gently and to murmur.

  The Virginian rose suddenly. "Will yu' save that thirst and take a forty-dollar job?"

  "Missin' trains, profanity, or what?" said Scipio.

  "I'll tell yu' soon as I'm sure."

  At this Scipio looked hard at the Virginian. "Why, you're talkin' business!" said he, and leaped on the caboose, where I was already. "I WAS thinkin' of Rawhide," he added, "but I ain't any more."

  "Well, good luck!" said Shorty, on the track behind us.

  "Oh, say!" said Scipio, "he wanted to go on that train, just like me."

  "Get on," called the Virginian. "But as to getting a job, he ain't just like you." So Shorty came, like a lost dog when you whistle to him.

  Our wheels clucked over the main-line switch. A train-hand threw it shut after us, jumped aboard, and returned forward over the roofs. Inside the caboose they had reached the third howling of the she-wolf.

  "Friends of yourn?" said Scipio.

  "My outfit," drawled the Virginian.

  "Do yu' always travel outside?" inquired Scipio.

  "It's lonesome in there," returned the deputy foreman. And here one of them came out, slamming the door.

  "Hell!" he said, at sight of the distant town. Then, truculently, to the Virginian, "I told you I was going to get a bottle here."

  "Have your bottle, then," said the deputy foreman, and kicked him off into Dakota. (It was not North Dakota yet; they had not divided it.) The Virginian had aimed his pistol at about the same time with his boot. Therefore the man sat in Dakota quietly, watching us go away into Montana, and offering no objections. Just before he became too small to make out, we saw him rise and remove himself back toward the saloons.

  XV. THE GAME AND THE NATION—ACT SECOND

  "That is the only step I have had to take this whole trip," said the Virginian. He holstered his pistol with a jerk. "I have been fearing he would force it on me." And he looked at empty, receding Dakota with disgust. "So nyeh back home!" he muttered.

  "Known your friend long?" whispered Scipio to me.

  "Fairly," I answered.

  Scipio's bleached eyes brightened with admiration as he considered the Southerner's back. "Well," he stated judicially, "start awful early when yu' go to fool with him, or he'll make you feel unpunctual."

  "I expaict I've had them almost all of three thousand miles," said the Virginian, tilting his head toward the noise in the caboose. "And I've strove to deliver them back as I received
them. The whole lot. And I would have. But he has spoiled my hopes." The deputy foreman looked again at Dakota. "It's a disappointment," he added. "You may know what I mean."

  I had known a little, but not to the very deep, of the man's pride and purpose in this trust. Scipio gave him sympathy. "There must be quite a balance of 'em left with yu' yet," said Scipio, cheeringly.

  "I had the boys plumb contented," pursued the deputy foreman, hurt into open talk of himself. "Away along as far as Saynt Paul I had them reconciled to my authority. Then this news about gold had to strike us."

  "And they're a-dreamin' nuggets and Parisian bowleyvards," suggested Scipio.

  The Virginian smiled gratefully at him.

  "Fortune is shinin' bright and blindin' to their delicate young eyes," he said, regaining his usual self.

  We all listened a moment to the rejoicings within.

  "Energetic, ain't they?" said the Southerner. "But none of 'em was whelped savage enough to sing himself bloodthirsty. And though they're strainin' mighty earnest not to be tame, they're goin' back to Sunk Creek with me accordin' to the Judge's awders. Never a calf of them will desert to Rawhide, for all their dangerousness; nor I ain't goin' to have any fuss over it. Only one is left now that don't sing. Maybe I will have to make some arrangements about him. The man I have parted with," he said, with another glance at Dakota, "was our cook, and I will ask yu' to replace him, Colonel."

  Scipio gaped wide. "Colonel! Say!" He stared at the Virginian. "Did I meet yu' at the palace?"

  "Not exackly meet," replied the Southerner. "I was present one mawnin' las' month when this gentleman awdehed frawgs' laigs."

  "Sakes and saints, but that was a mean position!" burst out Scipio. "I had to tell all comers anything all day. Stand up and jump language hot off my brain at 'em. And the pay don't near compensate for the drain on the system. I don't care how good a man is, you let him keep a-tappin' his presence of mind right along, without takin' a lay-off, and you'll have him sick. Yes, sir. You'll hit his nerves. So I told them they could hire some fresh man, for I was goin' back to punch cattle or fight Indians, or take a rest somehow, for I didn't propose to get jaded, and me only twenty-five years old. There ain't no regular Colonel Cyrus Jones any more, yu' know. He met a Cheyenne telegraph pole in seventy-four, and was buried. But his palace was doin' big business, and he had been a kind of attraction, and so they always keep a live bear outside, and some poor fello', fixed up like the Colonel used to be, inside. And it's a turruble mean position. Course I'll cook for yu'. Yu've a dandy memory for faces!"

  "I wasn't right convinced till I kicked him off and you gave that shut to your eyes again," said the Virginian.

  Once more the door opened. A man with slim black eyebrows, slim black mustache, and a black shirt tied with a white handkerchief was looking steadily from one to the other of us.

  "Good day!" he remarked generally and without enthusiasm; and to the Virginian, "Where's Schoffner?"

  "I expaict he'll have got his bottle by now, Trampas."

  Trampas looked from one to the other of us again. "Didn't he say he was coming back?"

  "He reminded me he was going for a bottle, and afteh that he didn't wait to say a thing."

  Trampas looked at the platform and the railing and the steps. "He told me he was coming back," he insisted.

  "I don't reckon he has come, not without he clumb up ahaid somewhere. An' I mus' say, when he got off he didn't look like a man does when he has the intention o' returnin'."

  At this Scipio coughed, and pared his nails attentively. We had already been avoiding each other's eye. Shorty did not count. Since he got aboard, his meek seat had been the bottom step.

  The thoughts of Trampas seemed to be in difficulty. "How long's this train been started?" he demanded.

  "This hyeh train?" The Virginian consulted his watch. "Why, it's been fanning it a right smart little while," said he, laying no stress upon his indolent syllables.

  "Huh!" went Trampas. He gave the rest of us a final unlovely scrutiny. "It seems to have become a passenger train," he said. And he returned abruptly inside the caboose.

  "Is he the member who don't sing?" asked Scipio.

  "That's the specimen," replied the Southerner.

  "He don't seem musical in the face," said Scipio.

  "Pshaw!" returned the Virginian. "Why, you surely ain't the man to mind ugly mugs when they're hollow!"

  The noise inside had dropped quickly to stillness. You could scarcely catch the sound of talk. Our caboose was clicking comfortably westward, rail after rail, mile upon mile, while night was beginning to rise from earth into the clouded sky.

  "I wonder if they have sent a search party forward to hunt Schoffner?" said the Virginian. "I think I'll maybe join their meeting." He opened the door upon them. "Kind o' dark hyeh, ain't it?" said he. And lighting the lantern, he shut us out.

  "What do yu' think?" said Scipio to me. "Will he take them to Sunk Creek?"

  "He evidently thinks he will," said I. "He says he will, and he has the courage of his convictions."

  "That ain't near enough courage to have!" Scipio exclaimed. "There's times in life when a man has got to have courage WITHOUT convictions—WITHOUT them—or he is no good. Now your friend is that deep constitooted that you don't know and I don't know what he's thinkin' about all this."

  "If there's to be any gun-play," put in the excellent Shorty, "I'll stand in with him."

  "Ah, go to bed with your gun-play!" retorted Scipio, entirely good-humored. "Is the Judge paying for a carload of dead punchers to gather his beef for him? And this ain't a proposition worth a man's gettin' hurt for himself, anyway."

  "That's so," Shorty assented.

  "No," speculated Scipio, as the night drew deeper round us and the caboose click-clucked and click-clucked over the rail joints; "he's waitin' for somebody else to open this pot. I'll bet he don't know but one thing now, and that's that nobody else shall know he don't know anything."

  Scipio had delivered himself. He lighted a cigarette, and no more wisdom came from him. The night was established. The rolling bad-lands sank away in it. A train-hand had arrived over the roof, and hanging the red lights out behind, left us again without remark or symptom of curiosity. The train-hands seemed interested in their own society and lived in their own caboose. A chill wind with wet in it came blowing from the invisible draws, and brought the feel of the distant mountains.

  "That's Montana!" said Scipio, snuffing. "I am glad to have it inside my lungs again."

  "Ain't yu' getting cool out there?" said the Virginian's voice. "Plenty room inside."

  Perhaps he had expected us to follow him; or perhaps he had meant us to delay long enough not to seem like a reenforcement. "These gentlemen missed the express at Medora," he observed to his men, simply.

  What they took us for upon our entrance I cannot say, or what they believed. The atmosphere of the caboose was charged with voiceless currents of thought. By way of a friendly beginning to the three hundred miles of caboose we were now to share so intimately, I recalled myself to them. I trusted no more of the Christian Endeavor had delayed them. "I am so lucky to have caught you again," I finished. "I was afraid my last chance of reaching the Judge's had gone."

  Thus I said a number of things designed to be agreeable, but they met my small talk with the smallest talk you can have. "Yes," for instance, and "Pretty well, I guess," and grave strikings of matches and thoughtful looks at the floor. I suppose we had made twenty miles to the imperturbable clicking of the caboose when one at length asked his neighbor had he ever seen New York.

  "No," said the other. "Flooded with dudes, ain't it?"

  "Swimmin'," said the first.

  "Leakin', too," said a third.

  "Well, my gracious!" said a fourth, and beat his knee in private delight. None of them ever looked at me. For some reason I felt exceedingly ill at ease.

  "Good clothes in New York," said the third.

  "Rich food," said the firs
t.

  "Fresh eggs, too," said the third.

  "Well, my gracious!" said the fourth, beating his knee.

  "Why, yes," observed the Virginian, unexpectedly; "they tell me that aiggs there ain't liable to be so rotten as yu'll strike 'em in this country."

  None of them had a reply for this, and New York was abandoned. For some reason I felt much better.

  It was a new line they adopted next, led off by Trampas.

  "Going to the excitement?" he inquired, selecting Shorty.

  "Excitement?" said Shorty, looking up.

  "Going to Rawhide?" Trampas repeated. And all watched Shorty.

  "Why, I'm all adrift missin' that express," said Shorty.

  "Maybe I can give you employment," suggested the Virginian. "I am taking an outfit across the basin."

  "You'll find most folks going to Rawhide, if you re looking for company," pursued Trampas, fishing for a recruit.

  "How about Rawhide, anyway?" said Scipio, skillfully deflecting this missionary work. "Are they taking much mineral out? Have yu' seen any of the rock?"

  "Rock?" broke in the enthusiast who had beaten his knee. "There!" And he brought some from his pocket.

  "You're always showing your rock," said Trampas, sulkily; for Scipio now held the conversation, and Shorty returned safely to his dozing.

  "H'm!" went Scipio at the rock. He turned it back and forth in his hand, looking it over; he chucked and caught it slightingly in the air, and handed it back. "Porphyry, I see." That was his only word about it. He said it cheerily. He left no room for discussion. You could not damn a thing worse. "Ever been in Santa Rita?" pursued Scipio, while the enthusiast slowly pushed his rock back into his pocket. "That's down in New Mexico. Ever been to Globe, Arizona?" And Scipio talked away about the mines he had known. There was no getting at Shorty any more that evening. Trampas was foiled of his fish, or of learning how the fish's heart lay. And by morning Shorty had been carefully instructed to change his mind about once an hour. This is apt to discourage all but very superior missionaries. And I too escaped for the rest of this night. At Glendive we had a dim supper, and I bought some blankets; and after that it was late, and sleep occupied the attention of us all.