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 Cañada 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 YOUR
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 eyes 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.

XXXVI. AT DUNBARTON

For their first bridal camp he chose an island. Long weeks beforehand he
had thought of this place, and set his heart upon it. Once established
in his mind, the thought became a picture that he saw waking and
sleeping. He had stopped at the island many times alone, and in all
seasons; but at this special moment of the year he liked it best. Often
he had added several needless miles to his journey that he might finish
the day at this point, might catch the trout for his supper beside a
certain rock upon its edge, and fall asleep hearing the stream on either
side of him.

Always for him the first signs that he had gained the true world of the
mountains began at the island. The first pine trees stood upon it; the
first white columbine grew in their shade; and it seemed to him that he
always met here the first of the true mountain air--the coolness and the
new fragrance. Below, there were only the cottonwoods, and the knolls
and steep foot-hills with their sage-brush, and the great warm air of
the plains; here at this altitude came the definite change. Out of the
lower country and its air he would urge his horse upward, talking to him
aloud, and promising fine pasture in a little while.

Then, when at length he had ridden abreast of the island pines, he would
ford to the sheltered circle of his camp-ground, throw off the saddle
and blanket from the horse’s hot, wet back, throw his own clothes off,
and, shouting, spring upon the horse bare, and with a rope for bridle,
cross with him to the promised pasture. Here there was a pause in the
mountain steepness, a level space of open, green with thick grass.
Riding his horse to this, he would leap off him, and with the flat of
his hand give him a blow that cracked sharp in the stillness and sent
the horse galloping and gambolling to his night’s freedom. And while
the animal rolled in the grass, often his master would roll also, and
stretch, and take the grass in his two hands, and so draw his body
along, limbering his muscles after a long ride. Then he would slide
into the stream below his fishing place, where it was deep enough for
swimming, and cross back to his island, and dressing again, fit his rod
together and begin his casting. After the darkness had set in, there
would follow the lying drowsily with his head upon his saddle, the
camp-fire sinking as he watched it, and sleep approaching to the murmur
of the water on either side of him.

So many visits to this island had he made, and counted so many hours of
revery spent in its haunting sweetness, that the spot had come to seem
his own. It belonged to no man, for it was deep in the unsurveyed and
virgin wilderness; neither had he ever made his camp here with any
man, nor shared with any the intimate delight which the place gave him.
Therefore for many weeks he had planned to bring her here after their
wedding, upon the day itself, and show her and share with her his pines
and his fishing rock. He would bid her smell the first true breath of
the mountains, would watch with her the sinking camp-fire, and with her
listen to the water as it flowed round the island.

Until this wedding plan, it had by no means come home to him how deep a
hold upon him the island had taken. He knew that he liked to go there,
and go alone; but so little was it his way to scan himself, his mind, or
his feelings (unless some action called for it), that he first learned
his love of the place through his love of her. But he told her nothing
of it. After the thought of taking her there came to him, he kept his
island as something to let break upon her own eyes, lest by looking
forward she should look for more than the reality.

Hence, as they rode along, when the houses of the town were shrunk to
dots behind them, and they were nearing the gates of the foot-hills, she
asked him questions. She hoped they would find a camp a long way from
the town. She could ride as many miles as necessary. She was not tired.
Should they not go on until they found a good place far enough within
the solitude? Had he fixed upon any? And at the nod and the silence
that he gave her for reply, she knew that he had thoughts and intentions
which she must wait to learn.

They passed through the gates of the foot-hills, following the stream up
among them. The outstretching fences and the widely trodden dust were
no more. Now and then they rose again into view of the fields and houses
down in the plain below. But as the sum of the miles and hours grew,
they were glad to see the road less worn with travel, and the traces of
men passing from sight. The ploughed and planted country, that quilt of
many-colored harvests which they had watched yesterday, lay in another
world from this where they rode now. No hand but nature’s had sown these
crops of yellow flowers, these willow thickets and tall cottonwoods.
Somewhere in a passage of red rocks the last sign of wagon wheels was
lost, and after this the trail became a wild mountain trail. But it was
still the warm air of the plains, bearing the sage-brush odor and not
the pine, that they breathed; nor did any forest yet cloak the shapes
of the tawny hills among which they were ascending. Twice the steepness
loosened the pack ropes, and he jumped down to tighten them, lest the
horses should get sore backs. And twice the stream that they followed
went into deep canyons, so that for a while they parted from it. When
they came back to its margin for the second time, he bade her notice how
its water had become at last wholly clear. To her it had seemed clear
enough all along, even in the plain above the town. But now she saw that
it flowed lustrously with flashes; and she knew the soil had changed to
mountain soil. Lower down, the water had carried the slightest cloud
of alkali, and this had dulled the keen edge of its transparence. Full
solitude was around them now, so that their words grew scarce, and when
they spoke it was with low voices. They began to pass nooks and points
favorable for camping, with wood and water at hand, and pasture for the
horses. More than once as they reached such places, she thought he must
surely stop; but still he rode on in advance of her (for the trail
was narrow) until, when she was not thinking of it, he drew rein and
pointed.

“What?” she asked timidly.

“The pines,” he answered.

She looked, and saw the island, and the water folding it with ripples
and with smooth spaces. The sun was throwing upon the pine boughs a light
of deepening red gold, and the shadow of the fishing rock lay over a
little bay of quiet water and sandy shore. In this forerunning glow of
the sunset, the pasture spread like emerald; for the dry touch of summer
had not yet come near it. He pointed upward to the high mountains which
they had approached, and showed her where the stream led into their
first unfoldings.

“To-morrow we shall be among them,” said he.

“Then,” she murmured to him, “to-night is here?”

He nodded for answer, and she gazed at the island and understood why he
had not stopped before; nothing they had passed had been so lovely as
this place.

There was room in the trail for them to go side by side; and side by
side they rode to the ford and crossed, driving the packhorses in front
of them, until they came to the sheltered circle, and he helped her down
where the soft pine needles lay. They felt each other tremble, and for a
moment she stood hiding her head upon his breast. Then she looked round
at the trees, and the shores, and the flowing stream, and he heard her
whispering how beautiful it was.

“I am glad,” he said, still holding her. “This is how I have dreamed it
would happen. Only it is better than my dreams.” And when she pressed
him in silence, he finished, “I have meant we should see our first
sundown here, and our first sunrise.”

She wished to help him take the packs from their horses, to make the
camp together with him, to have for her share the building of the fire,
and the cooking. She bade him remember his promise to her that he would
teach her how to loop and draw the pack-ropes, and the swing-ropes
on the pack-saddles, and how to pitch a tent. Why might not the first
lesson be now? But he told her that this should be fulfilled later. This
night he was to do all himself. And he sent her away until he should
have camp ready for them. He bade her explore the island, or take her
horse and ride over to the pasture, where she could see the surrounding
hills and the circle of seclusion that they made.

“The whole world is far from here,” he said. And so she obeyed him, and
went away to wander about in their hiding-place; nor was she to return,
he told her, until he called her.

Then at once, as soon as she was gone, he fell to. The packs and saddles
came off the horses, which he turned loose upon the pasture on the main
land. The tent was unfolded first. He had long seen in his mind where it
should go, and how its white shape would look beneath the green of
the encircling pines. The ground was level in the spot he had chosen,
without stones or roots, and matted with the fallen needles of the
pines. If there should come any wind, or storm of rain, the branches
were thick overhead, and around them on three sides tall rocks and
undergrowth made a barrier. He cut the pegs for the tent, and the front
pole, stretching and tightening the rope, one end of it pegged down and
one round a pine tree. When the tightening rope had lifted the canvas to
the proper height from the ground, he spread and pegged down the sides
and back, leaving the opening so that they could look out upon the fire
and a piece of the stream beyond. He cut tufts of young pine and strewed
them thickly for a soft floor in the tent, and over them spread the
buffalo hide and the blankets. At the head he placed the neat sack of
her belongings. For his own he made a shelter with crossed poles and
a sheet of canvas beyond the first pines. He built the fire where its
smoke would float outward from the trees and the tent, and near it he
stood the cooking things and his provisions, and made this first supper
ready in the twilight. He had brought much with him; but for ten minutes
he fished, catching trout enough. When at length she came riding over
the stream at his call, there was nothing for her to do but sit and eat
at the table he had laid. They sat together, watching the last of the
twilight and the gentle oncoming of the dusk. The final after-glow of
day left the sky, and through the purple which followed it came slowly
the first stars, bright and wide apart. They watched the spaces between
them fill with more stars, while near them the flames and embers of
their fire grew brighter. Then he sent her to the tent while he cleaned
the dishes and visited the horses to see that they did not stray from
the pasture. Some while after the darkness was fully come, he rejoined
her. All had been as he had seen it in his thoughts beforehand: the
pines with the setting sun upon them, the sinking camp-fire, and now the
sound of the water as it flowed murmuring by the shores of the island.

The tent opened to the east, and from it they watched together their
first sunrise. In his thoughts he had seen this morning beforehand also:
the waking, the gentle sound of the water murmuring ceaselessly, the
growing day, the vision of the stream, the sense that the world was shut
away far from them. So did it all happen, except that he whispered to
her again:-- “Better than my dreams.”

They saw the sunlight begin upon a hilltop; and presently came the sun
itself, and lakes of warmth flowed into the air, slowly filling the
green solitude. Along the island shores the ripples caught flashes from
the sun.

“I am going into the stream,” he said to her; and rising, he left her in
the tent. This was his side of the island, he had told her last night;
the other was hers, where he had made a place for her to bathe. When
he was gone, she found it, walking through the trees and rocks to the
water’s edge. And so, with the island between them, the two bathed in
the cold stream. When he came back, he found her already busy at their
camp. The blue smoke of the fire was floating out from the trees,
loitering undispersed in the quiet air, and she was getting their
breakfast. She had been able to forestall him because he had delayed
long at his dressing, not willing to return to her unshaven. She looked
at his eyes that were clear as the water he had leaped into, and at his
soft silk neckerchief, knotted with care.

“Do not let us ever go away from here!” she cried, and ran to him as he
came. They sat long together at breakfast, breathing the morning breath
of the earth that was fragrant with woodland moisture and with the
pines. After the meal he could not prevent her helping him make
everything clean. Then, by all customs of mountain journeys, it was time
they should break camp and be moving before the heat of the day. But
first, they delayed for no reason, save that in these hours they so
loved to do nothing. And next, when with some energy he got upon his
feet and declared he must go and drive the horses in, she asked, Why?
Would it not be well for him to fish here, that they might be sure of
trout at their nooning? And though he knew that where they should stop
for noon, trout would be as sure as here, he took this chance for more
delay.

She went with him to his fishing rock, and sat watching him. The rock
was tall, higher than his head when he stood. It jutted out halfway
across the stream, and the water flowed round it in quick foam, and fell
into a pool. He caught several fish; but the sun was getting high, and
after a time it was plain the fish had ceased to rise.

Yet still he stood casting in silence, while she sat by and watched him.
Across the stream, the horses wandered or lay down in their pasture. At
length he said with half a sigh that perhaps they ought to go.

“Ought?” she repeated softly.

“If we are to get anywhere to-day,” he answered.

“Need we get anywhere?” she asked.

Her question sent delight through him like a flood. “Then you do not
want to move camp to-day?” said he.

She shook her head.

At this he laid down his rod and came and sat by her. “I am very glad we
shall not go till to-morrow,” he murmured.

“Not to-morrow,” she said. “Nor next day. Nor any day until we must.”
 And she stretched her hands out to the island and the stream exclaiming,
“Nothing can surpass this!”

He took her in his arms. “You feel about it the way I do,” he almost
whispered. “I could not have hoped there’d be two of us to care so
much.”

Presently, while they remained without speaking by the pool, came a
little wild animal swimming round the rock from above. It had not seen
them, nor suspected their presence. They held themselves still, watching
its alert head cross through the waves quickly and come down through
the pool, and so swim to the other side. There it came out on a small
stretch of sand, turned its gray head and its pointed black nose this
way and that, never seeing them, and then rolled upon its back in the
warm dry sand. After a minute of rolling, it got on its feet again,
shook its fur, and trotted away.

Then the bridegroom husband opened his shy heart deep down.

“I am like that fellow,” he said dreamily. “I have often done the same.”
 And stretching slowly his arms and legs, he lay full length upon his
back, letting his head rest upon her. “If I could talk his animal
language, I could talk to him,” he pursued. “And he would say to me:
‘Come and roll on the sands. Where’s the use of fretting? What’s the
gain in being a man? Come roll on the sands with me.’ That’s what he
would say.” The Virginian paused. “But,” he continued, “the trouble is,
I am responsible. If that could only be forgot forever by you and me!”
 Again he paused and went on, always dreamily. “Often when I have camped
here, it has made me want to become the ground, become the water, become
the trees, mix with the whole thing. Not know myself from it. Never
unmix again. Why is that?” he demanded, looking at her. “What is it? You
don’t know, nor I don’t. I wonder would everybody feel that way here?”

“I think not everybody,” she answered.

“No; none except the ones who understand things they can’t put words to.
But you did!” He put up a hand and touched her softly. “You understood
about this place. And that’s what makes it--makes you and me as we are
now--better than my dreams. And my dreams were pretty good.”

He sighed with supreme quiet and happiness, and seemed to stretch his
length closer to the earth. And so he lay, and talked to her as he had
never talked to any one, not even to himself. Thus she learned secrets
of his heart new to her: his visits here, what they were to him, and why
he had chosen it for their bridal camp. “What I did not know at all,”
 he said, “was the way a man can be pining for--for this--and never guess
what is the matter with him.”

When he had finished talking, still he lay extended and serene; and she
looked down at him and the wonderful change that had come over him,
like a sunrise. Was this dreamy boy the man of two days ago? It seemed
a distance immeasurable; yet it was two days only since that wedding
eve when she had shrunk from him as he stood fierce and implacable. She
could look back at that dark hour now, although she could not speak of
it. She had seen destruction like sharp steel glittering in his eyes.
Were these the same eyes? Was this youth with his black head of hair in
her lap the creature with whom men did not trifle, whose hand knew how
to deal death? Where had the man melted away to in this boy? For as she
looked at him, he might have been no older than nineteen to-day. Not
even at their first meeting--that night when his freakish spirit was
uppermost--had he looked so young. This change their hours upon the
island had wrought, filling his face with innocence.

By and by they made their nooning. In the afternoon she would have
explored the nearer woods with him, or walked up the stream. But since
this was to be their camp during several days, he made it more complete.
He fashioned a rough bench and a table; around their tent he built a
tall wind-break for better shelter in case of storm; and for the fire he
gathered and cut much wood, and piled it up. So they were provided for,
and so for six days and nights they stayed, finding no day or night long
enough.

Once his hedge of boughs did them good service, for they had an
afternoon of furious storm. The wind rocked the pines and ransacked the
island, the sun went out, the black clouds rattled, and white bolts of
lightning fell close by. The shower broke through the pine branches and
poured upon the tent. But he had removed everything inside from where it
could touch the canvas and so lead the water through, and the rain ran
off into the ditch he had dug round the tent. While they sat within,
looking out upon the bounding floods and the white lightning, she saw
him glance at her apprehensively, and at once she answered his glance.

“I am not afraid,” she said. “If a flame should consume us together now,
what would it matter?”

And so they sat watching the storm till it was over, he with his face
changed by her to a boy’s, and she leavened with him.

When at last they were compelled to leave the island, or see no more of
the mountains, it was not a final parting. They would come back for the
last night before their journey ended. Furthermore, they promised each
other like two children to come here every year upon their wedding day,
and like two children they believed that this would be possible. But
in after years they did come, more than once, to keep their wedding day
upon the island, and upon each new visit were able to say to each other,
“Better than our dreams.”

For thirty days by the light of the sun and the camp-fire light they
saw no faces except their own; and when they were silent it was all
stillness, unless the wind passed among the pines, or some flowing water
was near them. Sometimes at evening they came upon elk, or black-tailed
deer, feeding out in the high parks of the mountains; and once from the
edge of some concealing timber he showed her a bear, sitting with an
old log lifted in its paws. She forbade him to kill the bear, or any
creature that they did not require. He took her upward by trail and
canyon, through the unfooted woods and along dwindling streams to their
headwaters, lakes lying near the summit of the range, full of trout,
with meadows of long grass and a thousand flowers, and above these the
pinnacles of rock and snow.

They made their camps in many places, delaying several days here, and
one night there, exploring the high solitudes together, and sinking deep
in their romance. Sometimes when he was at work with their horses, or
intent on casting his brown hackle for a fish, she would watch him with
eyes that were fuller of love than of understanding. Perhaps she never
came wholly to understand him; but in her complete love for him she
found enough. He loved her with his whole man’s power. She had listened
to him tell her in words of transport, “I could enjoy dying”; yet she
loved him more than that. He had come to her from a smoking pistol, able
to bid her farewell--and she could not let him go. At the last white-hot
edge of ordeal, it was she who renounced, and he who had his way.
Nevertheless she found much more than enough, in spite of the sigh that
now and again breathed through her happiness when she would watch him
with eyes fuller of love than of understanding.

They could not speak of that grim wedding eve for a long while after;
but the mountains brought them together upon all else in the world and
their own lives. At the end they loved each other doubly more than at
the beginning, because of these added confidences which they exchanged
and shared. It was a new bliss to her to know a man’s talk and thoughts,
to be given so much of him; and to him it was a bliss still greater to
melt from that reserve his lonely life had bred in him. He never would
have guessed so much had been stored away in him, unexpressed till now.
They did not want to go to Vermont and leave these mountains, but the
day came when they had to turn their backs upon their dream. So
they came out into the plains once more, well established in their
familiarity, with only the journey still lying between themselves and
Bennington.

“If you could,” she said, laughing. “If only you could ride home like
this.”

“With Monte and my six-shooter?” he asked. “To your mother?”

“I don’t think mother could resist the way you look on a horse.”

But he said, “It’s this way she’s fearing I will come.”

“I have made one discovery,” she said. “You are fonder of good clothes
than I am.”

He grinned. “I cert’nly like ’em. But don’t tell my friends. They would
say it was marriage. When you see what I have got for Bennington’s
special benefit, you--why, you’ll just trust your husband more than
ever.”

She undoubtedly did. After he had put on one particular suit, she arose
and kissed him where he stood in it.

“Bennington will be sorrowful,” he said. “No wild-west show, after all.
And no ready-made guy, either.” And he looked at himself in the glass
with unbidden pleasure.

“How did you choose that?” she asked. “How did you know that homespun
was exactly the thing for you?”

“Why, I have been noticing. I used to despise an Eastern man because his
clothes were not Western. I was very young then, or maybe not so very
young, as very--as what you saw I was when you first came to Bear Creek.
A Western man is a good thing. And he generally knows that. But he has
a heap to learn. And he generally don’t know that. So I took to watching
the Judge’s Eastern visitors. There was that Mr. Ogden especially, from
New Yawk--the gentleman that was there the time when I had to sit up all
night with the missionary, yu’ know. His clothes pleased me best of all.
Fit him so well, and nothing flash. I got my ideas, and when I knew I
was going to marry you, I sent my measure East--and I and the tailor are
old enemies now.”

Bennington probably was disappointed. To see get out of the train merely
a tall man with a usual straw hat, and Scotch homespun suit of a
rather better cut than most in Bennington--this was dull. And his
conversation--when he indulged in any--seemed fit to come inside the
house.

Mrs. Flynt took her revenge by sowing broadcast her thankfulness that
poor Sam Bannett had been Molly’s rejected suitor. He had done so much
better for himself. Sam had married a rich Miss Van Scootzer, of the
second families of Troy; and with their combined riches this happy
couple still inhabit the most expensive residence in Hoosic Falls.

But most of Bennington soon began to say that Molly’s cow-boy could be
invited anywhere and hold his own. The time came when they ceased to
speak of him as a cow-boy, and declared that she had shown remarkable
sense. But this was not quite yet.

Did this bride and groom enjoy their visit to her family? Well--well,
they did their best. Everybody did their best, even Sarah Bell. She said
that she found nothing to object to in the Virginian; she told Molly so.
Her husband Sam did better than that. He told Molly he considered that
she was in luck. And poor Mrs. Wood, sitting on the sofa, conversed
scrupulously and timidly with her novel son-in-law, and said to Molly
that she was astonished to find him so gentle. And he was undoubtedly
fine-looking; yes, very handsome. She believed that she would grow to
like the Southern accent. Oh, yes! Everybody did their best; and, dear
reader, if ever it has been your earthly portion to live with a number
of people who were all doing their best, you do not need me to tell you
what a heavenly atmosphere this creates.

And then the bride and groom went to see the old great-aunt over at
Dunbarton.

Their first arrival, the one at Bennington, had been thus: Sam Bell
had met them at the train, and Mrs. Wood, waiting in her parlor, had
embraced her daughter and received her son-in-law. Among them they had
managed to make the occasion as completely mournful as any family party
can be, with the window blinds up. “And with you present, my dear,” said
Sam Bell to Sarah, “the absence of a coffin was not felt.”

But at Dunbarton the affair went off differently. The heart of the
ancient lady had taught her better things. From Bennington to Dunbarton
is the good part of a day’s journey, and they drove up to the gate in
the afternoon. The great-aunt was in her garden, picking some August
flowers, and she called as the carriage stopped, “Bring my nephew here,
my dear, before you go into the house.”

At this, Molly, stepping out of the carriage, squeezed her husband’s
hand. “I knew that she would be lovely,” she whispered to him. And then
she ran to her aunt’s arms, and let him follow. He came slowly, hat in
hand.

The old lady advanced to meet him, trembling a little, and holding out
her hand to him. “Welcome, nephew,” she said. “What a tall fellow you
are, to be sure. Stand off, sir, and let me look at you.”

The Virginian obeyed, blushing from his black hair to his collar.

Then his new relative turned to her niece, and gave her a flower. “Put
this in his coat, my dear,” she said. “And I think I understand why you
wanted to marry him.”

After this the maid came and showed them to their rooms. Left alone in
her garden, the great-aunt sank on a bench and sat there for some time;
for emotion had made her very weak.

Upstairs, Molly, sitting on the Virginian’s knee, put the flower in his
coat, and then laid her head upon his shoulder.

“I didn’t know old ladies could be that way,” he said. “D’ yu’ reckon
there are many?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the girl. “I’m so happy!”

Now at tea, and during the evening, the great-aunt carried out her plans
still further. At first she did the chief part of the talking herself.
Nor did she ask questions about Wyoming too soon. She reached that in
her own way, and found out the one thing that she desired to know. It
was through General Stark that she led up to it.

“There he is,” she said, showing the family portrait. “And a rough time
he must have had of it now and then. New Hampshire was full of fine
young men in those days. But nowadays most of them have gone away to
seek their fortunes in the West. Do they find them, I wonder?”

“Yes, ma’am. All the good ones do.”

“But you cannot all be--what is the name?--Cattle Kings.”

“That’s having its day, ma’am, right now. And we are getting ready for
the change--some of us are.”

“And what may be the change, and when is it to come?”

“When the natural pasture is eaten off,” he explained. “I have seen that
coming a long while. And if the thieves are going to make us drive
our stock away, we’ll drive it. If they don’t, we’ll have big pastures
fenced, and hay and shelter ready for winter. What we’ll spend in
improvements, we’ll more than save in wages. I am well fixed for the
new conditions. And then, when I took up my land, I chose a place where
there is coal. It will not be long before the new railroad needs that.”

Thus the old lady learned more of her niece’s husband in one evening
than the Bennington family had ascertained during his whole sojourn with
them. For by touching upon Wyoming and its future, she roused him to
talk. He found her mind alive to Western questions: irrigation, the
Indians, the forests; and so he expanded, revealing to her his wide
observation and his shrewd intelligence. He forgot entirely to be shy.
She sent Molly to bed, and kept him talking for an hour. Then she showed
him old things that she was proud of, “because,” she said, “we, too, had
something to do with making our country. And now go to Molly, or you’ll
both think me a tiresome old lady.”

“I think--” he began, but was not quite equal to expressing what he
thought, and suddenly his shyness flooded him again.

“In that case, nephew,” said she, “I’m afraid you’ll have to kiss me
good night.”

And so she dismissed him to his wife, and to happiness greater than
either of them had known since they had left the mountains and come to
the East. “He’ll do,” she said to herself, nodding.

Their visit to Dunbarton was all happiness and reparation for the
doleful days at Bennington. The old lady gave much comfort and advice
to her niece in private, and when they came to leave, she stood at the
front door holding both their hands a moment.

“God bless you, my dears,” she told them. “And when you come next time,
I’ll have the nursery ready.”

And so it happened that before she left this world, the great-aunt was
able to hold in her arms the first of their many children.

Judge Henry at Sunk Creek had his wedding present ready. His growing
affairs in Wyoming needed his presence in many places distant from his
ranch, and he made the Virginian his partner. When the thieves prevailed
at length, as they did, forcing cattle owners to leave the country or be
ruined, the Virginian had forestalled this crash. The herds were driven
away to Montana. Then, in 1889, came the cattle war, when, after putting
their men in office, and coming to own some of the newspapers, the
thieves brought ruin on themselves as well. For in a broken country
there is nothing left to steal.

But the railroad came, and built a branch to that land of the
Virginian’s where the coal was. By that time he was an important man,
with a strong grip on many various enterprises, and able to give his
wife all and more than she asked or desired.

Sometimes she missed the Bear Creek days, when she and he had ridden
together, and sometimes she declared that his work would kill him.
But it does not seem to have done so. Their eldest boy rides the horse
Monte; and, strictly between ourselves, I think his father is going to
live a long while.