conquer her at last and leave his lips upon hers. And with this
controlled fire pent up within him, he had counted the days, scratching
them off his calendar with a dig each night that once or twice snapped
the pen. Then, when the trail stood open, this meeting was deferred,
put off for indefinite days, or weeks; he could not tell how long.
So, gripping his pencil and tracing heavy words, he gave himself what
consolation he could by writing her.

The letter, duly stamped and addressed to Bear Creek, set forth upon
its travels; and these were devious and long. When it reached its
destination, it was some twenty days old. It had gone by private hand
at the outset, taken the stagecoach at a way point, become late in
that stagecoach, reached a point of transfer, and waited there for the
postmaster to begin, continue, end, and recover from a game of poker,
mingled with whiskey. Then it once more proceeded, was dropped at
the right way point, and carried by private hand to Bear Creek. The
experience of this letter, however, was not at all a remarkable one at
that time in Wyoming.

Molly Wood looked at the envelope. She had never before seen the
Virginian’s handwriting. She knew it instantly. She closed her door and
sat down to read it with a beating heart.

SUNK CREEK RANCH, May 5, 188-

My Dear Miss Wood: I am sorry about this. My plan was different. It was
to get over for a ride with you about now or sooner. This year Spring is
early. The snow is off the flats this side the range and where the
sun gets a chance to hit the earth strong all day it is green and has
flowers too, a good many. You can see them bob and mix together in the
wind. The quaking-asps down low on the South side are in small leaf and
will soon be twinkling like the flowers do now. I had planned to take a
look at this with you and that was a better plan than what I have got to
do. The water is high but I could have got over and as for the snow on
top of the mountain a man told me nobody could cross it for a week yet,
because he had just done it himself. Was not he a funny man? You ought
to see how the birds have streamed across the sky while Spring was
coming. But you have seen them on your side of the mountain. But I can’t
come now Miss Wood. There is a lot for me to do that has to be done and
Judge Henry needs more than two eyes just now. I could not think much of
myself if I left him for my own wishes.

But the days will be warmer when I come. We will not have to quit by
five, and we can get off and sit too. We could not sit now unless for a
very short while. If I know when I can come I will try to let you know,
but I think it will be this way. I think you will just see me coming for
I have things to do of an unsure nature and a good number of such. Do
not believe reports about Indians. They are started by editors to keep
the soldiers in the country. The friends of the editors get the hay and
beef contracts. Indians do not come to settled parts like Bear Creek is.
It is all editors and politicianists.

Nothing has happened worth telling you. I have read that play Othello.
No man should write down such a thing. Do you know if it is true? I have
seen one worse affair down in Arizona. He killed his little child as
well as his wife but such things should not be put down in fine language
for the public. I have read Romeo and Juliet. That is beautiful language
but Romeo is no man. I like his friend Mercutio that gets killed. He
is a man. If he had got Juliet there would have been no foolishness and
trouble.

Well Miss Wood I would like to see you to-day. Do you know what I think
Monte would do if I rode him out and let the rein slack? He would come
straight to your gate for he is a horse of great judgement. (“That’s the
first word he has misspelled,” said Molly.) I suppose you are sitting
with George Taylor and those children right now. Then George will get
old enough to help his father but Uncle Hewie’s twins will be ready for
you about then and the supply will keep coming from all quarters all
sizes for you to say big A little a to them. There is no news here. Only
calves and cows and the hens are laying now which does always seem news
to a hen every time she does it. Did I ever tell you about a hen Emily
we had here? She was venturesome to an extent I have not seen in other
hens only she had poor judgement and would make no family ties. She
would keep trying to get interest in the ties of others taking charge
of little chicks and bantams and turkeys and puppies one time, and she
thought most anything was an egg. I will tell you about her sometime.
She died without family ties one day while I was building a house for
her to teach school in. (“The outrageous wretch!” cried Molly! And her
cheeks turned deep pink as she sat alone with her lover’s letter.)

I am coming the first day I am free. I will be a hundred miles from you
most of the time when I am not more but I will ride a hundred miles for
one hour and Monte is up to that. After never seeing you for so long I
will make one hour do if I have to. Here is a flower I have just been
out and picked. I have kissed it now. That is the best I can do yet.

Molly laid the letter in her lap and looked at the flower. Then suddenly
she jumped up and pressed it to her lips, and after a long moment held
it away from her.

“No,” she said. “No, no, no.” She sat down.

It was some time before she finished the letter. Then once more she got
up and put on her hat.

Mrs. Taylor wondered where the girl could be walking so fast. But she
was not walking anywhere, and in half an hour she returned, rosy with
her swift exercise, but with a spirit as perturbed as when she had set
out.

Next morning at six, when she looked out of her window, there was Monte
tied to the Taylor’s gate. Ah, could he have come the day before, could
she have found him when she returned from that swift walk of hers!

XXV. PROGRESS OF THE LOST DOG

It was not even an hour’s visit that the Virginian was able to pay
his lady love. But neither had he come a hundred miles to see her. The
necessities of his wandering work had chanced to bring him close enough
for a glimpse of her, and this glimpse he took, almost on the wing. For
he had to rejoin a company of men at once.

“Yu’ got my letter?” he said.

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday! I wrote it three weeks ago. Well, yu’ got it. This cannot
be the hour with you that I mentioned. That is coming, and maybe very
soon.”

She could say nothing. Relief she felt, and yet with it something like a
pang.

“To-day does not count,” he told her, “except that every time I see you
counts with me. But this is not the hour that I mentioned.”

What little else was said between them upon this early morning shall be
told duly. For this visit in its own good time did count momentously,
though both of them took it lightly while its fleeting minutes passed.
He returned to her two volumes that she had lent him long ago and
with Taylor he left a horse which he had brought for her to ride. As a
good-by, he put a bunch of flowers in her hand. Then he was gone, and
she watched him going by the thick bushes along the stream. They were
pink with wild roses; and the meadow-larks, invisible in the grass,
like hiding choristers, sent up across the empty miles of air their
unexpected song. Earth and sky had been propitious, could he have
stayed; and perhaps one portion of her heart had been propitious too.
So, as he rode away on Monte, she watched him, half chilled by reason,
half melted by passion, self-thwarted, self-accusing, unresolved.
Therefore the days that came for her now were all of them unhappy ones,
while for him they were filled with work well done and with changeless
longing.

One day it seemed as if a lull was coming, a pause in which he could
at last attain that hour with her. He left the camp and turned his face
toward Bear Creek. The way led him along Butte Creek. Across the stream
lay Balaam’s large ranch; and presently on the other bank he saw Balaam
himself, and reined in Monte for a moment to watch what Balaam was
doing.

“That’s what I’ve heard,” he muttered to himself. For Balaam had led
some horses to the water, and was lashing them heavily because they
would not drink. He looked at this spectacle so intently that he did not
see Shorty approaching along the trail.

“Morning,” said Shorty to him, with some constraint.

But the Virginian gave him a pleasant greeting, “I was afraid I’d not
catch you so quick,” said Shorty. “This is for you.” He handed his
recent foreman a letter of much battered appearance. It was from the
Judge. It had not come straight, but very gradually, in the pockets of
three successive cow-punchers. As the Virginian glanced over it and saw
that the enclosure it contained was for Balaam, his heart fell. Here
were new orders for him, and he could not go to see his sweetheart.

“Hello, Shorty!” said Balaam, from over the creek. To the Virginian he
gave a slight nod. He did not know him, although he knew well enough who
he was.

“Hyeh’s a letter from Judge Henry for yu’” said the Virginian, and he
crossed the creek.

Many weeks before, in the early spring, Balaam had borrowed two horses
from the Judge, promising to return them at once. But the Judge, of
course, wrote very civilly. He hoped that “this dunning reminder” might
be excused. As Balaam read the reminder, he wished that he had sent the
horses before. The Judge was a greater man than he in the Territory.
Balaam could not but excuse the “dunning reminder,”--but he was ready to
be disagreeable to somebody at once.

“Well,” he said, musing aloud in his annoyance, “Judge Henry wants them
by the 30th. Well, this is the 24th, and time enough yet.”

“This is the 27th,” said the Virginian, briefly.

That made a difference! Not so easy to reach Sunk Creek in good order by
the 30th! Balaam had drifted three sunrises behind the progress of the
month. Days look alike, and often lose their very names in the quiet
depths of Cattle Land. The horses were not even here at the ranch.
Balaam was ready to be very disagreeable now. Suddenly he perceived the
date of the Judge’s letter. He held it out to the Virginian, and struck
the paper.

“What’s your idea in bringing this here two weeks late?” he said.

Now, when he had struck that paper, Shorty looked at the Virginian. But
nothing happened beyond a certain change of light in the Southerner’s
eyes. And when the Southerner spoke, it was with his usual gentleness
and civility. He explained that the letter had been put in his hands
just now by Shorty.

“Oh,” said Balaam. He looked at Shorty. How had he come to be a
messenger? “You working for the Sunk Creek outfit again?” said he.

“No,” said Shorty.

Balaam turned to the Virginian again. “How do you expect me to get those
horses to Sunk Creek by the 30th?”

The Virginian levelled a lazy eye on Balaam. “I ain’ doin’ any
expecting,” said he. His native dialect was on top to-day. “The Judge
has friends goin’ to arrive from New Yawk for a trip across the Basin,”
 he added. “The hawsses are for them.”

Balaam grunted with displeasure, and thought of the sixty or seventy
days since he had told the Judge he would return the horses at once.
He looked across at Shorty seated in the shade, and through his uneasy
thoughts his instinct irrelevantly noted what a good pony the youth
rode. It was the same animal he had seen once or twice before. But
something must be done. The Judge’s horses were far out on the big
range, and must be found and driven in, which would take certainly the
rest of this day, possibly part of the next.

Balaam called to one of his men and gave some sharp orders, emphasizing
details, and enjoining haste, while the Virginian leaned slightly
against his horse, with one arm over the saddle, hearing and
understanding, but not smiling outwardly. The man departed to saddle up
for his search on the big range, and Balaam resumed the unhitching of
his team.

“So you’re not working for the Sunk Creek outfit now?” he inquired of
Shorty. He ignored the Virginian. “Working for the Goose Egg?”

“No,” said Shorty.

“Sand Hill outfit, then?”

“No,” said Shorty.

Balaam grinned. He noticed how Shorty’s yellow hair stuck through a hole
in his hat, and how old and battered were Shorty’s overalls. Shorty had
been glad to take a little accidental pay for becoming the bearer of the
letter which he had delivered to the Virginian. But even that sum was no
longer in his possession. He had passed through Drybone on his way, and
at Drybone there had been a game of poker. Shorty’s money was now in the
pocket of Trampas. But he had one valuable possession in the world left
to him, and that was his horse Pedro.

“Good pony of yours,” said Balaam to him now, from across Butte Creek.
Then he struck his own horse in the jaw because he held back from coming
to the water as the other had done.

“Your trace ain’t unhitched,” commented the Virginian, pointing.

Balaam loosed the strap he had forgotten, and cut the horse again for
consistency’s sake. The animal, bewildered, now came down to the water,
with its head in the air, and snuffing as it took short, nervous steps.

The Virginian looked on at this, silent and sombre. He could scarcely
interfere between another man and his own beast. Neither he nor Balaam
was among those who say their prayers. Yet in this omission they were
not equal. A half-great poet once had a wholly great day, and in that
great day he was able to write a poem that has lived and become, with
many, a household word. He called it The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
And it is rich with many lines that possess the memory; but these are
the golden ones:

    “He prayeth well who loveth well
     Both man and bird and beast.

     He prayeth best who loveth best
     All things both great and small;
     For the dear God who loveth us,
     He made and loveth all.”

These lines are the pure gold. They are good to teach children; because
after the children come to be men, they may believe at least some part
of them still. The Virginian did not know them,--but his heart had
taught him many things. I doubt if Balaam knew them either. But on him
they would have been as pearls to swine.

“So you’ve quit the round-up?” he resumed to Shorty.

Shorty nodded and looked sidewise at the Virginian.

For the Virginian knew that he had been turned off for going to sleep
while night-herding.

Then Balaam threw another glance on Pedro the horse.

“Hello, Shorty!” he called out, for the boy was departing. “Don’t you
like dinner any more? It’s ready about now.”

Shorty forded the creek and slung his saddle off, and on invitation
turned Pedro, his buckskin pony, into Balaam’s pasture. This was green,
the rest of the wide world being yellow, except only where Butte Creek,
with its bordering cottonwoods, coiled away into the desert distance
like a green snake without end. The Virginian also turned his horse into
the pasture. He must stay at the ranch till the Judge’s horses should be
found.

“Mrs. Balaam’s East yet,” said her lord, leading the way to his dining
room.

He wanted Shorty to dine with him, and could not exclude the Virginian,
much as he should have enjoyed this.

“See any Indians?” he enquired.

“Na-a!” said Shorty, in disdain of recent rumors.

“They’re headin’ the other way,” observed the Virginian. “Bow Laig Range
is where they was repawted.”

“What business have they got off the reservation, I’d like to know,”
 said the ranchman, “Bow Leg, or anywhere?”

“Oh, it’s just a hunt, and a kind of visitin’ their friends on the South
Reservation,” Shorty explained. “Squaws along and all.”

“Well, if the folks at Washington don’t keep squaws and all where they
belong,” said Balaam, in a rage, “the folks in Wyoming Territory ’ill do
a little job that way themselves.”

“There’s a petition out,” said Shorty. “Paper’s goin’ East with a lot of
names to it. But they ain’t no harm, them Indians ain’t.”

“No harm?” rasped out Balaam. “Was it white men druv off the O. C.
yearlings?”

Balaam’s Eastern grammar was sometimes at the mercy of his Western
feelings. The thought of the perennial stultification of Indian affairs
at Washington, whether by politician or philanthropist, was always sure
to arouse him. He walked impatiently about while he spoke, and halted
impatiently at the window. Out in the world the unclouded day was
shining, and Balaam’s eye travelled across the plains to where a blue
line, faint and pale, lay along the end of the vast yellow distance.
That was the beginning of the Bow Leg Mountains. Somewhere over there
were the red men, ranging in unfrequented depths of rock and pine--their
forbidden ground.

Dinner was ready, and they sat down.

“And I suppose,” Balaam continued, still hot on the subject, “you’d
claim Indians object to killing a white man when they run on to him good
and far from human help? These peaceable Indians are just the worst in
the business.”

“That’s so,” assented the easy-opinioned Shorty, exactly as if he had
always maintained this view. “Chap started for Sunk Creek three weeks
ago. Trapper he was; old like, with a red shirt. One of his horses come
into the round-up Toosday. Man ain’t been heard from.” He ate in silence
for a while, evidently brooding in his childlike mind. Then he said,
querulously, “I’d sooner trust one of them Indians than I would
Trampas.”

Balaam slanted his fat bullet head far to one side, and laying his spoon
down (he had opened some canned grapes) laughed steadily at his guest
with a harsh relish of irony.

The guest ate a grape, and perceiving he was seen through, smiled back
rather miserably.

“Say, Shorty,” said Balaam, his head still slanted over, “what’s the
figures of your bank balance just now?”

“I ain’t usin’ banks,” murmured the youth.

Balaam put some more grapes on Shorty’s plate, and drawing a cigar from
his waistcoat, sent it rolling to his guest.

“Matches are behind you,” he added. He gave a cigar to the Virginian as
an afterthought, but to his disgust, the Southerner put it in his pocket
and lighted a pipe.

Balaam accompanied his guest, Shorty, when he went to the pasture to
saddle up and depart. “Got a rope?” he asked the guest, as they lifted
down the bars.

“Don’t need to rope him. I can walk right up to Pedro. You stay back.”

Hiding his bridle behind him, Shorty walked to the river-bank, where the
pony was switching his long tail in the shade; and speaking persuasively
to him, he came nearer, till he laid his hand on Pedro’s dusky mane,
which was many shades darker than his hide. He turned expectantly, and
his master came up to his expectations with a piece of bread.

“Eats that, does he?” said Balaam, over the bars.

“Likes the salt,” said Shorty. “Now, n-n-ow, here! Yu’ don’t guess
yu’ll be bridled, don’t you? Open your teeth! Yu’d like to play yu’ was
nobody’s horse and live private? Or maybe yu’d prefer ownin’ a saloon?”

Pedro evidently enjoyed this talk, and the dodging he made about the
bit. Once fairly in his mouth, he accepted the inevitable, and followed
Shorty to the bars. Then Shorty turned and extended his hand.

“Shake!” he said to his pony, who lifted his forefoot quietly and put it
in his master’s hand. Then the master tickled his nose, and he wrinkled
it and flattened his ears, pretending to bite. His face wore an
expression of knowing relish over this performance. “Now the other
hoof,” said Shorty; and the horse and master shook hands with their
left. “I learned him that,” said the cow-boy, with pride and affection.
“Say, Pede,” he continued, in Pedro’s ear, “ain’t yu’ the best little
horse in the country? What? Here, now! Keep out of that, you dead-beat!
There ain’t no more bread.” He pinched the pony’s nose, one quarter of
which was wedged into his pocket.

“Quite a lady’s little pet!” said Balaam, with the rasp in his voice.
“Pity this isn’t New York, now, where there’s a big market for harmless
horses. Gee-gees, the children call them.”

“He ain’t no gee-gee,” said Shorty, offended. “He’ll beat any cow-pony
workin’ you’ve got. Yu’ can turn him on a half-dollar. Don’t need to
touch the reins. Hang ’em on one finger and swing your body, and he’ll
turn.”

Balaam knew this, and he knew that the pony was only a four-year-old.
“Well,” he said, “Drybone’s had no circus this season. Maybe they’d buy
tickets to see Pedro. He’s good for that, anyway.”

Shorty became gloomy. The Virginian was grimly smoking. Here was
something else going on not to his taste, but none of his business.

“Try a circus,” persisted Balaam. “Alter your plans for spending cash in
town, and make a little money instead.”

Shorty having no plans to alter and no cash to spend, grew still more
gloomy.

“What’ll you take for that pony?” said Balaam.

Shorty spoke up instantly. “A hundred dollars couldn’t buy that piece
of stale mud off his back,” he asserted, looking off into the sky
grandiosely.

But Balaam looked at Shorty, “You keep the mud,” he said, “and I’ll give
you thirty dollars for the horse.”

Shorty did a little professional laughing, and began to walk toward his
saddle.

“Give you thirty dollars,” repeated Balaam, picking a stone up and
slinging it into the river.

“How far do yu’ call it to Drybone?” Shorty remarked, stooping to
investigate the bucking-strap on his saddle--a superfluous performance,
for Pedro never bucked.

“You won’t have to walk,” said Balaam. “Stay all night, and I’ll send
you over comfortably in the morning, when the wagon goes for the mail.”

“Walk?” Shorty retorted. “Drybone’s twenty-five miles. Pedro’ll put me
there in three hours and not know he done it.” He lifted the saddle on
the horse’s back. “Come, Pedro,” said he.

“Come, Pedro!” mocked Balaam.

There followed a little silence.

“No, sir,” mumbled Shorty, with his head under Pedro’s belly, busily
cinching. “A hundred dollars is bottom figures.”

Balaam, in his turn, now duly performed some professional laughing,
which was noted by Shorty under the horse’s belly. He stood up and
squared round on Balaam. “Well, then,” he said, “what’ll yu give for
him?”

“Thirty dollars,” said Balaam, looking far off into the sky, as Shorty
had looked.

“Oh, come, now,” expostulated Shorty.

It was he who now did the feeling for an offer and this was what Balaam
liked to see. “Why yes,” he said, “thirty,” and looked surprised that he
should have to mention the sum so often.

“I thought yu’d quit them first figures,” said the cow-puncher, “for yu’
can see I ain’t goin’ to look at em.”

Balaam climbed on the fence and sat there “I’m not crying for your
Pedro,” he observed dispassionately. “Only it struck me you were dead
broke, and wanted to raise cash and keep yourself going till you hunted
up a job and could buy him back.” He hooked his right thumb inside his
waistcoat pocket. “But I’m not cryin’ for him,” he repeated. “He’d stay
right here, of course. I wouldn’t part with him. Why does he stand that
way? Hello!” Balaam suddenly straightened himself, like a man who has
made a discovery.

“Hello, what?” said Shorty, on the defensive.

Balaam was staring at Pedro with a judicial frown. Then he stuck out a
finger at the horse, keeping the thumb hooked in his pocket. So meagre
a gesture was felt by the ruffled Shorty to be no just way to point at
Pedro. “What’s the matter with that foreleg there?” said Balaam.

“Which? Nothin’s the matter with it!” snapped Shorty.

Balaam climbed down from his fence and came over with elaborate
deliberation. He passed his hand up and down the off foreleg. Then he
spit slenderly. “Mm!” he said thoughtfully; and added, with a shade of
sadness, “that’s always to be expected when they’re worked too young.”

Shorty slid his hand slowly over the disputed leg. “What’s to be
expected?” he inquired--“that they’ll eat hearty? Well, he does.”

At this retort the Virginian permitted himself to laugh in audible
sympathy.

“Sprung,” continued Balaam, with a sigh. “Whirling round short when his
bones were soft did that. Yes.”

“Sprung!” Shorty said, with a bark of indignation. “Come on, Pede; you
and me’ll spring for town.”

He caught the horn of the saddle, and as he swung into place the horse
rushed away with him. “O-ee! yoi-yup, yup, yup!” sang Shorty, in the
shrill cow dialect. He made Pedro play an exhibition game of speed,
bringing him round close to Balaam in a wide circle, and then he
vanished in dust down the left-bank trail.

Balaam looked after him and laughed harshly. He had seen trout dash
about like that when the hook in their jaw first surprised them. He knew
Shorty would show the pony off, and he knew Shorty’s love for Pedro
was not equal to his need of money. He called to one of his men, asked
something about the dam at the mouth of the canyon, where the main
irrigation ditch began, made a remark about the prolonged drought, and
then walked to his dining-room door, where, as he expected, Shorty met
him.

“Say,” said the youth, “do you consider that’s any way to talk about a
good horse?”

“Any dude could see the leg’s sprung,” said Balaam. But he looked at
Pedro’s shoulder, which was well laid back; and he admired his points,
dark in contrast with the buckskin, and also the width between the eyes.

“Now you know,” whined Shorty, “that it ain’t sprung any more than your
leg’s cork. If you mean the right leg ain’t plumb straight, I can tell
you he was born so. That don’t make no difference, for it ain’t weak.
Try him onced. Just as sound and strong as iron. Never stumbles. And he
don’t never go to jumpin’ with yu’. He’s kind and he’s smart.” And the
master petted his pony, who lifted a hoof for another handshake.

Of course Balaam had never thought the leg was sprung, and he now took
on an unprejudiced air of wanting to believe Shorty’s statements if he
only could.

“Maybe there’s two years’ work left in that leg,” he now observed.

“Better give your hawss away, Shorty,” said the Virginian.

“Is this your deal, my friend?” inquired Balaam. And he slanted his
bullet head at the Virginian.

“Give him away, Shorty,” drawled the Southerner. “His laig is busted.
Mr. Balaam says so.”

Balaam’s face grew evil with baffled fury. But the Virginian was gravely
considering Pedro. He, too, was not pleased. But he could not interfere.
Already he had overstepped the code in these matters. He would have
dearly liked--for reasons good and bad, spite and mercy mingled--to
have spoiled Balaam’s market, to have offered a reasonable or even an
unreasonable price for Pedro, and taken possession of the horse himself.
But this might not be. In bets, in card games, in all horse transactions
and other matters of similar business, a man must take care of himself,
and wiser onlookers must suppress their wisdom and hold their peace.

That evening Shorty again had a cigar. He had parted with Pedro
for forty dollars, a striped Mexican blanket, and a pair of spurs.
Undressing over in the bunk house, he said to the Virginian, “I’ll sure
buy Pedro back off him just as soon as ever I rustle some cash.” The
Virginian grunted. He was thinking he should have to travel hard to
get the horses to the Judge by the 30th; and below that thought lay his
aching disappointment and his longing for Bear Creek.

In the early dawn Shorty sat up among his blankets on the floor of the
bunk house and saw the various sleepers coiled or sprawled in their
beds; their breathing had not yet grown restless at the nearing of day.
He stepped to the door carefully, and saw the crowding blackbirds begin
their walk and chatter in the mud of the littered and trodden corrals.
From beyond among the cottonwoods, came continually the smooth
unemphatic sound of the doves answering each other invisibly; and
against the empty ridge of the river-bluff lay the moon, no longer
shining, for there was established a new light through the sky. Pedro
stood in the pasture close to the bars. The cow-boy slowly closed the
door behind him, and sitting down on the step, drew his money out and
idly handled it, taking no comfort just then from its possession. Then
he put it back, and after dragging on his boots, crossed to the pasture,
and held a last talk with his pony, brushing the cakes of mud from his
hide where he had rolled, and passing a lingering hand over his mane. As
the sounds of the morning came increasingly from tree and plain, Shorty
glanced back to see that no one was yet out of the cabin, and then put
his arms round the horse’s neck, laying his head against him. For a
moment the cow-boy’s insignificant face was exalted by the emotion he
would never have let others see. He hugged tight this animal, who was
dearer to his heart than anybody in the world.

“Good-by, Pedro,” he said--“good-by.” Pedro looked for bread.

“No,” said his master, sorrowfully, “not any more. Yu’ know well I’d
give it yu’ if I had it. You and me didn’t figure on this, did we,
Pedro? Good-by!”

He hugged his pony again, and got as far as the bars of the pasture, but
returned once more. “Good-by, my little horse, my dear horse, my little,
little Pedro,” he said, as his tears wet the pony’s neck. Then he
wiped them with his hand, and got himself back to the bunk house. After
breakfast he and his belongings departed to Drybone, and Pedro from his
field calmly watched this departure; for horses must recognize even less
than men the black corners that their destinies turn. The pony stopped
feeding to look at the mail-wagon pass by; but the master sitting in the
wagon forebore to turn his head.

XXVI. BALAAM AND PEDRO

Resigned to wait for the Judge’s horses, Balaam went into his office
this dry, bright morning and read nine accumulated newspapers; for
he was behindhand. Then he rode out on the ditches, and met his man
returning with the troublesome animals at last. He hastened home and
sent for the Virginian. He had made a decision.

“See here,” he said; “those horses are coming. What trail would you take
over to the Judge’s?”

“Shortest trail’s right through the Bow Laig Mountains,” said the
foreman, in his gentle voice.

“Guess you’re right. It’s dinner-time. We’ll start right afterward.
We’ll make Little Muddy Crossing by sundown, and Sunk Creek to-morrow,
and the next day’ll see us through. Can a wagon get through Sunk Creek
Canyon?”

The Virginian smiled. “I reckon it can’t, seh, and stay resembling a
wagon.”

Balaam told them to saddle Pedro and one packhorse, and drive the bunch
of horses into a corral, roping the Judge’s two, who proved extremely
wild. He had decided to take this journey himself on remembering certain
politics soon to be rife in Cheyenne. For Judge Henry was indeed a
greater man than Balaam. This personally conducted return of the horses
would temper its tardiness, and, moreover, the sight of some New York
visitors would be a good thing after seven months of no warmer touch
with that metropolis than the Sunday HERALD, always eight days old when
it reached the Butte Creek Ranch.

They forded Butte Creek, and, crossing the well-travelled trail which
follows down to Drybone, turned their faces toward the uninhabited
country that began immediately, as the ocean begins off a sandy shore.
And as a single mast on which no sail is shining stands at the horizon
and seems to add a loneliness to the surrounding sea, so the long gray
line of fence, almost a mile away, that ended Balaam’s land on this side
the creek, stretched along the waste ground and added desolation to
the plain. No solitary watercourse with margin of cottonwoods or willow
thickets flowed here to stripe the dingy, yellow world with interrupting
green, nor were cattle to be seen dotting the distance, nor moving
objects at all, nor any bird in the soundless air. The last gate was
shut by the Virginian, who looked back at the pleasant trees of the
ranch, and then followed on in single file across the alkali of No Man’s
Land.

No cloud was in the sky. The desert’s grim noon shone sombrely on flat
and hill. The sagebrush was dull like zinc. Thick heat rose near at hand
from the caked alkali, and pale heat shrouded the distant peaks.

There were five horses. Balaam led on Pedro, his squat figure stiff in
the saddle, but solid as a rock, and tilted a little forward, as his
habit was. One of the Judge’s horses came next, a sorrel, dragging back
continually on the rope by which he was led. After him ambled Balaam’s
wise pack-animal, carrying the light burden of two days’ food and
lodging. She was an old mare who could still go when she chose, but had
been schooled by the years, and kept the trail, giving no trouble to the
Virginian who came behind her. He also sat solid as a rock, yet subtly
bending to the struggles of the wild horse he led, as a steel spring
bends and balances and resumes its poise.

Thus they made but slow time, and when they topped the last dull rise of
ground and looked down on the long slant of ragged, caked earth to the
crossing of Little Muddy, with its single tree and few mean bushes, the
final distance where eyesight ends had deepened to violet from the thin,
steady blue they had stared at for so many hours, and all heat was
gone from the universal dryness. The horses drank a long time from the
sluggish yellow water, and its alkaline taste and warmth were equally
welcome to the men. They built a little fire, and when supper was ended,
smoked but a short while and in silence, before they got in the blankets
that were spread in a smooth place beside the water.

They had picketed the two horses of the Judge in the best grass they
could find, letting the rest go free to find pasture where they could.
When the first light came, the Virginian attended to breakfast, while
Balaam rode away on the sorrel to bring in the loose horses. They had
gone far out of sight, and when he returned with them, after some two
hours, he was on Pedro. Pedro was soaking with sweat, and red froth
creamed from his mouth. The Virginian saw the horses must have been hard
to drive in, especially after Balaam brought them the wild sorrel as a
leader.

“If you’d kep’ ridin’ him, ’stead of changin’ off on your hawss, they’d
have behaved quieter,” said the foreman.

“That’s good seasonable advice,” said Balaam, sarcastically. “I could
have told you that now.”

“I could have told you when you started,” said the Virginian, heating
the coffee for Balaam.

Balaam was eloquent on the outrageous conduct of the horses. He had come
up with them evidently striking back for Butte Creek, with the old mare
in the lead.

“But I soon showed her the road she was to go,” he said, as he drove
them now to the water.

The Virginian noticed the slight limp of the mare, and how her pastern
was cut as if with a stone or the sharp heel of a boot.

“I guess she’ll not be in a hurry to travel except when she’s wanted
to,” continued Balaam. He sat down, and sullenly poured himself some
coffee. “We’ll be in luck if we make any Sunk Creek this night.”

He went on with his breakfast, thinking aloud for the benefit of his
companion, who made no comments, preferring silence to the discomfort of
talking with a man whose vindictive humor was so thoroughly uppermost.
He did not even listen very attentively, but continued his preparations
for departure, washing the dishes, rolling the blankets, and moving
about in his usual way of easy and visible good nature.

“Six o’clock, already,” said Balaam, saddling the horses. “And we’ll
not get started for ten minutes more.” Then he came to Pedro. “So you
haven’t quit fooling yet, haven’t you?” he exclaimed, for the pony
shrank as he lifted the bridle. “Take that for your sore mouth!” and he
rammed the bit in, at which Pedro flung back and reared.

“Well, I never saw Pedro act that way yet,” said the Virginian.

“Ah, rubbish!” said Balaam. “They’re all the same. Not a bastard one
but’s laying for his chance to do for you. Some’ll buck you off, and
some’ll roll with you, and some’ll fight you with their fore feet. They
may play good for a year, but the Western pony’s man’s enemy, and when
he judges he’s got his chance, he’s going to do his best. And if you
come out alive it won’t be his fault.” Balaam paused for a while,
packing. “You’ve got to keep them afraid of you,” he said next; “that’s
what you’ve got to do if you don’t want trouble. That Pedro horse there
has been fed, hand-fed, and fooled with like a damn pet, and what’s that
policy done? Why, he goes ugly when he thinks it’s time, and decides
he’ll not drive any horses into camp this morning. He knows better now.”

“Mr. Balaam,” said the Virginian, “I’ll buy that hawss off yu’ right
now.”

Balaam shook his head. “You’ll not do that right now or any other time,”
 said he. “I happen to want him.”

The Virginian could do no more. He had heard cow-punchers say to
refractory ponies, “You keep still, or I’ll Balaam you!” and he now
understood the aptness of the expression.

Meanwhile Balaam began to lead Pedro to the creek for a last drink
before starting across the torrid drought. The horse held back on the
rein a little, and Balaam turned and cut the whip across his forehead.
A delay of forcing and backing followed, while the Virginian, already
in the saddle, waited. The minutes passed, and no immediate prospect,
apparently, of getting nearer Sunk Creek.

“He ain’ goin’ to follow you while you’re beatin’ his haid,” the
Southerner at length remarked.

“Do you think you can teach me anything about horses?” retorted Balaam.

“Well, it don’t look like I could,” said the Virginian, lazily.

“Then don’t try it, so long as it’s not your horse, my friend.”

Again the Southerner levelled his eye on Balaam. “All right,” he said,
in the same gentle voice. “And don’t you call me your friend. You’ve
made that mistake twiced.”

The road was shadeless, as it had been from the start, and they could
not travel fast. During the first few hours all coolness was driven out
of the glassy morning, and another day of illimitable sun invested the
world with its blaze. The pale Bow Leg Range was coming nearer, but its
hard hot slants and rifts suggested no sort of freshness, and even
the pines that spread for wide miles along near the summit counted for
nothing in the distance and the glare, but seemed mere patches of dull
dry discoloration. No talk was exchanged between the two travellers, for
the cow-puncher had nothing to say and Balaam was sulky, so they moved
along in silent endurance of each other’s company and the tedium of the
journey.

But the slow succession of rise and fall in the plain changed and
shortened. The earth’s surface became lumpy, rising into mounds and
knotted systems of steep small hills cut apart by staring gashes of
sand, where water poured in the spring from the melting snow. After a
time they ascended through the foot-hills till the plain below was for a
while concealed, but came again into view in its entirety, distant and a
thing of the past, while some magpies sailed down to meet them from
the new country they were entering. They passed up through a small
transparent forest of dead trees standing stark and white, and a little
higher came on a line of narrow moisture that crossed the way and formed
a stale pool among some willow thickets. They turned aside to water
their horses, and found near the pool a circular spot of ashes and some
poles lying, and beside these a cage-like edifice of willow wands built
in the ground.

“Indian camp,” observed the Virginian.

There were the tracks of five or six horses on the farther side of the
pool, and they did not come into the trail, but led off among the rocks
on some system of their own.

“They’re about a week old,” said Balaam. “It’s part of that outfit
that’s been hunting.”

“They’ve gone on to visit their friends,” added the cow-puncher.

“Yes, on the Southern Reservation. How far do you call Sunk Creek now?”

“Well,” said the Virginian, calculating, “it’s mighty nigh fo’ty miles
from Muddy Crossin’, an’ I reckon we’ve come eighteen.”

“Just about. It’s noon.” Balaam snapped his watch shut. “We’ll rest here
till 12:30.”

When it was time to go, the Virginian looked musingly at the mountains.
“We’ll need to travel right smart to get through the canyon to-night,”
 he said.

“Tell you what,” said Balaam; “we’ll rope the Judge’s horses together
and drive ’em in front of us. That’ll make speed.”

“Mightn’t they get away on us?” objected the Virginian. “They’re pow’ful
wild.”

“They can’t get away from me, I guess,” said Balaam, and the arrangement
was adopted. “We’re the first this season over this piece of the trail,”
 he observed presently.

His companion had noticed the ground already, and assented. There were
no tracks anywhere to be seen over which winter had not come and gone
since they had been made. Presently the trail wound into a sultry gulch
that hemmed in the heat and seemed to draw down the sun’s rays more
vertically. The sorrel horse chose this place to make a try for liberty.
He suddenly whirled from the trail, dragging with him his less inventive
fellow. Leaving the Virginian with the old mare, Balaam headed them off,
for Pedro was quick, and they came jumping down the bank together, but
swiftly crossed up on the other side, getting much higher before they
could be reached. It was no place for this sort of game, as the sides of
the ravine were ploughed with steep channels, broken with jutting knobs
of rock, and impeded by short twisted pines that swung out from their
roots horizontally over the pitch of the hill. The Virginian helped,
but used his horse with more judgment, keeping as much on the level as
possible, and endeavoring to anticipate the next turn of the runaways
before they made it, while Balaam attempted to follow them close,
wheeling short when they doubled, heavily beating up the face of the
slope, veering again to come down to the point he had left, and whenever
he felt Pedro begin to flag, driving his spurs into the horse and
forcing him to keep up the pace. He had set out to overtake and capture
on the side of the mountain these two animals who had been running
wild for many weeks, and now carried no weight but themselves, and
the futility of such work could not penetrate his obstinate and rising
temper. He had made up his mind not to give in. The Virginian soon
decided to move slowly along for the present, preventing the wild horses
from passing down the gulch again, but otherwise saving his own animal
from useless fatigue. He saw that Pedro was reeking wet, with mouth
open, and constantly stumbling, though he galloped on. The cow-puncher
kept the group in sight, driving the packhorse in front of him, and
watching the tactics of the sorrel, who had now undoubtedly become
the leader of the expedition, and was at the top of the gulch, in vain
trying to find an outlet through its rocky rim to the levels above. He
soon judged this to be no thoroughfare, and changing his plan, trotted
down to the bottom and up the other side, gaining more and more; for
in this new descent Pedro had fallen twice. Then the sorrel showed the
cleverness of a genuinely vicious horse. The Virginian saw him stop
and fall to kicking his companion with all the energy that a short rope
would permit. The rope slipped, and both, unencumbered, reached the top
and disappeared. Leaving the packhorse for Balaam, the Virginian started
after them and came into a high tableland, beyond which the mountains
began in earnest. The runaways were moving across toward these at an
easy rate. He followed for a moment, then looking back, and seeing no
sign of Balaam, waited, for the horses were sure not to go fast when
they reached good pasture or water.

He got out of the saddle and sat on the ground, watching, till the mare
came up slowly into sight, and Balaam behind her. When they were near,
Balaam dismounted and struck Pedro fearfully, until the stick broke, and
he raised the splintered half to continue.

Seeing the pony’s condition, the Virginian spoke, and said, “I’d let
that hawss alone.”

Balaam turned to him, but wholly possessed by passion did not seem to
hear, and the Southerner noticed how white and like that of a maniac his
face was. The stick slid to the ground.

“He played he was tired,” said Balaam, looking at the Virginian with
glazed eyes. The violence of his rage affected him physically, like some
stroke of illness. “He played out on me on purpose.” The man’s voice
was dry and light. “He’s perfectly fresh now,” he continued, and turned
again to the coughing, swaying horse, whose eyes were closed. Not having
the stick, he seized the animal’s unresisting head and shook it. The
Virginian watched him a moment, and rose to stop such a spectacle. Then,
as if conscious he was doing no real hurt, Balaam ceased, and turning
again in slow fashion looked across the level, where the runaways were
still visible.

“I’ll have to take your horse,” he said, “mine’s played out on me.”

“You ain’ goin’ to touch my hawss.”

Again the words seemed not entirely to reach Balaam’s understanding, so
dulled by rage were his senses. He made no answer, but mounted Pedro;
and the failing pony walked mechanically forward, while the Virginian,
puzzled, stood looking after him. Balaam seemed without purpose of going
anywhere, and stopped in a moment. Suddenly he was at work at something.
This sight was odd and new to look at. For a few seconds it had no
meaning to the Virginian as he watched. Then his mind grasped the
horror, too late. Even with his cry of execration and the tiger spring
that he gave to stop Balaam, the monstrosity was wrought. Pedro sank
motionless, his head rolling flat on the earth. Balaam was jammed
beneath him. The man had struggled to his feet before the Virginian
reached the spot, and the horse then lifted his head and turned it
piteously round.

Then vengeance like a blast struck Balaam. The Virginian hurled him to
the ground, lifted and hurled him again, lifted him and beat his face
and struck his jaw. The man’s strong ox-like fighting availed nothing.
He fended his eyes as best he could against these sledge-hammer blows
of justice. He felt blindly for his pistol. That arm was caught and
wrenched backward, and crushed and doubled. He seemed to hear his own
bones, and set up a hideous screaming of hate and pain. Then the
pistol at last came out, and together with the hand that grasped it was
instantly stamped into the dust. Once again the creature was lifted and
slung so that he lay across Pedro’s saddle a blurred, dingy, wet pulp.

Vengeance had come and gone. The man and the horse were motionless.
Around them, silence seemed to gather like a witness.

“If you are dead,” said the Virginian, “I am glad of it.” He stood
looking down at Balaam and Pedro, prone in the middle of the open
tableland. Then he saw Balaam looking at him. It was the quiet stare of
sight without thought or feeling, the mere visual sense alone, almost
frightful in its separation from any self. But as he watched those
eyes, the self came back into them. “I have not killed you,” said the
Virginian. “Well, I ain’t goin’ to do any more to yu’--if that’s a
satisfaction to know.”

Then he began to attend to Balaam with impersonal skill, like some one
hired for the purpose. “He ain’t hurt bad,” he asserted aloud, as if
the man were some nameless patient; and then to Balaam he remarked, “I
reckon it might have put a less tough man than you out of business for
quite a while. I’m goin’ to get some water now.” When he returned with
the water, Balsam was sitting up, looking about him. He had not yet
spoken, nor did he now speak. The sunlight flashed on the six-shooter
where it lay, and the Virginian secured it. “She ain’t so pretty as she
was,” he remarked, as he examined the weapon. “But she’ll go right handy
yet.”

Strength was in a measure returning to Pedro. He was a young horse,
and the exhaustion neither of anguish nor of over-riding was enough
to affect him long or seriously. He got himself on his feet and walked
waveringly over to the old mare, and stood by her for comfort. The
cow-puncher came up to him, and Pedro, after starting back slightly,
seemed to comprehend that he was in friendly hands. It was plain that he
would soon be able to travel slowly if no weight was on him, and that he
would be a very good horse again. Whether they abandoned the runaways or
not, there was no staying here for night to overtake them without food
or water. The day was still high, and what its next few hours had in
store the Virginian could not say, and he left them to take care of
themselves, determining meanwhile that he would take command of the
minutes and maintain the position he had assumed both as to Balaam and
Pedro. He took Pedro’s saddle off, threw the mare’s pack to the ground,
put Balaam’s saddle on her, and on that stowed or tied her original
pack, which he could do, since it was so light. Then he went to Balaam,
who was sitting up.

“I reckon you can travel,” said the Virginian. “And your hawss can. If
you’re comin’ with me, you’ll ride your mare. I’m goin’ to trail them
hawsses. If you’re not comin’ with me, your hawss comes with me, and
you’ll take fifty dollars for him.”

Balaam was indifferent to this good bargain. He did not look at the
other or speak, but rose and searched about him on the ground. The
Virginian was also indifferent as to whether Balaam chose to answer or
not. Seeing Balaam searching the ground, he finished what he had to say.

“I have your six-shooter, and you’ll have it when I’m ready for you to.
Now, I’m goin’,” he concluded.

Balaam’s intellect was clear enough now, and he saw that though the rest
of this journey would be nearly intolerable, it must go on. He looked
at the impassive cow-puncher getting ready to go and tying a rope on
Pedro’s neck to lead him, then he looked at the mountains where the
runaways had vanished, and it did not seem credible to him that he had
come into such straits. He was helped stiffly on the mare, and the three
horses in single file took up their journey once more, and came slowly
among the mountains. The perpetual desert was ended, and they crossed a
small brook, where they missed the trail. The Virginian dismounted to
find where the horses had turned off, and discovered that they had gone
straight up the ridge by the watercourse.

“There’s been a man camped in hyeh inside a month,” he said, kicking up
a rag of red flannel. “White man and two hawsses. Ours have went up his
old tracks.”

It was not easy for Balaam to speak yet, and he kept his silence. But he
remembered that Shorty had spoken of a trapper who had started for Sunk
Creek.

For three hours they followed the runaways’ course over softer ground,
and steadily ascending, passed one or two springs, at length, where
the mud was not yet settled in the hoofprints. Then they came through
a corner of pine forest and down a sudden bank among quaking-asps to a
green park. Here the runaways beside a stream were grazing at ease, but
saw them coming, and started on again, following down the stream.
For the present all to be done was to keep them in sight. This creek
received tributaries and widened, making a valley for itself. Above
the bottom, lining the first terrace of the ridge, began the pines, and
stretched back, unbroken over intervening summit and basin, to cease at
last where the higher peaks presided.

“This hyeh’s the middle fork of Sunk Creek,” said the Virginian. “We’ll
get on to our right road again where they join.”

Soon a game trail marked itself along the stream. If this would only
continue, the runaways would be nearly sure to follow it down into the
canyon. Then there would be no way for them but to go on and come out
into their own country, where they would make for the Judge’s ranch of
their own accord. The great point was to reach the canyon before dark.
They passed into permanent shadow; for though the other side of
the creek shone in full day, the sun had departed behind the ridges
immediately above them. Coolness filled the air, and the silence, which
in this deep valley of invading shadow seemed too silent, was relieved
by the birds. Not birds of song, but a freakish band of gray talkative
observers, who came calling and croaking along through the pines, and
inspected the cavalcade, keeping it company for a while, and then flying
up into the woods again. The travellers came round a corner on a little
spread of marsh, and from somewhere in the middle of it rose a buzzard
and sailed on its black pinions into the air above them, wheeling
and wheeling, but did not grow distant. As it swept over the trail,
something fell from its claw, a rag of red flannel; and each man in turn
looked at it as his horse went by.

“I wonder if there’s plenty elk and deer hyeh?” said the Virginian.

“I guess there is,” Balaam replied, speaking at last. The travellers had
become strangely reconciled.

“There’s game ’most all over these mountains,” the Virginian continued;
“country not been settled long enough to scare them out.” So they fell
into casual conversation, and for the first time were glad of each
other’s company.

The sound of a new bird came from the pines above--the hoot of an
owl--and was answered from some other part of the wood. This they did
not particularly notice at first, but soon they heard the same note,
unexpectedly distant, like an echo. The game trail, now quite a defined
path beside the river, showed no sign of changing its course or fading
out into blank ground, as these uncertain guides do so often. It led
consistently in the desired direction, and the two men were relieved to
see it continue. Not only were the runaways easier to keep track of,
but better speed was made along this valley. The pervading imminence of
night more and more dispelled the lingering afternoon, though there was
yet no twilight in the open, and the high peaks opposite shone yellow
in the invisible sun. But now the owls hooted again. Their music had
something in it that caused both the Virginian and Balaam to look up at
the pines and wish that this valley would end. Perhaps it was early for
night-birds to begin; or perhaps it was that the sound never seemed to
fall behind, but moved abreast of them among the trees above, as they
rode on without pause down below; some influence made the faces of the
travellers grave. The spell of evil which the sight of the wheeling
buzzard had begun, deepened as evening grew, while ever and again along
the creek the singular call and answer of the owls wandered among the
darkness of the trees not far away.

The sun was gone from the peaks when at length the other side of the
stream opened into a long wide meadow. The trail they followed, after
crossing a flat willow thicket by the water, ran into dense pines, that
here for the first time reached all the way down to the water’s edge.
The two men came out of the willows, and saw ahead the capricious
runaways leave the bottom and go up the hill and enter the wood.

“We must hinder that,” said the Virginian; and he dropped Pedro’s rope.
“There’s your six-shooter. You keep the trail, and camp down there”--he
pointed to where the trees came to the water--“till I head them hawsses
off. I may not get back right away.” He galloped up the open hill
and went into the pine, choosing a place above where the vagrants had
disappeared.

Balaam dismounted, and picking up his six-shooter, took the rope off
Pedro’s neck and drove him slowly down toward where the wood began.
Its interior was already dim, and Balaam saw that here must be their
stopping-place to-night, since there was no telling how wide this pine
strip might extend along the trail before they could come out of it and
reach another suitable camping-ground. Pedro had recovered his strength,
and he now showed signs of restlessness. He shied where there was not
even a stone in the trail, and finally turned sharply round. Balaam
expected he was going to rush back on the way they had come; but the
horse stood still, breathing excitedly. He was urged forward again,
though he turned more than once. But when they were a few paces from the
wood, and Balaam had got off preparatory to camping, the horse snorted
and dashed into the water, and stood still there. The astonished Balaam
followed to turn him; but Pedro seemed to lose control of himself,
and plunged to the middle of the river, and was evidently intending to
cross. Fearing that he would escape to the opposite meadow and add to
their difficulties, Balaam, with the idea of turning him round, drew his
six-shooter and fired in front of the horse, divining, even as the flash
cut the dusk, the secret of all this--the Indians; but too late. His
bruised hand had stiffened, marring his aim, and he saw Pedro fall over
in the water then rise and struggle up the bank on the farther shore,
where he now hurried also, to find that he had broken the pony’s leg.

He needed no interpreter for the voices of the seeming owls that had
haunted the latter hour of their journey, and he knew that his beast’s
keener instinct had perceived the destruction that lurked in the
interior of the wood. The history of the trapper whose horse had
returned without him might have been--might still be--his own; and he
thought of the rag that had fallen from the buzzard’s talons when he had
been disturbed at his meal in the marsh. “Peaceable” Indians were still
in these mountains, and some few of them had for the past hour been
skirting his journey unseen, and now waited for him in the wood which
they expected him to enter. They had been too wary to use their rifles
or show themselves, lest these travellers should be only part of a
larger company following, who would hear the noise of a shot, and catch
them in the act of murder. So, safe under the cover of the pines, they
had planned to sling their silent noose, and drag the white man from his
horse as he passed through the trees.

Balaam looked over the river at the ominous wood, and then he looked
at Pedro, the horse that he had first maimed and now ruined, to whom he
probably owed his life. He was lying on the ground, quietly looking over
the green meadow, where dusk was gathering. Perhaps he was not suffering
from his wound yet, as he rested on the ground; and into his animal
intelligence there probably came no knowledge of this final stroke of
his fate. At any rate, no sound of pain came from Pedro, whose friendly
and gentle face remained turned toward the meadow. Once more Balaam
fired his pistol, and this time the aim was true, and the horse rolled
over, with a ball through his brain. It was the best reward that
remained for him.

Then Balaam rejoined the old mare, and turned from the middle fork of
Sunk Creek. He dashed across the wide field, and went over a ridge, and
found his way along in the night till he came to the old trail--the
road which they would never have left but for him and his obstinacy. He
unsaddled the weary mare by Sunk Creek, where the canyon begins, letting
her drag a rope and find pasture and water, while he, lighting no fire
to betray him, crouched close under a tree till the light came. He
thought of the Virginian in the wood. But what could either have done
for the other had he stayed to look for him among the pines? If the
cow-puncher came back to the corner, he would follow Balaam’s tracks or
not. They would meet, at any rate, where the creeks joined.

But they did not meet. And then to Balaam the prospect of going onward
to the Sunk Creek Ranch became more than he could bear. To come without
the horses, to meet Judge Henry, to meet the guests of the Judge’s,
looking as he did now after his punishment by the Virginian, to give the
news about the Judge’s favorite man--no, how could he tell such a story
as this? Balaam went no farther than a certain cabin, where he slept,
and wrote a letter to the Judge. This the owner of the cabin delivered.
And so, having spread news which would at once cause a search for the
Virginian, and having constructed such sentences to the Judge as would
most smoothly explain how, being overtaken by illness, he had not wished
to be a burden at Sunk Creek, Balaam turned homeward by himself. By the
time he was once more at Butte Creek, his general appearance was a thing
less to be noticed. And there was Shorty, waiting!

One way and another, the lost dog had been able to gather some ready
money. He was cheerful because of this momentary purseful of prosperity.

“And so I come back, yu’ see,” he said. “For I figured on getting Pedro
back as soon as I could when I sold him to yu’.”

“You’re behind the times, Shorty,” said Balaam.

Shorty looked blank. “You’ve sure not sold Pedro?” he exclaimed.

“Them Indians,” said Balaam, “got after me on the Bow Leg trail. Got
after me and that Virginia man. But they didn’t get me.”

Balaam wagged his bullet head to imply that this escape was due to his
own superior intelligence. The Virginian had been stupid, and so the
Indians had got him. “And they shot your horse,” Balaam finished. “Stop
and get some dinner with the boys.”

Having eaten, Shorty rode away in mournful spirits. For he had made so
sure of once more riding and talking with Pedro, his friend whom he had
taught to shake hands.

XXVII. GRANDMOTHER STARK

Except for its chair and bed, the cabin was stripped almost bare. Amid
its emptiness of dismantled shelves and walls and floor, only the tiny
ancestress still hung in her place, last token of the home that had
been. This miniature, tacked against the despoiled boards, and its
descendant, the angry girl with her hand on an open box-lid, made a sort
of couple in the loneliness: she on the wall sweet and serene, she by
the box sweet and stormy. The picture was her final treasure waiting to
be packed for the journey. In whatever room she had called her own
since childhood, there it had also lived and looked at her, not quite
familiar, not quite smiling, but in its prim colonial hues delicate as
some pressed flower. Its pale oval, of color blue and rose and
flaxen, in a battered, pretty gold frame, unconquerably pervaded any
surroundings with a something like last year’s lavender. Till yesterday
a Crow Indian war-bonnet had hung next it, a sumptuous cascade of
feathers; on the other side a bow with arrows had dangled; opposite had
been the skin of a silver fox; over the door had spread the antlers of
a black-tail deer; a bearskin stretched beneath it. Thus had the whole
cosey log cabin been upholstered, lavish with trophies of the frontier;
and yet it was in front of the miniature that the visitors used to stop.

Shining quietly now in the cabin’s blackness this summer day, the
heirloom was presiding until the end. And as Molly Wood’s eyes fell upon
her ancestress of Bennington, 1777, there flashed a spark of steel in
them, alone here in the room that she was leaving forever. She was not
going to teach school any more on Bear Creek, Wyoming; she was going
home to Bennington, Vermont. When time came for school to open again,
there should be a new schoolmarm.

This was the momentous result of that visit which the Virginian had paid
her. He had told her that he was coming for his hour soon. From that
hour she had decided to escape. She was running away from her own heart.
She did not dare to trust herself face to face again with her potent,
indomitable lover. She longed for him, and therefore she would never see
him again. No great-aunt at Dunbarton, or anybody else that knew her and
her family, should ever say that she had married below her station, had
been an unworthy Stark! Accordingly, she had written to the Virginian,
bidding him good-by, and wishing him everything in the world. As she
happened to be aware that she was taking everything in the world away
from him, this letter was not the most easy of letters to write. But
she had made the language very kind. Yes; it was a thoroughly kind
communication. And all because of that momentary visit, when he had
brought back to her two novels, EMMA and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

“How do you like them?” she had then inquired; and he had smiled slowly
at her. “You haven’t read them!” she exclaimed.

“No.”

“Are you going to tell me there has been no time?”

“No.”

Then Molly had scolded her cow-puncher, and to this he had listened with
pleasure undisguised, as indeed he listened to every word that she said.

“Why, it has come too late,” he had told her when the scolding was over.
“If I was one of your little scholars hyeh in Bear Creek schoolhouse,
yu’ could learn me to like such frillery I reckon. But I’m a mighty
ignorant, growed-up man.”

“So much the worse for you!” said Molly.

“No. I am pretty glad I am a man. Else I could not have learned the
thing you have taught me.”

But she shut her lips and looked away. On the desk was a letter written
from Vermont. “If you don’t tell me at once when you decide,” had said
the arch writer, “never hope to speak to me again. Mary Wood, seriously,
I am suspicious. Why do you never mention him nowadays? How exciting
to have you bring a live cow-boy to Bennington! We should all come
to dinner. Though of course I understand now that many of them have
excellent manners. But would he wear his pistol at table?” So the letter
ran on. It recounted the latest home gossip and jokes. In answering it
Molly Wood had taken no notice of its childish tone here and there.

“Hyeh’s some of them cactus blossoms yu’ wanted,” said the Virginian.
His voice recalled the girl with almost a start. “I’ve brought a good
hawss I’ve gentled for yu’, and Taylor’ll keep him till I need him.”

“Thank you so much! but I wish--”

“I reckon yu’ can’t stop me lendin’ Taylor a hawss. And you cert’nly’ll
get sick schoolteachin’ if yu’ don’t keep outdoors some. Good-by--till
that next time.”

“Yes; there’s always a next time,” she answered, as lightly as she
could.

“There always will be. Don’t yu’ know that?”

She did not reply.

“I have discouraged spells,” he pursued, “but I down them. For I’ve told
yu’ you were going to love me. You are goin’ to learn back the thing you
have taught me. I’m not askin’ anything now; I don’t want you to speak a
word to me. But I’m never goin’ to quit till ‘next time’ is no more, and
it’s ‘all the time’ for you and me.”

With that he had ridden away, not even touching her hand. Long after
he had gone she was still in her chair, her eyes lingering upon his
flowers, those yellow cups of the prickly pear. At length she had
risen impatiently, caught up the flowers, gone with them to the open
window,--and then, after all, set them with pains in water.

But to-day Bear Creek was over. She was going home now. By the week’s
end she would be started. By the time the mail brought him her good-by
letter she would be gone. She had acted.

To Bear Creek, the neighborly, the friendly, the not comprehending, this
move had come unlooked for, and had brought regret. Only one hard word
had been spoken to Molly, and that by her next-door neighbor and kindest
friend. In Mrs. Taylor’s house the girl had daily come and gone as
a daughter, and that lady reached the subject thus:-- “When I took
Taylor,” said she, sitting by as Robert Browning and Jane Austen were
going into their box, “I married for love.”

“Do you wish it had been money?” said Molly, stooping to her industries.

“You know both of us better than that, child.”

“I know I’ve seen people at home who couldn’t possibly have had any
other reason. They seemed satisfied, too.”

“Maybe the poor ignorant things were!”

“And so I have never been sure how I might choose.”

“Yes, you are sure, deary. Don’t you think I know you? And when it comes
over Taylor once in a while, and he tells me I’m the best thing in his
life, and I tell him he ain’t merely the best thing but the only thing
in mine,--him and the children,--why, we just agree we’d do it all over
the same way if we had the chance.”

Molly continued to be industrious.

“And that’s why,” said Mrs. Taylor, “I want every girl that’s anything
to me to know her luck when it comes. For I was that near telling Taylor
I wouldn’t!”

“If ever my luck comes,” said Molly, with her back to her friend, “I
shall say ‘I will’ at once.”

“Then you’ll say it at Bennington next week.”

Molly wheeled round.

“Why, you surely will. Do you expect he’s going to stay here, and you in
Bennington?” And the campaigner sat back in her chair.

“He? Goodness! Who is he?”

“Child, child, you’re talking cross to-day because you’re at outs with
yourself. You’ve been at outs ever since you took this idea of leaving
the school and us and everything this needless way. You have not treated
him right. And why, I can’t make out to save me. What have you found out
all of a sudden? If he was not good enough for you, I--But, oh, it’s a
prime one you’re losing, Molly. When a man like that stays faithful to a
girl ’spite all the chances he gets, her luck is come.”

“Oh, my luck! People have different notions of luck.”

“Notions!”

“He has been very kind.”

“Kind!” And now without further simmering, Mrs. Taylor’s wrath boiled
up and poured copiously over Molly Wood. “Kind! There’s a word you
shouldn’t use, my dear. No doubt you can spell it. But more than its
spelling I guess you don’t know. The children can learn what it means
from some of the rest of us folks that don’t spell so correct, maybe.”

“Mrs. Taylor, Mrs. Taylor--”

“I can’t wait, deary. Since the roughness looks bigger to you than the
diamond, you had better go back to Vermont. I expect you’ll find better
grammar there, deary.”

The good dame stalked out, and across to her own cabin, and left the
angry girl among her boxes. It was in vain she fell to work upon them.
Presently something had to be done over again, and when it was the box
held several chattels less than before the readjustment. She played a
sort of desperate dominos to fit these objects in the space, but here
were a paper-weight, a portfolio, with two wretched volumes that no
chink would harbor; and letting them fall all at once, she straightened
herself, still stormy with revolt, eyes and cheeks still hot from
the sting of long-parried truth. There, on her wall still, was the
miniature, the little silent ancestress; and upon this face the girl’s
glance rested. It was as if she appealed to Grandmother Stark for
support and comfort across the hundred years which lay between them. So
the flaxen girl on the wall and she among the boxes stood a moment face
to face in seeming communion, and then the descendant turned again to
her work. But after a desultory touch here and there she drew a long
breath and walked to the open door. What use was in finishing to-day,
when she had nearly a week? This first spurt of toil had swept the cabin
bare of all indwelling charm, and its look was chill. Across the lane
his horse, the one he had “gentled” for her, was grazing idly. She
walked there and caught him, and led him to her gate. Mrs. Taylor saw
her go in, and soon come out in riding-dress; and she watched the girl
throw the saddle on with quick ease--the ease he had taught her. Mrs.
Taylor also saw the sharp cut she gave the horse, and laughed grimly
to herself in her window as horse and rider galloped into the beautiful
sunny loneliness.

To the punished animal this switching was new! and at its third
repetition he turned his head in surprise, but was no more heeded than
were the bluffs and flowers where he was taking his own undirected
choice of way. He carried her over ground she knew by heart--Corncliff
Mesa, Crowheart Butte, Westfall’s Crossing, Upper Canyon; open land and
woodland, pines and sage-brush, all silent and grave and lustrous in the
sunshine. Once and again a ranchman greeted her, and wondered if she
had forgotten who he was; once she passed some cow-punchers with a small
herd of steers, and they stared after her too. Bear Creek narrowed, its
mountain-sides drew near, its little falls began to rush white in midday
shadow, and the horse suddenly pricked his ears. Unguided, he was taking
this advantage to go home. Though he had made but little way--a mere
beginning yet--on this trail over to Sunk Creek, here was already a
Sunk Creek friend whinnying good day to him, so he whinnied back and
quickened his pace, and Molly started to life. What was Monte doing
here? She saw the black horse she knew also, saddled, with reins
dragging on the trail as the rider had dropped them to dismount. A cold
spring bubbled out beyond the next rock, and she knew her lover’s horse
was waiting for him while he drank. She pulled at the reins, but loosed
them, for to turn and escape now was ridiculous; and riding boldly round
the rock, she came upon him by the spring. One of his arms hung up to
its elbow in the pool, the other was crooked beside his head, but the
face was sunk downward against the shelving rock, so that she saw only
his black, tangled hair. As her horse snorted and tossed his head she
looked swiftly at Monte, as if to question him. Seeing now the sweat
matted on his coat, and noting the white rim of his eye, she sprang and
ran to the motionless figure. A patch of blood at his shoulder behind
stained the soft flannel shirt, spreading down beneath his belt, and the
man’s whole strong body lay slack and pitifully helpless.

She touched the hand beside his head, but it seemed neither warm nor
cold to her; she felt for the pulse, as nearly as she could remember the
doctors did, but could not tell whether she imagined or not that it was
still; twice with painful care her fingers sought and waited for the
beat, and her face seemed like one of listening. She leaned down and
lifted his other arm and hand from the water, and as their ice-coldness
reached her senses, clearly she saw the patch near the shoulder she
had moved grow wet with new blood, and at that sight she grasped at the
stones upon which she herself now sank. She held tight by two rocks,
sitting straight beside him, staring, and murmuring aloud, “I must
not faint; I will not faint;” and the standing horses looked at her,
pricking their ears.

In this cup-like spread of the ravine the sun shone warmly down, the
tall red cliff was warm, the pines were a warm film and filter of green;
outside the shade across Bear Creek rose the steep, soft, open yellow
hill, warm and high to the blue, and Bear Creek tumbled upon its
sunsparkling stones. The two horses on the margin trail still looked
at the spring and trees, where sat the neat flaxen girl so rigid by the
slack prone body in its flannel shirt and leathern chaps. Suddenly her
face livened. “But the blood ran!” she exclaimed, as if to the horses,
her companions in this. She moved to him, and put her hand in through
his shirt against his heart.

Next moment she had sprung up and was at his saddle, searching, then
swiftly went on to her own and got her small flask and was back beside
him. Here was the cold water he had sought, and she put it against his
forehead and drenched the wounded shoulder with it. Three times she
tried to move him, so he might lie more easy, but his dead weight was
too much, and desisting, she sat close and raised his head to let it
rest against her. Thus she saw the blood that was running from in front
of the shoulder also; but she said no more about fainting. She tore
strips from her dress and soaked them, keeping them cold and wet upon
both openings of his wound, and she drew her pocket-knife out and cut
his shirt away from the place. As she continually rinsed and cleaned
it, she watched his eyelashes, long and soft and thick, but they did not
stir. Again she tried the flask, but failed from being still too gentle,
and her searching eyes fell upon ashes near the pool. Still undispersed
by the weather lay the small charred ends of a fire he and she had made
once here together, to boil coffee and fry trout. She built another fire
now, and when the flames were going well, filled her flask-cup from the
spring and set it to heat. Meanwhile, she returned to nurse his head
and wound. Her cold water had stopped the bleeding. Then she poured
her brandy in the steaming cup, and, made rough by her desperate
helplessness, forced some between his lips and teeth.

Instantly, almost, she felt the tremble of life creeping back, and
as his deep eyes opened upon her she sat still and mute. But the gaze
seemed luminous with an unnoting calm, and she wondered if perhaps he
could not recognize her; she watched this internal clearness of his
vision, scarcely daring to breathe, until presently he began to speak,
with the same profound and clear impersonality sounding in his slowly
uttered words.

“I thought they had found me. I expected they were going to kill me.”
 He stopped, and she gave him more of the hot drink, which he took, still
lying and looking at her as if the present did not reach his senses. “I
knew hands were touching me. I reckon I was not dead. I knew about them
soon as they began, only I could not interfere.” He waited again. “It is
mighty strange where I have been. No. Mighty natural.” Then he went back
into his revery, and lay with his eyes still full open upon her where
she sat motionless.

She began to feel a greater awe in this living presence than when it
had been his body with an ice-cold hand; and she quietly spoke his name,
venturing scarcely more than a whisper.

At this, some nearer thing wakened in his look. “But it was you all
along,” he resumed. “It is you now. You must not stay--” Weakness
overcame him, and his eyes closed. She sat ministering to him, and when
he roused again, he began anxiously at once: “You must not stay. They
would get you, too.”

She glanced at him with a sort of fierceness, then reached for his
pistol, in which was nothing but blackened empty cartridges. She threw
these out and drew six from his belt, loaded the weapon, and snapped
shut its hinge.

“Please take it,” he said, more anxious and more himself. “I ain’t worth
tryin’ to keep. Look at me!”

“Are you giving up?” she inquired, trying to put scorn in her tone. Then
she seated herself.

“Where is the sense in both of us--”

“You had better save your strength,” she interrupted.

He tried to sit up.

“Lie down!” she ordered.

He sank obediently, and began to smile.

When she saw that, she smiled too, and unexpectedly took his hand.
“Listen, friend,” said she. “Nobody shall get you, and nobody shall get
me. Now take some more brandy.”

“It must be noon,” said the cow-puncher, when she had drawn her hand
away from him. “I remember it was dark when--when--when I can remember.
I reckon they were scared to follow me in so close to settlers. Else
they would have been here.”

“You must rest,” she observed.

She broke the soft ends of some evergreen, and putting them beneath his
head, went to the horses, loosened the cinches, took off the bridles,
led them to drink, and picketed them to feed. Further still, to leave
nothing undone which she could herself manage, she took the horses’
saddles off to refold the blankets when the time should come, and
meanwhile brought them for him. But he put them away from him. He was
sitting up against a rock, stronger evidently, and asking for cold
water. His head was fire-hot, and the paleness beneath his swarthy skin
had changed to a deepening flush.

“Only five miles!” she said to him, bathing his head.

“Yes. I must hold it steady,” he answered, waving his hand at the cliff.

She told him to try and keep it steady until they got home.

“Yes,” he repeated. “Only five miles. But it’s fightin’ to turn around.”
 Half aware that he was becoming light-headed, he looked from the rock to
her and from her to the rock with dilating eyes.

“We can hold it together,” she said. “You must get on your horse.” She
took his handkerchief from round his neck, knotting it with her own, and
to make more bandage she ran to the roll of clothes behind his saddle
and tore in halves a clean shirt. A handkerchief fell from it, which
she seized also, and opening, saw her own initials by the hem. Then she
remembered: she saw again their first meeting, the swollen river, the
overset stage, the unknown horseman who carried her to the bank on his
saddle and went away unthanked--her whole first adventure on that
first day of her coming to this new country--and now she knew how her
long-forgotten handkerchief had gone that day. She refolded it gently
and put it back in his bundle, for there was enough bandage without it.
She said not a word to him, and he placed a wrong meaning upon the look
which she gave him as she returned to bind his shoulder.

“It don’t hurt so much,” he assured her (though extreme pain was
clearing his head for the moment, and he had been able to hold the cliff
from turning). “Yu’ must not squander your pity.”

“Do not squander your strength,” said she.

“Oh, I could put up a pretty good fight now!” But he tottered in showing
her how strong he was, and she told him that, after all, he was a child
still.

“Yes,” he slowly said, looking after her as she went to bring his horse,
“the same child that wanted to touch the moon, I guess.” And during the
slow climb down into the saddle from a rock to which she helped him he
said, “You have got to be the man all through this mess.”

She saw his teeth clinched and his drooping muscles compelled by will;
and as he rode and she walked to lend him support, leading her horse
by a backward-stretched left hand, she counted off the distance to him
continually--the increasing gain, the lessening road, the landmarks
nearing and dropping behind; here was the tree with the wasp-nest gone;
now the burned cabin was passed; now the cottonwoods at the ford were in
sight. He was silent, and held to the saddle-horn, leaning more and more
against his two hands clasped over it; and just after they had made the
crossing he fell, without a sound slipping to the grass, and his descent
broken by her. But it started the blood a little, and she dared not
leave him to seek help. She gave him the last of the flask and all the
water he craved.

Revived, he managed to smile. “Yu’ see, I ain’t worth keeping.”

“It’s only a mile,” said she. So she found a log, a fallen trunk, and he
crawled to that, and from there crawled to his saddle, and she marched
on with him, talking, bidding him note the steps accomplished. For the
next half-mile they went thus, the silent man clinched on the horse, and
by his side the girl walking and cheering him forward, when suddenly he
began to speak:-- “I will say good-by to you now, ma’am.”

She did not understand, at first, the significance of this.

“He is getting away,” pursued the Virginian. “I must ask you to excuse
me, ma’am.”

It was a long while since her lord had addressed her as “ma’am.” As she
looked at him in growing apprehension, he turned Monte and would have
ridden away, but she caught the bridle.

“You must take me home,” said she, with ready inspiration. “I am afraid
of the Indians.”

“Why, you--why, they’ve all gone. There he goes. Ma’am--that hawss--”

“No,” said she, holding firmly his rein and quickening her step. “A
gentleman does not invite a lady to go out riding and leave her.”

His eyes lost their purpose. “I’ll cert’nly take you home. That sorrel
has gone in there by the wallow, and Judge Henry will understand.” With
his eyes watching imaginary objects, he rode and rambled and it was now
the girl who was silent, except to keep his mind from its half-fixed
idea of the sorrel. As he grew more fluent she hastened still more,
listening to head off that notion of return, skilfully inventing
questions to engage him, so that when she brought him to her gate
she held him in a manner subjected, answering faithfully the shrewd
unrealities which she devised, whatever makeshifts she could summon to
her mind; and next she had got him inside her dwelling and set him down
docile, but now completely wandering; and then--no help was at hand,
even here. She had made sure of aid from next door, and there she
hastened, to find the Taylor’s cabin locked and silent; and this meant
that parents and children were gone to drive; nor might she be luckier
at her next nearest neighbors’, should she travel the intervening mile
to fetch them. With a mind jostled once more into uncertainty, she
returned to her room, and saw a change in him already. Illness had
stridden upon him; his face was not as she had left it, and the whole
body, the splendid supple horseman, showed sickness in every line
and limb, its spurs and pistol and bold leather chaps a mockery of
trappings. She looked at him, and decision came back to her, clear and
steady. She supported him over to her bed and laid him on it. His head
sank flat, and his loose, nerveless arms stayed as she left them. Then
among her packing-boxes and beneath the little miniature, blue and
flaxen and gold upon its lonely wall, she undressed him. He was cold,
and she covered him to the face, and arranged the pillow, and got from
its box her scarlet and black Navajo blanket and spread it over him.
There was no more that she could do, and she sat down by him to wait.
Among the many and many things that came into her mind was a word he
said to her lightly a long while ago. “Cow-punchers do not live long
enough to get old,” he had told her. And now she looked at the head upon
the pillow, grave and strong, but still the head of splendid, unworn
youth.

At the distant jingle of the wagon in the lane she was out, and had met
her returning neighbors midway. They heard her with amazement, and came
in haste to the bedside; then Taylor departed to spread news of the
Indians and bring the doctor, twenty-five miles away. The two women
friends stood alone again, as they had stood in the morning when anger
had been between them.

“Kiss me, deary,” said Mrs. Taylor. “Now I will look after him--and
you’ll need some looking after yourself.”

But on returning from her cabin with what store she possessed of lint
and stimulants, she encountered a rebel, independent as ever. Molly
would hear no talk about saving her strength, would not be in any room
but this one until the doctor should arrive; then perhaps it would be
time to think about resting. So together the dame and the girl rinsed
the man’s wound and wrapped him in clean things, and did all the little
that they knew--which was, in truth, the very thing needed. Then they
sat watching him toss and mutter. It was no longer upon Indians or
the sorrel horse that his talk seemed to run, or anything recent,
apparently, always excepting his work. This flowingly merged with
whatever scene he was inventing or living again, and he wandered
unendingly in that incompatible world we dream in. Through the medley of
events and names, often thickly spoken, but rising at times to grotesque
coherence, the listeners now and then could piece out the reference from
their own knowledge. “Monte,” for example, continually addressed, and
Molly heard her own name, but invariably as “Miss Wood”; nothing less
respectful came out, and frequently he answered some one as “ma’am.”
 At these fragments of revelation Mrs. Taylor abstained from speech, but
eyed Molly Wood with caustic reproach. As the night wore on, short lulls
of silence intervened, and the watchers were deceived into hope that the
fever was abating. And when the Virginian sat quietly up in bed, essayed
to move his bandage, and looked steadily at Mrs. Taylor, she rose
quickly and went to him with a question as to how he was doing.

“Rise on your laigs, you polecat,” said he, “and tell them you’re a
liar.”

The good dame gasped, then bade him lie down, and he obeyed her with
that strange double understanding of the delirious; for even while
submitting, he muttered “liar,” “polecat,” and then “Trampas.”

At that name light flashed on Mrs. Taylor, and she turned to Molly; and
there was the girl struggling with a fit of mirth at his speech; but the
laughter was fast becoming a painful seizure. Mrs. Taylor walked Molly
up and down, speaking mmediately to arrest her attention.

“You might as well know it,” she said. “He would blame me for speaking
of it, but where’s the harm all this while after? And you would never
hear it from his mouth. Molly, child, they say Trampas would kill him if
he dared, and that’s on account of you.”

“I never saw Trampas,” said Molly, fixing her eyes upon the speaker.

“No, deary. But before a lot of men--Taylor has told me about
it--Trampas spoke disrespectfully of you, and before them all he made
Trampas say he was a liar. That is what he did when you were almost
a stranger among us, and he had not started seeing so much of you. I
expect Trampas is the only enemy he ever had in this country. But he
would never let you know about that.”

“No,” whispered Molly; “I did not know.”

“Steve!” the sick man now cried out, in poignant appeal. “Steve!” To the
women it was a name unknown,--unknown as was also this deep inward tide
of feeling which he could no longer conceal, being himself no longer.
“No, Steve,” he said next, and muttering followed. “It ain’t so!” he
shouted; and then cunningly in a lowered voice, “Steve, I have lied for
you.”

In time Mrs. Taylor spoke some advice.

“You had better go to bed, child. You look about ready for the doctor
yourself.”

“Then I will wait for him,” said Molly.

So the two nurses continued to sit until darkness at the windows
weakened into gray, and the lamp was no more needed. Their patient was
rambling again. Yet, into whatever scenes he went, there in some guise
did the throb of his pain evidently follow him, and he lay hitching his
great shoulder as if to rid it of the cumbrance. They waited for the
doctor, not daring much more than to turn pillows and give what other
ease they could; and then, instead of the doctor, came a messenger,
about noon, to say he was gone on a visit some thirty miles beyond,
where Taylor had followed to bring him here as soon as might be. At this
Molly consented to rest and to watch, turn about; and once she was over
in her friend’s house lying down, they tried to keep her there. But the
revolutionist could not be put down, and when, as a last pretext, Mrs.
Taylor urged the proprieties and conventions, the pale girl from Vermont
laughed sweetly in her face and returned to sit by the sick man. With
the approach of the second night his fever seemed to rise and master
him more completely than they had yet seen it, and presently it so raged
that the women called in stronger arms to hold him down. There were
times when he broke out in the language of the round-up, and Mrs. Taylor
renewed her protests. “Why,” said Molly, “don’t you suppose I knew they
could swear?” So the dame, in deepening astonishment and affection, gave
up these shifts at decorum. Nor did the delirium run into the intimate,
coarse matters that she dreaded. The cow-puncher had lived like his
kind, but his natural daily thoughts were clean, and came from the
untamed but unstained mind of a man. And toward morning, as Mrs. Taylor
sat taking her turn, suddenly he asked had he been sick long, and looked
at her with a quieted eye. The wandering seemed to drop from him at a
stroke, leaving him altogether himself. He lay very feeble, and inquired
once or twice of his state and how he came here; nor was anything left
in his memory of even coming to the spring where he had been found.

When the doctor arrived, he pronounced that it would be long--or very
short. He praised their clean water treatment; the wound was fortunately
well up on the shoulder, and gave so far no bad signs; there were not
any bad signs; and the blood and strength of the patient had been as
few men’s were; each hour was now an hour nearer certainty, and
meanwhile--meanwhile the doctor would remain as long as he could. He had
many inquiries to satisfy. Dusty fellows would ride up, listen to him,
and reply, as they rode away, “Don’t yu’ let him die, Doc.” And Judge
Henry sent over from Sunk Creek to answer for any attendance or medicine
that might help his foreman. The country was moved with concern and
interest; and in Molly’s ears its words of good feeling seemed to unite
and sum up a burden, “Don’t yu’ let him die, Doc.” The Indians who had
done this were now in military custody. They had come unpermitted from
a southern reservation, hunting, next thieving, and as the slumbering
spirit roused in one or two of the young and ambitious, they had
ventured this in the secret mountains, and perhaps had killed a trapper
found there. Editors immediately reared a tall war out of it; but from
five Indians in a guard-house waiting punishment not even an editor
can supply spar for more than two editions, and if the recent alarm
was still a matter of talk anywhere, it was not here in the sick-room.
Whichever way the case should turn, it was through Molly alone (the
doctor told her) that the wounded man had got this chance--this good
chance, he related.

And he told her she had not done a woman’s part, but a man’s part, and
now had no more to do; no more till the patient got well, and could
thank her in his own way, said the doctor, smiling, and supposing things
that were not so--misled perhaps by Mrs. Taylor.

“I’m afraid I’ll be gone by the time he is well,” said Molly, coldly;
and the discreet physician said ah, and that she would find Bennington
quite a change from Bear Creek.

But Mrs. Taylor spoke otherwise, and at that the girl said: “I shall
stay as long as I am needed. I will nurse him. I want to nurse him. I
will do everything for him that I can!” she exclaimed, with force.

“And that won’t be anything, deary,” said Mrs. Taylor, harshly. “A year
of nursing don’t equal a day of sweetheart.”

The girl took a walk,--she was of no more service in the room at
present,--but she turned without going far, and Mrs. Taylor spied her
come to lean over the pasture fence and watch the two horses--that one
the Virginian had “gentled” for her, and his own Monte. During this
suspense came a new call for the doctor, neighbors profiting by his
visit to Bear Creek; and in his going away to them, even under promise
of quick return, Mrs. Taylor suspected a favorable sign. He kept his
word as punctually as had been possible, arriving after some six hours
with a confident face, and spending now upon the patient a care not
needed, save to reassure the bystanders. He spoke his opinion that all
was even better than he could have hoped it would be, so soon. Here was
now the beginning of the fifth day; the wound’s look was wholesome, no
further delirium had come, and the fever had abated a degree while he
was absent. He believed the serious danger-line lay behind, and (short
of the unforeseen) the man’s deep untainted strength would reassert
its control. He had much blood to make, and must be cared for during
weeks--three, four, five--there was no saying how long yet. These next
few days it must be utter quiet for him; he must not talk nor hear
anything likely to disturb him; and then the time for cheerfulness and
gradual company would come--sooner than later, the doctor hoped. So
he departed, and sent next day some bottles, with further cautions
regarding the wound and dirt, and to say he should be calling the day
after to-morrow.

Upon that occasion he found two patients. Molly Wood lay in bed at Mrs.
Taylor’s, filled with apology and indignation. With little to do, and
deprived of the strong stimulant of anxiety and action, her strength
had quite suddenly left her, so that she had spoken only in a sort of
whisper. But upon waking from a long sleep, after Mrs. Taylor had taken
her firmly, almost severely, in hand, her natural voice had returned,
and now the chief treatment the doctor gave her was a sort of scolding,
which it pleased Mrs. Taylor to hear. The doctor even dropped a phrase
concerning the arrogance of strong nerves in slender bodies, and of
undertaking several people’s work when several people were at hand to do
it for themselves, and this pleased Mrs. Taylor remarkably. As for the
wounded man, he was behaving himself properly. Perhaps in another week
he could be moved to a more cheerful room. Just now, with cleanliness
and pure air, any barn would do.

“We are real lucky to have such a sensible doctor in the country,” Mrs.
Taylor observed, after the physician had gone.

“No doubt,” said Molly. “He said my room was a barn.”

“That’s what you’ve made it, deary. But sick men don’t notice much.”

Nevertheless, one may believe, without going widely astray, that
illness, so far from veiling, more often quickens the perceptions--at
any rate those of the naturally keen. On a later day--and the interval
was brief--while Molly was on her second drive to take the air with Mrs.
Taylor, that lady informed her that the sick man had noticed. “And I
could not tell him things liable to disturb him,” said she, “and so
I--well, I expect I just didn’t exactly tell him the facts. I said yes,
you were packing up for a little visit to your folks. They had not seen
you for quite a while, I said. And he looked at those boxes kind of
silent like.”

“There’s no need to move him,” said Molly. ‘“It is simpler to move
them--the boxes. I could take out some of my things, you know, just
while he has to be kept there. I mean--you see, if the doctor says the
room should be cheerful--”

“Yes, deary.”

“I will ask the doctor next time,” said Molly, “if he believes I
am--competent to spread a rug upon a floor.” Molly’s references to
the doctor were usually acid these days. And this he totally failed to
observe, telling her when he came, why, to be sure! the very thing!
And if she could play cards or read aloud, or afford any other light
distractions, provided they did not lead the patient to talk and tire
himself, that she would be most useful. Accordingly she took over the
cribbage board, and came with unexpected hesitation face to face again
with the swarthy man she had saved and tended. He was not so swarthy
now, but neat, with chin clean, and hair and mustache trimmed and
smooth, and he sat propped among pillows watching for her.

“You are better,” she said, speaking first, and with uncertain voice.

“Yes. They have given me awdehs not to talk,” said the Southerner,
smiling.

“Oh, yes. Please do not talk--not to-day.”

“No. Only this”--he looked at her, and saw her seem to shrink--“thank
you for what you have done,” he said simply.

She took tenderly the hand he stretched to her; and upon these terms
they set to work at cribbage. She won, and won again, and the third time
laid down her cards and reproached him with playing in order to lose.

“No,” he said, and his eye wandered to the boxes. “But my thoughts get
away from me. I’ll be strong enough to hold them on the cyards next
time, I reckon.”

Many tones in his voice she had heard, but never the tone of sadness
until to-day.

Then they played a little more, and she put away the board for this
first time.

“You are going now?” he asked.

“When I have made this room look a little less forlorn. They haven’t
wanted to meddle with my things, I suppose.” And Molly stooped once
again among the chattels destined for Vermont. Out they came; again the
bearskin was spread on the floor, various possessions and ornaments went
back into their ancient niches, the shelves grew comfortable with books,
and, last, some flowers were stood on the table.

“More like old times,” said the Virginian, but sadly.

“It’s too bad,” said Molly, “you had to be brought into such a looking
place.”

“And your folks waiting for you,” said he.

“Oh, I’ll pay my visit later,” said Molly, putting the rug a trifle
straighter.

“May I ask one thing?” pleaded the Virginian, and at the gentleness of
his voice her face grew rosy, and she fixed her eyes on him with a sort
of dread.

“Anything that I can answer,” said she.

“Oh, yes. Did I tell yu’ to quit me, and did yu’ load up my gun and
stay? Was that a real business? I have been mixed up in my haid.”

“That was real,” said Molly. “What else was there to do?”

“Just nothing--for such as you!” he exclaimed. “My haid has been mighty
crazy; and that little grandmother of yours yondeh, she--but I can’t
just quite catch a-hold of these things”--he passed a hand over
his forehead--“so many--or else one right along--well, it’s all
foolishness!” he concluded, with something almost savage in his tone.
And after she had gone from the cabin he lay very still, looking at the
miniature on the wall.

He was in another sort of mood the next time, cribbage not interesting
him in the least. “Your folks will be wondering about you,” said he.

“I don’t think they will mind which month I go to them,” said Molly.
“Especially when they know the reason.”

“Don’t let me keep you, ma’am,” said he. Molly stared at him; but he
pursued, with the same edge lurking in his slow words: “Though I’ll
never forget. How could I forget any of all you have done--and been? If
there had been none of this, why, I had enough to remember! But please
don’t stay, ma’am. We’ll say I had a claim when yu’ found me pretty well
dead, but I’m gettin’ well, yu’ see--right smart, too!”

“I can’t understand, indeed I can’t,” said Molly, “why you’re talking
so!”

He seemed to have certain moods when he would address her as “ma’am,”
 and this she did not like, but could not prevent.

“Oh, a sick man is funny. And yu’ know I’m grateful to you.”

“Please say no more about that, or I shall go this afternoon. I don’t
want to go. I am not ready. I think I had better read something now.”

“Why, yes. That’s cert’nly a good notion. Why, this is the best show
you’ll ever get to give me education. Won’t yu’ please try that EMMA
book now, ma’am? Listening to you will be different.” This was said with
softness and humility.

Uncertain--as his gravity often left her--precisely what he meant by
what he said, Molly proceeded with EMMA, slackly at first, but soon with
the enthusiasm that Miss Austen invariably gave her. She held the volume
and read away at it, commenting briefly, and then, finishing a chapter
of the sprightly classic, found her pupil slumbering peacefully. There
was no uncertainty about that.

“You couldn’t be doing a healthier thing for him, deary,” said Mrs.
Taylor. “If it gets to make him wakeful, try something harder.” This was
the lady’s scarcely sympathetic view.

But it turned out to be not obscurity in which Miss Austen sinned.

When Molly next appeared at the Virginian’s threshold, he said
plaintively, “I reckon I am a dunce.” And he sued for pardon. “When I
waked up,” he said, “I was ashamed of myself for a plumb half-hour.” Nor
could she doubt this day that he meant what he said. His mood was again
serene and gentle, and without referring to his singular words that had
distressed her, he made her feel his contrition, even in his silence.

“I am right glad you have come,” he said. And as he saw her going to the
bookshelf, he continued, with diffidence: “As regyards that EMMA book,
yu’ see--yu’ see, the doin’s and sayin’s of folks like them are above
me. But I think” (he spoke most diffidently), “if yu’ could read me
something that was ABOUT something, I--I’d be liable to keep awake.” And
he smiled with a certain shyness.

“Something ABOUT something?” queried Molly, at a loss.

“Why, yes. Shakespeare. HENRY THE FOURTH. The British king is fighting,
and there is his son the prince. He cert’nly must have been a jim-dandy
boy if that is all true. Only he would go around town with a mighty
triflin’ gang. They sported and they held up citizens. And his father
hated his travelling with trash like them. It was right natural--the boy
and the old man! But the boy showed himself a man too. He killed a big
fighter on the other side who was another jim-dandy--and he was sorry
for having it to do.” The Virginian warmed to his recital. “I understand
most all of that. There was a fat man kept everybody laughing. He was
awful natural too; except yu’ don’t commonly meet ’em so fat. But the
prince--that play is bed-rock, ma’am! Have you got something like that?”

“Yes, I think so,” she replied. “I believe I see what you would
appreciate.”

She took her Browning, her idol, her imagined affinity. For the pale
decadence of New England had somewhat watered her good old Revolutionary
blood too, and she was inclined to think under glass and to live
underdone--when there were no Indians to shoot! She would have joyed to
venture “Paracelsus” on him, and some lengthy rhymed discourses; and she
fondly turned leaves and leaves of her pet doggerel analytics. “Pippa
Passes” and others she had to skip, from discreet motives--pages which
he would have doubtless stayed awake at; but she chose a poem at length.
This was better than Emma, he pronounced. And short. The horse was a
good horse. He thought a man whose horse must not play out on him would
watch the ground he was galloping over for holes, and not be likely to
see what color the rims of his animal’s eye-sockets were. You could not
see them if you sat as you ought to for such a hard ride. Of the next
piece that she read him he thought still better. “And it is short,” said
he. “But the last part drops.”

Molly instantly exacted particulars.

“The soldier should not have told the general he was killed,” stated the
cow-puncher.

“What should he have told him, I’d like to know?” said Molly.

“Why, just nothing. If the soldier could ride out of the battle all shot
up, and tell his general about their takin’ the town--that was being
gritty, yu’ see. But that truck at the finish--will yu’ please say it
again?”

So Molly read:--

    “‘You’re wounded! ‘Nay,’ the soldier’s pride
     Touched to the quick, he said,
     ‘I’m killed, sire!’ And, his chief beside,
     Smiling the boy fell dead.”

“‘Nay, I’m killed, sire,’” drawled the Virginian, amiably; for (symptom
of convalescence) his freakish irony was revived in him. “Now a man
who was man enough to act like he did, yu’ see, would fall dead without
mentioning it.”

None of Molly’s sweet girl friends had ever thus challenged Mr.
Browning. They had been wont to cluster over him with a joyous awe that
deepened proportionally with their misunderstanding. Molly paused to
consider this novelty of view about the soldier. “He was a Frenchman,
you know,” she said, under inspiration.

“A Frenchman,” murmured the grave cow-puncher. “I never knowed a
Frenchman, but I reckon they might perform that class of foolishness.”

“But why was it foolish?” she cried.

“His soldier’s pride--don’t you see?”

“No.”

Molly now burst into a luxury of discussion. She leaned toward her
cow-puncher with bright eyes searching his; with elbow on knee and hand
propping chin, her lap became a slant, and from it Browning the poet
slid and toppled, and lay unrescued. For the slow cow-puncher unfolded
his notions of masculine courage and modesty (though he did not deal in
such high-sounding names), and Molly forgot everything to listen to him,
as he forgot himself and his inveterate shyness and grew talkative to
her. “I would never have supposed that!” she would exclaim as she heard
him; or, presently again, “I never had such an idea!” And her mind
opened with delight to these new things which came from the man’s mind
so simple and direct. To Browning they did come back, but the Virginian,
though interested, conceived a dislike for him. “He is a smarty,” said
he, once or twice.

“Now here is something,” said Molly. “I have never known what to think.”

“Oh, Heavens!” murmured the sick man, smiling. “Is it short?”

“Very short. Now please attend.” And she read him twelve lines about
a lover who rowed to a beach in the dusk, crossed a field, tapped at a
pane, and was admitted.

“That is the best yet,” said the Virginian. “There’s only one thing yu’
can think about that.”

“But wait,” said the girl, swiftly. “Here is how they parted:--

     “Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
     And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim--
     And straight was a path of gold for him,
     And the need of a world of men for me.”

“That is very, very true,” murmured the Virginian, dropping his eyes
from the girl’s intent ones.

“Had they quarrelled?” she inquired.

“Oh, no!”

“But--”

“I reckon he loved her very much.”

“Then you’re sure they hadn’t quarrelled?”

“Dead sure, ma’am. He would come back afteh he had played some more of
the game.”

“The game?”

“Life, ma’am. Whatever he was a-doin’ in the world of men. That’s a
bed-rock piece, ma’am!”

“Well, I don’t see why you think it’s so much better than some of the
others.”

“I could sca’cely explain,” answered the man. “But that writer does know
something.”

“I am glad they hadn’t quarrelled,” said Molly, thoughtfully. And she
began to like having her opinions refuted.

His bandages, becoming a little irksome, had to be shifted, and this
turned their discourse from literature to Wyoming; and Molly inquired,
had he ever been shot before? Only once, he told her. “I have been
lucky in having few fusses,” said he. “I hate them. If a man has to be
killed--”

“You never--” broke in Molly. She had started back a little. “Well,” she
added hastily, “don’t tell me if--”

“I shouldn’t wonder if I got one of those Indians,” he said quietly.
“But I wasn’t waitin’ to see! But I came mighty near doing for a white
man that day. He had been hurtin’ a hawss.”

“Hurting?” said Molly.

“Injurin.’ I will not tell yu’ about that. It would hurt yu’ to hear
such things. But hawsses--don’t they depend on us? Ain’t they somethin’
like children? I did not lay up the man very bad. He was able to travel
’most right away. Why, you’d have wanted to kill him yourself!”

So the Virginian talked, nor knew what he was doing to the girl. Nor
was she aware of what she was receiving from him as he unwittingly spoke
himself out to her in these Browning meetings they had each day. But
Mrs. Taylor grew pleased. The kindly dame would sometimes cross the
road to see if she were needed, and steal away again after a peep at the
window. There, inside, among the restored home treasures, sat the two:
the rosy alert girl, sweet as she talked or read to him; and he, the
grave, half-weak giant among his wraps, watching her.

Of her delayed home visit he never again spoke, either to her or to Mrs.
Taylor; and Molly veered aside from any trend of talk she foresaw was
leading toward that subject. But in those hours when no visitors
came, and he was by himself in the quiet, he would lie often sombrely
contemplating the girl’s room, her little dainty knickknacks, her home
photographs, all the delicate manifestations of what she came from and
what she was. Strength was flowing back into him each day, and Judge
Henry’s latest messenger had brought him clothes and mail from Sunk
Creek and many inquiries of kindness, and returned taking the news of
the cow-puncher’s improvement, and how soon he would be permitted the
fresh air. Hence Molly found him waiting in a flannel shirt of highly
becoming shade, and with a silk handkerchief knotted round his throat;
and he told her it was good to feel respectable again.

She had come to read to him for the allotted time; and she threw around
his shoulders the scarlet and black Navajo blanket, striped with its
splendid zigzags of barbarity. Thus he half sat, half leaned, languid
but at ease. In his lap lay one of the letters brought over by the
messenger: and though she was midway in a book that engaged his full
attention--DAVID COPPERFIELD--his silence and absent look this morning
stopped her, and she accused him of not attending.

“No,” he admitted; “I am thinking of something else.”

She looked at him with that apprehension which he knew.

“It had to come,” said he. “And to-day I see my thoughts straighter than
I’ve been up to managing since--since my haid got clear. And now I
must say these thoughts--if I can, if I can!” He stopped. His eyes were
intent upon her; one hand was gripping the arm of his chair.

“You promised--” trembled Molly.

“I promised you should love me,” he sternly interrupted. “Promised that
to myself. I have broken that word.”

She shut DAVID COPPERFIELD mechanically, and grew white.

“Your letter has come to me hyeh,” he continued, gentle again.

“My--” She had forgotten it.

“The letter you wrote to tell me good-by. You wrote it a little while
ago--not a month yet, but it’s away and away long gone for me.”

“I have never let you know--” began Molly.

“The doctor,” he interrupted once more, but very gently now, “he gave
awdehs I must be kept quiet. I reckon yu’ thought tellin’ me might--”

“Forgive me!” cried the girl. “Indeed I ought to have told you sooner!
Indeed I had no excuse!”

“Why, should yu’ tell me if yu’ preferred not? You had written. And you
speak” (he lifted the letter) “of never being able to repay kindness;
but you have turned the tables. I can never repay you by anything! by
anything! So I had figured I would just jog back to Sunk Creek and let
you get away, if you did not want to say that kind of good-by. For I saw
the boxes. Mrs. Taylor is too nice a woman to know the trick of lyin’,
and she could not deceive me. I have knowed yu’ were going away for good
ever since I saw those boxes. But now hyeh comes your letter, and it
seems no way but I must speak. I have thought a deal, lyin’ in this
room. And--to-day--I can say what I have thought. I could not make you
happy.” He stopped, but she did not answer. His voice had grown softer
than whispering, but yet was not a whisper. From its quiet syllables she
turned away, blinded with sudden tears.

“Once, I thought love must surely be enough,” he continued. “And
I thought if I could make you love me, you could learn me to be
less--less--more your kind. And I think I could give you a pretty good
sort of love. But that don’t help the little mean pesky things of day by
day that make roughness or smoothness for folks tied together so awful
close. Mrs. Taylor hyeh--she don’t know anything better than Taylor
does. She don’t want anything he can’t give her. Her friends will do for
him and his for her. And when I dreamed of you in my home--” he closed
his eyes and drew a long breath. At last he looked at her again. “This
is no country for a lady. Will yu’ forget and forgive the bothering I
have done?”

“Oh!” cried Molly. “Oh!” And she put her hands to her eyes. She had
risen and stood with her face covered.

“I surely had to tell you this all out, didn’t I?” said the cow-puncher,
faintly, in his chair.

“Oh!” said Molly again.

“I have put it clear how it is,” he pursued. “I ought to have seen from
the start I was not the sort to keep you happy.”

“But,” said Molly--“but I--you ought--please try to keep me happy!” And
sinking by his chair, she hid her face on his knees.

Speechless, he bent down and folded her round, putting his hands on the
hair that had been always his delight. Presently he whispered:-- “You
have beat me; how can I fight this?”

She answered nothing. The Navajo’s scarlet and black folds fell over
both. Not with words, not even with meeting eyes, did the two plight
their troth in this first new hour. So they remained long, the fair head
nesting in the great arms, and the black head laid against it, while
over the silent room presided the little Grandmother Stark in her frame,
rosy, blue, and flaxen, not quite familiar, not quite smiling.

XXVIII. NO DREAM TO WAKE FROM

For a long while after she had left him, he lay still, stretched in
his chair. His eyes were fixed steadily upon the open window and the
sunshine outside. There he watched the movement of the leaves upon the
green cottonwoods. What had she said to him when she went? She had said,
“Now I know how unhappy I have been.” These sweet words he repeated to
himself over and over, fearing in some way that he might lose them. They
almost slipped from him at times; but with a jump of his mind he caught
them again and held them,--and then--“I’m not all strong yet,” he
murmured. “I must have been very sick.” And, weak from his bullet
wound and fever, he closed his eyes without knowing it. There were the
cottonwoods again, waving, waving; and he felt the cool, pleasant air
from the window. He saw the light draught stir the ashes in the great
stone fireplace. “I have been asleep,” he said. “But she was cert’nly
here herself. Oh, yes. Surely. She always has to go away every day
because the doctor says--why, she was readin’!” he broke off, aloud.
“DAVID COPPERFIELD.” There it was on the floor. “Aha! nailed you
anyway!” he said. “But how scared I am of myself!--You’re a fool. Of
course it’s so. No fever business could make yu’ feel like this.”

His eye dwelt awhile on the fireplace, next on the deer horns, and
next it travelled toward the shelf where her books were; but it stopped
before reaching them.

“Better say off the names before I look,” said he. “I’ve had a heap o’
misreading visions. And--and supposin’--if this was just my sickness
fooling me some more--I’d want to die. I would die! Now we’ll see. If
COPPERFIELD is on the floor” (he looked stealthily to be sure that it
was), “then she was readin’ to me when everything happened, and then
there should be a hole in the book row, top, left. Top, left,” he
repeated, and warily brought his glance to the place. “Proved!” he
cried. “It’s all so!”

He now noticed the miniature of Grandmother Stark. “You are awful like
her,” he whispered. “You’re cert’nly awful like her. May I kiss you too,
ma’am?”

Then, tottering, he rose from his sick-chair. The Navajo blanket fell
from his shoulders, and gradually, experimentally, he stood upright.

Helping himself with his hand slowly along the wall of the room, and
round to the opposite wall with many a pause, he reached the picture,
and very gently touched the forehead of the ancestral dame with his
lips. “I promise to make your little girl happy,” he whispered.

He almost fell in stooping to the portrait, but caught himself and stood
carefully quiet, trembling, and speaking to himself. “Where is your
strength?” he demanded. “I reckon it is joy that has unsteadied your
laigs.”

The door opened. It was she, come back with his dinner.

“My Heavens!” she said; and setting the tray down, she rushed to him.
She helped him back to his chair, and covered him again. He had suffered
no hurt, but she clung to him; and presently he moved and let himself
kiss her with fuller passion.

“I will be good,” he whispered.

“You must,” she said. “You looked so pale!”

“You are speakin’ low like me,” he answered. “But we have no dream we
can wake from.”

Had she surrendered on this day to her cow-puncher, her wild man? Was she
forever wholly his? Had the Virginian’s fire so melted her heart that no
rift in it remained? So she would have thought if any thought had come
to her. But in his arms to-day, thought was lost in something more
divine.

XXIX. WORD TO BENNINGTON

They kept their secret for a while, or at least they had that special
joy of believing that no one in all the world but themselves knew this
that had happened to them. But I think that there was one person who
knew how to keep a secret even better than these two lovers. Mrs. Taylor
made no remarks to any one whatever. Nobody on Bear Creek, however, was
so extraordinarily cheerful and serene. That peculiar severity which she
had manifested in the days when Molly was packing her possessions,
had now altogether changed. In these days she was endlessly kind and
indulgent to her “deary.” Although, as a housekeeper, Mrs. Taylor
believed in punctuality at meals, and visited her offspring with
discipline when they were late without good and sufficient excuse, Molly
was now exempt from the faintest hint of reprimand.

“And it’s not because you’re not her mother,” said George Taylor,
bitterly. “She used to get it, too. And we’re the only ones that get it.
There she comes, just as we’re about ready to quit! Aren’t you going to
say NOTHING to her?”

“George,” said his mother, “when you’ve saved a man’s life it’ll be time
for you to talk.”

So Molly would come in to her meals with much irregularity; and her
remarks about the imperfections of her clock met with no rejoinder. And
yet one can scarcely be so severe as had been Mrs. Taylor, and become
wholly as mild as milk. There was one recurrent event that could
invariably awaken hostile symptoms in the dame. Whenever she saw a
letter arrive with the Bennington postmark upon it, she shook her fist
at that letter. “What’s family pride?” she would say to herself. “Taylor
could be a Son of the Revolution if he’d a mind to. I wonder if she has
told her folks yet.”

And when letters directed to Bennington would go out, Mrs. Taylor would
inspect every one as if its envelope ought to grow transparent beneath
her eyes, and yield up to her its great secret, if it had one. But in
truth these letters had no great secret to yield up, until one day--yes;
one day Mrs. Taylor would have burst, were bursting a thing that people
often did. Three letters were the cause of this emotion on Mrs. Taylor’s
part; one addressed to Bennington, one to Dunbarton, and the third--here
was the great excitement--to Bennington, but not in the little
schoolmarm’s delicate writing. A man’s hand had traced those plain,
steady vowels and consonants.

“It’s come!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor, at this sight. “He has written to
her mother himself.”

That is what the Virginian had done, and here is how it had come about.

The sick man’s convalescence was achieved. The weeks had brought back to
him, not his whole strength yet--that could come only by many miles
of open air on the back of Monte; but he was strong enough now to GET
strength. When a patient reaches this stage, he is out of the woods.

He had gone for a little walk with his nurse. They had taken (under the
doctor’s recommendation) several such little walks, beginning with a
five-minute one, and at last to-day accomplishing three miles.

“No, it has not been too far,” said he. “I am afraid I could walk twice
as far.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes. Because it means I can go to work again. This thing we have had
together is over.”

For reply, she leaned against him.

“Look at you!” he said. “Only a little while ago you had to help me
stand on my laigs. And now--” For a while there was silence between
them. “I have never had a right down sickness before,” he presently went
on. “Not to remember, that is. If any person had told me I could ENJOY
such a thing--” He said no more, for she reached up, and no more speech
was possible.

“How long has it been?” he next asked her.

She told him.

“Well, if it could be forever--no. Not forever with no more than this.
I reckon I’d be sick again! But if it could be forever with just you and
me, and no one else to bother with. But any longer would not be doing
right by your mother. She would have a right to think ill of me.”

“Oh!” said the girl. “Let us keep it.”

“Not after I am gone. Your mother must be told.”

“It seems so--can’t we--oh, why need anybody know?”

“Your mother ain’t ‘anybody.’ She is your mother. I feel mighty
responsible to her for what I have done.”

“But I did it!”

“Do you think so? Your mother will not think so. I am going to write to
her to-day.”

“You! Write to my mother! Oh, then everything will be so different! They
will all--” Molly stopped before the rising visions of Bennington. Upon
the fairy-tale that she had been living with her cow-boy lover broke the
voices of the world. She could hear them from afar. She could see the
eyes of Bennington watching this man at her side. She could imagine the
ears of Bennington listening for slips in his English. There loomed upon
her the round of visits which they would have to make. The ringing of
the door-bells, the waiting in drawing-rooms for the mistress to descend
and utter her prepared congratulations, while her secret eye devoured
the Virginian’s appearance, and his manner of standing and sitting. He
would be wearing gloves, instead of fringed gauntlets of buckskin. In a
smooth black coat and waistcoat, how could they perceive the man he was?
During those short formal interviews, what would they ever find out of
the things that she knew about him? The things for which she was proud
of him? He would speak shortly and simply; they would say, “Oh, yes!”
 and “How different you must find this from Wyoming!”--and then, after
the door was shut behind his departing back they would say--He would
be totally underrated, not in the least understood. Why should he be
subjected to this? He should never be!

Now in all these half-formed, hurried, distressing thoughts which
streamed through the girl’s mind, she altogether forgot one truth. True
it was that the voice of the world would speak as she imagined. True it
was that in the eyes of her family and acquaintance this lover of her
choice would be examined even more like a SPECIMEN than are other lovers
upon these occasions: and all accepted lovers have to face this ordeal
of being treated like specimens by the other family. But dear me!
most of us manage to stand it, don’t we? It isn’t, perhaps, the
most delicious experience that we can recall in connection with our
engagement. But it didn’t prove fatal. We got through it somehow. We
dined with Aunt Jane, and wined with Uncle Joseph, and perhaps had two
fingers given to us by old Cousin Horatio, whose enormous fortune was of
the greatest importance to everybody. And perhaps fragments of the other
family’s estimate of us subsequently reached our own ears. But if a
chosen lover cannot stand being treated as a specimen by the other
family, he’s a very weak vessel, and not worth any good girl’s love.
That’s all I can say for him.

Now the Virginian was scarcely what even his enemy would term a weak
vessel; and Molly’s jealousy of the impression which he might make upon
Bennington was vastly superfluous. She should have known that he would
indeed care to make a good impression; but that such anxiety on his part
would be wholly for her sake, that in the eyes of her friends she might
stand justified in taking him for her wedded husband. So far as he was
concerned apart from her, Aunt Jane and Uncle Joseph might say anything
they pleased, or think anything they pleased. His character was open for
investigation. Judge Henry would vouch for him.

This is what he would have said to his sweetheart had she but revealed
to him her perturbations. But she did not reveal them; and they were not
of the order that he with his nature was likely to divine. I do not
know what good would have come from her speaking out to him, unless that
perfect understanding between lovers which indeed is a good thing. But
I do not believe that he could have reassured her; and I am certain that
she could not have prevented his writing to her mother.

“Well, then,” she sighed at last, “if you think so, I will tell her.”

That sigh of hers, be it well understood, was not only because of those
far-off voices which the world would in consequence of her news be
lifting presently. It came also from bidding farewell to the fairy-tale
which she must leave now; that land in which she and he had been living
close together alone, unhindered, unmindful of all things.

“Yes, you will tell her,” said her lover. “And I must tell her too.”

“Both of us?” questioned the girl.

What would he say to her mother? How would her mother like such a letter
as he would write to her? Suppose he should misspell a word? Would not
sentences from him at this time--written sentences--be a further bar to
his welcome acceptance at Bennington?

“Why don’t you send messages by me?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “She is not going to like it, anyway,” he answered.
“I must speak to her direct. It would be like shirking.”

Molly saw how true his instinct was here; and a little flame shot upward
from the glow of her love and pride in him. Oh, if they could all only
know that he was like this when you understood him! She did not dare say
out to him what her fear was about this letter of his to her mother. She
did not dare because--well, because she lacked a little faith. That is
it, I am afraid. And for that sin she was her own punishment. For in
this day, and in many days to come, the pure joy of her love was vexed