Virginian (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (47 page)

“Her daughter and her might have been thinkin’ mighty hard about each other just then,” he pursued. “But Steve is dead. Finished. You cert’nly don’t believe there’s anything more?”

“I wish I could,” I told him.

“No, I’m satisfied. Heaven didn’t never interest me much. But if there was a world of dreams after you went—” He stopped himself and turned his searching eyes away from mine. “There’s a heap o’ darkness wherever you try to step,” he said, “and I thought I’d left off wasting thoughts on the subject. You see”—he dexterously roped a horse, and once more his splendid sanity was turned to gold by his imagination—“I expect in many growed-up men you’d call sensible there’s a little boy sleepin’—the little kid they onced was—that still keeps his fear of the dark. You mentioned the dark yourself yesterday. Well, this experience has woke up that kid in me, and blamed if I can coax the little cuss to go to sleep again! I keep a-telling him daylight will sure come, but he keeps a-crying and holding on to me.”

Somewhere far in the basin there was a faint sound, and we stood still.

“Hush!” he said.

But it was like our watching the dawn; nothing more followed.

“They have shot that bear,” I remarked.

He did not answer, and we put the saddles on without talk. We made no haste, but we were not over half an hour, I suppose, in getting off with the packs. It was not a new thing to hear a shot where wild game was in plenty, yet as we rode that shot sounded already in my mind different from others. Perhaps I should not believe this today but for what I look back to. To make camp last night we had turned off the trail, and now followed the stream down for a while, taking next a cut through the wood. In this way we came upon the tracks of our horses where they had been galloping back to the camp after their fright. They had kicked up the damp and matted pine needles very plainly all along.

“Nothing has been here but themselves, though,” said I.

“And they ain’t showing signs of remembering any scare,” said the Virginian.

In a little while we emerged upon an open.

“Here’s where they were grazing,” said the Virginian; and the signs were clear enough. “Here’s where they must have got their scare,” he pursued. “You stay with them while I circle a little.” So I stayed; and certainly our animals were very calm at visiting this scene. When you bring a horse back to where he has recently encountered a wild animal his ears and his nostrils are apt to be wide awake.

The Virginian had stopped and was beckoning to me.

“Here’s your bear,” said he, as I arrived. “Two-legged, you see. And he had a hawss of his own.” There was a stake driven down where an animal had been picketed for the night.

“Looks like Ounces,” I said, considering the bootprints.

“It’s Ounces. And Ounces wanted another hawss very bad, so him and Pounds could travel like gentlemen should.”

“But Pounds doesn’t seem to have been with him.”

“Oh, Pounds, he was making coffee, somewheres in yonder, when this happened. Neither of them guessed there’d be other hawsses wandering here in the night, or they both would have come.” He turned back to our pack animals.

“Then you’ll not hunt for this camp to make sure?”

“I prefer making sure first. We might be expected at that camp.”

He took out his rifle from beneath his leg and set it across his saddle at half-cock. I did the same; and thus cautiously we resumed our journey in a slightly different direction. “This ain’t all we’re going to find out,” said the Virginian. “Ounces had a good idea; but I reckon he made a bad mistake later.”

We had found out a good deal without any more, I thought. Ounces had gone to bring in their single horse, and coming upon three more in the pasture had undertaken to catch one and failed, merely driving them where he feared to follow.

“Shorty never could rope a horse alone,” I remarked.

The Virginian grinned. “Shorty? Well, Shorty sounds as well as Ounces. But that ain’t the mistake I’m thinking he made.”

I knew that he would not tell me, but that was just like him. For the last twenty minutes, having something to do, he had become himself again, had come to earth from that unsafe country of the brain where beckoned a spectral Steve. Nothing was left but in his eyes that question which pain had set there; and I wondered if his friend of old, who seemed so brave and amiable, would have dealt him that hurt at the solemn end had he known what a poisoned wound it would be.

We came out on a ridge from which we could look down. “You always want to ride on high places when there’s folks around whose intentions ain’t been declared,” said the Virginian. And we went along our ridge for some distance. Then suddenly he turned down and guided us almost at once to the trail. “That’s it,” he said. “See.”

The track of a horse was very fresh on the trail. But it was a galloping horse now, and no bootprints were keeping up with it any more. No boots could have kept up with it. The rider was making time to-day. Yesterday that horse had been ridden up into the mountains at leisure. Who was on him? There was never to be any certain answer to that. But who was not on him? We turned back in our journey, back into the heart of that basin with the tall peaks all rising like teeth in the cloudless sun, and the snow-fields shining white.

“He was afraid of us,” said the Virginian. “He did not know how many of us had come up here. Three hawsses might mean a dozen more around.”

We followed the backward trail in among the pines, and came after a time upon their camp. And then I understood the mistake that Shorty had made. He had returned after his failure, and had told that other man of the presence of new horses. He should have kept this a secret; for haste had to be made at once, and two cannot get away quickly upon one horse. But it was poor Shorty’s last blunder. He lay there by their extinct fire, with his wistful, lost-dog face upward, and his thick yellow hair unparted as it had always been. The murder had been done from behind. We closed the eyes.

“There was no natural harm in him,” said the Virginian. “But you must do a thing well in this country.”

There was not a trace, not a clue, of the other man; and we found a place where we could soon cover Shorty with earth. As we lifted him we saw the newspaper he had kept for kindling. He had brought it from the clump of cottonwoods where he and the other man had made a later visit than ours to be sure of the fate of their friends—or possibly in hopes of another horse. Evidently, when the party were surprised, they had been able to escape with only one. All of the newspaper was there save the leaf I had picked up—all and more, for this had pencil writing on it that was not mine, nor did I at first take it in. I thought it might be a clue, and I read it aloud. “Good-by, Jeff,” it said. “I could not have spoke to you without playing the baby.”

“Who’s Jeff?” I asked. But it came over me when I looked at the Virginian. He was standing beside me quite motionless; and then he put out his hand and took the paper, and stood still, looking at the words. “Steve used to call me Jeff,” he said, “because I was Southern, I reckon. Nobody else ever did.”

He slowly folded the message from the dead, brought by the dead, and rolled it in the coat behind his saddle. For a half- minute he stood leaning his forehead down against the saddle. After this he came back and contemplated Shorty’s face awhile. “I wish I could thank him,” he said. “I wish I could.”

We carried Shorty over and covered him with earth, and on that laid a few pine branches; then we took up our journey, and by the end of the forenoon we had gone some distance upon our trail through the Teton Mountains. But in front of us the hoofprints ever held their stride of haste, drawing farther from us through the hours, until by the next afternoon somewhere we noticed they were no longer to be seen; and after that they never came upon the trail again.

—33—

THE SPINSTER LOSES SOME SLEEP

SOMEWHERE AT THE EASTERN base of the Teton’s did those hoofprints disappear into a mountain sanctuary where many crooked paths have led. He that took another man’s possessions, or he that took another man’s life, could always run here if the law or popular justice were too hot at his heels. Steep ranges and forests walled him in from the world on all four sides, almost without a break; and every entrance lay through intricate solitudes. Snake River came into the place through canons and mournful pines and marshes, to the north, and went out at the south between formidable chasms. Every tributary to this stream rose among high peaks and ridges, and descended into the valley by well-nigh impenetrable courses: Pacific Creek from Two Ocean Pass, Buffalo Fork from no pass at all, Black Rock from the To-wo-ge-tee Pass—all these, and many more, were the waters of loneliness, among whose thousand hiding-places it was easy to be lost. Down in the bottom was a spread of level land, broad and beautiful, with the blue and silver Tetons rising from its chain of lakes to the west, and other heights presiding over its other sides. And up and down and in and out of this hollow square of mountains where waters plentifully flowed, and game and natural pasture abounded, there skulked a nomadic and distrustful population. This in due time built cabins, took wives, begot children, and came to speak of itself as “The honest settlers of Jackson’s Hole.” It is a commodious title, and doubtless to-day more accurate than it was once.

In to this place the hoofprints disappeared. Not many cabins were yet built there; but the unknown rider of the horse knew well that he would find shelter and welcome among the felons of his stripe. Law and order might guess his name correctly, but there was no next step, for lack of evidence; and he would wait, whoever he was, until the rage of popular justice, which had been pursuing him and his brother thieves, should subside. Then, feeling his way gradually with prudence, he would let himself be seen again.

And now, as mysteriously as he had melted away, rumor passed over the country. No tongue seemed to be heard telling the first news; the news was there, one day, a matter of whispered knowledge. On Sunk Creek and on Bear Creek, and elsewhere far and wide, before men talked men seemed secretly to know that Steve, and Ed, and Shorty, would never again be seen. Riders met each other in the road and drew rein to discuss the event, and its bearing upon the cattle interests. In town saloons men took each other aside, and muttered over it in corners.

Thus it reached the ears of Molly Wood, beginning in a veiled and harmless shape.

A neighbor joined her when she was out riding by herself.

“Good morning,” said he. “Don’t you find it lonesome?” And when she answered lightly, he continued, meaning well: “You’ll be having company again soon now. He has finished his job. Wish he’d finished it
more!
Well, good day.”

Molly thought these words over. She could not tell why they gave her a strange feeling. To her Vermont mind no suspicion of the truth would come naturally. But suspicion began to come when she returned from her ride. For, entering the cabin of the Taylors’, she came upon several people who all dropped their talk short, and were not skilful at resuming it. She sat there awhile, uneasily aware that all of them knew something which she did not know, and was not intended to know. A thought pierced her: had anything happened to her lover? No; that was not it. The man she had met on horseback spoke of her having company soon again. How soon? she wondered. He had been unable to say when he should return, and now she suddenly felt that a great silence had enveloped him lately: not the mere silence of absence, of receiving no messages or letters, but another sort of silence, which now, at this moment, was weighing strangely upon her.

And then the next day it came out at the schoolhouse. During that interval known as recess, she became aware through the open window that they were playing a new game outside. Lusty screeches of delight reached her ears.

“jump!” a voice ordered. “jump!”

“I don’t want to,” returned another voice, uneasily.

“You said you would,” said several. “Didn’t he say he would? Ah, he said he would. Jump now, quick!”

“But I don’t want to,” quavered the voice in a tone so dismal that Molly went out to see.

They had got Bob Carmody on the top of the gate by a tree, with a rope round his neck, the other end of which four little boys were joyously holding. The rest looked on eagerly, three little girls clasping their hands, and springing up and down with excitement.

“Why, children!” exclaimed Molly.

“He’s said his prayers and everything,” they all screamed out. “He’s a rustler, and we’re lynchin’ him. Jump, Bob!”

“I don’t want—”

“Ah, coward, won’t take his medicine!”

“Let him go, boys,” said Molly. “You might really hurt him.” And so she broke up this game, but not without general protest from Wyoming’s young voice.

“He said he would,” Henry Dow assured her.

And George Taylor further explained: “He said he’d be Steve. But Steve didn’t scare.” Then George proceeded to tell the schoolmarm, eagerly, all about Steve and Ed, while the schoolmarm looked at him with a rigid face.

“You promised your mother you’d not tell,” said Henry Dow, after all had been told. “You’ve gone and done it,” and Henry wagged his head in a superior manner.

Thus did the New England girl learn what her cowboy lover had done. She spoke of it to nobody; she kept her misery to herself. He was not there to defend his act. Perhaps in a way that was better. But these were hours of darkness indeed to Molly Wood.

On that visit to Dunbarton, when at the first sight of her lover’s photograph in frontier dress her aunt had exclaimed, “I suppose there are days when he does not kill people,” she had cried in all good faith and mirth, “He never killed anybody!” Later, when he was lying in her cabin weak from his bullet wound, but each day stronger beneath her nursing, at a certain word of his there had gone through her a shudder of doubt. Perhaps in his many wanderings he had done such a thing in self-defence, or in the cause of popular justice. But she had pushed the idea away from her hastily, back into the days before she had ever seen him. If this had ever happened, let her not know of it. Then, as a cruel reward for his candor and his laying himself bare to her mother, the letters from Bennington had used that very letter of his as a weapon against him. Her sister. Sarah had quoted from it. “He says with apparent pride,” wrote Sarah, “that he has ‘never killed for pleasure or profit.’ Those are his exact words, and you may guess their dreadful effect upon mother. I congratulate you, my dear, on having chosen a protector so scrupulous.”