Progress Of The Lost Dog

: The Virginian

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 cowboy, 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 cotton woods, 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 cowboy 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 cowboy'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.



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