With Malice Aforethought

: The Virginian

Town lay twelve straight miles before the lover and his sweetheart, when

they came to the brow of the last long hill. All beneath them was like

a map: neither man nor beast distinguishable, but the veined and tinted

image of a country, knobs and flats set out in order clearly, shining

extensive and motionless in the sun. It opened on the sight of the

lovers as they reached the sudden edge of the tableland, where since

orning they had ridden with the head of neither horse ever in advance

of the other.



At the view of their journey's end, the Virginian looked down at his

girl beside him, his eyes filled with a bridegroom's light, and, hanging

safe upon his breast, he could feel the gold ring that he would slowly

press upon her finger to-morrow. He drew off the glove from her left

hand, and stooping, kissed the jewel in that other ring which he had

given her. The crimson fire in the opal seemed to mingle with that in

his heart, and his arm lifted her during a moment from the saddle as he

held her to him. But in her heart the love of him was troubled by that

cold pang of loneliness which had crept upon her like a tide as the day

drew near. None of her own people were waiting in that distant town to

see her become his bride. Friendly faces she might pass on the way; but

all of them new friends, made in this wild country: not a face of her

childhood would smile upon her; and deep within her, a voice cried for

the mother who was far away in Vermont. That she would see Mrs. Taylor's

kind face at her wedding was no comfort now.



There lay the town in the splendor of Wyoming space. Around it spread

the watered fields, westward for a little way, eastward to a great

distance, making squares of green and yellow crops; and the town was but

a poor rag in the midst of this quilted harvest. After the fields to the

east, the tawny plain began; and with one faint furrow of river lining

its undulations, it stretched beyond sight. But west of the town rose

the Bow Leg Mountains, cool with their still unmelted snows and their

dull blue gulfs of pine. From three canyons flowed three clear forks

which began the river. Their confluence was above the town a good two

miles; it looked but a few paces from up here, while each side the river

straggled the margin cottonwoods, like thin borders along a garden walk.

Over all this map hung silence like a harmony, tremendous yet serene.



"How beautiful! how I love it!" whispered the girl. "But, oh, how big it

is!" And she leaned against her lover for an instant. It was her spirit

seeking shelter. To-day, this vast beauty, this primal calm, had in it

for her something almost of dread. The small, comfortable, green hills

of home rose before her. She closed her eyes and saw Vermont: a village

street, and the post-office, and ivy covering an old front door, and her

mother picking some yellow roses from a bush.



At a sound, her eyes quickly opened; and here was her lover turned in

his saddle, watching another horseman approach. She saw the Virginian's

hand in a certain position, and knew that his pistol was ready. But the

other merely overtook and passed them, as they stood at the brow of the

hill.



The man had given one nod to the Virginian, and the Virginian one to

him; and now he was already below them on the descending road. To Molly

Wood he was a stranger; but she had seen his eyes when he nodded to her

lover, and she knew, even without the pistol, that this was not enmity

at first sight. It was not indeed. Five years of gathered hate had

looked out of the man's eyes. And she asked her lover who this was.



"Oh," said he, easily, "just a man I see now and then."



"Is his name Trampas?" said Molly Wood.



The Virginian looked at her in surprise. "Why, where have you seen him?"

he asked.



"Never till now. But I knew."



"My gracious! Yu' never told me yu' had mind-reading powers." And he

smiled serenely at her.



"I knew it was Trampas as soon as I saw his eyes."



"My gracious!" her lover repeated with indulgent irony. "I must be

mighty careful of my eyes when you're lookin' at 'em."



"I believe he did that murder," said the girl.



"Whose mind are yu' readin' now?" he drawled affectionately.



But he could not joke her off the subject. She took his strong hand in

hers, tremulously, so much of it as her little hand could hold. "I know

something about that--that--last autumn," she said, shrinking from words

more definite. "And I know that you only did--"



"What I had to," he finished, very sadly, but sternly, too.



"Yes," she asserted, keeping hold of his hand. "I suppose

that--lynching--" (she almost whispered the word) "is the only way. But

when they had to die just for stealing horses, it seems so wicked that

this murderer--"



"Who can prove it?" asked the Virginian.



"But don't you know it?"



"I know a heap o' things inside my heart. But that's not proving. There

was only the body, and the hoofprints--and what folks guessed."



"He was never even arrested!" the girl said.



"No. He helped elect the sheriff in that county."



Then Molly ventured a step inside the border of her lover's reticence.

"I saw--" she hesitated, "just now, I saw what you did."



He returned to his caressing irony. "You'll have me plumb scared if you

keep on seein' things."



"You had your pistol ready for him."



"Why, I believe I did. It was mighty unnecessary." And the Virginian

took out the pistol again, and shook his head over it, like one who has

been caught in a blunder.



She looked at him, and knew that she must step outside his reticence

again. By love and her surrender to him their positions had been

exchanged.



He was not now, as through his long courting he had been, her

half-obeying, half-refractory worshipper. She was no longer his

half-indulgent, half-scornful superior. Her better birth and schooling

that had once been weapons to keep him at his distance, or bring her off

victorious in their encounters, had given way before the onset of

the natural man himself. She knew her cow-boy lover, with all that he

lacked, to be more than ever she could be, with all that she had. He was

her worshipper still, but her master, too. Therefore now, against the

baffling smile he gave her, she felt powerless. And once again a pang of

yearning for her mother to be near her to-day shot through the girl. She

looked from her untamed man to the untamed desert of Wyoming, and the

town where she was to take him as her wedded husband. But for his sake

she would not let him guess her loneliness.



He sat on his horse Monte, considering the pistol. Then he showed her a

rattlesnake coiled by the roots of some sage-brush. "Can I hit it?" he

inquired.



"You don't often miss them," said she, striving to be cheerful.



"Well, I'm told getting married unstrings some men." He aimed, and the

snake was shattered. "Maybe it's too early yet for the unstringing to

begin!" And with some deliberation he sent three more bullets into the

snake. "I reckon that's enough," said he.



"Was not the first one?"



"Oh, yes, for the snake." And then, with one leg crooked cow-boy fashion

across in front of his saddle-horn, he cleaned his pistol, and replaced

the empty cartridges.



Once more she ventured near the line of his reticence. "Has--has Trampas

seen you much lately?"



"Why, no; not for a right smart while. But I reckon he has not missed

me."



The Virginian spoke this in his gentlest voice. But his rebuffed

sweetheart turned her face away, and from her eyes she brushed a tear.



He reined his horse Monte beside her, and upon her cheek she felt his

kiss. "You are not the only mind-reader," said he, very tenderly. And

at this she clung to him, and laid her head upon his breast. "I had been

thinking," he went on, "that the way our marriage is to be was the most

beautiful way."



"It is the most beautiful," she murmured.



He slowly spoke out his thought, as if she had not said this. "No folks

to stare, no fuss, no jokes and ribbons and best bonnets, no public

eye nor talkin' of tongues when most yu' want to hear nothing and say

nothing."



She answered by holding him closer.



"Just the bishop of Wyoming to join us, and not even him after we're

once joined. I did think that would be ahead of all ways to get married

I have seen."



He paused again, and she made no rejoinder.



"But we have left out your mother."



She looked in his face with quick astonishment. It was as if his spirit

had heard the cry of her spirit.



"That is nowhere near right," he said. "That is wrong."



"She could never have come here," said the girl.



"We should have gone there. I don't know how I can ask her to forgive

me."



"But it was not you!" cried Molly.



"Yes. Because I did not object. I did not tell you we must go to her.

I missed the point, thinking so much about my own feelings. For you

see--and I've never said this to you until now--your mother did hurt me.

When you said you would have me after my years of waiting, and I wrote

her that letter telling her all about myself, and how my family was not

like yours, and--and--all the rest I told her, why you see it hurt me

never to get a word back from her except just messages through you. For

I had talked to her about my hopes and my failings. I had said more

than ever I've said to you, because she was your mother. I wanted her to

forgive me, if she could, and feel that maybe I could take good care of

you after all. For it was bad enough to have her daughter quit her home

to teach school out hyeh on Bear Creek. Bad enough without havin' me to

come along and make it worse. I have missed the point in thinking of my

own feelings."



"But it's not your doing!" repeated Molly.



With his deep delicacy he had put the whole matter as a hardship to her

mother alone. He had saved her any pain of confession or denial. "Yes,

it is my doing," he now said. "Shall we give it up?"



"Give what--?" She did not understand.



"Why, the order we've got it fixed in. Plans are--well, they're no

more than plans. I hate the notion of changing, but I hate hurting your

mother more. Or, anyway, I OUGHT to hate it more. So we can shift, if

yu' say so. It's not too late."



"Shift?" she faltered.



"I mean, we can go to your home now. We can start by the stage to-night.

Your mother can see us married. We can come back and finish in the

mountains instead of beginning in them. It'll be just merely shifting,

yu' see."



He could scarcely bring himself to say this at all; yet he said it

almost as if he were urging it. It implied a renunciation that he could

hardly bear to think of. To put off his wedding day, the bliss upon

whose threshold he stood after his three years of faithful battle

for it, and that wedding journey he had arranged: for there were the

mountains in sight, the woods and canyons where he had planned to go

with her after the bishop had joined them; the solitudes where only the

wild animals would be, besides themselves. His horses, his tent, his

rifle, his rod, all were waiting ready in the town for their start

to-morrow. He had provided many dainty things to make her comfortable.

Well, he could wait a little more, having waited three years. It would

not be what his heart most desired: there would be the "public eye and

the talking of tongues"--but he could wait. The hour would come when he

could be alone with his bride at last. And so he spoke as if he urged

it.



"Never!" she cried. "Never, never!"



She pushed it from her. She would not brook such sacrifice on his part.

Were they not going to her mother in four weeks? If her family had

warmly accepted him--but they had not; and in any case, it had gone too

far, it was too late. She told her lover that she would not hear him,

that if he said any more she would gallop into town separately from him.

And for his sake she would hide deep from him this loneliness of hers,

and the hurt that he had given her in refusing to share with her his

trouble with Trampas, when others must know of it.



Accordingly, they descended the hill slowly together, lingering to spin

out these last miles long. Many rides had taught their horses to go

side by side, and so they went now: the girl sweet and thoughtful in her

sedate gray habit; and the man in his leathern chaps and cartridge belt

and flannel shirt, looking gravely into the distance with the level gaze

of the frontier.



Having read his sweetheart's mind very plainly, the lover now broke his

dearest custom. It was his code never to speak ill of any man to any

woman. Men's quarrels were not for women's ears. In his scheme, good

women were to know only a fragment of men's lives. He had lived many

outlaw years, and his wide knowledge of evil made innocence doubly

precious to him. But to-day he must depart from his code, having read

her mind well. He would speak evil of one man to one woman, because his

reticence had hurt her--and was she not far from her mother, and very

lonely, do what he could? She should know the story of his quarrel in

language as light and casual as he could veil it with.



He made an oblique start. He did not say to her: "I'll tell you about

this. You saw me get ready for Trampas because I have been ready for him

any time these five years." He began far off from the point with that

rooted caution of his--that caution which is shared by the primal savage

and the perfected diplomat.



"There's cert'nly a right smart o' difference between men and women," he

observed.



"You're quite sure?" she retorted.



"Ain't it fortunate?--that there's both, I mean."



"I don't know about fortunate. Machinery could probably do all the heavy

work for us without your help."



"And who'd invent the machinery?"



She laughed. "We shouldn't need the huge, noisy things you do. Our world

would be a gentle one."



"Oh, my gracious!"



"What do you mean by that?"



"Oh, my gracious! Get along, Monte! A gentle world all full of ladies!"



"Do you call men gentle?" inquired Molly.



"Now it's a funny thing about that. Have yu' ever noticed a joke about

fathers-in-law? There's just as many fathers--as mothers-in-law; but

which side are your jokes?"



Molly was not vanquished. "That's because the men write the comic

papers," said she.



"Hear that, Monte? The men write 'em. Well, if the ladies wrote a comic

paper, I expect that might be gentle."



She gave up this battle in mirth; and he resumed:-- "But don't you

really reckon it's uncommon to meet a father-in-law flouncin' around

the house? As for gentle--Once I had to sleep in a room next a ladies'

temperance meetin'. Oh, heavens! Well, I couldn't change my room, and

the hotel man, he apologized to me next mawnin'. Said it didn't surprise

him the husbands drank some."



Here the Virginian broke down over his own fantastic inventions, and

gave a joyous chuckle in company with his sweetheart. "Yes, there's

a big heap o' difference between men and women," he said. "Take that

fello' and myself, now."



"Trampas?" said Molly, quickly serious. She looked along the road ahead,

and discerned the figure of Trampas still visible on its way to town.



The Virginian did not wish her to be serious--more than could be helped.

"Why, yes," he replied, with a waving gesture at Trampas. "Take him and

me. He don't think much o' me! How could he? And I expect he'll never.

But yu' saw just now how it was between us. We were not a bit like a

temperance meetin'."



She could not help laughing at the twist he gave to his voice. And she

felt happiness warming her; for in the Virginian's tone about Trampas

was something now that no longer excluded her. Thus he began his gradual

recital, in a cadence always easy, and more and more musical with the

native accent of the South. With the light turn he gave it, its pure

ugliness melted into charm.



"No, he don't think anything of me. Once a man in the John Day Valley

didn't think much, and by Canada de Oro I met another. It will always be

so here and there, but Trampas beats 'em all. For the others have always

expressed themselves--got shut of their poor opinion in the open air."



"Yu' see, I had to explain myself to Trampas a right smart while ago,

long before ever I laid my eyes on yu'. It was just nothing at all. A

little matter of cyards in the days when I was apt to spend my money and

my holidays pretty headlong. My gracious, what nonsensical times I have

had! But I was apt to win at cyards, 'specially poker. And Trampas, he

met me one night, and I expect he must have thought I looked kind o'

young. So he hated losin' his money to such a young-lookin' man, and he

took his way of sayin' as much. I had to explain myself to him plainly,

so that he learned right away my age had got its growth.



"Well, I expect he hated that worse, having to receive my explanation

with folks lookin' on at us publicly that-a-way, and him without further

ideas occurrin' to him at the moment. That's what started his poor

opinion of me, not havin' ideas at the moment. And so the boys resumed

their cyards.



"I'd most forgot about it. But Trampas's mem'ry is one of his strong

points. Next thing--oh, it's a good while later--he gets to losin' flesh

because Judge Henry gave me charge of him and some other punchers taking

cattle--"



"That's not next," interrupted the girl.



"Not? Why--"



"Don't you remember?" she said, timid, yet eager. "Don't you?"



"Blamed if I do!"



"The first time we met?"



"Yes; my mem'ry keeps that--like I keep this." And he brought from his

pocket her own handkerchief, the token he had picked up at a river's

brink when he had carried her from an overturned stage.



"We did not exactly meet, then," she said. "It was at that dance. I

hadn't seen you yet; but Trampas was saying something horrid about me,

and you said--you said, 'Rise on your legs, you pole cat, and tell them

you're a liar.' When I heard that, I think--I think it finished me." And

crimson suffused Molly's countenance.



"I'd forgot," the Virginian murmured. Then sharply, "How did you hear

it?"



"Mrs. Taylor--"



"Oh! Well, a man would never have told a woman that."



Molly laughed triumphantly. "Then who told Mrs. Taylor?"



Being caught, he grinned at her. "I reckon husbands are a special kind

of man," was all that he found to say. "Well, since you do know about

that, it was the next move in the game. Trampas thought I had no call

to stop him sayin' what he pleased about a woman who was nothin' to

me--then. But all women ought to be somethin' to a man. So I had to give

Trampas another explanation in the presence of folks lookin' on, and it

was just like the cyards. No ideas occurred to him again. And down goes

his opinion of me some more!



"Well, I have not been able to raise it. There has been this and that

and the other,--yu' know most of the later doings yourself,--and to-day

is the first time I've happened to see the man since the doings last

autumn. Yu' seem to know about them, too. He knows I can't prove he

was with that gang of horse thieves. And I can't prove he killed poor

Shorty. But he knows I missed him awful close, and spoiled his thieving

for a while. So d' yu' wonder he don't think much of me? But if I had

lived to be twenty-nine years old like I am, and with all my chances

made no enemy, I'd feel myself a failure."



His story was finished. He had made her his confidant in matters he had

never spoken of before, and she was happy to be thus much nearer to him.

It diminished a certain fear that was mingled with her love of him.



During the next several miles he was silent, and his silence was enough

for her. Vermont sank away from her thoughts, and Wyoming held less of

loneliness. They descended altogether into the map which had stretched

below them, so that it was a map no longer, but earth with growing

things, and prairie-dogs sitting upon it, and now and then a bird flying

over it. And after a while she said to him, "What are you thinking

about?"



"I have been doing sums. Figured in hours it sounds right short. Figured

in minutes it boils up into quite a mess. Twenty by sixty is twelve

hundred. Put that into seconds, and yu' get seventy-two thousand

seconds. Seventy-two thousand. Seventy-two thousand seconds yet before

we get married."



"Seconds! To think of its having come to seconds!"



"I am thinkin' about it. I'm choppin' sixty of 'em off every minute."



With such chopping time wears away. More miles of the road lay behind

them, and in the virgin wilderness the scars of new-scraped water

ditches began to appear, and the first wire fences. Next, they were

passing cabins and occasional fields, the outposts of habitation. The

free road became wholly imprisoned, running between unbroken stretches

of barbed wire. Far off to the eastward a flowing column of dust marked

the approaching stage, bringing the bishop, probably, for whose visit

here they had timed their wedding. The day still brimmed with heat and

sunshine; but the great daily shadow was beginning to move from the feet

of the Bow Leg Mountains outward toward the town. Presently they began

to meet citizens. Some of these knew them and nodded, while some did

not, and stared. Turning a corner into the town's chief street, where

stood the hotel, the bank, the drug store, the general store, and

the seven saloons, they were hailed heartily. Here were three

friends,--Honey Wiggin, Scipio Le Moyne, and Lin McLean,--all desirous

of drinking the Virginian's health, if his lady--would she mind? The

three stood grinning, with their hats off; but behind their gayety the

Virginian read some other purpose.



"We'll all be very good," said Honey Wiggin.



"Pretty good," said Lin.



"Good," said Scipio.



"Which is the honest man?" inquired Molly, glad to see them.



"Not one!" said the Virginian. "My old friends scare me when I think of

their ways."



"It's bein' engaged scares yu'," retorted Mr. McLean. "Marriage restores

your courage, I find."



"Well, I'll trust all of you," said Molly. "He's going to take me to the

hotel, and then you can drink his health as much as you please."



With a smile to them she turned to proceed, and he let his horse move

with hers; but he looked at his friends. Then Scipio's bleached blue

eyes narrowed to a slit, and he said what they had all come out on the

street to say:-- "Don't change your clothes."



"Oh!" protested Molly, "isn't he rather dusty and countrified?"



But the Virginian had taken Scipio's meaning. "DON'T CHANGE YOURS

CLOTHES." Innocent Molly appreciated these words no more than the

average reader who reads a masterpiece, complacently unaware that

its style differs from that of the morning paper. Such was Scipio's

intention, wishing to spare her from alarm.



So at the hotel she let her lover go with a kiss, and without a thought

of Trampas. She in her room unlocked the possessions which were there

waiting for her, and changed her dress.



Wedding garments, and other civilized apparel proper for a genuine

frontiersman when he comes to town, were also in the hotel, ready for

the Virginian to wear. It is only the somewhat green and unseasoned

cow-puncher who struts before the public in spurs and deadly weapons.

For many a year the Virginian had put away these childish things. He

made a sober toilet for the streets. Nothing but his face and bearing

remained out of the common when he was in a town. But Scipio had told

him not to change his clothes; therefore he went out with his pistol at

his hip. Soon he had joined his three friends.



"I'm obliged to yu'," he said. "He passed me this mawnin'."



"We don't know his intentions," said Wiggin.



"Except that he's hangin' around," said McLean.



"And fillin' up," said Scipio, "which reminds me--"



They strolled into the saloon of a friend, where, unfortunately, sat

some foolish people. But one cannot always tell how much of a fool a man

is, at sight.



It was a temperate health-drinking that they made. "Here's how," they

muttered softly to the Virginian; and "How," he returned softly, looking

away from them. But they had a brief meeting of eyes, standing and

lounging near each other, shyly; and Scipio shook hands with the

bridegroom. "Some day," he stated, tapping himself; for in his vagrant

heart he began to envy the man who could bring himself to marry. And he

nodded again, repeating, "Here's how."



They stood at the bar, full of sentiment, empty of words, memory

and affection busy in their hearts. All of them had seen rough days

together, and they felt guilty with emotion.



"It's hot weather," said Wiggin.



"Hotter on Box Elder," said McLean. "My kid has started teething."



Words ran dry again. They shifted their positions, looked in their

glasses, read the labels on the bottles. They dropped a word now and

then to the proprietor about his trade, and his ornaments.



"Good head," commented McLean.



"Big old ram," assented the proprietor. "Shot him myself on Gray Bull

last fall."



"Sheep was thick in the Tetons last fall," said the Virginian.



On the bar stood a machine into which the idle customer might drop his

nickel. The coin then bounced among an arrangement of pegs, descending

at length into one or another of various holes. You might win as much as

ten times your stake, but this was not the most usual result; and with

nickels the three friends and the bridegroom now mildly sported for a

while, buying them with silver when their store ran out.



"Was it sheep you went after in the Tetons?" inquired the proprietor,

knowing it was horse thieves.



"Yes," said the Virginian. "I'll have ten more nickels."



"Did you get all the sheep you wanted?" the proprietor continued.



"Poor luck," said the Virginian.



"Think there's a friend of yours in town this afternoon," said the

proprietor.



"Did he mention he was my friend?"



The proprietor laughed. The Virginian watched another nickel click down

among the pegs.



Honey Wiggin now made the bridegroom a straight offer. "We'll take this

thing off your hands," said he.



"Any or all of us," said Lin.



But Scipio held his peace. His loyalty went every inch as far as theirs,

but his understanding of his friend went deeper. "Don't change your

clothes," was the first and the last help he would be likely to give in

this matter. The rest must be as such matters must always be, between

man and man. To the other two friends, however, this seemed a very

special case, falling outside established precedent. Therefore they

ventured offers of interference.



"A man don't get married every day," apologized McLean. "We'll just run

him out of town for yu'."



"Save yu' the trouble," urged Wiggin. "Say the word."



The proprietor now added his voice. "It'll sober him up to spend his

night out in the brush. He'll quit his talk then."



But the Virginian did not say the word, or any word. He stood playing

with the nickels.



"Think of her," muttered McLean.



"Who else would I be thinking of?" returned the Southerner. His face had

become very sombre. "She has been raised so different!" he murmured. He

pondered a little, while the others waited, solicitous.



A new idea came to the proprietor. "I am acting mayor of this town,"

said he. "I'll put him in the calaboose and keep him till you get

married and away."



"Say the word," repeated Honey Wiggin.



Scipio's eye met the proprietor's, and he shook his head about a quarter

of an inch. The proprietor shook his to the same amount. They understood

each other. It had come to that point where there was no way out, save

only the ancient, eternal way between man and man. It is only the great

mediocrity that goes to law in these personal matters.



"So he has talked about me some?" said the Virginian.



"It's the whiskey," Scipio explained.



"I expect," said McLean, "he'd run a mile if he was in a state to

appreciate his insinuations."



"Which we are careful not to mention to yu'," said Wiggin, "unless yu'

inquire for 'em."



Some of the fools present had drawn closer to hear this interesting

conversation. In gatherings of more than six there will generally be at

least one fool; and this company must have numbered twenty men.



"This country knows well enough," said one fool, who hungered to be

important, "that you don't brand no calves that ain't your own."



The saturnine Virginian looked at him. "Thank yu'," said he, gravely,

"for your indorsement of my character." The fool felt flattered. The

Virginian turned to his friends. His hand slowly pushed his hat back,

and he rubbed his black head in thought.



"Glad to see yu've got your gun with you," continued the happy fool.

"You know what Trampas claims about that affair of yours in the Tetons?

He claims that if everything was known about the killing of Shorty--"



"Take one on the house," suggested the proprietor to him, amiably. "Your

news will be fresher." And he pushed him the bottle. The fool felt less

important.



"This talk had went the rounds before it got to us," said Scipio, "or

we'd have headed it off. He has got friends in town."



Perplexity knotted the Virginian's brows. This community knew that a man

had implied he was a thief and a murderer; it also knew that he knew

it. But the case was one of peculiar circumstances, assuredly. Could he

avoid meeting the man? Soon the stage would be starting south for the

railroad. He had already to-day proposed to his sweetheart that they

should take it. Could he for her sake leave unanswered a talking enemy

upon the field? His own ears had not heard the enemy.



Into these reflections the fool stepped once more. "Of course this

country don't believe Trampas," said he. "This country--"



But he contributed no further thoughts. From somewhere in the rear of

the building, where it opened upon the tin cans and the hinder purlieus

of the town, came a movement, and Trampas was among them, courageous

with whiskey.



All the fools now made themselves conspicuous. One lay on the floor,

knocked there by the Virginian, whose arm he had attempted to hold.

Others struggled with Trampas, and his bullet smashed the ceiling

before they could drag the pistol from him. "There now! there now!" they

interposed; "you don't want to talk like that," for he was pouring out a

tide of hate and vilification. Yet the Virginian stood quiet by the bar,

and many an eye of astonishment was turned upon him. "I'd not stand half

that language," some muttered to each other. Still the Virginian waited

quietly, while the fools reasoned with Trampas. But no earthly foot can

step between a man and his destiny. Trampas broke suddenly free.



"Your friends have saved your life," he rang out, with obscene epithets.

"I'll give you till sundown to leave town."



There was total silence instantly.



"Trampas," spoke the Virginian, "I don't want trouble with you."



"He never has wanted it," Trampas sneered to the bystanders. "He has

been dodging it five years. But I've got him coralled."



Some of the Trampas faction smiled.



"Trampas," said the Virginian again, "are yu' sure yu' really mean

that?"



The whiskey bottle flew through the air, hurled by Trampas, and crashed

through the saloon window behind the Virginian.



"That was surplusage, Trampas," said he, "if yu' mean the other."



"Get out by sundown, that's all," said Trampas. And wheeling, he went

out of the saloon by the rear, as he had entered.



"Gentlemen," said the Virginian, "I know you will all oblige me."



"Sure!" exclaimed the proprietor, heartily, "We'll see that everybody

lets this thing alone."



The Virginian gave a general nod to the company, and walked out into the

street.



"It's a turruble shame," sighed Scipio, "that he couldn't have postponed

it."



The Virginian walked in the open air with thoughts disturbed. "I am of

two minds about one thing," he said to himself uneasily.



Gossip ran in advance of him; but as he came by, the talk fell away

until he had passed. Then they looked after him, and their words again

rose audibly. Thus everywhere a little eddy of silence accompanied his

steps.



"It don't trouble him much," one said, having read nothing in the

Virginian's face.



"It may trouble his girl some," said another.



"She'll not know," said a third, "until it's over."



"He'll not tell her?"



"I wouldn't. It's no woman's business."



"Maybe that's so. Well, it would have suited me to have Trampas die

sooner."



"How would it suit you to have him live longer?" inquired a member of

the opposite faction, suspected of being himself a cattle thief.



"I could answer your question, if I had other folks' calves I wanted to

brand." This raised both a laugh and a silence.



Thus the town talked, filling in the time before sunset.



The Virginian, still walking aloof in the open air, paused at the edge

of the town. "I'd sooner have a sickness than be undecided this way,"

he said, and he looked up and down. Then a grim smile came at his own

expense. "I reckon it would make me sick--but there's not time."



Over there in the hotel sat his sweetheart alone, away from her mother,

her friends, her home, waiting his return, knowing nothing. He looked

into the west. Between the sun and the bright ridges of the mountains

was still a space of sky; but the shadow from the mountains' feet had

drawn halfway toward the town. "About forty minutes more," he said

aloud. "She has been raised so different." And he sighed as he

turned back. As he went slowly, he did not know how great was his own

unhappiness. "She has been raised so different," he said again.



Opposite the post-office the bishop of Wyoming met him and greeted him.

His lonely heart throbbed at the warm, firm grasp of this friend's hand.

The bishop saw his eyes glow suddenly, as if tears were close. But none

came, and no word more open than, "I'm glad to see you."



But gossip had reached the bishop, and he was sorely troubled also.

"What is all this?" said he, coming straight to it.



The Virginian looked at the clergyman frankly. "Yu' know just as much

about it as I do," he said. "And I'll tell yu' anything yu' ask."



"Have you told Miss Wood?" inquired the bishop.



The eyes of the bridegroom fell, and the bishop's face grew at once more

keen and more troubled. Then the bridegroom raised his eyes again, and

the bishop almost loved him. He touched his arm, like a brother. "This

is hard luck," he said.



The bridegroom could scarce keep his voice steady. "I want to do right

to-day more than any day I have ever lived," said he.



"Then go and tell her at once."



"It will just do nothing but scare her."



"Go and tell her at once."



"I expected you was going to tell me to run away from Trampas. I can't

do that, yu' know."



The bishop did know. Never before in all his wilderness work had he

faced such a thing. He knew that Trampas was an evil in the country,

and that the Virginian was a good. He knew that the cattle thieves--the

rustlers--were gaining, in numbers and audacity; that they led many

weak young fellows to ruin; that they elected their men to office, and

controlled juries; that they were a staring menace to Wyoming. His heart

was with the Virginian. But there was his Gospel, that he preached, and

believed, and tried to live. He stood looking at the ground and drawing

a finger along his eyebrow. He wished that he might have heard nothing

about all this. But he was not one to blink his responsibility as a

Christian server of the church militant.



"Am I right," he now slowly asked, "in believing that you think I am a

sincere man?"



"I don't believe anything about it. I know it."



"I should run away from Trampas," said the bishop.



"That ain't quite fair, seh. We all understand you have got to do the

things you tell other folks to do. And you do them, seh. You never talk

like anything but a man, and you never set yourself above others. You

can saddle your own horses. And I saw yu' walk unarmed into that

White River excitement when those two other parsons was a-foggin' and

a-fannin' for their own safety. Damn scoundrels!"



The bishop instantly rebuked such language about brothers of his cloth,

even though he disapproved both of them and their doctrines. "Every one

may be an instrument of Providence," he concluded.





"Well," said the Virginian, "if that is so, then Providence makes use of

instruments I'd not touch with a ten-foot pole. Now if you was me, seh,

and not a bishop, would you run away from Trampas?"



"That's not quite fair, either!" exclaimed the bishop, with a smile.

"Because you are asking me to take another man's convictions, and yet

remain myself."



"Yes, seh. I am. That's so. That don't get at it. I reckon you and I

can't get at it."



"If the Bible," said the bishop, "which I believe to be God's word, was

anything to you--"



"It is something to me, seh. I have found fine truths in it."



"'Thou shalt not kill,'" quoted the bishop. "That is plain."



The Virginian took his turn at smiling. "Mighty plain to me, seh. Make

it plain to Trampas, and there'll be no killin'. We can't get at it that

way."



Once more the bishop quoted earnestly. "'Vengeance is mine, I will

repay, saith the Lord.'"



"How about instruments of Providence, seh? Why, we can't get at it that

way. If you start usin' the Bible that way, it will mix you up mighty

quick, seh."



"My friend," the bishop urged, and all his good, warm heart was in it,

"my dear fellow--go away for the one night. He'll change his mind."



The Virginian shook his head. "He cannot change his word, seh. Or at

least I must stay around till he does. Why, I have given him the say-so.

He's got the choice. Most men would not have took what I took from him

in the saloon. Why don't you ask him to leave town?"



The good bishop was at a standstill. Of all kicking against the pricks

none is so hard as this kick of a professing Christian against the whole

instinct of human man.



"But you have helped me some," said the Virginian. "I will go and tell

her. At least, if I think it will be good for her, I will tell her."



The bishop thought that he saw one last chance to move him.



"You're twenty-nine," he began.



"And a little over," said the Virginian.



"And you were fourteen when you ran away from your family."



"Well, I was weary, yu' know, of havin' elder brothers lay down my law

night and mawnin'."



"Yes, I know. So that your life has been your own for fifteen years. But

it is not your own now. You have given it to a woman."



"Yes; I have given it to her. But my life's not the whole of me. I'd

give her twice my life--fifty--a thousand of 'em. But I can't give

her--her nor anybody in heaven or earth--I can't give my--my--we'll

never get at it, seh! There's no good in words. Good-by." The Virginian

wrung the bishop's hand and left him.



"God bless him!" said the bishop. "God bless him!"



The Virginian unlocked the room in the hotel where he kept stored his

tent, his blankets, his pack-saddles, and his many accoutrements for the

bridal journey in the mountains. Out of the window he saw the mountains

blue in shadow, but some cottonwoods distant in the flat between were

still bright green in the sun. From among his possessions he took

quickly a pistol, wiping and loading it. Then from its holster he

removed the pistol which he had tried and made sure of in the morning.

This, according to his wont when going into a risk, he shoved between

his trousers and his shirt in front. The untried weapon he placed in

the holster, letting it hang visibly at his hip. He glanced out of

the window again, and saw the mountains of the same deep blue. But the

cottonwoods were no longer in the sunlight. The shadow had come past

them, nearer the town; for fifteen of the forty minutes were gone. "The

bishop is wrong," he said. "There is no sense in telling her." And he

turned to the door, just as she came to it herself.



"Oh!" she cried out at once, and rushed to him.



He swore as he held her close. "The fools!" he said. "The fools!"



"It has been so frightful waiting for you," said she, leaning her head

against him.



"Who had to tell you this?" he demanded.



"I don't know. Somebody just came and said it."



"This is mean luck," he murmured, patting her. "This is mean luck."



She went on: "I wanted to run out and find you; but I didn't! I didn't!

I stayed quiet in my room till they said you had come back."



"It is mean luck. Mighty mean," he repeated.



"How could you be so long?" she asked. "Never mind, I've got you now. It

is over."



Anger and sorrow filled him. "I might have known some fool would tell

you," he said.



"It's all over. Never mind." Her arms tightened their hold of him. Then

she let him go. "What shall we do?" she said. "What now?"



"Now?" he answered. "Nothing now."



She looked at him without understanding.



"I know it is a heap worse for you," he pursued, speaking slowly. "I

knew it would be."



"But it is over!" she exclaimed again.



He did not understand her now. He kissed her. "Did you think it was

over?" he said simply. "There is some waiting still before us. I wish

you did not have to wait alone. But it will not be long." He was looking

down, and did not see the happiness grow chilled upon her face, and then

fade into bewildered fear. "I did my best," he went on. "I think I did.

I know I tried. I let him say to me before them all what no man has

ever said, or ever will again. I kept thinking hard of you--with all

my might, or I reckon I'd have killed him right there. And I gave him a

show to change his mind. I gave it to him twice. I spoke as quiet as

I am speaking to you now. But he stood to it. And I expect he knows he

went too far in the hearing of others to go back on his threat. He will

have to go on to the finish now."



"The finish?" she echoed, almost voiceless.



"Yes," he answered very gently.



Her dilated eves were fixed upon him. "But--" she could scarce form

utterance, "but you?"



"I have got myself ready," he said. "Did you think--why, what did you

think?"



She recoiled a step. "What are you going--" She put her two hands to her

head. "Oh, God!" she almost shrieked, "you are going--" He made a step,

and would have put his arm round her, but she backed against the wall,

staring speechless at him.



"I am not going to let him shoot me," he said quietly.



"You mean--you mean--but you can come away!" she cried. "It's not too

late yet. You can take yourself out of his reach. Everybody knows that

you are brave. What is he to you? You can leave him in this place. I'll

go with you anywhere. To any house, to the mountains, to anywhere away.

We'll leave this horrible place together and--and--oh, won't you listen

to me?" She stretched her hands to him. "Won't you listen?"



He took her hands. "I must stay here."



Her hands clung to his. "No, no, no. There's something else. There's

something better than shedding blood in cold blood. Only think what it

means! Only think of having to remember such a thing! Why, it's what

they hang people for! It's murder!"



He dropped her hands. "Don't call it that name," he said sternly.



"When there was the choice!" she exclaimed, half to herself, like a

person stunned and speaking to the air. "To get ready for it when you

have the choice!"



"He did the choosing," answered the Virginian. "Listen to me. Are you

listening?" he asked, for her gaze was dull.



She nodded.



"I work hyeh. I belong hyeh. It's my life. If folks came to think I was

a coward--"



"Who would think you were a coward?"



"Everybody. My friends would be sorry and ashamed, and my enemies would

walk around saying they had always said so. I could not hold up my head

again among enemies or friends."



"When it was explained--"



"There'd be nothing to explain. There'd just be the fact." He was nearly

angry.



"There is a higher courage than fear of outside opinion," said the New

England girl.



Her Southern lover looked at her. "Cert'nly there is. That's what I'm

showing in going against yours."



"But if you know that you are brave, and if I know that you are brave,

oh, my dear, my dear! what difference does the world make? How much

higher courage to go your own course--"



"I am goin' my own course," he broke in. "Can't yu' see how it must be

about a man? It's not for their benefit, friends or enemies, that I have

got this thing to do. If any man happened to say I was a thief and I

heard about it, would I let him go on spreadin' such a thing of me?

Don't I owe my own honesty something better than that? Would I sit down

in a corner rubbin' my honesty and whisperin' to it, 'There! there! I

know you ain't a thief?' No, seh; not a little bit! What men say about

my nature is not just merely an outside thing. For the fact that I

let 'em keep on sayin' it is a proof I don't value my nature enough to

shield it from their slander and give them their punishment. And that's

being a poor sort of a jay."



She had grown very white.



"Can't yu' see how it must be about a man?" he repeated.



"I cannot," she answered, in a voice that scarcely seemed her own. "If I

ought to, I cannot. To shed blood in cold blood. When I heard about that

last fall,--about the killing of those cattle thieves,--I kept saying to

myself: 'He had to do it. It was a public duty.' And lying sleepless I

got used to Wyoming being different from Vermont. But this--" she gave

a shudder--"when I think of to-morrow, of you and me, and of--If you do

this, there can be no to-morrow for you and me."



At these words he also turned white.



"Do you mean--" he asked, and could go no farther.



Nor could she answer him, but turned her head away.



"This would be the end?" he asked.



Her head faintly moved to signify yes.



He stood still, his hand shaking a little. "Will you look at me and

say that?" he murmured at length. She did not move. "Can you do it?" he

said.



His sweetness made her turn, but could not pierce her frozen resolve.

She gazed at him across the great distance of her despair.



"Then it is really so?" he said.



Her lips tried to form words, but failed.



He looked out of the window, and saw nothing but shadow. The blue of the

mountains was now become a deep purple. Suddenly his hand closed hard.



"Good-by, then," he said.



At that word she was at his feet, clutching him. "For my sake," she

begged him. "For my sake."



A tremble passed through his frame. She felt his legs shake as she held

them, and, looking up, she saw that his eyes were closed with misery.

Then he opened them, and in their steady look she read her answer. He

unclasped her hands from holding him, and raised her to her feet.



"I have no right to kiss you any more," he said. And then, before his

desire could break him down from this, he was gone, and she was alone.



She did not fall, or totter, but stood motionless. And next--it seemed

a moment and it seemed eternity--she heard in the distance a shot, and

then two shots. Out of the window she saw people beginning to run. At

that she turned and fled to her room, and flung herself face downward

upon the floor.



Trampas had departed into solitude from the saloon, leaving behind him

his ULTIMATUM. His loud and public threat was town knowledge already,

would very likely be county knowledge to-night. Riders would take it

with them to entertain distant cabins up the river and down the river;

and by dark the stage would go south with the news of it--and the news

of its outcome. For everything would be over by dark. After five years,

here was the end coming--coming before dark. Trampas had got up this

morning with no such thought. It seemed very strange to look back upon

the morning; it lay so distant, so irrevocable. And he thought of how he

had eaten his breakfast. How would he eat his supper? For supper would

come afterward. Some people were eating theirs now, with nothing like

this before them. His heart ached and grew cold to think of them, easy

and comfortable with plates and cups of coffee.



He looked at the mountains, and saw the sun above their ridges, and

the shadow coming from their feet. And there close behind him was the

morning he could never go back to. He could see it clearly; his thoughts

reached out like arms to touch it once more, and be in it again. The

night that was coming he could not see, and his eyes and his thoughts

shrank from it. He had given his enemy until sundown. He could not

trace the path which had led him to this. He remembered their first

meeting--five years back, in Medicine Bow, and the words which at once

began his hate. No, it was before any words; it was the encounter of

their eyes. For out of the eyes of every stranger looks either a friend

or an enemy, waiting to be known. But how had five years of hate come to

play him such a trick, suddenly, to-day? Since last autumn he had meant

sometime to get even with this man who seemed to stand at every turn

of his crookedness, and rob him of his spoils. But how had he come to

choose such a way of getting even as this, face to face? He knew many

better ways; and now his own rash proclamation had trapped him. His

words were like doors shutting him in to perform his threat to the

letter, with witnesses at hand to see that he did so.



Trampas looked at the sun and the shadow again. He had till sundown. The

heart inside him was turning it round in this opposite way: it was to

HIMSELF that in his rage he had given this lessening margin of grace.

But he dared not leave town in all the world's sight after all the world

had heard him. Even his friends would fall from him after such an act.

Could he--the thought actually came to him--could he strike before the

time set? But the thought was useless. Even if his friends could harbor

him after such a deed, his enemies would find him, and his life would be

forfeit to a certainty. His own trap was closing upon him.



He came upon the main street, and saw some distance off the Virginian

standing in talk with the bishop. He slunk between two houses, and

cursed both of them. The sight had been good for him, bringing some

warmth of rage back to his desperate heart. And he went into a place and

drank some whiskey.



"In your shoes," said the barkeeper, "I'd be afraid to take so much."



But the nerves of Trampas were almost beyond the reach of intoxication,

and he swallowed some more, and went out again. Presently he fell in

with some of his brothers in cattle stealing, and walked along with them

for a little.



"Well, it will not be long now," they said to him. And he had never

heard words so desolate.



"No," he made out to say; "soon now." Their cheerfulness seemed

unearthly to him, and his heart almost broke beneath it.



"We'll have one to your success," they suggested.



So with them he repaired to another place; and the sight of a man

leaning against the bar made him start so that they noticed him. Then he

saw that the man was a stranger whom he had never laid eyes on till now.



"It looked like Shorty," he said, and could have bitten his tongue off.



"Shorty is quiet up in the Tetons," said a friend. "You don't want to be

thinking about him. Here's how!"



Then they clapped him on the back and he left them. He thought of his

enemy and his hate, beating his rage like a failing horse, and treading

the courage of his drink. Across a space he saw Wiggin, walking with

McLean and Scipio. They were watching the town to see that his friends

made no foul play.



"We're giving you a clear field," said Wiggin.



"This race will not be pulled," said McLean.



"Be with you at the finish," said Scipio.



And they passed on. They did not seem like real people to him.



Trampas looked at the walls and windows of the houses. Were they real?

Was he here, walking in this street? Something had changed. He looked

everywhere, and feeling it everywhere, wondered what this could be. Then

he knew: it was the sun that had gone entirely behind the mountains, and

he drew out his pistol.



The Virginian, for precaution, did not walk out of the front door of the

hotel. He went through back ways, and paused once. Against his breast

he felt the wedding ring where he had it suspended by a chain from his

neck. His hand went up to it, and he drew it out and looked at it. He

took it off the chain, and his arm went back to hurl it from him as far

as he could. But he stopped and kissed it with one sob, and thrust it in

his pocket. Then he walked out into the open, watching. He saw men here

and there, and they let him pass as before, without speaking. He saw

his three friends, and they said no word to him. But they turned and

followed in his rear at a little distance, because it was known that

Shorty had been found shot from behind. The Virginian gained a position

soon where no one could come at him except from in front; and the sight

of the mountains was almost more than he could endure, because it was

there that he had been going to-morrow.



"It is quite a while after sunset," he heard himself say.



A wind seemed to blow his sleeve off his arm, and he replied to it, and

saw Trampas pitch forward. He saw Trampas raise his arm from the ground

and fall again, and lie there this time, still. A little smoke was

rising from the pistol on the ground, and he looked at his own, and saw

the smoke flowing upward out of it.



"I expect that's all," he said aloud.



But as he came nearer Trampas, he covered him with his weapon. He

stopped a moment, seeing the hand on the ground move. Two fingers

twitched, and then ceased; for it was all. The Virginian stood looking

down at Trampas.



"Both of mine hit," he said, once more aloud. "His must have gone mighty

close to my arm. I told her it would not be me."



He had scarcely noticed that he was being surrounded and congratulated.

His hand was being shaken, and he saw it was Scipio in tears. Scipio's

joy made his heart like lead within him. He was near telling his friend

everything, but he did not.



"If anybody wants me about this," he said, "I will be at the hotel."



"Who'll want you?" said Scipio. "Three of us saw his gun out." And he

vented his admiration. "You were that cool! That quick!"



"I'll see you boys again," said the Virginian, heavily; and he walked

away.



Scipio looked after him, astonished. "Yu' might suppose he was in poor

luck," he said to McLean.



The Virginian walked to the hotel, and stood on the threshold of his

sweetheart's room. She had heard his step, and was upon her feet. Her

lips were parted, and her eyes fixed on him, nor did she move, or speak.



"Yu' have to know it," said he. "I have killed Trampas."



"Oh, thank God!" she said; and he found her in his arms. Long they

embraced without speaking, and what they whispered then with their

kisses, matters not.



Thus did her New England conscience battle to the end, and, in the end,

capitulate to love. And the next day, with the bishop's blessing, and

Mrs. Taylor's broadest smile, and the ring on her finger, the Virginian

departed with his bride into the mountains.



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