The Game And The Nation Act Second

: The Virginian

"That is the only step I have had to take this whole trip," said the

Virginian. He holstered his pistol with a jerk. "I have been fearing

he would force it on me." And he looked at empty, receding Dakota with

disgust. "So nyeh back home!" he muttered.



"Known your friend long?" whispered Scipio to me.



"Fairly," I answered.



Scipio's bleached eyes brightened with admiration as he onsidered the

Southerner's back. "Well," he stated judicially, "start awful early when

yu' go to fool with him, or he'll make you feel unpunctual."



"I expaict I've had them almost all of three thousand miles," said the

Virginian, tilting his head toward the noise in the caboose. "And I've

strove to deliver them back as I received them. The whole lot. And I

would have. But he has spoiled my hopes." The deputy foreman looked

again at Dakota. "It's a disappointment," he added. "You may know what I

mean."



I had known a little, but not to the very deep, of the man's pride and

purpose in this trust. Scipio gave him sympathy. "There must be quite a

balance of 'em left with yu' yet," said Scipio, cheeringly.



"I had the boys plumb contented," pursued the deputy foreman, hurt

into open talk of himself. "Away along as far as Saynt Paul I had them

reconciled to my authority. Then this news about gold had to strike us."



"And they're a-dreamin' nuggets and Parisian bowleyvards," suggested

Scipio.



The Virginian smiled gratefully at him.



"Fortune is shinin' bright and blindin' to their delicate young eyes,"

he said, regaining his usual self.



We all listened a moment to the rejoicings within.



"Energetic, ain't they?" said the Southerner. "But none of 'em was

whelped savage enough to sing himself bloodthirsty. And though they're

strainin' mighty earnest not to be tame, they're goin' back to Sunk

Creek with me accordin' to the Judge's awders. Never a calf of them will

desert to Rawhide, for all their dangerousness; nor I ain't goin' to

have any fuss over it. Only one is left now that don't sing. Maybe I

will have to make some arrangements about him. The man I have parted

with," he said, with another glance at Dakota, "was our cook, and I will

ask yu' to replace him, Colonel."



Scipio gaped wide. "Colonel! Say!" He stared at the Virginian. "Did I

meet yu' at the palace?"



"Not exackly meet," replied the Southerner. "I was present one mawnin'

las' month when this gentleman awdehed frawgs' laigs."



"Sakes and saints, but that was a mean position!" burst out Scipio. "I

had to tell all comers anything all day. Stand up and jump language hot

off my brain at 'em. And the pay don't near compensate for the drain on

the system. I don't care how good a man is, you let him keep a-tappin'

his presence of mind right along, without takin' a lay-off, and you'll

have him sick. Yes, sir. You'll hit his nerves. So I told them they

could hire some fresh man, for I was goin' back to punch cattle or fight

Indians, or take a rest somehow, for I didn't propose to get jaded,

and me only twenty-five years old. There ain't no regular Colonel

Cyrus Jones any more, yu' know. He met a Cheyenne telegraph pole in

seventy-four, and was buried. But his palace was doin' big business, and

he had been a kind of attraction, and so they always keep a live bear

outside, and some poor fello', fixed up like the Colonel used to be,

inside. And it's a turruble mean position. Course I'll cook for yu'.

Yu've a dandy memory for faces!"



"I wasn't right convinced till I kicked him off and you gave that shut

to your eyes again," said the Virginian.



Once more the door opened. A man with slim black eyebrows, slim black

mustache, and a black shirt tied with a white handkerchief was looking

steadily from one to the other of us.



"Good day!" he remarked generally and without enthusiasm; and to the

Virginian, "Where's Schoffner?"



"I expaict he'll have got his bottle by now, Trampas."



Trampas looked from one to the other of us again. "Didn't he say he was

coming back?"



"He reminded me he was going for a bottle, and afteh that he didn't wait

to say a thing."



Trampas looked at the platform and the railing and the steps. "He told

me he was coming back," he insisted.



"I don't reckon he has come, not without he clumb up ahaid somewhere.

An' I mus' say, when he got off he didn't look like a man does when he

has the intention o' returnin'."



At this Scipio coughed, and pared his nails attentively. We had already

been avoiding each other's eye. Shorty did not count. Since he got

aboard, his meek seat had been the bottom step.



The thoughts of Trampas seemed to be in difficulty. "How long's this

train been started?" he demanded.



"This hyeh train?" The Virginian consulted his watch. "Why, it's been

fanning it a right smart little while," said he, laying no stress upon

his indolent syllables.



"Huh!" went Trampas. He gave the rest of us a final unlovely scrutiny.

"It seems to have become a passenger train," he said. And he returned

abruptly inside the caboose.



"Is he the member who don't sing?" asked Scipio.



"That's the specimen," replied the Southerner.



"He don't seem musical in the face," said Scipio.



"Pshaw!" returned the Virginian. "Why, you surely ain't the man to mind

ugly mugs when they're hollow!"



The noise inside had dropped quickly to stillness. You could scarcely

catch the sound of talk. Our caboose was clicking comfortably westward,

rail after rail, mile upon mile, while night was beginning to rise from

earth into the clouded sky.



"I wonder if they have sent a search party forward to hunt Schoffner?"

said the Virginian. "I think I'll maybe join their meeting." He opened

the door upon them. "Kind o' dark hyeh, ain't it?" said he. And lighting

the lantern, he shut us out.



"What do yu' think?" said Scipio to me. "Will he take them to Sunk

Creek?"



"He evidently thinks he will," said I. "He says he will, and he has the

courage of his convictions."



"That ain't near enough courage to have!" Scipio exclaimed.

"There's times in life when a man has got to have courage WITHOUT

convictions--WITHOUT them--or he is no good. Now your friend is that

deep constitooted that you don't know and I don't know what he's

thinkin' about all this."



"If there's to be any gun-play," put in the excellent Shorty, "I'll

stand in with him."



"Ah, go to bed with your gun-play!" retorted Scipio, entirely

good-humored. "Is the Judge paying for a carload of dead punchers to

gather his beef for him? And this ain't a proposition worth a man's

gettin' hurt for himself, anyway."



"That's so," Shorty assented.



"No," speculated Scipio, as the night drew deeper round us and the

caboose click-clucked and click-clucked over the rail joints; "he's

waitin' for somebody else to open this pot. I'll bet he don't know but

one thing now, and that's that nobody else shall know he don't know

anything."



Scipio had delivered himself. He lighted a cigarette, and no more wisdom

came from him. The night was established. The rolling bad-lands sank

away in it. A train-hand had arrived over the roof, and hanging the red

lights out behind, left us again without remark or symptom of curiosity.

The train-hands seemed interested in their own society and lived in

their own caboose. A chill wind with wet in it came blowing from the

invisible draws, and brought the feel of the distant mountains.



"That's Montana!" said Scipio, snuffing. "I am glad to have it inside my

lungs again."



"Ain't yu' getting cool out there?" said the Virginian's voice. "Plenty

room inside."



Perhaps he had expected us to follow him; or perhaps he had meant us

to delay long enough not to seem like a reenforcement. "These gentlemen

missed the express at Medora," he observed to his men, simply.



What they took us for upon our entrance I cannot say, or what they

believed. The atmosphere of the caboose was charged with voiceless

currents of thought. By way of a friendly beginning to the three hundred

miles of caboose we were now to share so intimately, I recalled myself

to them. I trusted no more of the Christian Endeavor had delayed them.

"I am so lucky to have caught you again," I finished. "I was afraid my

last chance of reaching the Judge's had gone."



Thus I said a number of things designed to be agreeable, but they met my

small talk with the smallest talk you can have. "Yes," for instance, and

"Pretty well, I guess," and grave strikings of matches and thoughtful

looks at the floor. I suppose we had made twenty miles to the

imperturbable clicking of the caboose when one at length asked his

neighbor had he ever seen New York.



"No," said the other. "Flooded with dudes, ain't it?"



"Swimmin'," said the first.



"Leakin', too," said a third.



"Well, my gracious!" said a fourth, and beat his knee in private

delight. None of them ever looked at me. For some reason I felt

exceedingly ill at ease.



"Good clothes in New York," said the third.



"Rich food," said the first.



"Fresh eggs, too," said the third.



"Well, my gracious!" said the fourth, beating his knee.



"Why, yes," observed the Virginian, unexpectedly; "they tell me that

aiggs there ain't liable to be so rotten as yu'll strike 'em in this

country."



None of them had a reply for this, and New York was abandoned. For some

reason I felt much better.



It was a new line they adopted next, led off by Trampas.



"Going to the excitement?" he inquired, selecting Shorty.



"Excitement?" said Shorty, looking up.



"Going to Rawhide?" Trampas repeated. And all watched Shorty.



"Why, I'm all adrift missin' that express," said Shorty.



"Maybe I can give you employment," suggested the Virginian. "I am taking

an outfit across the basin."



"You'll find most folks going to Rawhide, if you re looking for

company," pursued Trampas, fishing for a recruit.



"How about Rawhide, anyway?" said Scipio, skillfully deflecting this

missionary work. "Are they taking much mineral out? Have yu' seen any of

the rock?"



"Rock?" broke in the enthusiast who had beaten his knee. "There!" And he

brought some from his pocket.



"You're always showing your rock," said Trampas, sulkily; for Scipio now

held the conversation, and Shorty returned safely to his dozing.



"H'm!" went Scipio at the rock. He turned it back and forth in his hand,

looking it over; he chucked and caught it slightingly in the air, and

handed it back. "Porphyry, I see." That was his only word about it. He

said it cheerily. He left no room for discussion. You could not damn

a thing worse. "Ever been in Santa Rita?" pursued Scipio, while the

enthusiast slowly pushed his rock back into his pocket. "That's down in

New Mexico. Ever been to Globe, Arizona?" And Scipio talked away about

the mines he had known. There was no getting at Shorty any more that

evening. Trampas was foiled of his fish, or of learning how the fish's

heart lay. And by morning Shorty had been carefully instructed to change

his mind about once an hour. This is apt to discourage all but very

superior missionaries. And I too escaped for the rest of this night. At

Glendive we had a dim supper, and I bought some blankets; and after that

it was late, and sleep occupied the attention of us all.



We lay along the shelves of the caboose, a peaceful sight I should

think, in that smoothly trundling cradle. I slept almost immediately, so

tired that not even our stops or anything else waked me, save once, when

the air I was breathing grew suddenly pure, and I roused. Sitting in

the door was the lonely figure of the Virginian. He leaned in silent

contemplation of the occasional moon, and beneath it the Yellowstone's

swift ripples. On the caboose shelves the others slept sound and still,

each stretched or coiled as he had first put himself. They were not

untrustworthy to look at, it seemed to me--except Trampas. You would

have said the rest of that young humanity was average rough male blood,

merely needing to be told the proper things at the right time; and one

big bunchy stocking of the enthusiast stuck out of his blanket, solemn

and innocent, and I laughed at it. There was a light sound by the door,

and I found the Virginian's eye on me. Finding who it was, he nodded

and motioned with his hand to go to sleep. And this I did with him in

my sight, still leaning in the open door, through which came the

interrupted moon and the swimming reaches of the Yellowstone.