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Into what mood was it that the Virginian now fell? Being less
busy, did he begin to "grieve" about the girl on Bear Creek? I
only know that after talking so lengthily he fell into a nine
days' silence. The talking part of him deeply and unbrokenly
slept.
Official words of course came from him as we rode southward from
the railroad, gathering the Judge's stray cattle. During the many
weeks since the spring round-up, some of these animals had as
usual got very far off their range, and getting them on again
became the present business of our party.
Directions and commands--whatever communications to his
subordinates were needful to the forwarding of this--he duly
gave. But routine has never at any time of the world passed for
conversation. His utterances, such as, "We'll work Willo' Creek
to-morro' mawnin'," or, "I want the wagon to be at the fawks o'
Stinkin' Water by Thursday," though on some occasions numerous
enough to sound like discourse, never once broke the man's true
silence. Seeming to keep easy company with the camp, he yet kept
altogether to himself. That talking part of him--the mood which
brings out for you your friend's spirit and mind as a free gift
or as an exchange--was down in some dark cave of his nature,
hidden away. Perhaps it had been dreaming; perhaps completely
reposing. The Virginian was one of those rare ones who are able
to refresh themselves in sections. To have a thing on his mind
did not keep his body from resting. During our recent journey--it
felt years ago now!--while our caboose on the freight train had
trundled endlessly westward, and the men were on the ragged edge,
the very jumping-off place, of mutiny and possible murder, I had
seen him sleep like a child. He snatched the moments not
necessary for vigil I had also seen him sit all night watching
his responsibility, ready to spring on it and fasten his teeth in
it. And now that he had confounded them with their own attempted
weapon of ridicule, his powers seemed to be profoundly dormant.
That final pitched battle of wits had made the men his captives
and admirers--all save Trampas. And of him the Virginian did not
seem to be aware.
But Scipio le Moyne would say to me now and then, "If I was
Trampas, I'd pull my freight." And once he added, "Pull it kind
of casual, yu' know, like I wasn't noticing myself do it."
"Yes," our friend Shorty murmured pregnantly, with his eye upon
the quiet Virginian, "he's sure studying his revenge."
"Studying your pussy-cat," said Scipio. "He knows what he'll do.
The time 'ain't arrived." This was the way they felt about it;
and not unnaturally this was the way they made me, the
inexperienced Easterner, feel about it. That Trampas also felt
something about it was easy to know. Like the leaven which
leavens the whole lump, one spot of sulkiness in camp will spread
its dull flavor through any company that sits near it; and we had
to sit near Trampas at meals for nine days.
His sullenness was not wonderful. To feel himself forsaken by his
recent adherents, to see them gone over to his enemy, could not
have made his reflections pleasant. Why he did not take himself
off to other climes--"pull his freight casual," as Scipio said--I
can explain only thus: pay was due him--"time," as it was called
in cow-land; if he would have this money, he must stay under the
Virginian's command until the Judge's ranch on Sunk Creek should
be reached; meanwhile, each day's work added to the wages in
store for him; and finally, once at Sunk Creek, it would be no
more the Virginian who commanded him; it would be the real ranch
foreman. At the ranch he would be the Virginian's equal again,
both of them taking orders from their officially recognized
superior, this foreman. Shorty's word about "revenge" seemed to
me like putting the thing backwards. Revenge, as I told Scipio,
was what I should be thinking about if I were Trampas.
"He dassent," was Scipio's immediate view. "Not till he's got
strong again. He got laughed plumb sick by the bystanders, and
whatever spirit he had was broke in the presence of us all. He'll
have to recuperate." Scipio then spoke of the Virginian's
attitude. "Maybe revenge ain't just the right word for where this
affair has got to now with him. When yu' beat another man at his
own game like he done to Trampas, why, yu've had all the revenge
yu' can want, unless you're a hog. And he's no hog. But he has
got it in for Trampas. They've not reckoned to a finish. Would
you let a man try such spitework on you and quit thinkin' about
him just because yu'd headed him off?" To this I offered his own
notion about hogs and being satisfied. "Hogs!" went on Scipio, in
a way that dashed my suggestion to pieces; "hogs ain't in the
case. He's got to deal with Trampas somehow--man to man. Trampas
and him can't stay this way when they get back and go workin'
same as they worked before. No, sir; I've seen his eye twice, and
I know he's goin' to reckon to a finish."
I still must, in Scipio's opinion, have been slow to understand,
when on the afternoon following this talk I invited him to tell
me what sort of "finish" he wanted, after such a finishing as had
been dealt Trampas already. Getting "laughed plumb sick by the
bystanders" (I borrowed his own not overstated expression) seemed
to me a highly final finishing. While I was running my notions
off to him, Scipio rose, and, with the frying-pan he had been
washing, walked slowly at me.
"I do believe you'd oughtn't to be let travel alone the way you
do." He put his face close to mine. His long nose grew eloquent
in its shrewdness, while the fire in his bleached blue eye burned
with amiable satire. "What has come and gone between them two has
only settled the one point he was aimin' to make. He was
appointed boss of this outfit in the absence of the regular
foreman. Since then all he has been playin' for is to hand back
his men to the ranch in as good shape as they'd been handed to
him, and without losing any on the road through desertion or
shooting or what not. He had to kick his cook ok the train that
day, and the loss made him sorrowful, I could see. But I'd
happened to come along, and he jumped me into the vacancy, and I
expect he is pretty near consoled. And as boss of the outfit he
beat Trampas, who was settin' up for opposition boss. And the
outfit is better than satisfied it come out that way, and they're
stayin' with him; and he'll hand them all back in good condition,
barrin' that lost cook. So for the present his point is made, yu'
see. But look ahead a little. It may not be so very far ahead
yu'll have to look. We get back to the ranch. He's not boss there
any more. His responsibility is over. He is just one of us again,
taking orders from a foreman they tell me has showed partiality
to Trampas more'n a few times. Partiality! That's what Trampas is
plainly trusting to. Trusting it will fix him all right and fix
his enemy all wrong. He'd not otherwise dare to keep sour like
he's doing. Partiality! D' yu' think it'll scare off the enemy?"
Scipio looked across a little creek to where the Virginian was
helping threw the gathered cattle on the bedground. "What odds
"--he pointed the frying-pan at the Southerner--"d' yu' figure
Trampas's being under any foreman's wing will make to a man like
him? He's going to remember Mr. Trampas and his spite-work if
he's got to tear him out from under the wing, and maybe tear off
the wing in the operation. And I am goin' to advise your folks,"
ended the complete Scipio, "not to leave you travel so much
alone--not till you've learned more life."
He had made me feel my inexperience, convinced me of innocence,
undoubtedly; and during the final days of our journey I no longer
invoked his aid to my reflections upon this especial topic: What
would the Virginian do to Trampas? Would it be another
intellectual crushing of him, like the frog story, or would there
be something this time more material--say muscle, or possibly
gunpowder--in it? And was Scipio, after all, infallible? I didn't
pretend to understand the Virginian; after several years'
knowledge of him he remained utterly beyond me. Scipio's
experience was not yet three weeks long. So I let him alone as to
all this, discussing with him most other things good and evil in
the world, and being convinced of much further innocence; for
Scipio's twenty odd years were indeed a library of life. I have
never met a better heart, a shrewder wit, and looser morals, with
yet a native sense of decency and duty somewhere hard and fast
enshrined.
But all the while I was wondering about the Virginian: eating
with him, sleeping with him (only not so sound as he did), and
riding beside him often for many hours.
Experiments in conversation I did make--and failed. One day
particularly while, after a sudden storm of hail had chilled the
earth numb and white like winter in fifteen minutes, we sat
drying and warming ourselves by a fire that we built, I touched
upon that theme of equality on which I knew him to hold opinions
as strong as mine. "Oh," he would reply, and "Cert'nly"; and when
I asked him what it was in a man that made him a leader of men,
he shook his head and puffed his pipe. So then, noticing how the
sun had brought the earth in half an hour back from winter to
summer again, I spoke of our American climate.
It was a potent drug, I said, for millions to be swallowing every
day.
"Yes," said he, wiping the damp from his Winchester rifle.
Our American climate, I said, had worked remarkable changes, at
least.
"Yes," he said; and did not ask what they were.
So I had to tell him. "It has made successful politcians of the
Irish. That's one. And it has given our whole race the habit of
poker."
Bang went his Winchester. The bullet struck close to my left. I
sat up angrily.
"That's the first foolish thing I ever saw you do! I said.
"Yes," he drawled slowly, "I'd ought to have done it sooner. He
was pretty near lively again." And then he picked up a
rattlesnake six feet behind me. It had been numbed by the hail,
part revived by the sun, and he had shot its head off.
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