The Virginian
XV
THE GAME AND THE NATION—ACT SECOND
"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 considered 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.