The Virginian
XIV
BETWEEN THE ACTS
My road to Sunk Creek lay in no straight line. By rail I diverged northwest
to Fort Meade, and thence, after some stay with the kind military people, I made
my way on a horse. Up here in the Black Hills it sluiced rain most intolerably.
The horse and I enjoyed the country and ourselves but little; and when finally I
changed from the saddle into a stagecoach, I caught a thankful expression upon
the animal's face, and returned the same.
"Six legs inside this jerky to-night?" said somebody, as I climbed the wheel.
"Well, we'll give thanks for not havin' eight," he added cheerfully. "Clamp your
mind on to that, Shorty." And he slapped the shoulder of his neighbor. Naturally
I took these two for old companions. But we were all total strangers. They told
me of the new gold excitement at Rawhide, and supposed it would bring up the
Northern Pacific; and when I explained the millions owed to this road's German
bondholders, they were of opinion that a German would strike it richer at
Rawhide. We spoke of all sorts of things, and in our silence I gloated on the
autumn holiday promised me by Judge Henry. His last letter had said that an
outfit would be starting for his ranch from Billings on the seventh, and he
would have a horse for me. This was the fifth. So we six legs in the jerky
travelled harmoniously on over the rain-gutted road, getting no deeper knowledge
of each other than what our outsides might imply.
Not that we concealed anything. The man who had slapped Shorty introduced
himself early. "Scipio le Moyne, from Gallipolice, Ohio," he said. "The eldest
of us always gets called Scipio. It's French. But us folks have been white for a
hundred years." He was limber and light-muscled, and fell skilfully about,
evading bruises when the jerky reeled or rose on end. He had a strange, long,
jocular nose, very wary-looking, and a bleached blue eye. Cattle was his
business, as a rule, but of late he had been "looking around some," and Rawhide
seemed much on his brain. Shorty struck me as "looking around" also. He was
quite short, indeed, and the jerky hurt him almost every time. He was
light-haired and mild. Think of a yellow dog that is lost, and fancies each
newcomer in sight is going to turn out his master, and you will have Shorty.
It was the Northern Pacific that surprised us into intimacy. We were nearing
Medora. We had made a last arrangement of our legs. I lay stretched in silence,
placid in the knowledge it was soon to end. So I drowsed. I felt something
sudden, and, waking, saw Scipio passing through the air. As Shorty next shot
from the jerky, I beheld smoke and the locomotive. The Northern Pacific had
changed its schedule. A valise is a poor companion for catching a train with.
There was rutted sand and lumpy, knee-high grease wood in our short cut. A piece
of stray wire sprang from some hole and hung caracoling about my ankle. Tin cans
spun from my stride. But we made a conspicuous race. Two of us waved hats, and
there was no moment that some one of us was not screeching. It meant twenty-four
hours to us.
Perhaps we failed to catch the train's attention, though the theory seems
monstrous. As it moved off in our faces, smooth and easy and insulting, Scipio
dropped instantly to a walk, and we two others outstripped him and came
desperately to the empty track. There went the train. Even still its puffs were
the separated puffs of starting, that bitten-off, snorty kind, and sweat and our
true natures broke freely forth.
I kicked my valise, and then sat on it, dumb.
Shorty yielded himself up aloud. All his humble secrets came out of him. He
walked aimlessly round, lamenting. He had lost his job, and he mentioned the
ranch. He had played cards, and he mentioned the man. He had sold his horse and
saddle to catch a friend on this train, and he mentioned what the friend had
been going to do for him. He told a string of griefs and names to the air, as if
the air knew.
Meanwhile Scipio arrived with extreme leisure at the rails. He stuck his
hands into his pockets and his head out at the very small train. His bleached
blue eyes shut to slits as he watched the rear car in its smoke-blur ooze away
westward among the mounded bluffs. "Lucky it's out of range," I thought. But now
Scipio spoke to it.
"Why, you seem to think you've left me behind," he began easily, in fawning
tones. "You're too much of a kid to have such thoughts. Age some." His next
remark grew less wheedling. "I wouldn't be a bit proud to meet yu'. Why, if I
was seen travellin' with yu', I'd have to explain it to my friends! Think you've
got me left, do yu'? Just because yu' ride through this country on a rail, do
yu' claim yu' can find your way around? I could take yu' out ten yards in the
brush and lose yu' in ten seconds, you spangle-roofed hobo! Leave ME behind? you
recent blanket-mortgage yearlin'! You plush-lined, nickel-plated, whistlin' wash
room, d' yu' figure I can't go east just as soon as west? Or I'll stay right
here if it suits me, yu' dude-inhabited hot-box! Why, yu' coon-bossed
face-towel—" But from here he rose in flights of novelty that appalled and held
me spellbound, and which are not for me to say to you. Then he came down easily
again, and finished with expressions of sympathy for it because it could never
have known a mother.
"Do you expaict it could show a male parent offhand?" inquired a slow voice
behind us. I jumped round, and there was the Virginian.
"Male parent!" scoffed the prompt Scipio. "Ain't you heard about THEM yet?"
"Them? Was there two?"
"Two? The blamed thing was sired by a whole doggone Dutch syndicate."
"Why, the piebald son of a gun!" responded the Virginian, sweetly. "I got
them steers through all right," he added to me. "Sorry to see yu' get so out o'
breath afteh the train. Is your valise sufferin' any?"
"Who's he?" inquired Scipio, curiously, turning to me.
The Southerner sat with a newspaper on the rear platform of a caboose. The
caboose stood hitched behind a mile or so of freight train, and the train was
headed west. So here was the deputy foreman, his steers delivered in Chicago,
his men (I could hear them) safe in the caboose, his paper in his lap, and his
legs dangling at ease over the railing. He wore the look of a man for whom
things are going smooth. And for me the way to Billings was smooth now, also.
"Who's he?" Scipio repeated.
But from inside the caboose loud laughter and noise broke on us. Some one was
reciting "And it's my night to howl."
"We'll all howl when we get to Rawhide," said some other one; and they howled
now.
"These hyeh steam cyars," said the Virginian to Scipio, "make a man's
language mighty nigh as speedy as his travel." Of Shorty he took no notice
whatever—no more than of the manifestations in the caboose.
"So yu' heard me speakin' to the express," said Scipio. "Well, I guess,
sometimes I—See here," he exclaimed, for the Virginian was gravely considering
him, "I may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You didn't catch ME
squandering no speed. Soon as—"
"I noticed," said the Virginian, "thinkin' came quicker to yu' than runnin'."
I was glad I was not Shorty, to have my measure taken merely by my way of
missing a train. And of course I was sorry that I had kicked my valise.
"Oh, I could tell yu'd been enjoyin' us!" said Scipio. "Observin' somebody
else's scrape always kind o' rests me too. Maybe you're a philosopher, but maybe
there's a pair of us drawd in this deal."
Approval now grew plain upon the face of the Virginian. "By your laigs," said
he, "you are used to the saddle."
"I'd be called used to it, I expect."
"By your hands," said the Southerner, again, "you ain't roped many steers
lately. Been cookin' or something?"
"Say," retorted Scipio, "tell my future some now. Draw a conclusion from my
mouth."
"I'm right distressed," unsevered the gentle Southerner, "we've not a drop in
the outfit."
"Oh, drink with me uptown!" cried Scipio "I'm pleased to death with yu'."
The Virginian glanced where the saloons stood just behind the station, and
shook his head.
"Why, it ain't a bit far to whiskey from here!" urged the other, plaintively.
"Step down, now. Scipio le Moyne's my name. Yes, you're lookin' for my brass
ear-rings. But there ain't no ear-rings on me. I've been white for a hundred
years. Step down. I've a forty-dollar thirst."
"You're certainly white," began the Virginian. "But—"
Here the caboose resumed:
"I'm wild, and woolly, and full of peas;
I'm hard to curry above the knees;
I'm a she-wolf from Bitter Creek, and
It's my night to ho-o-wl—"
And as they howled and stamped, the wheels of the caboose began to turn
gently and to murmur.
The Virginian rose suddenly. "Will yu' save that thirst and take a
forty-dollar job?"
"Missin' trains, profanity, or what?" said Scipio.
"I'll tell yu' soon as I'm sure."
At this Scipio looked hard at the Virginian. "Why, you're talkin' business!"
said he, and leaped on the caboose, where I was already. "I WAS thinkin' of
Rawhide," he added, "but I ain't any more."
"Well, good luck!" said Shorty, on the track behind us.
"Oh, say!" said Scipio, "he wanted to go on that train, just like me."
"Get on," called the Virginian. "But as to getting a job, he ain't just like
you." So Shorty came, like a lost dog when you whistle to him.
Our wheels clucked over the main-line switch. A train-hand threw it shut
after us, jumped aboard, and returned forward over the roofs. Inside the caboose
they had reached the third howling of the she-wolf.
"Friends of yourn?" said Scipio.
"My outfit," drawled the Virginian.
"Do yu' always travel outside?" inquired Scipio.
"It's lonesome in there," returned the deputy foreman. And here one of them
came out, slamming the door.
"Hell!" he said, at sight of the distant town. Then, truculently, to the
Virginian, "I told you I was going to get a bottle here."
"Have your bottle, then," said the deputy foreman, and kicked him off into
Dakota. (It was not North Dakota yet; they had not divided it.) The Virginian
had aimed his pistol at about the same time with his boot. Therefore the man sat
in Dakota quietly, watching us go away into Montana, and offering no objections.
Just before he became too small to make out, we saw him rise and remove himself
back toward the saloons.