Where Fancy was Bred

by Owen Wister

 

WHERE FANCY WAS BRED

BY OWEN WISTER

ON a Monday noon a small company of horsemen strung out along the trail from Sunk Creek to gather cattle over their allotted sweep of range. Spring was backward, and they, as they rode galloping and gathering upon the cold week's work, cursed cheerily, and occasionally sang. The man from Virginia was grave in bearing and of infrequent speech, but he had one only song, a matter of some seventy-nine verses. Seventy-eight were quite unprintable, and rejoiced his brother cow-punchers monstrously. They, knowing him to be a singular man, forbore ever to press him, and awaited his own humor, lest he should weary of the lyric; and when, after a day of silence apparently saturnine, he would lift his gentle voice and begin—

"If you go to monkey with my Looloo girl,
I'll tell you what I'll do:
I'll cyarve your heart with my razor and
I'll shoot you with my pistol too—"

then they would stridently take up each last line, and keep it going three, four, ten times, and kick holes in the ground to it.

By the levels of Bear Creek, that reach like inlets among the promontories of the lonely hills, they came upon the school-house, nearly roofed, and ready for the first native Wyoming crop. It symbolized the dawn of a neighborhood, and it brought a change into the wilderness air. The feel of it struck cold upon the vagrant spirits of the cow-punchers, and they told each other that, what with women and children and wire fences, this country would not long be a country for men. They stopped for a meal at an old comrade's. They looked over his gate, and there he was, pottering among garden furrows.

"Pickin' nosegays?" inquired the Virginian; and the old comrade asked if they could not recognize potatoes except in the dish. But he grinned sheepishly at them too, because they knew he had not always lived in a garden. Then he took them into his house, where they saw an object crawling on the floor with a tin locomotive. He began to remove the locomotive, but stopped in alarm at the result, and his wife looked in from the kitchen to caution him about humoring little Christopher.

Then the Virginian slowly spoke again: "How many little strangers have yu' got, James?"

"Only two."

"My! Ain't it most three years since yu' married? Yu' mustn't let time creep ahaid o' yu', James."

The father once more grinned at his guests, who themselves turned sheepish and polite; for Mrs. Westfall came in, brisk and hearty, and set the meat upon the table. After that it was she who talked. The guests ate scrupulously, muttering "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," in their plates, while their hostess told them of the increasing families upon Bear Creek, and the expected school-teacher, and little Alfred's early teething, and how it was time for them all to become husbands like James. The bachelors of the saddle listened, always diffident, but eating heartily to the end, and soon after rode away together in a thoughtful clump. The wives of Bear Creek were few as yet, and the homes scattered; the school-house was only a sprig on the vast face of a world of elk and bear and uncertain Indians; but that night, when the earth near the fire was littered with the cow-punchers' beds, the Virginian was heard drawling to himself: "Alfred and Christopher. Oh, sugar!"

And they found pleasure in the delicately chosen shade of this oath. He also recited to them a new verse about how he took his Looloo girl to the school-house for to learn her ABC; and as it was quite original and unprintable, the camp laughed and swore joyfully, and rolled in its blankets to sleep under the stars.

 

Upon a Monday noon likewise (for things will happen so) some tearful people in petticoats waved handkerchiefs at a train that was just leaving Bennington, Vermont. A girl's face smiled back at them once, and withdrew quickly, for they must not see the smile die away. The girl was twenty-two, and she had been once to New York, and to Boston twice; but Molly Stark had been her great-grandmother, and so she was setting forth, fearless and alone, from Bennington, Vermont, to teach school on Bear Creek, Wyoming. She had a little money, a few clothes, and a determination not to be a burden on her mother; beyond this, she possessed not much except spelling-books and a craving for the unknown. At Hoosac Junction, which is not far, she passed the up train bound back toward her dwindling-home; and seeing the engineer and the conductor look so usual, her eyes failed her at last, and she shut them against this glimpse of what lay behind her, and pressed a little bunch of flowers closer in her hand. But after Rotterdam Junction, which is not much further, she sat bravely up in the through car, dwelling upon the unknown. She thought she had attained it in Ohio on Tuesday morning, and wrote a letter about it to Bennington. On Wednesday afternoon in Iowa she felt sure, and wrote another letter, much more picturesque. But on the following day, after breakfast at North Platte, Nebraska, she wrote a very long letter indeed, and told them that she had seen a black pig on a white pile of buffalo bones, catching drops of water in the air as they fell from the railroad tank. She also wrote that trees were extraordinarily scarce. Each hour westward from the pig confirmed this opinion, and when she left the train at Rock Creek, late upon that fourth night—in those days the trains were slower—she knew that she had really attained the unknown, and sent an expensive telegram to say that she was very well.

At six in the morning the stage drove away, with her its only passenger, into the sage-brush, and by sundown she had passed through some of the primitive perils of the world. The second team, virgin to harness, and displeased with this novelty, tried to take it off, and went down to the bottom of a gully on its eight hind legs, while Miss Wood sat mute and unflinching beside the driver. Therefore he, when it was over and they on the proper road again, invited her earnestly to be his wife during many of the next fifteen miles, and told her of his snug cabin and his horses and his mine. Then she got down and rode inside, Independence and Grandmother Stark shining in her eye. At Point of Rocks, where they had supper and his drive ended, her face distracted his heart, and he told her once more about his cabin, and lamentably hoped she would remember him. She answered sweetly that she would try, and she gave him her hand. After all, he was a frank-looking boy, who had paid her the highest compliment that a boy knows; and it is said that Molly Stark, in her day, was not a New Woman.

The new driver banished the first one from the maiden's mind. He was not a frank-looking boy, and he had been taking whiskey. All night long he took it, while his passenger, helpless and sleepless inside the lurching stage, sat as upright as she possibly could, nor did the voices that she heard at Drybone reassure her. Sunrise found the white stage lurching eternally on across the alkali, with a driver and a bottle on the box, and a pale girl staring out at the drifted plain, and knotting in her handkerchief some utterly dead flowers. They came to a river, where the man bungled the ford. Two wheels sank down over an edge, and the canvas toppled like a failing kite. The ripple came sucking through the upper spokes, and as she felt the seat careen she put out her head and tremulously asked if anything was wrong. But the driver was addressing his team with language, and also with the lash. Then a tall man appeared close against the buried axles, and took her out of the stage on his horse so suddenly that she screamed. She felt splashes, saw a swimming flood, and found herself lifted down upon the shore. The man said something to her about cheering up, and its being all right, but her wits were stock-still, so she did not speak and thank him. After four days of train and thirty hours of stage, she was having a little too much unknown at once. Then the tall man gently withdrew, leaving her to become herself again. She limply regarded the river pouring round the slanted stage, and a number of horsemen with ropes, who righted the vehicle and got it quickly to dry land, and disappeared at once with a herd of cattle, uttering lusty yells.

She saw the tall one delaying beside the driver, and speaking, but so quietly that not a word reached her, until of a sudden the driver protested loudly, and the man threw something, which turned out to be a bottle, that twisted loftily and dived into the stream. He said something more to the driver, then put his hand on the saddle-horn, looked half-lingeringly at the passenger on the bank, dropped his eyes from hers, and swinging upon his horse, was gone, just as the passenger opened her mouth and with inefficient voice murmured, "Oh, thank you!" at his departing back.

The driver drove up now, a chastened creature. He helped Miss Wood in, and inquired after her welfare with a hanging head; then, meek as his own drenched horses, he climbed back to his reins, and nursed the stage on toward the Bow-Leg Mountains much as if it had been a perambulator. As for Miss Wood, she sat recovered, and reflecting what the man on the horse must think of her. She knew she was not ungrateful, and if he had given her an opportunity she would have explained to him. If he thought she did not appreciate his act— Here into the midst of these regrets came an abrupt memory that she had screamed—she could not be sure when. So she rehearsed the adventure from its beginning, and found one or two further uncertainties—how it had all been while she was on the horse, for instance. It was confusing to determine precisely what she had done with her arms. And the handkerchief with the flowers was gone! She made a few rapid dives in search of it. Had she, or had she not, seen him putting something in his pocket? And why had she behaved so unlike herself? In a few miles Miss Wood entertained sentiments of maidenly resentment toward her rescuer, and maidenly hope to see him again.

 

To that river crossing he came again, alone, when the days were growing short. The ford was dry sand, and the stream a winding lane of shingle. He found a pool—pools always survive the year round in this stream—and having watered his pony, he lunched near the spot to which he had borne the frightened passenger that day. Where the flowing current had been he sat, regarding the extremely safe channel. "She cert'nly wouldn't need to grip me so close this mawnin'," he said, as he pondered over his meal. "I reckon it will mightily astonish her when I tell her how harmless the torrent is lookin'." He held out to his pony a slice of bread matted with sardines, which the pony expertly accepted. "You're a plumb pie-biter, you Monte," he continued. Monte rubbed his nose on his master's shoulder. "I wouldn't trust you with berries and cream. No, seh; not though yu' did rescue a drownin' lady." Presently he tightened the forward cinch, got in the saddle, and the pony fell into his wise mechanical jog, for he had come a long way, and was going a long way, and he knew this as well as the man did.

Steers had jumped to seventy-five. To have nourished in that golden time you need not be dead now, nor even middle-aged; but it is Wyoming mythology already, quite as fabulous as the cat and the fiddle and the high-jumping cow. Indeed, people gathered together and behaved themselves much in the same pleasant, improbable way. Johnson County and Natrona and Converse and others, to say nothing of the Cheyenne Club, had been jumping over the moon for some weeks, all on account of steers; and on the strength of this vigorous price of seventy-five, the Swinton brothers were giving a barbecue at the Goose Egg outfit, their ranch on Bear Creek. Of course the whole neighborhood was bidden, and would come forty miles to a man; some would come further—the Virginian was coming a hundred and eighteen. It had struck him—rather suddenly, as shall be made plain—that he should like to see how they were getting along up there on Bear Creek. "They" was how he put it to himself, and consequently he ought to have been aware that the trousers he bought and the unnecessarily excellent scarf were an extravagance.

In the spring, two days after that miring of the stage, he had learned accidentally that the passenger was the Bear Creek school-marm; but the camp never noticed he ceased to sing that eightieth verse he had made about the ABC which was not printable. He effaced it imperceptibly, giving the boys the other seventy-nine at judicious intervals, so that they dreamed of no guile, but saw in him, whether frequenting camp or town, the same not over-angelic comrade whom they valued and could not wholly understand. All spring he had ridden trail, worked at ditches during summer, and now had just finished with the beef round-up. Yesterday, while he was spending a little comfortable money at the Drybone hog ranch, a casual traveller from the north gossiped of Bear Creek, and the fences up there, and the farm crops, the Westfalls, and the young school-marm from Vermont, for whom the Taylors had built a cabin next door to theirs. He had not seen her, but Mrs. Taylor and all the ladies thought the world of her, and Lin McLean had told him she was "away up in G." She would have plenty of partners at this Swinton barbecue. Great boom for the country, wasn't it, steers jumping that way?

The Virginian heard, asking no questions; and left town in an hour, with the scarf and trousers tied in his slicker behind his saddle. After looking upon the ford again, even though it was dry and not at all the same place, he journeyed inattentively. When you have been hard at work for months, with no time to think, of course you think a great deal during your first empty days. "Step along, you Monte hawse!" he said, rousing after some while. He disciplined Monte, who flattened his ears affectedly and snorted. "Why, you surely ain' thinkin' of you'self as a hero? She wasn't really a-drowndin', you pie-biter." He rested his serious glance upon the alkali. "She's not likely to have forgot that mix-up, though. I guess I'll not remind her about grippin' me, and all that. She wasn't the kind a man ought to josh about such things. She had a right clear eye." Thus, tall and loose in the saddle, did he jog along the sixty miles which still lay between him and the dance.

Two camps in the open, and his Monte horse, untired, brought him to the Swintons' early for the barbecue, and received good food at length, while the rider was welcomed with good whiskey. Good whiskey—for had not steers jumped to seventy-five? Inside the Goose Egg kitchen many small things were preparing, and a steer was roasting whole outside. The bed of flame under it showed steadily brighter against the dusk that was beginning to veil the lowlands. The busy hosts went and came, while men stood and men lay near the fire-glow. Shorty was there, and Nebrasky, and a man called Trampas, and Honey Wiggin, with others, enjoying the occasion; but Honey Wiggin was enjoying himself—he had an audience; he was sitting up discoursing to it.

"Hello!" he said, perceiving the Virginian. "So you've dropped in fer your turn! Number—six, ain't he, boys?"

"Depends who's a-runnin' the countin'," said the Virginian, and stretched himself down among the audience.

"I've saw him number one when nobody else was around," said Trampas.

"How far away was you standin' when you beheld that?" inquired the lounging Southerner.

"Well, boys," said Wiggin, "I expect it will be Miss School-marm says who's number one to-night."

"So she's arrived in this hyeh country?" observed the Virginian, very casually.

"Arrived!" said Trampas again. "Where have you been grazing lately?"

"A right smart way from the mules."

"Nebrasky and the boys was tellin' me they'd missed yu' off the range," again interposed Wiggin. "Say, Nebrasky, who hev yu' offered yer canary to, the school-marm said you mustn't give her?"

Nebrasky grinned wretchedly.

"Well, she's a lady, and she's square, not takin' a man's gift when she don't take the man. But you'd ought to get back all them letters yu' wrote her. Yu' sure ought to ask her for them telltales."

"Ah, pshaw, Honey!" protested the youth. It was well known that he could not write his name.

"Why, if here ain't Bokay Baldy!" cried the agile Wiggin, stooping to fresh prey. "Found them slippers yet, Baldy? Tell yu', boys, that was turruble sad luck Baldy had. Did yu' hear about that? Baldy, yu' know, he can stay on a tame horse most as well as the school-marm. But just you give him a pair of young knittin'-needles and see him make 'em sweat! He worked an elegant pair of slippers with pink cabbages on 'em for Miss Wood."

"I bought 'em at Medicine Bow," blundered Baldy.

"So yu' did!" assented the skilful comedian. "Baldy he bought 'em. And on the road to her cabin there at the Taylors' he got thinkin' they might be too big, and he got studyin' what to do. And he fixed up to tell her about his not bein' sure of the size, and how she was to let him know if they dropped off her, and he'd exchange 'em, and when he got right near her door, why, he couldn't find his courage, and he slips the parcel under the fence and starts serenadin' her. But she ain't inside her cabin at all. She's at supper next door, with the Taylors, and Baldy singin' 'Love has conqwered pride and angwer' to a lone house. Lin McLean was comin' up by Taylor's corral, where Taylor's polled Angus bull was. Well, it was turruble sad. Baldy's pants got tore, but he fell inside the fence, and Lin druv the bull back, and somebody stole them Medicine Bow goloshes. Are yu' goin' to knit her some more, Bokay?"

"About half that ain't straight," Baldy commented, with mildness.

"The half that was tore off yer pants? Well, never mind, Baldy; Lin will get left too, same as all of yu'."

"Is there many?" inquired the Virginian. He was still stretched on his back, looking up at the sky.

"I don't know how many she's been used to where she was raised," Wiggin answered. "A kid stage-driver come from Point of Rocks one day and went back the next. Then the foreman of the 76 outfit, and the horse-wrangler from the Bar Circle L, and two deputy marshals, with punchers stringin' right along—all got their tumble. Old Judge Burrage from Cheyenne come up in August for a hunt, and staid round here and never hunted at all. There was that horse thief—awful good-lookin'. Taylor wanted to warn her about him, but Mrs. Taylor said she'd look after her if it was needed. Mr. Horse-thief gave it up quicker than most; but she couldn't have knowed he had a Mrs. Horse-thief camped on Poison Spider till afterwards. She wouldn't go ridin' with him. She'll go with some—takin' a kid along."

"Bah!" said Trampas.

The Virginian stopped looking at the sky, and watched Trampas from where he lay.

"I think she encourages a man some," said poor Nebrasky.

"Encourages? Because she lets yu' teach her how to shoot?" said Wiggin. "Well—I don't guess I'm a judge. I've always kind o' kep' away from them good women. Don't seem to think of anything to chat about to 'em. The only folks I'd say she encourages is the school kids. She kisses them."

"Riding, and shooting, and kissing the kids," sneered Trampas. "That's a heap too pussy-kitten for me."

They laughed. The sage-brush audience is readily cynical.

"Look for the man, I say," Trampas pursued. "And ain't he there? She leaves Baldy sit on the fence while she and Lin McLean—"

They laughed loudly at the blackguard picture he drew; and the laugh stopped short, for the Virginian stood over Trampas.

"You can rise up now and tell them you lie," he said.

The man was still for a moment in the dead silence. "I thought you claimed you and her wasn't acquainted," said he then.

"Stand on your laigs, you polecat, and say you're a liar."

Trampas's hand moved behind him.

"Quit that," said the Southerner, "or I'll break your neck."

The eye of a man is the prince of deadly weapons. Trampas looked in the Virginian's, and slowly rose. "I didn't mean—" he began, and paused, his face poisonously bloated.

"Well, I'll call that sufficient. Keep a-standin' still. I ain' goin' to trouble yu' long. In admittin' you'self to be a liar, you have spoke God's truth for onced. Honey Wiggin, you and me and the boys have hit town too frequent for any of us to play Sunday on the balance of the gang." He stopped and surveyed Public Opinion, seated around in carefully inexpressive attention. "We ain't a Christian outfit a little bit, and maybe we have most forgotten what decency feels like. But I reckon we haven't plumb forgot what it means. You can sit down now, if you want."

The liar stood, and sneered experimentally, looking at Public Opinion. But this changeful deity was no longer with him, and he heard it variously assenting, "That's so," and "She's a lady," and otherwise excellently moralizing. So he held his peace. When, however, the Virginian had departed to the roasting steer, and Public Opinion relaxed into that comfort which we all experience when the sermon ends, Trampas sat down amid the reviving cheerfulness; and noting certain surmises, he ventured again to be facetious.

"Shet yer rank mouth," said Wiggin to him, amiably. "I don't care whether he knows her or if he done it on principle. I'll accept the roundin' up he gave us—and say! you'll swaller your dose too! Us boys 'll stand in with him on this."

So Trampas swallowed.

And the moralist?

He had championed the feeble and spoken honorably in meeting, and, according to all the constitutions and bylaws, he should have been walking in Virtue's especial calm. But there it was! he had spoken; he had given them a peep through the key-hole; and as he prowled away from the assemblage before whom he stood convicted of decency, it was vicious rather than virtuous that he felt. Other matters also disquieted him; yet he joined Ben Swinton in a seemingly Christian spirit. He took some whiskey and praised the size of the barrel, speaking with his host like this:

"There cert'nly ain' goin' to be sca'ceness about any second helpin'."

"Hope not. We'd ought to have more trimmings, though. We're shy on ducks."

"Yu' have the barrel. Has Lin McLean seen that?"

"No. We tried for ducks away down as far as the Laparel outfit. A real barbecue—"

"There's large thirsts on Bear Creek. Lin McLean will pass on ducks."

"Lin's not thirsty this month."

"Signed for one month, has he?"

"Signed! He's spooning our school-marm."

"They claim she's a right sweet-faced girl."

"Yes; yes; awful agreeable. And next thing you're fooled clean through."

"Yu' don't say!"

"She keeps a-teaching the darned kids, and it seems like a good growed-up man can't interest her."

"You don't say!"

"There used to be all the ducks you wanted at the Laparel, but their fool cook's dead stuck on raising turkeys this year."

"That must have been mighty close to a drowndin' the school-marm got at South Fork."

"Why, I guess not. When? She's never spoken of any such thing—that I've heard."

"Mos' likely the stage-driver got it wrong, then."

"Yes. Must have drownded somebody else. Here they come! That's her ridin' the horse. There's the Westfalls. Where are you running to?"

"To fix up. Got any soap around hyeh?"

"Yes," shouted Swinton, for the Virginian was now some distance away; "towels and everything in the dugout." And he went to welcome his first formal guests.

The Virginian reached his saddle, under a shed. "So she's never mentioned it," said he, untying his slicker for the trousers and scarf. "I didn't notice Lin anywheres around her." He was over in the dugout now, whipping off his overalls; and soon he was beautifully clean, and ready, except for the tie in his scarf and the part in his hair. "I'd have knowed her in Greenland," he remarked. He held the candle up and down at the looking-glass, and the looking-glass up and down at his head. "It's mighty strange why she 'ain't mentioned that." He worried the scarf a fold or two further, and at length, a trifle more than satisfied with his appearance, he proceeded most serenely toward the sound of the tuning fiddles. He passed through the store-room behind the kitchen, stepping lightly lest he should rouse the ten or twelve babies that lay on the table or beneath it. On Bear Creek you always took your babies to a very late affair, because you had no nurse or maid, and Indians sometimes left their reservations, and the babies might wake up at home and want you. So little Alfred and Christopher lay there among wraps, parallel and crosswise with little Taylors and little Carmodys and Lees, and all Bear Creek offspring that was not yet able to skip at large and hamper its indulgent elders in the ballroom.

"Why, Lin ain't hyeh yet!" said the Virginian, looking in upon the people. Miss Wood was standing up for the quadrille, lively enough to all comers, but with something like battle in her bright eye. The Virginian still waited, lurking by the door. "I didn't remember her hair was that pretty," said he. "But ain't she a little, little girl!"

Now she was in truth five feet three; but then he could look away down on the top of her head.

"Salute your honey!" called the first fiddler. All partners bowed to each other, and as she turned, Miss Wood saw the man in the doorway. Again, as it had been at South Fork that day, his eyes dropped from hers, and she, divining instantly why he had come after half a year, thought of the handkerchief and that scream of hers in the river, and became filled with tyranny and anticipation; for indeed he was fine to look upon. So she danced away, carefully unaware of his existence.

"First lady centre!" said her partner, reminding her of her turn. "Have you forgotten how it goes since last time?"

Molly Wood—she was named from her great-grandmother—did not forget again, but quadrilled with the most sprightly devotion.

"I see some new faces to-night," said she, presently.

"Yu' always do forgit our poor faces," said her partner.

"Oh no! There's a stranger now. Who is that black man?"

"Well—he's from Virginia, and he ain't allowin' he's black."

"He's a tenderfoot, I suppose?"

"Ha! ha! ha! That's rich, too!" And so the simple partner explained a great deal about the Virginian to Molly Wood. At the end of the set she saw the man by the door take a step.

"Oh," said she to the partner, "how warm it is! I must see how those babies are doing." And she passed the Virginian in a breeze of unconcern.

His eyes gravely lingered where she had gone. "She knowed me right away," said he. He looked for a moment, then leaned against the door. "'How warm it is!' says she. Well, it ain't so screechin' hot hyeh; and as for rushin' after Alfred and Christopher, when their natural mothehs are bumpin' around handy— She cert'nly can't be offended?" he broke off, and looked again where she had gone. "I 'ain't never studied 'em much," he resumed; and while he stood, Miss Wood passed him brightly again, and was dancing the schottische almost immediately. "Oh yes, she knows me," the swarthy cow-puncher mused. "Yu' may not speak to the stranger yu' scrape by in a door, but yu've got to take trouble not to see him, and what she's a-fussin' at is mighty interestin'. Hello!"

"Hello!" said Lin McLean, sourly. He had just looked into the kitchen.

"Not dancin'?" the Southerner inquired.

"Don't know how."

"Had scyarlet fever and forgot your past life?"

Lin grinned.

"Better persuade the school-marm to learn yu'. She's goin' to give me instruction."

"Huh!" went Mr. McLean, and skulked out to the barrel.

"Why, they claimed you weren't drinkin' this month!" said his friend, following.

"Well, I am. Here's luck!" The two pledged in tin cups. "But I'm not waltzin' with her," blurted Mr. McLean, grievously. "She called me an exception."

"Waltzin'?" said the Virginian, quickly; and hearing the fiddles, he hastened away.

Few in the Bear Creek country could waltz, and with these it was mostly an unsteered and ponderous event; therefore was the Southerner bent upon profiting by his skill. He entered the room, and his lady saw him come where she sat, alone for the moment, and her thoughts grew a little hurried.

"Will you try a turn, ma'am?"

"I beg your pardon?" It was a remote, well-schooled eye she lifted upon him now.

"If you like a waltz, ma'am, will you waltz with me?"

"You're from Virginia, I understand?" said Molly Wood, regarding him politely, but not rising. One gains authority immensely by keeping one's seat. All good teachers know this.

"Yes, ma'am, from Virginia."

"I've heard Southerners have such good manners."

"That's correct." The cow-puncher flushed, but he spoke in his unvaryingly gentle voice.

"For in New England, you know," pursued Miss Molly, noting his scarf and clean-shaven chin, and then again steadily meeting his eye, "gentlemen ask to be presented to ladies before they ask them to waltz."

He stood a moment before her, deeper and deeper scarlet; and the more she saw his handsome looks, the keener rose her enjoyment of this. She waited for him to speak of the river, for then she was going to be surprised, and gradually to recall that slight annoyance, and then be very nice to him. But he gave her a more rapid astonishment. "I ask your pardon, lady," said he, and bowing, walked off, leaving her at once afraid that he might not come back. But she had altogether mistaken her man. Back he came serenely with Mr. Taylor, who suspected nothing, and made them acquainted. Thus were the conventions vindicated. It can never be known what the cow-puncher was going to say next, for James Westfall stepped up with the glass of water he had left Miss Wood to bring, and asking for a turn, most graciously received it. She danced away from a situation where she began to feel herself getting the worst of it. One moment the Virginian stared at his lady lightly circulating, and then he went out to the barrel.

"Been gettin' them instructions?" said Lin McLean; "thought I saw yu' learnin' your steps through the windo'."

"Here's youh good health, sell," said the Southerner. And they pledged again in the tin cups.

"Did she call yu' an exception, or anything?" said Lin.

"Well, it would cipher out right close in that neighbo'hood."

"Here's how, then!" cried the delighted Lin, over his cup. And they proceeded forthwith to feel like brothers.

"Jest because yu' happen to come from Vermont," continued Mr. McLean, "is no cause for stickin' yer nose in the air. Shoo! I was raised in Massachusetts myself, and big men have been raised there too. Daniel Webster and Israel Putnam, and a lot of them politicians."

"Virginia is a good little old State," observed the Southerner.

"Both of 'em's a sight ahead of Vermont. She told me I was the first exception she'd struck."

"What rule were yu' provin' at the time, Lin?"

"Well, yu' see I started to kiss her."

"Jumpin' Jemima!"

"Shucks! I didn't mean nothin'."

"I reckon yu' stopped mighty sudden?"

"Why, I'd been ridin' out with her—ridin' to school, ridin' from school, and a-comin'and a-goin', and she chattin' cheerful and askin' me a heap o' questions all about myself every day, and I not lyin' much, neither. And so I figured she wouldn't mind. Lots of them like it. But she didn't, you bet!"

"No," said the Virginian, absently. "She never." He had pulled her out of the water once, and he had been her unrewarded knight even to-day, and he felt his grievance; but he spoke not of it to Lin; for he felt also, in memory, her arms clinging round him as he carried her ashore upon his horse. But he muttered "Plumb ridiculous!" as her injustice struck him afresh, while the outraged McLean told his tale.

"Trample is what she has done on me to-night, and without notice. We was startin' to come here; Taylor and Mrs. were ahead in the buggy, and I was holdin' her horse and helpin' her up in the saddle, like I done for days and days. Who was there to see us? And I figured she'd not mind, and she calls me an exception! Yu'd ought to've just heard her about Western men respectin' women. So that's the last word we've spoke. We come twenty-five miles then, she scootin' in front, and her horse kickin' the sand in my face. Mrs. Taylor she guessed something was up, but she didn't tell."

"Miss Wood didn't tell?"

"Not she! She'll never open her head. She can take care of herself, you bet!"

The fiddles sounded hilariously in the house, and the feet also. They had warmed up altogether, and their dancing figures crossed the windows back and forth energetically. The two outcasts drew near to it, and looked in with gloom.

"There she goes," said Lin.

"With Westfall again," said the Virginian. "James has a wife and a fam'ly, and James gets the dancin' too." Soon they saw Mr. Taylor favored. "Another married man," the Southerner commented. They prowled round to the store-room, and passed through the kitchen to where the assembly was robustly tramping. "Still old Taylor. Let's have some whiskey." They had it, and returned. "Uncle Carmody has got her now," drawled the Virginian. "He polkas like a landslide. She learns his monkey-faced kid to spell dog and cow all the mawnin'. He ought to be tucked up cozy in his bed right now, Uncle Carmody ought."

And just here one of the infants beneath the table awaked, and said "Baa!" drowsily.

"Nine, ten, eleven beautiful sleepin' strangers," the Virginian counted, in a sweet voice.

"What do you mean?" said Lin.

"Eleven, twelve. This hyeh is little Christopher in the blue-stripe quilt—or maybe that other pink-head is him. The angels have commenced to drop in on us right smart along Bear Creek, Lin."

"What trash are yu' talkin', anyway?"

"If they look so awful alike in the heavenly gyarden," the gentle Southerner continued, "I'd jest hate to be the folks that has the cuttin' of 'em out o' the general herd. And that's a right quaint notion too," he added, softly; and stooping among the torpid babies, became busy with their wraps and blankets.

Puzzled, Mr. McLean stared; then, with a genial screech, sprang to abet him.

The Swinton barbecue was over. The fiddles were silent, the steer was eaten, the barrel emptied—or largely so—and the tapers extinguished; around the house and sunken fire all movement of guests was quiet; the families were long departed homeward, and after their hospitable turbulence the Swintons slept.

Mr. and Mrs. Westfall drove through the night, and as they neared their cabin there came from among the bundled wraps a still, small voice.

"Jim," said his wife, "I said Alfred would catch cold!"

"Oh, he's not done anything like that."

"He has. Listen how hoarse he is. I told you we ought not to come. He has never been the same child since his teething."

"Bosh! Lizzie, don't you fret. He's little more than a yearlin', and of course he'll snuffle." And young James took a kiss from his love.

"Well, how you can speak of Alfred that way, calling him a yearling, as if he was a calf, and he just as much your child as mine, I don't see, James Westfall!"

"Why, what under the sun do you mean?"

"There he goes again! Do hurry up home, Jim. He's got a real strange cough."

So they hurried home. Soon the nine miles were finished, and good James was unhitching by his stable lantern, while his wife in the house hastened to commit their offspring to bed. The traces had dropped, and each horse marched forward for further unbuckling, when James heard himself called. Indeed, there was that in his wife's voice which made him jerk out his pistol as he ran. But it was no bear or Indian; only two strange children on the bed, at which his wife was glaring.

He sighed with relief, and laid down the pistol.

"Put that on again, James Westfall. You'll need it. Look here!"

"Well, they won't bite. Whose are they? Where have you stowed ourn?"

"Where have I—" But why not imagine what this mother said to her dense lord? "And you ask me!" she concluded. "Ask Lin McLean. Ask him that sets bulls on folks and steals slippers what he's done with our innocent lambs, mixing them up with other people's coughing unhealthy brats. That's Charlie Taylor in Alfred's clothes; and I knew Alfred didn't cough like that, and I said to you it was strange; and the other one that's been put in Christopher's new quilts is not even a bub—bub—boy!"

As this crime against society shone suddenly clear to James Westfall's understanding, he sat down on the nearest piece of furniture, and, heedless of his wife's tears and his exchanged children, broke into unregenerate laughter. Doubtless after his sharp alarm about the bear he was unstrung. His lady, however, promptly restrung him; and by the time they had repacked the now clamorous changelings, and were rattling on their way to the Taylors', he began to share her outraged feelings properly, as a husband and a father should; but when he reached the Taylors, and learned from Miss Wood that at this house a child had been unwrapped whom nobody could at all identify, and that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were already far on the road to the Swintons, James Westfall whipped up his horses and grew almost as thirsty for revenge as was his wife.

{[dhr]} Where the steer had been roast, the powdered ashes were now cold white, and Mr. McLean, feeling through his dreams the change come over the air, sat up cautiously among the out-door slumberers and waked his neighbor.

"Day will be soon," he whispered, "and we must light out of this. I never suspicioned yu' had that much devil in yu' before."

"I reckon some o' the fellows will act haidstrong," the Virginian murmured luxuriously among the warmth of his blankets. Being inexperienced of women, or of mothers at least, he failed to divine his worst enemies in this.

"I tell yu' we must skip," said Lin, for the second time; and he rubbed the Virginian's black head, which alone was visible.

"Skip, then, you," came muffled from within; "and keep you'self mighty sca'ce till they can appreciate our frolic."

The Southerner withdrew deeper into his bed; and Mr. McLean, informing him that he was a fool, arose and saddled his horse. From the saddle-bag he brought a parcel, and lightly laying this beside Bokay Baldy, he mounted, and was gone. When Baldy awoke, later, he found the parcel to be a pair of flowery slippers.

In selecting the inert Virginian as the fool, Mr. McLean was scarcely accurate: it is the absent who are always guilty. And McLean's reputation—nay, his very life— But this is what happened:

Before ever Lin could have been a mile in retreat, the rattle of wheels roused all of them, and here came the Taylors. Before the Taylors' knocking had brought the Swintons to their door other wheels sounded, and here were Mr. and Mrs. Carmody, and close after them Mr. Dow, alone, who told how his wife had gone into one of her fits—she upon whom Dr. Barker, at Drybone, had enjoined total abstinence from excitement. She proved the only absentee. The voices of women and children began to be uplifted; the Westfalls arrived in a lather, and the Thomases; and by sunrise, what with fathers and mothers and spectators and loud offspring, there was gathered such a meeting as has seldom been before among the generations of speaking men. To-day can you hear legends of it from Texas to Montana; but I am giving you the full particulars. Of course they pitched upon poor Lin, and some subtle insinuations of Trampas were derided at once; his spiteful nature was known; and here was the Virginian, doing his best, holding horses and helping ladies descend, while the name of McLean was a hissing and a byword. Soon a party led by Mr. Dow set forth in search of him, and the Southerner debated a moment, but judged they might safely go on searching. Mrs. Westfall found Christopher at once in the green shawl of Anna Maria Dow; but all was not achieved thus in the twinkling of an eye. Mr. McLean had, it appeared, as James Westfall lugubriously pointed out, not merely "swapped the duds; he had shuffled the whole doggone deck"; and they sighed over this Satanic invention. The fathers were but of moderate assistance; it was the mothers did the heavy work; and by ten o'clock some unsolved problems grew so delicate that a ladies' caucus was organized in a private room—no admittance for men—and what was done there I can only surmise. During its progress the search party returned. It had not found Mr. McLean. It had found a tree with a notice pegged upon it, reading, "God bless our home!" This was captured. But success attended the caucus; each mother emerged satisfied that she had received her own, and each sire, now that his family was itself again, began to look at his neighbor sidewise. Most of them, being as yet more their wives' lovers than their children's parents, had, like Westfall, seen mirth in it at the go-off, like him been swiftly chastened, and, like him, they now ceased to feel very severely toward Lin McLean. The women could not take this view. "And, anyway," said Mrs. Westfall, "it was real defiant of him putting that up on the tree."

"Yes," spoke the Virginian, "that wasn't sort o' right. Especially as I done the trick myself," he gently announced.

Well, they could not pump up an entirely new indignation, and he was not scolded as sharply as such a stroke of genius deserved. But when they sat down to lunch upon the copious remnant of the barbecue, he did not join them. In telling you that Mrs. Dow was the only lady absent on this historic morning, I was guilty of an inadvertence.

The Virginian, quite good again after his freak, rode away sedately through the autumn sunshine; and as he went he asked his Monte horse a question. "Do yu' reckon she'll have forgot you too, you pie-biter?" said he. Although the cow-puncher's leathern chaps were on his legs again, the scarf was knotted at his neck, and his appearance was not one of which a man need be ashamed, or a woman sorry to see. It was Sunday, and no school-day, and he found her in her cabin that was near the Taylors' house. Her eyes were very bright.

"I thought I'd jest call," said he.

"Why, that's such a pity! Mr. and Mrs. Taylor are away."

"Yes; they've been right busy. That's why I thought I'd call. Will yu' come for a ride, ma'am?"

"Dear me! I—"

"You can ride my hawse. He's gentle."

"What! And you walk?"

"No, ma'am. Nor the two of us ride him this time, either." At this she turned entirely pink, and he, noticing, went on, quietly: "I'll catch up one of Taylor's hawses. Taylor knows me."

"No. I don't really think I could do that. But thank you. Thank you very much. I must go now and see how Mrs. Taylor's fire is."

"I'll look after that, ma'am. I'd like for yu' to go ridin' mighty well. Yu' have no babies this mawnin' to be anxious after."

Grandmother Stark flashed awake immediately. "I don't know what you mean, sir, by that. And I am not accustomed to permit strangers to advise me upon my duties."

"I was introduced, ma'am. And I wouldn't be oversteppin' for the world. I'll go away if you want."

"You call yourself a man, I suppose," said Molly Wood.

But at her suddenly rigid severity he did not tremble in the least. Her fierce attitude filled him with delight and tenderness, as he stood smiling gravely, and watching the pink of her forehead where the hair rippled.

"A grown-up, responsible man," she repeated.

"Yes, ma'am. I think so." He sat down now.

"And you let them think that—that Mr. McLean— You dare not look me in the face and say it was he who did that last night."

"I reckon I dassen't."

"There! I said so from the first!"

"Who did yu' say it to, ma'am?"

"What! are you afraid?" And she laughed—it was a delicate, mocking strain.

"Why, only they seemed so plumb genuwinely astonished when I owned up about it myself, that I was afraid they'd been foolin' me if you'd told 'em you'd seen me."

"I did not see you. I knew it must— Of course I did not tell any one. When I said I said so from the first, I meant—you can understand perfectly what I meant."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And what sort of a trick was it to play? Do you call it a manly thing to frighten and distress women because you—for no reason at all? I should never have imagined it could be the act of a person who wears a big pistol and rides a big horse. I should be afraid to go riding with such an immature protector."

"Yes, ma'am. That was awful childish. Your words do cut a little; for maybe there's been times when I have acted pretty near like a man. But I cert'nly forgot to be introduced before I spoke to yu' last night. Because why? You've found me out dead in one thing. Won't you take a guess at this too?"

Molly Wood now had a desire to run somewhere, but there was nowhere for her to run. "I cannot sit guessing why people do not behave themselves—who seem to know better," said she.

"Oh, ma'am, I've played square and owned up to yu'. And that's not what you're doin' by me. I ask your pardon if I say what I have a right to say in language not as good as I'd like to talk to yu' with. But at South Fork Crossin' who did any introducin'? Did yu' complain I was a stranger then?"

"I—no!" she flashed out; then, quite sweetly, "The driver told me it wasn't really so dangerous there, you know."

"That's not the point I'm makin', ma'am. You are a grown-up woman, a responsible woman. You've come ever so far, and all alone, to a rough country to instruct young children that play games—tag, and hide-and-seek, and fooleries they'll have to quit when they get old. Don't you think pretendin' yu' don't know a man—his name's nothin', but him—a man whom you were glad enough to let assist yu' when somebody was needed—don't you think that's mighty close to hide-and-seek them children plays? I ain't so sure but what there's a pair of us children in this hyeh room."

Molly Wood was regarding him saucily. "I don't think I like you," said she.

"That's all square enough. You're goin' to love me before we get through. I wish yu'd come a-ridin', ma'am."

"Dear, dear, dear! Men are so big and strong! And they think they only need to sit and make chests at a girl—"

"Goodness gracious! I ain't makin' any chests at yu'!" The Virginian laughed aloud with relish—he did not do so often—and the note in his laughter found more favor with Miss Wood than even his direct and potent countenance. "Please come a-ridin'," he urged. "It's the prettiest kind of a day."

But she would not; and soon he knew inwardly that in spite of hide-and-seek she was somehow beyond him and easily held herself there; so he sealed his determination to reach her one day.

"I must tell yu' good-by now," said he. "But I'm coming again. And next time I'll have along a gentle hawse for yu'."

"Next time! Next time! Well, perhaps I will go. Do you live far?"

"I live on Judge Henry's ranch, over yondeh." He pointed across the mountains. "It's on Sunk Creek. A pretty rough trail; but I can come hyeh to see you in a day, I reckon. Well, I hope you'll cert'nly enjoy good health, ma'am."

"Oh, there's one thing!" said Molly Wood, calling after him rather quickly. "I—I'm not at all afraid of horses. You needn't bring such a gentle one. I—was very tired that day, and—and I don't scream as a rule."

He turned and looked at her so that she could not meet his glance. "Bless your heart!" said he. "Will yu' give me one o' those flowers?"

"Oh, certainly! I'm always so glad when people like them."

"They're kind o' gray, like your eyes."

"Never mind my eyes."

"Can't help it, ma'am; not since South Fork."

He put the flower in the leather band of his hat, and rode away on his Monte horse. Miss Wood lingered a moment, then made some steps toward her gate, from which he could still be seen; and then, with something like a toss of the head, she went in and shut her door.

Somewhat later in the day the Virginian met Mr. McLean, who looked at his hat, and innocently quoted, "'My Looloo picked a daisy.'"

"Don't yu', Lin," said the Southerner.

"Then I won't," said Lin.

Thus, for this occasion, did the Virginian part from his lady—and nothing said about the handkerchief one way or another.

 

Fragment from a postscript, in a letter received at Bennington, Vermont:

"Please send my Browning and Jane Austen. I have been neglecting serious culture shockingly. But you have no idea how delightful it is to ride, especially on a spirited horse, which I can do now quite well. My dear, these cowboys are most extraordinary!

Molly."