The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister (beach read book txt) 📗

take a job with some of them. And maybe our cows'll commence gettin' killed again, and we'll have to take steps that will be more emphatic—maybe.”

Scipio meditated. “I wonder what killin' a man feels like?” he said.

“Why, nothing to bother yu'—when he'd ought to have been killed. Next point: Trampas he'll take Shorty with him, which is certainly bad for Shorty. But it's me that has kept Shorty out of harm's way this long. If I had fired Trampas, he'd have worked Shorty into dissatisfaction that much sooner.”

Scipio meditated again. “I knowed Trampas would pull his freight,” he said. “But I didn't think of Shorty. What makes you think it?”

“He asked me for a raise.”

“He ain't worth the pay he's getting now.”

“Trampas has told him different.”

“When a man ain't got no ideas of his own,” said Scipio, “he'd ought to be kind o' careful who he borrows 'em from.”

“That's mighty correct,” said the Virginian. “Poor Shorty! He has told me about his life. It is sorrowful. And he will never get wise. It was too late for him to get wise when he was born. D' yu' know why he's after higher wages? He sends most all his money East.”

“I don't see what Trampas wants him for,” said Scipio.

“Oh, a handy tool some day.”

“Not very handy,” said Scipio.

“Well, Trampas is aimin' to train him. Yu' see, supposin' yu' were figuring to turn professional thief—yu'd be lookin' around for a nice young trustful accomplice to take all the punishment and let you take the rest.”

“No such thing!” cried Scipio, angrily. “I'm no shirker.” And then, perceiving the Virginian's expression, he broke out laughing. “Well,” he exclaimed, “yu' fooled me that time.”

“Looks that way. But I do mean it about Trampas.”

Presently Scipio rose, and noticed the half-finished exercise upon the Virginian's desk. “Trampas is a rolling stone,” he said.

“A rolling piece of mud,” corrected the Virginian.

“Mud! That's right. I'm a rolling stone. Sometimes I'd most like to quit being.”

“That's easy done,” said the Virginian.

“No doubt, when yu've found the moss yu' want to gather.” As Scipio glanced at the school books again, a sparkle lurked in his bleached blue eye. “I can cipher some,” he said. “But I expect I've got my own notions about spelling.”

“I retain a few private ideas that way myself,” remarked the Virginian, innocently; and Scipio's sparkle gathered light.

“As to my geography,” he pursued, “that's away out loose in the brush. Is Bennington the capital of Vermont? And how d' yu' spell bridegroom?”

“Last point!” shouted the Virginian, letting a book fly after him: “don't let badness and goodness worry yu', for yu'll never be a judge of them.”

But Scipio had dodged the book, and was gone. As he went his way, he said to himself, “All the same, it must pay to fall regular in love.” At the bunk house that afternoon it was observed that he was unusually silent. His exit from the foreman's cabin had let in a breath of winter so chill that the Virginian went to see his thermometer, a Christmas present from Mrs. Henry. It registered twenty below zero. After reviving the fire to a white blaze, the foreman sat thinking over the story of Shorty: what its useless, feeble past had been; what would be its useless, feeble future. He shook his head over the sombre question, Was there any way out for Shorty? “It may be,” he reflected, “that them whose pleasure brings yu' into this world owes yu' a living. But that don't make the world responsible. The world did not beget you. I reckon man helps them that help themselves. As for the universe, it looks like it did too wholesale a business to turn out an article up to standard every clip. Yes, it is sorrowful. For Shorty is kind to his hawss.”

In the evening the Virginian brought Shorty into his room. He usually knew what he had to say, usually found it easy to arrange his thoughts; and after such arranging the words came of themselves. But as he looked at Shorty, this did not happen to him. There was not a line of badness in the face; yet also there was not a line of strength; no promise in eye, or nose, or chin; the whole thing melted to a stubby, featureless mediocrity. It was a countenance like thousands; and hopelessness filled the Virginian as he looked at this lost dog, and his dull, wistful eyes.

But some beginning must be made.

“I wonder what the thermometer has got to be,” he said. “Yu' can see it, if yu'll hold the lamp to that right side of the window.”

Shorty held the lamp. “I never used any,” he said, looking out at the instrument, nevertheless.

The Virginian had forgotten that Shorty could not read. So he looked out of the window himself, and found that it was twenty-two below zero. “This is pretty good tobacco,” he remarked; and Shorty helped himself, and filled his pipe.

“I had to rub my left ear with snow to-day,” said he. “I was just in time.”

“I thought it looked pretty freezy out where yu' was riding,” said the foreman.

The lost dog's eyes showed plain astonishment. “We didn't see you out there,” said he.

“Well,” said the foreman, “it'll soon not be freezing any more; and then we'll all be warm enough with work. Everybody will be working all over the range. And I wish I knew somebody that had a lot of stable work to be attended to. I cert'nly do for your sake.”

“Why?” said Shorty.

“Because it's the right kind of a job for you.”

“I can make more—” began Shorty, and stopped.

“There is a time coming,” said the Virginian, “when I'll want somebody that knows how to get the friendship of hawsses. I'll want him to handle some special hawsses the Judge has plans about. Judge Henry would pay fifty a month for that.”

“I can make more,” said Shorty, this time with stubbornness.

“Well, yes. Sometimes a man can—when he's not worth it, I mean. But it don't generally last.”

Shorty was silent. “I used to make more myself,” said the Virginian.

“You're making a lot more now,” said Shorty.

“Oh, yes. But I mean when I was fooling around the earth, jumping from job to job, and helling all over town between whiles. I was not worth fifty a month then, nor twenty-five. But there was nights I made a heap more at cyards.”

Shorty's eyes grew large.