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

killed,” stated the cow-puncher.

“What should he have told him, I'd like to know?” said Molly.

“Why, just nothing. If the soldier could ride out of the battle all shot up, and tell his general about their takin' the town—that was being gritty, yu' see. But that truck at the finish—will yu' please say it again?”

So Molly read:—

“'You're wounded! 'Nay,' the soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said, 'I'm killed, sire!' And, his chief beside, Smiling the boy fell dead.”

“'Nay, I'm killed, sire,'” drawled the Virginian, amiably; for (symptom of convalescence) his freakish irony was revived in him. “Now a man who was man enough to act like he did, yu' see, would fall dead without mentioning it.”

None of Molly's sweet girl friends had ever thus challenged Mr. Browning. They had been wont to cluster over him with a joyous awe that deepened proportionally with their misunderstanding. Molly paused to consider this novelty of view about the soldier. “He was a Frenchman, you know,” she said, under inspiration.

“A Frenchman,” murmured the grave cow-puncher. “I never knowed a Frenchman, but I reckon they might perform that class of foolishness.”

“But why was it foolish?” she cried.

“His soldier's pride—don't you see?”

“No.”

Molly now burst into a luxury of discussion. She leaned toward her cow-puncher with bright eyes searching his; with elbow on knee and hand propping chin, her lap became a slant, and from it Browning the poet slid and toppled, and lay unrescued. For the slow cow-puncher unfolded his notions of masculine courage and modesty (though he did not deal in such high-sounding names), and Molly forgot everything to listen to him, as he forgot himself and his inveterate shyness and grew talkative to her. “I would never have supposed that!” she would exclaim as she heard him; or, presently again, “I never had such an idea!” And her mind opened with delight to these new things which came from the man's mind so simple and direct. To Browning they did come back, but the Virginian, though interested, conceived a dislike for him. “He is a smarty,” said he, once or twice.

“Now here is something,” said Molly. “I have never known what to think.”

“Oh, Heavens!” murmured the sick man, smiling. “Is it short?”

“Very short. Now please attend.” And she read him twelve lines about a lover who rowed to a beach in the dusk, crossed a field, tapped at a pane, and was admitted.

“That is the best yet,” said the Virginian. “There's only one thing yu' can think about that.”

“But wait,” said the girl, swiftly. “Here is how they parted:—

“Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, And the sun looked over the mountain's rim— And straight was a path of gold for him, And the need of a world of men for me.”

“That is very, very true,” murmured the Virginian, dropping his eyes from the girl's intent ones.

“Had they quarrelled?” she inquired.

“Oh, no!”

“But—”

“I reckon he loved her very much.”

“Then you're sure they hadn't quarrelled?”

“Dead sure, ma'am. He would come back afteh he had played some more of the game.”

“The game?”

“Life, ma'am. Whatever he was a-doin' in the world of men. That's a bed-rock piece, ma'am!”

“Well, I don't see why you think it's so much better than some of the others.”

“I could sca'cely explain,” answered the man. “But that writer does know something.”

“I am glad they hadn't quarrelled,” said Molly, thoughtfully. And she began to like having her opinions refuted.

His bandages, becoming a little irksome, had to be shifted, and this turned their discourse from literature to Wyoming; and Molly inquired, had he ever been shot before? Only once, he told her. “I have been lucky in having few fusses,” said he. “I hate them. If a man has to be killed—”

“You never—” broke in Molly. She had started back a little. “Well,” she added hastily, “don't tell me if—”

“I shouldn't wonder if I got one of those Indians,” he said quietly. “But I wasn't waitin' to see! But I came mighty near doing for a white man that day. He had been hurtin' a hawss.”

“Hurting?” said Molly.

“Injurin.' I will not tell yu' about that. It would hurt yu' to hear such things. But hawsses—don't they depend on us? Ain't they somethin' like children? I did not lay up the man very bad. He was able to travel 'most right away. Why, you'd have wanted to kill him yourself!”

So the Virginian talked, nor knew what he was doing to the girl. Nor was she aware of what she was receiving from him as he unwittingly spoke himself out to her in these Browning meetings they had each day. But Mrs. Taylor grew pleased. The kindly dame would sometimes cross the road to see if she were needed, and steal away again after a peep at the window. There, inside, among the restored home treasures, sat the two: the rosy alert girl, sweet as she talked or read to him; and he, the grave, half-weak giant among his wraps, watching her.

Of her delayed home visit he never again spoke, either to her or to Mrs. Taylor; and Molly veered aside from any trend of talk she foresaw was leading toward that subject. But in those hours when no visitors came, and he was by himself in the quiet, he would lie often sombrely contemplating the girl's room, her little dainty knickknacks, her home photographs, all the delicate manifestations of what she came from and what she was. Strength was flowing back into him each day, and Judge Henry's latest messenger had brought him clothes and mail from Sunk Creek and many inquiries of kindness, and returned taking the news of the cow-puncher's improvement, and how soon he would be permitted the fresh air. Hence Molly found him waiting in a flannel shirt of highly becoming shade, and with a silk handkerchief knotted round his throat; and he told her it was good to feel respectable again.

She had come to read to him for the allotted time; and she threw around his shoulders the scarlet and black Navajo blanket, striped with its splendid zigzags of barbarity. Thus he half sat, half leaned, languid but at ease. In his lap lay one of the letters brought over by the messenger: and though she was midway in a book that engaged his full attention—DAVID COPPERFIELD—his silence and absent look this morning stopped her, and she accused him of not attending.

“No,” he admitted; “I am thinking of something else.”

She looked at him with that apprehension which he knew.