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

We got back into our saddles with the mystery unsolved. To the Virginian it was a greater one, apparently, than to me; why should one have to account for every stray traveller in the mountains?

“That's queer, too,” said the Virginian. He was now riding in front of me, and he stopped, looking down at the trail. “Don't you notice?”

It did not strike me.

“Why, he keeps walking beside his hawss; he don't get on him.”

Now we, of course, had mounted at the beginning of the better trail after the steep rock, and that was quite half a mile back. Still, I had a natural explanation. “He's leading a packhorse. He's a poor trapper, and walks.”

“Packhorses ain't usually shod before and behind,” said the Virginian; and sliding to the ground he touched the footprints. “They are not four hours old,” said he. “This bank's in shadow by one o'clock, and the sun has not cooked them dusty.”

We continued on our way; and although it seemed no very particular thing to me that a man should choose to walk and lead his horse for a while,—I often did so to limber my muscles,—nevertheless I began to catch the Virginian's uncertain feeling about this traveller whose steps had appeared on our path in mid-journey, as if he had alighted from the mid-air, and to remind myself that he had come over the great face of rock from another trail and thus joined us, and that indigent trappers are to be found owning but a single horse and leading him with their belongings through the deepest solitudes of the mountains—none of this quite brought back to me the comfort which had been mine since we left the cottonwoods out of sight down in the plain. Hence I called out sharply, “What's the matter now?” when the Virginian suddenly stopped his horse again.

He looked down at the trail, and then he very slowly turned round in his saddle and stared back steadily at me. “There's two of them,” he said.

“Two what?”

“I don't know.”

“You must know whether it's two horses or two men,” I said, almost angrily.

But to this he made no answer, sitting quite still on his horse and contemplating the ground. The silence was fastening on me like a spell, and I spurred my horse impatiently forward to see for myself. The footprints of two men were there in the trail.

“What do you say to that?” said the Virginian. “Kind of ridiculous, ain't it?”

“Very quaint,” I answered, groping for the explanation. There was no rock here to walk over and step from into the softer trail. These second steps came more out of the air than the first. And my brain played me the evil trick of showing me a dead man in a gray flannel shirt.

“It's two, you see, travelling with one hawss, and they take turns riding him.”

“Why, of course!” I exclaimed; and we went along for a few paces.

“There you are,” said the Virginian, as the trail proved him right. “Number one has got on. My God, what's that?”

At a crashing in the woods very close to us we both flung round and caught sight of a vanishing elk.

It left us confronted, smiling a little, and sounding each other with our eyes. “Well, we didn't need him for meat,” said the Virginian.

“A spike-horn, wasn't it?” said I.

“Yes, just a spike-horn.”

For a while now as we rode we kept up a cheerful conversation about elk. We wondered if we should meet many more close to the trail like this; but it was not long before our words died away. We had come into a veritable gulf of mountain peaks, sharp at their bare summits like teeth, holding fields of snow lower down, and glittering still in full day up there, while down among our pines and parks the afternoon was growing sombre. All the while the fresh hoofprints of the horse and the fresh footprints of the man preceded us. In the trees, and in the opens, across the levels, and up the steeps, they were there. And so they were not four hours old! Were they so much? Might we not, round some turn, come upon the makers of them? I began to watch for this. And again my brain played me an evil trick, against which I found myself actually reasoning thus: if they took turns riding, then walking must tire them as it did me or any man. And besides, there was a horse. With such thoughts I combated the fancy that those footprints were being made immediately in front of us all the while, and that they were the only sign of any presence which our eyes could see. But my fancy overcame my thoughts. It was shame only which held me from asking this question of the Virginian: Had one horse served in both cases of Justice down at the cottonwoods? I wondered about this. One horse—or had the strangling nooses dragged two saddles empty at the same signal? Most likely; and therefore these people up here—Was I going back to the nursery? I brought myself up short. And I told myself to be steady; there lurked in this brain-process which was going on beneath my reason a threat worse than the childish apprehensions it created. I reminded myself that I was a man grown, twenty-five years old, and that I must not merely seem like one, but feel like one. “You're not afraid of the dark, I suppose?” This I uttered aloud, unwittingly.

“What's that?”

I started; but it was only the Virginian behind me. “Oh, nothing. The air is getting colder up here.”

I had presently a great relief. We came to a place where again this trail mounted so abruptly that we once more got off to lead our horses. So likewise had our predecessors done; and as I watched the two different sets of footprints, I observed something and hastened to speak of it.

“One man is much heavier than the other.”

“I was hoping I'd not have to tell you that,” said the Virginian.

“You're always ahead of me! Well, still my education is progressing.”

“Why, yes. You'll equal an Injun if you keep on.”

It was good to be facetious; and I smiled to myself as I trudged upward. We came off the steep place, leaving the canyon beneath us, and took to horseback. And as we proceeded over the final gentle slant up to the rim of the great basin that was set among the peaks, the Virginian was jocular once more.

“Pounds has got on,” said he, “and Ounces is walking.”

I glanced over my shoulder at him, and he nodded as he fixed the weather-beaten crimson handkerchief round his neck. Then he threw a stone at a pack animal that was delaying on the trail. “Damn your buckskin hide,” he drawled. “You can view the scenery from the top.”

He was so natural, sitting loose in the saddle, and