It may be mentioned that Sarah’s surmises did not greatly contribute to her mother’s happiness. And rumor is so strange a thing that presently from the malicious outside air came a vague and dreadful word—one of those words that cannot be traced to its source. Somebody said to Andrew Bell that they heard Miss Molly Wood was engaged to marry a rustler.
“Heavens, Andrew!” said his wife; “what is a rustler?”
It was not in any dictionary, and current translations of it were inconsistent. A man at Hoosic Falls said that he had passed through Cheyenne, and heard the term applied in a complimentary way to people who were alive and pushing. Another man had always supposed it meant some kind of horse. But the most alarming version of all was that a rustler was a cattle thief.
Now the truth is that all these meanings were right. The word ran a sort of progress in the cattle country, gathering many meanings as it went. It gathered more, however, in Bennington. In a very few days, gossip had it that Molly was engaged to a gambler, a gold miner, an escaped stage robber, and a Mexican bandit; while Mrs. Flynt feared she had married a Mormon.
Along Bear Creek, however, Molly and her “rustler” took a ride soon after her return. They were neither married nor engaged, and she was telling him about Vermont.
“I never was there,” said he. “Never happened to strike in that direction.”
“What decided your direction?”
“Oh, looking for chances. I reckon I must have been more ambitious than my brothers—or more restless. They stayed around on farms. But I got out. When I went back again six years afterward, I was twenty. They was talking about the same old things. Men of twenty-five and thirty—yet just sittin’ and talkin’ about the same old things. I told my mother about what I’d seen here and there, and she liked it, right to her death. But the others—well, when I found this whole world was hawgs and turkeys to them, with a little gunnin’ afteh small game throwed in, I put on my hat one mawnin’ and told ’em maybe when I was fifty I’d look in on ’em again to see if they’d got any new subjects. But they’ll never. My brothers don’t seem to want chances.”
“You have lost a good many yourself,” said Molly.
“That’s correct.”
“And yet,” said she, “sometimes I think you know a great deal more than I ever shall.”
“Why, of course I do,” said he, quite simply. “I have earned my living since I was fourteen. And that’s from old Mexico to British Columbia. I have never stolen or begged a cent. I’d not want yu’ to know what I know.”
She was looking at him, half listening and half thinking of her great-aunt.
“I am not losing chances any more,” he continued. “And you are the best I’ve got.”
She was not sorry to have Georgie Taylor come galloping along at this moment and join them. But the Virginian swore profanely under his breath. And on this ride nothing more happened.
XXIII
Various Points
Love had been snowbound for many weeks. Before this imprisonment its course had run neither smooth nor rough, so far as eye could see; it had run either not at all, or, as an undercurrent, deep out of sight. In their rides, in their talks, love had been dumb, as to spoken words at least; for the Virginian had set himself a heavy task of silence and of patience. Then, where winter barred his visits to Bear Creek, and there was for the while no ranch work or responsibility to fill his thoughts and blood with action, he set himself a task much lighter. Often, instead of Shakespeare and fiction, school books lay open on his cabin table; and penmanship and spelling helped the hours to pass. Many sheets of paper did he fill with various exercises, and Mrs. Henry gave him her assistance in advice and corrections.
“I shall presently be in love with him myself,” she told the Judge. “And it’s time for you to become anxious.”
“I am perfectly safe,” he retorted. “There’s only one woman for him any more.”
“She is not good enough for him,” declared Mrs. Henry. “But he’ll never see that.”
So the snow fell, the world froze, and the spelling-books and exercises went on. But this was not the only case of education which was progressing at the Sunk Creek Ranch while love was snowbound.
One morning Scipio le Moyne entered the Virginian’s sitting room—that apartment where Dr. MacBride had wrestled with sin so courageously all night.
The Virginian sat at his desk. Open books lay around him; a half-finished piece of writing was beneath his fist; his fingers were coated with ink. Education enveloped him, it may be said. But there was none in his eye. That was upon the window, looking far across the cold plain.
The foreman did not move when Scipio came in, and this humorous spirit smiled to himself. “It’s Bear Creek he’s havin’ a vision of,” he concluded. But he knew instantly that this was not so. The Virginian was looking at something real, and Scipio went to the window to see for himself.
“Well,” he said, having seen, “when is he going to leave us?”
The foreman continued looking at two horsemen riding together. Their shapes, small in the distance, showed black against the universal whiteness.
“When d’ yu’ figure he’ll leave us?” repeated Scipio.
“He,” murmured the Virginian, always watching the distant horsemen; and again, “he.”
Scipio
