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The Virginian, A Horseman Of The Plains, by Owen Wister
Etext prepared by Bill Brewer, billbrewer@ttu.edu





THE VIRGINIAN
A Horseman Of The Plains

by
OWEN WISTER



To
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Some of these pages you have seen, some you have praised, one stands
new-written because you blamed it; and all, my dear critic, beg leave to
remind you of their author's changeless admiration.



TO THE READER

Certain of the newspapers, when this book was first announced,
made a mistake most natural upon seeing the sub-title as it then
stood, A TALE OF SUNDRY ADVENTURES. "This sounds like a
historical novel," said one of them, meaning (I take it) a
colonial romance. As it now stands, the title will scarce lead to
such interpretation; yet none the less is this book
historical--quite as much so as any colonial romance. Indeed,
when you look at the root of the matter, it is a colonial
romance. For Wyoming between 1874 and 1890 was a colony as wild
as was Virginia one hundred years earlier. As wild, with a
scantier population, and the same primitive joys and dangers.
There were, to be sure, not so many Chippendale settees.

We know quite well the common understanding of the term
"historical novel." HUGH WYNNE exactly fits it. But SILAS LAPHAM
is a novel as perfectly historical as is Hugh Wynne, for it
pictures an era and personifies a type. It matters not that in
the one we find George Washington and in the other none save
imaginary figures; else THE SCARLET LETTER were not historical.
Nor does it matter that Dr. Mitchell did not live in the time of
which he wrote, while Mr. Howells saw many Silas Laphams with his
own eyes; else UNCLE TOM'S CABIN were not historical. Any
narrative which presents faithfully a day and a generation is of
necessity historical; and this one presents Wyoming between 1874
and 1890.Had you left New York or San Francisco at ten o'clock
this morning, by noon the day after to-morrow you could step out
at Cheyenne There you would stand at the heart of the world that
is the subject of my picture, yet you would look around you in
vain for the reality. It is a vanished world. No journeys, save
those which memory can take, will bring you to it now. The
mountains are there, far and shining, and the sunlight, and the
infinite earth, and the air that seems forever the true fountain
of youth, but where is the buffalo, and the wild antelope, and
where the horseman with his pasturing thousands? So like its old
self does the sage-brush seem when revisited, that you wait for
the horseman to appear.

But he will never come again. He rides in his historic yesterday.
You will no more see him gallop out of the unchanging silence
than you will see Columbus on the unchanging sea come sailing
from Palos with his caravels.

And yet the horseman is still so near our day that in some
chapters of this book, which were published separate at the close
of the nineteenth century, the present tense was used. It is true
no longer. In those chapters it has been changed, and verbs like
"is" and "have" now read "was" and "had." Time has flowed faster
than my ink.

What is become of the horseman, the cowpuncher, the last romantic
figure upon our soil? For he was romantic. Whatever he did, he
did with his might. The bread that he earned was earned hard, the
wages that he squandered were squandered hard,--half a year's pay
sometimes gone in a night,--"blown in," as he expressed it, or
"blowed in," to be perfectly accurate. Well, he will be here
among us always, invisible, waiting his chance to live and play
as he would like. His wild kind has been among us always, since
the beginning: a young man with his temptations, a hero without
wings.

The cow-puncher's ungoverned hours did not unman him. If he gave
his word, he kept it; Wall Street would have found him behind the
times. Nor did he talk lewdly to women; Newport would have
thought him old-fashioned. He and his brief epoch make a complete
picture, for in themselves they were as complete as the pioneers
of the land or the explorers of the sea. A transition has
followed the horseman of the plains; a shapeless state, a
condition of men and manners as unlovely as is that moment in the
year when winter is gone and spring not come, and the face of
Nature is ugly. I shall not dwell upon it here. Those who have
seen it know well what I mean. Such transition was inevitable.
Let us give thanks that it is but a transition, and not a
finality.

Sometimes readers inquire, Did I know the Virginian? As well, I
hope, as a father should know his son. And sometimes it is asked,
Was such and such a thing true? Now to this I have the best
answer in the world. Once a cowpuncher listened patiently while I
read him a manuscript. It concerned an event upon an Indian
reservation. "Was that the Crow reservation?" he inquired at the
finish. I told him that it was no real reservation and no real
event; and his face expressed displeasure. "Why," he demanded,
"do you waste your time writing what never happened, when you
know so many things that did happen?"

And I could no more help telling him that this was the highest
compliment ever paid me than I have been able to help telling you
about it here!

CHARLESTON, S.C., March 31st, 1902


THE VIRGINIAN


I. ENTER THE MAN

Some notable sight was drawing the passengers, both men and
women, to the window; and therefore I rose and crossed the car to
see what it was. I saw near the track an enclosure, and round it
some laughing men, and inside it some whirling dust, and amid the
dust some horses, plunging, huddling, and dodging. They were cow
ponies in a corral, and one of them would not be caught, no
matter who threw the rope. We had plenty of time to watch this
sport, for our train had stopped that the engine might take water
at the tank before it pulled us up beside the station platform of
Medicine Bow. We were also six hours ate, and starving for
entertainment. The pony in the corral was wise, and rapid of
limb. Have you seen a skilful boxer watch his antagonist with a
quiet, incessant eye? Such an eye as this did the pony keep upon
whatever man took the rope. The man might pretend to look at the
weather, which was fine; or he might affect earnest conversation
with a bystander: it was bootless. The pony saw through it. No
feint hoodwinked him. This animal was thoroughly a man of the
world. is undistracted eye stayed fixed upon the dissembling foe,
and the gravity of his horse-expression made the matter one of
high comedy. Then the rope would sail out at him, but he was
already elsewhere; and if horses laugh, gayety must have abounded
in that corral. Sometimes the pony took a turn alone; next he had
slid in a flash among his brothers, and the whole of them like a
school of playful fish whipped round the corral, kicking up the
fine dust, and (I take it) roaring with laughter. Through the
window-glass of our Pullman the thud of their mischievous hoofs
reached us, and the strong, humorous curses of the cow-boys. Then
for the first time I noticed a man who sat on the high gate of
the corral, looking on. For he now climbed down with the
undulations of a tiger, smooth and easy, as if his muscles flowed
beneath his skin. The others had all visibly whirled the rope,
some of them even shoulder high. I did not see his arm lift or
move. He appeared to hold the rope down low, by his leg. But like
a sudden snake I saw the noose go out its length and fall true;
and the thing was done. As the captured pony walked in with a
sweet, church-door expression, our train moved slowly on to the
station, and a passenger remarked, "That man knows his business."

But the passenger's dissertation upon roping I was obliged to
lose, for Medicine Bow was my station. I bade my
fellow-travellers good-by, and descended, a stranger, into the
great cattle land. And here in less than ten minutes I learned
news which made me feel a stranger indeed.

My baggage was lost; it had not come on my train; it was adrift
somewhere back in the two thousand miles that lay behind me. And
by way of comfort, the baggage-man remarked that passengers often
got astray from their trunks, but the trunks mostly found them
after a while. Having offered me this encouragement, he turned
whistling to his affairs and left me planted in the baggage-room
at Medicine Bow. I stood deserted among crates and boxes, blankly
holding my check, fungus and forlorn. I stared out through the
door at the sky and the plains; but I did not see the antelope
shining among the sage-brush, nor the great sunset light of
Wyoming. Annoyance blinded my eyes to all things save my
grievance: I saw only a lost trunk. And I was muttering
half-aloud, "What a forsaken hole this is!" when suddenly from
outside on the platform came a slow voice:"Off to get married
AGAIN? Oh, don't!"

The voice was Southern and gentle and drawling; and a second
voice came in immediate answer, cracked and querulous."It ain't
again. Who says it's again? Who told you, anyway?"

And the first voice responded caressingly:"Why, your Sunday
clothes told me, Uncle Hughey. They are speakin' mighty loud o'
nuptials."

"You don't worry me!" snapped Uncle Hughey, with shrill heat.

And the other gently continued, "Ain't them gloves the same yu'
wore to your last weddin'?"

"You don't worry me! You don't worry me!" now screamed Uncle
Hughey.

Already I had forgotten my trunk; care had left me; I was aware
of the sunset, and had no desire but for more of this
conversation. For it resembled none that I had heard in my life
so far. I stepped to the door and looked out upon the station
platform.

Lounging there at ease against the wall was a slim young giant,
more beautiful than pictures. His broad, soft hat was pushed
back; a loose-knotted, dull-scarlet handkerchief sagged from his
throat; and one casual thumb was hooked in the cartridge-belt
that slanted across his hips. He had plainly come many miles from
somewhere across the vast horizon, as the dust upon him showed.
His boots were white with it. His overalls were gray with it. The
weather-beaten bloom of his face shone through it duskily, as the
ripe peaches look upon their trees in a dry season. But no
dinginess of travel or shabbiness of attire could tarnish the
splendor that radiated from his youth and strength. The old man
upon whose temper his remarks were doing such deadly work was
combed and curried to a finish, a bridegroom swept and garnished;
but alas for age! Had I been the bride, I should have taken the
giant, dust and all. He had by no means done with the old man.

"Why, yu've hung weddin' gyarments on every limb!" he now
drawled, with admiration. "Who is the lucky lady this trip?"

The old man seemed to vibrate. "Tell you there ain't been no
other! Call me a Mormon, would you?"

"Why, that--"

"Call me a Mormon? Then name some of my wives. Name two. Name
one. Dare you!"

"--that Laramie wido' promised you--'

"Shucks!"

"--only her docter suddenly ordered Southern climate and--"

"Shucks! You're a false alarm."

"--so nothing but her lungs came between you. And next you'd most
got united with Cattle Kate, only--"

"Tell you you're a false alarm!"

"--only she got hung."

"Where's the wives in all this? Show the wives! Come now!"

"That corn-fed biscuit-shooter at Rawlins yu' gave the canary--"

"Never married her. Never did marry--"

"But yu' come so near, uncle! She was the one left yu' that
letter explaining how she'd got married to a young cyard-player
the very day before her ceremony with you was due, and--"

"Oh, you're nothing; you're a kid; you don't amount to--"

"--and how she'd never, never forgot to feed the canary.

"This country's getting full of kids," stated the old man,
witheringly. "It's doomed." This crushing assertion plainly
satisfied him. And he blinked his eyes with renewed anticipation.
His tall tormentor continued with a face of unchanging gravity,
and a voice of gentle solicitude:"How is the health of that
unfortunate--"

"That's right! Pour your insults! Pour 'em on a sick, afflicted
woman!" The eyes blinked with combative relish.

"Insults? Oh, no, Uncle Hughey!"

"That's all right! Insults goes!"

"Why, I was mighty relieved when she began to recover her mem'ry.
Las' time I heard, they told me she'd got it pretty near all
back. Remembered her father, and her mother, and her sisters and
brothers, and her friends, and her happy childhood, and all her
doin's except only your face. The boys was bettin' she'd get that
far too, give her time. But I reckon afteh such a turrable
sickness as she had, that would be expectin' most too much."

At this Uncle Hughey jerked out a small parcel. "Shows how much
you know!" he cackled. "There! See that! That's my ring she sent
me back, being too unstrung for marriage. So she don't remember
me, don't she? Ha-ha! Always said you were a false alarm."

The Southerner put more anxiety into his tone. "And so you're
a-takin' the ring right on to the next one!" he exclaimed. "Oh,
don't go to get married again, Uncle Hughey! What's the use o'
being married?"

"What's the use?" echoed the bridegroom, with scorn. "Hm! When
you grow up you'll think different."

"Course I expect to think different when my age is different. I'm
havin' the thoughts proper to twenty-four, and you're havin' the
thoughts proper to sixty."

"Fifty!" shrieked Uncle Hughey, jumping in the air.

The Southerner took a tone of self-reproach. "Now, how could I
forget you was fifty," he murmured, "when you have been telling
it to the boys so careful for the last ten years!"

Have you ever seen a cockatoo--the white kind with the
top-knot--enraged by insult? The bird erects every available
feather upon its person. So did Uncle Hughey seem to swell,
clothes, mustache, and woolly white beard; and without further
speech he took himself on board the Eastbound train, which now
arrived from its siding in time to deliver him.

Yet this was not why he had not gone away before. At any time he
could have escaped into the baggage-room or withdrawn to a
dignified distance until his train should come up. But the old
man had evidently got a sort of joy from this teasing. He had
reached that inevitable age when we are tickled to be linked with
affairs of gallantry, no matter how.

With him now the East-bound departed slowly into that distance
whence I had come. I stared after it as it went its way to the
far shores of civilization. It grew small in the unending gulf of
space, until all sign of its presence was gone save a faint skein
of smoke against the evening sky And now my lost trunk came back
into my thoughts, and Medicine Bow seemed a lonely spot. A sort
of ship had left me marooned in a foreign ocean; the Pullman was
comfortably steaming home to port, while I--how was I to find
Judge Henry's ranch? Where in this unfeatured wilderness was Sunk
Creek? No creek or any water at all flowed here that I could
perceive. My host had written he should meet me at the station
and drive me to his ranch. This was all that I knew. He was not
here. The baggage-man had not seen him lately. The ranch was
almost certain to be too far to walk to, to-night. My trunk--I
discovered myself still staring dolefully after the vanished
East-bound; and at the same instant I became aware that the tall
man was looking gravely at me,--as gravely as he had looked at
Uncle Hughey throughout their remarkable conversation.

To see his eye thus fixing me and his thumb still hooked in his
cartridge-belt, certain tales of travellers from these parts
forced themselves disquietingly into my recollection. Now that
Uncle Hughey was gone, was I to take his place and be, for
instance, invited to dance on the platform to the music of shots
nicely aimed?

"I reckon I am looking for you, seh," the tall man now observed.


II. "WHEN YOU CALL ME THAT, SMILE!"

We cannot see ourselves as other see us, or I should know what
appearance I cut at hearing this from the tall man. I said
nothing, feeling uncertain.

"I reckon I am looking for you, seh," he repeated politely.

"I am looking for Judge Henry," I now replied.

He walked toward me, and I saw that in inches he was not a giant.
He was not more than six feet. It was Uncle Hughey that had made
him seem to tower. But in his eye, in his face, in his step, in
the whole man, there dominated a something potent to be felt, I
should think, by man or woman.

"The Judge sent me afteh you, seh," he now explained, in his
civil Southern voice; and he handed me a letter from my host. Had
I not witnessed his facetious performances with Uncle Hughey, I
should have judged him wholly ungifted with such powers. There
was nothing external about him but what seemed the signs of a
nature as grave as you could meet. But I had witnessed; and
therefore supposing that I knew him in spite of his appearance,
that I was, so to speak, in his secret and could give him a sort
of wink, I adopted at once a method of easiness. It was so
pleasant to be easy with a large stranger, who instead of
shooting at your heels had very civilly handed you a letter.

"You're from old Virginia, I take it?" I began.

He answered slowly, "Then you have taken it correct, seh."

A slight chill passed over my easiness, but I went cheerily on
with a further inquiry. "Find many oddities out here like Uncle
Hughey?"

"Yes, seh, there is a right smart of oddities around. They come
in on every train."

At this point I dropped my method of easiness.

"I wish that trunks came on the train," said I. And I told him my
predicament.

It was not to be expected that he would be greatly moved at my
loss; but he took it with no comment whatever. "We'll wait in
town for it," said he, always perfectly civil.

Now, what I had seen of "town" was, to my newly arrived eyes,
altogether horrible. If I could possibly sleep at the Judge's
ranch, I preferred to do so.

"Is it too far to drive there to-night?" I inquired.

He looked at me in a puzzled manner.

"For this valise," I explained, "contains all that I immediately
need; in fact, I could do without my trunk for a day or two, if
it is not convenient to send. So if we could arrive there not too
late by starting at once--" I paused.

"It's two hundred and sixty-three miles," said the Virginian.

To my loud ejaculation he made no answer, but surveyed me a
moment longer, and then said, "Supper will be about ready now."
He took my valise, and I followed his steps toward the
eating-house in silence. I was dazed.

As we went, I read my host's letter--a brief hospitable message.
He was very sorry not to meet me him self. He had been getting
ready to drive over, when the surveyor appeared and detained him.
Therefore in his stead he was sending a trustworthy man to town,
who would look after me and drive me over. They were looking
forward to my visit with much pleasure. This was all.

Yes, I was dazed. How did they count distance in this country?
You spoke in a neighborly fashion about driving over to town, and
it meant--I did not know yet how many days. And what would be
meant by the term "dropping in," I wondered. And how many miles
would be considered really far? I abstained from further
questioning the "trustworthy man." My questions had not fared
excessively well. He did not propose making me dance, to be sure:
that would scarcely be trustworthy. But neither did he propose to
have me familiar with him. Why was this? What had I done to
elicit that veiled and skilful sarcasm about oddities coming in
on every train? Having been sent to look after me, he would do
so, would even carry my valise; but I could not be jocular with
him. This handsome, ungrammatical son of the soil had set between
us the bar of his cold and perfect civility. No polished person
could have done it better. What was the matter? I looked at him,
and suddenly it came to me. If he had tried familiarity with me
the first two minutes of our acquaintance, I should have resented
it; by what right, then, had I tried it with him? It smacked of
patronizing: on this occasion he had come off the better
gentleman of the two. Here in flesh and blood was a truth which I
had long believed in words, but never met before. The creature we
call a GENTLEMAN lies deep in the hearts of thousands that are
born without chance to master the outward graces of the type.

Between the station and the eating-house I did a deal of straight
thinking. But my thoughts were destined presently to be drowned
in amazement at the rare personage into whose society fate had
thrown me.

Town, as they called it, pleased me the less, the longer I saw
it. But until our language stretches itself and takes in a new
word of closer fit, town will have to do for the name of such a
place as was Medicine Bow. I have seen and slept in many like it
since. Scattered wide, they littered the frontier from the
Columbia to the Rio Grande, from the Missouri to the Sierras.
They lay stark, dotted over a planet of treeless dust, like
soiled packs of cards. Each was similar to the next, as one old
five-spot of clubs resembles another. Houses, empty bottles, and
garbage, they were forever of the same shapeless pattern. More
forlorn they were than stale bones. They seemed to have been
strewn there by the wind and to be waiting till the wind should
come again and blow them away. Yet serene above their foulness
swam a pure and quiet light, such as the East never sees; they
might be bathing in the air of creation's first morning. Beneath
sun and stars their days and nights were immaculate and
wonderful.

Medicine Bow was my first, and I took its dimensions, twenty-nine
buildings in all,--one coal shute, one water tank, the station,
one store, two eating-houses, one billiard hall, two tool-houses,
one feed stable, and twelve others that for one reason and
another I shall not name Yet this wretched husk of squalor spent
thought upon appearances; many houses in it wore a false front to
seem as if they were two stories high. There they stood, rearing
their pitiful masquerade amid a fringe of old tin cans, while at
their very doors began a world of crystal light, a land without
end, a space across which Noah and Adam might come straight from
Genesis. Into that space went wandering a road, over a hill and
down out of sight, and up again smaller in the distance, and down
once more, and up once more, straining the eyes, and so away.

Then I heard a fellow greet my Virginian. He came rollicking out
of a door, and made a pass with his hand at the Virginian's hat.
The Southerner dodged it, and I saw once more the tiger
undulation of body, and knew my escort was he of the rope and the
corral.

"How are yu' Steve?" he said to the rollicking man. And in his
tone I heard instantly old friendship speaking. With Steve he
would take and give familiarity.

Steve looked at me, and looked away--and that was all. But it was
enough. In no company had I ever felt so much an outsider. Yet I
liked the company, and wished that it would like me.

"Just come to town?" inquired Steve of the Virginian.

"Been here since noon. Been waiting for the train."

"Going out to-night?"

"I reckon I'll pull out to-morro'."

"Beds are all took," said Steve. This was for my benefit.

"Dear me," said I.

"But I guess one of them drummers will let yu' double up with
him." Steve was enjoying himself, I think. He had his saddle and
blankets, and beds were nothing to him.

"Drummers, are they?" asked the Virginian.

"Two Jews handling cigars, one American with consumption killer,
and a Dutchman with jew'lry."

The Virginian set down my valise, and seemed to meditate. "I did
want a bed to-night," he murmured gently.

"Well," Steve suggested, "the American looks like he washed the
oftenest."

"That's of no consequence to me," observed the Southerner.

"Guess it'll be when yu' see 'em."

"Oh, I'm meaning something different. I wanted a bed to myself."

"Then you'll have to build one."

"Bet yu' I have the Dutchman's."

"Take a man that won't scare. Bet yu' drinks yu' can't have the
American's."

"Go yu' said the Virginian. "I'll have his bed without any fuss.
Drinks for the crowd."

"I suppose you have me beat," said Steve, grinning at him
affectionately. "You're such a son-of-a-- when you get down to
work. Well, so long! I got to fix my horse's hoofs."

I had expected that the man would be struck down. He had used to
the Virginian a term of heaviest insult, I thought. I had
marvelled to hear it come so unheralded from Steve's friendly
lips. And now I marvelled still more. Evidently he had meant no
harm by it, and evidently no offence had been taken. Used thus,
this language was plainly complimentary. I had stepped into a
world new to me indeed, and novelties were occurring with scarce
any time to get breath between them. As to where I should sleep,
I had forgotten that problem altogether in my curiosity. What was
the Virginian going to do now? I began to know that the quiet of
this man was volcanic.

"Will you wash first, sir?"

We were at the door of the eating-house, and he set my valise
inside. In my tenderfoot innocence I was looking indoors for the
washing arrangements.

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