WESTERN CLASSICS - Ultimate Collection: Historical Novels, Wild West Adventures & Action Romance Novels. Owen Wister

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СКАЧАТЬ observed the Virginian.

      "Yes," said Lin, nodding sagely at the fire, "that's so, too."

      Yet not he, not any one, could have foreseen the mortifying harmlessness of the outcome. They swept down upon Separ like all the hordes of legend—more egregiously, perhaps, because they were play-acting and no serious horde would go on so. Our final hundred yards of speed and copious howling brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear like rabbits—all save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or in there, and the horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and leaped to earth—except Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door stood open wide to any cool breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped in foremost, hat lowering over eyes and pistol prominent. He stopped rooted, staring, and his mouth came open slowly; his hand went feeling up for his hat, and came down with it by degrees as by degrees his grin spread. Then in a milky voice, he said: "Why, excuse me, ma'am! Good-morning."

      There answered a clear, long, rippling, ample laugh. It came out of the open door into the heat; it made the sun-baked air merry; it seemed to welcome and mock; it genially hovered about us in the dusty quiet of Separ; for there was no other sound anywhere at all in the place, and the great plain stretched away silent all round it. The bulging water-tank shone overhead in bland, ironic safety.

      The horde stood blank; then it shifted its legs, looked sideways at itself, and in a hesitating clump reached the door, shambled in, and removed its foolish hat.

      "Good-morning, gentlemen," said Jessamine Buckner, seated behind her railing; and various voices endeavored to reply conventionally.

      "If you have any letters, ma'am," said the Virginian, more inventive, "I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's." He knew the judge's office was seventy miles from here.

      "Any for the C. Y.?" muttered another, likewise knowing better.

      It was a happy, if simple, thought, and most of them inquired for the mail. Jessamine sought carefully, making them repeat their names, which some did guiltily: they foresaw how soon the lady would find out no letters ever came for these names!

      There was no letter for any one present.

      "I'm sorry, truly," said Jessamine behind the railing. "For you seemed real anxious to get news. Better luck next time! And if I make mistakes, please everybody set me straight, for of course I don't understand things yet."

      "Yes, m'm."

      "Good-day, m'm."

      "Thank yu', m'm."

      They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.

      "No, she don't understand things yet," soliloquized the Virginian. "Oh dear, no." He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. "You Lin McLean," said he, in his gentle voice, "you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this mawnin'."

      Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly and vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I, and here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.

      Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean "'Neighbor' is as cute a name for a six-shooter as ever I heard," said he. "But she'll never have need of your gun in Separ—only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while she hearkens to your courtin'."

      That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. "Plumb strange," he said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, "how a man will win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one."

      "Your hair seems black as ever," said I.

      "My hopes ain't so glossy any more," he answered. "Lin has done better this second trip."

      "Mrs. Lusk don't count," said I.

      "I reckon she counted mighty plentiful when he thought he'd got her clamped to him by lawful marriage. But Lin's lucky." And the Virginian fell silent again.

      Lucky Lin bestirred him over his work, his plans, his ranch on Box Elder that was one day to be a home for his lady. He came and went, seeing his idea triumph and his girl respected. Not only was she a girl, but a good shot too. And as if she and her small, neat home were a sort of possession, the cow-punchers would boast of her to strangers. They would have dealt heavily now with the wretch who should trifle with the water-tank. When camp came within visiting distance, you would see one or another shaving and parting his hair. They wrote unnecessary letters, and brought them to mail as excuses for an afternoon call. Honey Wiggin, more original, would look in the door with his grin, and hold up an ace of clubs. "I thought maybe yu' could spare a minute for a shootin'-match," he would insinuate; and Separ now heard no more objectionable shooting than this. Texas brought her presents of game—antelope, sage-chickens—but, shyness intervening, he left them outside the door, and entering, dressed in all the "Sunday" that he had, would sit dumbly in the lady's presence. I remember his emerging from one of these placid interviews straight into the hands of his tormentors.

      "If she don't notice your clothes, Texas," said the Virginian, "just mention them to her."

      "Now yer've done offended her," shrilled Manassas Donohoe. "She heard that."

      "She'll hear you singin' sooprano," said Honey Wiggin. "It's good this country has reformed, or they'd have you warblin' in some dance-hall and corrupt your morals."

      "You sca'cely can corrupt the morals of a soprano man," observed the Virginian. "Go and play with Billy till you can talk bass."

      But it was the boldest adults that Billy chose for playmates. Texas he found immature. Moreover, when next he came, he desired play with no one. Summer was done. September's full moon was several nights ago; he had gone on his hunt with Lin, and now spelling-books were at hand. But more than this clouded his mind, he had been brought to say good-bye to Jessamine Buckner, who had scarcely seen him, and to give her a wolverene-skin, a hunting trophy. "She can have it," he told me. "I like her." Then he stole a look at his guardian. "If they get married and send me back to mother," said he, "I'll run away sure." So school and this old dread haunted the child, while for the man, Lin the lucky, who suspected nothing of it, time was ever bringing love nearer to his hearth. His Jessamine had visited Box Elder, and even said she wanted chickens there; since when Mr. McLean might occasionally have been seen at his cabin, worrying over barn-yard fowls, feeding and cursing them with equal care. Spring would see him married, he told me.

      "This time right!" he exclaimed. "And I want her to know Billy some more before he goes to Bear Creek."

      "Ah, Bear Creek!" said Billy, acidly. "Why can't I stay home?"

      "Home sounds kind o' slick," said Lin to me. "Don't it, now? 'Home' is closer than 'neighbor,' you bet! Billy, put the horses in the corral, and ask Miss Buckner if we can come and see her after supper. If you're good, maybe she'll take yu' for a ride to-morrow. And, kid, ask her about Laramie."

      Again suspicion quivered over Billy's face, and he dragged his horses angrily to the corral.

      Lin nudged me, laughing. "I can rile him every time about Laramie," said he, affectionately. "I wouldn't have believed the kid set so much store by me. Nor I didn't need to ask Jessamine to love him for my sake. What do yu' suppose? Before I'd got far as thinking of Billy at all—right after Edgeford, when my head was just a whirl of joy—Jessamine says to me one day, 'Read that.' It was Governor Barker СКАЧАТЬ