"And so," the Judge continued speaking to me, "here I am at a very inconvenient time without a foreman. Unless," I caught the twinkle in his eyes before he turned to the Virginian, "unless you're willing to take the position yourself. Will you?"
I saw the Southerner's hand grip his hat as he was turning it round. He held it still now, and his other hand found it and gradually crumpled the soft crown in. It meant everything to him: recognition, higher station, better fortune, a separate house of his own, and — perhaps — one step nearer to the woman he wanted. I don't know what words he might have said to the Judge had they been alone, but the Judge had chosen to do it in our presence, the whole thing from beginning to end. The Virginian sat with the damp coming out on his forehead, and his eyes dropped from his employer's.
"Thank yu'," was what he managed at last to say.
"Well, now, I'm greatly relieved!" exclaimed the Judge, rising at once. He spoke with haste, and lightly. "That's excellent. I was in some thing of a hole," he said to Ogden and me; "and this gives me one thing less to think of. Saves me a lot of particulars," he jocosely added to the Virginian, who was now also standing up. "Begin right off. Leave the bunk house. The gentlemen won't mind your sleeping in your own house."
Thus he dismissed his new foreman gayly. But the new foreman, when he got outside, turned back for one gruff word, — "I'll try to please yu'." That was all. He was gone in the darkness. But there was light enough for me, looking after him, to see him lay his hand on a shoulder-high gate and vault it as if he had been the wind. Sounds of cheering came to us a few moments later from the bunk house. Evidently he had "begun right away," as the Judge had directed. He had told his fortune to his brother cow-punchers, and this was their answer.
"I wonder if Trampas is shouting too?" inquired Ogden.
"Hm!" said the Judge. "That is one of the particulars I wash my hands of."
I knew that he entirely meant it. I knew, once his decision taken of appointing the Virginian his lieutenant for good and all, that, like a wise commander-in-chief, he would trust his lieutenant to take care of his own business.
"Well," Ogden pursued with interest, "haven't you landed Trampas plump at his mercy?"
The phrase tickled the Judge. "That is where I've landed him!" he declared. "And here is Dr. MacBride."
XXI. IN A STATE OF SIN
Thunder sat imminent upon the missionary's brow. Many were to be at his mercy soon. But for us he had sunshine still. "I am truly sorry to be turning you upside down," he said importantly. "But it seems the best place for my service." He spoke of the tables pushed back and the chairs gathered in the hall, where the storm would presently break upon the congregation. "Eight-thirty?" he inquired.
This was the hour appointed, and it was only twenty minutes off. We threw the unsmoked fractions of our cigars away, and returned to offer our services to the ladies. This amused the ladies. They had done without us. All was ready in the hall.
"We got the cook to help us," Mrs. Ogden told me, "so as not to disturb your cigars. In spite of the cow-boys, I still recognize my own country."
"In the cook?" I rather densely asked.
"Oh, no! I don't have a Chinaman. It's in the length of after-dinner cigars."
"Had you been smoking," I returned, "you would have found them short this evening."
"You make it worse," said the lady; "we have had nothing but Dr. MacBride."
"We'll share him with you now," I exclaimed.
"Has he announced his text? I've got one for him," said Molly Wood, joining us. She stood on tiptoe and spoke it comically in our ears. "'I said in my haste, All men are liars.'" This made us merry as we stood among the chairs in the congested hall.
I left the ladies, and sought the bunk house. I had heard the cheers, but I was curious also to see the men, and how they were taking it. There was but little for the eye. There was much noise in the room. They were getting ready to come to church, — brushing their hair, shaving, and making themselves clean, amid talk occasionally profane and continuously diverting.
"Well, I'm a Christian, anyway," one declared.
"I'm a Mormon, I guess," said another.
"I belong to the Knights of Pythias," said a third.
"I'm a Mohammedist," said a fourth; "I hope I ain't goin' to hear nothin' to shock me."
And they went on with their joking. But Trampas was out of the joking. He lay on his bed reading a newspaper, and took no pains to look pleasant. My eyes were considering him when the blithe Scipio came in.
"Don't look so bashful," said he. "There's only us girls here."
He had been helping the Virginian move his belongings from the bunk house over to the foreman's cabin. He himself was to occupy the Virginian's old bed here. "And I hope sleepin' in it will bring me some of his luck," said Scipio. "Yu'd ought to've seen us when he told us in his quiet way. Well," Scipio sighed a little, "it must feel good to have your friends glad about you."
"Especially Trampas," said I. "The Judge knows about that," I added.
"Knows, does he? What's he say?" Scipio drew me quickly out of the bunk house.
"Says it's no business of his."
"Said nothing but that?" Scipio's curiosity seemed strangely intense. "Made no suggestion? Not a thing?"
"Not a thing. Said he didn't want to know and didn't care."
"How did he happen to hear about it?" snapped Scipio. "You told him!" he immediately guessed. "He never would." And Scipio jerked his thumb at the Virginian, who appeared for a moment in the lighted window of the new quarters he was arranging. "He never would tell," Scipio repeated. "And so the Judge never made a suggestion to him," he muttered, nodding in the darkness. "So it's just his own notion. Just like him, too, come to think of it. Only I didn't expect — well, I guess he could surprise me any day he tried."
"You're surprising me now," I said. "What's it all about?"
"Oh, him and Trampas."
"What? Nothing surely happened yet?" I was as curious as Scipio had been.
"No, not yet. But there will."
"Great Heavens, man! when?"
"Just as soon as Trampas makes the first move," Scipio replied easily.
I became dignified. Scipio had evidently been told things by the Virginian.
"Yes, I up and asked him plumb out," Scipio answered. "I was liftin' his trunk in at the door, and I couldn't stand it no longer, and I asked him plumb out. 'Yu've sure got Trampas where yu' want him.' That's what I said. And he up and answered and told me. So I know." At this point Scipio stopped; I was not to know.
"I had no idea," I said, "that your system held so much meanness."
"Oh, it ain't meanness!" And he laughed ecstatically.
"What do you call it, then?"
"He'd call it discretion," said Scipio. Then he became serious. "It's too blamed grand to tell yu'. I'll leave yu' to see it happen. Keep around, that's all. Keep around. I pretty near wish I didn't know it myself."
What with my feelings at Scipio's discretion, and my human curiosity, I was not in that mood which best profits from a sermon. Yet even though my expectations had been cruelly left quivering in mid air, I was not sure how much I really wanted to "keep around." You will therefore understand how Dr. MacBride was able to make a prayer and to read Scripture without my being conscious of a word that he had uttered. It was when I saw him opening the manuscript of his sermon that I suddenly remembered I was sitting, so to speak, in church, and began once more to think of the preacher and his congregation. Our chairs were in the front line, of course; but, being next the wall, I could easily see the cow-boys behind me. They were perfectly decorous. If Mrs. Ogden had looked for pistols, daredevil attitudes, and so forth, she must have been greatly disappointed. Except for their weather-beaten cheeks and eyes, they were simply American young men with mustaches and without, and might have been sitting, say, in Danbury, Connecticut. Even Trampas merged quietly with the general placidity. The Virginian did not, to be sure, look like Danbury, and his frame and his features showed out of the mass; but his eyes were upon Dr. MacBride with a creamlike propriety.