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This would have knocked any meditated generosity out of my heart. But I was not the Virginian. He shifted his legs, leaned back a little, and laughed. "Go back to your job, Trampas, if that's all your complaint. You're right about me being in luck. But maybe there's two of us in luck." It was this that Scipio had preferred me to see with my own eyes. The fight was between man and man no longer.
I had also seen him sit all night watching his responsibility, ready to spring on it and fasten his teeth in it. And now that he had confounded them with their own attempted weapon of ridicule, his powers seemed to be profoundly dormant. That final pitched battle of wits had made the men his captives and admirers all save Trampas. And of him the Virginian did not seem to be aware.
Train was flying past that quick the bullet broke every window and killed a passenger on the back platform. You've been running too much with aristocrats," finished Trampas, and turned on his heel. "Haw, hew!" began the enthusiast, but his neighbor gripped him to silence. This was a triumph too serious for noise. Not a mutineer moved; and I felt cold.
I spread my blankets on some straw in a stall by myself and rolled up in them; yet I lay growing broader awake, every inch of weariness stricken from my excited senses. For a while they sat over their councils, whispering cautiously, so that I was made curious to hear them by not being able; was it the names of Trampas and Shorty that were once or twice spoken I could not be sure.
"Gawd, Trampas!" said the Virginian, "d' yu' reckon I'd be rotting hyeh on forty dollars if Tulare was like it used to be? Tulare is broke." "What broke it? Your leaving?" "Revenge broke it, and disease," said the Virginian, striking the frying-pan on his knee, for the frogs were all gone.
On the caboose shelves the others slept sound and still, each stretched or coiled as he had first put himself. They were not untrustworthy to look at, it seemed to me except Trampas.
"Trampas," said the Virginian, "I thought yu'd be afeared to try it on me." Trampas whirled round. His hand was at his belt. "Afraid!" he sneered. "Shorty!" said Scipio, sternly, and leaping upon that youth, took his half-drawn pistol from him. "I'm obliged to yu'," said the Virginian to Scipio. Trampas's hand left his belt.
In the springtime, when the neighboring ranches needed additional hands, it happened as the Virginian had foreseen, Trampas departed to a "better job," as he took pains to say, and with him the docile Shorty rode away upon his horse Pedro. Love now was not any longer snowbound. The mountain trails were open enough for the sure feet of love's steed that horse called Monte.
When yu' beat another man at his own game like he done to Trampas, why, yu've had all the revenge yu' can want, unless you're a hog. And he's no hog. But he has got it in for Trampas. They've not reckoned to a finish. Would you let a man try such spite-work on you and quit thinkin' about him just because yu'd headed him off?" To this I offered his own notion about hogs and being satisfied.
And they never struck any plan to brand their stock and prove ownership." "Well, twenty per cent is good enough for me," said Trampas, "if Rawhide don't suit me." "A hundred a month!" said the enthusiast. And busy calculations began to arise among them. "It went to fifty per cent," pursued the Virginian, "when New York and Philadelphia got to biddin' agaynst each other.
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