Part 59

He shook his head. “The windo’ shades is all down still oveh yondeh.” He paused. “I don’t care,” he stated, quite as if he had been ten years old. Then he grinned guiltily. “I was mighty respectful to him all night.”

“Oh, yes, respectful! Especially when you invited him to turn his wolf loose.”

The Virginian gave a joyous gulp. He now came and sat down on the edge of my bed. “I spoke awful good English to him most of the time,” said he. “I can, yu’ know, when I cinch my attention tight on to it. Yes, I cert’nly spoke a lot o’ good English. I didn’t understand some of it myself!”

He was now growing frankly pleased with his exploit. He had builded so much better than he knew. He got up and looked out across the crystal world of light. “The Doctor is at one-mile crossing,” he said. “He’ll get breakfast at the N-lazy-Y.” Then he returned and sat again on my bed, and began to give me his real heart. “I never set up for being better than others. Not even to myself. My thoughts ain’t apt to travel around making comparisons. And I shouldn’t wonder if my memory took as much notice of the meannesses I have done as of--as of the other actions. But to have to sit like a dumb lamb and let a stranger tell yu’ for an hour that yu’re a hawg and a swine, just after you have acted in a way which them that know the facts would call pretty near white--”

“Trampas!” I could not help exclaiming.

For there are moments of insight when a guess amounts to knowledge.

“Has Scipio told--”

“No. Not a word. He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Well, yu’ see, I arrived home hyeh this evenin’ with several thoughts workin’ and stirrin’ inside me. And not one o’ them thoughts was what yu’d call Christian. I ain’t the least little bit ashamed of ’em. I’m a human. But after the Judge--well, yu’ heard him. And so when I went away from that talk and saw how positions was changed--”

A step outside stopped him short. Nothing more could be read in his face, for there was Trampas himself in the open door.

“Good morning,” said Trampas, not looking at us. He spoke with the same cool sullenness of yesterday.

We returned his greeting.

“I believe I’m late in congratulating you on your promotion,” said he.

The Virginian consulted his watch. “It’s only half afteh six,” he returned.

Trampas’s sullenness deepened. “Any man is to be congratulated on getting a rise, I expect.”

This time the Virginian let him have it. “Cert’nly. And I ain’t forgetting how much I owe mine to you.”

Trampas would have liked to let himself go. “I’ve not come here for any forgiveness,” he sneered.

“When did yu’ feel yu’ needed any?” The Virginian was impregnable.

Trampas seemed to feel how little he was gaining this way. He came out straight now. “Oh, I haven’t any Judge behind me, I know. I heard you’d be paying the boys this morning, and I’ve come for my time.”

“You’re thinking of leaving us?” asked the new foreman. “What’s your dissatisfaction?”

“Oh, I’m not needing anybody back of me. I’ll get along by myself.” It was thus he revealed his expectation of being dismissed by his enemy.

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. The case could not be one of forgiveness; but the Virginian would not use his official position to crush his subordinate.

Trampas departed with something muttered that I did not hear, and the Virginian closed intimate conversation by saying, “You’ll be late for breakfast.” With that he also took himself away.

The ladies were inclined to be scandalized, but not the Judge. When my whole story was done, he brought his fist down on the table, and not lightly this time. “I’d make him lieutenant general if the ranch offered that position!” he declared.

Miss Molly Wood said nothing at the time. But in the afternoon, by her wish, she went fishing, with the Virginian deputed to escort her. I rode with them, for a while. I was not going to continue a third in that party; the Virginian was too becomingly dressed, and I saw KENILWORTH peeping out of his pocket. I meant to be fishing by myself when that volume was returned.

But Miss Wood talked with skilful openness as we rode. “I’ve heard all about you and Dr. MacBride,” she said. “How could you do it, when the Judge places such confidence in you?”

He looked pleased. “I reckon,” he said, “I couldn’t be so good if I wasn’t bad onced in a while.”