Part 90

“I hope so,” I answered. “How about Ed?”

“He was not a man, though we thought he was till this. Steve and I started punching cattle together at the Bordeaux outfit, north of Cheyenne. We did everything together in those days--work and play. Six years ago. Steve had many good points onced.”

We must have gone two miles before he spoke again. “You prob’ly didn’t notice Steve? I mean the way he acted to me?” It was a question, but he did not wait for my answer. “Steve never said a word to me all through. He shunned it. And you saw how neighborly he talked to the other boys.”

“Where have they all gone?” I asked.

He smiled at me. “It cert’nly is lonesome now, for a fact.”

“I didn’t know you felt it,” said I.

“Feel it!--they’ve went to the railroad. Three of them are witnesses in a case at Evanston, and the Judge wants our outfit at Medicine Bow. Steve shunned me. Did he think I was going back on him?”

“What if he did? You were not. And so nobody’s going to Wind River but you?”

“No. Did you notice Steve would not give us any information about Shorty? That was right. I would have acted that way, too.” Thus, each time, he brought me back to the subject.

The sun was now shining warm during two or three minutes together, and gulfs of blue opened in the great white clouds. These moved and met among each other, and parted, like hands spread out, slowly weaving a spell of sleep over the day after the wakeful night storm. The huge contours of the earth lay basking and drying, and not one living creature, bird or beast, was in sight. Quiet was returning to my revived spirits, but there was none for the Virginian. And as he reasoned matters out aloud, his mood grew more overcast.

“You have a friend, and his ways are your ways. You travel together, you spree together confidentially, and you suit each other down to the ground. Then one day you find him putting his iron on another man’s calf. You tell him fair and square those ways have never been your ways and ain’t going to be your ways. Well, that does not change him any, for it seems he’s disturbed over getting rich quick and being a big man in the Territory. And the years go on, until you are foreman of Judge Henry’s ranch and he--is dangling back in the cottonwoods. What can he claim? Who made the choice? He cannot say, ‘Here is my old friend that I would have stood by.’ Can he say that?”

“But he didn’t say it,” I protested.

“No. He shunned me.”

“Listen,” I said. “Suppose while you were on guard he had whispered, ‘Get me off’--would you have done it?”

“No, sir!” said the Virginian, hotly.

“Then what do you want?” I asked. “What did you want?”

He could not answer me--but I had not answered him, I saw; so I pushed it farther. “Did you want indorsement from the man you were hanging? That’s asking a little too much.”

But he had now another confusion. “Steve stood by Shorty,” he said musingly. “It was Shorty’s mistake cost him his life, but all the same he didn’t want us to catch--”

“You are mixing things,” I interrupted. “I never heard you mix things before. And it was not Shorty’s mistake.”

He showed momentary interest. “Whose then?”

“The mistake of whoever took a fool into their enterprise.”

“That’s correct. Well, Trampas took Shorty in, and Steve would not tell on him either.”

I still tried it, saying, “They were all in the same boat.” But logic was useless; he had lost his bearings in a fog of sentiment. He knew, knew passionately, that he had done right; but the silence of his old friend to him through those last hours left a sting that no reasoning could assuage. “He told good-by to the rest of the boys; but not to me.” And nothing that I could point out in common sense turned him from the thread of his own argument. He worked round the circle again to self-justification. “Was it him I was deserting? Was not the deserting done by him the day I spoke my mind about stealing calves? I have kept my ways the same. He is the one that took to new ones. The man I used to travel with is not the man back there. Same name, to be sure. And same body. But different in--and yet he had the memory! You can’t never change your memory!”

He gave a sob. It was the first I had ever heard from him, and before I knew what I was doing I had reined my horse up to his and put my arm around his shoulders. I had no sooner touched him than he was utterly overcome. “I knew Steve awful well,” he said.

Thus we had actually come to change places; for early in the morning he had been firm while I was unnerved, while now it was I who attempted to steady and comfort him.

I had the sense to keep silent, and presently he shook my hand, not looking at me as he did so. He was always very shy of demonstration. And he took to patting the neck of his pony. “You Monte hawss,” said he, “you think you are wise, but there’s a lot of things you don’t savvy.” Then he made a new beginning of talk between us.

“It is kind of pitiful about Shorty.”

“Very pitiful,” I said.