"That is the only step I have had to take this whole trip," said the Virginian. He holstered his pistol with a jerk. "I have been fearing he would force it on me." And he looked at empty, receding1 Dakota with disgust. "So nyeh back home!" he muttered.
"Known your friend long?" whispered Scipio to me.
"Fairly," I answered.
Scipio's bleached2 eyes brightened with admiration3 as he considered the Southerner's back. "Well," he stated judicially4, "start awful early when yu' go to fool with him, or he'll make you feel unpunctual."
"I expaict I've had them almost all of three thousand miles," said the Virginian, tilting5 his head toward the noise in the caboose. "And I've strove to deliver them back as I received them. The whole lot. And I would have. But he has spoiled my hopes." The deputy foreman looked again at Dakota. "It's a disappointment," he added. "You may know what I mean."
I had known a little, but not to the very deep, of the man's pride and purpose in this trust. Scipio gave him sympathy. "There must be quite a balance of 'em left with yu' yet," said Scipio, cheeringly.
"I had the boys plumb6 contented," pursued the deputy foreman, hurt into open talk of himself. "Away along as far as Saynt Paul I had them reconciled to my authority. Then this news about gold had to strike us."
"And they're a-dreamin' nuggets and Parisian bowleyvards," suggested Scipio.
The Virginian smiled gratefully at him.
"Fortune is shinin' bright and blindin' to their delicate young eyes," he said, regaining7 his usual self.
We all listened a moment to the rejoicings within.
"Energetic, ain't they?" said the Southerner. "But none of 'em was whelped savage8 enough to sing himself bloodthirsty. And though they're strainin' mighty9 earnest not to be tame, they're goin' back to Sunk Creek10 with me accordin' to the Judge's awders. Never a calf11 of them will desert to Rawhide12, for all their dangerousness; nor I ain't goin' to have any fuss over it. Only one is left now that don't sing. Maybe I will have to make some arrangements about him. The man I have parted with," he said, with another glance at Dakota, "was our cook, and I will ask yu' to replace him, Colonel."
Scipio gaped13 wide. "Colonel! Say!" He stared at the Virginian. "Did I meet yu' at the palace?"
"Not exackly meet," replied the Southerner. "I was present one mawnin' las' month when this gentleman awdehed frawgs' laigs."
"Sakes and saints, but that was a mean position!" burst out Scipio. "I had to tell all comers anything all day. Stand up and jump language hot off my brain at 'em. And the pay don't near compensate14 for the drain on the system. I don't care how good a man is, you let him keep a-tappin' his presence of mind right along, without takin' a lay-off, and you'll have him sick. Yes, sir. You'll hit his nerves. So I told them they could hire some fresh man, for I was goin' back to punch cattle or fight Indians, or take a rest somehow, for I didn't propose to get jaded15, and me only twenty-five years old. There ain't no regular Colonel Cyrus Jones any more, yu' know. He met a Cheyenne telegraph pole in seventy-four, and was buried. But his palace was doin' big business, and he had been a kind of attraction, and so they always keep a live bear outside, and some poor fello', fixed16 up like the Colonel used to be, inside. And it's a turruble mean position. Course I'll cook for yu'. Yu've a dandy memory for faces!"
"I wasn't right convinced till I kicked him off and you gave that shut to your eyes again," said the Virginian.
Once more the door opened. A man with slim black eyebrows17, slim black mustache, and a black shirt tied with a white handkerchief was looking steadily18 from one to the other of us.
"Good day!" he remarked generally and without enthusiasm; and to the Virginian, "Where's Schoffner?"
"I expaict he'll have got his bottle by now, Trampas."
Trampas looked from one to the other of us again. "Didn't he say he was coming back?"
"He reminded me he was going for a bottle, and afteh that he didn't wait to say a thing."
Trampas looked at the platform and the railing and the steps. "He told me he was coming back," he insisted.
"I don't reckon he has come, not without he clumb up ahaid somewhere. An' I mus' say, when he got off he didn't look like a man does when he has the intention o' returnin'."
At this Scipio coughed, and pared his nails attentively19. We had already been avoiding each other's eye. Shorty did not count. Since he got aboard, his meek20 seat had been the bottom step.
The thoughts of Trampas seemed to be in difficulty. "How long's this train been started?" he demanded.
"This hyeh train?" The Virginian consulted his watch. "Why, it's been fanning it a right smart little while," said he, laying no stress upon his indolent syllables21.
"Huh!" went Trampas. He gave the rest of us a final unlovely scrutiny22. "It seems to have become a passenger train," he said. And he returned abruptly23 inside the caboose.
"Is he the member who don't sing?" asked Scipio.
"That's the specimen," replied the Southerner.
"He don't seem musical in the face," said Scipio.
"Pshaw!" returned the Virginian. "Why, you surely ain't the man to mind ugly mugs when they're hollow!"
The noise inside had dropped quickly to stillness. You could scarcely catch the sound of talk. Our caboose was clicking comfortably westward24, rail after rail, mile upon mile, while night was beginning to rise from earth into the clouded sky.
"I wonder if they have sent a search party forward to hunt Schoffner?" said the Virginian. "I think I'll maybe join their meeting." He opened the door upon them. "Kind o' dark hyeh, ain't it?" said he. And lighting25 the lantern, he shut us out.
"What do yu' think?" said Scipio to me. "Will he take them to Sunk Creek?"
"He evidently thinks he will," said I. "He says he will, and he has the courage of his convictions."
"That ain't near enough courage to have!" Scipio exclaimed. "There's times in life when a man has got to have courage WITHOUT convictions--WITHOUT them--or he is no good. Now your friend is that deep constitooted that you don't know and I don't know what he's thinkin' about all this."
"If there's to be any gun-play," put in the excellent Shorty, "I'll stand in with him."
"Ah, go to bed with your gun-play!" retorted Scipio, entirely26 good-humored. "Is the Judge paying for a carload of dead punchers to gather his beef for him? And this ain't a proposition worth a man's gettin' hurt for himself, anyway."
"That's so," Shorty assented27.
"No," speculated Scipio, as the night drew deeper round us and the caboose click-clucked and click-clucked over the rail joints28; "he's waitin' for somebody else to open this pot. I'll bet he don't know but one thing now, and that's that nobody else shall know he don't know anything."
Scipio had delivered himself. He lighted a cigarette, and no more wisdom came from him. The night was established. The rolling bad-lands sank away in it. A train-hand had arrived over the roof, and hanging the red lights out behind, left us again without remark or symptom of curiosity. The train-hands seemed interested in their own society and lived in their own caboose. A chill wind with wet in it came blowing from the invisible draws, and brought the feel of the distant mountains.
"That's Montana!" said Scipio, snuffing. "I am glad to have it inside my lungs again."
"Ain't yu' getting cool out there?" said the Virginian's voice. "Plenty room inside."
Perhaps he had expected us to follow him; or perhaps he had meant us to delay long enough not to seem like a reenforcement. "These gentlemen missed the express at Medora," he observed to his men, simply.
What they took us for upon our entrance I cannot say, or what they believed. The atmosphere of the caboose was charged with voiceless currents of thought. By way of a friendly beginning to the three hundred miles of caboose we were now to share so intimately, I recalled myself to them. I trusted no more of the Christian29 Endeavor had delayed them. "I am so lucky to have caught you again," I finished. "I was afraid my last chance of reaching the Judge's had gone."
Thus I said a number of things designed to be agreeable, but they met my small talk with the smallest talk you can have. "Yes," for instance, and "Pretty well, I guess," and grave strikings of matches and thoughtful looks at the floor. I suppose we had made twenty miles to the imperturbable30 clicking of the caboose when one at length asked his neighbor had he ever seen New York.
"No," said the other. "Flooded with dudes, ain't it?"
"Swimmin'," said the first.
"Leakin', too," said a third.
"Well, my gracious!" said a fourth, and beat his knee in private delight. None of them ever looked at me. For some reason I felt exceedingly ill at ease.
"Good clothes in New York," said the third.
"Rich food," said the first.
"Fresh eggs, too," said the third.
"Well, my gracious!" said the fourth, beating his knee.
"Why, yes," observed the Virginian, unexpectedly; "they tell me that aiggs there ain't liable to be so rotten as yu'll strike 'em in this country."
None of them had a reply for this, and New York was abandoned. For some reason I felt much better.
It was a new line they adopted next, led off by Trampas.
"Going to the excitement?" he inquired, selecting Shorty.
"Excitement?" said Shorty, looking up.
"Going to Rawhide?" Trampas repeated. And all watched Shorty.
"Why, I'm all adrift missin' that express," said Shorty.
"Maybe I can give you employment," suggested the Virginian. "I am taking an outfit31 across the basin."
"You'll find most folks going to Rawhide, if you re looking for company," pursued Trampas, fishing for a recruit.
"How about Rawhide, anyway?" said Scipio, skillfully deflecting32 this missionary33 work. "Are they taking much mineral out? Have yu' seen any of the rock?"
"Rock?" broke in the enthusiast34 who had beaten his knee. "There!" And he brought some from his pocket.
"You're always showing your rock," said Trampas, sulkily; for Scipio now held the conversation, and Shorty returned safely to his dozing35.
"H'm!" went Scipio at the rock. He turned it back and forth36 in his hand, looking it over; he chucked and caught it slightingly in the air, and handed it back. "Porphyry, I see." That was his only word about it. He said it cheerily. He left no room for discussion. You could not damn a thing worse. "Ever been in Santa Rita?" pursued Scipio, while the enthusiast slowly pushed his rock back into his pocket. "That's down in New Mexico. Ever been to Globe, Arizona?" And Scipio talked away about the mines he had known. There was no getting at Shorty any more that evening. Trampas was foiled of his fish, or of learning how the fish's heart lay. And by morning Shorty had been carefully instructed to change his mind about once an hour. This is apt to discourage all but very superior missionaries37. And I too escaped for the rest of this night. At Glendive we had a dim supper, and I bought some blankets; and after that it was late, and sleep occupied the attention of us all.
We lay along the shelves of the caboose, a peaceful sight I should think, in that smoothly38 trundling cradle. I slept almost immediately, so tired that not even our stops or anything else waked me, save once, when the air I was breathing grew suddenly pure, and I roused. Sitting in the door was the lonely figure of the Virginian. He leaned in silent contemplation of the occasional moon, and beneath it the Yellowstone's swift ripples39. 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. You would have said the rest of that young humanity was average rough male blood, merely needing to be told the proper things at the right time; and one big bunchy stocking of the enthusiast stuck out of his blanket, solemn and innocent, and I laughed at it. There was a light sound by the door, and I found the Virginian's eye on me. Finding who it was, he nodded and motioned with his hand to go to sleep. And this I did with him in my sight, still leaning in the open door, through which came the interrupted moon and the swimming reaches of the Yellowstone.
收听单词发音 |
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receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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judicially
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| 依法判决地，公平地 | |
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tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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plumb
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| adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深 | |
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regaining
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| 复得( regain的现在分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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rawhide
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| n.生牛皮 | |
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gaped
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| v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的过去式和过去分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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compensate
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| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
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jaded
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| adj.精疲力竭的；厌倦的；（因过饱或过多而）腻烦的；迟钝的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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syllables
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| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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imperturbable
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| adj.镇静的 | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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deflecting
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| （使）偏斜， （使）偏离， （使）转向( deflect的现在分词 ) | |
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missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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enthusiast
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| n.热心人，热衷者 | |
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35
dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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37
missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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