THE LAST NIGHT AT HOME
In the mountain country the twilights are longer and the sunset colors
lovelier than anywhere else. Long after Virginia and her father,
supper over, had come out upon the porch to sit together, the golden
light lingered in the western sky, making more blue the far distant
mountains, throwing the prairie into shadow, and casting upon the
nearer eastern foot-hills a strange, almost violet glow. Slowly the
gold changed to the deep, almost transparent blue of the mountain sky
at night. The sunset light faded to give place to the stars, which,
when the twilight was almost gone, seemed to shine out all at once, as
if fearful of the sunset’s lingering too long.
It was very still everywhere. Virginia sat in her favorite way—on a
low stool by her father’s chair, her head upon his knees, his hand in
hers. Together they watched the light fade and the stars come out, as
they had done for so many nights. No sound anywhere, except Hannah’s
steps in the kitchen, an occasional distant laugh or song from the men
in the bunk-house, and the night noises—the stirring of the
cottonwoods and the singing of the insects.
For a long time neither of them spoke, and the realization coming
closer every moment that this evening would be their last chance to
talk together for many months, did not seem to make conversation
easier. The big man in his chair was reviewing the years—thinking of
the time, twenty-five years back, when he had first come to this
country—then wild and unbroken like its own animals and roaming
horses. He had come like countless other young men, seeking a new
life, adventure, fortune; and he had stayed, having found an abundance
of the first two, and enough of the last. In the darkness he saw the
distant, widely separated lights of the homes on the prairie—that
prairie which he as a young man had ridden across, then
sagebrush-covered, the home of the antelope, the prairie dog, and the
rattler; now, intersected with irrigation ditches, covered with wheat
fields, dotted with homes. Yet the land possessed its old charm for
him. It was still a big country. The mountains had not changed; the
plains, though different in feature, stretched as wide; the sky was as
vast. He loved this land, so much that it had become a part of him;
but his little daughter at his feet he was sending away that she might
know another life.
He looked down at her. She was thinking, too—filled with a great
desire to stay in her own dear, Western country, and with another as
great to experience all the new things which this year was to bring
her. Homesickness and anticipation were fighting hard. She looked up
at her father, and even in the darkness saw the sadness in his face.
Lost in her own thoughts, she had left him out—him, whose loneliness
would be far greater than her own. She sprang up from her stool and
into his lap, as she had always done before the years had made her
such a big girl; and he held her close in his strong arms, while she
cried softly against his shoulder.
“Daddy,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Daddy, dear, do you
suppose people often want two different things so much that they can’t
tell which they want the most? Did you ever?”
He held her closer. “Yes, little girl. I expect many people do that
very thing when it comes to deciding. And your dad is doing that very
thing this minute. He thinks he wants to keep you right here with him,
but he knows away down deep that he wouldn’t let you stay if he could.
He knows he wants his little daughter to go away to her mother’s
school, and to have everything this big world can give her.”
“But it’s going to be so lonely for you, father. I’m so selfish, just
thinking of me, and never of you. I can’t leave you all alone!” And
the tears came again.
Silently he smoothed her hair, until with a choking little laugh she
raised her head.
“Don would call me a quitter, I guess,” she said. “I’m homesick
already, and he said to-day of course I’d be too plucky to be
homesick.” She laughed again. “I’m not going to cry another tear. And
there are so many things I want to ask you. Father, tell me truly, do
you like the folks in Vermont? Will I like them, do you think?”
She waited for what seemed to her long minutes before he answered her.
“Virginia,” he said at last, “your mother’s people are not like us
away out here. They are of New England stock and know nothing of our
life here, and it naturally seems rough to them. Your mother seemed to
have a different strain in her, else she had never come to Wyoming,
and stayed to marry a ranchman like me. But they are your mother’s
people, and as such I honor and respect them. And I want you to like
them, Virginia, for your mother’s sake.”
“I will, father,” she whispered, clinging to him. “I promise I will!”
A minute later she laughed again.
“I’ve written down all of Aunt Lou’s warnings, and I’ll learn them all
on the train. Are grandmother and Aunt Nan like Aunt Lou, father?”
“I don’t quite remember. Your grandmother is a lady, and looks it.
Your Aunt Nan was but a little girl of your age when I saw her, but I
think she’s—well, a little less particular than your Aunt Lou, judging
from her letters. I have been wrong,” he continued after a pause, “in
not sending you on to them in the summers, but I could not go, and it
seemed a long way to have you go without me. And though we’ve always
asked them, none of them has ever come here, until your Aunt Lou came
this summer.”
“Why didn’t mother go oftener?”
He hesitated a moment. “Some way she didn’t want to leave for so long.
She loved this Big Horn country as much as you and I. We went together
once before you came; and then the summer you were five years old she
took you and went again. But that was the last time. Do you remember
it?”
“I remember the tall clock on the stairs. I held the pendulum one day
and stopped it, and grandmother said it had not stopped for
seventy-five years. Then she scolded me, and told mother I was a
little wild thing—not a bit like my mother—and mother cried and said
she wished we were back home with you.”
They were silent again, listening to the wind in the cottonwoods. A
long silence, then her father said quietly,
“Your grandmother was wrong. You are very like your mother. But I am
sorry you had to look like your dad. It will disappoint them in
Vermont.”
Virginia’s eyes in the darkness sparkled dangerously. She sat up very
straight.
“If they don’t like the way I look,” she announced deliberately, “I’ll
go on to school, and not trouble them. I’m proud of looking like my
father, and I shall tell them so!”
Her father watched her proudly. Back through the years he heard her
mother’s voice:
“If they don’t like the man I’ve married, we’ll come back to the
mountains, and not torment them!”
A creaking sound, occurring regularly at intervals of a few seconds,
came from the road back of the house leading to the ranch buildings,
and gradually grew more distinct.
“Jim’s coming,” said Virginia. “He isn’t going on the round-up
to-morrow, is he, father? Don’t let him go, please!”
The creaking drew nearer, accompanied by hard, exhausted breathing.
“No,” her father told her, his voice low. “I’m not going to let him
go. He’s too worn out and old for that work, though it’s wonderful how
he rides with that wooden leg; but I can’t tell him he shan’t take
charge of the branding. He couldn’t stand that disappointment. Come
on, Jim,” he called cheerily. “We’re on the porch.”
Virginia echoed her father. “Come and talk with us, Jim.”
“I’m a-comin’,” came from the corner of the porch, “fast as this old
stick’ll bring me. Ain’t much the way I used to come, is it, sir? But
stick or leg, I’m good for years yet. Lord, Miss Virginia, I’m a-goin’
to teach your boys and girls how to throw the rope!” And talking as he
wheezed and creaked, Jim reached the porch and laboriously stumped up
the steps.
Jim was an old man, fifty of whose seventy years had been spent on the
ranges and ranches of the Great West. He had grown with the country,
moving westward as the tide moved, from Iowa to Kansas and Nebraska,
Nebraska to the Dakotas, and from the Dakotas to Montana and Wyoming.
No phase of the life West had escaped Jim. He had fought Indians and
cattle-thieves, punched cattle and homesteaded, prospected and mined.
Twenty years before, seeking more adventure, he had made his way on
horseback through the mountains to Arizona. Whether he found what he
sought, he never told, but five years later, he appeared again in
Wyoming, and since that time he had been with Mr. Hunter, whom he had
known when the country was new. Had his education equaled his honesty
and foresight, Mr. Hunter would long ago have made him foreman, for he
had no man whom he so fully trusted; but Jim’s limited knowledge of
letters and figures prohibited that distinction, and he remained in
one sense an ordinary ranch-hand, apparently content. Still, in
another sense, there was something unique about his position. The
younger men looked up to him, because of his wide experience and fund
of practical knowledge; Mr. Hunter relied implicitly upon his honesty,
and consulted him upon many matters of ranch management; and, next to
her father, there was no one in all Wyoming whom Virginia so loved.
Jim had taught her to ride when her short legs could hardly reach the
stirrups; had told her the names of every tree, bush, and flower of
the hills and plains; and had been her guard and companion on
expeditions far and wide. As she grew older, he gave and taught her
how to use her small rifle; and of late had even given her lessons in
swinging the lasso in the corral, in which art he was dexterity
itself. And last winter Virginia had been able to repay him,—though
all through the years she had given him far more than she knew,—for in
the autumn round-up, Jim, galloping over the range, had been thrown
from his horse, when the animal stumbled into a prairie dog’s hole,
and the fall had broken his leg.
The chagrin of the old cow-puncher was more pitiable to witness than
his pain, when the boys brought him in to the ranch. That he, the
veteran of the range, should have behaved thus—“like the rankest
tenderfoot”—was almost more than his proud spirit could withstand; and
later, when the doctor said the leg below the knee must be sacrificed,
the pain and loss, even the necessity of stumping about the rest of
his days, seemed as nothing to him compared with the shame he felt
over his “tenderfoot foolishness.”
The winter days would have been endless, indeed, had not Virginia been
there to cheer him. Mr. Hunter would not hear of his staying in the
bunk-house, but brought him to the ranch,—and there, under Hannah’s
faithful nursing, and Virginia’s companionship, the old man forgot a
little of his chagrin and humiliation. Virginia read to him by the
hour, nearly everything she had, and her books were many. Seventy is a
strange age to receive a long-deferred education, but Jim profited by
every chapter, even from “David Copperfield,” who, he privately
thought, was “a white-livered kind of fool” and his patience in
listening to David, Virginia rewarded by the convict scene in her own
dear “Great Expectations,” or by “Treasure Island,” both of which he
never tired.
Then, when he was able to sit up, even to stump about a little,
Virginia, having reviewed the venture in her own mind, suggested
bravely one day that he learn to read, for he barely knew his letters,
so that while she was at school the hours might not drag so wearily
for him. A little to her surprise, the old man assented eagerly, and
took his first lesson that very hour, He learned rapidly, to write as
well as read, and now that his labors on the ranch were so impaired he
had found it a blessing, indeed.
Of Jim’s early life no one knew. He was always reticent concerning it,
and no one safely tried to penetrate his reserve. His accent betokened
Scotch ancestry, but his birth-place, his parents, and his name were
alike a mystery. He was known to miles of country as “Jim.” That was
all. Enough, he said.
As he stood there in the open doorway, the light falling upon his bent
figure, and bronzed, bearded face, Virginia realized with a quick pang
of how much of her life Jim had been the center. She realized, too,
how worn he looked, and how out of breath he was, and she sprang from
her father’s lap.
“Come in, Jim,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “It’s cold out
here. Come, father.”
They went into the big, low-storied living-room, where Hannah had
lighted a fire in the great stone fire-place. The spruce logs were
burning brightly, and Virginia drew her father’s big arm-chair toward
the fire.
“Sit here, Jim, where it’s warm, and rest.”
Jim about to sit down, hesitated. “You see, sir, I come up on an
errand with a message from the boys. If it’s all well and pleasin’ to
you both, they’d like to beg permission to come up for a minute. You
see, they’re leavin’ early in the mornin’ for the round-up, and they
want to wish Miss Virginia good luck. If they was to come, I wasn’t to
go back.”
“Why, of course, they’re to come!” cried Virginia, while her father
nodded his approval. “I’d forgotten they go so early on the range, and
I wouldn’t go for the world without seeing them all. Sit down, Jim.
Do! Will they be right up?”
Jim sank gratefully into the big chair, placed his broad-brimmed hat
on his knee, and gave a final twist to his clean bandanna.
“They was a-sprucin’ up when I left the bunk-house, kind o’ reckonin’
on your sayin’ to come along. Beats all how walkin’ with a stick takes
your wind.” He was still breathing hard. Virginia watched him
anxiously.
“Jim,” said Mr. Hunter, after a pause, “I wish you’d look out for the
place to-morrow. I’ve some matters in town to attend to after taking
Virginia in for the train, and it may be late when I get back. A man
from Willow Creek thought he’d be around this week to look at some
sheep. I’m thinking of selling one hundred or so of that last year
lot, and I’ll leave the choice and price to your judgment.”
“All right, sir.” This helped matters considerably. Jim himself had
decided that he could not go upon the range, but here was afforded a
valid excuse to give the boys. His tired face brightened.
“And, Jim,” continued Virginia, eagerly, “I almost forgot to tell you.
Don and I spied Bess and the colt to-day on the lower range, not two
miles from the corral. The colt’s black like Bess, and a darling!
Don’t hurt it any more than you can help when you brand it, will you,
Jim? Does it hurt much, do you suppose?”
“Sho’ now, don’t you worry, Miss Virginia. You see, brandin’s like
most other things that don’t hurt nearly so much as you think they’re
goin’ to. It ain’t bad after a minute. I’ll be careful of the little
fellow. Here come the boys.”
Five stalwart forms passed the window and came to the porch, cleaning
their feet carefully upon the iron mud-scraper screwed to the side of
the lowest step for that very purpose. Then, a little embarrassed,
they filed up the steps and into the house, the two last bearing
between them a large box which they placed near the door. They were
hardy men, used to a rough life, of ages varying from young Dick
Norton, who was eighteen and a newcomer, to John Weeks, the foreman, a
man of fifty. Roughly dressed though they were, in flannel shirts and
knee-boots, they were clean, having, as Jim said, “spruced up” for the
occasion. For a moment they stood ill at ease, sombreros in their
hands, but only for a moment, for Mr. Hunter found them chairs,
talking meanwhile of the round-up, and Virginia ran to the kitchen to
ask Hannah for cider and gingerbread.
“Come in yourself, Hannah,” she said to the kind soul, who sat by the
spotless pine table, knitting busily; and she begged until Hannah
changed her apron and joined the circle about the fire.
“Joe,” said Virginia to a big man of thirty, whose feet worried him
because they demanded so much room. “Joe, you’ll keep an eye on the
littlest pup, won’t you? He has a lump in his throat, and the others
pick on him. I wish you’d rub the lump with liniment; and don’t forget
to tell me how he is.”
Joe promised. If the service had been for the Queen, he could not have
been more honored.
“And, Alec,” to a tall Scotchman, who had a wife and family in the
nearest town, “I’m leaving my black Sampson and all his clothes to
little David. You’ll take them when you go in Saturday night?”
Alec beamed his thanks.
“I wish you’d use Pedro all you can, Dick.” This to the young lad, who
colored and smiled. “He gets sore if he isn’t used; and give him some
sugar now and then for me. He’ll miss me at first.”
She turned toward the farthest corner of the room where a man sat
apart from the others—a man with a kind, almost sad face, upon the
features of which the town saloon had left its mark. This was William,
one of the best cattle hands in the county when he could keep away
from town. To every one but Virginia he was “Bill,” but Virginia said
he needed to be called William.
“William,” she said, “if you kill any snakes, I wish you’d save me the
rattles. I’m collecting them. And, if you have any time, I wish you’d
plant some perennial things in the bed under my window, so they’ll
bloom early in June. You choose whatever you like. It’ll be more fun
not to know, and then see them all in blossom when I get home. Don’t
you think it would be a good plan?”
William’s tired face, on which were written the records of many hopes
and failures, grew so bright with interest that he did not look like
“Bill” at all. Moreover, he loved flowers.
“Just the thing, Miss Virginia,” he said. “I’ll have it ready for you
in June, and I won’t forget them rattles, either.”
She thanked him. “And oh, Mr. Weeks,” she said, for she dignified the
foreman by a title, “you won’t let father work too hard, will you?
Because I shall worry if you don’t promise me.”
So the delighted Mr. Weeks promised, while they all laughed. Then the
men looked from one another to Jim with shy, embarrassed glances, as
though they were waiting for something. Jim was equal to the occasion.
“You, Joe and Dick, bring that box in front of the fire while I get
up.”
Joe and Dick, glad of something to do, obeyed, lifting the big box
before the fire, while Virginia stared in surprise, and her father
smiled, watching her. Jim, scorning assistance, had risen from his
chair and stood facing his audience, but his eyes were on Virginia.
“Miss Virginia,” he began, while the boys fumbled with their hats,
“none of us ain’t forgot what you’ve been to us while you’ve been
a-growin’ up. Some of us have been here a good while, and some ain’t
been so long, but we’ve all been long enough to think a deal o’ you.
You’ve always treated us like gentlemen, and we ain’t them that
forget. This old ranch ain’t goin’ to seem the same without you, but
we’re glad you’re goin’ to be educated in that school your mother went
to, for those of us who knowed her, knowed a lady.
“Now there ain’t a better rider in all this country than yourself,
Miss Virginia, and I can just see how you’ll make them Easterners’
eyes stick out. And we boys don’t want you to have to ride on any o’
them flat-seated English saddles, that ain’t fit for any one but a
tenderfoot. So we’ve just took the liberty of gettin’ you a little
remembrance of us. Joe and Dick, suppose you lift the cover, and show
Miss Virginia her present.”
[Illustration: “Jim, scorning assistance, had risen from his chair
and stood facing his audience.”]
Joe and Dick raised the cover of the box, and lifted from it before
Virginia’s shining eyes a new Western saddle. It was made from russet
leather with trappings complete, and could not be surpassed in design
and workmanship. On its brass-topped saddle-horn were engraved the
letters “V. H.”; the same monogram was embroidered on the four corners
of the heavy brown saddle blanket; and the brass of the bridle,
suspended from the saddle-horn, was cunningly engraved with the same
design.
Virginia gazed at the saddle, at her father, at the men, one by one,
at Hannah, who was wiping her eyes; and then suddenly the tears came
into her own eyes, and her voice, when she tried to thank them, broke
at every word.
“Oh, I—just—can’t—thank—you—” she managed to say, while the men’s
rough faces twitched, and tears filled the furrows of Jim’s cheeks,
“but I’ll—never forget you, never, because you’re my very best
friends!” And she went from one to the other, shaking hands with each,
while her father followed her example, for he was quite as touched and
delighted as she.
Then, after she had examined all over again every part of the saddle;
after Jim had explained how they were to pack and ship it so that it
would reach school by the time she arrived; after gingerbread and
cider had helped them all to regain composure, Virginia went to her
room and returned with a tiny box, and her fountain pen.
“Aunt Lou says that every girl who goes away to school must have
calling cards,” she explained, “and I’m going to use mine for the very
first time to-night to write my address for each one of you. And every
time you look at it, please remember how much I thank you every one,
and how much I’m missing you.”
So when the men went back to the bunk-house, after an hour they would
always remember, each carried in the pocket of his flannel shirt a
calling-card, given by a “lady” to a “gentleman.”
“Oh, daddy,” cried Virginia, as the last faint creak of Jim’s stick
died away on the road to the bunk-house. “Oh, daddy, why did they ever
do it for me? And I’ve never done a thing for them, except perhaps
reading to Jim!”
Her father gathered her in his lap for the last few minutes before the
fire.
“Virginia,” he said, “I learned long ago that we often help others
most by just being ourselves. When you grow older, perhaps you’ll
understand what the men mean.” They sat silently for a while, neither
wanting to leave the fire and each other. From the bunk-house came the
sound of voices singing some lusty song of the range. The boys
apparently were happy, too. “And now, little girl, it’s a long drive
to-morrow, and we must be off early. Kiss your father, and run to
bed.”
Closely she clung to him, and kissed him again and again; but when the
lump in her throat threatened to burst with bigness, she ran to her
own room, leaving her father to watch the fire die away and to think
of many things. Pinned to her pillow, she found a brown paper parcel,
with “From Hannah” written in ungainly characters upon it. Inside were
red mittens, knitted by the same rough fingers that had penned the
words. The lump in Virginia’s throat swelled bigger. She ran across
the hall to the little room where Hannah, muffled in flannel gown and
night-cap, lay in bed, and kissed her gratefully.
“Run to bed, dearie,” muttered the old servant. “It’s cold these
nights in the mountains.”
But Virginia’s mind was too full of thoughts for sleep. She reviewed
her ride with Donald, her talk with her father, all the dear events of
the evening with its crowning joy. It seemed hours when she heard her
father go to his room, and yet she could not sleep. At last she sat up
in bed, bundling the covers about her, for the air was cold, and
looked out of her window. At night the mountains seemed nearer still,
and more friendly—more protecting, less strange and secretive. She
looked at them wondering. Did they really know all things? Were they
millions of years old, as she had read? Did they care at all for
people who looked at them, and wondered, and wanted to be like them?
“To-night I half believe you do care,” she whispered. “Anyway, I’m not
frightened of you at all. And oh, do take care of those I love till I
come back again!”
Then she lay down again, and soon was fast asleep.