We left Snake River. We went up Pacific Creek, and through Two Ocean
Pass, and down among the watery willow-bottoms and beaverdams of the
Upper Yellowstone. We fished; we enjoyed existence along the lake. Then
we went over Pelican Creek trail and came steeply down into the giant
country of grasstopped mountains. At dawn and dusk the elk had begun to
call across the stillness. And one morning in the Hoodoo country,
where we were looking for sheep, we came round a jut of the strange,
organ-pipe formation upon a longlegged boy of about nineteen, also
hunting.
“Still hyeh?” said the Virginian, without emotion.
“I guess so,” returned the boy, equally matter-of-fact. “Yu' seem to be
around yourself,” he added.
They might have been next-door neighbors, meeting in a town street for
the second time in the same day.
The Virginian made me known to Mr. Lin McLean, who gave me a brief nod.
“Any luck?” he inquired, but not of me.
“Oh,” drawled the Virginian, “luck enough.”
Knowing the ways of the country, I said no word. It was bootless to
interrupt their own methods of getting at what was really in both their
minds.
The boy fixed his wide-open hazel eyes upon me. “Fine weather,” he
mentioned.
“Very fine,” said I.
“I seen your horses a while ago,” he said. “Camp far from here?” he
asked the Virginian.
“Not specially. Stay and eat with us. We've got elk meat.”
“That's what I'm after for camp,” said McLean. “All of us is out on a
hunt to-day--except him.”
“How many are yu' now?”
“The whole six.”
“Makin' money?”
“Oh, some days the gold washes out good in the pan, and others it's that
fine it'll float off without settlin'.”
“So Hank ain't huntin' to-day?”
“Huntin'! We left him layin' out in that clump o'brush below their
cabin. Been drinkin' all night.”
The Virginian broke off a piece of the Hoodoo mud-rock from the weird
eroded pillar that we stood beside. He threw it into a bank of last
year's snow. We all watched it as if it were important. Up through the
mountain silence pierced the long quivering whistle of a bull-elk. It
was like an unearthly singer practising an unearthly scale.
“First time she heard that,” said McLean, “she was scared.”
“Nothin' maybe to resemble it in Austria,” said the Virginian.
“That's so,” said McLean. “That's so, you bet! Nothin' just like Hank
over there, neither.”
“Well, flesh is mostly flesh in all lands, I reckon,” said the
Virginian. “I expect yu' can be drunk and disorderly in every language.
But an Austrian Hank would be liable to respect her crucifix.”
“That's so!”
“He ain't made her quit it yet?”
“Not him. But he's got meaner.”
“Drunk this mawnin', yu' say?”
“That's his most harmless condition now.”
“Nobody's in camp but them two? Her and him alone?”
“Oh, he dassent touch her.”
“Who did he tell that to?”
“Oh, the camp is backin' her. The camp has explained that to him several
times, you bet! And what's more, she has got the upper hand of him
herself. She has him beat.”
“How beat?”
“She has downed him with her eye. Just by endurin' him peacefully; and
with her eye. I've saw it. Things changed some after yu' pulled out. We
had a good crowd still, and it was pleasant, and not too lively nor yet
too slow. And Willomene, she come more among us. She'd not stay shut
in-doors, like she done at first. I'd have like to've showed her how to
punish Hank.”
“Afteh she had downed yu' with her eye?” inquired the Virginian.
Young McLean reddened, and threw a furtive look upon me, the stranger,
the outsider. “Oh, well,” he said, “I done nothing onusual. But that's
all different now. All of us likes her and respects her, and makes
allowances for her bein' Dutch. Yu' can't help but respect her. And she
shows she knows.”
“I reckon maybe she knows how to deal with Hank,” said the Virginian.
“Shucks!” said McLean, scornfully. “And her so big and him so puny! She'd
ought to lift him off the earth with one arm and lam him with a baste or
two with the other, and he'd improve.”
“Maybe that's why she don't,” mused the Virginian, slowly; “because
she is so big. Big in the spirit, I mean. She'd not stoop to his
level. Don't yu' see she is kind o' way up above him and camp and
everything--just her and her crucifix?”
“Her and her crucifix!” repeated young Lin McLean, staring at this
interpretation, which was beyond his lively understanding. “Her and her
crucifix. Turruble lonesome company! Well, them are things yu' don't
know about. I kind o' laughed myself the first time I seen her at it.
Hank, he says to me soft, 'Come here, Lin,' and I peeped in where she
was a-prayin'. She seen us two, but she didn't quit. So I quit, and Hank
came with me, sayin' tough words about it. Yes, them are things yu'
sure don't know about. What's the matter with you camping with us boys
tonight?”
We had been going to visit them the next day. We made it to-day,
instead. And Mr. McLean helped us with our packs, and we carried our
welcome in the shape of elk meat. So we turned our faces down the
grass-topped mountains towards Galena Creek. Once, far through an
open gap away below us, we sighted the cabin with the help of our
field-glasses.
“Pity we can't make out Hank sleepin' in that brush,” said McLean.
“He has probably gone into the cabin by now,” said I.
“Not him! He prefers the brush all day when he's that drunk, you bet!”
“Afraid of her?”
“Well--oneasy in her presence. Not that she's liable to be in there
now. She don't stay inside nowadays so much. She's been comin' round
the ditch, silent-like but friendly. And she'll watch us workin' for a
spell, and then she's apt to move off alone into the woods, singin' them
Dutch songs of hern that ain't got no toon. I've met her walkin' that
way, tall and earnest, lots of times. But she don't want your company,
though she'll patch your overalls and give yu' lunch always. Nor she
won't take pay.”
Thus we proceeded down from the open summits into the close pines;
and while we made our way among the cross-timber and over the little
streams, McLean told us of various days and nights at the camp, and how
Hank had come to venting his cowardice upon his wife's faith.
“Why, he informed her one day when he was goin' take his dust to town,
that if he come back and found that thing in the house, he'd do it up
for her. 'So yu' better pack off your wooden dummy somewheres,' says he.
And she just looked at him kind o' stone-like and solemn. For she don't
care for his words no more.
“And while he was away she'd have us all in to supper up at the shack,
and look at us eatin' while she'd walk around puttin' grub on your
plate. Day time she'd come around the ditch, watchin' for a while, and
move off slow, singin' her Dutch songs. And when Hank comes back from
spendin' his dust, he sees the crucifix same as always, and he says,
'Didn't I tell yu' to take that down?' 'You did,' says Willomene,
lookin' at him very quiet. And he quit.
“And Honey Wiggin says to him, 'Hank, leave her alone.' And Hank, bein'
all trembly from spreein' in town, he says, 'You're all agin me!' like
as if he were a baby.”
“I should think you would run him out of camp,” said I.
“Well, we've studied over that some,” McLean answered. “But what's to be
done with Willomene?”