The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains

  XIX. DR. MACBRIDE BEGS PARDON

  Judge and Mrs. Henry, Molly Wood, and two strangers, a lady anda gentleman, were the party which had been driving in the largethree-seated wagon. They had seemed a merry party. But as I came withinhearing of their talk, it was a fragment of the minister's sonoritywhich reached me first: "--more opportunity for them to have the benefitof hearing frequent sermons," was the sentence I heard him bring tocompletion.

  "Yes, to be sure, sir." Judge Henry gave me (it almost seemed)additional warmth of welcome for arriving to break up the presentdiscourse. "Let me introduce you to the Rev. Dr. Alexander MacBride.Doctor, another guest we have been hoping for about this time," was myhost's cordial explanation to him of me. There remained the gentlemanwith his wife from New York, and to these I made my final bows. But Ihad not broken up the discourse.

  "We may be said to have met already." Dr. MacBride had fixed upon me hisfull, mastering eye; and it occurred to me that if they had policemenin heaven, he would be at least a centurion in the force. But he did notmean to be unpleasant; it was only that in a mind full of matters lessworldly, pleasure was left out. "I observed your friend was a skilfulhorseman," he continued. "I was saying to Judge Henry that I could wishsuch skilful horsemen might ride to a church upon the Sabbath. A church,that is, of right doctrine, where they would have opportunity to hearfrequent sermons."

  "Yes," said Judge Henry, "yes. It would be a good thing."

  Mrs. Henry, with some murmur about the kitchen, here went into thehouse.

  "I was informed," Dr. MacBride held the rest of us, "before undertakingmy journey that I should find a desolate and mainly godless country. Butnobody gave me to understand that from Medicine Bow I was to drive threehundred miles and pass no church of any faith."

  The Judge explained that there had been a few a long way to the rightand left of him. "Still," he conceded, "you are quite right. But don'tforget that this is the newest part of a new world."

  "Judge," said his wife, coming to the door, "how can you keep themstanding in the dust with your talking?"

  This most efficiently did break up the discourse. As our little party,with the smiles and the polite holdings back of new acquaintanceship,moved into the house, the Judge detained me behind all of them longenough to whisper dolorously, "He's going to stay a whole week."

  I had hopes that he would not stay a whole week when I presently learnedof the crowded arrangements which our hosts, with many hospitableapologies, disclosed to us. They were delighted to have us, but theyhadn't foreseen that we should all be simultaneous. The foreman's househad been prepared for two of us, and did we mind? The two of us wereDr. MacBride and myself; and I expected him to mind. But I wronged himgrossly. It would be much better, he assured Mrs. Henry, than straw in astable, which he had tried several times, and was quite ready for. So Isaw that though he kept his vigorous body clean when he could, he carednothing for it in the face of his mission. How the foreman and his wiferelished being turned out during a week for a missionary and myselfwas not my concern, although while he and I made ready for supper overthere, it struck me as hard on them. The room with its two cots andfurniture was as nice as possible; and we closed the door upon theadjoining room, which, however, seemed also untenanted.

  Mrs. Henry gave us a meal so good that I have remembered it, and herhusband the Judge strove his best that we should eat it in merriment. Hepoured out his anecdotes like wine, and we should have quickly warmedto them; but Dr. MacBride sat among us, giving occasional heavy ha-ha's,which produced, as Miss Molly Wood whispered to me, a "dreadfullycavernous effect." Was it his sermon, we wondered, that he was thinkingover? I told her of the copious sheaf of them I had seen him pull fromhis wallet over at the foreman's. "Goodness!" said she. "Then are we tohear one every evening?" This I doubted; he had probably been pickingone out suitable for the occasion. "Putting his best foot foremost," washer comment; "I suppose they have best feet, like the rest of us." Thenshe grew delightfully sharp. "Do you know, when I first heard him Ithought his voice was hearty. But if you listen, you'll find it'smerely militant. He never really meets you with it. He's off on his hillwatching the battle-field the whole time."

  "He will find a hardened pagan here."

  "Judge Henry?"

  "Oh, no! The wild man you're taming brought you Kenilworth safe back."

  She was smooth. "Oh, as for taming him! But don't you find himintelligent?"

  Suddenly I somehow knew that she didn't want to tame him. But what didshe want to do? The thought of her had made him blush this afternoon. Nothought of him made her blush this evening.

  A great laugh from the rest of the company made me aware that the Judgehad consummated his tale of the "Sole Survivor."

  "And so," he finished, "they all went off as mad as hops becauseit hadn't been a massacre." Mr. and Mrs. Ogden--they were the NewYorkers--gave this story much applause, and Dr. MacBride half a minutelater laid his "ha-ha," like a heavy stone, upon the gayety.

  "I'll never be able to stand seven sermons," said Miss Wood to me.

  "Talking of massacres,"--I now hastened to address the already saddenedtable,--"I have recently escaped one myself."

  The Judge had come to an end of his powers. "Oh, tell us!" he implored.

  "Seriously, sir, I think we grazed pretty wet tragedy but yourextraordinary man brought us out into comedy safe and dry."

  This gave me their attention; and, from that afternoon in Dakota when Ihad first stepped aboard the caboose, I told them the whole tale of myexperience: how I grew immediately aware that all was not right, by theVirginian's kicking the cook off the train; how, as we journeyed, thedark bubble of mutiny swelled hourly beneath my eyes; and how, when itwas threatening I know not what explosion, the Virginian had pricked itwith humor, so that it burst in nothing but harmless laughter.

  Their eyes followed my narrative: the New Yorkers, because such eventsdo not happen upon the shores of the Hudson; Mrs. Henry, because she wasmy hostess; Miss Wood followed for whatever her reasons were--I couldn'tsee her eyes; rather, I FELT her listening intently to the deeds anddangers of the man she didn't care to tame. But it was the eyes of theJudge and the missionary which I saw riveted upon me indeed until theend; and they forthwith made plain their quite dissimilar opinions.

  Judge Henry struck the table lightly with his fist. "I knew it!" And heleaned back in his chair with a face of contentment. He had trusted hisman, and his man had proved worthy.

  "Pardon me." Dr. MacBride had a manner of saying "pardon me," whichrendered forgiveness well-nigh impossible.

  The Judge waited for him.

  "Am I to understand that these--a--cow-boys attempted to mutiny, andwere discouraged in this attempt upon finding themselves less skilful atlying than the man they had plotted to depose?"

  I began an answer. "It was other qualities, sir, that happened to berevealed and asserted by what you call his lying that--"

  "And what am I to call it, if it is not lying? A competition in deceitin which, I admit, he out did them.

  "It's their way to--"

  "Pardon me. Their way to lie? They bow down to the greatest in this?"

  "Oh," said Miss Wood in my ear, "give him up."

  The Judge took a turn. "We-ell, Doctor--" He seemed to stick here.

  Mr. Ogden handsomely assisted him. "You've said the word yourself,Doctor. It's the competition, don't you see? The trial of strength by nomatter what test."

  "Yes," said Miss Wood, unexpectedly. "And it wasn't that GeorgeWashington couldn't tell a lie. He just wouldn't. I'm sure if he'dundertaken to he'd have told a much better one than Cornwall's."

  "Ha-ha, madam! You draw an ingenious subtlety from your books."

  "It's all plain to me," Ogden pursued. "The men were morose. Thisforeman was in the minority. He cajoled them into a bout of tallstories, and told the tallest himself. And when they found they hadswallowed it whole--well, it would certainly take the starch out of me,"he concluded. "I couldn't be a serious mutineer
after that."

  Dr. MacBride now sounded his strongest bass. "Pardon me. I cannot acceptsuch a view, sir. There is a levity abroad in our land which I mustdeplore. No matter how leniently you may try to put it, in the end wehave the spectacle of a struggle between men where lying decides thesurvival of the fittest. Better, far better, if it was to come, thatthey had shot honest bullets. There are worse evils than war."

  The Doctor's eye glared righteously about him. None of us, I think,trembled; or, if we did, it was with emotions other than fear. Mrs.Henry at once introduced the subject of trout-fishing, and thus happilyremoved us from the edge of whatever sort of precipice we seemed to haveapproached; for Dr. MacBride had brought his rod. He dilated upon thissport with fervor, and we assured him that the streams upon the westslope of the Bow Leg Mountains would afford him plenty of it. Thus weended our meal in carefully preserved amity.