V. ENTER THE WOMAN
"We are taking steps," said Mr. Taylor. "Bear Creek ain't going to behasty about a schoolmarm."
"Sure," assented the Virginian. "The children wouldn't want yu' tohurry."
But Mr. Taylor was, as I have indicated, a serious family man. Theproblem of educating his children could appear to him in no light excepta sober one. "Bear Creek," he said, "don't want the experience they hadover at Calef. We must not hire an ignoramus."
"Sure!" assented the Virginian again.
"Nor we don't want no gad-a-way flirt," said Mr. Taylor.
"She must keep her eyes on the blackboa'd," said the Virginian, gently.
"Well, we can wait till we get a guaranteed article," said Mr. Taylor."And that's what we're going to do. It can't be this year, and itneedn't to be. None of the kids is very old, and the schoolhouse has gotto be built." He now drew a letter from his pocket, and looked at me."Are you acquainted with Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington, Vermont?"he inquired.
I was not acquainted with her at this time.
"She's one we are thinking of. She's a correspondent with Mrs. Balaam."Taylor handed me the letter. "She wrote that to Mrs. Balaam, and Mrs.Balaam said the best thing was for to let me see it and judge formyself. I'm taking it back to Mrs. Balaam. Maybe you can give me youropinion how it sizes up with the letters they write back East?"
The communication was mainly of a business kind, but also personal,and freely written. I do not think that its writer expected it to beexhibited as a document. The writer wished very much that she could seethe West. But she could not gratify this desire merely for pleasure,or she would long ago have accepted the kind invitation to visit Mrs.Balaam's ranch. Teaching school was something she would like to do, ifshe were fitted for it. "Since the mills failed" (the writer said) "wehave all gone to work and done a lot of things so that mother might keepon living in the old house. Yes, the salary would be a temptation. But,my dear, isn't Wyoming bad for the complexion? And could I sue them ifmine got damaged? It is still admired. I could bring one male witness ATLEAST to prove that!" Then the writer became businesslike again. Even ifshe came to feel that she could leave home, she did not at all know thatshe could teach school. Nor did she think it right to accept aposition in which one had had no experience. "I do love children, boysespecially," she went on. "My small nephew and I get on famously. Butimagine if a whole benchful of boys began asking me questions that Icouldn't answer! What should I do? For one could not spank them all,you know! And mother says that I ought not to teach anybody spelling,because I leave the U out of HONOR."
Altogether it was a letter which I could assure Mr. Taylor "sized up"very well with the letters written in my part of the United States. Andit was signed, "Your very sincere spinster, Molly Stark Wood."
"I never seen HONOR spelled with a U," said Mr. Taylor, over whose nothighly civilized head certain portions of the letter had lightly passed.
I told him that some old-fashioned people still wrote the word so.
"Either way would satisfy Bear Creek," said Mr. Taylor, "if she'sotherwise up to requirements."
The Virginian was now looking over the letter musingly, and withawakened attention.
"'Your very sincere spinster,'" he read aloud slowly.
"I guess that means she's forty," said Taylor.
"I reckon she is about twenty," said the Virginian. And again he fell tomusing over the paper that he held.
"Her handwriting ain't like any I've saw," pursued Mr. Taylor. "But BearCreek would not object to that, provided she knows 'rithmetic and GeorgeWashington, and them kind of things."
"I expect she is not an awful sincere spinster," surmised the Virginian,still looking at the letter, still holding it as if it were some token.
Has any botanist set down what the seed of love is? Has it anywhere beenset down in how many ways this seed may be sown? In what various vesselsof gossamer it can float across wide spaces? Or upon what differentsoils it can fall, and live unknown, and bide its time for blooming?
The Virginian handed back to Taylor the sheet of note paper where a girlhad talked as the women he had known did not talk. If his eyes hadever seen such maidens, there had been no meeting of eyes; and if suchmaidens had ever spoken to him, the speech was from an establisheddistance. But here was a free language, altogether new to him. Itproved, however, not alien to his understanding, as it was alien to Mr.Taylor's.
We drove onward, a mile perhaps, and then two. He had lately been fullof words, but now he barely answered me, so that a silence fell uponboth of us. It must have been all of ten miles that we had driven whenhe spoke of his own accord.
"Your real spinster don't speak of her lot that easy," he remarked. Andpresently he quoted a phrase about the complexion, "'Could I sue themif mine got damaged?'" and he smiled over this to himself, shakinghis head. "What would she be doing on Bear Creek?" he next said. Andfinally: "I reckon that witness will detain her in Vermont. And hermother'll keep livin' at the old house."
Thus did the cow-puncher deliver himself, not knowing at all that theseed had floated across wide spaces, and was biding its time in hisheart.
On the morrow we reached Sunk Creek. Judge Henry's welcome and hiswife's would have obliterated any hardships that I had endured, and Ihad endured none at all.
For a while I saw little of the Virginian. He lapsed into his native wayof addressing me occasionally as "seh"--a habit entirely repudiated bythis land of equality. I was sorry. Our common peril during the runawayof Buck and Muggins had brought us to a familiarity that I hoped wasdestined to last. But I think that it would not have gone farther,save for a certain personage--I must call her a personage. And as I amindebted to her for gaining me a friend whose prejudice against me mightnever have been otherwise overcome, I shall tell you her little story,and how her misadventures and her fate came to bring the Virginian andme to an appreciation of one another. Without her, it is likely I shouldalso not have heard so much of the story of the schoolmarm, and how thatlady at last came to Bear Creek.