Page:Owen Wister - The Virginian.djvu/169

Rh made him broad gauge, yu' see, and then took his chance away."

Molly liked the Virginian for his blush. It made him very handsome. But she thought that it came from his confession about "pretty near crying." The deeper cause she failed to divine,—that he, like the dying hero in the novel, felt himself to be a giant whom life had made "broad gauge," and denied opportunity. Fecund nature begets and squanders thousands of these rich seeds in the wilderness of life.

He took away with him a volume of Shakespeare. "I've saw good plays of his," he remarked.

Kind Mrs. Taylor in her cabin next door watched him ride off in the sleet, bound for the lonely mountain trail.

"If that girl don't get ready to take him pretty soon," she observed to her husband, "I'll give her a piece of my mind."

Taylor was astonished. "Is he thinking of her?" he inquired.

"Lord, Mr. Taylor, and why shouldn't he?"

Mr. Taylor scratched his head and returned to his newspaper.

It was warm—warm and beautiful upon Bear Creek. Snow shone upon the peaks of the Bow Leg range; lower on their slopes the pines were stirring with a gentle song; and flowers bloomed across the wide plains at their feet.

Molly and her Virginian sat at a certain spring where he had often ridden with her. On this day he was bidding her farewell before undertaking the most important trust which Judge Henry had