"Perhaps I can do something to-night at Mrs. Taylor's," she said, looking at her paper.
On it were a few words crossed out. This was all she had to show.
At this set task in letter-writing, the cow-puncher had greatly excelled the schoolmarm!
But that night, while he lay quite fast asleep in his bed, she was keeping vigil in her room at Mrs. Taylor's.
Accordingly, the next day, those three letters departed for the mail, and Mrs. Taylor consequently made her exclamation, "It's come!"
On the day before the Virginian returned to take up his work at Judge Henry's ranch, he and Molly announced their news. What Molly said to Mrs. Taylor and what Mrs. Taylor said to her, is of no interest to us, though it was of much to them.
But Mr. McLean happened to make a call quite early in the morning to inquire for his friend's health.
"Lin," began the Virginian, "there is no harm in your knowing an hour or so before the rest, I am--"
"Lord!" said Mr. McLean, indulgently. Everybody has knowed that since the day she found yu' at the spring."
"It was not so, then," said the Virginian, crossly.
"Lord! Everybody has knowed it right along."
"Hmp!" said the Virginian. "I didn't know this country was that rank with gossips."
Mr. McLean laughed mirthfully at the lover. "Well," he said, "Mrs. McLean will be glad. She told me to give yu' her congratulations quite a while ago. I was to have 'em ready just as soon as ever yu' asked for 'em yourself." Lin had been made a happy man some twelve months previous to this. And now, by way of an exchange of news, he added: "We're expectin' a little McLean down on Box Elder. That's what you'll be expectin' some of these days, I hope."
"Yes," murmured the Virginian, "I hope so too."
"And I don't guess," said Lin, "that you and I will do much shufflin' of other folks' children any more."
Whereupon he and the Virginian shook hands silently, and understood each other very well.
On the day that the Virginian parted with Molly, beside the weight of farewell which lay heavy on his heart, his thoughts were also grave with news. The cattle thieves had grown more audacious. Horses and cattle both were being missed, and each man began almost to doubt his neighbor.
"Steps will have to be taken soon by somebody, I reckon," said the lover.
"By you?" she asked quickly.
"Most likely I'll get mixed up with it."
"What will you have to do?""Can't say. I'll tell yu' when I come back.
So did he part from her, leaving her more kisses than words to remember.
And what was doing at Bennington, meanwhile, and at Dunbarton?
Those three letters which by their mere outside had so moved Mrs.
Taylor, produced by their contents much painful disturbance.
It will be remembered that Molly wrote to her mother, and to her great-aunt. That announcement to her mother was undertaken first.
Its composition occupied three hours and a half, and it filled eleven pages, not counting a postscript upon the twelfth. The letter to the great-aunt took only ten minutes. I cannot pretend to explain why this one was so greatly superior to the other; but such is the remarkable fact. Its beginning, to be sure, did give the old lady a start; she had dismissed the cow-boy from her probabilities.
"Tut, tut, tut!" she exclaimed out loud in her bedroom. "She has thrown herself away on that fellow!"
But some sentences at the end made her pause and sit still for a long while. The severity upon her face changed to tenderness, gradually. "Ah, me," she sighed. "If marriage were as simple as love!" Then she went slowly downstairs, and out into her garden, where she walked long between the box borders. "But if she has found a great love," said the old lady at length. And she returned to her bedroom, and opened an old desk, and read some old letters.
There came to her the next morning a communication from Bennington. This had been penned frantically by poor Mrs. Wood.
As soon as she had been able to gather her senses after the shock of her daughter's eleven pages and the postscript, the mother had poured out eight pages herself to the eldest member of the family. There had been, indeed, much excuse for the poor lady. To begin with, Molly had constructed her whole opening page with the express and merciful intention of preparing her mother.
Consequently, it made no sense whatever. Its effect was the usual effect of remarks designed to break a thing gently. It merely made Mrs. Wood's head swim, and filled her with a sickening dread. "Oh, mercy, Sarah," she had cried, "come here. What does this mean?" And then, fortified by her elder daughter, she had turned over that first page and found what it meant on the top of the second. "A savage with knives and pistols!" she wailed.
"Well, mother, I always told you so," said her daughter Sarah.
"What is a foreman?" exclaimed the mother. "And who is Judge Henry?" "She has taken a sort of upper servant," said Sarah. "If it is allowed to go as far as a wedding, I doubt if I can bring myself to be present." (This threat she proceeded to make to Molly, with results that shall be set forth in their proper place.) "The man appears to have written to me himself," said Mrs. Wood. "He knows no better," said Sarah. "Bosh!" said Sarah's husband later. "It was a very manly thing to do." Thus did consternation rage in the house at Bennington. Molly might have spared herself the many assurances that she gave concerning the universal esteem in which her cow-puncher was held, and the fair prospects which were his. So, in the first throes of her despair, Mrs. Wood wrote those eight not maturely considered pages to the great-aunt.
"Tut, tut, tut!" said the great-aunt as she read them. Her face was much more severe today. "You'd suppose," she said, "that the girl had been kidnapped! Why, she has kept him waiting three years!" And then she read more, but soon put the letter down with laughter. For Mrs. Wood had repeated in writing that early outburst of hers about a savage with knives and pistols. "Law!" said the great-aunt. "Law, what a fool Lizzie is!"
