The Virginian

The narrator travels by train, horse, and coach through Dakota on his way to an autumn sojourn at Sunk Creek Ranch. Joining him is a lithe, talkative cattleman named Scipio and a small, lost-looking man named Shorty. Their coach arrives at the station too late to catch the train, which is departing early, and the three make a futile dash to catch it. Shorty bemoans his fate, while Scipio curses the receding train in colorful phrases.

A voice interrupts them. It’s the Virginian, sitting on the rear platform of a caboose attached to a westbound train standing idle on a siding. His men are laughing and singing inside the car. The Virginian banters a bit with Scipio and suggests he might have a job for him. The train begins to move, and the three travelers hop aboard. One of the cowboys emerges onto the caboose platform and whines that he’d planned to get a whiskey in town. The Virginian replies, "Have your bottle, then” (163), and kicks him off the train. 

The Virginian wants to bring all his men back to the ranch, safe and sound, but the one drunkard has forced his hand, and he feels regret, not for the drunkard but for the mark on his perfect record as deputy foreman. Trampas sticks his head out, looking for Schoffner the cook, and the Virginian tells him that Schoffner left the train back in town to get whiskey. Trampas seems miffed and returns inside.

The Virginian noticed Scipio back in Omaha at work in Cyrus Jones’s kitchen. He offers Scipio the job of ranch cook. Scipio, having quit the Jones eatery from overwork, accepts. The Virginian goes inside; a few minutes later, he reappears and invites the trio of train jumpers to join him and his crew.

Inside, there is no more singing, and the atmosphere is tense. The narrator reintroduces himself to the ranch hands, but they barely acknowledge him. Trampas tries to interest them in joining his plan to leave the train at the Rawhide station and set out for the new gold strike. This idea gets bandied about but to no end. After a meal at the next stop, the men curl up on caboose shelves and sleep soundly. The Virginian sits at the open door, watching the moon. 

The next morning, it’s clear the cowboys are ready to quit their work for the Virginian, join Trampas, leave the train at the next station, and head for the gold mines. One of the cowboys tells the narrator how a rattlesnake bit him and a woman saved him, but the story ends abruptly as a dirty joke. The crew laugh loudly. Out on the platform, Scipio explains to the narrator that making a fool of a friend of the boss was a deliberate dig at the Virginian.

The Virginian chats amiably with the crew, apparently ignoring all the mutiny talk. At one point, he says something that angers Trampas, whose hand edges down toward his gun, but the tension soon subsides. The train slows to a stop. The Virginian points out the road crews and delayed trains up ahead. Apparently, a flood has taken out the rail bridge; the crew’s train will be delayed for hours. The train at the head of the line has been stranded for four days, and passengers have emptied the nearby town of food. Crow Indians from the nearby reservation have brought trinkets to sell.

The Virginian realizes there is some food within reach that no one has thought of. At a word from him, Scipio builds a cook fire next to the caboose. The Virginian mumbles something about frog’s legs and heads for a nearby creek. Scipio is puzzled; the narrator explains that the menu at Cyrus Jones’s eatery had listed frog’s legs, to add a touch of class, but they weren’t actually available to eat. Scipio had never bothered to read the entire menu, knowing it was unreliable.

Scipio realizes that the Virginian is playing a long game with Trampas, but he can’t yet figure it out. The Virginian returns with a sack filled with frogs, assisted by a man from the nearby town. At once, Scipio begins preparing and frying the frog legs, and train passengers pay the assistant for the chance to eat a few. The assistant offers half of his take to the Virginian, but he waves it aside.

The Virginian explains to a passenger that the townsfolk are cattle people, and the cattle business is poor in this region, but they’re so used to thinking about herds and nothing else that they overlook obvious opportunities right at their feet. He adds gently, “It's mighty hard to do what your neighbors ain't doin’” (191).

The locals listen along with the passengers. The Virginian tells of frog ranches in the swamplands of Tulare in California, where they’ve made as much as 40% profit on frogs sent to restaurants from San Francisco to New York on trains with glass tanks. He describes herds of frogs and laments that the frog ranchers had failed to brand them, so that many were stolen.

A few in his audience realize that the Virginian is telling a tall tale, but Trampas has taken the bait. The Virginian warns that the frog business crashed when the chefs at Delmonico’s and Augustin’s, fancy restaurants back East, got into a bidding war over the frogs, traveled to California, and tried to outbid each other for a monopoly on frog deliveries. The Tulare ranchers, not realizing who they were, roughed them up, so that they left together, swore “eternal friendship,” and refused any more frog deliveries to their restaurants.

Having completely bamboozled Trampas in front of dozens of listeners to his tall tale, the Virginian concludes, “Frawgs are dead, Trampas, and so are you” (200). The cowboy crew, realizing how easy it is to be fooled by rumors of riches, decide not to go with Trampas to the gold fields.

People come up to the Virginian and shake his hand, thanking him for the entertainment. Scipio hugs him. The narrator realizes that “the Virginian had been equal to the occasion: that is the only kind of equality which I recognize” (200). 

At their station, the crewmen collect their horses and begin rounding up the remaining herd. The Virginian gives orders but otherwise says little. The narrator notes that the Southerner acts when he needs to, speaks when appropriate, and enjoys unworried sleep despite danger.

Scipio reckons that Trampas and the Virginian aren’t done with each other. Trampas wants revenge but is in a weak position and must continue to take orders from the Virginian, at least until they arrive at the ranch. The narrator thinks the Virginian already has won the day, but Scipio explains that the Virginian has merely won his goal of completing the job and bringing the men home. At the ranch, Trampas has the support of the foreman.

One day, while the narrator chats amiably about the American experiment to his taciturn friend, the Virginian suddenly fires his rifle near the narrator’s left side. Angry, the narrator demands an explanation. The Virginian rises, walks past the narrator, and picks up the body of a rattlesnake whose head he has just shot off. 

As they approach Sunk Creek Ranch, the Virginian asks the narrator, “Would you be a parson?” (210) He admits he wouldn’t be able to keep from laughing, were he to be called his Holiness or His grace. He then quotes an archbishop in a Shakespeare play who describes to King Henry how beehives resemble a kingdom.

He asks for the total number of religions in America, and the narrator calculates that there are 15, all of them worshipping the same God. The Virginian argues that there aren’t 15 different types of good people but only one type and having a couple of them as friends and examples is worth more than any preaching. Mediocrity in medicine or law is acceptable to him, “but keep me from a middlin' man of God” (214).

The source of these musings is a preacher up ahead, clad in black and pacing impatiently next to a creek. The Virginian turns suddenly to Trampas, riding not far behind, and demands that he return his rope. Trampas had switched them that morning, hoping to goad the Virginian; now, he tenses up. The Virginian says, “Take your hand off your gun, Trampas. If I had wanted to kill yu' you'd be lying nine days back on the road now” (216). Trampas makes some excuse about the ropes and returns the stolen one, laying it loosely across the rear of the Virginian’s saddle.

The preacher interrupts them, complaining that he has arrived at Judge Henry’s invitation, but the judge isn’t home to greet him. The Virginian’s rope falls suddenly from his saddle; without dismounting, he bends down casually to snag it with an artful hand, but his face betrays anger. To the preacher, he points to where the judge has appeared in the distance, driving a wagon of his guests. They ride on.

The narrator tries to make conversation, but the Virginian, still irritated by Trampas and annoyed at the preacher’s impertinence, shushes him angrily. Moments later, he apologizes and explains that, though he believes in a God, he doesn’t think there’s time enough in life to earn either Heaven or Hell.