The Virginian

The Virginian is in Bear Creek on business, but he manages a few minutes with Molly. He returns some volumes she had lent him, leaves a horse for her to ride, gives her a bunch of flowers, and departs. For days thereafter, Molly is moody trying to resist her feelings for him.

Not long after, the Virginian finds a gap in his work and sets off to visit Molly again, only to meet Shorty on the trail, who gives him a letter that he must forward to Mr. Balaam at his nearby ranch. The letter is from Judge Henry, who requires that Balaam return some horses he has borrowed. The Virginian presents the letter to Balaam, who grouses a bit, strikes his own horse—he’s known for cruelty—and sends a man into the hills to round up the steeds.

Shorty rides an excellent horse, Pedro, and Balaam covets it. Knowing Shorty is unemployed and broke, Balaam invites him and the Virginian to dinner. After the meal, Balaam offers $30 for Shorty’s pony. Shorty counters lamely at $100. The Virginian wants to help poor Shorty, who’s badly outclassed in this negotiation, but it’s none of his business. Shorty gives up the horse for $40, a blanket, and some spurs. Early the next morning, Shorty goes out to Pedro and hugs him goodbye. 

To make up for his tardiness in honoring a debt to a more powerful man, Balaam wants to bring the horses to Judge Henry personally. He and the Virginian ride out, leading the horses across alkali flats; they stop for the night at a bitter-tasting river and set loose the animals to feed on whatever they can find. In the morning, Balaam rounds up the animals; the Virginian notes that they show signs of being whipped.

Balaam manhandles Pedro, saying to the Virginian, "You've got to keep them afraid of you” (301). The Virginian offers to buy the horse from Balaam, but the rancher turns him down. The heat of the day slows their progress, but finally they begin the climb into the Bow Leg Range, and they rest at a pond where they find signs of an old Indian encampment.

To speed their travel, Balaam decides to drive the judge’s horses ahead of them. The Virginian worries that they’ll bolt, but Balaam disagrees. Sure enough, the horses make a dash for it, but Balaam, on Pedro, chases them up and down the steep hillsides, spurring Pedro and beating him with a stick to make him gallop harder. The Virginian guards the trail from below. Finally, the Southerner rides past Balaam and the sweating Pedro and follows the runaways, which get to the top of the ridge and gallop off toward forage.

Balaam reaches the ridge on the exhausted pony and continues to beat him. The Virginian asks him to stop; Balaam stares at him like a maniac and demands the Virginian’s horse so he can continue the chase. The Virginian refuses. Balaam rides forward, then stops, does something to Pedro, and the horse sinks to the ground.

The Virginian lunges at Balaam and beats him savagely. Balaam tries to draw his pistol, but the Southerner takes it away. Balaam sits, dazed; after a few moments, the Virginian tends to the rancher’s wounds. Pedro, still alive, climbs to his feet. The Virginian removes the beleaguered horse’s saddle, places it on the pack horse, and tells Balaam that he’ll ride on that horse. He returns Balaam’s pistol.

They climb higher into the mountains, following the runaways’ trail through forests of aspen and pine. The renegades travel down a canyon that leads straight to the Sunk Creek ranch, and the men follow the trail downhill as shadows lengthen. Owls hoot nearby and keep pace with them.

As night falls, they see the runaways, which run up into the hillside forest as they approach. The Virginian rides after them while Balaam leads the other horses downstream. Pedro shies suddenly, runs to the nearby creek, and begins to cross it. Balaam draws his pistol and fires, intending to kick up dust ahead of Pedro and deter his flight, but his hand, damaged in the fight with the Virginian, aims poorly, and the bullet strikes Pedro in the leg. Worse, Balaam now realizes that the owl sounds are issued by Indians who stalk him.

Balaam crosses the creek and shoots Pedro in the head, putting the doomed pony out of his misery. He mounts the pack horse and hustles out of the canyon to the plain below, where he crouches under a tree till dawn. The Virginian doesn’t show, so Balaam rides until he comes to a cabin. There, he writes a quick note to Judge Henry, explaining the Indian attack and claiming that he is ill and must return home. The cabin’s owner forwards the note.

Balaam returns to his ranch to find Shorty, who has acquired some cash and wants to buy back Pedro. 

Molly decides to leave Bear Creek for good. She can’t go on torturing herself with the idea of the Virginian if choosing him would bring down condemnation from her family for marrying below her station. She packs her belongings, save for a portrait of her feisty Grandmother Stark, the independent-minded revolutionary heroine whom she so resembles. Mrs. Taylor drops in from next door, sees the packed crates, and scolds Molly for leaving the man she loves.

Molly decides to go for a ride. Taking the horse, the Virginian left her, she rides along Bear Creek until its course rises into the hills. There, at a pool beneath the pines, she comes upon the Virginian’s horse and the man himself, lying unconscious and bleeding at the creek’s edge.

Tearing strips from her dress, Molly rinses and cleans his shoulder wound. She builds a fire, heats water in a tin cup, adds brandy from her travel flask, and forces the concoction past his lips. The Virginian opens his eyes, gazes at her a while, and calmly says he thought he was about to be killed before realizing he was being aided.

He recognizes her, then warns her of Indian danger and that she must leave at once. Molly finds his pistol and reloads it. The Virginian tells her to take it and go. Instead, she prepares his horse, gets him on it, and, leading her own horse, walks beside him back down the trail toward her cabin. He falls off at one point, but she gets him remounted and they continue.

A half-mile from the cabin, the Virginian begins to hallucinate, not recognizing her and believing he is needed elsewhere. She insists he cannot abandon a woman who fears nearby Indians. They make it to her cabin, where she gets him inside. The Taylors are away, and he is cold and ashen. She undresses him, puts him in her bed, covers him with a Navajo blanket, and sits beside him.

The Taylors return, and Molly hurries to them. Mr. Taylor goes for the doctor while Mrs. Taylor brings a few medications. The two women re-clean his wounds and stand guard. Through the night, the Virginian tosses and turns, muttering dreamlike inanities. The next day, they learn that the doctor is 30 miles out, but Mr. Taylor will bring him back soon.

The women watch over the wounded man for a second night, during which his fever worsens, and neighbors are called to hold him down. In his delirium, the Southerner says many strange things and sometimes curses, but Molly realizes that he has real goodness in him: “The cow-puncher had lived like his kind, but his natural daily thoughts were clean, and came from the untamed but unstained mind of a man” (337).

On the second morning, the Virginian is suddenly himself again, though he can’t recall how he ended up at Molly’s cabin. The doctor arrives and pronounces him much improved but not yet out of the woods. Cowboys drop by and say to the physician, “Don't yu' let him die, Doc” (338).

News arrives that five Indians came up from the south to hunt but had taken up thievery and worse, killing a trapper and wounding the Virginian. They were now in the hands of the military. The newspapers try to fan the flames of outrage, but a clutch of braves in custody doesn’t make very compelling copy.

The doctor tells Molly that her quick thinking and excellent care saved her man’s life: “he told her she had not done a woman's part, but a man's part” (339). Molly announces to Mrs. Taylor that she will stay as long as he needs care, and then she will depart. Mrs. Taylor retorts, “A year of nursing don't equal a day of sweetheart” (339).

The doctor stays in Bear Creek to tend to others in need of him, but he regularly looks in on the Virginian. By the fifth day, the inflammation and fever have subsided, and the delirium has passed, but the patient is still frail from blood loss and will need weeks of convalescence.

Having done the work of several people on the Virginian’s behalf, Molly suddenly is exhausted and sleeps over at the Taylor house. As the Virginian recovers, he notices that Molly’s things are packed for travel; though she claims it’s just for a visit to her family, the Virginian thereafter betrays an edge of sadness.

They play cribbage, and talk, and sometimes he urges her to be done with him and go back to Vermont. At his request, she begins to read Emma to him, but at the end of the first chapter, she looks up to find him fast asleep. Next, she reads from Robert Browning’s poems, and he remains awake, enthusiastic. He disputes one poem’s ending, and they discuss it, and other things, enthralled with each other’s minds.

For many days, they continue with poems and other works and talking. Mrs. Taylor notices that Molly’s packed-up things have slowly returned to their places around the cabin.

One day, the Virginian dresses fully and sits in a chair. As she reads to him, Molly senses that he’s distracted. He confesses that he’s thinking about a letter she sent him a month earlier that he has only now received, telling him of her plans to leave him forever. He tells her he realizes that his rough ways can never make her happy, even if she were to love him: “This is no country for a lady. Will yu' forget and forgive the bothering I have done?” (353-54)

Shocked, Molly bursts into tears: “but I—you ought—please try to keep me happy!” (354) She embraces him, and they hold each other for a long time beneath the portrait of Grandmother Stark. 

Molly steps away so the Virginian can rest. He wonders if what just happened is another hallucination from his illness. He sees the book she was reading to him, David Copperfield, lying on the ground where it fell when he asked her to leave him. He looks up at the bookshelf and finds the gap where the Copperfield volume should be; therefore, he’s not imagining things.

He looks at the portrait of Grandmother Stark and notices how much she looks like Molly. He stands unsteadily, makes his way slowly to the portrait, and kisses it, promising he’ll take good care of Molly. She returns with his dinner, finds him standing there, hurries to him, and helps him sit back down. They share a first kiss.

The Virginian continues to recover, and he and Molly take walks that grow longer each day. He reminds her that she soon must inform her family of her decision about him. She fears that, no matter how well-mannered and dressed he will be when they visit back East, her family will find ways to criticize him. She doesn’t want him to suffer such indignities.

The Virginian insists they both write letters to Molly’s mother; otherwise, he would be shirking a duty. They sit at her table and write, each struggling with the wording, but the Virginian finishes first, while Molly worries over her letter for hours. A second note, to her great-aunt, takes only 10 minutes. Mrs. Taylor takes the letters for posting; she is delighted with this progress.

The two lovers announce their engagement the next day. The first to hear it is Lin McLean, who drops by to check on the Virginian. Lin smiles and says, “Everybody has knowed it right along” (367).

In Vermont, the great-aunt reads Molly’s letter and realizes that her niece has found true love, which transcends the awkwardness about him being a cowboy. Molly’s mother takes the news badly, and Molly’s sister, Sarah, says she’ll refuse a wedding invitation. Mrs. Wood writes to the great-aunt, bemoaning Molly’s choice of a man of “knives and pistols” (370). The great-aunt writes back, reminding her that General Stark also carried such weapons; she asks to see the Virginian’s letter so she can judge for herself.

The Virginian’s missive, though grammatically imperfect, is honest and direct. He describes how Molly saved him from death and nursed him back to health. He acknowledges that he is of a type that might dismay Molly’s family, but he also declares that his own family has a long and stable history in Virginia, with heroes of the 1812, Mexican, and Civil wars. He admits he has known the company of women but quit his wanderings when he met Molly. After a three-year courtship, he realized that he was no good for her and tried to leave her, but Molly insisted that he stay.

The great-aunt weeps for her own fate, having missed a similar chance for love with a man who died too soon. She writes a sweet letter to Molly, who is glad to read it among the harsh rebukes from the rest of her family.

The Virginian resumes his work for the ranch. He travels to Idaho on ranch business and invites the narrator to join him. The narrator, also in Idaho, cuts short his hunting trip and travels toward the designated rendezvous point.