A creaking sound, occurring regularly at intervals of a few seconds, came from the road back of the house leading to the ranch buildings, and gradually grew more distinct.
“Jim’s coming,” said Virginia. “He isn’t going on the round-up to-morrow, is he, father? Don’t let him go, please!”
The creaking drew nearer, accompanied by hard, exhausted breathing.
“No,” her father told her, his voice low. “I’m not going to let him go. He’s too worn out and old for that work, though it’s wonderful how he rides with that wooden leg; but I can’t tell him he shan’t take charge of the branding. He couldn’t stand that disappointment. Come on, Jim,” he called cheerily. “We’re on the porch.”
Virginia echoed her father. “Come and talk with us, Jim.”
“I’m a-comin’,” came from the corner of the porch, “fast as this old stick’ll bring me. Ain’t much the way I used to come, is it, sir? But stick or leg, I’m good for years yet. Lord, Miss Virginia, I’m a-goin’ to teach your boys and girls how to throw the rope!” And talking as he wheezed and creaked, Jim reached the porch and laboriously stumped up the steps.
Jim was an old man, fifty of whose seventy years had been spent on the ranges and ranches of the Great West. He had grown with the country, moving westward as the tide moved, from Iowa to Kansas and Nebraska, Nebraska to the Dakotas, and from the Dakotas to Montana and Wyoming. No phase of the life West had escaped Jim. He had fought Indians and cattle-thieves, punched cattle and homesteaded, prospected and mined. Twenty years before, seeking more adventure, he had made his way on horseback through the mountains to Arizona. Whether he found what he sought, he never told, but five years later, he appeared again in Wyoming, and since that time he had been with Mr. Hunter, whom he had known when the country was new. Had his education equaled his honesty and foresight, Mr. Hunter would long ago have made him foreman, for he had no man whom he so fully trusted; but Jim’s limited knowledge of letters and figures prohibited that distinction, and he remained in one sense an ordinary ranch-hand, apparently content. Still, in another sense, there was something unique about his position. The younger men looked up to him, because of his wide experience and fund of practical knowledge; Mr. Hunter relied implicitly upon his honesty, and consulted him upon many matters of ranch management; and, next to her father, there was no one in all Wyoming whom Virginia so loved.
Jim had taught her to ride when her short legs could hardly reach the stirrups; had told her the names of every tree, bush, and flower of the hills and plains; and had been her guard and companion on expeditions far and wide. As she grew older, he gave and taught her how to use her small rifle; and of late had even given her lessons in swinging the lasso in the corral, in which art he was dexterity itself. And last winter Virginia had been able to repay him,—though all through the years she had given him far more than she knew,—for in the autumn round-up, Jim, galloping over the range, had been thrown from his horse, when the animal stumbled into a prairie dog’s hole, and the fall had broken his leg.
The chagrin of the old cow-puncher was more pitiable to witness than his pain, when the boys brought him in to the ranch. That he, the veteran of the range, should have behaved thus—“like the rankest tenderfoot”—was almost more than his proud spirit could withstand; and later, when the doctor said the leg below the knee must be sacrificed, the pain and loss, even the necessity of stumping about the rest of his days, seemed as nothing to him compared with the shame he felt over his “tenderfoot foolishness.”
The winter days would have been endless, indeed, had not Virginia been there to cheer him. Mr. Hunter would not hear of his staying in the bunk-house, but brought him to the ranch,—and there, under Hannah’s faithful nursing, and Virginia’s companionship, the old man forgot a little of his chagrin and humiliation. Virginia read to him by the hour, nearly everything she had, and her books were many. Seventy is a strange age to receive a long-deferred education, but Jim profited by every chapter, even from “David Copperfield,” who, he privately thought, was “a white-livered kind of fool” and his patience in listening to David, Virginia rewarded by the convict scene in her own dear “Great Expectations,” or by “Treasure Island,” both of which he never tired.