ircle
of eighty miles) as "the tenderfoot." It was thus that Balaam, the
maltreater of horses, learned to address me when he came a two
days' journey to pay a visit. And it was this name and my notorious
helplessness that bid fair to end what relations I had with the
Virginian. For when Judge Henry ascertained that nothing could prevent
me from losing myself, that it was not uncommon for me to saunter out
after breakfast with a gun and in thirty minutes cease to know north
from south, he arranged for my protection. He detailed an escort for me;
and the escort was once more the trustworthy man! The poor Virginian was
taken from his work and his comrades and set to playing nurse for me.
And for a while this humiliation ate into his untamed soul. It was his
lugubrious lot to accompany me in my rambles, preside over my blunders,
and save me from calamitously passing into the next world. He bore it in
courteous silence, except when speaking was necessary. He would show me
the lower ford, which I could never find for myself, generally mistaking
a quicksand for it. He would tie my horse properly. He would recommend
me not to shoot my rifle at a white-tailed deer in the particular moment
that the outfit wagon was passing behind the animal on the further side
of the brush. There was seldom a day that he was not obliged to hasten
and save me from sudden death or from ridicule, which is worse. Yet
never once did he lose his patience and his gentle, slow voice, and
apparently lazy manner remained the same, whether we were sitting at
lunch together, or up in the mountain during a hunt, or whether he
was bringing me back my horse, which had run away because I had again
forgotten to throw the reins over his head and let them trail.

"He'll always stand if yu' do that," the Virginian would say. "See how
my hawss stays right quiet yondeh."

After such admonition he would say no more to me. But this tame
nursery business was assuredly gall to him. For though utterly a man
in countenance and in his self-possession and incapacity to be put at
a loss, he was still boyishly proud of his wild calling, and wore his
leather straps and jingled his spurs with obvious pleasure. His tiger
limberness and his beauty were rich with unabated youth; and that force
which lurked beneath his surface must often have curbed his intolerance
of me. In spite of what I knew must be his opinion of me, the
tenderfoot, my liking for him grew, and I found his silen