The Virginian Summary
The Virginian is a 1902 novel about the exploits of a cowboy called the Virginian in the American West.
- The narrator moves from the East Coast to the West, where he meets the Virginian in the town of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, and travels with him to Judge Henry's ranch.
- In the town of Bear Creek, the Virginian falls in love with Molly Stark Wood, the new schoolteacher, who has just arrived from Vermont.
- After the Virginian defeats his greatest enemy, a cowboy named Trampas, in a shootout, he and Molly marry, and Judge Henry makes him a partner on the ranch.
Summary
The narrator arrives in the small Western town of Medicine Bow, where he is met by the Virginian, a tall, handsome, strong young man who has been commissioned to escort him to the ranch of Judge Henry, a landowner who lives 263 miles from the town. They stay the night in Medicine Bow, where a cowboy named Trampas accuses the Virginian of cheating at poker, but the Virginian draws his gun and forces Trampas to back down. The Virginian and the narrator then journey together to Sunk Creek, Judge Henry’s ranch in Wyoming, where the narrator stays for a few months. The Virginian is initially aloof, and is annoyed, though coolly courteous, when deputed to look after the inexperienced narrator by the judge, but the two eventually become friends over their mutual attachment to Em’ly, a demented hen unable to lay eggs.
The narrator returns to the East Coast but meets the Virginian again for an elk-hunting expedition. He continues to receive news from Sunk Creek and the nearby (as distances go in the West) community of Bear Creek. The residents of Bear Creek have built a schoolhouse for their children and recruit a schoolmarm named Molly Stark Wood from Bennington, Vermont. Toward the end of her journey to Bear Creek, Molly travels in a stage coach with a drunken driver and is saved from a serious accident by a tall, mysterious rider who turns out to be the Virginian.
The Virginian and Molly meet again at a barbecue in Bear Creek, where the Virginian invites Molly to dance, but she pretends not to recognize him and refuses. The Virginian plays a prank which involves mixing up the clothes of all the children at the barbecue so the parents take home the wrong babies. When Molly reproaches him for this, he replies that his conduct has been no more childish than hers in pretending not to know him. The two become sparring partners and, gradually, friends. They go out riding together, and when Molly receives a consignment of books from her mother in Vermont, she starts the Virginian on a course of reading.
The narrator next meets the Virginian by chance in Omaha. The Virginian has been appointed acting foreman of Judge Henry’s ranch and is bringing a group of cowboys back there after selling two trainloads of steers in Chicago. The narrator returns with them. After a rumor that gold has been found at Rawhide, many of the ranch hands, led by Trampas, who has gained employment with the judge and remains an implacable enemy of the Virginian, are tempted to leave the Virginian’s party and go prospecting.
The Virginian asserts his authority, first by kicking the cook, who has become belligerent, off the train, then by cooking up a meal of frogs for the hungry cowboys, who can find no other food, at the same time as he tells a ludicrous story, which completely takes in Trampas. The other hands see how Trampas has been fooled and promptly abandon him and his plan of going to Rawhide, electing to return to Sunk Creek with the Virginian. When he hears from the narrator about the incidents of this journey, Judge Henry is impressed by the Virginian’s resourcefulness and gives him a permanent job as foreman at Sunk Creek ranch. Trampas expects to be fired and prepares to depart, but the Virginian is magnanimous in victory and allows him to remain. However, Trampas departs in the spring anyway.
On a journey to return some horses borrowed by a rancher called Balaam to the Sunk Creek ranch, the Virginian is set...
(This entire section contains 1107 words.)
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upon and captured by Indians. He is later found, close to death, by Molly, who had been about to leave Bear Creek and say goodbye to the Virginian forever. She takes him back to her cabin and nurses him back to health and strength, realizing as she does so how much she loves him. By the time the Virginian is recovered, they have arranged to marry.
At this point, the narrator reenters the story as a character and meets the Virginian in the foothills of the Teton Mountain Range. The men accompanying the Virginian are suspicious of the narrator’s presence, and it turns out that this is because they have captured two cattle rustlers, whom they intend to hang. One of the rustlers is a man named Steve, a former friend of the Virginian, whom the narrator remembers from his first visit to Medicine Bow. The Virginian and the other cowboys hang the two cattle rustlers, though the Virginian is haunted by his former friend’s coldness toward him at the end.
Back at Bear Creek, Molly hears about the lynching of the cattle rustlers and the Virginian’s involvement in it. She is horrified and becomes very morose, refusing to eat or talk to her friends. When Judge Henry is in town, he speaks to her and says that he sent the Virginian after the rustlers himself, so he bears some of the responsibility. He says that capital punishment of this kind is terrible, but not so terrible as the complete lawlessness which would be the alternative. Molly is calmed, if not immediately cheered, by his words.
When the Virginian next writes to the narrator, it is with a request for wedding rings. He and Molly have set a date, and no ring good enough for her is to be found in the West. On the day before the wedding, Molly and the Virginian ride together into the town of Medicine Bow, where they are to be married by the Bishop of Wyoming. On the way, they encounter Trampas, whom Molly knows immediately as the Virginian’s bitterest enemy by the hate in his eyes, although she has never met him before.
Trampas gives the Virginian until sundown to leave Medicine Bay. The Virginian decides to face him, although both the Bishop and Molly ask him not to do so, and Molly says she will not marry him if he does. The Virginian shoots and kills Trampas in what the bystanders agree is a fair fight. Molly is so relieved that the Virginian is still alive that she forgives him, and the two are married the next day. After a month’s honeymoon in the wilds of Wyoming, they go to visit Molly’s family in Bennington, Vermont, where the inhabitants are relieved and slightly disappointed to find the Virginian a well-dressed, well-mannered Southern gentleman, rather than a rough, gun-toting cowboy. Judge Henry gives the Virginian a partnership on his ranch, and he settles down to become a prosperous family man.
