The Virginian

The Virginian is a foundational American Western, set in the Wyoming Territory during the cattle-boom years of the 1870s and 1880s. The story is told mostly through the eyes of an unnamed Eastern visitor who arrives at the railway town of Medicine Bow and meets a tall, soft-spoken cowboy from Virginia. The Virginian — he is never given a first name — works as a hand, and later as foreman, for Judge Henry's Sunk Creek Ranch. He is brave, funny, fair, and unhurried; he is also dangerous when he must be. In the famous opening confrontation in a saloon, the bully Trampas insults him at the card table. The Virginian draws his pistol and answers with the line that defined the cowboy hero for a century: "When you call me that, smile."

Into this rough country comes Molly Stark Wood, a young, well-educated schoolteacher from Bennington, Vermont, fleeing a tame Eastern engagement. The Virginian falls in love with her at first sight when he carries her out of a flooded creek. Their slow, stubborn courtship is the heart of the book. Molly reads Shakespeare and Browning with him; he teaches her about horses, weather, and people. He proposes again and again; she refuses, then hesitates, then surrenders.

While Molly and the Virginian circle one another, cattle rustlers threaten the territory. The Virginian's old friend Steve falls in with the thieves. When Judge Henry orders the rustlers caught and hanged, the Virginian must help hang his own friend — a long night that nearly breaks him. Trampas, the man from the saloon, has joined the rustlers too, and has hated the Virginian for years. On the day of the Virginian's wedding, Trampas comes for him in town. There is a short, fatal gunfight, and Trampas is killed. The Virginian and Molly are married, ride into the mountains alone, and eventually prosper as ranchers and parents. The mythic American cowboy hero begins here.