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Book Club: Discuss/find out about a Classic Tale Set in Wyoming: The Virginian

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Front-Ranger:
Chapter 13.

The Virginian is travelling back east by train, and invites the narrator to come with him, after the narrator and his buddies miss their connecting train by minutes (ever had that experience, Eric?). Narrator notices a couple of changes in our hero: he is toting along a copy of Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott that the schoolmistress, Molly Wood, whom TV is sweet on, has given him. Also, the narrator observes that "the boy was altogether gone from his face...the boy who had loved to jingle his spurs. But manhood had only trained, not broken, his youth. It was all there, only obedient to the rein and curb." (page 109 in the Pocket edition)

Chapter 14. Between the Acts

As I mentioned before, we now meet Scipio le Moyne, from Gallipolice, Ohio. After witnessing his outbreak of witty profanity (quoted a page or two ago on this topic) The Virginian is quick to invite Scipio to join the band of cowpokes in the caboose and return back to Judge Henry's ranch. The narrator thinks TV rather rash, since he just met Scipio, but wait! TV remembers that Scipio was a cook at the famous eating place in Omaha (TV never forgets a face). And it's a good thing that Scipio happened along, because TV just had to kick the cook off the train due to drinking. This episode is told in Wister's usual colorful style with plenty of suspense, comedy, and local dialogue.

Front-Ranger:
Chapter 15: The Game and the Nation—Act Second

The Virginian has his hands full with a caboose full of idle cowpunchers. After kicking the cook off the train and replacing him with Scipio le Moyne, there is “only one left now that don’t sing.” You guessed it—TV’s nemesis, Trampas. “Tramp” is currently plotting to mutiny, taking some of the men with him to Rawhide, Wyoming, to hunt gold instead of returning to the ranch.

Chapter 16: ~~ Last Act

There's not much to do on the trip back West, so the cowboys indulge in one of their favorite activities--jawing with each other and telling tall tales. Comparing scars, one cowpoke relates that he picked up a rattlesnake, snapping it like a whip and severing the head. Only the head flew into his neck and bit him. Snakes, whips, and lassos have their accustomed place here as in subsequent Westerns and they also have a multitude of meanings.

The men marvel that a buck antelope knows to circle around a rattler, then jump and come down with all fours on top of Mr. Snake. "Now you tell me how the buck knows that" they wonder.

Meryl:
Lee, I'm enjoying  your summaries more than the actual book!  ;D

Here's the lowdown on the Goose Egg Ranch, where the Virginian and McLean played their prank on the revelers:
http://72.232.132.224/forum/index.php/topic,5015.msg119055.html#msg119055

Front-Ranger:
Cool link, Meryl, and thank yu'!!

I might be able to swing by there on my upcoming trip to Wyoming!!

During this part of the book, the Virginian is reading Kenilworth, by Sir Walter Scott. Remember what John Nesbitt, the professor of history at the University of Wyoming, told us about The Virginian: "The novel itself is a blending together of the novel of manners (in the style of Jane Austen and Henry James) and the historical romance (in the style of James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott, the latter being a source of Wister’s ideology of the cow-puncher as a latter-day Ivanhoe)."

Kenilworth is about Queen Elizabeth I and TV and the narrator have a couple of conversations about her. TV reckons that if he played poker with QEI she would certainly win because "she is a lady."

Lynne:
I'm up to Chapter 9.  8)
It's not that I'm a slow reader, but you can't read and be online simultaneously, or at least I can't - I will be back eventually.
-Lynne

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