After several chapters devoted to the shenanigans of that trash Trampas, who slunk off one day with the gullible cowboy Shorty, an action-filled chapter occurs. Chapter 27 "Grandmother Stark" opens with the schoolteacher, Molly Wood, packing up to go back home to Bennington, Vermont, giving in to her family and friends' warnings not to associate with wild men like that "rustler" The Virginian. She goes for one last ride on the horse that TV has gentled for her. She comes upon Monte, his horse, all wrung-out, and then upon the man himself, severely wounded. It is quite an ordeal getting him back to her cabin, where she puts him to bed amongst all the packing boxes.
While nursing him back to health, they read Browning together, which is their Pentecost. She reads to him a passage about two lovers:
Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim--
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
She doesn't know how to interpret this passage, but he says that the man would return "afteh he had played some more of the game...Life, ma'am. Whatever he was a-doin in the world of men. That's a bed-rock piece ma'am!"
