The Virginian

Molly Stark Wood

Molly Stark Wood belongs to a Vermont family that has always lived like gentlefolk, until the mills fail and she must earn her bread teaching music and making preserves. Bennington gossips are scandalized that she works for money yet still holds herself above Sam Bannett, the rising young man they consider good enough for anybody. Restless and quietly stubborn, she writes to Mrs. Balaam about migrating west to Bear Creek, and it is this decision that carries her into the Virginian's world.

The Virginian

The Virginian is a cowpuncher the narrator meets on the westward train, a man whose stillness unnerves and whose manners surprise. When Steve tosses him a term of heaviest insult, he takes it as a compliment, and when the wash-trough towel runs short, he charms a clean one out of the pretty proprietress without a fuss. His quiet is volcanic; he is the man other men watch, and the man Trampas cannot leave alone.

Trampas

Trampas is the man at the ranch who lost a powerful friend when Roberts went, and the men around him sense that he has no shield left between himself and the Virginian. When Judge Henry appoints the Virginian foreman on the spot, Trampas finds himself plump at his enemy's mercy, and the cowboys cheer while the Judge washes his hands of the particulars. His sulking spreads through camp like leaven, and everyone waits to see what he will do when the time arrives.

Scipio Le Moyne

Scipio Le Moyne is the friend who watches the Virginian sleep like a child while the men around him are on the ragged edge of mutiny, and who tells the narrator plainly what he thinks. He reckons Trampas will pull his freight, casual-like, and he argues that beating a man at his own game is all the revenge a man who isn't a hog could want. His dry, patient voice turns camp gossip into something close to prophecy.

Balaam

Balaam is the ranchman who owes Judge Henry horses and keeps putting off their return, greeting the Virginian's reminder with a struck fist and a demand for explanations. He rages about Indians off the reservation, cuts his own bewildered horse across the jaw for shying at water, and grins at Shorty's battered overalls while angling for the boy's good pony. The Virginian can scarcely interfere between another man and his own beast, but he looks on, and he remembers.

Shorty

Shorty is the boy who carries Balaam's overdue letter to the Virginian and gets nothing for it but a little pay already lost at poker in Drybone, where his money went into Trampas's pocket. He has one valuable possession left, his horse Pedro, and Balaam eyes it across Butte Creek while Shorty sits in the shade. Turned off the roundup for sleeping on night-herd, poor and docile, he is the kind of man the range uses up, and the kind Trampas finds useful.