Thornton shook his head.

"No. Hadn't heard of it and I guess I'll be busy enough without prancing out to dances." And then, a little curiosity in his even tones, "How does it happen you're not out hunting rustlers with the old man?"

Young King lifted his head and again Thornton saw in a man's eyes a thing which was so vague that it went almost unnoted, a look of veiled suspicion.

"The old man hunts his way and I hunt mine," Bud King said briefly. "And besides, I haven't been to a shindig for six months."

A little flush ran up into his face under Thornton's level glance, and Buck laughed softly.

"Who's the girl, Bud?" he challenged.

"Aw, go chase yourself," Bud flung back at him, but with a reddening grin. To Thornton came a swift inspiration.

"Wonder if Miss Waverly will be over from the Corners?" he asked.

"Dunno," Bud replied innocently, so innocently that Thornton laughed again.

Thornton rode back to the Poison Hole. And as he went, his thoughts ran now to the mission upon which old man King had set forth, now upon the wisdom of shaving, putting on his best suit and new hat and going to a dance....

"It isn't so much I want to see her again," he told himself, "as I want to give back her spur rowel!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE DANCE AT DEER CREEK SCHOOLHOUSE

Deer Creek schoolhouse stood in a tiny, emerald valley half a dozen miles from Hill's Corners, some fifteen miles from Thornton's cabin, its handful of barefooted pupils coming from the families scattered through the valley. It was a one roomed building with two low doors and six square windows. And yet it offered ample enough floor s.p.a.ce and bench accommodations for the valley dances, its one room being twenty-four feet long and twelve feet wide, certainly over large for the single "school marm" and her small flock, having been constructed with an eye to just such social gatherings as the one tonight.

The teacher's desk had been taken outdoors by willing hands; the pupils'

benches stood along the walls for the "women folk" during the intermissions; upon the slightly raised platform at one end of the room were the chairs for the musicians, fiddler and guitarist. And upon the floor was much shaved candle. For light there were the four coal-oil lamps with their foolish reflectors against the walls, and a full moon shining in through door and windows.

Thornton came late, late that is, for a country dance. It was after nine o'clock when, riding Comet, he saw the schoolhouse lamps winking at him through the oaks and heard the merry music of fiddle and guitar in the frolic of a heel-and-toe polka. Already he made out here and there the saddle horses which had brought so many "stags" so many miles to the dance, and which stood tied to tree and shrub. Also there were the usual spring wagons that had brought their family loads of father, mother, son, daughter, hired man and the baby; while the inevitable cart was in evidence speaking unmistakably of mooning couples whose budding interest in each other did not permit of the drive in the family carry-all.

Thornton noted the vehicles as he pa.s.sed them, and turned to look at the saddle horses, saying to himself, "So-and-so is here from Pine Ridge, So-and-so from the Corners." For hereabouts a man knew another man's horse and saddle, or wagon, as well as he knew the man himself. So when Thornton saw the buckboard near the door with its two cream-coloured mares, there was at once pleasure and speculation in his eyes, and he told himself, "Somebody is here from Pollard's."

He loosened Comet's cinch, flung the tie rope over the low limb of the big oak near Pollard's team, and leaving his horse in the shadows, went on to the open door.

Already the polka had come to its giddy end. Men and women, boys and girls, old folks with white hair and young folks in knee breeches and short skirts, laughing and talking crisscrossed the floor this way and that seeking seats. The girls and women sinking affectedly or plumping in matter-of-fact style down into their places, with languishing upward looks if they be young and in tune with the moon outside, with red faced jollity and much frankness of chatter if they were married and perhaps had a husband and children likewise disporting themselves, made long rows about the walls of the schoolhouse, looking for the world like orderly flocks of bright plumaged birds in their bravery of many hued calicos and ginghams; a gay display of bold reds and shy blues, of mellow yellows and soft pinks, with the fluttering of fans everywhere like little restless wings.

The men had left their partners, as custom demanded, and had gone to the doors, energetically mopping their brows with handkerchiefs as various in colour as the women's dresses; red and yellow silk, blue and purple, and the eternal gaudy bandana. Thornton paused at the door, losing himself among the men who had come out to stand there smoking or to wander a little away in the darkness where earlier in the evening each had hidden his personal flask under his particular bush. There would be a good deal of drinking tonight, but then that too was custom, and there was no more danger here of drunkenness than in those more pretentious b.a.l.l.s in town where men and women partake together of heady punch.

Thornton pa.s.sed words of greeting with many of these men, ranchers for the most part whom he knew well. There was Bud King, his tie a vivid scarlet, his store clothes a blue-bird-blue, the wide silk handkerchief mopping his flushed face a rich yellow; there was Hank James from the Deer Creek outfit speeding away with long strides to his own bottle under his own bush where he might conceal the tremor of the new happiness he had but come from and drink to the big-eyed girl in the pink dress with the cascades of baby-ribbon; there was Ruf Ettinger with his new overalls turned back the regulation six inches from the bottoms in a cowboy cuff that permitted of the vision of six inches of grey trouser leg below; there was Chase Harper of Tres Pinos in the smallest boots man ever wore, with the highest heels, their newness a thing of which in their pride they shrieked manfully as he walked; and there was Ben Broderick, the miner, quietly dressed in black broadcloth, looking almost the man of the city. To him Thornton merely nodded, briefly, knowing the man but little, liking him less. But Broderick put out his hand, saying cordially:

"h.e.l.lo, Buck. Going to shake a leg a little?"

"I might." They were just outside the door, and the cowboy's eyes running on past the miner sought up and down the lines of chatting women for the girl who had tempted him to his first dance in many months. He had seen Pollard's team, but he had not seen Pollard or his niece.

Broderick watched him, smiling a little. "Have a drink, Buck?" he asked, seeming not to have noticed the other's curtness of word and manner.

"I've got something prime outside."

"Not thirsty right now, Broderick," Thornton returned coolly.

Then he heard a man's voice from the shadows at his back, and without turning knew that Henry Pollard was out there, just behind him. At the same instant his busy eyes found the girl he sought.

Winifred Waverly's days in Hill's Corners had had little enough of the joy of life in them for her; she had felt that she breathed an atmosphere charged with forces which she could not understand; upon her spirit had rested a weight of uncertainty and uneasiness and suspicion; the men she saw had hard, sinister faces and seemed cast for dark, merciless things; even her uncle appeared a strange sort of stranger to her and she shrank from following her natural train of surmise and suspicion when now and then she surprised a certain look upon his face or when she saw him with the type of man with whom he mixed.

Tonight it was as though after a long period of gloomy, overcast skies, a storm had pa.s.sed and the sun had broken through. About her were light and music, the merry faces of children and girls with everywhere joyous, full throated, light hearted laughter. And the spirit of her ran out to meet the simple joy of the dance, glad just to be glad again.

Thornton knew that he had found her before she turned her face toward him. He recognized the trim little figure although now the riding habit was discarded for a pretty gown of white which he guessed her own quick fingers had fashioned for the dance; he recognized the white neck with the brown tendrils of hair rebelling from the ribbon-band about her head. And then, when she turned a little, he stared at her from his vantage in the outside darkness, wondering if she had grown prettier than ever in the few weeks since he had seen her, or if it were the dress and the way she wore her hair with a white flower in it, or if he had been half blind that other time.

There was a warm, tender flush upon her cheeks telling of her happiness.

Her eyes shone, soft in their brightness, and her lips were red with the leaping blood of youth. She had turned to speak with Mrs. Sturgis, the stoutest, jolliest and altogether most motherly woman in the valley, and Mrs. Sturgis, watching her eyes and lips and paying no attention to her words, put out her plump hands suddenly, crying heartily:

"You pretty little mouse! If I had just one wish I'd wish I was a man, an' I'd just grab you up in my arms an' I wouldn't stop goin' until I set you down in front of a preacher. Come here an' let Mother Mary kiss you."

"There's a woman with brains for you, Buck," chuckled Broderick.

Thornton, though he agreed very heartily just then, did so in silence.

"It's Winifred Waverly," went on Broderick carelessly. "She's Henry Pollard's niece, you know. A little beauty, don't you think?"

Thornton nodded. Again he had agreed but he did not care to discuss her with Ben Broderick. The miner laughed lightly, and added for Thornton's further information,

"As keen a dancer as she is a looker. And a flirt from the drop of the hat! Had the last dance with her. Which reminds me I better hurry and down my booze and get back. I'm going to rope her for the next dance, too."

Broderick went his way for his bottle. Thornton did not speak, did not turn, did not move that a man might see. But the fingers of the hand at his side twitched suddenly and for a moment were tense.

"Pollard can't help being mostly rattlesnake," he muttered angrily. "But he ought to be man enough to keep his own blood kin away from Ben Broderick's kind. Lord, Lordy, but it's sure enough h.e.l.l folks can't help having uncles like Ben Pollard. Poor little girl!" And then, thoughtfully, his eyes filled with speculation as they rested upon Winifred Waverly, "Mother Mary Sturgis was absolutely right!"

Now the fiddler was tuning with long drawn bow, and the patting of the guitarist's foot told that he was ready. Thornton, tossing his hat to the teacher's desk just outside the door, entered the building and strode straight to the girl. Other men were hurrying across the floor eager to be first to ask this or that demurely waiting maiden for the dance, but Thornton was well in the lead. He nodded and smiled and spoke to many of the women whom he knew, but he did not stop until he came to Winifred Waverly and Mrs. Sturgis. There he was stopped by the older woman who had not read his intentions, and who, thinking that he was going by, took his arm in her two plump hands.

"Why, Buck Thornton, you rascal, you!" she cried heartily. "Where you been all year? I ain't seen you since I c'n remember. An' where you think you're goin', stampedin' along like a runaway horse?"

"Howdy, Mother Mary," he returned as they shook hands. "I was headed right here to see you and Miss Waverly. Howdy, Miss Waverly."

The eyes which the girl turned upon him were wide with surprise. She had had no thought that he would come here tonight. Surely he must know that her uncle, the man whom he had robbed, was here! And Broderick, too--another man whom he had robbed! And how many others? And yet he had come, he seemed careless and without uneasiness, he dared to speak with her quite as if that which had happened in Harte's cabin had never occurred outside of his own imaginings. He even had the a.s.surance to put out his hand to her! As though she would touch him!...

"Take your pardners for a waltz!" cried Chase Harper of the Tres Pinos, he of the small boots, coming in through the door, wiping his mouth and resuming his duties as "caller" of the dances. "Shake a leg, boys!"

The hurried progress of men in search of "pardners" became a race, boots clumped noisily against the floor, the cowboys swooped down upon the line of women folks, often enough there was no spoken invitation to the waltz as a strong arm ran about a lithe waist, the fiddle sc.r.a.ped, the guitar thrummed into the tune, and with the first note they were dancing.

CHAPTER XIX

SIX FEET FOUR!