Fortunately, the thaws continued, and if no great quant.i.ty of snow fell between now and then, the first pa.s.senger train was scheduled to run through on the day that Pearl would dance, but Bob Flick, by some method known to himself, had succeeded in making his journey on the engine, and thus arrived at Gallito's cabin several days before he was expected, looking a little more worn than usual and faintly anxious, an expression which speedily disappeared as he saw the radiant health and spirits of Pearl. As for her, she was unfeignedly glad to see him.

"I sure have worried a lot about you this winter, Pearl," he said to her that evening as they two sat a little apart from the rest, Gallito, Jose, Hugh and Seagreave, who all cl.u.s.tered about the fire, while Pearl, as usual, had drawn her chair within the warm gloom of the pine-scented shadow.

"Ain't you silly!" She looked up at him with her heart-shattering, adorable smile.

"I am always about you," he said. "You're all I think of, Pearl, night and day."

She patted his arm lightly. "I've always got you to depend on anyway, haven't I, Bob?" Her soft, lazy, sliding voice was itself a caress.

"You sure have. Anytime, anywhere. No matter what happens, I can't ever change, Pearl. Lord! You ought to know that by this time."

"Maybe I do, Bob, and maybe I like knowing it."

"I hope you do, but it wouldn't make any difference whether you did or didn't. I got to love you. I guess the cards fell that way for me before I was born and nothing can ever change that layout."

"You've never failed me yet, Bob."

"And never will. Oh, Pearl, don't you, can't you see your way to marrying me?"

She stirred restlessly, a faintly troubled look shadowing her face.

"There's so many of me, and I never know what I'm going to do or how I'm going to feel. I'd just be bound to make you miserable."

"It wouldn't be the first time," he said a little sadly. "But you see I know you. I ain't got any mistaken notions about you, and I love you more than any other man in this life'll ever do, Pearl."

Again she moved and looked at him as if his words had roused in her some regret. "I guess that's so; but--it wouldn't be a square deal."

"I'll tend to that," he urged, "and you'll just have to know that I'm always loving you, no matter what's to pay."

"I--" she began, but was interrupted by Jose, who bowed low before her.

"Senorita," grandiosely, "the ladies and your father beg that, unworthy as I am to dance on the same floor as you, that yet, as a compliment to Mr. Flick, we go through some of the Spanish dances together."

Pearl a.s.sented and half rose, but Flick laid a detaining hand on her sleeve. "She will in a minute," he said. "Run along now, Jose, me and Miss Gallito's got something to talk over." He bent close to her again.

"Pearl," there was the faintest shake in his voice, "what are you going to tell me, now?"

"Oh, Bob," the regret was in her voice now, "I wish, I wish you didn't feel that way. I love you more than 'most anybody in the world--but not that way. And--and I don't want to lose your love for me. I like to know it's there. I sort of lean up against it."

He waited a moment or two before answering her, and then his voice was as steady as ever. "You can always come back to my love for you. The stars can fall out of the sky and the mountains slide down, but my love for you can't change, Pearl. It's fixed and steady and forever."

"Dear old Bob," she touched his cheek as she pa.s.sed him with a light caress and went on into the room beyond to get her dancing slippers.

It was later that evening that Jose began his unceasing importunities to see Pearl dance in the town hall. A stern and surprised veto of this plan was his immediate answer. But Jose was the most convincing and plausible of pleaders.

"But, Gallito," he cried almost piteously, "since Mrs. Nitschkan has watched my manners I have been like an angel. No more does the camp say that this hill is haunted, you know that."

"I told you what you'd get if you didn't stop hootin' at people who was pa.s.sin'," remarked Mrs. Nitschkan, knocking the ashes from her pipe out on the hearth and then carefully refilling it. "But you're none so good now that you need brag. I don't know that playin' monkey tricks to frighten folks ain't just as good a way to put in the time as sittin'

'round holdin' hands with Marthy Thomas."

"Sadie!" Mrs. Thomas drew forth her handkerchief and prepared to shed the ready tear. "How you can have the heart to talk so to a woman that ain't buried her husband twelve months! Mr. Jose ain't even thought of takin' the liberties you sit there accusin' him of. If I had a live husband to pertect me, you wouldn't dare treat me like what you do.

Whenever you miss a shot, or get fooled on a prospect, or get some money won away from you, you come back to our little cabin an' sit lookin' at me like you was a wolf an' talkin' like you was a she-bear. And--and it's darned hard, that's what it is."

"If you were a man, Nitschkan," Jose drew himself up truculently, "you would indeed answer for such speeches, and you would not have converted me so easily, either. I have no fear of men." This was quite true, he had not, but his eye quailed and drooped before the steady gaze of Mrs.

Nitschkan.

"Come, come," said Gallito peremptorily, "I am glad to see you all each evening about my fireside, but I will have no arguing nor quarreling, understand that. A man's house is his castle."

Jose diplomatically dropped the subject, which did not mean that he had abandoned his plan for one moment. He merely waited a more convenient season. His strongest arguments were that it was not an infrequent occurrence for Gallito to entertain guests of his own nationality in his mountain cabin. "And my hair!" cried Jose pathetically. "It would be a crown of glory to Nitschkan if she had it; but it is a shame to me, a man, to have to wear it so long. No one in the camp could possibly know that I have ears."

Gallito at first absolutely refused to listen to him, but so adroitly did Jose bring up the subject every evening that he began to make some impression on his stern jailer. He was careful, though, not to mention his hopes until near midnight, when Gallito's normally harsh mood was greatly softened not only by winning the final game, which Jose invariably permitted now, but also by the mellowing influence of his bland, old cognac. Then Gallito would embark on an argument, determined to convince Jose of the wild folly of his desire.

Their debate continued for several evenings and finally ended, as Jose meant it should, in Gallito giving a reluctant consent, under certain conditions which he insisted should be rigidly carried out.

He admitted that it was unlikely that any suspicion would be aroused in the village. Those who saw the party enter the hall would, if they thought about the matter at all, take it for granted that the stranger was some friend of Bob Flick's who had come up with him on the train.

But two conditions Gallito insisted upon: the first, that Jose was to turn the collar of his heavy overcoat high up about his face and draw his hat low over his brows, and the second was that he was only to be permitted to observe the dancing from behind the curtain of the little recess at the end of the hall which served Pearl as a dressing room. He might gaze his fill through the peep-hole there, but under no circ.u.mstances was he to be seen in the body of the hall. But these conditions, as Gallito pointed out, were entirely dependent on Pearl. It was a question whether she would tolerate Jose for a whole evening in her dressing room.

At first she flatly refused to do so and turned a persistently deaf ear to Jose's pleading. She had to slip out of one frock and into another at least three times. There would not be room with Jose sitting there.

"But, dear Senorita, I will not be sitting there," he cried. "When the moment comes that you change your frock I will be standing with my face to the wall and my eyes covered with my hands."

"I should hope so," murmured Mrs. Thomas, who was present.

But Pearl had another reason for not wishing to be alone with Jose upon this occasion. She meant to wear her emeralds, and she was not so anxious that the light-fingered bandit should have so near a view of them. When she mentioned this to Bob Flick and her father, however, they laughed at her fears. Not that they trusted Jose, but, as they pointed out, no matter how much he might be tempted by the jewels, there was no possible way for him to escape with them. He was clever enough to realize this, therefore his resistance to temptation under trying circ.u.mstances might be taken for granted. So Pearl at last gave her reluctant consent.

Upon the afternoon of the day that Pearl was to dance Hughie brought the news that the first train bearing pa.s.sengers had arrived, hours late, nearer six o'clock in the evening, than twelve, noon, when it was due; but nevertheless it had made the journey. It brought several people, but no one seemed to know who they were.

"It is a question," said Gallito, squinting his eyes at the sky, "whether they will get back as easily as they came. See, the snow is again beginning to fall."

It was still snowing as the entire party, men and women, drove down the hill to the town hall. As there was not room for all in the mountain wagon, Seagreave again drove Pearl down in his cart.

They arrived early, as Gallito meant they should, and to his satisfaction found almost n.o.body in the hall, which was yet but dimly lighted.

Pearl immediately vanished into her dressing room, with Jose carrying the case containing her make-up, changes of costume, slippers, etc., close behind her.

Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas, Flick, Gallito and Seagreave selected their seats in the front row and, sitting down, began a discussion of certain mining matters while the house gradually filled. This took but a few moments. The inhabitants of Colina were too keen for a little diversion after the winter famine of amus.e.m.e.nt to stand upon the order of their coming. They came at once, and almost in a body.

Pearl was equally prompt, ready to begin upon the stroke of the hour, and as the time approached Hughie could be heard running his fingers over the keys, although the curtains had not yet been drawn back. By this time there was no longer standing room in the hall.

Mrs. Nitschkan was still deep in a mining discussion. "Who should I run across yesterday," she was saying, "but the Thompson boys. They just took a lease on the 'Pennyroyal,' you know, and they wanted me to go up and look it over. Well, I know, and you know, Gallito, the history of that mine from 'way back. 'She's got a bad name, boys,' I says, 'a bad name.' Well, I went through some of the new drifts with 'em, and I chipped off some specimens." She pulled two or three of these from her coat pocket and pa.s.sed them over to the men. "They sure look mighty good to me," she chuckled. "The truth of the matter is that that mine ain't never been worked right. We can knock it so skilful, though, Gallito, that the boys'll be glad to let us have it for 'most nothing. Jus' look 'round the hall, Bob, an' see if you can see 'em here to-night."

To oblige her he turned in his leisurely fashion and began to scan the audience.

Flick had never been known to start; that was a part of his training. If a cannon had been fired off close to his ear, the narrowest observer could not have discerned the twitch of a muscle; neither would he have exhibited the faintest change of expression; training again. Now, his face was quite as impa.s.sive as usual. His mild, indifferent glance continued to rove over the house, noting with the accuracy of an adding machine certain men who either stood or sat in different parts of the house. Presently he encountered the gaze of Hanson, who was sitting almost directly opposite to him and who was evidently trying to attract his attention.

Eye held eye. On Hanson's face was unconcealed triumph, a cynical exultation. He nodded with smiling insolence, but Flick regarded him with a blank stare of non-recognition for a moment or so and then turned indifferently away. It was a matter of considerable surprise to those who bent watchful eyes on him from various parts of the hall that he did not, as far as they could see, speak either to Gallito or Seagreave.

In any event, he would have had but little time for consultation with them, for almost immediately the curtains were drawn aside, Hugh began to play, and Pearl made her appearance. That was the signal for applause as prolonged as it was enthusiastic. She was like a vision of the spring so eagerly awaited by these prisoners of winter. Her frock, which fell to her ankles, was of some white, silky, soft material and was deeply bordered with silver; her sleeves were of silver and there was a touch of silver on the bodice. Her emeralds gleamed like green fire against her bare white throat and as she danced a froth of rose-colored petticoat was visible, foaming above her ankles.

To all those eager, watching people Pearl seemed truly the incarnation of May in all its glory and shimmer, and Hughie's music was like the silver, fluting notes of her insistent heralds proclaiming the south wind, and bird calls and murmuring rivulets of melting snow. And when she ceased and they finally permitted her to withdraw before dancing again it was almost with a shock that they realized that the snow was still falling outside.