Judith of the Plains Part 27

"All dance as pretty as you can, Turn your toes and left alleman; First gent sashay to the right, Now swing the girl you last swung about, And now the one that's cut her out, And now the one that's dressed in white, And now the belle of the ball."

The dancers seemed bitten to the quick with the tarantula of an ecstatic hilarity; their bodies swayed in perfect harmony to the swing of the fiddles and the swell of the chorus. The most uncouth of them came under the spell of that mad magic. Their movements, that in the beginning of the dance had been shy and awkward, became almost beautiful; they forgot arms, hands, feet; their bodies had become like the strings of some skilfully played instrument, obediently responsive to rhythm, and in that composite blending of races each in his dancing brought some of the poetry of his own far land. The scene was amazing in its beauty and simplicity, like the strong, inspirational power and rugged rhythm of some old border minstrel.

One by one the dancers glowed with better understanding; discordant elements, alien nations were fused to harmony in this vivid picture.

Peter turned to Kitty, expecting to see her face aglow with the warmth of it. She stood beside him, the one unresponsive soul in the room, on her lips a pale, tolerant smile.

"Aren't they splendid, Kitty, these women? More than half of them work like beavers all day, and they have young children and dozens of worries, but would you suspect it? They're just the women for this country."

Now in the present state of affairs almost any other subject would have been better calculated to promote good feeling than the one on which Peter had alighted. Kitty's thoughts had perversely lingered about one who, though not one with these women, had yet their st.u.r.dy self-reliance, their acquiescence in grim conditions, their pleasure in simple things. Kitty's apprehension, slow to kindle, had taken fire like a forest, and by its blaze she saw things in a distorted light; her present vision magnified the relations of Peter and Judith to a degree that a month ago she would have regarded as impossible. "He is her lover!" was the accusation that suddenly flashed through her mind, and with the thought an overwhelming desire to say something unkind, something that should hurt him, supplanted all judgment and reason.

"Oh, it's a decidedly remarkable scene, pictorially, I agree with you. And an artist, of course-but isn't it a trifle quixotic, Peter, to idealize them because they are having a good time? There's no virtue in it. It is conceivable that they might have to work just as hard and have just as many little children to look after, and yet not have these dances you praise them for coming to."

"I'm afraid you find us and our amus.e.m.e.nts a little crude. Evidently the spirit of our dances does not appeal to you; but I did not suppose it necessary to remind you that they should not be judged by the standard of conventional evening parties," said Peter, hurt and angry in his turn.

"Us, our amus.e.m.e.nts, our dances? So you are quite identified with these people, my dear Peter, and I had thought you an ornament of cotillions and country clubs. I can only infer that it is somebody in particular who has brought about your change of heart."

Peter flushed a little, and Kitty kept on: "Some of the native belles are quite wonderful, I believe. Nannie Wetmore tells of a half-breed who is very handsome."

Peter set his lips. "At the expense of spoiling Nannie's pretty romance, I must tell you that the lady she refers to is not only the most beautiful of women, but she would be at ease in any drawing-room. It would be as ridiculous to apply the petty standards of ladyhood to her as it would to-well, imagine some foolish girl bringing up the question at a woman's club-'Was Joan of Arc a lady?'" Peter spoke without calculating the conviction that his words carried. He was angry, and his manner, voice, intonation showed it.

Kitty, now that her most unworthy suspicions had been confirmed by Peter's ardent championing of Judith, lost her discretion in the pang that gnawed her little soul: "I beg your pardon, Peter. When I spoke I did not, of course, know that this young woman was anything to you."

"Anything to me? My dear Kitty, I've never had a better friend than Judith Rodney."

The dance was at its flood-tide. The exhilaration had grown with each sweep of the fiddle-bow, with the sorcery of sinuous, swaying bodies, with the song of the dancers as they joined in the calling out of the figures, with the rhythmic shuffle of feet, with the hum of the pulses, with the leaping of blood to cheek and heart till the dancers whirled as leaves circling towards the eddies of a whirlpool. The dancing Mrs. Dax split her favors into infinitesimal fragments, for each measure of which her long list of waiting gallants stood ready to pick a quarrel if need be. Her dancing, in the splendor of its spontaneity, had something of the surge of the west wind sweeping over a field of grain. Sometimes she waved back her partner and alone danced a figure, putting to the music her own interpretation-barbaric, pa.s.sionate, rude, but magnificently vivid. And the dancers would stop and crowd about her, clapping hands and stamping feet to the rhyming movement of her body, while against the wall her hostile sister-in-law, Mrs. Leander, stood and glared in a fury of disapproval, Leander himself smiling broadly meanwhile and exercising the utmost restraint to keep from joining Mrs. Johnnie's train.

The "x.x.x" men, who had remained aloof from the dancers and the merriment, keeping a faithful vigil in the bunk-room, where the hospitable bottles were to be found, seemed to awaken from the spell that had bound them all day. Henderson, the foreman, whose face had not lost its tallow paleness despite the number of his potations, put his head through the door to have a look at the dancing Mrs. Dax, was caught in the outermost eddy of the whirling throng, and was soon dancing as madly as the others. The rest of the "x.x.x" party still hugged the bunk-room, where the bottles gleamed hospitable. They were still dusty from their long ride of the early morning, and more than once their fear-quickened imaginations had been haunted by the spectre of the dead cotton-woods, from which something heavy and limp and warm had been swaying when they left it. Henderson had secured the dancing Mrs. Dax for a partner. The "caller-out," stationed between the two rooms, warmed to his genial task. He improvised, he put a wealth of imagination and personality into his work, he showered compliments on the nimbleness of Mrs. Dax's feet, he joked Henderson on his pallor, he attempted a florid venture at Kitty. Miguel put fresh magic into his bowing, Jose's fiddle rioted with the madness of it.

Judith stood for a moment in the kindly enveloping darkness, and her heart cried out in protest at the thing she must do. It was the utmost cruelty of fate that forced her here to dance on the evening of the day that they had killed him. But she must do it, that his children might evade the stigma of "cattle-thief," that the shadow of the gallows-tree might not fall across their young lives, that the neighbors might give credence to the tale of Jim's escape from his enemies, that Alida and she might earn the pittance that would give the children the "clean start" that Jim had set his heart on so confidently. And she must dance and be the merriest of them all that these things might happen, but again and again she deferred the dread moment. The light, the music, the voices, the shuffle of the feet came to her as she stood forlorn in the grateful darkness. On the wall the shadows of the dancers, magnified and grotesque, parodied their movements, as they contended there, monstrous, uncouth shapes, like prehistoric monsters gripping, clinching in some mighty struggle; and above it all sang out the wild rhythm of Miguel's fiddle, and young Jose's bow capered madly.

Judith drew close to the window, and the merriment struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-l.u.s.t of the Indian woke in her heart. The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but Henderson as he danced that he might forget the gray of morning, the black, dead trees, and the grotesque thing with head awry that swayed in the breeze like a pendulum. He dreaded the long, black ride that would bring him to his camp, for he alone of the lynchers remained. Something was drawing his gaze out into the blackness of the night. He struggled against the temptation to look towards the window. He whirled the Dax woman till her twinkling feet cleared the floor. He sang to the accompaniment of Miguel's fiddle. He was outwitting the thing that dangled before his eyes, having the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance. And as he danced and swayed, all unwittingly his glance fell on the window opposite, and Jim Rodney's face looked in at him, beautiful in its ecstasy of hate-Rodney's face, refined, sharpened, tried in some bitter crucible, but Rodney's face! Henderson could not withdraw his fascinated gaze. He stood in the midst of the dancers like a man turned to stone. He put up his hand to his eyes as if to brush away a cloud of swarming gnats, then threw up his arms and rushed from the room. The dancers paused in their mad whirl. Miguel's bow stopped with a wailing shriek. Every eye turned towards the window for an explanation of Henderson's sudden panic, but all was dark without on the prairie. The magic had gone from the dance, the whirlwind of drapery that had swung like flags in a breeze dropped in dead air. "What was it?"

the dancers asked one another in whispers.

And for answer Judith entered, but a Judith that was strange to them.

There was about her a white radiance that kept the dancers back, and in her eyes something of Mary's look, as she turned from Calvary. The dancers still kept the position of the figures, the men with their arms about their partners' waists, the women stepping forward; they were like the painted figures of dancers in a fresco. And among them stood Judith, waiting to play her part, waiting to show her world that she could dance and be merry because all was well with her and hers. But the bronzed sons of the saddle hung back, they who a day before would have quarrelled for the honor of a dance. They were afraid of her; it would be like dancing with the death angel. She looked from face to face. Surely some one would ask her to dance, and her eyes fell on Henderson, returning from the bottled courage in the bunk-room. Some word was due from him to explain his terror of a moment ago.

"Oh, Miss Judith, I thought you was a ghost when I seen you at the window."

"A ghost that's ready to dance." She held out her hand to him. In her gesture there was something of royal command, and Henderson, reading the meaning in her eyes, stepped forward. Her face, almost a perfect replica of the dead man's, looked at him.

"I bring you greeting from my brother," she said. "He has gone on a long journey."

Henderson started. Through the still room ran the murmur, "Rodney's outwitted them; he's played a joke on the rope!" And Judith, his dare-devil sister, had come with his greetings to Henderson, leader of the faction against him! The tide had turned. The applause that is ever the meed of the winner was hers to command. The cattle faction were ready to sing the praises of her splendid audacity. In their hearts they were glad in the thought that Jim had outwitted them.

Miguel's bow dashed across the strings, and he drew from the little brown fiddle music that again made them merry and glowing. The magic came back to the dance, the blood leaped again with the merry madness, and they swept to the bowing like leaves when the first faint wail of winter cries in the trees.

Hamilton, standing apart with Kitty Colebrooke, had been a dazed witness of the scene. With the rest he had watched the entrance of Judith, had been stunned by the change in her appearance, had seen her triumph and heard the rumor of Jim's escape, and his heart had warmed with the good word. She had probably managed the plan, and had come to-night, in the joy of her triumph, to hurl in their faces that she had outwitted them. And she had paid the penalty of her courage-her face told that. What a woman she was! Her heart would pay the penalty to the last throb, and yet she could dance with the merriest of them. And as she danced she seemed to Peter Hamilton, in her white draperies, like a cloud of whirling snow-flakes drifting across the silence of the desert night. She was the one woman in all the world for him, though his blind eyes had faced the light for years and had not known it. He had squandered the strength of his youth in the pursuit of a little wax light, and had not marked the serene shining of the moon.

"And a man there was and he made his prayer-" he quoted to himself. Well, thank G.o.d that it had not been answered. He would take her away from here.

She could take her place in his family and reflect credit on his choice.

His family, his friends-he winced at the thought of their possible reception of the news. But Judith's presence would adjust these difficulties. He would present her to Kitty now, that his old friend might see what manner of woman she was. Kitty, he felt, would be kind in memory of the old days. She would give to them both in friendship what she had denied him in love. And as he warmed to the thought he turned to the woman of his youth. And she read a look in his face that had not been there in a long time. Had he, then, come back to her? Was the distance from bark to sh.o.r.e lessening as the sea of misunderstanding diminished?

"Kitty, we were speaking a moment ago of Miss Rodney. You would like to know her, I'm sure. We've been such good friends all these years while you were deciding that what I wanted was not good for us-and deciding wisely, as I know now. Look at her! You'll understand how she has helped me keep the balance of things. When she's finished dancing you'll let me bring her to you, won't you?"

And Kitty, who had expected much different words, struggled with the meaning of these unexpected ones. The strangeness of the pain bewildered her. Her dazed consciousness refused to accept that Peter was asking permission to present to her a woman whom she thought should not have been permitted to enter her presence. There was about her a white flame of anger that seemed to lick up the red blood in her veins as she turned to answer:

"She is undeniably handsome, Peter, but I do not care to meet your mistress."

He bowed low to her as Lieutenant Swift, of Fort Washakie, who was of the Wetmore party, came to claim Kitty's hand for the next dance. Judith and Henderson were leading the last figure, their hands clasped high in an arch through which the dancers trooped in couples. Again and again he tried to catch Judith's eye, but her glance never once met his. Her great, wide eyes had a far-away look as if they saw some tragedy, the shadow of which would never fall from her. She was, indeed, the tragic muse in her floating white drapery, the tragic muse whose grief is too deep for tears.

He watched her as she swept towards him in the figure of the dance, the head thrown back, slightly foreshortened, the mouth smiling with the smile that knows all things, the eyes holy wells of truth. He saw in her something of the tenderness of Eve, for all the blending of the calm modern woman, capable in affairs, equal to emergency. It was like her to contrive her brother's escape and then to dance with the very men who had knotted the noose for his hanging. Henderson was bowing to her, the dance was over, and the next moment she was alone.

"Is it you, Peter?" She thrust a strand of hair back from her temple. Her eyes rested on him for a moment, then wandered, till in their absent look was the rapt expression of the sleep-walker. The dark-rimmed eyes had in their depths the quiet of a conflagration, and Peter, seeing these things, and knowing the gamut of all her moods, saw that he had been mistaken. She had not come, to dance in triumph, in the face of her brother's enemies.

There was no triumph in her face, but white, consuming despair.

"Did you ask me to dance?" Again she put back the strand of hair. "Forgive me for being so stupid, but I've kept post-office to-day, and had a long ride, and I danced with Henderson."

He drew her arm within his and led the way out through the crowd of dancers to the star-strewn night. She did not speak again, nor did she seem to notice that they had left the room with the dancers. She turned her face towards the lonely valley, where the drama of her brother's pa.s.sing had been consummated, and something there was in her look as it turned towards the hills that told Peter.

"Tell me, Judith, 'what has happened?"

For answer she pointed towards the valley. "They did it last night at the dead cotton-woods. Henderson led them. I could not stay with Alida. I had to come here to dance that no one might suspect."

Her voice was steady, but low and thrilling. In its deep resonance was the echo of all human sorrow. There was no hint of accusation, yet Peter felt accused. He felt, now when it was too late, that his position had been one of almost pusillanimous negligence. From the beginning he had taken a firm stand against violent measures. He had talked, argued, reasoned, inveighed against violence; no later than a week ago he had ridden across the desert to tell Henderson that the Wetmore outfit would take no part in violence of any sort, and that the cattle outfit that did resort to extreme measures would miss the support of the "W-Square" in any future range business. But it had not been enough. He should have made plain his position in regard to Judith. With her as his future wife the tragedy of the valley would not have been possible.

From the ranch-house came the swell of the fiddles, the rhythmic shuffle of feet, the song of the dancers, dulled by distance. Beside him was Judith, a white spirit, the woman in her dead of grief. And yet, through all the grim horror of the tragedy she remembered the part that had been allotted to her, threw all the weight of her personality on the side of the game she was playing.

"You must be on our side, Peter, and when there is talk of Jim's absence you must imply that he is East somewhere. You will know how to meet such inquiries better than we women. Henderson will be only too glad. You should have seen the wretch when I held out my hand to him and told him to dance with me. He came, white and shambling; we have nothing to fear from Henderson. Alida has no money to go away with. She and I must stay here and make a beginning for the children, and, Peter, we want you to help us."

He had no voice to answer her brave words for a minute, and then his sentences came uncertain and halting.

"You must think me a poor sort of friend, Judith, one who has been blind till the eleventh hour and is then found wanting. I feel so guilty to you, to your brother's wife, to that little child who put out his arms so trustfully to me that night, but I never imagined that things would come to such a pa.s.s as this. The smaller cattle outfits have been doing a good deal of bl.u.s.tering, but the more conservative element supposed that they had them in check, and did not for a moment think that they would take the law into their own hands. Believe me, this lawlessness has been in the face of every influence that could be brought to bear, and it shall not go unpunished."

She spoke to him from the darkness, as the spirit of grief might speak.

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that is the justice of the plains. But, Peter, it is but poor justice. What's done is done, and fresh violence will not give back Alida her husband nor the little ones their father. What we need is friends, one or two loyal souls who, though knowing the hideous truth of this thing, will stand by us in our pitiful falsehood. I have told no one, nor shall I, but you and-Peter, you must not laugh at your fellow-conspirator-Leander."

He took her hands in his and pressed them; big hands they were, and hardened by many a homely task, but withal tender and with the healing quality of womanliness in the touch of their warm, supple fingers. But to-night she did not seem to know that he held them, nor to be conscious of his presence. The woman in her was dead of grief. The white spirit in her place, that plotted and planned that Jim's children and Jim's wife might not from henceforth walk in the shadow of the gallows, was beyond the prompting of the flesh. And again she spoke to him in the same far-away voice, with the same far-away look in her eyes.

"You must know, Peter, that Leander is at heart of the salt of the earth.

I told him about it all, and he asked to be given the commission to deal with the men. He has risen to his post magnificently. I heard him swear the wretches to secrecy, hint to them that he had a great story to tell them. They were frightened, and listened. And the poor little man that we have so despised told them convincingly how Jim had made good his escape-even Henderson half believes we saved him."

Peter hoped that she would accuse him of his half-heartedness indirectly, if not openly. It would have made his conscience more comfortable, and his conscience troubled him sorely to-night. It was that fatal habit of procrastination that had brought this thing about. He had hesitated all these weeks about Judith, and while he had threshed out the pro and con of her disadvantageous family connection, this hideous tragedy had happened.

"Peter"-and now her eyes seemed to come back to earth again, to lose something of the far-away look of the sleep-walker-"Peter, I'm cruel to speak to you of these things now. When your heart is full of your own happiness, I come to you like a dark shadow with this tragedy. But I am glad for the good that has come to you, Peter. Perhaps Miss Colebrooke told you of the day I met her in the wood, the day of the wolf-hunt. She was so beautiful, I understood-"

"Judith, I hardly know how to say what I am going to, I feel that I have been such a bad friend to you, but you must hear me patiently. Together, if you are willing, after knowing all of me that you do, we must look after your brother's children. That night in the little house in the valley, when the little chap came to me, don't you remember, there was something fine and fearless in the way he did it. 'You may belong to the cattle side of the argument,' he seemed to say, 'but I trust you.' Now, Judith dear, that boy's faith in me is not going to be shaken. We must look after them together. It is a very little thing you have asked of me, my dearest, but a very big one that I am asking of you. Do you understand, my Judith, it is _you_ that I want? Don't think of me as I have been, Judith, but as you are going to make me. I want you to give me the right now, this evening, to share all this trouble with you. Do we understand each other, Judith? Is it to be? And will you come back with me now, into the room where they are dancing, and let me present you to them, to the Wetmores, as _my_ Judith, my betrothed?"

"But, Peter, I don't understand. I-I thought you and Miss Colebrooke were-"

"That's all over, Judith. I did love her once. Oh, you dear, brave woman, I'm not a hero from any point of view, and you know it. It's but a sorry lover that's making his prayer to you, my dearest; but you won't judge, I know, beloved, you will love me instead?"