Peak and Prairie Part 10

Tramp, tramp, tramp went the rhythmic feet; diddle-diddle-dee went the fiddles. There was not much talking among either dancers or sitters-out.

Occasionally one of the babies in the adjoining bedroom waked and wailed, but on the whole they were well-behaved babies. There they lay on the bed, six in a row, while their mothers eagerly s.n.a.t.c.hed their bit of pleasure at the cost of a night's sleep.

Lemuel Keith, joint host with his brother on this occasion, sat on a bench against the wall, contemplating with wonder the energy of these overworked women. Beside him sat the husband of one of them, a tall, gaunt ranchman, with his legs crossed, poising upon a bony knee an atom of humanity in a short plaided woollen frock.

"How old is your baby?" asked Lem, mindful of his duties as host.

"Four months," was the laconic reply; and as though embarra.s.sed by the personal nature of the inquiry, the man rose and repaired to a remote corner, where he began a solemn waltz with his offspring in his arms.

It was an April evening, and the windows were open to the south. A cool night-breeze came in, grateful alike to dancers and lookers-on. Lem sat watching his twin brother Joe, who was taking his turn at the dance. Lem usually watched Joe when he had the chance; for if the brothers were bewilderingly alike in appearance, they were animated by a spirit so unlike, that Joe's every look and action was a source of interest to Lem. Indeed, it was his taste for Joe's society that had made a Colorado ranchman of him. Nature had intended Lemuel Keith for a student, and then, by a strange oversight, had made him the twin-brother of a fascinating daredevil for whom the East was too narrow.

Lem sat and watched Joe, and observed the progress of the dance, philosophizing over the scene in a way peculiar to himself. For his own part, he never danced if he could help himself, but he found the dancing human being a fruitful subject of contemplation. Joe's partner, in particular, amused and interested him. She was a rather dressy young person, with a rose-leaf complexion and a simpering mouth. Rose-leaf complexions are rare on the sun-drenched, wind-swept prairies, and the more effective for that. The possessor of this one, fully aware of her advantage, was displaying, for her partner's delectation, the most wonderful airs and graces. She glided about upon the points of her toes; she gave him her delicately poised finger-tips with a birdlike coyness which the glance of her beady black eyes belied. Joe was in his element, playing the bold yet insinuating cavalier.

Lem Keith found a fascination in this first ranch dance of his. He liked the heartiness of the whole performance; he enjoyed the sharp-cut individuality of the people, their eccentricities of costume and deportment; he was of too sensitive a fibre not to feel the dramatic possibilities of the occasion. "Tenderfoot" as he was, the fact could not escape him that a man in a flannel shirt, with a pistol at his belt,--and most of the men were thus equipped,--was more than likely to have a touch of lawlessness about him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE KEITH RANCH.]

There was a pause between the two figures of the dance. Joe had taken his partner's fan, which he was gently waving to and fro before her face.

She stood panting with affected exhaustion, glancing archly at her new "young man" from under studiously fluttering eyelids. The gaunt father, having stopped waltzing, had discovered that the woollen-clad baby was fast asleep on his shoulder. Over in another corner, under a window, was a red-faced cowboy, slumbering as tranquilly as the baby, his head sunk on his breast, a genial forelock waving lightly in the breeze. The fiddlers resumed their function. "Swing your pards!" cried the curly-headed boy; and once more all was commotion.

The room seemed hot and crowded. Lem had shifted his position, and was standing opposite the windows. He looked toward them, and his glance was arrested. In the square of light cast outside by the lamps within was a sinister, malignant face. It was the face of a man whom the Keith boys had seen to-night for the first time. He had paid his seventy-five cents, and had received his numbered ticket like the others, by which simple ceremony all the requirements of ranch etiquette were fulfilled. Bub Quinn they called him--Bub Quinn from the Divide. Rather a nice-looking fellow, the brothers had agreed, attracted by his brilliant smile and hearty hand-shake. It was Bub Quinn who had brought the girl that Joe was dancing with, and now that Lem came to think of it, he could not remember having seen her dance with any one else, besides Quinn himself.

Lem's heart gave a heavy thump almost before his brain had grasped the situation. Yet the situation was very plain. It was Joe and his little fool of a partner that those malignant eyes were following.

They were light eyes, looking out from under level light eyebrows, and Lem frankly quaked at sight of them. The man's face was clean-shaven, showing high cheekbones and a firm, handsome mouth. He stood in an indolent att.i.tude, with his hands in his pockets; but all the reckless pa.s.sion of the desperado was concentrated in the level glance of those menacing eyes.

"Meet your partner with a double _sashay_," cried the curly-headed boy.

Diddle-diddle-dee squeaked the fiddles. Lem looked again at his brother.

He was flirting outrageously.

A door opened behind Lem, and a woman called him by name. He stepped into the kitchen, where two of his prairie neighbors were busy with the supper. It was Mrs. Luella Jenkins who had summoned him, kind, queer, warm-hearted Mrs. Luella. The "Keith boys" were giving their first dance, and she had undertaken to engineer the supper.

"We've got the coffee on," she remarked, pointing over her shoulder at a couple of gallon-cans on the stove, from which an agreeable aroma was rising.

"That's first-rate," said Lem, who had a much more distinct vision of Bub Quinn's eyes than of the mammoth tin cans. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Well, I dunno," Mrs. Luella ruminated. Her speech was as slow as her movements were quick. "I was thinkin' 't was 'most a pity you hadn't had bun sandwiches." She looked regretfully at the rapidly growing pile of the ordinary kind with which the table was being loaded. "The buns taste kind o' sweet and pleasant, mixed up with the ham."

Through the closed door came the sc.r.a.ping of the indefatigable fiddles.

"Hold her tight, and run her down the middle!" shouted the voice of the caller-out.

"Over to Watts's last fall," Mrs. Luella rambled on, slicing ham the while at a great rate, "they had bun sandwiches, and in the top of ary bun there was a toothpick stickin' up. If you've got toothpicks enough about the place, we might try it. It looks real tasty."

"Mrs. Jenkins," Lem broke in, "do you know Bub Quinn?"

"No; nor I don't want to," Luella answered curtly.

"Why not?"

"He's too handy with his shooting-irons to suit my taste."

Then, resuming the thread of her discourse: "You don't think, now, you've got toothpicks enough? They'd set things off real nice." But Lem had departed.

"I s'pose he's kind o' fl.u.s.tered with givin' their first dance," she said apologetically to her coadjutor among the sandwiches.

Lem was a great favorite with Mrs. Luella. She liked him better than she did Joe. She was one of the few people who could, at a glance, tell the two brothers apart. She always spoke of Lem as the "little chap," though he was in fact precisely of a height with his brother; and she gave as the reason for the preference, that "the little chap wasn't a ramper."

Unfortunately for Lem, perhaps, she was right. He was not a ramper.

As Lem stepped out into the other room, the caller-out was shouting, "Promen-_ade_ all--you know where!" The sets were breaking up, and Joe with his best manner was leading his partner to a seat. The face had vanished from the window. Bub Quinn was striding across the room, and now planted himself in front of the recreant pair.

"You're to come with me, Aggy," he growled.

"Pray don't mention it!" cried Joe, relinquishing the girl to Quinn with a mocking reverence.

Shrugging her shoulders, and pouting, Aggy moved away with her captor; not, however, without a parting glance over her shoulder at Joe. The two brothers met at the kitchen-door.

"I say, Joe," Lem begged, "don't dance with that girl again."

"And why not!"

"You wouldn't ask why not if you had seen that ruffian's face at the window."

"Didn't I see it, though?" scoffed Joe, in high spirits, and Lem knew that he had blundered.

A new caller-out had taken the floor, and was shouting, "Seventeen to twenty-four, get on the floor and dance!"

The pauses are short at a ranch dance, for each man, having a right in only one dance out of three or four, is eager for his turn. The women on this particular occasion might have been glad of a rest, for there were only ten of them to satisfy the demands of all the men, and steady dancing from eight o'clock to three is no light task. Nevertheless, each one rose with sufficient alacrity in response to the polite inquiry, "Will you a.s.sist me with this dance?" and in a few minutes the same many-colored woollen gowns, and much befrizzled heads, which had diversified the last sets, were lending l.u.s.tre to the present dance.

Neither Bub Quinn nor Joe Keith was included this time among those admonished to "get on the floor and dance," and Lem, thankful for the respite, stepped out on the piazza, where a group of men were lounging and smoking. The air outside was sharp and invigorating; the moon was full, and in its cold, clear light the Peak glimmered white and ghostly.

Lem strolled off the piazza, and over to the group of sorry-looking broncos, in saddle or harness, standing hitched to the fence. He pushed in among them, patting their heads, or righting the blankets of the few that were fortunate enough to have such luxuries. He felt as though he should like to enter into confidential relations with them. They seemed, somehow, more of his own kind than the rough, jostling, pugnacious beings pa.s.sing themselves off as men and brothers within there. He poked about from one to the other of the st.u.r.dy, plush-coated little beasts, till he came to a great white plow-horse harnessed to a sulky, and looking like a giant in contrast with the scrubby broncos. The amiability which is supposed to wait upon generous proportions proved to be a characteristic of this equine Goliath, for at Lem's approach he c.o.c.ked his ears and turned his head with marked friendliness. Lem looked across the creature's rough neck to the firm, strong outlines of "the range," showing clearly in the moonlight; he drew his lungs full of the keen, thin air. But neither "the strength of the hills," nor the elixir of the air, could restore his equanimity. He could not throw off the weight that oppressed him. There was no shirking the truth. He was deadly afraid of Bub Quinn; the sight of that lowering face at the window had caused in him a horrible physical shrinking; the dread of an undefined mischief brewing weighed upon his spirit like a nightmare.

"Great heavens! What a coward I am!" he groaned aloud.

The white horse rubbed his velvet nose in mute sympathy against the young man's shoulder; but there was no solace that the white horse could give. Lem leaned against the friendly neck, and shut his teeth hard together. A lifelong chagrin welled up in him, flooding his soul with bitterness.

If Lemuel Keith had not adored his brother, he would have hated him--hated him for possessing that one quality of rash courage beside which every other virtue seemed mean and worthless.

Presently he found himself looking in at the window again. Joe had disappeared from the scene. Bub Quinn and his Aggy were sitting side by side in stony silence. The fiddles had fallen into a more sentimental strain; hints of "The Mocking Bird" might be heard struggling for utterance in the strings. In this ambitious attempt the pitch would get lower and lower, and then recover itself with a queer falsetto effect.

Charley Leroy, the crack "bronco-buster" of the region, was caller-out this time. He was less inventive than the curly-headed boy, but he gave out his commands in the same chanting measure, and the tramp, tramp of the feet was as rhythmic as ever. The curly-headed boy was having his turn at the dance, "a.s.sisted" by a sallow, middle-aged woman in a brown woollen dress, who made frequent dashes into the adjoining room to quiet her baby. Lem noticed that the hands of the curly-headed boy were so tanned that the finger-nails showed white by contrast. He also observed that Aggy's neck was as pink as her cheeks, which had not been the case half an hour before. In his effort not to look at Bub Quinn, Lem's attention had become vague and scattered. He fixed his eyes upon an elderly man of an anxious countenance, with a shock of tow-colored hair sticking straight out in all directions. The man was having some difficulty in steering his partner through an intricate figure; he was the only person on the floor who did not keep step, and his movements became at every moment more vague and undecided. When, at last, the wiry, determined-looking "bronco-buster" sprang upon the company the somewhat abstruse direction:

"Lady round the gent, and the gent don't go; Lady round the lady, and the gent so-_lo_!"

the "gent" in question became hopelessly bewildered, and stood stock still in the middle of the floor. By the time the set was disentangled, the dance seemed to be over, and the "bronco-buster" dismissed the dancers with the cynical prophecy, "You'll all get married on a _stor-my day_!"

At this juncture, midnight being well pa.s.sed, supper was announced. The kitchen door swung open, and the fragrant smell of the coffee took possession of the room, and floated out through the open window. As some one closed the window in his face, Lem followed the other loungers into the house. The men had all made a stampede for the kitchen; the women sat on chairs and benches against the wall, some of them leaning their heads back wearily, while others fanned themselves and their neighbors with vigor, not relaxing for a moment the somewhat strained vivacity which they felt that the occasion demanded. Bub Quinn's Aggy--no one knew her last name--sat a little apart from the others. She was apparently absorbed in the contemplation of her pocket-handkerchief, a piece of coa.r.s.e finery, which she held by the exact middle, flirting it across her face in lieu of the fan, which had slid to the floor.

Lem paused on his way to the kitchen, and observed her closely. He saw the pink of her neck take on a deeper tinge, and at the same moment Bub Quinn and Joe brushed past him and stood before the girl, each offering her a plate on which reposed two sandwiches and a section of cuc.u.mber pickle.

This was Aggy's opportunity. She shrugged her shoulders, which were encased in red velveteen; she lifted and then dropped her eyes, poising her head first on one side and then on the other; she clasped her hands and wrinkled her forehead. Lem felt as though he were watching the capricious sparks which mark the progress of a slow match toward a powder-train. Bub Quinn, meanwhile, stood rooted before the girl, while Joe, having possessed himself of the fallen fan, met her coquetry with blandishments of the most undisguised nature. At length, hesitatingly, deprecatingly, she took Quinn's plate, but at the same time she moved along on the bench and offered Joe a seat. He promptly took it, and Quinn went away with the calmness of a silently gathering thunder-cloud.