The Range Dwellers Part 6

"Ellie Carleton, it's never you!" chirped a familiar voice.

I turned, a bit dazed with the unexpected interruption, and saw that it was Edith Loroman, whom I had last seen in the East the summer before, when I was gyrating through Newport and all those places, with Barney MacTague for chaperon, and whom I had known for long. Edith had chosen to be very friendly always, and I liked her--only, I suspected her of being a bit too worldly to suit me.

"And why isn't it I? I can't see that my ident.i.ty is more surprising than yours," I retorted, pulling myself together. It did certainly give me a start to see her there, and looking so exactly as she had always looked.

I couldn't think of anything more to say, so, as the music had started, I asked her if she had any dances saved for me. I couldn't decently leave her and carry out my original plan, you see.

She laughed at my ignorance, and told me that this was a "frontier" dance, and there were no programs.

"You just promise one or two dances ahead," she explained. "As many as you can remember. Beryl told me all about how they do here; Beryl King is my cousin, you know."

I didn't know, but I was content to take her word for it, and asked her for that dance and got it, and she chattered on about everything under the sun, and told all about how they happened to be in Montana, and how long they were going to stay, and that Mr. Weaver had brought his auto, and another fellow--I forget his name--had intended to bring his, but didn't, and that they were going to tour through to Helena, on their way home, and it would be such fun, and that if I didn't come over right away to call upon her, she would never forgive me.

"There's a drawback," I told her. "I'm not on your cousin's visiting-list; I've never even been introduced to her."

"That," said Miss Edith complacently, "is easily remedied. You know mama well enough, I should think. Aunt Lodema--funny name, isn't it?--is stopping here all summer, with Beryl. Beryl has the strangest tastes. She _will_ spend every summer out here with her father, and if any of us poor mortals want a glimpse of her between seasons, we must come where she is.

She's a dear, and you must know her, even if you do hold yourself superior to us women. She's almost as much a crank on athletics as you are; you ought to see her on the links, once! That's why I can't understand her running away off here every summer. And, by the way, Ellie, what are _you_ doing here--a stranger?"

"I'm earning my bread by the sweat of my brow," I told her plainly. "I'm a cowboy--a would-be, I suppose I should say."

She looked up at me horrified. "Have you--lost--your millions?" she wanted to know. Edith Loroman was always a straightforward questioner, at any rate.

"The millions," I told her, laughing, "are all right, I believe. Dad has a cattle-ranch in this part of the world, and he sent me out here to reform me. He meant it as a punishment, but at present I'm getting rather the best of the deal, I think."

"And where's Barney?" she asked. "One reason I came near not recognizing you was because you hadn't your shadow along."

"Barney is luxuriating in idleness somewhere," I answered lightly. "One couldn't expect _him_ to turn savage, just because I did. I can't imagine Barney working for his daily bread."

"I can," retorted Miss Edith, "every bit as easily as I can imagine you!

And, if you'll pardon me, I don't believe a word of it, either."

On the whole, I could hardly blame her. As she had always known me, I must have appeared to her somewhat like Solomon's lilies. But I did not try to convince her; there were other things more important.

I went and made my bow to Mrs. Loroman, and answered sundry questions--more conventional, I may say, than were those of her daughter.

Mrs. Loroman was one of the best type of society dames, and I will own that I was a bit surprised to find that she was Beryl King's aunt. In spite of that indefinable little air of breeding that I had felt in my two meetings with Miss King, I had thought of her as distinctly a daughter of the range-land.

"I'll introduce you to my cousin and aunt now, if you like," Edith offered generously, in an undertone--for the two were not ten feet from us, although Miss King had not yet seen fit to know that I was in the room.

How a woman can act so deuced innocent, beats me.

Miss King lowered her chin as much as half an inch, and looked at me as if I were an exceeding commonplace, inanimate object that could not possibly interest her. Her aunt, Lodema King, was almost as bad, I think; I didn't notice particularly. But Miss King's I-do-not-know-you-sir air could not save her; I hadn't schemed like a villain for a week, and ridden twenty-five miles at a good fast clip after a stiff day's work, just to be presented and walk away. I asked her for the next waltz.

"The next waltz is promised to Mr. Weaver," she told me freezingly.

I asked for the next two-step.

"The next two-step is also promised--to Mr. Weaver."

I began to have unfriendly feelings toward Mr. Weaver. "Will you be good enough to inform what dance is _not_ promised?" I almost finished "to Mr.

Weaver," but I'm not quite a cad, I hope.

"Really, we haven't programs here to-night," she parried.

I played a reckless lead. "I wonder," I said, looking straight down into those eyes of hers, and hoping she couldn't suspect the p.r.i.c.kles chasing over me at the very look of them--"I wonder if it's because you're _afraid_ to dance with me?"

"Are you so--fearsome?" she retorted evenly, and I got back instantly:

"It would almost seem so."

I had the satisfaction of seeing her lip go in between her teeth. (I should like to say something about those teeth--only it would sound like the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a dentifrice, for I should be bound to mention pearls once or twice.)

"You are flattering yourself, Mr. Carleton; I am not at all afraid to dance with you," she said--and, oh, the tone of her!

"I shall expect you to prove that instantly," I retorted, still looking straight into her face.

A quadrille--the old-fashioned kind--was called, and she looked up at me and put out her hand. Only an idiot would wonder whether I took it.

"This isn't a fair test," I told her, after leading her out in position.

"You won't be dancing with me a quarter of the time, you know. Only the closest observer may tell, after we once get going, whom you are dancing with."

"That," she retorted, with a gleam in her eyes I couldn't--being no lady's man--interpret--"that is a mere quibble, and would not hold in court."

"It's going to hold in _this_ court," I answered boldly, and wished I had not so systematically wasted my opportunities in the past--that I had spent more time drinking tea and studying the "infernal feminine."

She gave me a quick, puzzling glance, and as we were commanded at that instant to salute our partners, she swept me a half-curtsy that made me grit my teeth, though I tried to make my own bow quite as elaborate and mocking. I couldn't make her out at all during that dance. Whenever we came together there was that little air of mockery in every move she made, and yet something in her eyes seemed to invite and to challenge. The first time we were privileged, by the old-fashioned "caller," to "swing our partners," milady would have given me her finger-tips--only I wouldn't have it that way. I held her as close as I dared, and--I don't know but I'm a fool--she didn't seem in any great rage over it. Lord, how I did wish I was wise to the ways of women!

The next waltz I couldn't have, because she was to dance it with Mr.

Weaver. So I had the fun of sitting there watching them fly around the room, and getting a good-sized dislike of the fellow over it. I don't pretend to be one of those large-minded men who are always painfully unprejudiced. Weaver looked like a pretty good sort, and under other circ.u.mstances I should probably have liked him, but as it was I emphatically did not.

However, I got a waltz, after a heart-breaking delay, and it was worth waiting for. I had felt all along that we could hit it off pretty well together, and we did. We didn't say much--we just floated off into another world--or I did--and there was nothing I wanted to say that I dared say. I call that a good excuse for silence.

Afterward I asked her for another, and she looked at me curiously.

"You're a very hard man to convince, Mr. Carleton," she told me, with that same queer look in her eyes. I was beginning to get drunk--intoxicated, if you like the word better--on those same eyes; they always affected me, somehow, as if I'd never seen them before; always that same little tingle of surprise went over me when she lifted those heavy fringes of lashes.

I'm not psychologist enough to explain this, and I'm strictly no good at introspection; it was that way with me, and that will have to do.

I told her she probably would never meet another who required so much convincing, and, after wrangling over the matter politely for a minute, got her to promise me another waltz, said promise to be redeemed after supper.

I tried to talk to "Aunt Lodema," but she would have none of me, and she seemed to think I had more than my share of effrontery to attempt such a thing. Mrs. Loroman was better, and I filled in fifteen minutes or so very pleasantly with her. After that I went over to Edith and got her to sit out a dance with me.

The first thing she asked me was about Frosty. Who was he? and why was he here? and how long had he been here? I told her all I knew about him, and then turned frank and asked her why she wanted to know.

"Mama hasn't recognized him--yet," she said confidentially, "but I was sure he was the same. He has shaved his mustache, and he's much browner and heavier, but he's Fred Miller--and why doesn't he come and speak to me?"

Out of much words, I gathered that she and Frosty were, to put it mildly, old friends. She didn't just say there was an engagement between them, but she hinted it; his father had "had trouble"--the vagueness of women!--and Edith's mama had turned Frosty down, to put it bluntly. Frosty had, ostensibly, gone to South Africa, and that was the last of him. Miss Edith seemed quite disturbed over seeing him there in Kenmore. I told her that if Frosty wanted to stay in the background, that was his privilege and my gain, and she smiled at me vaguely and said of course it didn't really matter.

At supper-time our crowd got the storekeeper intimidated sufficiently to open his store and sell us something to eat. The King faction had looked upon us blackly, though there were too many of us to make it safe meddling, and none of us were minded to break bread with them. Instead, we sat around on the counter and on boxes in the store, and ate crackers and sardines and things like that. I couldn't help remembering my last Fourth, and the banquet I had given on board the _Molly Stark_--my yacht, named after the lady known to history, whom dad claims for an ancestress--and I laughed out loud. The boys wanted to know the cause of my mirth, and so, with a sardine laid out decently between two crackers in one hand, and a blue "granite" cup of plebeian beer in the other, I told them all about that banquet, and some of the things we had to eat and drink--whereat they laughed, too. The contrast was certainly amusing. But, somehow, I wouldn't have changed, just then, if I could have done so. That, also, is something I'm not psychologist enough to explain.

That last waltz with Miss King was like to prove disastrous, for we swished uncomfortably close to her father, standing scowling at Frosty and some of the others of our crowd near the door. Luckily, he didn't see us, and at the far end Miss King stopped abruptly. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes looked up at me--wistfully, I could almost say.

"I think, Mr. Carleton, we had better stop," she said hesitatingly. "I don't believe your enmity is so ungenerous as to wish to cause me unpleasantness. You surely are convinced now that I am not afraid of you, so the truce is over."