Without incident the Block S trailed its bulky herd across the
rolling country between Eagle Creek and Big Sandy. Late September
was on the land. The days were still and warm, the air full of a
tenuous haze. When the riders went on guard there was a sharp
coolness in the night wind, a harbinger of other nights to come when
they would grumble and wipe the hoar frost from the seats of their
saddles before mounting.
But as yet summer held on. The grass waved yellow where it grew tall
in the foothills, curled like a brown mat on the wide reach of the
plains. Out of these unfenced pastures the Montana beef herds went
to market daily in their tens of thousands from a score of shipping
points, rolling east to feed a multitude in urban centers and to
fatten the bank accounts of the cattle barons. To this stream of
outgoing stock the Block S added its quota on a bright autumn day, a
week after Robin rode in the twilight with May Sutherland.
They did not tarry in town. There was a rising market in Chicago and
it was a season of prime beef on the range. Twenty-four hours after
the last steer clicked his polished horns against the walls of a
slatted car the Block S pitched camp at sundown on Little Eagle, two
miles below the Sutherland ranch. The cowboys were going to a dance.
It was not to interfere with their work. They would dance instead of
sleeping, that was all. A few hours sleep more or less----
Robin didn’t wait to eat supper. When the last tent stake was driven
he mounted and bore away for home, a matter of ten miles. Twelve
miles from Mayne’s to the schoolhouse. He would ride that twenty-two
miles, dance all night, take Ivy three miles above the schoolhouse
to a neighbor’s where she could sleep till noon and ride home at her
leisure. He, himself, would get to the roundup in time to swallow a
cup of coffee, catch a fresh horse and ride again. And he would
enjoy every minute of it. So would Ivy Mayne. Music and a smooth
floor. They both loved dancing. A dance in the summer was rare.
There was always the important seasonal work of the range in summer.
Winter was the time for play. Robin would not have missed that
night’s fun for a month’s pay. And Ivy would never forgive him if he
let her miss it. She wouldn’t go with any other man, and it wasn’t
the thing in the cow country for nice girls to attend dances
unescorted. So Robin rode his best horse, Red Mike, and whistled as
he burned up the miles.
A little after nine o’clock he was helping Ivy off her horse. Other
saddle ponies, a score of them, were hitched to the rail fence that
kept wild cattle out of the schoolhouse yard. Buggies and spring
wagons loomed in the darkness. Light shone in the yellow squares
from the windows. No one could ever accuse range folk of taking
their pleasures sadly. Within rose a cheerful clatter of voices,
laughter, the tuneful blend of a fiddle and a piano, the slither of
feet on a floor made smooth by candlescrapings.
They hurried in.
While Ivy went into a sort of side room to change her riding boots
for a pair of slippers carried in her hand, Robin stood in a short
entryway, looking in. As a practiced cowman sweeps a bunch of stock
and at a single glance notes marks and brands, so he took in the
different faces, most of which he knew--the Davis girls, from the
ranch nearby where Ivy’s small brother and sister lived while they
attended school, the whole Santerre family from Sand Creek, a
sprinkling of small cowmen and ranchers from within a radius of
twenty miles, even a contingent from Big Sandy.
Over in one corner, bulking large, his big face rosy like a rising
sun sat Adam Sutherland, one leg crossed over the other, conversing
with another man. Down at the far end Robin marked two couples just
a little different, very subtly, indefinably so, from the general
run of the crowd gathered for this merry-making. Of the quartette
Robin knew one--Sutherland’s girl. The other three, two young men
and a girl of twenty, he had never seen before. They were waltzing.
As they came down the length of the floor May saw Robin in the
doorway. She smiled, nodded over her partner’s shoulder. Just
abreast of him the music ceased. May turned to him.
“Hello, Robin Tyler.”
“Howdy, Miss Sutherland.”
“Let me introduce you--Mr. Stevens, Mr. Tyler.”
Robin took a second look at young Stevens.
“You happen to be connected with the Long S down in the Larb Hills
country?” he inquired.
“Well, sort of,” young Stevens grinned. “My father’s outfit. You
know anybody with the Long S?”
“Oh, I expect I know some of your men,” Robin said. “But I wasn’t
thinkin’ of that. It just struck me that it’s kind of funny to come
across you. Bob Terry is a cousin of mine.”
“The dickens he is! Then we’re kin by marriage. You’re a Texan too,
then?”
Robin shook his head.
“My father was. I was born in the Black Hills; grew up there.”
“Wonder you never showed up round the Long S.” Stevens gazed at him.
“Or are you on your own here?”
“Uh-uh. Punchin’ cows. I was with Bob one season over on the Big
Dry.”
“You know my sister, then?”
“Oh sure. Liked her a heap, too.”
Young Stevens smiled at May and Robin impartially.
“You’ve heard about Bob Terry chasing all the way from the Panhandle
to kill young Joe Stevens, haven’t you?”
May laughed.
“Certainly. I was a little girl here when it happened. Is there any
one on the range in Montana who hasn’t heard that story about Bob
Terry and young Joe Stevens? And Mr. Tyler is Bob Terry’s cousin,
eh? Since Joe is your sister, what ‘in-law’ relation does that make
you two?”
“Give it up.”
“Too complicated,” Robin murmured. “I’d have to go to school some
more to figure that out.”
“As usual,” May changed the subject, “there aren’t enough girls to
go around. Did you bring one?”
“Yes. She’s getting organized,” Robin answered.
He looked around. Ivy stood just inside the door of the little side
room looking at him. He beckoned. She didn’t move, except to lift
her hands and finger her hair with deft little patting touches. The
handclapping brought an encore from the fiddler and the coatless
pianist who pawed the ivory with gay abandon even if his technique
left something to be desired. Stevens and May went on with their
dance. Robin joined Ivy where she stood. He was impatient to get his
feet on that smooth floor.
“Who was that towhead you were talkin’ to?” she asked--it seemed to
Robin a trifle resentfully. That amused him, perhaps even flattered
his vanity a trifle. He had known Ivy to be jealous before on slight
grounds, or none at all.
“Oh, that’s Adam Sutherland’s girl,” he said carelessly. “Come on.
Let’s dance.”
“I never knew you knew her,” Ivy said.
“I met her once. What’s the odds?”
They moved out on the floor. Mark Steele passed them with the
schoolma’am clasped in his manly arms. The school-teacher was very
good-looking, a vivacious person with a mass of dark auburn hair and
gray eyes and Mark was supposed to like her rather well. He smiled
and spoke to Ivy over his partner’s shoulder and Ivy bestowed on
Mark her sweetest smile and a pert reply.
Robin looked down at her. Her dark head didn’t come more than
halfway up his breast, so he couldn’t see her eyes. But he felt a
strange stiffness in her attitude, a resentment. Robin had a faculty
of gauging Ivy’s moods without a word from her. Almost at once the
anticipated pleasure of the evening began to wane. Ivy was sore
because he knew May Sutherland well enough to speak to her. She
would go out of her way to make him feel her displeasure. She would
want to hurt him, and she would be extremely nice to Mark Steele, or
some other man, just to spite him. More than likely she would choose
to use Steele as a foil. With what Robin knew of Mark’s raiding
Mayne’s stock and Mark’s attitude toward himself Robin foresaw some
unpleasant moments ahead. For a fleeting instant he wished he hadn’t
come. Then he felt ashamed of himself for such a weakness, annoyed
at anticipation of trouble and a wish to avoid it. Time enough to
worry when trouble lifted its ugly head.
“Floor’s good,” he remarked to Ivy. “I feel like I had wings on.”
“Yes,” she drawled with a rising inflection. “Look out you don’t fly
too high.”
“Wha’s a molla, hon?” he wheedled. “You’re not goin’ to have a
grouch about nothin’, are you?”
Ivy looked up at him. It happened that at that precise instant
Robin’s gaze was on May and her partner. Ivy’s dark eyes glowed.
“I will if you dance with that stuck-up thing,” she whispered
tensely. “Promise me you won’t.”
“Ivy,” he protested. “What the dickens has got into you all at
once?”
“She thinks she’s so darned smart,” Ivy muttered.
Robin had fully intended to dance with May Sutherland because
dancing with her would afford the only opportunity they would have
to talk and he had scarcely realized how eager he was to talk to May
Sutherland until Ivy began taking measures to forestall anything of
the kind. Robin was both irritated and puzzled. But he had a nimble
wit and a touch of diplomacy. He was willing to concede a point, to
make a concession.
“If I give her the go-by will you promise not to dance with Mark
Steele?”
“Why, how can I,” Ivy manifested surprise, “if he asks me?”
“You can tell him you got another partner,” Robin suggested, “or say
you’re tired. Any darned fool thing girls say when they don’t want
to dance with a man.”
“I can’t,” Ivy declared.
“You mean you won’t. What’s the difference in you dancin’ with
Shinin’ Mark when you know I’d rather you wouldn’t and me dancin’
with Miss Sutherland?”
Robin kept his tone gentle although he had an impulse to shake
soundly this morsel of perverse prettiness he held in his arms. He
even managed to get a jocular note into what he said.
“Lots of difference. I’ve often danced with Mark. You never kicked.
You never said you didn’t want me to dance with him.”
Robin was dumb. He couldn’t tell Ivy why. He couldn’t explain to her
that he had never liked Mark Steele, nor why that dislike had
suddenly become acute.
“Well,” he said unhappily, “what’s fair for one ought to be fair for
the other. If you’re dead set on being mean, go ahead.”
“I suppose you will dance with her?” the storm tone was growing in
Ivy’s voice.
“I didn’t say I was going to.”
“I know you. You never do anything I want.”
“Oh, for the Lord’s sake let’s not spoil this with a row,” Robin
pleaded. “You know darned well I love you too much to bother my head
about any other girl. What’s wrong with May Sutherland more than any
other girl here? You never asked me not to dance with Minnie Davis
nor Bessie Santerre nor the school-teacher.”
“I don’t like her. I don’t like the way she looked at you,” Ivy
muttered sullenly.
“Neither do I like the way Mark Steele looks at you, old girl,”
Robin lowered his voice. “And he looks at you that way every time
he’s around you. I never kicked about it before. I never acted like
I wanted to put you in a glass case. I give you credit for havin’
sense about men.”
“Aw, pouf!”
There was an angry finality in Ivy’s exclamation. They finished the
waltz in silence and it was not a particularly enjoyable
Terpsichorean effort for Robin Tyler. When they sat down he tried to
talk about different matters but Ivy confined herself to “yes” or
“no” or an occasional sarcastic “you don’t say” until Robin gave up
in despair. When the music began again Mark Steele slid across the
floor and Ivy rose to dance with him. There was a defiant sidelong
flicker in her eyes toward Robin as she got up.
His first impulse was to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Robin was
disturbed and uneasy and resentful. He knew that was no frame of
mind for dancing. The night, the stars, and a cigarette would drive
that mood away. Like a wounded animal Robin instinctively sought
solitude when he was hurt. All his minor victories over whatever
griefs and disappointment had come his way had been won by thinking
it out alone, on the plains, in lonely camps, in night watches under
a quiet sky.
But as Robin rose to go his glance, taking in the room, fell upon
May, sitting by her father. She was looking squarely at him.
Moreover, from the other side of the room a large, ungainly stock
hand from the head of Sand Creek, who had taken one drink too many
before he came to the dance, was staring earnestly at May, evidently
meditating descent, since she was the only woman not already on the
floor.
Robin’s mood changed in the flick of an eyelash. If Ivy wanted
to--well, let her! He strode over to May.
“I thought you were going to beat a retreat,” she murmured, when
they were on the floor. “You aren’t shy, are you?”
“You don’t know me very well,” Robin replied. “The only time you
ever saw me I didn’t act very shy, did I?”
“That was different,” she laughed. “A cow-puncher on a horse, on his
own ground--that _is_ different. Some of these nice-looking boys act
as if they weren’t sure it was safe to approach me.”
“A fellow hates to get turned down,” Robin observed. “You’re a big,
strange toad in the puddle--oh, darn it, I didn’t mean that.”
“It’s a perfectly proper simile,” she hastened to assure him. “I
know what you mean. I am. But no one need be afraid of splashing me.
I like to dance. I like fun as well as any other girl in these
hills.”
“I expect you do,” Robin somehow found it easy to talk to her. “But
you cut a lot of ice in this country, or your dad does, and it’s the
same thing. I expect after the kind of dances you’re used to and the
people you’ve lived among this don’t exactly look like no Fourth of
July celebration to you. A cow-puncher may be wild and woolly but
he’s no fool. He knows when he’s outclassed--as far as a girl is
concerned.”
“You are a rather wide-awake young man in some respects,” she said
thoughtfully. Then after a momentary silence she changed the
subject. “Who is the pretty little dark-haired girl you brought?”
“That’s Ivy Mayne.”
“Oh, so that’s Ivy. She doesn’t seem to know me. Well, I don’t
suppose she would.”
“You know Ivy?” Robin pricked up his ears. He had never heard Ivy so
much as mention May Sutherland.
“Why, we began school together right here in this room. At least I
had been going a couple of years when Ivy commenced. There were only
six pupils. I attended this school until I was twelve. Then I went
away to boarding school.”
“Were you two chummy at all?” Robin inquired.
May wrinkled her brows slightly.
“It seems to me we agreed to disagree on various occasions,” she
replied. “I was a good deal of a spitfire in those days. If I
remember correctly I used to flare up and then Ivy would sulk. What
silly things girls do when they’re kids,” she laughed reminiscently.
“I shouldn’t have known her. She’s awfully good looking, isn’t she?
Perfect features and beautiful eyes. How has she escaped capture
here in the Bear Paws where there are six men for every woman? Dad
says no schoolteacher has ever taught more than a single term. They
always get married. How has Ivy kept her freedom?”
“Hard to catch, I guess,” Robin made a noncommittal reply.
He did not say that he had tentatively captured Ivy. Here, to-night,
for the first time in the six months they had been formally engaged
he had a doubt of his capture being complete. And besides that doubt
he did not want to talk about Ivy Mayne to this fair-haired girl who
floated in his clasp light as a feather.
When that dance ended May left him to go straight to Ivy. Robin saw
her shake hands and sit down beside Dan Mayne’s daughter and talk
with a gracious smile. He didn’t stay to see the outcome of that. He
was a little uneasy. He knew Ivy. She could be gracious when she
chose, but she could also be very difficult with members of her own
sex. Robin let his desire for a smoke take him outside. There, as he
leaned against the building he overheard a snatch of conversation
just around the corner. He knew one of the voices--Tex Matthews. The
other was strange. Robin would have moved instantly, but the first
sentence held him.
“Who was the good-lookin’ kid dancin’ with Sutherland’s daughter. I
don’t mean young Stevens or the other one--the boy with the wavy
hair?”
“Robin Tyler. You know--I told you.”
“I see. An’ that was his girl Shinin’ danced with. Say, they make
well-matched couples paired that way, eh? Looked to me like the
blond princess likes the kid. An’ I don’t reckon the red-headed
school-teacher better be too sure of Mark, eh? Two pair, queens up.”
The man chuckled at his fancy.
“Queens all right,” Matthews drawled. “Well, I’ve seen two pair,
queens up, hard to beat before now.”
“Old Adam Sutherland could beat any two pair in the deck with an ace
in the hole, the way he’s fixed,” the other man laughed. “I don’t
suppose old Adam aims his girl to marry no common cow hand. Still,
you never can tell. I’d play that curly-headed kid for a king any
time.”
“And the other one’s a jack--a measly jack,” Matthews said harshly.
“Remember that old jingle ‘The queen of hearts, she made some tarts
upon a summer day. The jack of hearts, he stole those tarts and
carried them away.’ Well----”
“Say,” the other man lowered his voice discreetly, “don’t talk like
that out loud, Tex. Cracks like that can make trouble. I guess we
better not hit that bottle again.”
“It wasn’t whisky made me say that,” Tex replied. “And I don’t ever
talk in my sleep. There won’t be no trouble until--well, until I
know better where we’re at. Then maybe I’ll start her myself.”
Robin withdrew softly, a little ashamed for listening, a little
disturbed by what he had heard--and puzzled also by the last
exchange of sentences. But it seemed to have no bearing on his
affairs. There was a two-step playing now and Robin sought a
partner.
By midnight he had been unable to claim more than a couple of dances
from Ivy and these she quite patently danced under protest, refusing
to smile at him, scarcely condescending to talk. This sullen
resentment she kept for him alone. With every other man she was
bright as new-minted gold, even gay. And she danced oftenest of all
with Mark Steele. Slowly there grew in Robin’s breast a curiously
mingled ache and anger. She wouldn’t play fair and he was impotent
to do anything about it.
For the supper dance Ivy flatly turned him down.
“Go dance it with May Sutherland,” she said tartly. “I got a
partner.”
“What you tryin’ to do to me, Ivy?” he asked soberly.
“Nothin’ at all. I’m just having a good time. Isn’t that what we
come to a dance for?”
Go dance it with May Sutherland! All right, Robin said to himself.
He would--if he could. If it was to be everybody for himself and the
devil take the hindmost, why not be in the van? He knew what partner
Ivy meant. He knew what construction every man and woman there would
put on Ivy’s eating supper with Shining Mark. They would infer that
Mark had cut him out, and there would be just the faintest
anticipation of trouble. Robin grimly promised to fool them there.
He would never jump Mark Steele over a woman’s fickle whim. If Ivy
was fool enough to throw herself at Shining Mark in a fit of
groundless jealousy--she could! No, if and when he clashed with Mark
Steele it would be over something more serious than a girl’s favor.
So Robin stood by and when Mark did claim Ivy for the supper dance
he looked about for May. On second thought he expected to find her
dancing with young Stevens or young Harper. But Stevens was paired
with Miss Rose Barton and young Harper had appropriated the
auburn-haired school-teacher. Robin had in the course of the evening
been introduced to all three. He had danced with Rose, a gay and
lightsome damsel from Helena, who confided to Robin that she had
come there in some trepidation since she had never before seen the
cowboy on his native heath. Having been told sundry tales by Adam
Sutherland and young Stevens she half expected the Block S riders to
take the floor in woolly chaps and jingling spurs, to make the
welkin ring with shouts and perhaps occasionally fire a shot through
the roof in their unrestrained exuberance.
“Too bad,” Robin had sympathized mockingly. “And you find us a tame
outfit wearin’ store clothes and collars and patent leather shoes
and actin’ like anybody at any ordinary dance. Maybe some of the
boys might put on a little wild west specially for your benefit if
you mentioned it.”
But Miss Barton hastened to assure him that she wanted no such
displays. The Block S men were good dancers. She liked cow-punchers,
she informed him archly, if several of those present were a fair
sample.
For the moment the rest of the Sutherland crowd had vanished. He
didn’t see Adam anywhere. Looking about he got a flash of May in the
lean-to helping two or three older women arrange sandwiches on
platters. The smell of coffee floated out of this room.
Robin went outside. He didn’t want to dance. He didn’t want to eat.
He was acutely uncomfortable. He boiled within and the accumulated
pressure of emotion was a long time yielding to the solace of
tobacco and the quiet night. Under the dusky pines, the high hills
that walled in the little valley, the soundless velvet sky, Robin
presently regained his poise. He knew Ivy through and through. She
was acting like a fool. She knew it and to-morrow or the next day
she would be sorrowful and contrite. Since he could never hold a
grudge against her it would be all right. No use getting all “het
up,” as old Mayne would say. Robin was no philosopher. But he did
have certain qualities of mind which made him patient, resourceful,
an unconscious practitioner of the saying that what cannot be cured
must be endured. He could wait and hold on, without losing heart.
The lilt of the fiddle and the thump of the piano presently apprised
him that supper was over. He thought he might as well go in. There
was a chilly comfort in the reflection that no one would have missed
him, or wondered where he was. So he lingered to smoke another
cigarette. Strangely his mental images were not of Ivy and Shining,
nor of May Sutherland, nor indeed of anything pertaining to the
night and the hour. His mind went back to the day he lamed Stormy by
Cold Spring and what he saw in the Birch Creek bottom. He thought of
cows dead of sudden death, of stolen calves, of many other trifling
incidents which somehow all seemed to be falling into a definite
sequence that must lead to some sort of climax in which he was bound
to be involved. He knew what desperate chances rustlers take once
they embark on the quick road to a bigger herd than comes by natural
growth. Theft led to killing, as the cornered highwayman kills. That
was the history of the cattle thief all the way from the Staked
Plains to the forty-ninth parallel. Robin wondered where this
unlawful venture of Mark Steele’s was going to lead all of them,
more particularly himself. He knew, moreover, as matters stood, that
if Ivy gave Mark Steele a definite impression that she could be his
for the taking--and Mark wanted her--he and Mark Steele couldn’t
live in the same country. It wasn’t big enough.
He threw away his cigarette and went back to the schoolhouse. There
was a quicker tempo in evidence. There had been three or four
bottles of whisky cached around outside. No one was drunk, but high
spirits were being more freely manifested. That was a custom of the
country, seldom lacking observance.
In the entry-way, a sort of lobby, Robin met Ivy. She had on her
riding boots and coat.
“You going now?” he said in surprise. “Wait till I get my hat.”
“Never mind,” she answered stiffly. “Mr. Steele is going to take me
up to Davis’s.”
For a breath Robin literally saw red, a red mist that momentarily
fogged his vision. By an effort he shook that off. That gust of
unreasoning fury had a double effect. It was like a physical
pain--and it frightened him. He understood in that moment why men
strangely run amuck. Yet in one corner of his brain a small, weak
voice seemed to be saying, “Don’t act like a damn fool. Don’t act
like a damn fool.”
He forced himself to say with a smile, “Oh, all right.”
Then Steele appeared, hat in hand, jaunty. He flashed a look that
Robin read as amused triumph--and Robin let that pass.
“Good-night,” he said to Ivy quite casually and went on in, straight
to where he saw May Sutherland talking to another girl. He wouldn’t
give either Ivy or Steele the satisfaction of looking back, though
he knew instinctively that both were watching him while Mark leaned
against the wall buckling on his silver spurs.
“Will you dance this?” Robin asked May.
She didn’t say she would. She rose with a faint smile and put her
hand on his arm. As they turned the first corner of the room Robin
saw the other two pass out, Ivy flinging a last glance over her
shoulder.
“If they think I’m going to care a curse----” he didn’t finish the
sentence in his mind. It wasn’t true. He did care. His pride as well
as his affection was involved in that episode. Any other man but
Shining Mark! Then he put it resolutely aside and talked to May.
“I’m going home after this number,” May told him presently. “Some of
these men have had one drink too many. I’m a little bit tired. I’ve
danced everything but the supper dance.”
“They do get lit up once in a while,” Robin admitted. “How did you
come? Buggy?”
“No, we all rode up. Dad and Bill Harper went home before supper.
Billy doesn’t care much about dancing, and I think he had a little
tiff with Rose.”
“I’m about ready to go myself,” Robin said. “I’ll ride down with you
if you like.”
“Didn’t you bring a girl?” May looked at him curiously. “Isn’t it
proper to take _her_ home?”
“Sure. But she’s gone home already,” Robin answered evenly, “with
another wild cowboy.”
May said nothing to that for a minute. Then: “All right, if you
_are_ going. Rose and Joe are having too good a time to leave yet.”
“I’ll find your horse and bring him to the door.”
“Thanks. It’s the chestnut I rode the other day. Will you know him?”
“Sure. I’d know your saddle anyhow, by those funny little
_tapaderos_.”
The music stopped. Robin got his hat and went out. When he led the
two horses to the steps in front May was waiting. Rose Barton and Ed
Stevens were with her. Three or four other dancers had come out for
a breath of air. They stood chatting and laughing in the light from
the open doorway. Robin suspected that tongues would wag freely
about himself and Mark Steele and Ivy and May. But he didn’t
care--if May didn’t. It struck him that probably May would never
know that people were wagging their tongues, and that she would only
be amused if she did know. If a king--whether a king in cattleland
or a monarch by right divine--could do no wrong, a king’s daughter
wore no lesser mantle.
“Take care you don’t get lost,” Rose Barton teased. “You’ll see that
bandits don’t carry her off and hold her for ransom, won’t you, Mr.
Tyler?”
“Oh, sure,” Robin flung back, as he swung into his saddle. “If we
meet up with outlaws I’ll be the cowboy hero. Good-night,
everybody.”
They rode down that dark creek bottom. Little Eagle muttered in its
pebbly channel between lines of drooping willow. Smells of pine came
down from hills black against the paler sky. They rode silently,
side by side, each seeing the other’s face as a pale blur in the
darkness.
It wasn’t far to the Block S. They crossed a horse pasture, came
into another enclosure where loomed a diversity of dim buildings, a
great monument of a barn. Beyond these on a little knoll rose the
king’s castle, a one-story structure sprawling in three wings added
from time to time in the last fifteen years as the Sutherland
fortunes expanded. A light glowed in one window.
“Have a good time?” Robin asked when they dismounted.
“Oh, splendid,” she murmured. “Everybody seemed to enjoy it so.”
“They generally do.”
“And I was lucky besides,” May laughed. “I got through the whole
evening without having to dance with the Block S range foreman. I
wonder if that man affects anybody else the way he does me? When I
look at him I’d as soon have a snake touch me. It’s queer.”
“I guess there’s others don’t like him much,” Robin agreed. “And I
don’t suppose he cares. Will I put your horse in the barn, Miss
Sutherland?”
“Oh, no, don’t bother. Just lay the saddle by the steps and turn him
loose.”
Robin did so. May stood by until the chestnut went free.
“Well, I reckon you want to get in your little trundle bed.” Robin
lifted his hat. “So, I’ll ramble.”
“Good-night,” said May softly. “Take care of yourself, Robin Tyler.
Don’t let any bad horses fall on you so you won’t be able to go to
dances in the Bear Paws this winter.”
“No fear,” Robin shook the extended hand and turned to his stirrup.
“It won’t be bad horses that’ll keep me from dancin’. Good-night.”
In twenty minutes Robin was in his blankets, in a camp still all but
deserted. Sleep came slowly. When he did fall asleep he dreamed a
lot of fantastic stuff in which Mark Steele, Ivy, himself, May
Sutherland, dead cows, lonely sage-grown bottoms, herds of T Bar S’s
and dancing couples mixed and whirled in a disorderly fantasy. And
somehow he seemed to move amid these scenes and persons with his
hands tied behind his back, the sport of all the others.