go on. To-night, the one night when she needed all her powers, it was
foolish to allow a whim to weaken them. She shook her head at herself
and smiled. The smile was not a success. She turned away wearily and
thrust her hands through her hair. Why had Graham taken it into his
head to bother her this one evening of all others? It was his fault.
She stamped her foot angrily. All his fault. In spite of his denial,
she believed he would be there and would set everything. The thought
stung her pride and the desire for tears left her. She would show him
just how much his advice and his fears were worth. On the impulse she
spread her white dress out on the bed, and began hastily to smooth out
the wrinkles in its pleats. After a moment she turned decisively to
the mirror, and began to take down her hair.
XXX
ANCESTRAL VOICES
Archibald Mudge, alias Frosty, dressed in a clean white apron, stood
behind the bar and surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction. It had
gone well, and for this one day his master had been in an unwontedly
good humor.
Directly opposite, a wide door opened into the new dance hall. From
where Frosty stood one could see that it was a long low room,
flag-draped, with few windows, and furnished only by an unbroken line
of benches against the wall. One standing in the doorway, however,
could have perceived that at one end were placed for the musicians a
number of tall "look-out" stools--tall in order that the performers
might at once overlook the performance of the square-dance "figures,"
and early prepare to avoid possible hostilities. A number of large
lamps with reflectors illuminated the apartment with crossed shafts of
light.
Frosty polished glasses in anticipation of the evening's business,
which would be lively, glancing complacently from the fresh-scrubbed
floor to the lately renewed sheets, imitating plaster. As the outer
door was now closed, he was relieved from the necessity of ejecting
Peter. It did no good to tie Peter up: either the animal was ingenious
at escapes, or the men were mischievous in their desire to bother
Frosty. This was one of Frosty's many troubles. He led a life of care.
After a little, the door opened, and three men came in. They steered
to the bar at once, as a sort of familiar haven in strange
surroundings. From its anchorage they took their initial view of the
hall. After subsequent arrivals had braced them to the point of
confidence, they made a first awful tour of that apartment, but soon
returned to more familiar surroundings. The saloon filled with a
heterogeneous gathering. All types were there in their best clothes,
from the spotlessly immaculate faro dealer, dressed in a black
broadcloth frock coat, to Dave Kelly, with his new red handkerchief and
his high-heeled boots. The main gathering remained crowded in the
saloon, whence small groups occasionally ventured into the hall, but
only for the purposes of temporary inspection. A hum of low-voiced
talk went up, which fell to expectant silence every time the door was
opened. The musicians from Spanish Gulch arrived and began to tune up.
They were closely followed by the first woman, a red-cheeked awkward
country lass, who took her position on the bench near one corner and
began at once to dispense smiles and loud small talk to the men who
followed her there. The assistants' spirits rose. They had known this
girl as Sal Jenks, of rather drab-colored disposition and appearance.
To-night, in the glamour of a light-colored dress and the illumination
of a ball room, she had suddenly become transformed into something
quite different and infinitely more attractive. The musicians played a
tune. The other women came in, gayly dressed and accompanied always by
a red-faced swain. Black Mike took his stand at the side of Frosty,
and began to assist that individual in dispensing drinks. Black Mike's
democracy was no small element of his popularity. At about half-past
eight those near the door saw him talking with Cheyenne Harry. A buzz
swept over the room. Copper Creek had been waiting in suppressed
excitement to see whom Cheyenne Harry would accompany--Molly Lafond or
the newcomer--and lo! he had come alone.
Then, before the astonishment had subsided, the outer door opened again
and Molly entered, looking very pale and sweet and serious.
She walked directly by the bar into the dance hall, where she seated
herself near the door and looked calmly about her. She was dressed
entirely in white. Cheyenne Harry was leaning over the bar talking
attentively, so that he was perhaps the only person in the room who did
not see her come in. A dozen men at once surrounded her and began to
chat. She answered them good-humoredly enough, but indifferently.
The door once more flew open and Bismarck Anne, standing on the sill,
cried out in her clear, high voice, "Well, boys!" She paused a moment.
Cheyenne Harry, turning at the sound of her voice, remembered how,
about a year ago, Molly Lafond had stood there in just that attitude.
But he felt a great difference.
Cheyenne Harry had for some time, as we have said, been growing a
little tired of his affair with Molly. The mental ingredients of
satiety were all present, but he had as yet received no conscious
notice of their existence. He imagined himself as much fascinated as
ever. If something lately had seemed to lack, he had laid it to
circumstances and not at all to the state of his relations with the
girl. But for all that, the satiety had been real. He only needed to
be told of it to realize it himself very plainly. Bismarck Anne had
told him.
He saw now absolutely no attraction for himself in Molly Lafond, and
that without attempting to deny her intrinsic attraction for others.
He simply did not care for her any more. It seemed perhaps like a
sudden revulsion, but it was not so really; it had been inevitable from
the very first, and from the very first it had been slowly maturing.
Not even the results were sudden: only Cheyenne Harry's knowledge of
them.
He had always felt his relations with Molly Lafond as more or less
restrictive, because the good is always so. He had dimly caught the
truth that, without a deep moral incentive, restriction is always
irksome; that although pure love is the most ideal condition in the
world, its simulation is the most wearisome after the novelty has worn
off; and all the rest of the long psychological train of emotion and
reasoning common to the trifler. But now for the first time he knew
it. He knew it because, standing in the doorway, looking at him with
bold black eyes, was the exact opposite of all this, and he recognized
a mighty relief.
Bismarck Anne knew enough to dress all in black. She had the taste to
appreciate the effect of one red flower in her hair as her only
ornament. She had the sense to wear her dress cut neither too low
above nor too high below. And so she was exceedingly handsome as she
stood there, the devil of excitement in her eyes.
Cheyenne Harry abruptly ceased his conversation with Lafond to shake
hands with her. They turned in company. Harry linked his arm through
hers, and they entered the dance hall close together, and took their
seats in a corner far removed from the musicians, where they continued
engaged in such earnest conversation that none of the men ventured to
approach them. After a time, when the music struck up for the first
dance, she seemed to be commanding something to which Cheyenne Harry
seemed to be objecting. Then the latter arose slowly and asked Molly
Lafond to dance the first dance with him. She accepted with a sharp
pang at her heart. The newcomer had scored.
Owing to the scarcity of the gentler sex, it had been decided that no
one "set" was to be blessed with more than one girl. Thus they would
go around better. Molly, glancing across at her rival, saw that she
was surrounded by a laughing group of men. The woman was joking
broadly at each, wriggling her white shoulders, darting side glances,
half promising, half denying. In a moment the group broke, and the
members of it rushed in her own direction. They were already
quarrelling for places in her set. The matter was arranged somehow
after much wrangling. Then, too late, Molly saw that the other woman
had scored again. Bismarck Anne had not only selected her partner, but
also the other six members of the set. Thus she had made seven men
happy and none jealous.
A Western dance is a sight worth seeing. The musicians call off the
figures. The head fiddler does it until his voice gives out. Then the
second fiddler and the accordion take a try at it, after which further
calling is unnecessary owing to the fact that most of the dancers are
very drunk. This comes to pass because, at the end of each dance, all
are supposed to visit the bar. The most heinous crime, next to horse
stealing or sluice robbing, is "shying drinks" at such times. As some
men can hold more than others this enforced equality of quantity
consumed brings about unexpected variation in the hilarity of the
consumers, all of which adds to the variety of the occasion.
The interims between drinks are occupied by square dances. The men go
through some set of monkey shines which they call figures, the
principal object of which seems to be at once the tripping up of such
male and the prolonged squeezing of such female dancers as they may
come into intimate personal relations with on their grand rounds, which
is conducive to hilarity of the loud-mouthed variety. The exercise
itself is rather violent, and as the room is low, lit by lamps, and
comparatively windowless, the air soon becomes heavy with the reek of
perspiration and the fumes of tobacco. The floor acquires a heaving
motion and the lights sway back and forth. The homeliest of the
dance-hall girls somehow looks like a fairy through the haze--a rather
elusive fairy, with a rather heavy unfairylike gait. At this period
there is usually a good deal of noise. Then all at once it is morning,
and somehow the scene has changed to the ravine, and there is a tomato
can poking itself into the small of the back.
Molly tripped gracefully and easily through the figures of the opening
dance, seeming scarcely to touch the floor. Bismarck Anne leaned
heavily on each man in the swing, and pressed her bosom against his
arm. Twice she half slipped and caught by the shoulder of her partner
of the moment, and her breath was hot against his throat. She said not
one word the whole dance through.
With the last quaver of the fiddle came the harsh command--
"S'lute yore pardners! All promenade to th' bar!"
They obeyed. The sets went in two by two, the men treating their
masculine partners with humorous politeness in the matter of assistance
in crossing the sill of the door. The non-dancers crowded after them
in a confused mob.
At the bar Frosty had the drinks all ready on the back shelf. Black
Mike assisted him, and together the two, their sleeves rolled back and
their faces glistening with the sweat of honest toil, passed over
brimming little glasses of "forty rod" and jingled two-bit pieces into
the drawer. Bismarck Anne drank with the best of them, leaning
familiarly against the men nearest her, bandying jokes that were more
than doubtful. Molly sat on her corner of the bar but did not drink.
At the beginning of the next dance the aspect of things was a trifle
changed. A bigger crowd gathered about Bismarck Anne soliciting places
in her set, and it was more familiar. Some one snatched a kiss of her.
She merely laughed and pushed him away. There seemed to have suddenly
sprung up between them and her a _camaraderie_ in which Molly had no
part, as though they and the newcomer had some secret to keep to
themselves which thrust the younger girl without the circle.
Cheyenne Harry did not come near her again. He seemed wholly
fascinated by the stranger. The sight of his attentions to the other
aroused Molly. A bright red spot burned in either cheek. She was all
animation. Her laughter rang true, her eyes flashed with merriment.
For every one she had a joke, a half-tender, half-sympathetic aside.
She saw that as long as they were in her actual presence the men were
wholly hers. And yet she felt too the subtle growth of this other
woman's influence, and realized that eventually it would beat her down.
In spite of her brave appearance her throat choked her. Only by a
great concentration of the will could she prevent herself from lapsing
into silence, and then into tears. As the strain began to tell on her
nerves, the old feeling of unknowable guilt came to oppress her heart,
and with it a growing longing to get away, to hide somewhere; to begin
all over again humbly, below the lowest; to claim nothing, to attempt
nothing, to do nothing in opposition to that accusing Thought which
seemed greater than herself. All at once she was tired of struggling.
She was ready to give up this life, if only they would let her feel
like something besides a breathless naughty child, fearfully expecting
every moment the grave reproving voice of the Master.
She chided herself for this. It was not game. Pluck she admired above
everything; and yet here she was, ready to run away at the first taste
of defeat. She smiled ravishingly on Dave Kelly, until he began to
speculate on the possibility of repeating that delicious experience
which Peter had so inopportunely cut short.
[Illustration: "ARE YOU STILL MAD?"]
As the evening progressed, the "forty rod" began to show its effects.
Williams had to have the full width of the floor whenever he tried to
walk, and his enthusiastic imitations of an angry catamount were most
creditable. Some one was always disgustedly repressing him. Several
others were in like condition with different symptoms. The soberest
manifested increased vigor of limb and fertility of imagination. A
happy combination of these two effects brought about the proposal of a
turkey walk. A ring was formed on the instant.
Into the ring two men, chosen _viva voce_, were pushed. They began at
once to strut back and forth like turkey cocks in the spring. They
hollowed their backs in, stuck their chests and rumps out, slapped
their thighs, toed in, puffed their cheeks, ducked their heads, uttered
sundry gurgling whoops, and hopped about, first on one foot, then on
the other in a charmingly, impartial imitation of a Southern cake walk
and a Sioux Indian war dance. These performances tickled the crowd
immensely. When it came to noisy vote on the relative merits of the
performers, it vociferously shouted unanimous approval of all.
Therefore the contest was pronounced a tie. At this moment Dave
Williams staggered forward. His muddled brain had room for only the
most evident facts. He saw the ring and his drunken shrewdness had
retained cognizance of the evening's rivalry. He mixed the two ideas
up to effect a proposal.
"Hyar," he shouted, "lesh do this ri'! I secon' Bismarck Anne!" He
let out a wild-cat yell--"Whe-ee!! Two t' one on Anne!"
Some one hit him on the chest and sent him staggering backward. He
gyrated unevenly toward the corner, stumbled over his own feet, and sat
down heavily on the floor, where after feeling vainly for his gun he
relapsed into good humor. But his suggestion hit the popular fancy.
The idea ran like fire. In a second the ring was formed again. Those
in front knelt; those behind looked over their shoulders. Even Frosty
and Black Mike deserted the bar and stood leaning in the doorway. The
girls were urged forward into the ring, which closed after them, and
the music was ordered to proceed.
Bismarck Anne walked calmly into the circle and stood looking about
her. Molly had an instant of doubt. Then a revulsion against her easy
surrender got her to her feet and into the ring. The gauntlet was
down. She would accept the challenge. It was a duel.
There was a moment's squabble between two self-appointed officials in
regard to precedence. It was settled, and Molly was beckoned to begin.
The fiddles started up a squeaky, lively air to which the men kept time
with hands and feet. The young girl, her cheeks burning, stepped into
the centre of the ring and struck the first graceful pose of the
_cachucha_, learned years before at the Agency from a little Mexican
serving-maid. The men recognized it in a swift quickly silenced burst.
The fiddles changed their measure to suit the dance.
The _cachucha_ is a beautiful dance when rightly done. It is a
combination of airy half-steps, sinuous body movements, and slow
languorous and graceful weavings of the arms. It has in it all the
enchantment of the lazy South. There is not an abrupt movement in it,
but one pose melts into another as imperceptibly as night into day.
Molly did it well. Her supple figure was suited to it, and the very
refinement of her actions enhanced the charm of the dance. The men
applauded vehemently when she stopped. The other woman laughed aloud
in scorn.
With a final sweeping curtsy the dancer turned to go. The flush of
triumph and excitement burned on her cheeks and in her eyes. Finding
the ring solidly closed so that exit was impossible, she accepted a
seat on the knee of one of those in the front rank. The man put his
arms around her and drew her close in a drunken embrace, which the girl
only half noticed.
Bismarck Anne sprang to the centre of the ring at one bound, the sneer
still on her lips. She turned abruptly to the musicians.
"Quit that damn stuff!" she snarled. "Play somethin'!"
The musicians hurriedly swung into a lively air.
Bismarck Anne's dance was not especially graceful. It consisted mainly
of high kicks and a certain athletic feat known as the split. But it
was magnificent in its abandon, and fierce in the crude animal energy
of it. Besides its mere suggestiveness and appeal to the passions, it
had too a swing, a fire, a brute-like force which could not but hit to
the hearts of men at bottom strong, crude, and savage. They went
crazy. They shouted encouraging things at her with open straining
throats. They stamped and cheered until the lights wavered. They
clapped each other delightedly on the back. And Bismarck Anne danced
ever the more furiously. She kicked with enthusiasm, with abandon,
holding her short skirts still higher to gain the greater freedom. The
tiger-lily fell from her head and was snatched up almost before it
touched the floor. Her heavy black hair came down, and hung in strands
across her face, and fell in vivid contrast upon her white shoulders
and her heaving bosom. She shook it back with a savage movement.
And she in the corner, who was nothing but a woman, with little of the
savage in her to appeal to savage men, and, for all her independence,
little of this bold reckless spirit of the frontier in her to appeal to
pioneers, felt herself growing sick and faint as she saw these greater
forces slipping beyond her control roaringly, as would a mountain
torrent. Her rule was over, and this woman's had begun. The room
swayed before her eyes. Some one behind her handed a brimming glass of
whisky over her shoulder, and she seized it eagerly and gulped it down.
The unaccustomed stimulant cleared her vision. The room stood still,
the different objects in it became distinct. She looked on the
whirling figure of the woman in the centre, the open-mouth
turmoil-stirred crowd in the background, with dispassionate eyes. She
was deadly cool. To her memory came Graham's words of that same
afternoon. "_Because you are too good for them!_" She remembered the
very emphasis of his tone. Well, he was right, and yet not right. She
had been too good for them, but she world show them now! With the
sudden flash of resolve, the first unnatural hardening effect of the
whisky passed, and in a whirl the exhilaration came. She laughed and
responded convulsively to the man's embrace.
Bismarck Anne gave a final kick, and fell in some one's open arms. The
men, shouting frantically, began to stir preparatory to regaining their
feet. Then they sank back again with a fresh cheer. Into the centre
of the ring Molly tripped unsteadily, and stood for a moment looking
about her with uncertain foolishly smiling eyes. Her cheeks were a
glow of red. She glanced toward the musicians, and, with the tip of
her fingers, raised her dress to her knees, waiting for the music to
begin.
The room was deadly still. She could see, looking at her excitedly,
all the men she had met and come to know in the last year. She saw
them dimly, as through a haze. Would the music never begin? What were
they waiting for? A draught blew cold along the floor. She felt it on
her legs. Why was it? Oh, yes, she was holding her skirts up to
dance, to show them that she was no better than this woman, Bismarck
Anne.
And then the black cloud that had been gathering so long, the undefined
guilty feeling at nothing, broke over her. She wanted to go on--the
music had begun now--but she could not. Twice she tried. Something
held her, something real, something stronger than herself. She did not
recognize them, these ancestral voices, but they laid upon her their
commands. She dropped her skirts, and covered her eyes with her two
hands, and burst through the ring of men, and ran out through the night
to her own cabin, where she threw herself on her bed weeping bitterly.
She was ashamed.
XXXI
LAFOND'S FIRST CARD
Lafond, in the meantime, had left the dispensation of drinks almost
entirely to Frosty. He darted here and there in the crowd, a light of
unwonted excitement in his eye.
"That thar Mike's shore waked up," commented Old Mizzou. "Never see
him so plumb animated. He shore looks nutty. Dance halls is mostly
too rich fer his blood, I reckon."
But Tony Houston and Jack Snowie and a dozen others by now knew better
than to attribute this excitement to dance halls. Lafond possessed in
his pocket a copy of Knapp's dismissal, and he had told them of it.
He told them of it mysteriously, in half-limits, pointing out
tendencies and solutions to what they already knew, leaving them to
draw deductions, sowing anxieties that there might spring up a harvest
of distrust.
Through the woof of gayety he rapidly ran a dull thread of angry
suspicion. Men made merry, and forgot all the past and all the future.
Other men talked low-voiced in corners, and tried, from the distraction
of drink and gayety, to draw clear plan and reflection. And always
Lafond took other men aside and whispered eager little
half-confidences, and went on quickly to the next.
His spirit was upheld by a great excitement, such as it had never
experienced before, not even in his early and adventurous days. He
seemed to himself to be mounting higher and higher on the summit of a
great wave of luck, as a swimmer is lifted by the sea. And yet, behind
it all, again for the first time in his life, he felt a portent in the
air. It was as though the wave were rearing itself, only to curl over
and break upon the shore. He laid this to nervousness, and yet it
affected him with a certain superstitious awe.
So occupied was he, that he quite missed the girl's sudden exit, and
was drawn from his brown study only by the sudden hush that succeeded
it. In the silence a drunken voice uplifted itself loudly.
"M' work 'sh done," it vociferated. "I wan' m' pay!"
Everybody turned, prepared to laugh at this "comic relief!" Jack
Snowie was addressing Billy Knapp. Billy at once became conscious of
an audience, and the usual desire to appear well seized him. He smiled
with the good-humored tolerance of a drunken man.
"I suppose you want me to take it right out of my pants pocket, eh,
Jack?" he inquired paternally. "Of co'se you wants yo' pay! Come
around in th' mornin' an' get it." He smiled again at the group that
surrounded him. It appeared to be listening to this colloquy with
unusual interest.
"I wan' m' pay!" reiterated Snowie sullenly, but then apparently lost
the thread of his ideas and lurched away. Billy considered the
incident closed. He was mistaken. The group did not dissolve; it came
closer. The men had a strangely unfriendly look about the eyes. Billy
did not understand it. He stepped toward one side of the circle about
him. It closed the tighter to keep him in.
"What's the joke, boys?" he asked, still smiling.
The room was breathlessly still. Many of those within it did not
understand the trouble, but trouble was in the air. Across a wavering
line of heat could be dimly discerned the musicians, poised to start
the next dance, but uncertain whether or not to begin. They did not
begin. The silence was startled even by Peter's doggy yawn from the
far corner of the saloon proper.
"Ain't no joke!" "That's what we want to know!" "Damned poor joke!"
"You'll find out soon enough!" cried the men angrily, and then paused
and looked at each other because of the jostle of words that meant
nothing.