Carrigan found Jac trembling with excitement, though her face was still
calm.
“What the devil,” he began. “I thought Gordon was the man you wanted--”
“Don’t you get me?” she broke in eagerly. “None of those swell Eastern
ladies would bat an eye at a bum who came up to them without bein’
introduced.”
“Oh!” said Carrigan. “And who--”
“You will,” she answered without hesitation. “Take me over to a chair
and talk with me a minute. Then you can sidestep up to the bar and get a
drink. When all the boys flock around and ask about me--”
He growled: “How do you know they’ll flock around and ask about you?”
There was something akin to pity in her smile. The statue was walking
away from Pygmalion.
“Take it from me. They will. Your money ain’t any good at that bar--take
me to that chair standing away from the rest of them--because every man
will be wantin’ to make your acquaintance an’ buy you liquor. Drink
beer, Carrie. I hate a breath. Then they’ll ask about me, an’ you tell
’em that I’m straight from the East, an’ don’t understand Western ways.
Tell ’em they’ll have to be introduced. An’ don’t bring over any one I
don’t point out.”
“Beginnin’ with Gordon?”
“Sure. Bring him first.”
“Who’s next? Are you goin’ to corral ’em all?”
“If I want to.”
They sat down--Carrigan rather gingerly, and edging away from her.
“You see that skinny feller with the black hair?”
“Yep.”
“That’s Dave Carey. He’s engaged to that girl with the smile an’ the
fluffy pink dress. She called me a ‘horrible tomboy’ once. You can bring
Dave Carey next.”
“Goin’ to bust up the happy homes, Jac?”
“Miss Silvestre,” she corrected. “Watch Jenny Hendrix stare at me! She’s
whispering, too. I hate her! Then there’s Ben Craig, the tall man with
the thin, sad-lookin’ face. Once when he was at the hotel he said my
head was more like a turkey-egg than a face. You c’n bring him third.
I’ll think of some more after a while.”
“How’re you goin’ to keep up the bluff with all those fellers? They’ll
spot your lingo in a minute.”
Jacqueline waved the suggestion airily away.
“I read a book once,” she said, and her smile was very close to the grin
of Jac During, now no more. “It told about an Eastern girl who came West
an’ she was terrible thrilled about the Western men. She had a great
lingo. I’ll stick by what she said.”
“What was it?”
“Mr. Carrigan, have you lived all your life in the West?”
“Sure.”
He started and stared at her.
“Is that part of the lingo?”
“I knew you had been all your life out here in these big open spaces. It
makes you so much more real than the Eastern men.”
“Huh!” grunted Carrigan, and blinked rapidly.
“Do you know that I feel that you--but you would think me foolish if I
said it.”
“You bet your life I wouldn’t!” gasped Carrigan.
She leaned closer and dropped a hand on his arm. Her gaze dwelt tenderly
on his startled eyes.
“I feel that you are the first _real_ man I have ever known, Mr.
Carrigan.”
“The devil you do!”
“Yes. All the men I have met have been so superficial. But you are like
your own great West, Mr. Carrigan, with a heart as wide as the desert
and as open as the sky. I feel it. Am I foolish to tell you this?”
Carrigan loosened his bandanna.
“Jac, are you goin’ to pull this sort of a line on all the boys?” he
asked hoarsely.
“Sure I am. Why not? Don’t it get by?”
“There’ll be gun-play before the night’s over, you c’n lay that ten to
one.”
“Why?”
“Don’t look at me like that! You make me nervous. It ain’t what you say
so much as the way you say it. Where’d you learn that way of talkin’?”
“I been to the movies, an’ I used my eyes. I’ve seen Maude Merriam an’
come home an’ practised at the mirror. Has she got anything on me?”
“She generally ain’t got half so much on,” groaned Carrigan, and rose.
“Wait a minute, Carrie!”
“Say, Cinderella, maybe I’m the fairy godmother, but don’t go callin’ me
by a woman’s name. The brand don’t no ways look well on my hide.”
“All right, Mr. Carrigan. But just remember this: That ain’t the
Carrigan cut that we done in the last dance.”
He rubbed a hand across his forehead.
“It’s the Silvestre slide.”
“What?”
“Sure. I introduced it in New York, an’ everybody in the Five Hundred
copied it an’ named it after me. It made an awful hit.”
Carrigan fled. He went straight for the bar by instinct, for he began to
need a drink. Jacqueline proved a prophet. As he dropped his coin on the
bar a broad hand swept it back to him. He looked up into the handsome,
serious face of Maurie Gordon.
“Partner,” said Maurie, “this drink’s on me. My name’s Gordon.”
“Wait a minute, Maurie,” broke in another voice. “You’re lickerin’ with
me, friend. I’m Dave Carey. Glad to meet you. Two comin’ up, bartender!”
“I’m drinkin’ beer,” said Carrigan, remembering orders.
An odd look, which he understood perfectly, came in the eyes of the
other men.
“Look here,” went on Maurie, “that girl you brung to the dance is a hell
bender. If you ain’t dancin’ all evenin’ with her, maybe I could break
in, eh?”
He reinforced his suggestion with a broad wink and a tremendous slap on
the shoulder.
“Maybe you could,” said Carrigan.
“I’ll have to introduce you. Miss Silvestre is straight from the East,
an’ she don’t quite get the hang of our Western ways.”
“Straight from the East?”
“Yep. New York, an’ all that. Blood as blue as hell.”
“The devil!”
“It is, all right, till you get to know her.”
“How’d you pick her up?”
“She’s been visitin’ at the ranch where I work. We sort of ran off
together tonight. She was strong for some sort of a lark. Kind of
nifty?”
“_Is_ she?”
“But you got to talk careful to her, get me?”
“I’ll hang on to my tongue like it was a buckin’ bronco.”
“Then foller me.”
“Hold on,” said Carey desperately. “Carrigan, don’t I get no look in
here?”
“What d’you want to go hangin’ around with every girl in the country
for?” queried Gordon, and his frown was dangerous. “Ain’t you engaged
already?”
“Am I?” replied Carey, with an ominous lowering of the voice. “An’ ain’t
Dolly Maxwell got you roped and throwed?”
“Suppose,” broke in Carrigan anxiously, “that you get introduced at the
same time, an’ then Gordon c’n have the first dance an’ you get the
next.”
They compromised on this basis and trooped obediently behind Carrigan.
“Wait a minute,” said Gordon. “Maybe you’d like to meet Dolly Maxwell?”
“Sure,” said Carrigan.
They stopped before the girl of the golden hair. There was soul-deep
understanding in the cold eye she fixed upon Maurie Gordon. Carrigan
received gushing recognition, not for him, he knew, but for the partner
of the sensation in green.
“The next dance? Sure you can have it. Good-by, Maurie.”
But her parting shot was wasted on thin air. Maurie was headed for other
and more pleasant regions, and the light of the discoverer was in his
eye. He was a new Balboa looking out upon another Pacific. They ranged
before Jac.
“Miss Silvestre, this is Mr. Gordon, an’ Mr. Carey.”
Maurie searched his memory, steeled his nerves, and spoke: “I sure feel
it’s a privilege to know you.”
“Me, too,” said Carey, and then bit his lips.
The scorn of a superior intelligence was haughty in the face of big
Maurie.
“Thank you,” Jac was saying. “Will you sit down?”
“Sure,” said Maurie, and plumped into the chair beside her. “Maybe you
ain’t got the next dance taken. Can I have it? Thanks.”
He glared his triumph at Carey, who turned away, dark-eyed with envy.
The cold glance of Jac cut short Carrigan’s incipient grin.
“So-long,” he said, and turned on his heel.
He joined Dave Carey.
“Fourteen degrees of frost in her smile,” said that worthy, “but I’m
bettin’ on a river runnin’ under the ice.”
“Are you goin’ to dance?”
“Nope. I need a drink. Have one on me?”
“I got work ahead,” said Carrigan, and made for Dolly Maxwell.