THE ESCAPE FROM THE DANCE.
"IT is all settled, Laura dear," Mrs. Simpson announced comfortably as
the automobile drew up in front of her ranch-house door. "The Indian
girl is to stay with us and be your maid, as your mother says you are
accustomed to having some one to look after you, and Mrs. Merton tells
me she has taught this Olilie how to behave about a house. She seems to
have made quite a pet of her. I haven't talked it over with Jean and
Jack yet, but I am sure it would be most unwise for them to attempt to
keep the Indian girl at their ranch. They have Aunt Ellen and Zack to do
their work, and indeed they ought to have some one to look after them,
instead of undertaking to care for some one else." Mrs. Simpson nodded
emphatically. She was fond of giving advice, a little more fond than
Jean and Jack were of receiving it.
The ranch girls said nothing, but Frank broke in to the conversation,
unexpectedly. "Oh, I say, Mrs. Simpson," he remarked thoughtfully.
"Don't you know, this Olilie, or Olive as you sometimes call her, don't
strike me in the least as belonging to the servant class. Of course we
look at these things differently in England from what you do out West,
but this girl is so gentle and refined, it seems to me she ought to have
a real chance."
Jack smiled gratefully, with her head turned away. "I think so too," she
murmured to herself. "I only wish we knew how to manage it."
The house party was to have a dance at the ranch house that evening.
Jean and Jack and Frieda had never had any real dancing lessons, but the
two older girls were accustomed to going to the informal parties at the
other ranch houses. They knew how to dance the waltz, two-step and
quadrille, and it never occurred to them that Laura would try to
introduce the new style dances at their Western party. Of course some of
her guests had been to schools in the big Western cities and understood
the latest dances. Dan Norton had spent a year at the Leland Stanford
University, and, though he had not been able to pass his Sophomore
exams., he considered himself very superior to the boys and girls who
had never been away either to college or school.
The three ranch girls were not worried about their dancing, but they
were about their costumes. Mrs. Simpson had suggested that Olive would
feel shy, if she came to the party, and she was grateful to be left out.
If only Jean and Jack would tell her what they had found out at the
Indian village, and what they meant to do with her! But the girls did
not realize that the Indian girl knew anything of their trip of the
afternoon or that she was eating her heart out in silence rather than
ask them what had occurred.
Jean shook out her party dress anxiously; Jack surveyed hers with an
expression half of affection and half of disdain. The dresses were their
best last summer frocks and Jim had gone over to Laramie and brought
them home with him in triumph. They were not what the girls would have
chosen for themselves, but they had been proud of them until to-night.
"Do you think she will laugh at us, Jack?" Jean inquired, bravely. "I am
sure I don't care if she does."
At least poor Jim had had a good eye for color, if the materials he had
chosen for the girls' gowns were odd.
Jean's was a soft rose color, just the shade of the wild rose that
covers the western prairies in the early spring and the girl smiled
slightly as she looked at herself critically in the glass. The gown was
becoming to her nut-brown hair and eyes and her clear, colorless skin.
Jack was dressing Frieda in a corner. "You are pretty as a picture,
Jean!" she insisted. "Please don't care so much about what Laura Post
may think. Come and kiss Frieda, she is sweet enough to eat."
Frieda's costume was the prettiest of the three, although it was of
coarse white embroidery, such as only a man would buy. Her long blonde
hair was freshly braided and tied with pale blue ribbons, and around her
plump little waist was a blue sash which in color matched her eyes,
sparkling now from excitement at attending her first dance. Jean marched
Frieda over to a chair and held her in her lap, so that Jack could get
ready to go to the reception room with them.
Jacqueline Ralston thought little about her own appearance. She probably
knew she was pretty, most pretty people are aware of it, but Jack had
really had so much to do and so many things to think about, that she had
almost none of the vanities of most girls of sixteen. She coiled her
gold-brown braids around her head in simple fashion, though she usually
wore them down, as it was so difficult to keep her hair up when she was
on horseback. But to-night, in honor of the party, she wished to look
more grown up. Jack's hair waved from the roots to the ends and broke
out all over her forehead in wayward curls and was particularly becoming
to her, arranged in a simple coronet. In five minutes she had on her
blue cotton crepe gown and the three went into Mrs. Simpson's big
living-room.
The room had a hardwood floor and had been charmingly decorated with
evergreens, which the men had brought in from the woods at the far end
of the Simpson Ranch.
"Oh, Jack, Jean, look!" Frieda suddenly gasped. A vision of fashionable
loveliness swept before their girlish eyes. Miss Laura Post was crossing
the room followed by her mother. Jack and Jean felt like creeping back
to their bedroom, not realizing how inappropriate Laura's and her
mother's costumes were for such a simple home party.
Laura was a picture and looked as if she had just stepped out of the
pages of a magazine. She wore a white lace gown over silk and chiffon,
trimmed in silver lace. Her hair was elaborately dressed in a
bewildering mass of small, blonde puffs and around her neck a string of
pearls shone softly. Mrs. Post was in violet satin, and wore a diamond
crescent, which made Frieda's round eyes open wider and wider. She had
never seen real diamonds, only their crystal imitations shining in the
great Wyoming rocks.
For a little while Jean and Jack felt as dowdy as old rag dolls, but
when the dancing began they forgot to care about their clothes. There
were a number of other guests besides the house party, who had driven
over to the dance, and most of them were friends of the ranch girls.
Frank did not ask Jack to dance nor did he make any effort to talk to
her. She had said she could not be friends with him and he did not mean
to take advantage of their being at the same house party together, to
thrust himself upon her, as his attentions seemed unwelcome.
After supper, Laura Post grew tired of the simple old-fashioned waltz
which had entertained her visitors the first of the evening, and
insisted that the Spanish waltz was the newest thing in her set, and
that she wanted to try it. She managed to get half a dozen young people
to attempt it with her while others sat around the wall.
Jean dearly loved to dance, and had no intention of being a wall flower,
so she and Harry Pryor slipped out on the big ranch veranda to talk. It
was a wonderful moonlight night, as clear and brilliant as the day, and
across the wide stretch of lowlands the moon shimmered and shone, as if
reflected on the still surface of the ocean.
Jacqueline Ralston saw Jean and Harry disappear; slowly she followed
them and stood for a moment drinking in the wonderful beauty of the
Western night, then crossed to Jean and Harry.
"Jean, Harry, wouldn't it be a glorious night for a ride?" she asked
breathlessly. "Do you think it would be wrong if we should go for a
little run across the prairies? We could easily find the trail, for it
is as bright as daytime."
Jean clapped her hands softly. "Bully!" Harry announced quietly. "It is
not ten o'clock yet and we can be back long before the dance breaks up.
I'll go saddle the ponies while you girls slip into your riding togs."
"Be sure to get Hotspur and Frisk, Jean's pony," Jack entreated. "Jim
sent over our own ponies from the ranch, and I simply hate to ride any
horse but dear little Hotspur."
Just as Jean and Jack slipped into the front hall to go to their room,
Frank Kent stepped out on the porch. He was looking pale and ill, for
the heat of the room and the effort of dancing had brought the old
weakness back on him that he had felt only a few times since his coming
to Wyoming.
Jack felt a sudden wave of sympathy and friendliness. She touched Frank
lightly on the arm: "My cousin and I and Harry Pryor are going to steal
away from the dance for a little horseback ride. Would you care to come
with us?" she asked.
Frank's face lost most of its pallor. He immediately insisted that the
one thing in the world he most wished to do was to take a moonlight ride
across the prairies.
Ten minutes later the two girls and two boys cantered away from the
Simpson ranch. They had no thought of staying out long, and had left
word with Mrs. Simpson's maid that they would be back in about an hour.
Aunt Sallie was too busy with her other guests to be interrupted, and it
never dawned on the girls that they should not have gone for a ride at
night, for they were just like a couple of careless boys.