THE DANCE
Jacqueline could never back a horse in that gown, or even sit sidewise
in the saddle without hopelessly crumpling it, so they walked to the
schoolhouse. It was a slow progress, for she had to step lightly and
carefully for fear of the slippers. He took her bare arm and helped
her; he would never have thought of it under ordinary conditions, but
since she had put on this gown she was greatly changed to him, no
longer the wild, free rider of the mountain-desert, but a defenseless,
strangely weak being. Her strength was now something other than the
skill to ride hard and shoot straight and quick.
Greatest wonder of all, she accepted the new relation tacitly, and
leaned more and more weight on his hand, and even looked up and laughed
with pleasure when he almost lifted her over a muddy runlet. It was
all new, very strange, and, oddly enough, not unpleasant. Each was
viewing the other from such an altered point that neither spoke.
So they came to the schoolhouse in this silence, and reached the long
line of buggies, buckboards, and, most of all, saddled horses. They
flooded the horse-shed where the school children stabled their mounts
in the winter weather. They were tethered to the posts of the fence;
they were grouped about the trees.
It was a prodigious gathering, and a great affair for the
mountain-desert. They knew this even before they had set foot within
the building.
They stopped here and adjusted their masks carefully. They were made
from a strip of black lining which Jack had torn from one of the coats
in the trunk which lay far back in the hills.
Those masks had to be tied firmly and well, for some jester might try
to pull away that of Pierre, and if his face were seen, it would be
death--a slaughter without defense, for he had not been able to conceal
his big Colt in these tight-fitting clothes. Even as it was, there was
peril from the moment that the lights within should shine on that head
of dark-red hair.
As for Jack, there was little fear that she would be recognized. She
was strange even to Pierre every time he looked down at her, for she
had ceased to be Jack and had become very definitely "Jacqueline." But
the masks were on; the scarf adjusted about the throat and bare,
shivering shoulders of Jack, and they stood arm in arm before the door
out of which streamed the voices and the music.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"Pierre--if they should find us out--"
"Never in a thousand years. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
But she was trembling so, either from fear, or excitement, or both,
that he had to take a firm hold on her arm and almost carry her up the
steps, shove the door open, and force her in.
A hundred eyes were instantly upon them, practised, suspicious eyes,
accustomed to search into all things and take nothing for granted; eyes
of men who, when a rap came at their door, looked to see whether or not
the shadow of the stranger fell full in the center of the crack beneath
the door. If it fell to one side the man might be an enemy, and
therefore they would stand at one side of the room, their hands upon
the butt of the six-gun, and shout: "Come in." Such was the battery of
glances from the men, and the color of Pierre altered, paled.
He knew some of those faces, for those who hunt and are hunted never
forget the least gestures of their enemies. There was a mighty
temptation to turn back even then, but he set his teeth and forced
himself to stand calmly, adjust the absurd eye-glass on his nose, and
stare about the room.
The chuckle which replied to this maneuver freed him for the moment.
Suspicion was lulled. Moreover, the red-jeweled hair of Jacqueline and
her lighted eyes called all attention almost immediately upon her. She
shifted the golden scarf--the white arms and breast flashed in the
light--a gasp responded. There would be talk to-morrow; there were
whispers even now.
It was not the main hall that they stood in, for this school, having
been built by an aspiring community, contained two rooms; this smaller
room, used by the little ones of the school, was now converted into a
hat-and-cloak room, and here also were a dozen baskets and boxes filled
with comforters and blankets.
It was because of what lay in those baskets that the men and the women
walked and talked softly in this room. They were wary lest they should
arouse a sound which not even the loudest music could quite drown--a
sound which makes all women sit up straight and sniff like hunted
animals at bay, and makes all men frown and glance about for places of
refuge.
Now and then some girl came panting and flushed from the dance-hall
within and tiptoed to one of these baskets, and raised an edge of a
blanket and looked down at the contents with a singular smile. Pierre
hung up his hat, removed his gloves slowly, nerving himself to endure
the sharp glances, and opened the door for Jacqueline.
If she had held back tremulously before, something she had seen in the
eyes of those in the first room, something in the whisper and murmur
which rose the moment she started to leave, gave her courage. She
stepped into the dance-hall like a queen going forth to address devoted
subjects.
The second ordeal was easier than the first. There were many times
more people in that crowded room, but each was intent upon his own
pleasure. A wave of warmth and light swept upon them, and a blare of
music, and a stir and hum of voices, and here and there the sweet sound
of a happy girl's laughter. They raised their heads, these two wild
rangers of the mountain-desert, and breathed deep of the fantastic
scene.
It was marvelous, indeed, that so much gay life could exist within the
arms of those gaunt, naked hills beyond the windows. There was no
attempt at beauty in the costumes of the masqueraders. Here and there
some girl achieved a novel and pleasing effect; but on the whole they
strove for cheaper and more stirring things in the line of the
grotesque.
Here passed a youth wearing a beard made from the stiff, red bristles
of the tail of a sorrel horse. Another wore a bear's head cunningly
stuffed, the grinning teeth flashing over his head and the skin draped
over his shoulders. A third disfigured himself horribly by painting
after the fashion of an Indian on the war-path, with crimson streaks
down his forehead and red and black across his cheeks.
But not more than a third of all the assembly made any effort to
masquerade, beyond the use of the simple black mask across the upper
part of the face. The rest of the men and women contented themselves
with wearing the very finest clothes they could afford to buy, and
there was through the air a scent of the general merchandise store
which not even a liberal use of cheap perfume and all the drifts of
pale-blue cigarette smoke could quite overcome.
As for the music, it was furnished by two very old men, relics of the
days when there were contests in fiddling; a stout fellow of middle
age, with cheeks swelled almost to bursting as he thundered out
terrific blasts on a slide trombone; a youth who rattled two sticks on
an overturned dish-pan in lieu of a drum, and a cornetist of real skill.
In an interlude, before very long, he would amuse with a solo,
including all sorts of runs and whistling notes, and be a source of
talk for many a month to come.
There were hard faces in the crowd, most of them, of men who had set
their teeth against hard weather and hard men, and fought their way
through, not to happiness, but to existence, so that fighting had
become their pleasure.
Now they relaxed their eternal vigilance, their eternal suspicion.
Another phase of their nature weakened. Some of them were smiling and
laughing for the first time in months, perhaps, of bitter labor and
loneliness on the range. With the gates of good-nature opened, a
veritable flood of gaiety burst out. It glittered in their eyes, it
rose to their lips in a wild laughter. They seemed to be dancing more
furiously fast in order to forget the life which they had left, and to
which they must return.
And through all the cheapness there was a great note of poetry as well;
but one caught this only by a sense of intuition, or by remembering
that these were the conquerors of the bitter nature of the
mountain-desert. There was beauty here, the beauty of strength in the
men and a brown loveliness in the girls; just as in the music, the
blatancy of the rattling dish-pan and the blaring trombone were more
than balanced by the real skill of the violinists, who kept a high,
sweet, singing tone through all the clamor.
One could close his ears to the rest of the noise, if he strove to do
so, and hear nothing but that harmonious moaning of the strings, steady
and clear, like the aspirations of a man divorced from the facts of his
weakness and his crudeness in practical life.
And Pierre le Rouge and Jacqueline? They stood aghast for a moment
when that crash of noise broke around them; but they came from a life
where there was nothing of beauty except the lonely strength of the
mountains and the appalling silences of the stars that roll above the
desert. Almost at once they caught the overtone of human joyousness,
and they turned with strange smiles to each other, and it was "Pierre?"
"Jack?" Then a nod, and she was in his arms, and they glided into the
dance.