The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 19
AT THE Four Corners community dance house, the rule was that every man must leave his arms, both shooting and cutting, at the door. All feuds stopped at the threshold of that place of pleasure; a man might enter there among his blood enemies and enjoy himself in peace. Of course, there was no guaranty against what might happen to him on the way home.
The dance house at Four Corners was a house, not a hall. That distinction maintained everywhere when it was mentioned, for in that word lay the difference, understood and expressed, between a place of the highest respectability and one of low diversions.
The building was made of short-length pine logs, pegged together into a solid wall. It was a large structure, larger than a schoolhouse in that country would have been in those days, for there were far more inhabitants of the dancing age than the student age. It was a sort of primitive recognition of the need of social diversion in a socially barren land, a first step toward meeting the question of how to keep the girls on the ranch.
One dance house in all that immense empty country did not go far toward making life attractive to youth, but it broke the long stretches of lonesome days, and perhaps held more than one girl on the ranch against the lure of becoming waitresses in the railroad eating-houses, simply by anticipation of its long-spaced pleasures. Once a girl was held on the range until she was married, she was anchored there for life.
There was no church in the range country where the Diamond Tail ranch spread its far boundaries, no ministers to cure the souls of any, no matter how spiritually sick. But there was a notable fiddler who went about from ranch to ranch like a troubadour of old, and who, with his lone hand, supplied the music for the dances at Four Corners, as well as other social gatherings in public and private places where his skill might be required.
This fiddler, known all over the inter-mountain range country as Banjo Gibson, because of his proficiency with that merry instrument, was making the night joyous at Four Corners dance house on the night of the first ball of the season. For one lone fiddler he was making considerable noise, as one fiddler must make who worked against the competition of Fred Grubb calling the numbers of the quadrille.
Fred stood on the little rostrum, lifted about a foot above the ballroom floor, where the fiddler sat, singing the tune as Banjo Gibson played it, singing the figures of the dance to it, changing tunes with as much facility as the fiddler himself. Fred was as famous for his calling-off as he was for his jewsharp playing, two accomplishments which carried him farther on the range than all the poetry he ever hatched.
The tune was The Girl I Left Behind Me, and Fred's adaptation of it to the occasion was like this: The girl you left behind you,
O—o—o, swing that girl, that purty little girl,
The girl you left behind you!
She's purty in the face and slim around the wais',
That girl you left behind you,
O—o—o—, swing that gal, that purty little gal
and so on, with such swinging as made the girls' skirts stand out as if they wore hoops, and left the world reeling when they came at last to the triumphant, high-flung "Promenade you-all, to your seats!"
The dancers were so greatly pleased by Fred's originality and long-drawn performance that they cheered him heartily, touching the poet in his tender spot. He knew what they wanted, and forthwith produced his jewsharp, which he carried in his hip pocket tied to a little block of wood. Slowly, and with that artistic whetting of the expectation Fred knew so well how to manage, the poet began to unwind the great length of string from his little steel-tongued instrument.
At last the jewsharp was free. Cheers greeted its appearance from the mesh of protecting cord. Fred deliberately rewound the string about the block, holding the treat at arm's length, it might be said, and Banjo Gibson, knowing just when his part came in, reached behind him for his banjo, This auxiliary was also cheered.
Fixing the jewsharp io his lips, Fred threw his weight on his left leg, his right thrust forward a little in truly musical pose, his foot free to pat time. Those who knew of the founts of something more than music which well-ed in Fred's mouth when he whanged this little lyre, moved back.
Dan Gustin, standing his turn as gun-taker at the door, cheered his old comrade louder than anybody in the house when he finished his selection, Banjo Gibson coming along softly with the second. Dan was in high spirits; he felt as if he could fold up his feet and soar. Music never had sounded so good to him, girls never had looked so pretty, married women so refined and graceful, in spite of their rough red cheeks and large necks. It was his night of all nights; Cattle Kate had come with him to the dance.
Even that moment Cattle Kate stood beside him, like a bride at the door with her beloved welcoming guests to her marriage feast. Only she was helping the women with their hats, stacking them on a table which stood next to the gun repository; and she was not as merry as a bride should be, nor flushed over with a glow of sweet confusion. Her smile was not wanting, in truth, but it was slow to break and quick to vanish, as a weak light one strikes on a wet night, which glows for a moment in the protecting palm, and sinks and dies away.
During the encore which the dancers demanded of Fred, while Dan, engrossed in the captivating drone of the jewsharp, was patting time with his foot, Cattle Kate went to the door, where she stood looking out into the dark. The moon was not up; in the northwest the Great Dipper reached down to the hills, as if it swept to scoop the river that ran beyond them into its bowl. Cattle Kate looked long into the night, and turned away from it with a sigh.
"Somebody comin'?" Dan inquired.
He hoped it might be Dale Findlay, from whom he would have the pleasure of taking his gun; who would see Cattle Kate there beside him, and then might draw conclusions as to where his own chances stood.
For the three partners expected Findlay to bring Alma Nearing to the dance. Cattle Kate expected it; other people who had heard that Alma was coming, expected it. They had not come. Banjo Gibson was tuning his fiddle; he struck the notes of The Waltz.
That was the way people on the range covered by Banjo Gibson's orbit always spoke of that tune: The Waltz. It was the only waltz that Banjo Gibson knew; the only waltz, of a consequence, that any of them knew. Likewise The Schottische. Banjo knew just one schottische, and everybody knew that it was. The Captain with His Whiskers; but when they spoke of it they said The Schottische. Some of the older ones always hummed it, the words almost under their breath, when Banjo played it:
Took a sly glance at me, took a sly glance at me
You will remember how it goes.
Ed Barrett approached the table bearing the banquet of arms, and waved Cattle Kate and Dan away into the dance.
"They said for me to keep the door," he explained, and smiled, well pleased to see Dan so happy as they whirled into The Waltz.
Cattle Kate's gipsy ringlets brushed Dan's shoulder as they skated through the throng, pretty good dancers for that long-forgotten place; her pale cheek was near his, which was far from pale. But Barrett could see that her soul was away under the stars somewhere, seeking along a trail for a figure that her heart missed as the blood that visited it. For her the dance house was empty; for her the music did not sound.
Kate begged off from the next dance, which was. The Schottische, on some plea that Barrett did not hear, although she stood near him. She smiled as she sent Dan off with another girl, and turned softly again, with a little guilty look back, to peer out into the night.
Barrett watched the door almost as anxiously as Cattle Kate, but with a different feeling in his breast. The hour was growing late, even the stragglers had stopped coming, the last of the distant riders was already there. But Alma had not come.
Barrett believed she had been wiser at the last moment and decided not to venture it. He knew, and Alma must have realized by this, that they could not get anything out of Cattle Kate, granting that she knew anything to tell. As she stood at the door now, eyes searching in that pathetic longing, Barrett knew that she would die for Dale Findlay, and the secrets which she shared with him. He felt lighter in heart than he had felt for days. Alma was not coming. Perhaps Cattle Kate would have her wish; Findlay might come alone.
Kate left the door at the sound of somebody approaching. Barrett wondered what bucko could be arriving so late as he moved a hat or two to make room for the expected weapons. In a moment his question was answered; old Manuel, wrangler and man of all tasks from the ranch, was blinking in the light of the door.
The old man leaned, one bony hand braced against the doorpost, the thong of his dangling quirt about his wrist. His thin dark face wore a troubled look as he drew his eyes small to focus them to the light. When he discovered Barrett he lifted a finger in expressive signal, and disappeared in the dark.
Barrett followed immediately, stepping aside quickly out of the beam of light that fell a little way outside the door from the hanging lamp that swung with the dancers' tread.
"Manuel!" he called softly.
"Here," the old man answered from the corner of the house.
"Did you want to see me?" Barrett asked as he went toward the shadowy figure.
"Come this way a little," the old man requested. He went around the corner of the house; Barrett followed.
At that moment Cattle Kate, scarcely breathing as she stood in the door listening, stepped quietly out after Barrett, and followed silently, guiding herself in the sudden blindness of the dark with one hand against the wall.
"What's the matter, Manuel?" Barrett inquired, a cold sense of looming trouble over him. "Did Miss Nearing"
"I went to your house; you were not there," the old man said, something severely chiding in his tone. "While you dance, they rob you."
"They rob me whether I dance or stand still," Barrett replied testily, losing patience with the old man's reticent, roundabout way. "If you've got anything to say, say it. What's the matter?"
"They rob you not alone of your cattle, but of your bride," said Manuel, slowly, solemnly, giving Barrett time to weigh every word as it was spoken.
"My bride? Hell! I never had a bride," said Barrett in the explosive way of the range. "What do you mean—my bride?"
"They will marry her; maybe by this time she is married to another man."
"Alma?" Barrett demanded, prickling with a thousand points of fire.
He stepped close to Manuel in his eagerness to have the instant truth, and laid hold roughly of his arm.
"Alma," Manuel repeated, with expressive accent of confirmation.
"Who's going to marry her, Manuel? They can't marry her unless she's willing, man!"
"It is the price Nearing pays for silence. I heard them when my ear was on the grass."
"Findlay? You mean Findlay?"
"It is his price."
"When? You don't mean tonight?"
"Tonight. They are waiting for the old lawyer. When he comes. But maybe if you ride fast"
Barrett jumped for the door to get his hat and gun. Cattle Kate stood just outside, as if she had come out for a breath of fresh air. Another quadrille was under way, Fred Grubb singing the figures in his musical high voice.
"You're not leavin', Ed?" said Cattle Kate, as Barrett came out again, buckling on his gun.
"Yes. Will you please tell Dan?"
Manuel was already in the saddle, holding Barrett's horse. It was then past nine o'clock; fifteen miles lay between them and the ranch. In his eagerness to cover the distance Barrett stood in his stirrups, forgetting the drilling of Fred Grubb, the gentle sarcasm of Dan Gustin.
It seemed an impossibly melodramatic situation, almost a foolish one to spend so much care and anxiety upon, Barrett thought as he rode beside Manuel swiftly through the night. If there had not been the probability of Nearing's cowardly appeal, perhaps command, to save his own precious honor, Barrett would have dismissed Manuel's news at a word. It might be that Findlay and Nearing, with the dark connivance of Thomson, had reached some agreement in which Alma was to be the price of the cattleman's future immunity. With Findlay in the family, the cattle baron would be safe from the sting of his tongue.
Even in the light of this probability it seemed incredible that a high-blooded girl like Alma would consent to any such disgraceful compact. There must be force behind Nearing's act. Alma might throw her youth, happiness, life, away on Findlay to save that white-haired woman, who had been mother to her all those years, the pangs of disgrace; Barrett hardly believed she would go that far for Nearing.
The fact that Thomson, that lugubrious old fox, was mixed in the affair was another consideration to arouse the keenest anxiety. For weeks that rogue had been putting his head to Findlay's, two brands of iniquity which could produce no other result than an unholy fire. What his interest in the affairs of Nearing and Findlay could be, Barrett never had been able to even guess. That he was sharing the spoils of the Diamond Tail herds, at some angle of the steal, was certain; that he was an ally of Findlay seemed to go without a doubt.
Now they were waiting for this morose, conscienceless scoundrel at the ranch, with what sweat of cowardly fear, what cold hopelessness and sinking of the soul, no man could measure who had not felt the terror of on-creeping disgrace, the misery of overhanging shame.
How was he to prevent this sacrifice of youth and comeliness? Barrett asked of himself. Perhaps his interference might be resented. Alma might be the last one to countenance his interposition, in the great fear they must have roused in her, or the great compassion that had led her to such step. He stopped suddenly, shot by a thought that had not troubled him before.
"Did Alma send you?" he asked.
"No, I did not wait. My Teresa heard them through the window in the patio. I came to call the master of the house to guard his own."
Barrett spurred on again, settling down in the saddle, remembering Fred Grubb's admonition to sit tight and spare the horse when a long ride lay ahead. He clasped the galloping beast's sides hard with his knees, as if he would lift it and soar in pace with his onrushing, turbulent desire.