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,
