Читать книгу Dan Barry's Daughter - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 9

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There was an excellent reason for that. Harry Gloster had heard her horse break out of the shrubbery and, running to the place, he was in time to see the bay gelding, glistening in the moonshine, darting away at full speed. Even with an equal start he knew that he could not keep in touch with that fugitive. And through a strange country by night it was impossible to trace her.

Yet he was so excited that for a time reason had nothing to do with his actions. He ran a short distance on foot before he realized his folly. Then, standing for another moment, he watched the horse fade into the moon-haze and knew that he had lost her indeed.

The sound of her voice and “Que viva la rumba” was all that he had by which to trail her. It would have been better to have had nothing at all. He tried the effect of cold-blooded argument as he turned and walked slowly back. In the first place, he had not seen her face. In the second place he knew nothing whatever about her. She might be a mere imp of the desert with sunfaded hair and freckles strewn across her nose.

But he found that impulse was breaking through reason again and again. He had heard only her voice, but it was a voice to dream of—low, sweet-toned, gentle—and all the freshness of girlhood was in it. She must be beautiful, he told himself, with such a voice as that.

He was beginning to feel that an ugly fate had hold of him in this country. In the first place, there had been that singular meeting with a man whose eyes had such power that they had pierced through and through him and got quite at the heart of his story. He was fleeing for the Rio Grande and if he was caught the chances were considerably more than three out of four that he would be swung from the gallows for having shortened the life of a fellow man.

Lee Haines had looked him through and through, and for that very reason he should have started south again as fast as a staggeringly weary horse could take him. But he had lingered until he was drawn into battle again, and in that fight he had made a mortal enemy of Joe. Joe Macarthur he had learned that the man’s name was, and Haines had understated the formidable character of the fellow.

Now, then, that one man had discovered that he was a fugitive and that another was on his trail to “get” him, certainly he had reason enough for wishing to leave the town at a full gallop. But he had deliberately lingered, jogging only a mile or two south and then making a detour.

Joe Macarthur would thunder south along the trail which a dozen people could point out to him. Let him go! Harry Gloster would start later and by a different route. For he had no desire to meet a man who was a professional in the use of a gun.

He himself could occasionally hit a target—if it were large enough and he had time enough to aim with care, but this magic of swift drawing and murderous straight shooting combined was quite beyond him. Fighting for its own sake he loved with a passionate devotion.

But to face a gunman would be suicide. So he had lingered in the town until the dark, and then he started forth leisurely on a trail that ran south and west. So it was that he came to the lighted schoolhouse. Twice he rode by it, and twice he turned and came back to listen to the gusts of young voices and to the bursts of the music. All common sense told him to be off and away. But it was a year since he had danced, and Harry Gloster was young.

So he went inside the school, but once inside he regretted his step more than ever. Something had died in him, so it seemed, during that last year. The music was flat; not a smile which his great size and his handsome face won for him penetrated his armor of indifference, and after he had spent fifteen minutes in the hall he got up and left. He was on his way to his horse when he heard

“Que viva la rumba,

Que viva, que viva placer—”

ring sweet and thin from the thicket.

And now he was coming back toward his horse with the solemn realization that there would be no shelter for him below the Rio Grande. For, sooner or later, he must come back to find the trail of this nameless girl, and when he returned he would be placing his head in the lion’s mouth of the law. But he knew himself too well to dream that he could hold out long against the temptation.

He paused again on his way to the horse. The music had a different meaning, now. His pulse was quick. His blood was hot. And there was a tingle of uneasiness which ran from hand to foot. Had he known that Joe Macarthur himself was in that dance hall, he would have entered again and taken his chance, which was not a chance at all.

Up the steps he went, and into the hurly-burly of a dance which was just beginning. He was too late to get a partner. As usual, there were three men for every two girls at this Western dance. Every girl was swept up in half a minute after a dance began, and still there were men along the walls and smoking on the steps.

Harry Gloster went to the orchestra. It consisted of a drummer, a cornetist, a violinist, and an individual playing a braying trombone which from time to time shook the whole place with its thunder. Into the hand of the violinist Harry Gloster slipped a five dollar bill.

“Switch back to ‘Que viva la rumba’ when you get a chance,” he said, and walked hurriedly away; for if he had stayed the old musician would doubtless have had pride enough to refuse the money. It was a tag dance which he was watching, a queer institution installed particularly for merrymakings in which there was a shortage of girls. Once the dance was under way the men from the sides worked onto the floor and touched the arms of those who were dancing with the girls of their choice. And so there was, perforce, a change of partners, and many a girl found herself whirling away in the arms of a man she had never known before.

Harry Gloster, from the side, watched the jumble of interweaving forms—saw the vain effort of dancing couples to elude the approach of the taggers—heard the uproar of laughter which almost drowned the strain of the waltz. There was a brief pause in the music, then the orchestra struck into the pleasant rhythm of “Que viva la rumba,” and the dance, which had hardly paused, started again more wildly than ever.

Gloster, searching the faces, felt that they had been transformed. That old touch of magic which he had felt in his boyhood, now had returned. Yonder in the moonshine he had been touched by the wand and poured full of the enchantment. And he knew it well enough. But so long as the illusion lasted, why should he give up the happiness? One dance, then away for the border!

How should he choose? They all appeared delightful enough to him now. Their smiles were like glimpses of blue sky after storm, and their bodies seemed floating and whirling lightly on the stream of the music. Yonder one with red hair was tagged so often that she was repeatedly whirling from the arms of one man to another, and yet her laughter never stopped. Should he touch her arm?

And there was another, slender, joyous—who changed partners often enough, but never lost her step. And here was a third with great, brown eyes and brown hair coiled low on her neck and dressed in a clinging mist of a gown like a sunset-tinted bit of cloud—

Instantly Harry Gloster was through the press, moving with wonderful lightness for so large a man. He touched the arm of the man who danced with that pink-clad vision, and received a stare of surprise from under level black brows.

“Next time around, Nell,” said he, stepping slowly back and still keeping his glance fixed upon Gloster.

“All right, John,” she answered, and then was away in the arms of Gloster.

“Nobody was tagging you,” he said.

“No,” she answered, demurely.

“Why not? Engaged to friend John?”

“Maybe,” she answered, without raising her eyes.

But Harry Gloster only laughed.

“I’ve broken the ice for you, then. Here comes a couple to get you. Shall I let them have you?”

And at this, finally, she looked up. They were great brown eyes, indeed, and filled with an almost too perfect meekness.

“Can you help it?” she asked.

“Say the word and I’ll show you the trick.”

Some of the meekness left her eyes and a glimmer of mischief took its place.

“If you can—” she said.

It was done with miraculous skill. A slight increase in their speed—they whirled toward one prospective and eager-faced tagger, then away from his reaching finger-tips—then toward the other, and away again, like a leaf which wind currents throw up and down, suddenly, but never with jar or jerk.

“How in the world did you do it?” she was laughing up to him.

He drank in that laughter, frankly, meeting her eyes as he had never met the eyes of any woman before. What did it matter? She was only a ghost. The reality was far away, fleeing through the haze of moonshine.

“You’re going to forget John—for this one dance,” he commanded. “You’re engaged to me, understand—for five minutes!”

“What do you mean?” gasped Nell.

“You know what I mean.”

He dodged an aggressive tagger and then sped on.

“If John doesn’t get me,” she was saying, “on this round, he’ll be furious.”

“It does John good to be furious,” answered Gloster. “We’re too happy to be bothered.”

“We?”

“You are or will be. I’m happy enough to make up for two. It’s overflowing. D’you feel it come out of my finger-tips at your back, like electricity?”

Her eyes were frightened, but her lips were smiling.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking you with me. For five minutes, you understand? Going to see how much action we can crowd into that time—”

“And after that—”

“I’m going away. Never see you again!”

“You’re not like other people,” she said almost wistfully.

“Not a bit. Here’s John again! Dance faster. Longer steps! We’re going to dodge him if you help—”

And help she did. She became as light as that whirling leaf he had thought of before. If seemed that his mere volition was guiding her.

“The devil!” muttered Harry Gloster. “Someone tagged me then. But we’re going on—”

“Oh, there’ll be trouble about it. It’s the rule!”

“Do you care about rules?”

“Not the least in the world!”

She had caught the fire at last. A rioting carelessness was in her eyes.

“There’s another hand at my shoulder!”

They had swerved deftly away, but John had apparently been watching the previous tactics of this big stranger, and his hand touched Gloster. But Gloster danced on, with the girl in his arms.

“What will happen? What will they do?” the girl was breathing close to his face.

“That’s for them to worry about. This dance is ours!”

He drew her a little closer.

“I feel your heart keeping time—with the music,” he whispered.

“You mustn’t look at me like that!”

“Why not?”

“They’ll know what you’re saying—”

“They’ll only wish they’d said it first—”

“And John will be wild—”

“The wilder he is to-night, the tamer he’ll be to-morrow! By the Lord, you’re too wonderful to be true!”

“I won’t listen to you!”

“Close your ears to me, then, and listen to the music. D’you hear it?

“Que viva la rumba;

Que viva, que viva placer;

Que vivan las niñas, chulitas, bonitas,

Y guapas que saben querer!”

“It’s talking for me, Nell!”

“There! You were tagged again!”

“What do I care?”

“Oh, everyone is looking at us!”

“Let them look. You’re worth seeing, Nell!”

“They’ll fight you about this.”

“Do you mind being fought for? I’d like to fight for you, Nell. There’s John again—but this time we’ve dodged him. But look at them coming! A dozen ready to tag me. Nell, you’re a popular girl! Confound them, they won’t have you yet!”

“Please!”

“Please what? Do you want me to let you go?”

“I—I—no!” She pressed a little closer to him. “Don’t let them take me!”

“Que viva la rumba,

Que viva, que viva placer—”

He sang it in a ringing bass.

“Every person is looking at you!”

“No—at you, Nell. Two minutes out of my five are left. I’m going to have you to myself that long!”

“What are you going to do?”

“Take you out of this place before they tag me with a club.”

“Take me where?”

“Outside. We’re going to sit on the moonlight side of a tree, and I’m going to make love to you, Nell, as you were never made love to before.”

“Do you think I’ve gone mad? I won’t go a step with you!”

“Hush, Nell. I know that you trust me.”

“Not a bit.”

“Look me in the eye when you say that.”

She flushed gloriously and her eyes wavered under his glance.

“You’re a dear, Nell. But I want to have you where it’s quiet to tell you just how dear you are. When we get to the end of the hall, out through the door we go together. You understand?”

“Yes—no! Of course I won’t go.”

“I won’t try to make you. Tell me for the last time? You’re going to hear me? Only for two minutes, and then I’m gone!”

“Oh!” cried she. “My head is swimming!”

“With the music!”

“I’ll go. I don’t care what they say!”

“Nor I what they do.”

They reached the end of the hall, swung deftly through the outer line of the dancers, and were suddenly through the door, leaving a gasp of wonder behind them. They stood at the head of the steps, worn and hollowed by the scraping feet of school children. Before them was the moonlight world.