From the first, Fayte Marchbanks’s presence at the Alamositas affected the whole atmosphere there—and quite differently from anything Hilda could have imagined. Maybelle had said they would have more fun if he were home. Hilda wouldn’t have put it just that way, exactly, yet everything was somehow changed—and rather exciting.

That very first evening at the dinner-table he began it. Hilda was conscious of some strain back of the general talk. It ran on jerkily for a time, and then Fayte sent one of his narrowed, sliding glances from her face to the colonel’s and remarked:

“If I’d known sooner that you were here, Hilda, you bet I wouldn’t have stayed down there on the border eating frijoles and operating in wet horses.”

The queer silence that followed made Hilda a little nervous, and she asked, smiling uncertainly:

“What are ‘wet horses’?”

“Don’t be a bigger fool than you have to, Fayte.” The colonel scowled at his son. “If you’d really been mixed up in all the things you pretend——”

“Shall I tell Hilda what wet horses are, mamma?” Fayte interrupted unconcernedly, speaking to his stepmother, ignoring his father.

“Tell her whatever you please, honey,” Mrs. Marchbanks said easily. “She’ll know you’re only fooling. Jinnie,” to the child in the high-chair, “quit pounding with your spoon.”

“Well, then, Miss Innocence,” Fayte turned that mocking look on Hilda, “wet horses are, technically, animals that have swam the Rio Grande—in the night—and the good reason for their dampness is that they owe Uncle Sam a duty, which they haven’t paid.”

Hilda understood that Fayte meant them to believe that in the weeks he’d been away—sent from home by his father for bad behavior—he had been helping smuggle horses across the Mexican border. They all took it in their different ways, his stepmother not believing a word against him; Miss Ferguson interested, but puzzled; Colonel Marchbanks angry, as Fayte intended he should be.

“Whether you did or didn’t do what you’re hinting at, young man,” he said finally, “it’s a cinch you ought to be locked up for talking too much.” And he left the table.

“Father’s right,” said Maybelle dryly. “Pass me the butter, Fayte. Don’t pay any attention to him, Hilda. When he brags about those sort of things we all know he’s trying to string us.”

It was Hilda’s first experience of a man who made capital of disgrace. The few she’d seen so far—men on the dodge, Uncle Hank’s old partner, Tracey Jacox—these spoke differently of anything criminal they had been connected with—or spoke not at all of it. It had grown to seem to Hilda one of the decencies of life to maintain such reserve. Yet Fayte made his queer kind of boasting rather attractive. Like the rest of the household, she didn’t believe he was as black as he painted himself, but it was interesting always to see just how black that would be.

And mixed up with all sorts of talk about dubious stuff he’d been into, dangers he’d run, half crimes he’d committed, Fayte—as the days and weeks went on—showed himself more and more in the character of her admirer. No stop at the pleasant half-way house of friendship; he was as carelessly over-confident in pushing to a more intimate footing with her as he had been in riding up to the Three Sorrows to rustle a whole herd of his father’s cattle. It astonished and rather amused her at first to see how little her wishes in the matter counted with him. The other boys wanted her to like them, were careful not to offend; Fayte was only interested in liking her—if his feeling could be called liking—and he didn’t a bit mind how much he offended. If she showed resentment, aversion, he only laughed and told her that some day she was going to love him just as hard as she hated him now.

Her only defense against this aggressive, almost threatening sentimentality, was to keep up the half-joking quarrels that young people use to cover all sorts of situations. For it seemed to her the two of them were forever together, and that the whole household kept out of their way and left them so. Apparently Fayte had no concerns of his own to interfere with his hanging around. He would follow her from the breakfast table, linger at the schoolroom door till Miss Ferguson had to put an end to the whispered conversation. And when the lessons were over and the girls came out, there he would be lying on his mother’s lounge in the sitting-room, or out in the hammock, a pile of paper-covered novels on floor or ground, a circle of cigarette butts and feathery ashes around him; then, if he didn’t see them first, Maybelle would call him to come and join them, or Mrs. Marchbanks would send him.

Hilda was often at her wit’s end; for there were never any of the other boys about now, whose presence might have helped out; Colonel Marchbanks had put his foot down on “all that sort of fooling,” had told the girls that for the rest of this term they must attend strictly to their lessons; there would be no more of this wasting their time with those young loafers. It was almost, Hilda thought, as though they wanted to throw her with Fayte and keep her out of the way of other people.

Then one afternoon Maybelle, up in Hilda’s bedroom, helping her clean her jewelry, asked with a significant glance:

“These all the rings you’ve got, Hilda?”

“They’re all I have with me,” Hilda said.

“Oh!” Again that queer look from Maybelle. “I thought maybe there was one you weren’t showing. I’ve got one nobody around the house has seen.” She waited for Hilda to say something, then finished, “But I’ll let you see it—if you want to.” She fumbled a moment at the neck of her blouse, got hold of a little ribbon there, drew out and slipped on the third finger of her left hand a solitaire of considerable size. Hilda stared at it.

“Why, Maybelle—where did you get it? It looks like—”

She broke off, and Maybelle said with one of her sly smiles.

“Yes—doesn’t it? Looks just like an engagement ring. Maybe that’s what it is. I’m not saying.” Then, suddenly, “Where’s yours?”

“Mine? Oh, you mean my solitaire—like that? I’ve got one, only mine is set lower and—and it’s—” She stopped, a little confused. She didn’t want to say that the stone in this ring—which had been her mother’s engagement ring, and was now lying in the safe deposit box in the bank at Dawn along with some other jewelry and valuables that would come to her later—was larger and handsomer than Maybelle’s. Maybelle herself was turning her hand and flashing the gem with a great deal of satisfaction. Suddenly she stopped and asked in an aggrieved tone:

“Well? Aren’t you going to show me yours? I think you might—I trusted you to see mine.”

“I—I can’t,” Hilda faltered. And then as Maybelle continued to eye her. “It isn’t here.”

“Oh, all right—all right for you, Miss Hilda Van Brunt. Anyhow—I found out what I wanted to know. I thought Fayte was lying, but I see he told the truth—for once,” and she flounced into her own room.

Hilda was too angry to follow and ask what it was that Fayte had told the truth about. She learned of it later from Lefty Adams, who clerked in the store, and was almost like a member of the family at the Alamositas. She and Maybelle—Jinnie tagging along—had gone to buy marshmallows that evening, and Lefty watched a chance to say to her aside,

“No callers over to the house these days, hey? Not getting lonesome, are you? Oh, no—I reckon Fayte’s enough all by his own sweet self. The feller that’s got a girl’s promise usually aims to be enough.”

“Lefty, what do you mean by that?” Hilda asked. And when he explained that Fayte was telling all the boys that he and Hilda were as good as engaged—on the sly—she laughed; not because it was funny, or she liked it, but with a sudden appreciation of how probable that must look to any one on the outside. That laugh settled it. Her denials, though they finally became indignant, had no effect. She saw that Lefty, anyhow, was convinced, as Maybelle had been, that what Fayte had told was the truth.

As they came out onto the store porch carrying their tin boxes of marshmallows, Jinnie capering at their heels, Maybelle caught Hilda’s arm suddenly and shook it, exclaiming,

“Look there! Funny we didn’t see that as we went in.”

Tacked to one of the posts, almost directly in front of them, was a placard, roughly lettered, by no very skilled hand:

Below had been added—apparently with a burnt match

Jinnie watched their faces as they read; and when, at the last line, they both laughed, she pulled at Hilda’s skirt, squealing.

“Tell me! Tell me!”

“All right—be still and listen,” said Hilda, and began to read the poster slowly to the child.

“It says kids! Can I go? Can I go?” Jinnie hopped up and down in her usual excited fashion.

“No—none of us will get to go,” said Hilda, a bit disconsolately. “Maybelle, do you suppose, maybe, your father—?”

But when she turned toward where Maybelle had stood, she found that her companion had dropped back to the doorway and seemed to be speaking to a man there. Hilda had noticed him when they first went in, standing far at the back of the store. All through her little talk with Lefty Adams, she was vaguely aware that this person watched them with the air of wishing not to seem to do so. He was no cowboy, Hilda knew, from the way he was dressed; yet he was not an eastern man—a tenderfoot. He belonged to the West; and she had too little experience of its small towns to recognize the type, to guess that this was, as Lefty would have described him, “A tin-horn gambler.”

Almost at the instant that Hilda turned, Maybelle sent an uneasy glance over her shoulder; then—for all the world as though she did it on purpose—she dropped her box of candy; the lid flew off, and the marshmallows scattered all about. Instantly the man lifted his hat with an air of exaggerated politeness and said in a good loud voice,

“Allow me, Miss.”

Hilda gazed in open-eyed astonishment, as Maybelle, making no reply that she could hear, promptly knelt down beside the man who was picking up the marshmallows, and the two of them, their heads together, proceeded to gather every one off the dirty porch floor and put them back into the box. It was such a ridiculous—such an incredible performance—that Hilda stood completely at a loss. They were just getting the last marshmallows back into the box—and, Hilda thought, talking in swift undertones—when Lefty Adams strolled from the store, saw what had happened, and called out:

“Great Scott, Maybelle—you don’t want to eat that stuff after it’s been in the dirt! Lemme give you another.”

Maybelle let him. The kind gentleman, who had helped her pick up marshmallows that were not fit to eat, walked away. Maybelle didn’t even look after him. Lefty still lingered in the doorway. He rolled a cigarette, then pointed with it to the placard, the grin on his face plainly advertising the fact that he himself was the author of that last line.

“See our invitation? That’ll be the biggest dance we’ve had this year. What you girls going to wear? Think I’ll flash my sky-blue-pink satin with the eighteen ruffles—make all the other boys jealous.”

“Yes, we see it,” said Maybelle. “But that’s all the good it’ll do us. Pa’s said that we shan’t have any company or go to any dances till we’ve finished this school term with Miss Ferguson.”

“Oh, Great Scott, Maybelle! That’s plain murder. You tell the colonel that he’ll have an uprisin’ on his hands if he keeps you away from that dance.”

“Huh,” said Maybelle, “I won’t tell him that—nor anything else. I know a better way.”

It was at the supper table that evening that Hilda learned what Maybelle’s better way was; for Fayte announced that the whole family—Miss Ferguson and the kids included—was going to the Grainger dance.

“Well, thank goodness the quarantine’s lifted!” said Maybelle, as though this was the first she’d heard of the matter. Miss Ferguson looked about her and remarked, half apologetically,

“I suppose there might be a good deal of interesting local color in a dance like that.”

“Might be!” grinned Fayte. “Miss Ferguson, that dance’ll furnish you one solid chunk of local color. It’s sure going to be what you call a very characteristic entertainment.”

It seemed to Hilda, when once she had the assurance that she would get to go to the dance, that the Saturday night for which it was set delayed and dallied on its way down the aisles of time in an exasperating fashion. All her thoughts of the coming evening centered around one point. She didn’t dare ask direct questions; she knew that she couldn’t command her features or her telltale color if she did. But she came at it indirectly, casually, in her talks with Maybelle, asking,

“Who all will be there?”

“Everybody—just everybody that lives within twenty miles; and some from as far away as sixty,” Maybelle answered. “The Grainger’s are great for that. They don’t stop at tacking up notices. Billy and Ed get on horses and ride for days giving invitations just like Pa does when he’s electioneering.”

Everybody. That would certainly include Pearse. Well—if she was to see him—she was to see him; the readiness was all. And the days went on, with hurried lessons in the morning, long afternoons of planning and preparation. Not till Saturday afternoon, during a last rehearsal of the dresses and the way they were going to do their hair, was Hilda sure enough of herself to venture another of those casual questions: A young lady named Esmond—was she likely to be at the dance?

Maybelle spoke through the pins between her teeth; she was doing her hair at the glass.

“That Galveston girl—niece of the manager of the JIC? No. She’s gone home. Thought I told you—he’s to follow later—they’ll be married in Galveston. Some girls have all the luck. Bet I could have got him away from her—with a fair chance. Fannie May wasn’t what I’d call pretty. But she had him right there on the ranch—and Pa won’t let a JIC put foot on the Alamositas.” She sighed. “He’s awfully good looking. Do you like my hair this way, Hilda?”

“Why—yes. You’ve got it a little too loose. Let me pin it in for you.”

Hilda’s voice didn’t amount to much; but she was thankful to be able to speak at all. Of course this was what she might have expected. Yet she hadn’t. No, no—she hadn’t. Going to Galveston, to be married—married! But maybe it wasn’t true. It might be—why, it might be just like what Fayte was telling about herself. To-night—to-night at the dance. He’d be there. She thought she would know when she looked at him, heard him speak—even if he told her nothing about Fannie May Esmond—whether it was so or not.

She came to herself with Maybelle giving dry little details concerning the girl from Galveston: her looks; how she had dressed; the “pieces” she played—small, definite things that seemed somehow to make her a very living presence to Hilda, and the idea of her engagement to Pearse very real. Her Boy-On-The-Train; her fugitive of the cyclone cellar; Pearse Masters, who, present or absent, had filled a place in her life and thoughts that no one else ever touched or came near to—he was going altogether away from her—almost as if he died.

Well, affairs were going on, just as they always do, just as though she’d heard no dreadful heart-shaking thing. She helped to pack the two party dresses which were boxed and sent on ahead in the buggy with Mrs. Marchbanks, Miss Ferguson, Tod and Jinnie. It was about twelve miles to the Grainger ranch, and they started early, so that they need not drive fast. Hilda, Maybelle and Fayte, on their ponies, left the Alamositas in a great, golden haze of sunset. Maybelle had no escort except her brother; even Lefty Adams—who really didn’t count, Hilda would have said—was told shortly, when he proposed to ride over with them, that those were “Pa’s orders.” That’s what Maybelle said, and tried to appear sulky about it, but it was plain to Hilda, as they set off, that she was really, in her quiet way, very much pleased with the arrangement.

As the three rode, almost entirely silent, the gold and crimson flamed, and then faded in the west. Dusk stole on; a cooler breath came sweeping up from the south; one by one the great white stars began to show in the sky about—and Fayte proposed a race. They let the ponies out a bit, not so very much, but Hilda soon saw that Maybelle was being left far behind them.

“Shall we wait for her—or go back?” she asked, pulling up.

“We won’t do either one,” Fayte said. “We’ll go right ahead with our race. Mabs doesn’t want us—and we don’t want her.”

“She doesn’t want——” Hilda had held back so long that they could now dimly see Maybelle’s mounted figure following them slowly—and she was not alone.

“Oh,” said Hilda; “why, there’s some one with her. Let’s wait and see who it is.”

“No—come on. Come on, I say. Hang it all—I know who that is with Mabs. It’s a man that can’t come to the dance. He wants to get a word with her. Come on. Leave them alone. You and I want to be alone, too—don’t we?” And he reached over and caught her bridle rein.

“Stop!” said Hilda desperately. “Oh, Fayte, don’t let’s be sentimental.”

She jerked at her rein, and her horse reared free. “Let’s race, then!” she gasped, and dug her spur into the plunging animal.

He bolted forward on the run. After a moment Fayte followed, laughing under his breath, stung more strongly to the pursuit by her reluctance, calling out,

“All right. It’s a race. You know what the stake is—and I’m bound to win!”

After that Hilda felt that there was nothing for it but to arrive among the lights and people at Grainger’s before her escort. They would have a late moon, but the night had begun to darken. In the trail there was small danger from dog holes, and her pony was carrying less weight than his. Still she thought longingly of a short-cut as she heard swift hoofs behind her, and leaned down, using voice and touch of the heel, with a good horsewoman’s objection to punishing her horse.

It was Fayte’s temper which won the race for her, after all; he slashed his pony with the quirt, and it began to buck, wheeling head for tail. By the time he had it settled once more into its pace, Hilda was nearly a mile ahead of him.

She slowed up when she felt safe to do so, and even waited for Fayte at the edge of the crowd outside the Grainger yard, so that they rode through the gate together. As he lifted her from her pony, she said to him in an undertone,

“I won, but you had no right to say what you did—we weren’t racing for any stakes.”

“Oh, no, you didn’t win,” Fayte laughed at her. “That race isn’t over. We’ll finish it on the way home.”

And at that moment Maybelle rode in—alone.

“I like the way you two ran off and left me,” she said as she got down from her pony without her brother’s assistance.

“Who was that with you?” Hilda asked in her nervousness.

“There wasn’t any one with me,” Maybelle returned placidly. “You and Fayte rode off like two wild Indians. I wasn’t going to run my pony lame—I need him to ride home on.”

Maybelle was talking more than usual, also she looked wonderfully lit up and excited, beyond what just going to a dance accounted for.

“Excuse me I—I thought there was some one with you,” Hilda faltered out, embarrassed, glancing from Maybelle to Fayte, who only grinned sardonically and didn’t say a word.

“Well, there wasn’t.” Maybelle gave her a swift sidelong look. “I don’t care to ride races and get myself all hot and mussed up when I’m going to a dance. Come on, Hilda.” And she led the way to the house.

At a table beside the main entrance of the great rambling adobe structure Miles Grainger was stationed, repeating with the ingratiating urgency of an auctioneer,

“Gentlemen, will you kindly lay your guns on this here table? A heavy six-shooter ain’t a thing to be dancing in, nohow. If it should ketch on one of the ladies’ dresses and go off, it might take somebody’s toe. And if we have any—little discussion—as folks is liable to do at a dance, you gentlemen will get along better without your guns. Take ’em off, boys. Take ’em off.”

There was already a goodly pile of weapons before him, and as Hilda’s amused eyes studied the heap, she noted that Grainger was addressing himself rather pointedly to her escort, and that the big fellow bent and whispered to Fayte, a persuading hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, all right—I don’t care, I was only fooling,” Fayte answered negligently, drawing out and laying down a long, blue-steel six-shooter. “This way, Miss Hilda,” and he guided her to the door of Mrs. Miles’ bedroom, which was doing duty as a cloak room. As he turned away he whispered,

“Don’t forget—we’ll finish that race going home.”

“Stop! Wait!” cried Hilda. “If you say that, I won’t ride home with you. I’m in earnest, Fayte Marchbanks. I will not.”

“I won’t say it then,” smiled Fayte, his tone implying that whatever he might or might not say, he would do as he pleased.