The Motor Maids Across the Continent Part 16

"I think it would be very rude not to dress up," cried Nancy hotly.

"Mrs. Steptoe is going to wear a pink cotton crepe. She told me she was, and they are all looking forward to seeing us in-well-something different than this."

The other girls laughed teasingly.

"Anything to show off that new frock of yours, Nancy," cried Billie.

"Cowboys and Indians will do if you can't find a better audience."

Nancy was offended. She flushed hotly and her eyes filled with tears.

She had very sensitive feelings somewhere hidden under her gay careless manner.

"Bless its heart! Are its feelings hurt?" exclaimed Billie, putting her arms around her friend's neck and kissing her warmly. "I wouldn't have gone fer to hurt its feelings for anything in the world. It shall wear its little folderols if it chooses, shan't it, Cousin, and put on all its ribbons and laces."

"Silly old tease," said Nancy, laughing through her tears. "You're just as anxious as anybody to dress up only you're too proud to admit it because you're afraid people will think you are vain."

"Go along with you, you foolish children, and get into your clothes,"

here interrupted Miss Campbell. "If Nancy wants to appear in a party frock, I think it won't do any harm to these poor isolated ranchmen."

It so happened, therefore, that the girls, in another twenty minutes, for the first time since they had left Sevenoaks, the home of their friend, Daniel Moore, attired themselves in their prettiest gowns. Only simple muslin frocks, but with plenty of hand embroidery and lace insertions to make them fine, and ribbon bows to set them off.

Nancy, beguiling creature that she was, tied a pink satin ribbon around her curly hair, and the picture she made when she entered the dining room in her white dress with her floating ribbons and dainty little black patent leather pumps, was a sight Jim was not to forget in a hurry.

Elinor might have been a young princess who had condescended to step out of the back door of her palace and mingle with her low subjects for a brief s.p.a.ce. She held her head with its coronet braids slightly higher than usual in the strange company which now began to congregate.

She wore a straight white dress all fine tucks and embroidery without a sign of lace or ribbon to mar the effect of very elegant simplicity.

Billie had tied around the smooth rolls of her light brown hair a blue velvet band to match the embroidery on her marquisette dress. She was a glowing picturesque figure, her face flushed with interest and enthusiasm. Mary, who always falls to the last in our descriptions, perhaps because she is so small and una.s.suming, wore a soft white mulle frock with a pale blue Roman sash knotted around her waist, a relic of her mother's own girlhood.

You may imagine, I am sure, what a sensation our dainty young girls and Miss Campbell, in a beautiful gray silk, made on the rough company now a.s.sembled. There were subdued murmurs of surprise and admiration. The few plain weather-beaten looking women who had driven miles across the plains for a glimpse of the Motor Maids, looked down hastily at their own pitiful attempts at finery, and ranchmen and cowboys craned their necks for a glimpse of the fair vision which had been vouchsafed them.

On a table at the far end of the room sat the two musicians, Mexicans.

Each with a guitar and a fiddle. The kerosene lamps, hung against reflectors on the wall, cast a yellow glow on the scene so new to the travelers. Five chairs had been arranged in a row at the other end of the room as places of honor for the Eastern guests, who might have been five new prima donnas at the opera for the intense interest they excited.

The music now set up a whining jig tune. There was an embarra.s.sed shuffling of feet for a moment, and clearing of throats. Presently two cowboys started to dancing the old fas.h.i.+oned polka together, and in a jiffy the whole company was whirling about the room madly. The five Easterners looked on for a while quite gravely. In the joy of the dance they had been quite forgotten.

Not quite forgotten, for Jim now appeared, handsome as a picture, with a new red silk handkerchief knotted around his neck, his black hair as smooth and slick as brush and water could make it.

"Are you willing to try it?" he asked, bowing before Nancy, who little knew what struggles between bashfulness and courage now rent his soul.

"I was wondering where you were," she said smiling sweetly as she floated away with him like a soap bubble on a summer breeze.

Tony Blackstone then asked Elinor to dance, and she had condescended, comforting herself with the secret knowledge that he was the son of an English lord. Barney McGee had led forth Mary. And Mrs. Steptoe, having introduced her brother, whose name Billie had failed to catch, that young woman had permitted herself to be circled around once. But her partner did not please her for some reason and she preferred to sit with Miss Helen and watch the dancers.

"Are you tired so soon?" he asked.

"No," she answered, always truthful under the most trying circ.u.mstances, "but I don't care to dance."

The man flashed an angry glance at her and for the first time she looked in his face. Where had she seen those dark scowling eyes before?

"I didn't catch your name," she said. "I would like to introduce you to my cousin."

"Hawkes," he answered in an almost threatening tone of voice.

"Why, you are-" but she never finished the sentence for the man named Hawkes had abruptly turned away.

"Strange," said Billie to herself, reflecting inwardly on the pa.s.sing likenesses one sees everywhere. "But, no, it is impossible, for this man is very well dressed, better than any man in the room, I think, and besides he's Rosina Steptoe's brother."

CHAPTER XI.-THE HAWKES FAMILY.

Breathless and flushed with exercise the other girls now dropped into their seats. The hot, crowded room, the dust raised by the shuffling of many feet on the floor and the strange company rather bewildered them.

Only Nancy had really enjoyed the experience, because Jim was an excellent dancer; and he had guided her carefully through the mazes of the jigging two-step.

But there was to be further entertainment before they might be allowed to stroll out under the stars and breathe in the fresh air. A Mexican cowboy with a broad crimson sash around his waist, a border of bright-colored fringe edging the side of his trousers and jingling spurs on his high-heeled boots, danced a wild fandango to a Spanish tune with a throbbing accompaniment on the guitar, which seemed to grow faster and faster as he struck his heels on the floor.

Then the music stopped and two Indians appeared. One of them squatted on the floor and began beating monotonously on a small kind of a drum or tom-tom. The other Indian in full regalia began dancing slowly in a circle, stooping low as if he were hiding from his prey which he would presently pounce upon and destroy utterly. He was a barbaric and war-like figure and the girls unconsciously shrunk back as he danced by them. Gradually the dance grew wilder and the steps quicker. The Indian gave a strange bird-like cry, and for the fraction of a moment paused in front of Billie. With another cry that had a familiar sound he flashed a black glance of hatred into her face and was gone.

Again Billie thought she recognized a likeness. She turned her bewildered eyes downward, her face flus.h.i.+ng with embarra.s.sment. There in her lap was a long, grayish feather.

"What's this for?" she demanded, turning to Barney McGee.

"I reckon it's a complimentary souvenir for you, Miss Billie," replied the ranchman. "It's one of Hawkeseye's jokes, a quill from a hawk's wing."

"Hawkeseye," repeated Billie.

"Oh, yes, we call him that for fun. His name is Buckthorne Hawkes. He ain't all Injun, you know. He's really the Missus' brother, but he can certainly fix himself up to look as much like a full-blooded Indian buck as if he had just come from the reservation."

"Was he ever a peddler?" Billie asked.

Barney laughed.

"He's a graduate of Carlyle University," he answered. "He's come out West to teach school."

In the meantime, Elinor had been led by Tony Blackstone into the courtyard, where they sat down on a bench. Overhead the stars gleamed with incredible brilliancy, partly because the stars from a Western plain seem infinitely larger and grander than they do anywhere else, and partly because they gazed at them from the depths of a small dark courtyard.

"Perhaps Miss Campbell would not like to have me leave the-the ballroom," said Elinor, not knowing how to designate the dining room in its present use.

"It's only a step away," said Tony Blackstone, "and we can't talk in there very well. You remind me of-of an English girl I once knew, and it would be just common charity to talk to me a little."

"Are you homesick, then?" asked Elinor.

"Sometimes. If anything happens to remind me of-of my other home."

"Then you are not happy here?" the young girl demanded quickly, as if this were a confirmation of her suspicions.

"There are times when I am happy," he said. "When I am riding at night across the plains on a horse that goes like the wind. It is wonderful then, especially when the moon is full. I can almost forget that I have an ident.i.ty at such times."