LeGraw stopped and confronted Martin, the bucket in his left hand, while he gesticulated with his right, flinging large drops of water into the bystanders’ eyes.
“Well, I’ve had two partners mighty nigh choked to death, an’ I ain’t a-goin’ to—”
Big Martin sneezed at this point, a sneeze that fairly shook the solid adobe walls. Then he began to get off the edge of the table. LeGraw set down the bucket and squared his shoulders. There was a backward movement in the crowd about. But Billy Grainger’s voice fell soothingly on the disturbance.
“Aw, say, boys, don’t worry about it. Supper’s ready, anyhow. Come on, people, and eat. We’ll get this floor fixed by the time you’re done your suppers.”
Out to the side yard went the company, sniffling and Wiping its eyes, and streamed over to the tables made of rough boards laid on barrels, where the barbecued meats were served with bread, potatoes roasted in the ashes, coffee in tin cups, and pies, cakes, preserves, and sweetmeats, that had come from scores of baskets. Fayte, with Hilda, was among the first to go; Maybelle and Lefty Adams followed close. Pearse Masters, with an eye on their movements, took out Mrs. Burkett, from over Caliente way, a comparatively new neighbor of the Flying M household, and a warm friend of young Masters. They sat just across from the Flying M party.
Hilda, intensely aware of his presence, did not lift her eyes to look at him. She never knew what she ate, or if she ate at all. They walked back to the house after supper, Pearse and jolly, loud-voiced Mrs. Burkett somewhere over to the left of Hilda and Fayte in the semi-obscurity; and that cheek of Hilda’s, that shoulder and arm, seemed to her to glow and palpitate in great electric waves, as she answered Fayte at hasty, joyous random.
In the house, the floor had been, as Big Martin somewhat discontentedly expressed it, “hoed off into pretty decent shape.” Presently came “the roundup,” the cowboy’s own cotillion, in which the couples are all in one great set, each pair going through every all-around figure. Pearse came and asked Hilda, and with a throb of joy touched with fear, she rose. Under cover of the round-up’s boisterous romping, and during the long waits, these two talked eagerly, swiftly.
“You’re not going to ride home with that fellow, Hilda.”
“I don’t want to, Pearse, but—”
“You’re not going to—dear.”