He looked over his shoulder to enjoy the triumph of the moment. Blatchley Turrentine’s delight was to traverse the will of every other human being with his own preference. Judith’s gaze, tormented, tear-blurred, followed his and saw across the shoulders of the others, the shine of Creed Bonbright’s fair hair, in the doorway. The sight brought from her an inarticulate cry. It fired Blatchley to take the kiss which he had vowed should be given him. As he bent to do so, Creed stepped forward and laid a hand upon his shoulder. The movement was absolutely pacific, but the fingers closed with a viselike grip, and there was so sharp a backward jerk that the proffered salute was not delivered.
In the surprise of the moment Judith pulled herself free and stood at bay. For an instant the two men looked into each other’s eyes. Creed’s blue orbs were calm, impersonal, and without one hint of yielding or fear.
“If you don’t play fair,” he said in argumentative tone, “there’s no use playing at all. Let’s close up the ring and try it again.”
All eyes in the room turned to Blatchley Turrentine, the women in a flutter of terrified apprehension, the men with a brightening of interest; surely he would resent this interference in some notable manner. But Blatch was in fact too deadly to be merely high-tempered, quick in anger. For a moment he stared at Bonbright, trying to look him down; then those odd, whitey-grey eyes narrowed to mere slits. He laid the matter up in his mind; this was not the time for settling it—here before Judith Barrier and the women. He did not mean to content himself with mere fisticuffs, or even a chance pocket-knife which might double in his grasp and cut his own hand. To the immense surprise of everybody he stretched out his long arms, caught carelessly at the fingers of a player on either side of him, and, mending the line, began to move in rhythmic time to the fiddle.
It was soon observable that Creed Bonbright’s presence caused Huldah Spiller’s spirits to mount several notes in the octave. Whether it was that her own betrothed was looking on, and this an excellent chance to show him that even the town feller felt her charm, or merely Creed’s personal attractions could hardly be guessed.
“Come on,” she cried recklessly, “let’s play ‘Over the River to Feed my Sheep.’ Strike up the tune, Wade.”
The game she mentioned was also a forfeit play, with the difference that the kiss was more certain, being taken of mere choice—though delivered, of course, with due maidenly reluctance and a show of resisting—whenever the girl facing one could be caught over the line. All the young people played it; all the elders deprecated it. At the bottom of Judith’s heart lay one reason for making a play-party and bidding Creed Bonbright to it; and now Huldah Spiller was blatantly calling out the unconfessed, the unconfessable; Wade was sullenly dropping into the old Scotch air; the long lines were forming, men opposite the girls—and the red-headed minx had placed herself directly across from Creed!
The laughing chains swayed back and forth to the measure of the music—advancing, retreating, pursuing, evading, choosing, rejecting, in a gay parody of courtship. Voices were added to that of the fiddle.
| “Hit’s over the river to feed my sheep, Hit’s over the river to Charley; Hit’s over the river to feed my sheep An’ to kiss my lonesome darling,” |
they sang.