“Timed it just right, didn’t I? Do you suppose the belles of Foleys will take me this way, travel-stained and weary? I’d like to see Black Dan’s daughter. They say she promises to be a beauty.”
“Promises!” echoed the Colonel; “she kept that promise some time ago. She’s sixteen years old, my boy, and she can take your pelt and nail it to the barn door whenever she’s a mind to.”
The other turned away to the open door of the room Forsythe had lit up for him.
“Sixteen!” he said. “Oh, that’s too young! No, Colonel, I’ve not got to the age when sixteen attracts. But you ought to be just about there. So long! You’ll see me later looking on at your gambols with the sixteen-year-older.”
His boyish laugh issued from the room, and as the Colonel went down stairs he could hear it above the swishing of water and the sound of smitten crockery.
From below the first tentative whinings of the violins rose, and as he reached the lower hall he heard the rattling of vehicles and the sound of voices as the earlier guests began to arrive. To the right of the hall he discovered Black Dan, secluded in a small room reserved by Forsythe for honored patrons, smoking tranquilly as he tilted back in a wooden arm-chair. The Colonel joined him, and for an hour the smoke of their cigars mingled amicably as they talked over the mining prospects of the district, and the Colonel’s scheme for the development of his mineral spring.
It was near nine and the dance had passed its initial stage of bashful gaiety, when they strolled down the balcony to where the windows of the dining-room cast elongated squares of light into the darkness. This room, built on the angle of the house, had a door in the front, flanked by two windows, and down the long side a line of four more windows. Before each aperture there was a gathering of shadowy shapes, the light gilding staring faces.
At the first window the two men stopped and looked in. The dining-room, with its wooden walls, low ceiling and board floor, framed like an echoing shell the simple revel. Its bareness had been decorated with long strands of colored paper, depending from points in the ceiling and caught up in the corners. At intervals along the walls kerosene lamps, backed by large tin reflectors, diffused a raw, bright light, each concave tin throwing a shadow like a stream of ink down the boards below it. In a corner the three musicians worked with furious energy, one blowing a cornet and two scraping violins. A square dance was in progress, and at intervals the man who played the larger violin, his chin dug pertinaciously into the end of his instrument, yelled in strident tones:
“Swing your pardners! Ladies to the right. Shassay all.”
Black Dan, satisfied by the first glance that his daughter was provided with a partner, retraced his steps and took a seat at the deserted end of the balcony, whence the red tip of his cigar came and went against a screen of darkness. The Colonel, much interested, remained looking in.