There was a warm, tender flush upon her cheeks telling of her happiness. Her eyes shone, soft in their brightness, and her lips were red with the leaping blood of youth. She had turned to speak with Mrs. Sturgis, the stoutest, jolliest and altogether most motherly woman in the valley, and Mrs. Sturgis, watching her eyes and lips and paying no attention to her words, put out her plump hands suddenly, crying heartily:
"You pretty little mouse! If I had just one wish I'd wish I was a man, an' I'd just grab you up in my arms an' I wouldn't stop goin' until I set you down in front of a preacher. Come here an' let Mother Mary kiss you."
"There's a woman with brains for you, Buck," chuckled Broderick.
Thornton, though he agreed very heartily just then, did so in silence.
"It's Winifred Waverly," went on Broderick carelessly. "She's Henry
Pollard's niece, you know. A little beauty, don't you think?"
Thornton nodded. Again he had agreed but he did not care to discuss her with Ben Broderick. The miner laughed lightly, and added for Thornton's further information,
"As keen a dancer as she is a looker. And a flirt from the drop of the hat! Had the last dance with her. Which reminds me I better hurry and down my booze and get back. I'm going to rope her for the next dance, too."
Broderick went his way for his bottle. Thornton did not speak, did not turn, did not move that a man might see. But the fingers of the hand at his side twitched suddenly and for a moment were tense.
"Pollard can't help being mostly rattlesnake," he muttered angrily. "But he ought to be man enough to keep his own blood kin away from Ben Broderick's kind. Lord, Lordy, but it's sure enough hell folks can't help having uncles like Ben Pollard. Poor little girl!" And then, thoughtfully, his eyes filled with speculation as they rested upon Winifred Waverly, "Mother Mary Sturgis was absolutely right!"
Now the fiddler was tuning with long drawn bow, and the patting of the guitarist's foot told that he was ready. Thornton, tossing his hat to the teacher's desk just outside the door, entered the building and strode straight to the girl. Other men were hurrying across the floor eager to be first to ask this or that demurely waiting maiden for the dance, but Thornton was well in the lead. He nodded and smiled and spoke to many of the women whom he knew, but he did not stop until he came to Winifred Waverly and Mrs. Sturgis. There he was stopped by the older woman who had not read his intentions, and who, thinking that he was going by, took his arm in her two plump hands.