“Who is going to pay for it, I'd like to know? If it's some of your doings, Jim Basset, I can't take it—so there!”
She thrust the package back upon him. He tore off the wrapper and let the wind carry his rejected token into the trampled mud and slush of the street.
Hetty screamed and pounced to the rescue. “What a shame! It's a beauty of a handkerchief. It must have cost a lot of money. I shan't let you use it so.”
She shook it, and wiped away the spots from its delicate sheen, and folded it into its folds again.
“I don't want the thing.” He spurned it fiercely.
“Then give it to some one else.” She endeavored coquettishly to force it into his hands, or into the pockets of his coat. He could not withstand her thrilling little liberties in the face of all the street.
“I'll wear it Monday night,” said he. “May be you think I won't be there?” he added hoarsely, for he had noted her look of surprise, mingled with an infuriating touch of pity. “You kin bank on it I'll be there.”
Hetty toyed with the thought that after all it might be better that she should not go to the dance. There might be trouble, for certainly Jim Basset had looked as if he meant it when he had said he would be there; and Hetty knew the temper of the company, the male portion of it, too well to doubt what their attitude would be toward an inhibited guest who disputed the popular verdict, and claimed social privileges which it had been agreed that he had forfeited. But it was never really in her mind to deny herself the excitement of going. She and her escort were among the first couples to cross the snowy pastures stretching between her father's claim and the lights of the lonely horse-ranch.
It was a cloudy night, the air soft, chill, and spring-like. Snow had fallen early and frozen upon the ground; the stockmen welcomed the “chinook wind” as the promise of a break in the hard weather. Shadows came out and played upon the pale slopes, as the riders rose and dropped past one long swell and another of dim country falling away like a ghostly land seeking a ghostly sea. And often Hetty looked back, fearing, yet half hoping, that the interdicted one might be on his way, among the dusky, straggling shapes behind.
The company was not large, nor, up to nine o'clock, particularly merry. The women were engaged in cooking supper, or were above in the roof-room brushing out their crimps by the light of an unshaded kerosene lamp, placed on the pine wash-stand which did duty as a dressing-table. The men's voices came jarringly through the loose boards of the floor from below.