Dean asked the very blond girl for the first dance, and Ginger for the second, and the betrothed girl with the dreaming eyes for the third, and he did not dance with Ginger again after that, but divided himself among the rest, with two or three extras with the pale blue organdie. Ginger knew and was sure that he knew that the doctor and her aunt and some of the others were watching them keenly, and she held her Scotch chin at a firm angle, and her Spanish mouth did not look in the least as it had that day upon Aleck’s bridge. She asked him if he had been able to save the skin of the mountain lion and was cordially pleased to hear that it was in excellent shape, and had been sent into San José to be mounted. Dean inquired for her henchmen at Dos Pozos with especial emphasis on Estrada, to whom he sent his remembrances.
If the contact set their hearts to galloping as Snort had done in the historic runaway, there was no visible evidence of it. They danced beautifully together, and Dean applauded enthusiastically for an encore, and they finished it out, and then he relinquished her to a gray-haired, black-eyed gallant whose heels had remained as light as his heart, and sat chatting pleasantly with Mrs. Featherstone. Almost at once he was aware that she and her niece had spent the greater portion of the winter in the far east, and when he went away to dance again he said bitterly to himself:
“Well, that does settle it. Months in the east, and never a sign, never a word—” and he asked the Fra Angelico angel in the blue organdie to walk down to the creek in the moonlight after their next fox trot together.
And Ginger, for her part, had told herself a hundred times, “He has been here since early in June; he has never let me know; it is simply over, that’s all; finished between us,” and she wondered just how soon she could reasonably and with dignity persuade Aunt Fan to go back to town.
Before the Ranger left that evening the doctor had persuaded him to go with them on a riding trip, or rather, to let them time their excursion with his regular ride to Slate’s Springs. The very blond girl was to go; she had had a riding suit made by the smartest tailor in San Francisco for just such an occasion as this, and—last and greatest wonder of the world—Mrs. Featherstone was to go. The doctor had told her seriously that the heroism of her diet must be supplemented by exercise if she meant to melt her too too solid flesh—strenuous exercise, not chugging down to the camp gate in her high heels and short vamps after supper—and she had dared two or three very brief equestrian outings on old Sam.
Ginger was amazed. “I think it’s sporting of you, Aunt Fan, but I don’t think you realize how hard it’s going to be—and the doctor doesn’t realize how soft you are! You keep telling that you lead an active life, and he believes you, but if he knew that you think it’s activity to walk from the St. Agnes to the Palace Hotel for lunch—”
“Now, don’t be a crape hanger, my child,” said her aunt, severely. “Just because you’re out of sorts yourself—honestly, Ginger, the way you let Dean Wolcott be gobbled up alive by that little, pale blue string bean—”
Ginger was brushing her mane of black hair, and it hung over her head and down before her face in a thick curtain. Her voice came through it, muffled but wholly amiable, “He seems to be enjoying it, doesn’t he?”
“Seems, of course! That’s just it. Any man with the spirit of a caterpillar— Do you expect him to sit in a corner and twiddle his thumbs until—”
“I expect him to do just as he’s doing,” said her niece, pleasantly. She was giving her hair, it appeared, an especially thorough brushing.