The Westerners

by Stewart Edward White

Then, before the astonishment had subsided, the outer door opened again and Molly entered, looking very pale and sweet and serious.

She walked directly by the bar into the dance hall, where she seated herself near the door and looked calmly about her. She was dressed entirely in white. Cheyenne Harry was leaning over the bar talking attentively, so that he was perhaps the only person in the room who did not see her come in. A dozen men at once surrounded her and began to chat. She answered them good-humoredly enough, but indifferently.

The door once more flew open and Bismarck Anne, standing on the sill, cried out in her clear, high voice, "Well, boys!" She paused a moment. Cheyenne Harry, turning at the sound of her voice, remembered how, about a year ago, Molly Lafond had stood there in just that attitude. But he felt a great difference.

Cheyenne Harry had for some time, as we have said, been growing a little tired of his affair with Molly. The mental ingredients of satiety were all present, but he had as yet received no conscious notice of their existence. He imagined himself as much fascinated as ever. If something lately had seemed to lack, he had laid it to circumstances and not at all to the state of his relations with the girl. But for all that, the satiety had been real. He only needed to be told of it to realize it himself very plainly. Bismarck Anne had told him.

He saw now absolutely no attraction for himself in Molly Lafond, and that without attempting to deny her intrinsic attraction for others. He simply did not care for her any more. It seemed perhaps like a sudden revulsion, but it was not so really; it had been inevitable from the very first, and from the very first it had been slowly maturing. Not even the results were sudden: only Cheyenne Harry's knowledge of them.

He had always felt his relations with Molly Lafond as more or less restrictive, because the good is always so. He had dimly caught the truth that, without a deep moral incentive, restriction is always irksome; that although pure love is the most ideal condition in the world, its simulation is the most wearisome after the novelty has worn off; and all the rest of the long psychological train of emotion and reasoning common to the trifler. But now for the first time he knew it. He knew it because, standing in the doorway, looking at him with bold black eyes, was the exact opposite of all this, and he recognized a mighty relief.

Bismarck Anne knew enough to dress all in black. She had the taste to appreciate the effect of one red flower in her hair as her only ornament. She had the sense to wear her dress cut neither too low above nor too high below. And so she was exceedingly handsome as she stood there, the devil of excitement in her eyes.

Cheyenne Harry abruptly ceased his conversation with Lafond to shake hands with her. They turned in company. Harry linked his arm through hers, and they entered the dance hall close together, and took their seats in a corner far removed from the musicians, where they continued engaged in such earnest conversation that none of the men ventured to approach them. After a time, when the music struck up for the first dance, she seemed to be commanding something to which Cheyenne Harry seemed to be objecting. Then the latter arose slowly and asked Molly Lafond to dance the first dance with him. She accepted with a sharp pang at her heart. The newcomer had scored.

Owing to the scarcity of the gentler sex, it had been decided that no one "set" was to be blessed with more than one girl. Thus they would go around better. Molly, glancing across at her rival, saw that she was surrounded by a laughing group of men. The woman was joking broadly at each, wriggling her white shoulders, darting side glances, half promising, half denying. In a moment the group broke, and the members of it rushed in her own direction. They were already quarrelling for places in her set. The matter was arranged somehow after much wrangling. Then, too late, Molly saw that the other woman had scored again. Bismarck Anne had not only selected her partner, but also the other six members of the set. Thus she had made seven men happy and none jealous.

A Western dance is a sight worth seeing. The musicians call off the figures. The head fiddler does it until his voice gives out. Then the second fiddler and the accordion take a try at it, after which further calling is unnecessary owing to the fact that most of the dancers are very drunk. This comes to pass because, at the end of each dance, all are supposed to visit the bar. The most heinous crime, next to horse stealing or sluice robbing, is "shying drinks" at such times. As some men can hold more than others this enforced equality of quantity consumed brings about unexpected variation in the hilarity of the consumers, all of which adds to the variety of the occasion.