And so on with another quadrille, minuet, and quadrille again. But the subsequent dances were not so orderly as the first. Filled with noise and romping, they frequently ended in wild disorder. The figures tangled themselves into a labyrinth, and the music, drowned by the tumult, ceased to be a clew of escape. Nor could Jake’s voice, half suffocated by the dust, be heard above the din, until, having hushed his orchestra, he had called “Halt!” a dozen times.
In the intervals between the dances we observed Larrap distributing whiskey to the better class of the emigrants. Sizzum did not disdain to accept the hospitality of the stranger. Old Bridger’s liquid stores, now Mormon property, and for sale at the price of Johannisberger, diminished fast on this festal night.
“Shall we go?” whispered I to Brent, after a while.
“Not quite yet. Old Bottery announces that he is going to play a polka. Fancy a polka here! That will engage Sizzum after his potations, so that he will forget our friends.”
“Now, brethren and saints,” cried Jake, “attention for the polky! Pipe up, Bottery!”
Evidently not the first time that this Strauss of some Manchester casino had played the very rollicking polka he now rattled off from his strings. How queerly ignoble those strident notes sounded in the silence of night in the great wilderness. For loud as was the uproar in the court, overhead were the stars, quiet and amazed, and, without, the great, still prairie protested against the discordant tumult. Some barbaric harmony, wild and thrilling, poured forth from strong-lunged brass, or a strain like that of the horns in Der Freischutz, would have chimed with the spirit of the desert. But Bottery’s mean twang suited better the bastard civilization that had invaded this station of the banished pioneer.
At the sound of the creaking polka, a youth, pale and unwholesome as a tailor’s apprentice, led out a sister saint. Others followed. Some danced teetotum fashion. Others bounced clumsily about. Around them all stood an applauding circle. The fiddles scraped; the dust flew. Sizzum and Larrap, two bad elements in combination, stood together, cheering the dancers.
“Come,” said Brent, “let us get into purer air and among nobler creatures. How little we thought,” he continued, “when we were speaking of such scenes and people as we have just left as a possible background, what figures would stand in the foreground!”
“I am glad to be out of that noisy rabble,” said I, as we passed from the gate. “The stars seem to look disdainfully on them. I cannot be entertained by that low comedy, with tragedy sitting beside our friends’ wagon.”
“The stars,” said Brent, bitterly, “are cold and cruel as destiny. There is heaven overhead, pretending to be calming and benignant, and giving no help, while I am thinking in agony what can be done to save from any touch of shame or deeper sorrow that noble daughter.”