Loudon, his hat pulled forward, leaned his chest against a windowsill and peered over the fat shoulders of Mrs. Ragsdale and a freighter's wife, who were enjoying the festivities with such zest that the chairs they sat in were on the point of collapse.
Kate Saltoun and Dorothy Burr were dancing in the same set. Dawson of the Seven Lazy Seven was Kate's partner, and Pete O'Leary swung Dorothy. Loudon was struck by the fact that Kate was not smiling. Her movements, likewise, lacked a certain springiness which was one of her salient characteristics.
"Somebody must 'a' stepped on her toe," decided Loudon. "Bet she don't dance with Dawson again."
She didn't. Marshal Dan Smith, perspiring and painfully conscious of a hard shirt and a forest-fire necktie, was her next partner. Loudon wondered why he had not hitherto perceived the marked resemblance between Dan Smith and a jack-rabbit. He found himself speculating on Kate's reasons for breaking her engagement. As he looked at Kate, her extreme beauty, contrasted with that of the other girls in the room, was striking.
"Kate is certainly a heap good-looker."
Mrs. Ragsdale and the freighter's wife turned sharply and stared open-mouthed at Loudon. Not till then did that young man realize that he had voiced aloud his estimate of Kate Saltoun. He fled hurriedly, his skin prickling all over, and dived into the kindly darkness behind the corral.
"Now I have done it!" he mourned, bitterly, squatting on the ground. "Those old tongue-wagglers heard me, an' they'll tell her. I seen it in their faces. What'll she think o' me. Luck! There ain't no such thing. If all the rocks was tobacco an' all the grass cigarette-papers, I'd be there without a match."
From the hotel drifted thinly the lilt of "Buffalo Girls." A bevy of convivial beings in the street were bawling "The Days of Forty-Nine." Across the discordant riot of sound cut the sudden clipping drum of a galloping pony.
"Injuns!" shouted a voice. "Injuns!"
Loudon sprang up and dashed around the corral. In the flare of light from the hotel doorway a dusty man sat a dustier horse. The man was hatless, his dark hair was matted with dirt and sweat, and his eyes were wild.