"Still," argued Milo Strong, the Iowa teacher, "we"ve got just the same chance as anybody out of the forty thousand. I don"t suppose there"s any question that the drawing will be fair?"
"It will be under the personal management of the United States Land Commissioner at Meander," said Horace Bentley.
"How do they work it?" asked June, perking up her head in quick interest from her task of hammering together the seams of a leaky new tin cup.
She had it over a projecting end of one of the trestles, and was going about it like a mechanic.
"Where did you learn that trick?" inquired the toolmaker, a look in his eyes which was pretty close kin to amazement.
"Huh!" said June, hammering away. "What do you suppose a college education"s good for, anyway? But how do they manage the drawing?" she pressed.
"Did they teach you the game of policy at Molly Bawn?" the lawyer asked.
"The idea!" sniffed Mrs. Reed.
Miss Horton smiled into her handkerchief, and June shook her head in vigorous denial.
"I don"t even know what it is," said she. "Is it some kind of insurance?"
"It beats insurance for the man that runs the game," said Strong, reminiscently.
"All of the names of those who register will be taken to Meander when the registration closes," explained Horace. "There are half a dozen clerks in the little office here transcribing the names on to small cards, with the addresses and all necessary information for notifying a winner. On the day of the drawing the forty thousand-odd names will be put into a big hollow drum, fitted with a crank. They"ll whirl it, and then a blindfolded child will put his hand into the drum and draw out Number One. Another child will then draw Number Two, and so on until eight thousand names have come out of the wheel. As there are only eight thousand parcels of land, that will end the lottery. What do you think of your chance by now, Miss Horton?"
"Why, it looks fair enough, the way they do it," she answered, questioning Dr. Slavens with her eyes.
He shook his head.
"You can"t tell," he responded. "I"ve seen enough crookedness in this tent-town in the past four days to set my suspicions against everything and every official in it."
"Well, the drawing"s to be held at Meander, you know," reminded William Bentley, the toolmaker, "and Meander advertises itself as a moral center. It seems that it was against this town from the very start--it wanted the whole show to itself. Here"s a circular that I got at Meander headquarters today. It"s got a great knock against Comanche in it."
"Yes, I saw it," said the doctor. "It sounds like one crook knocking another. But it can"t be any worse than this place, anyhow. I think I"ll take a ride over there in a day or so and size it up."
"Well, I surrender all pretensions to Claim Number One," laughed Mrs.
Reed, a straining of color in her cheeks.
June had not demanded fudge once in four days. That alone was enough to raise the colors of courage in her mother"s face, even if there hadn"t been a change in the young lady for the better in other directions. Four days of Wyoming summer sun and wind had made as much difference in June as four days of September blaze make in a peach on the tip of an exposed bough. She was browning and reddening beautifully, and her hair was taking on a trick of wildness, blowing friskily about her eyes.
It was plain that June had in her all the making of a hummer. That"s what Horace Bentley, the lawyer, owned to himself as he told her mother in confidence that a month of that high country, with its fresh-from-creation air, would be better for the girl"s natural endowments than all the beauty-parlors of Boston or the specialists of Vienna. Horace felt of his early bald spot, half believing that some stubby hairs were starting there already.
There was still a glow of twilight in the sky when lights appeared in the windowless windows of the church, and the whine of tuning fiddles came out of its open door. Mrs. Reed stiffened as she located the sound, and an expression of outraged sanct.i.ty appeared in her face. She turned to Dr. Slavens.
"Are they going to--to--_dance_ in that building?" she demanded.
"I"m afraid they are," said he. "It"s used for dancing, they tell me."
"But it"s a church--it"s consecrated!" she gasped.
"I reckon it"s worn off by this time," he comforted. "It was a church a long, long time ago--for Comanche. The saloon man across from it told me its history. He considered locating in it, he said, but they wanted too much rent.
"When Comanche was only a railroad camp--a good while before the rails were laid this far--a traveling preacher struck the town and warmed them up with an old-style revival. They chipped in the money to build the church in the fervor of the pa.s.sing glow, and the preacher had it put up--just as you see it, belfry and all.
"They even bought a bell for it, and it used to ding for the sheepmen and railroaders, as long as their religion lasted. When it ran out, the preacher moved on to fresh fields, and a rancher bought the bell to call his hands to dinner. The respectable element of Comanche--that is, the storekeepers, their wives, daughters and sons, and the clerks, and others--hold a dance there now twice a week. That is their only relaxation."
"It"s a shame!" declared Mrs. Reed.
"Oh, I don"t know," said the doctor easily.
"I"m _so_ disappointed in it!" said she.
"Because it represents itself as a church when it"s something else?"
inquired the doctor softly. "Well, I shouldn"t be, if I were you. It has really nothing to be ashamed of, for the respectable are mightily in the minority in Comanche, I can tell you, madam--that is, among the regular inhabitants."
"Let"s go over and look on," suggested William Bentley. "It may make some of you gloomy people forget your future troubles for a while."
The party soon found that looking on exposed them to the contagion of sociability. They were such wholesome-looking people at the gathering, and their efforts to make the visitors who stood outside the door feel at home and comfortable were so genuine, that reserve dissolved most unaccountably.
It was not long before June"s mother, her prejudices against such frivolous and worldly use of a church blown away, was pigeoning around with William Bentley. Likewise Mrs. Mann, the miller out of sight and out of mind, stepped lightly with Horace, the lawyer, the sober black bag doubled up and stored in the pocket of his coat, its handles dangling like bridle-reins.
June alone was left unpaired, in company with the doctor and Miss Horton, who a.s.serted that they did not dance. Her heels were itching to be clicking off that jolly two-step which the Italian fiddlers and harpist played with such enticing swing. The school-teacher and the sergeant were not with them, having gone out on some expedition of their own among the allurements of Comanche.
But June hadn"t long to bear the itch of impatience, for ladies were not plentiful at the dance. Before anybody had time to be astonished by his boldness, a young man was bowing before June, presenting his crooked elbow, inviting her to the dance with all the polish that could possibly lie on any one man. On account of an unusually enthusiastic clatter of heels at that moment, Dr. Slavens and Miss Horton, a few paces distant, could not hear what he said, but they caught their breaths a little sharply when June took the proffered arm.
"Surest thing you know," they heard her eager little voice say as she pa.s.sed them with a happy, triumphant look behind.
Dr. Slavens looked at Miss Horton; Miss Horton looked at the doctor.
Both laughed.
"Well, I like that!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," he agreed, but apparently from quite a different angle, "so do I.
It"s natural and unaffected; it"s coming down to first principles. Well, I don"t see that there"s anything left for you and me to do but use up some of this moonlight in a walk. I"d like to see the river in this light. Come?"
"Oh, that would be unconventional!" she protested.
But it was not a strong protest; more of a question perhaps, which left it all to him.
"This is an unconventional country," he said. "Look at it, as white as snow under this summer moon."
"It"s lovely by night," she agreed; "but this Comanche is like a sore spot on a clean skin. It"s a blight and a disfigurement, and these noises they make after dark sound like some savage revel."
"We"ll put them behind us for two hours or so," he decided with finality which allowed no further argument.
As they set off toward the river he did not offer her the support of his arm, for she strode beside him with her hands swinging free, long step to his long step, not a creature of whims and shams, he knew, quite able to bear her own weight on a rougher road than that.
"Still it _is_ unconventional," she reflected, looking away over the flat land.
"That"s the beauty of it," said he. "Let"s be just natural."
They pa.s.sed beyond the straggling limits of Comanche, where the town blended out into the plain in the tattered tents and road-battered wagons of the most earnest of all the home-seekers, those who had staked everything on the hope of drawing a piece of land which would serve at last as a refuge against the world"s buffeting.