that the neighbors might give credence to the tale of Jim’s escape from his enemies, that Alida and she might earn the pittance that would give the children the “clean start” that Jim had set his heart on so confidently.  And she must dance and be the merriest of them all that these things might happen, but again and again she deferred the dread moment.  The light, the music, the voices, the shuffle of the feet came to her as she stood forlorn in the grateful darkness.  On the wall the shadows of the dancers, magnified and grotesque, parodied their movements, as they contended there, monstrous, uncouth shapes, like prehistoric monsters gripping, clinching in some mighty struggle; and above it all sang out the wild rhythm of Miguel’s fiddle, and young Jose’s bow capered madly.

Judith drew close to the window, and the merriment struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a knell.  She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-lust of the Indian woke in her heart.  The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but Henderson as he danced that he might forget the gray of morning, the black, dead trees, and the grotesque thing with head awry that swayed in the breeze like a pendulum.  He dreaded the long, black ride that would bring him to his camp, for he alone of the lynchers remained.  Something was drawing his gaze out into the blackness of the night.  He struggled against the temptation to look towards the window.  He whirled the Dax woman till her twinkling feet cleared the floor.  He sang to the accompaniment of Miguel’s fiddle.  He was outwitting the thing that dangled before his eyes, having the incontrovertible last word with a vengeance.  And as he danced and swayed, all unwittingly his glance fell on the window opposite, and Jim Rodney’s face looked in at him, beautiful in its ecstasy of hate—­Rodney’s face, refined, sharpened, tried in some bitter crucible, but Rodney’s face!  Henderson could not withdraw his fascinated gaze.  He stood in the midst of the dancers like a man turned to stone.  He put up his hand to his eyes as if to brush away a cloud of swarming gnats, then threw up his arms and rushed from the room.  The dancers paused in their mad whirl.  Miguel’s bow stopped with a wailing shriek.  Every eye turned towards the window for an explanation of Henderson’s sudden panic, but all was dark without on the prairie.  The magic had gone from the dance, the whirlwind of drapery that had swung like flags in a breeze dropped in dead air.  “What was it?” the dancers asked one another in whispers.