Luck by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781477831212
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2013-07-23T06:00:00+00:00

21

The Dance

Jacqueline could never back a horse in that gown, or even sit sidewise in the saddle without hopelessly crumpling it, so they walked to the schoolhouse. It was a slow progress, for she had to step lightly and carefully for fear of the slippers. He took her bare arm and helped her; he would never have thought of it under ordinary conditions, but since she had put on this gown she was greatly changed to him, no longer the wild, free rider of the mountain desert, but a defenseless, strangely weak being. Her strength was now something other than the skill to ride hard and shoot straight and quick.

Greatest wonder of all, she accepted the new relation tactfully, and leaned more and more weight on his hand, and even looked up and laughed with pleasure when he almost lifted her over a muddy runlet. It was all new, very strange, and, oddly enough, not unpleasant. Each was viewing the other from such an altered point that neither spoke.

They came to the schoolhouse in this silence, and reached the long line of buggies, buckboards, and, most of all, saddled horses. They flooded the horse shed where the school children stabled their mounts in the winter weather. They were tethered to the posts of the fence; they were grouped about the trees.

It was a prodigious gathering, and a great affair for the mountain desert. They knew this even before they had set foot within the building.

They stopped here and adjusted their masks carefully. They were made from a strip of black lining which had torn from one of the coats in the trunk which lay far back in the hills. Those masks had to be tied firmly and well, for some jester might try to pull away that of Pierre and, if his face were seen, it would be death-a slaughter without defense, for he had not been able to conceal his big Colt in the tight-fitting clothes. Even as it was, there was peril from the moment that the light within should shine on that head of dark-red hair.

As for Jack, there was little fear that she would be recognized. She was strange even to Pierre every time he looked down at her, for she had ceased to be Jack and had become very definitely ‘Jacqueline.’But the masks were on; the scarf adjusted about the throat and bare, shivering shoulders of Jack, and they stood arm in arm before the door out of which streamed the voices and the music.

‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pierre…if they should find us out.…’

‘Never in a thousand years. Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

But she was trembling so, either from fear, or excitement, or both, that he had to take a firm hold on her arm and almost carry her up the steps, shove the door open, and force her in.

A hundred eyes were instantly upon them, practiced, suspicious eyes, accustomed to search into all things and take nothing for granted; eyes of men who, when a rap came at

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