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.

And for answer Judith entered, but a Judith that was strange to them.