huffled across the
threshold and porch with roundabout schemes to tread quietly. When one
or other stumbled on the steps and fell, he was jerked to his feet.
"You want to tame yourself," was the word. Then, suddenly, Chalkeye
and Toothpick Kid came precipitately back. "Her cash," they said. And
leaving the notes and coins, they hastened to catch their comrades on
the way back to the dance.

"I want you," repeated Barker to McLean.

"Him!" cried Mrs. Lusk, flashing alert again. "Jessamine wants him about
now, I guess. Don't keep him from his girl!" And she laughed her hard,
rich laugh, looking from one to the other. "Not the two of yus can't
save me," she stated, defiantly. But even in these last words a sort of
thickness sounded.

"Walk her up and down," said Barker. "Keep her moving. I'll look what
I can find. Keep her moving brisk." At once he was out of the door; and
before his running steps had died away, the fiddle had taken up its tune
across the quadrangle.

"'Buffalo Girls!'" exclaimed the woman. "Old times! Old times!"

"Come," said McLean. "Walk." And he took her.

Her head was full of the music. Forgetting all but that, she went with
him easily, and the two made their first turns around the room. Whenever
he brought her near the entrance, she leaned away from him toward the
open door, where the old fiddle tune was coming in from the dark.
But presently she noticed that she was being led, and her face turned
sullen.

"Walk," said McLean.

"Do you think so?" said she, laughing. But she found that she must go
with him. Thus they took a few more turns.

"You're hurting me," she said next. Then a look of drowsy cunning filled
her eyes, and she fixed them upon McLean's dogged face. "He's gone,
Lin," she murmured, raising her hand where Barker had disappeared.

She knew McLean had heard her, and she held back on the quickened pace
that he had set.

"Leave me down. You hurt," she pleaded, hanging on him.

The cow-puncher put forth more strength.

"Just the floor," she pleaded again. "Just one minute on the floor.
He'll think you could not keep me lifted."

Still McLean made no answer, but steadily led her round and round, as he
had undertaken.

"He's playing out!" she exclaimed. "You'll be played out soon." She
laughed herself half-awake. The man drew a breath, and she laughed more
to feel his hand and arm strain to surmount her increasing resistance.
"Jessamine!" she whispered to him. "Jessamine!