er?
First she wouldn't dance unless the floor was cleared--Sleepy Cat
folks ain't good enough for them Music Mountain cattle thieves! And
now the music doesn't suit her. Listen to that boob of a boy trying
one piece after another to get one to suit my outlaw lady. Nerve!"

But while the impatient woman chafed the right tune was found, and
Nan Morgan's face, as she watched the manipulator of the piano,
brightened. "Faster!" she cried under her breath, taking her position
on her cousin's arm. Then, responding with a sort of fiery impatience
to her partner's guiding, she caught the rapid step of the music, and
together the two swept down the floor.

Whatever the impatience of the crowd over the finicky start, the
spectators soon showed their admiration of the dancing with
unrestrained hand-clapping, and followed with approving outcries. De
Spain, standing apart, watched Nan's flying feet, wondering how she
and her people could possibly be what they were painted, and whether
they really were so or not. Every swaying step, every agile turn
proved how sure she was of herself, and how perfectly her body
answered to every exaction of the quick movement of the dance. Gale
Morgan seemed the merest attendant for his partner, who, with
quickened pulses, gave herself up more and more to the lively call of
the music.

Once the two swung away out, near to de Spain's corner. As Nan whirled
by, de Spain, either with the infection of the music or from her
nearness to him, caught his breath. His eyes riveted themselves on her
flushed face as she passed--oblivious of his presence--and he
recalled how in the morning she had handled her rifle in the same
quick, sure way. De Spain could not dance at all; but no one could
successfully accuse him of not knowing how to handle any sort of a
gun. It was only now, as she came so very close to him for the first
time since the mortification of the morning, and he saw the smoothness
of her pink-brown cheeks, that he could ungrudgingly give her full
credit for shooting him down. He forgave her, unasked, the humiliation
she had put on him. He felt an impulse to go up to her--now that she
had stopped dancing--and congratulate her honestly, instead of
boorishly as he had done at the match, and to say, unreservedly, that
she was the better shot--indeed, one of the best he had ever seen.

But while he thought all of this he did not stir a step. The two
dancers at once disappeared, and a new and rougher