Reluctantly, Webb let his gaze swing back to the girl with the yellow braids without continuing to Lilli. A tall, stern-looking man of Scandinavian descent was standing next to the golden-haired girl. Young Shorty evidently had already been turned down and stood watching while Abe tried his luck. The girl shook her head in refusal and edged closer to the tall man next to her.
“Maybe she’s married, too,” Webb suggested, not intending for his voice to sound so bitter.
“Nope. That big Swede next to her is a fella named Anderson. He’s got a whole brood of kids and his wife is about the same size he is. Big woman,” Nate stated. “They staked a claim on some land buttin’ up to the Triple C on the southeast corner. I saw ’em out working in their fields a few weeks back. The gal’s his daughter, all right.”
As that song ended and another started, Webb noticed that Abe and Shorty weren’t the only ones getting turned down. So were the cowboys from all the other outfits. The drylanders had no intention of letting their innocent daughters associate with the likes of a bunch of no-account cowboys. At least, Webb suspected that was their thinking.
Even the dance floor appeared divided, the homesteaders keeping to one side and the ranchers on the other. Webb realized that the electricity in the atmosphere wasn’t all generated by the holiday mood.
At first the cowboys were good-natured about the refused invitations to dance. They were ready for a party and weren’t about to be denied it. So they turned their attention on the female members of their own side, dancing with married and single women alike.
As Webb approached his mother, he gallantly swept off his hat and turned to offer her his arm. “May I have the next dance?”
She laughed and tucked her hand under his arm. “I’ve been saving it just for you.” When they were on the dance floor and had completed the first set of waltz steps, she tilted her head to him. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
“Grizzly chased me off the ranch with a butcher knife.” With his mother, he could get away with a light reply, so he did. It was easier than delving into the reasons that had brought him here when he had insisted he wasn’t coming.
“Are you going to dance with Ruth?” she couldn’t resist asking, hoping he might have reconsidered. She supposed it was the flaw of all women to live on hope.
“I haven’t noticed that she’s had any shortag
e of partners,” he replied.
“She hasn’t. In fact, she’s danced every dance.”
As they made another circle, Webb noticed Lilli on the other side of the dance floor. She was in the arms of the whiskered and stoop-shouldered man she had married. It grated him to see her smiling face turned upward to that man. It was wrong for them to be together.
“Webb? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” His expression closed up, letting her see none of his feelings, as he faced his mother once more. She looked unconvinced, but didn’t press him for a more revealing answer.
When the song ended, he escorted her back to his father’s side and returned to stand with his outfit. Disappointment and anger were knotting his insides, twisting him up with reckless urges, stirring up wants that were better left dormant.
The dark grumblings around him seemed to echo his mood. The looks being sent across the dance floor at the unattached females were turning into glares of resentment. The homesteader gals were like candy being dangled in front of a boy with a craving for sweets. And every time he reached for it, he got his hand slapped. And like little boys, the cowboys were growing sullen and restive.
“They think they’re too good for us, that’s what.”
“Some of them gals are downright ugly. We was doin’ ’em a favor just askin’ ’em to dance.”
“Look at ’em, thinking their daughters are so innocent an’ pure. I bet they ain’t that way out behind the barn.”
“They ain’t nothing but a bunch of scissorbills. I’d like to know where they got the idea they’re better than us.”
Echoing comments traveled up and down the clustering line of cowboys, resentment building among the ranks led by Hobie Evans. It wouldn’t take much to turn it violent. Webb sensed it, and a part of him didn’t care.
When the band began playing another one of those fast folk-dance songs foreign to most of the cowboys’ ears, they took exception to the accordion music. This time, they didn’t confine their complaints to themselves. They said them loud so the dancers could hear.
“Don’t you know any good music?”
“Somebody kick that guy with the squeezebox off the bandstand!”
“Yeah! We want to hear some fiddlin’!”
Nate sidled closer to Webb. “Looks like this might be an excitin’ party after all.”
“It’s either going to be a dance or a fight,” Webb agreed. “I don’t see the point in waiting to find out which. Get Shorty and Abe. We’re going to settle it one way or the other.”
When all three were gathered with him, Webb angled for the corner of the bandstand on the ranchers’ side. His objective was Doyle Pettit, minus his hat, goggles, and coat, standing by the hood of his shiny black automobile and proudly demonstrating to the curious the function of the crank.