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Deserted
by
“I lost my bearings,” he said. “If you had not answered me, I could not have found you.”
“Don’t leave me again,” she sobbed, clinging to his arm.
He put his arms round her and kissed her. It was mean, base, contemptible, to take advantage of her agitation in that way, but she did not resist, and he did it again and again,–I forbear to say how many times.
“Is n’t it a perfectly beautiful night?” he exclaimed, with a fine gush of enthusiasm.
“Is n’t it exquisite?” she echoed, with a rush of sympathetic feeling.
“See those stars: they look as if they had just been polished,” he cried.
“What a droll idea!” she exclaimed gleefully. “But do see that lovely mountain.”
Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be styled a fierce tenderness, he demanded, “What did you mean, miss, by refusing me this afternoon?”
“What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse,” she retorted smilingly.
“Will you be my wife?”
“Yes, sir; I meant to be all the time.”
The contract having been properly sealed, Lombard said, with a countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a smile of fatuous complacency, “There was a clear case of poetical justice in your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights of the train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation, gave you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. Of all leavings behind, there’s none so miserable as the experience of the rejected lover.”
“Poor fellow! so he should n’t be left behind. He shall be conductor of the train,” she said, with a bewitching laugh. His response was not verbal.
“How cold the wind is!” she said.
“Shall I build you another wigwam?”
“No; let us exercise a little. You whistle ‘The Beautiful Blue Danube,’ and we’ll waltz. This desert is the biggest, jolliest ball-room floor that ever was, and I dare say we shall be the first to waltz on it since the creation of the world. That will be something to boast of when we get home. Come, let’s dedicate the Great American Desert to Terpsichore.”
They stepped out from among the ruins of their sagebrush booth upon a patch of hard, bare earth close to the railroad track. Lombard puckered his lips and struck up the air, and off they went with as much enthusiasm as if inspired by a first-class orchestra. Round and round, to and fro, they swept until, laughing, flushed, and panting, they came to a stop.
It was then that they first perceived that they were not without a circle of appreciative spectators. Sitting like statues on their sniffing, pawing ponies, a dozen Piute Indians encircled them. Engrossed with the dance and with each other, they had not noticed them as they rode up, attracted from their route by this marvelous spectacle of a pale-face squaw and brave engaged in a solitary war dance in the midst of the desert.
At sight of the grim circle of centaurs around them Miss Dwyer would have fainted but for Lombard’s firm hold.
“Pretend not to see them; keep on dancing,” he hissed in her ear. He had no distinct plan in what he said, but spoke merely from an instinct of self-preservation, which told him that when they stopped, the Indians would be upon them. But as she mechanically, and really more dead than alive, obeyed his direction and resumed the dance, and he in his excitement was treading on her feet at every step, the thought flashed upon him that there was a bare chance of escaping violence, if they could keep the Indians interested without appearing to notice their presence. In successive whispers he communicated his idea to Miss Dyer: “Don’t act as if you saw them at all, but do everything as if we were alone. That will puzzle them, and make them think us supernatural beings, or perhaps crazy: Indians have great respect for crazy people. It’s our only chance. We will stop dancing now, and sing awhile. Give them a burlesque of opera. I ‘ll give you the cues and show you how. Don’t be frightened. I don’t believe they ‘ll touch us so long as we act as if we did n’t see them. Do you understand? Can you do your part?”