The Lazy-Y ranch-house, a one-storied building of logs, was built

about three sides of a paved court. In the middle of this court stood

a well with a high rustic top, and about this well on a certain

brilliant July night, a tall man was strolling with his hands behind

his back. It was a night of full moon, sailing high, which poured

whiteness into the court, making its cobbles embedded in the earth

look like milky bubbles and drawing clear-cut shadows of the well-top

and the gables and chimneys of the house. The man slowly circled the

court beginning close to the walls and narrowing till he made a loop

about the well, and then, reversing, worked in widening orbits as far

as the walls again. His wife, looking out at him through one of the

windows, thought that, in the moonlight, followed by his own squat,

active shadow, he looked like a huge spider weaving a web. This effect

was heightened by the fact that he never looked up. He was deep in

some plan to which it was impossible for her not to believe that the

curious pattern of his walk bore some relation.

From the northern wing of the ranch-house, strongly lighted, came a

tumult of sound; music, thumping feet, a man's voice chanting

couplets: "Oh, you walk right through and you turn around

and swing the girl that finds you,

And you come right back by the same old track

and turn the girl behind you."

Some one was directing a quadrille in native fashion. There was much

laughter, confusion, and applause. None of this noise disturbed the

man. He did not look at the lighted windows. He might really have been

a gigantic insect entirely unrelated to the human creatures so noisily

near at hand.

A man came round the corner of the house, crossed the square, and,

lurching a little, made for the door of the lighted wing. Shortly

after his entrance the sound of music and dancing abruptly stopped.

This stillness gave the spider pause, but he was about to renew his

weaving, when, in the silence, a woman spoke.

"You, Mabel, don't you go home," she said.

She had not spoken loudly, but her voice beat against the walls of the

court as though it could have filled the whole moonlight night with

dangerous beauty. The listener outside lifted his head with a low,

startled exclamation. Suddenly the world was alive with adventure and

alarm.

"Mind your own business, you wild cat," answered a man's raucous

voice. "She's my wife, which is somethin' that your sort knows nothin'

about. Come on, you Mabel. You think that outlaw can keep me from

takin' home my wife, you're betting wrong."




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