The girl — a lively little black-haired creature with sparkling eyes and a saucy, winning smile — was no stranger to the habitués of the place; she had been dancing there for several months. But always alone. Who was this fellow with her? They opened their eyes at his strange appearance.
He was a tall, ungainly chap, wearing the costume of a moving picture cowboy, and in his hand he carried a great coil of rope. There was an expression of painful embarrassment on his brown face as he glanced from side to side and saw five hundred pairs of eyes looking into his from all parts of the large, brilliantly lighted room.
The girl began to dance, swinging into the music with a series of simple, tentative steps, and the man roused himself to action. He loosened the coil of rope and began pulling it through a loop at one end to form a noose. Then slowly and easily, and gracefully, he began whirling the noose in the air. It was fifteen feet in diameter, half as wide as the platform.
The girl, quickening her steps with the music, swerved suddenly to one side and leaped into the center of the whirling coil of rope. Then the music quickened again and the rope whirled faster, while the dancer circled round and round its circumference in a series of dizzy gyrations. Suddenly the man twisted to one side, with a quick and powerful turn of the wrist, and the rope doubled on itself like lightning, forming two circles instead of one. The girl leaped and danced from one to the other.
The music became more rapid still, and the rope and the dancer, whirling with incredible swiftness in the most intricate and dazzling combinations, challenged the eye to follow them. The nooses of the rope, which had again doubled, came closer together, until finally two of them encircled the girl at once, then three, then all four, still whirling about her swiftly revolving form.
All at once the orchestra, with one tremendous crash, was silent; simultaneously the man gave a sudden powerful jerk with his arm and the dancer stopped and became rigid, while the four nooses of the rope tightened themselves about her, pinning her arms to her sides and rendering her powerless. One more crash from the orchestra, and the man ran forward, picked the girl up in his arms and ran quickly from the platform.
The applause was deafening. Dickson’s had scored another hit. All Broadway asks is something new.
Back of the platform the man had halted to place the girl gently on her feet and unwind the coils of rope. That done, she took him by the hand to lead him back to the platform for the bow. He hung back, but she insisted, and finally she dragged him on. They were forced to take another, and a third. When they returned from the last one they found Lonny Dickson himself waiting for them at the foot of the platform steps.
“Great stuff, Duggett,” he said enthusiastically. “You put it over fine, especially with only one day’s rehearsal. It’ll improve, too. I’ve been paying Miss Carson fifty a week. I’ll make it a hundred and fifty for the turn, and you and she can split it fifty-fifty.”
“Much obliged,” replied Rick calmly. His face was flushed and his brow covered with perspiration. He turned to his partner.
“Shall we have a drink on it, Miss Carson?”
They found a table in a corner back of the platform. Miss Carson, a rarity among cabaret performers, was even more pleasing to look at when you were close to her than on the stage. Her sparkling eyes retained all their charm, and the softness of her hair, the daintiness of her little mouth, the fresh smoothness of her cheeks, became more apparent. She was panting now from her exertions, and her flushed face and disarranged hair made a lovely picture.
“Really,” she said, as she sat down, “I ought to ask you to wait till I go to the dressing room and repair damages.”
“Oh, that can wait,” declared Rick. “If you knew how nice you look right now you wouldn’t want to fix up anyway. I suppose we ought to drink to each other with a bottle of champagne, but to tell the truth I was kind of hungry this evening and I’m afraid I about finished my little stake. I’ll corral Dickson for an advance tonight and we’ll have the wine later.”
But Miss Carson protested with a gay smile that she never drank anything stronger than mineral water, so that was all right. More, a little exclamation of horror escaped her when she saw Rick swallow three fingers of whiskey straight, after clinking glasses with her.
“That awful stuff!” she exclaimed. “It’ll kill you. I thought you mixed water with it or something.”
“I haven’t got that low yet,” Rick declared. “But there’s a funny thing, I was thinking just then that I’ve been drinking too much since I came East. Out home I don’t touch it oftener than once in two months, though I do fill up pretty well then. You know—” he hesitated — and blushed! “You know,” he went on, “I’m glad you don’t drink.”
“Yes? Why?”
“Lord, I don’t know. I’m just glad.”
“Well, so am I. I never have. But listen, Mr. Duggett. Mr. Dickson said he was going to give us a hundred and fifty and we could split it fifty-fifty. I won’t do that — divide it even, I mean. I was only getting fifty alone, so it’s quite evident that the hundred belongs to you.”
“You don’t say so,” Rick smiled at her. “Now, that’s just like you.” (How in the world could he have known what was just like her, having met her only twenty-four hours before?) “But you’ve got it wrong. The hundred is yours. I wouldn’t be worth two bits without you.”
“Mr. Duggett, the increased value of the turn is due entirely to you, and you must take the extra money. I insist.”
“Miss Carson, you really ought to have the whole thing, only I need a stake to get back home, so I’ll agree to take one-third. Not a cent more.”
They argued about it for twenty minutes, and at the end of that time compromised on an even split.
“It must be terribly exciting out in Arizona,” observed Miss Carson after a pause.
Rick lifted his eyebrows.
“Exciting?”
“Yes. That is — well — exciting.”
“Not so as you could notice it. Oh, it’s all right. I don’t kick any. Plenty to eat, a good poker game whenever you’re loaded and a dance every once in a while. And of course lots of work—”
“But I didn’t mean that,” Miss Carson put in. “Working and eating and playing cards and dancing — why, that’s just what the men do in New York. I meant Indians, and things like that.”
“Yes, the Indians are pretty bad,” Rick agreed. “You’ve got to keep your eye on ’em all the time. They’ll get anything that’s loose. Worst sneak thieves in the world. But I don’t call that very exciting. In fact, I guess I’m having the most exciting time of my life right now.”
“Oh, so you like New York?”
“I should say not. That is, I didn’t mean New York. I meant right now, here at this table.”
“My goodness, I don’t see anything very exciting about this,” the girl smiled.
“Of course not. You’re looking in the wrong direction. You’re looking at me and I’m looking at you. You know, it’s a funny thing about your eyes. They look like the eyes of a pony I had once, the best that ever felt a saddle. The only time I ever cried was when he stumbled in a prairie dog hole and had to be shot.”
This was not the first compliment Rick had ever paid a woman, but you may see that he had not practiced the art sufficiently to acquire any great degree of subtlety. It appeared nevertheless not to be totally ineffective, for Miss Carson turned away the eyes that reminded Rick of his lost pony. She even made inquiry about the pony’s name and age, and why his stumbling in a prairie dog hole necessitated his death; also what is a prairie dog and a hole thereof?