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Beverley drew a deep breath and came promptly back from his dream. It was now Oncle Jazon's turn to assume a reflective, reminiscent mood. He looked about him with an expression of vague half tenderness on his shriveled features. "I's jes' a thinkin' how time do run past a feller," he presently remarked.
Alice and Beverley were soon in the whirl of the dance, forgetful of everything but an exhilaration stirred to its utmost by Oncle Jazon's music.
You know 'at she deserves nothin' but the best; an' by the Holy Virgin, she's got to have it, or I'm a goin' to know several reasons why. Thet's what made me put the question straight to ye, young man, an' I expects a straight answer." Beverley's face paled; but not with anger. He grasped one of Oncle Jazon's greasy hands and gave it such a squeeze that the old fellow grimaced painfully.
Oncle Jazon attacked his fiddle again with startling energy. Those who were not to dance formed a compact double line around the wall, the shorter ones in front, the taller in the rear. And what a scene it was! but no person present regarded it as in any way strange or especially picturesque, save as to the gown of Alice, which was now floating and whirling in time to Oncle Jazon's mad music.
Overhead in the bare tops of the scrub oaks that covered the prairie oasis, the February wind sang a shrill and doleful song. Beverley started as if a blow had been aimed at him. Oncle Jazon's question, indeed, was a blow as unexpected as it was direct and powerful.
He separated the latest acquisition from the rest of the wisp and added, with a heinous chuckle: "This'n's Long-Hair's!" And so it was. Beverley knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose to go. "Wen they kicks yer Oncle Jazon's ribs," the old man added, "they'd jes' as well lay down an' give up, for he's goin' to salervate 'em."
Oncle Jazon's elbow was tired and the enthusiasm generated by his unrecognized Bergonzi became fitful, while the relaxing crowd rapidly encroached upon the space set apart for the dancers. In the open lamps suspended here and there the oil was running low, and the rag wicks sputtered and winked with their yellow flames.
Hamilton looked as Farnsworth directed, and sure enough, there was the young Virginian Lieutenant, standing on a barricade, his hat off, cheering his men with a superb show of zeal. Not a hair of his head was missing, so far as the glass could be relied upon to show. Oncle Jazon's quick old eyes saw the gleam of the telescope tube in the loop-hole.
What to see and hear, what to turn aside as a joke, what to insist upon with inflexible mastery, he knew by the fine instantaneous sense of genius. There were many men of Oncle Jazon's cast, true as steel, but refractory as flint, who could not be dominated by any person, no matter of what stamp or office. To them an order was an insult; but a suggestion pleased and captured them.
Who's got some tobacker?" Oncle Jazon's story, when presently he told it, interested Clark deeply. In the first place he was glad to hear that Simon Kenton had once more escaped from the Indians; and the news from Beverley, although bad enough, left room for hope. Frontiersmen always regarded the chances better than even, so long as there was life.
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