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Updated: May 5, 2025
They froze in their card-playing attitudes, turning horrified eyes in the direction of the sound. The door opened inward, and a ghastly moment passed before they could see what was behind it. Then each man's breath escaped with a little sound of amazement and awe. It was Bela. Raindrops sparkled like diamonds in Bela's dark hair and upon her glowing cheeks.
She looked despairingly around the disordered cabin, and moving uncertainly to the nearest box, dropped upon it, and spreading her arms on the table, let her head fall between them and wept like a white woman. The next day, as far as the settlement was concerned, Sam Gladding had ceased to be. Bringing the team to Bela's as he had promised, he left it tied outside, and the night had swallowed him.
These parties last all night or near it. It needs darkness to give the wild part-song its full effect, and to inspire the drummers to produce a voice of awe from the muttering tom-toms. They work up slowly. During a pause in the singing, while the drummer held his stick-kettle over the fire to contract the skin, some one asked Jeresis if he had seen Bela's white man.
She knew well enough that envy of her fashionable attire bore a large share in the ill-will which was displayed against her, and the handsome Jewess, who so often had to bear the contempt and the sneers of these Magyar peasants whom she despised, was delighted that Erös Béla's admiration for her had induced him to give her an opportunity of queening it for once amongst them all.
She did not altogether approve of Béla's choice of a wife, and her greetings of Elsa were always of a luke-warm character, and were usually accompanied by lengthy lectures on housewifery and the general management of a kitchen.
This was too much for Joe's self-control. A dull, bricky flush crept under his skin. "Put it over nothing!" he growled. "You come over to Bela's to-night if you want to see how I handle a cook!" "Who is the old guy camped beside Bela's shack?" asked the stranger. "Musq'oosis, a kind of medicine man of her tribe," answered Mahooley. "Is he her father?" "No; her father was a white man."
Of course, everyone knew of Béla's aversion to the csárdás, and curiosity prompted gaffers and gossips to try and hear what would be the end of this argument between the pretty bride who certainly looked rather wilful and obstinate now and her future lord and master.
"Ah, tell him to go before he's thrown out!" cried Joe. That settled it. Bela's head went up with a jerk, and her eyes flashed savagely at Joe. To Sam she said clearly: "Come in, my house is open to all." "Thanks," said Sam. Bela glared at Joe, defying him to do his worst. Joe refused her challenge. His eyes bolted. He scowled and muttered under his breath.
The banquet this afternoon had been a veritable triumph. Whatever she had suffered through Béla's final disloyalty to herself, she knew that Kapus Elsa must have suffered all through the banquet. The humiliation of seeing one's bridegroom openly flaunting his admiration for another woman must have been indeed very bitter to bear.
"Oh, never mind him!" said Big Jack. "He doesn't count! What is your answer?" Bela stopped laughing. "Well, I got think about it," she said. "I tell you to-morrow." The situation at Nine-Mile Point was not improved by the wholesale proposal for Bela's hand. The twenty-four hours she required for her answer promised to be hard to get through.
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