Read Corral Nocturne for Free Online Page B

shoe.”
    “What’s all this fuss over a new dress for,
anyway?” said Ed from the corner where he was barricaded with a
newspaper, having been forced to withdraw there by the amount of
“frills and stuff,” as he put it, laid out on the table and the
hard-cushioned old sofa.
    “Ellie’s going to the Fourth of July dance,
that’s what it’s about,” said Mrs. Strickland.
    “How’s she going to get there?”
    “Cole Newcomb is taking me,” said Ellie,
unconsciously sitting up a little straighter as she pronounced the
words. She had laid aside the catalogue, and was working on basting
a ruffle for the dress’s flounced hem.
    Ed cocked his head lazily with the first
appearance of interest he had shown. “Newcomb, eh?” he said.
“Pretty swell company you’re getting yourself into there.”
    “Oh, no, Cole’s not like that at all. He’s
very nice,” said Ellie absently, intent upon a delicate bit of
gathering.
    Ed gave the combined grunt and sniff of the
unconvinced and retired again behind his paper. “Still watch out if
I was you. Pretty fast sort, I’ll bet, what with the money old
Newcomb’s got, and his getting educated back East, and driving a
pair of horses like that. What’s he doing hanging around here at
the Fourth, when he could have his pick out of the girls up that
way whose folks are closer to what the Newcombs have got?”
    Ellie stared at her brother, letting her work
rest in her lap for a second. An oddly uneasy, sickly feeling
burned in her throat, startling her with its unpleasantness. The
ill-natured speculations cut sharply and unexpectedly into tender
places she had not known existed. But Ed was reading, apparently
only half his mind on what he had been saying, and Mrs. Strickland
was murmuring to herself counting something in her work and had not
been paying attention.
    It was only a moment’s sensation, and Ellie
brushed it off with a short shake of the head to herself and picked
up her ruffle. She was not accustomed to set much store by what Ed
said anyway.
     
    “There,” she said a few minutes later,
lifting the gathered ruffle and shaking it out lightly. “I’ve
finished basting this one, Mama. Can we put them on tonight?”
    “No, better wait till tomorrow so we don’t
have to stop midway through. I declare, I’m never sure when I stop
working that old machine if it’ll ever start again. Every time it
sticks I figure it’s through. I’d rather have daylight to do those
flounces by anyhow.”
    “It’ll all be done in plenty of time, though,
won’t it?” inquired Ellie very meekly, knowing it was perhaps the
tenth time she had put that question.
    “Plenty. What’s the use of having it done
before your shoes get here, anyway? Then you can try it all on
together.”
    Ellie smiled and sighed. “I know. I’m just so
eager for the Fourth, I can’t wait for it all to be ready! I wish
the dance was tomorrow.”
     

     
    She came very near regretting that wish a few
days later.
    It was a hot, windy afternoon three days
before the Fourth, and Ellie was out hanging up the wash on the
line, when she heard hoofbeats and looked over her shoulder to see
Cole Newcomb riding in. Ellie left a sheet swinging from a
clothespin at one corner and ran to the gate to meet him, as had
become her habit when he turned up unexpectedly.
    Today, however, Cole was holding the bay
horse down to a trot, and the weight of something perplexing seemed
to be resting on him when he pulled up at the gate, in a marked
difference from his usual carefree demeanor.
    “Ellie,” he said after they had exchanged a
greeting, “I’ve got kind of bad news for you, but it’s not as bad
as it could be. I’ve got to go out to one of our roundup camps for
Dad, and I don’t know if I’ll be back in time for the Fourth.”
    “Oh,” said Ellie. Surprise, uncertainty were
in her voice, neither very overwhelming—no hint of the happy
expectations and careful plans she saw tumbling down all around
her.