"There's a dance over to the school house tonight, for one thing. Coming, Buck?" Thornton shook his head. "No. Hadn't heard of it and I guess I'll be busy enough without prancing out to dances." And then, a little curiosity in his even tones, "How does it happen you're not out hunting rustlers with the old man?" Young King lifted his head and again Thornton saw in a man's eyes a thing which was so vague that it went almost unnoted, a look of veiled suspicion. "The old man hunts his way and I hunt mine," Bud King said briefly. "And besides, I haven't been to a shindig for six months." A little flush ran up into his face under Thornton's level glance, and Buck laughed softly. "Who's the girl, Bud?" he challenged. "Aw, go chase yourself," Bud flung back at him, but with a reddening grin. To Thornton came a swift inspiration. "Wonder if Miss Waverly will be over from the Corners?" he asked. "Dunno," Bud replied innocently, so innocently that Thornton laughed again. Thornton rode back to the Poison Hole. And as he went, his thoughts ran now to the mission upon which old man King had set forth, now upon the wisdom of shaving, putting on his best suit and new hat and going to a dance.... "It isn't so much I want to see her again," he told himself, "as I want to give back her spur rowel!" CHAPTER XVIII THE DANCE AT DEER CREEK SCHOOLHOUSE Deer Creek schoolhouse stood in a tiny, emerald valley half a dozen miles from Hill's Corners, some fifteen miles from Thornton's cabin, its handful of barefooted pupils coming from the families scattered through the valley. It was a one roomed building with two low doors and six square windows. And yet it offered ample enough floor space and bench accommodations for the valley dances, its one room being twenty-four feet long and twelve feet wide, certainly over large for the single "school marm" and her small flock, having been constructed with an eye to just such social gatherings as the one tonight. The teacher's desk had been taken outdoors by willing hands; the pupils' benches stood along the walls for the "women folk" during the intermissions; upon the slightly raised platform at one end of the room were the chairs for the musicians, fiddler and guitarist. And upon the floor was much shaved candle. For light there were the four coal-oil lamps with their foolish reflectors against the walls, and a full moon shining in through door and windows.