Missing

From all over the Malpais country, from the water-sheds where Bear and Elk and Cow creeks head, from the halfway house far out in the desert where the stage changes horses, men and women dribbled to the Frying Pan for the big dance after the round-up. Great were the preparations. Many cakes and pies and piles of sandwiches had been made ready. Also there was a wash boiler full of coffee and a galvanized tub brimming with lemonade. For the Frying Pan was doing itself proud.

Phil and his sister drove over together. The boy had asked Bess to go with him, but Cuffs had beaten him to it. The distance was only twenty-five miles, a neighborly stroll in that country of wide spaces and desert stretches filled with absentees.

When Phyllis came into the big room where the dancing was in progress, her dark eye swept the room without finding him for whom she looked. There were many there she knew, not more than two or three whom she had never met, but among them all she looked at none who was a magnet for her eyes. Keller had not yet arrived.

Before she had taken her seat she had three engagements to dance. Jim Yeager had waylaid her; so, too, had Slim and Curly. She waltzed first with Phil, and after he had done his duty he left her to the besiegings of half a score of riders for various ranches who came and went and came again. She joked with them, joined the merry banter that went on, laughed at them when they grew sentimental, always with a sprightly devotion to the matter in hand.