University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
JAKE SHAMBERLAIN'S BALL.

It grew dusk. Glimmering camp-fires marked
the circle of the Mormon caravan. The wagons
seemed each one, in the gloaming, a giant white
nightcap of an ogress leaning over her coals.
The world looked drowsy, and invited the pilgrims
toward the Mecca of the new Thingamy
to repose. They did not seem inclined to accept.
The tramping and lowing cattle kept up a tumult
like the noise of a far city. And presently another
din!

As Brent and I approached the fort, forth
issued Jake Shamberlain, with a drummer on
this side and a fifer on that. “Pop goes the
Weasel,” the fifer blew. A tuneless bang resounded
from the drum. If there was one thing
these rival melodists scorned, time was that
one thing. They might have been beating and
blowing with the eight thousand miles of the
globe's diameter between them, instead of Jake
Shamberlain's person, for any consideration they
showed to each other.

Jake, seeing us, backed out from between his
orchestra, who continued on, beating and blowing
in measureless content.

“We 're going to give a ball, gentlemen, and
request the honor of your company in ten minutes,
precisely. Kids not allowed on account
of popular prejudice. Red-flannel shirts and
boots with yaller tops is rayther the go fur
dress.”

“A ball, Jake! Where?”

“Why, in that rusty hole of old Bridger's.
Some of them John Bulls has got their fiddles
along. I allowed 't would pay to scare up a
dance. Guess them gals wont be the wus fur
a break-down or an old-fashioned hornpiper.
They hain't seen much game along back, ef
their looks tells the story. I never seed sech a
down-heel lot.”

Jake ran off after his music. We heard them,
still disdaining time, march around the camp
announcing the fandango.

“This helps us,” said Brent. “Our friends,
of course, will not join the riot. When the
Mormons are fairly engaged, we will make our
visit.”

“It is a good night for a gallop,” said I.

He nodded, but said nothing.

Presently Jake, still supported by his pair of
melodists, reappeared. A straggling procession

of Saints followed him. They trooped into the
enclosure, a motley throng indeed. Even that
dry husk of music, hardly even cadence, had put
some spirits into them. Noise, per se, is not
without virtue; it means life. Shamberlain's
guests came together, laughing and talking.
Their laughter was not liquid. But swallowing
prairie-dust does not instruct in dulcet
tones. Rather wrinkled merriment; but still
better than no merriment at all.

We entered with the throng. Within was a
bizarre spectacle. A strange night-scene for a
rough-handed Flemish painter of low life to
portray.

The palisades of old Bridger's Malakoff enclosed
a space of a hundred feet square. A
cattle-shed, house, and trading-shop surrounded
three sides of the square. The rest was open
court, paved with clod, the native carpet of the
region. Adobes, crumbling as the most strawless
bricks ever moulded by a grumbling Hebrew
with an Egyptian taskmaster, were the
principal material of Bridger's messuage. The
cattle on Mr. Mechi's model farm would have
whisked their tails and turned away in utter
contempt from these inelegant accommodations.
No high-minded pig would have consented to
wallow there. The khan of Cheronæa, abhorred
of Grecian travellers, is a sweeter place.

The khan of Tiberias, terror of pilgrims, is a
cleaner refuge. Bridger's Fort was as musty and
infragrant a caravansary as any of those dirty
cloisters of the Orient, where the disillusioned
howadji sinks into the arms of that misery's bedfellow,
the King of the Fleas, — which kangaroo-legged
caliph, let me say, was himself, or in
the person of a vigorous vizier, on the spot at
the Fort, entertaining us strangers according to
his royal notions of hospitality.

Into this Court of Dirt thronged the Latter-Day
Saints, in raiment also in its latter day.

“The ragamuffin brigade,” whispered I to
Brent. “Jake Shamberlain's red-flannel shirts
and yaller-topped boots would be better than
this seediness of the furbelowed nymphs and
ole clo' swains. Evidently suits of full dress are
not to be hired at a pinch on the boulevards
of Sizzumville.”

Brent made no answer, and surveyed the
throng anxiously.

“They have not come, — the father and daughter,”
he said. “I cannot think of the others
now.”

“Shall we go to them?”

“Not yet. Sizzum sees us and will suspect.”

We stood by regarding, too much concerned
for our new friends to feel thoroughly the humor
of the scene. But it made its impression.

For lights at the Shamberlain ball, instead
of the gas and wax of civilization, a fire blazed
in one corner of the court, and sundry dips
of unmitigated tallow, with their perfume undiluted,
flared from perches against the wall.
Overhead, up in the still, clear sky, the barefaced
stars stared at the spectacle, and shook
their cheeks over the laughable manœuvres of
terrestrials.

The mundane lights, fire and dips, flashed
and glimmered; the skylights twinkled merrily;
the guests were assembled; the ball waited to
begin.

Jake Shamberlain, the master of ceremonies,
cleared a space in the middle, and “called for
his fiddlers three.”

A board was laid across two barrels, and upon
it Jake arrayed his orchestra, with Brother Bottery,
so called, for leader. Twang went the fiddles.
“Pardners for a kerdrille!” cried Jake.

Sizzum led off the ball with one of the Blowsalinds
before mentioned. Dancing is enjoined
in the Latter-Day Church. They cite Jephthah's
daughter and David dancing by the ark as good
Scriptural authority for the custom.

“Right and left!” cried Jake Shamberlain.
“Forrud the gent! The lady forrud! Forrud
the hull squad. Jerk pardners! Scrape away,
Bottery! Kick out and no walkin'! Prance in,

gals! Lamm ahead, boys! Time, Time! All
hands round! Catch a gal and spin her! Well,
that was jest as harnsome a kerdrille as ever I
seed.”

And so on with another quadrille, minuet,
and quadrille again. But the subsequent dances
were not so orderly as the first. Filled with noise
and romping, they frequently ended in wild disorder.
The figures tangled themselves into a
labyrinth, and the music, drowned by the tumult,
ceased to be a clew of escape. Nor could Jake's
voice, half suffocated by the dust, be heard above
the din, until, having hushed his orchestra, he
had called “Halt!” a dozen times.

In the intervals between the dances we observed
Larrap distributing whiskey to the better class of
the emigrants. Sizzum did not disdain to accept
the hospitality of the stranger. Old Bridger's
liquid stores, now Mormon property, and for sale
at the price of Johannisberger, diminished fast
on this festal night.

“Shall we go?” whispered I to Brent, after a
while.

“Not quite yet. Old Bottery announces that
he is going to play a polka. Fancy a polka here!
That will engage Sizzum after his potations, so
that he will forget our friends.”

“Now, brethren and saints,” cried Jake, “attention
for the polky! Pipe up, Bottery!”

Evidently not the first time that this Strauss of
some Manchester casino had played the very rollicking
polka he now rattled off from his strings.
How queerly ignoble those strident notes sounded
in the silence of night in the great wilderness.
For loud as was the uproar in the court, overhead
were the stars, quiet and amazed, and, without,
the great, still prairie protested against the
discordant tumult. Some barbaric harmony, wild
and thrilling, poured forth from strong-lunged
brass, or a strain like that of the horns in Der
Freischutz, would have chimed with the spirit of
the desert. But Bottery's mean twang suited
better the bastard civilization that had invaded
this station of the banished pioneer.

At the sound of the creaking polka, a youth,
pale and unwholesome as a tailor's apprentice,
led out a sister saint. Others followed. Some
danced teetotum fashion. Others bounced clumsily
about. Around them all stood an applauding
circle. The fiddles scraped; the dust flew.
Sizzum and Larrap, two bad elements in combination,
stood together, cheering the dancers.

“Come,” said Brent, “let us get into purer
air and among nobler creatures. How little we
thought,” he continued, “when we were speaking
of such scenes and people as we have just
left as a possible background, what figures would
stand in the foreground!”

“I am glad to be out of that noisy rabble,”
said I, as we passed from the gate. “The stars
seem to look disdainfully on them. I cannot be
entertained by that low comedy, with tragedy
sitting beside our friends' wagon.”

“The stars,” said Brent, bitterly, “are cold
and cruel as destiny. There is heaven overhead,
pretending to be calming and benignant, and giving
no help, while I am thinking in agony what
can be done to save from any touch of shame or
deeper sorrow that noble daughter.”

“It is a fine night for a gallop,” I repeated.

“There they are. We must keep them out of
the fort, Wade. If you love me, detain the old
man in talk for half an hour.”

“Certainly; half a century, if it will do any
good.”

Mr. Clitheroe and his daughter were walking
slowly toward the fort. He appealed to us as
we approached.

“I am urging my daughter to join in the
amusements of the evening,” said he. “You
know, my dear, that many of our old Lancashire
neighbors still would be pleased to see you a
lady patroness of their innocent sports, and lending
your countenance to their healthy hilarity.
A little gayety will do you good, I am sure. This
ball may not be elegant; but it will be cheerful,
and of course conducted with great propriety,

since Brother Sizzum is present. I am afraid he
will miss us, and be offended. That must not
be, Ellen dear. We must not offend Brother Sizzum
in any way whatever. We must consider
that his wishes are sovereign; for is he not the
chosen apostle?”

Brent and I could both have wept to hear this
crazy, senile stuff.

“Pray, father dear,” said Miss Clitheroe, “do
not insist upon it. We shall both be wearied
out, if we are up late after our day's march.”

It was clearly out of tenderness to him that
she avoided the real objections she must have to
such a scene.

“It is quite too noisy and dusty for Miss Clitheroe
in the fort,” said I, and I took his arm.
“Come, sir, let us walk about and have a chat
in the open air.”

I led him off, poor old gentleman, facile under
my resolute control. All he had long ago
needed was a firm man friend to take him in
hand and be his despot; but the weaker he was,
the less he could be subject to his daughter.
It is the feeble, unmasculine men who fight
most petulantly against the influence and power
of women.

“Well, Mr. Wade,” said he, “perhaps you are
right. We have only to fancy this the terrace
outside the chateau, and it is as much according

to rule to promenade here, as to stifle in the ball-room.
You are very kind, gentlemen, both, to
prefer our society to the entertainment inside.
Certainly Brother Bottery's violin is not like one
of our modern bands; but when I was your age
I could dance to anything and anywhere. I
suppose young men see so much more of the
world now, that they outgrow those fancies
sooner.”

So we walked on, away from the harsh sounds
of the ball. Brent dropped behind, talking earnestly
with the lady. How sibylline she looked
in that dim starlight! How Cassandra-like, —
as one dreams that heroic and unflinching prophetess
of ills unheeded or disdained!