Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/235

 the lure of becoming waitresses in the railroad eating-houses, simply by anticipation of its long-spaced pleasures. Once a girl was held on the range until she was married, she was anchored there for life.

There was no church in the range country where the Diamond Tail ranch spread its far boundaries, no ministers to cure the souls of any, no matter how spiritually sick. But there was a notable fiddler who went about from ranch to ranch like a troubadour of old, and who, with his lone hand, supplied the music for the dances at Four Corners, as well as other social gatherings in public and private places where his skill might be required.

This fiddler, known all over the inter-mountain range country as Banjo Gibson, because of his proficiency with that merry instrument, was making the night joyous at Four Corners dance house on the night of the first ball of the season. For one lone fiddler he was making considerable noise, as one fiddler must make who worked against the competition of Fred Grubb calling the numbers of the quadrille.

Fred stood on the little rostrum, lifted about a foot above the ballroom floor, where the fiddler sat, singing the tune as Banjo Gibson played it, singing the figures of the dance to it, changing tunes with as much facility as the fiddler himself. Fred was as famous for his calling-off as he was for his jewsharp playing, two accomplishments which carried him farther on the range than all the poetry he ever hatched.

The tune was The Girl I Left Behind Me, and Fred's adaptation of it to the occasion was like this: