Matt laughed. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said.
Lucy joined in the laugh. “No, I can’t say that,” Lucy agreed.
“Ladies and gents, choose your partners and form your squares!”
Lucy looked at Matt expectantly and, with a smile, Matt held out his hand.
“Shall we dance, Mrs. Perkins?”
“Must you call me Mrs. Perkins?” she asked.
“Do you prefer Ma?”
Lucy laughed out loud, and clasped her hand to her mouth. “How about Lucy?” she suggested.
“Lucy it is,” Matt replied.
“Thank you, Matt, I would love to dance.”
They danced two more squares before six of Denbigh’s men rode up. All six were armed when they stepped up to the table to buy their tickets.
“Gentlemen, if you are going to come in here, you are going to have to leave your guns outside,” the fireman who was manning the front door said.
“I don’t take my gun off for anyone,” Meacham said.
“That’s fine, sir. If you want to keep your gun, you may keep it,” the fireman said politely. “You just can’t come in here with it.”
Seeing that there appeared to be some disturbance at the front door, Matt, John, and one of the other fireman walked over to see what was going on.
“Any trouble, Carl?” John asked the fireman at the door.
“These gentlemen don’t seem to want to check their guns,” Carl replied.
“Meacham, isn’t it?” John said to Meacham.
“That’s right,” Meacham replied.
“Mr. Meacham, as I am sure you can tell by looking around this room, nobody is armed,” Carl, the fireman at the door said. “That means you are in no danger here. I see no reason for you and your men to be armed.”
“What about Jensen here?” Meacham asked. “I’ve never known him to be without his gun.”
Without saying a word, Matt opened his jacket to show that he wasn’t armed.
“All right, boys, give up your guns,” Meacham said to the others as he unbuckled his gun belt and handed it to the fireman who was sitting at the table. He forced a smile. “We do want to be sociable, after all.”
Meacham, Slater, Dillon, Wilson, Bleeker, and Carver gave up their guns, then the six of them moved on into the ballroom. For the first few minutes, there was an uneasiness in the room. All knew that these men worked for Denbigh, and Slater, Dillon, and Wilson were frequent troublemakers when they came to town.
“Well, come on!” Slater shouted. “This is supposed to be a dance, ain’t it? How can you dance without music?”
Walter Bowman, the fire chief, nodded at the band leader, and with a few stomps of his foot and nods of his head, the music started once again. Within a few minutes, the dancing resumed, everyone got back into a good mood, and the six interlopers were forgotten.
Unable to get any of the ladies of the town to dance with them, Slater, Dillon, and Wilson cavorted around in their own square, and while they were disruptive with their loud laughter, and sometimes intrusive with their wide turns, they weren’t causing enough trouble to make it uncomfortable for others at the dance.
Meacham made no effort to dance. Instead, he stood to one side, leaning back against the wall, observing. Bleeker and Carver discovered the spiked punch, and they quickly ensconced themselves by the punch bowl, where they did little but drink and exchange obscene observations about the women who were present. That might not have caused any trouble at all, had Matt not overheard one of their comments when he came to the table to get coffee for himself and Lucy.
“They say that Perkins woman runs a boarding-house,” Bleeker said to Carver. “Ma Perkins’, they call it. But look at her. Does she look like someone who runs a boardinghouse?”
“Ha!” Carver replied. “Boardinghouse, is it? It’s a whorehouse just as sure as a gun is iron, and she is the chief whore.”
“Of course she is,” Carver said. “Look at her. You can tell she is a whore just by lookin’ at her.”
“What do you say that after this dance is over, we drop by her whorehouse and do some business with her?” Bleeker said.
Matt put both cups down and stepped up to the two men.
“Excuse me. I wonder if I could ask you two men to step outside?”
Matt’s sudden appearance surprised the two men, neither of whom had noticed him approach the coffee table.
“What do you want us to go outside for?” Bleeker asked.
“Because I heard what you two said about Mrs. Perkins, and I don’t like it.”
“Calling her a whore, you mean?” Bleeker replied with a chuckle. “Seeing as you are probably samplin’ some of her services, I don’t know why you would get all upset over it.”
