Spanish Johnny had no shop of his own, but he kept a table and an order-book in one corner of the drug store where paints and wall-paper were sold, and he was sometimes to be found there for an hour or so about noon. Thea had gone into the drug store to have a friendly chat with the proprietor¹, who used to lend her books from his shelves. She found Johnny there, trimming rolls of wall-paper for the parlor² of Banker Smith’s new house. She sat down on the top of his table and watched him.
 
“Johnny,” she said suddenly, “I want you to write down the words of that Mexican serenade you used to sing; you know, ‘Rosa de Noche.’ It’s an unusual song. I’m going to study it. I know enough Spanish for that.”
 
Johnny looked up from his roller with his bright, affable smile. “Si, but it is low for you, I think; voz contralto. It is low for me.”
 
“Nonsense. I can do more with my low voice than I used to. I’ll show you. Sit down and write it out for me, please.” Thea beckoned⁴ him with the short yellow pencil tied to his order-book.
 
Johnny ran his fingers through his curly black hair. “If you wish. I do not know if that serenata all right for young ladies. Down there it is more for married ladies. They sing it for husbands—or somebody else, may-bee.” Johnny’s eyes twinkled and he apologized gracefully⁵ with his shoulders. He sat down at the table, and while Thea looked over his arm, began to write the song down in a long, slanting⁸ script, with highly ornamental⁹ capitals. Presently he looked up. “This-a song not exactly Mexican,” he said thoughtfully. “It come from farther down; Brazil, Venezuela, may-bee. I learn it from some fellow down there, and he learn it from another fellow. It is-a most like Mexican, but not quite.” Thea did not release him, but pointed¹⁰ to the paper. There were three verses of the song in all, and when Johnny had written them down, he sat looking at them meditatively¹¹, his head on one side. “I don’ think for a high voice, señorita,” he objected with polite persistence¹². “How you accompany with piano?”
 
“Oh, that will be easy enough.”
 
“For you, may-bee!” Johnny smiled and drummed on the table with the tips of his agile¹³ brown fingers. “You know something? Listen, I tell you.” He rose and sat down on the table beside her, putting his foot on the chair. He loved to talk at the hour of noon. “When you was a little girl, no bigger than that, you come to my house one day ’bout noon, like this, and I was in the door, playing guitar. You was barehead, barefoot; you run away from home. You stand there and make a frown at me an’ listen. By ’n by you say for me to sing. I sing some lil’ ting, and then I say for you to sing with me. You don’ know no words, of course, but you take the air and you sing it justa beauti-ful! I never see a child do that, outside Mexico. You was, oh, I do’ know—seven year, may-bee. By ’n by the preacher come look for you and begin for scold. I say, ‘Don’ scold, Meester Kronborg. She come for hear guitar. She gotta some music in her, that child. Where she get?’ Then he tell me ’bout your gran’papa play oboe in the old country. I never forgetta that time.” Johnny chuckled¹⁴ softly.
 
Thea nodded. “I remember that day, too. I liked your music better than the church music. When are you going to have a dance over there, Johnny?”
 
Johnny tilted¹⁵ his head. “Well, Saturday night the Spanish boys have a lil’ party, some danza. You know Miguel Ramas? He have some young cousins, two boys, very nice-a, come from Torreon. They going to Salt Lake for some job-a, and stay off with him two-three days, and he mus’ have a party. You like to come?”
 
That was how Thea came to go to the Mexican ball. Mexican Town had been increased by half a dozen new families during the last few years, and the Mexicans had put up an adobe¹⁶ dance-hall, that looked exactly like one of their own dwellings¹⁷, except that it was a little longer, and was so unpretentious that nobody in Moonstone knew of its existence. The “Spanish boys” are reticent¹⁸ about their own affairs. Ray Kennedy used to know about all their little doings, but since his death there was no one whom the Mexicans considered simpatico.
 
On Saturday evening after supper Thea told her mother that she was going over to Mrs. Tellamantez’s to watch the Mexicans dance for a while, and that Johnny would bring her home.
 
Mrs. Kronborg smiled. She noticed that Thea had put on a white dress and had done her hair up with unusual care, and that she carried her best blue scarf. “Maybe you’ll take a turn yourself, eh? I wouldn’t mind watching them Mexicans. They’re lovely dancers.”
 
Thea made a feeble suggestion that her mother might go with her, but Mrs. Kronborg was too wise for that. She knew that Thea would have a better time if she went alone, and she watched her daughter go out of the gate and down the sidewalk that led to the depot¹⁹.
 
Thea walked slowly. It was a soft, rosy²⁰ evening. The sand hills were lavender. The sun had gone down a glowing copper²¹ disk, and the fleecy clouds in the east were a burning rose-color, flecked with gold. Thea passed the cottonwood grove²² and then the depot, where she left the sidewalk and took the sandy path toward Mexican Town. She could hear the scraping of violins being tuned²³, the tinkle²⁴ of mandolins, and the growl²⁵ of a double bass²⁶. Where had they got a double bass? She did not know there was one in Moonstone. She found later that it was the property of one of Ramas’s young cousins, who was taking it to Utah with him to cheer him at his “job-a.”
 
The Mexicans never wait until it is dark to begin to dance, and Thea had no difficulty in finding the new hall, because every other house in the town was deserted²⁷. Even the babies had gone to the ball; a neighbor was always willing to hold the baby while the mother danced. Mrs. Tellamantez came out to meet Thea and led her in. Johnny bowed to her from the platform at the end of the room, where he was playing the mandolin along with two fiddles²⁸ and the bass. The hall was a long low room, with whitewashed²⁹ walls, a fairly tight plank³⁰ floor, wooden benches along the sides, and a few bracket lamps screwed to the frame timbers. There must have been fifty people there, counting the children. The Mexican dances were very much family affairs. The fathers always danced again and again with their little daughters, as well as with their wives. One of the girls came up to greet Thea, her dark cheeks glowing with pleasure and cordiality, and introduced her brother, with whom she had just been dancing. “You better take him every time he asks you,” she whispered. “He’s the best dancer here, except Johnny.”
 
Thea soon decided³¹ that the poorest dancer was herself. Even Mrs. Tellamantez, who always held her shoulders so stiffly, danced better than she did. The musicians did not remain long at their post. When one of them felt like dancing, he called some other boy to take his instrument, put on his coat, and went down on the floor. Johnny, who wore a blousy white silk shirt, did not even put on his coat.
 
The dances the railroad men gave in Firemen’s Hall were the only dances Thea had ever been allowed to go to, and they were very different from this. The boys played rough jokes and thought it smart to be clumsy and to run into each other on the floor. For the square dances there was always the bawling³² voice of the caller, who was also the county auctioneer.
 
This Mexican dance was soft and quiet. There was no calling, the conversation was very low, the rhythm of the music was smooth and engaging, the men were graceful⁶ and courteous³³. Some of them Thea had never before seen out of their working clothes, smeared³⁴ with grease from the round-house or clay from the brickyard. Sometimes, when the music happened to be a popular Mexican waltz song, the dancers sang it softly as they moved. There were three little girls under twelve, in their first communion dresses, and one of them had an orange marigold in her black hair, just over her ear. They danced with the men and with each other. There was an atmosphere of ease and friendly pleasure in the low, dimly lit room, and Thea could not help wondering whether the Mexicans had no jealousies³⁵ or neighborly grudges³⁶ as the people in Moonstone had. There was no constraint³⁷ of any kind there to-night, but a kind of natural harmony about their movements, their greetings, their low conversation, their smiles.
 
Ramas brought up his two young cousins, Silvo and Felipe, and presented them. They were ............