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It was sultry, and toward evening the mosquitoes swarmed out of the lush grass around the spring and set the horses stamping and moving about uneasily. But it was a very successful picnic, with all the chatter, all the gourmandizing, all the gossip, all the childish romping in starched white frocks, all the innocuous pastimes that one expects to find at picnics.
Mary Hope wondered how in the world they were all going to find room inside the schoolhouse to dance. She had been frugal in the matter of music, dreading to spend any money in hiring professional musicians, lest she might not have enough people to justify the expense. Now she wished nervously that she had done as Lance Lorrigan had done, and brought musicians from Lava. Of course, there had been no piano when Lance gave his party, which was different. She herself meant to play, and Art Miller had brought his fiddle, and Jennie had volunteered to “chord” with him. But, Mary Hope felt much nervous apprehension lest these Pocatello and Lava people should think it was just Scotch stinginess on her part.
Late in the afternoon a few of the ranchers rode hastily homeward to “do the chores,” but the Lava and Pocatello crowd remained, and began to drift up to the schoolhouse and drum on the piano that was actually going to pay for itself and free Mary Hope’s pride from its burden.
By sundown a dozen energetic couples were209waltzing while a Pocatello dentist with a stiff, sandy pompadour chewed gum and played loudly, with much arm movement and very little rhythm; so very little rhythm that the shuffling feet frequently ceased shuffling, and expostulations rose high above his thunderous chords.
By dusk the overworked ranch women had fed the last hungry mouth and put away the fragments of home-baked cakes and thick sandwiches, and were forming a solid line of light shirtwaists and dark skirts along the wall. The dance was really beginning.
As before, groups of men stood around outside and smoked and slapped at mosquitoes––except that at Lance’s party there had been no mosquitoes to slap––and talked in undertones the gossip of the ranges. If now and then the name of Lorrigan was mentioned, there was no Lorrigan present to hear. At intervals the “floor manager” would come to the door and call out numbers: “Number one, and up to and including sixteen, git your pardners fer a two-step!” Whereupon certain men would pinch out the glow of their cigarettes and grind the stubs into the sod under their heels, and go in to find partners. With that crowd, not all could dance at once; Mary Hope remembered pridefully that there had been no dancing by numbers at the party Lance Lorrigan gave.
What a terrible dance that had been! A regular rowdy affair. And this crowd, big as it was,210had as yet shown no disposition to rowdyism. It surely did make a difference, thought Mary Hope, what kind of people sponsored an entertainment. With the Devil’s Tooth outfit as the leaders, who could expect anything but trouble?
Then she caught herself thinking, with a vague heaviness in her heart, how Lance had taken her away from that other dance; of that long, wonderful, silent ride through the starlight; how careful he had been of her––how tender! But it was only the way he had with him, she later reminded herself impatiently, and smiled over her shoulder at the whirling couples who danced to the music she made; and thought of the money that made her purse heavy as lead, the money that would wipe out her debt to the Lorrigans,––to Lance, if it really were Lance who had bought the piano.
A faint sound came to her through the open window, the rattle of a wagon coming down the hill in the dark. More people were coming to the dance, which meant more money to give to the Lorrigans. Mary Hope smiled again and played faster; so fast that more than one young man shook his head at her as he circled past, and puffed ostentatiously, laughing at the pace she set. She had a wild vision of other dances which she would give––Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s––and pay the Lorrigans for everything they had done; for the books, for the schoolhouse, everything. She felt that then, and then only,211could she face Lance Lorrigan level-eyed, cool, calm, feeling herself a match for him.
The rattle of the wagon sounded nearer, circled the yard, came in at the gate. Mary Hope was giving the dancers the fastest two-step she could play, and she laughed aloud. More people were coming to the dance, and there might not be coffee and sandwiches enough at midnight,––she had over three hundred dollars already.
The dancers whirled past, parted to right and left, stopped all at once. Mary Hope, still playing, looked over her shoulder––into the dark, impenetrable gaze of Tom Lorrigan, standing there in his working clothes, with his big, black Stetson on his head and his six-shooter in its holster on his hip. Behind him Mary Hope saw Al and Duke and Belle, and behind them other Devil’s Tooth men, cowboys whom she only knew slightly from meeting them sometimes in the trail as she rode to and from school. The cowboys seemed to be facing the other way, holding back the crowd near the door.
Mary Hope looked again into Tom’s face, looked at Belle. Her fingers strayed uncertainly over the keys, making discords. She half rose, then sat down again. The room, all at once, seemed very still.
“I’m sorry to disturb yuh,” Tom said, touching his hat brim and lifting his eyebrows at her, half smiling with his lips pulled to one side, like Lance––oh,212maddeningly like Lance!––“but I’ve come after the piano.”
Mary Hope gasped. Her arms went out instinctively across the keyboard, as if she would protect the instrument from his defaming touch.
“I’ll have to ask yuh to move,” said Tom. “Sorry to disturb yuh.”
“I––I’m going to pay for it,” said Mary Hope, finding her voice faint and husky. She had an odd sensation that this was a nightmare. She had dreamed so often of the dance and of the Lorrigans.
“I paid for it long ago. I bought the piano––I’ve come after it.”
Mary Hope slid off the stool, stood facing him, her eyes very blue. After all, he was not Lance. “You can’t have it!” she said. “I won’t let you take it. I’m raising money to pay you for it, and I intend to keep it.” She reached for her purse, but Tom restrained her with a gesture.
“It ain’t for sale,” he said, with that hateful smile that always made her wonder just what lay behind it. “I own it, and I ain’t thinking of selling. Here’s the shipping bill and the guarantee and all; I brought ’em along to show you, in case you got curious about whose piano it is. You see the number on the bill––86945. You’ll find it tallies with the number in the case, if you want to look. Pete, Ed, John, take it and load it in the wagon.”
“Well, now, see here! This is an outrage!213How much is the darn thing worth, anyway? This crowd is not going to stand by and see a raw deal like this pulled off.” It was the Pocatello dentist, and he was very much excited.
“You saw a raw deal, and stood for it, when you saw the Lorrigans cold-shouldered out of the dance,” Belle flashed at him. “We’ve stood for a lot, but this went a little beyond our limit.”
“We’re not going to stand for anything like this, you know!” Another man––also from Lava––shouldered his way up to them.
“Git outa the way, or you’ll git tromped on!” cried Pete over his shoulder as he backed, embracing the piano and groping for handholds.
The Lava man gripped Pete, trying to pull him away. Pete kicked back viciously with a spurred heel. The Lava man yelled and retreated, limping.
Just how it happened, no two men or women afterward agreed in the telling. But somehow the merrymakers, who were merry no longer, went back and back until they were packed solidly at the sides and near the door, a few squeezing through it when they were lucky enough to find room. Behind them came four of the Devil’s Tooth men with six-shooters, looking the crowd coldly in the eyes. Behind these came the piano, propelled by those whom Tom had named with the tone of authority.
The crowd squeezed closer against the wall as the piano went past them. There was not so much214noise and confusion as one would expect. Then, at the last, slim, overworked, round-shouldered Mother Douglas, who had done little save pray and weep and work and scold all her life, walked up and slapped Belle full on the cheek.
“Ye painted Jezebel!” she cried, her eyes burning. “Long have I wanted to smack ye for your wickedness and the brazen ways of ye––ye painted Jezebel!”
Blind, dazed with anger, Belle struck back.
“Don’t you touch my mother! Shame on you! Shame on you all! I didna ask you for your favors, for any gifts––and you gave them and then you come and take them––” This was the voice of Mary Hope, shrill with rage.
“You gave a dance in a house built for you by the Lorrigans, on Lorrigan land, and you danced to the music of a Lorrigan piano––and the Lorrigans were not good enough to be asked to come! Get outa my way, Hope Douglas––and take your mother with you. Callmea painted Jezebel, will she?”
The piano was outside, being loaded into the wagon, where Riley sat on the seat, chewing tobacco grimly and expectorating copiously, without regard for those who came close. Outside there was also much clamor of voices. A lantern held high by a Devil’s Tooth man who had a gun in the other, lighted the platform and the wagon beside it.
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At the last, Tom Lorrigan himself went back after the stool, and the room silenced so that his footsteps sounded loud on the empty floor. He looked at Mary Hope, looked at her mother, looked at the huddled, whispering women, the gaping children. He swung out of his course and slipped one arm around Belle and so led her outside, the stool swinging by one leg in the other hand.
“A painted Jezebel!” Belle said under her breath when they were outside the ring of light. “My God, Tom, think of that!”
Mary Hope had never in her life suffered such humiliation. It seemed to her that she stood disgraced before the whole world, that there was no spot wherein she might hide her shame. Her mother was weeping hysterically because she had been “slappit by the painted Jezebel” and because Aleck was not there to avenge her. The Pocatello and Lava crowd seemed on the point of leaving, and were talking very fast in undertones that made Mary Hope feel that they were talking about her. The rattle of the Lorrigan wagon hauling the piano away, the click of the horses’ feet as the Devil’s Tooth riders convoyed the instrument, made her wince, and want to put her palms over her ears to shut out the sound of it.
But she was Scotch, and a Douglas. There was no weak fiber that would let her slump before this emergency. She went back to the little platform, stood beside the desk that held the globe and the216dictionary and a can of flowers, and rapped loudly with the ruler from the Pocatello hardware store. By degrees the room ceased buzzing with excited talk, the shuffling feet stood still.
“I am very sorry,” said Mary Hope clearly, “that your pleasure has––has been interrupted. It seems there has been a misunderstanding about the piano. I thought that I could buy it for the school, and for that reason I gave this dance. But it seems––that––I’m terribly sorry the dance has been spoiled for you, and if the gentlemen who bought tickets will please step this way, I will return your money.”
She had to clench her teeth to keep her lips from trembling. Her hands shook so that she could scarcely open her handbag. But her purpose never faltered, her eyes were blue and sparkling when she looked out over the crowd. She waited. Feet scuffled the bare floor, voices whispered, but no man came toward her.
“I want to return your money,” she said sharply, “because without the piano I suppose you will not want to dance, and––”
“Aw, the dickens!” cried a big, good-natured cowpuncher with a sun-peeled nose and twinkly gray eyes. “I guess we all have danced plenty without no piano music. There’s mouth harps in this crowd, and there’s a fiddle. Git yore pardners for a square dance!” And under his breath, to his immediate masculine neighbors he added:217“To hell with the Lorrigans and their piano!”
Mary Hope could have hugged that cowpuncher who hastily seized her hand and swung her into place as the first couple in the first set.
When the three sets were formed he called the dance figures in a sonorous tone that swept out through the open windows and reached the ears of the Lorrigans as they rode away.
“Honoryore pardner––and the lady on yourleft!Joineight hands, an’ a-circle to theleft!Break anIndiantrail home in the Indianstyle, with thelady in thelead!Swing the ladybehindyou once in a while!––The ladybehindyou once in a while!––Nowyour pardner, and go hogwild!”
The fiddle and two mouth harps were scarcely heard above the rhythmic stamping of feet, the loud chant of the caller, who swung Mary Hope clear of the floor whenever he put his arm around her.
“A––secondcouple out, and a-cir-clefour!Lay-dees do cedo!Youswing me, an’ I’ll swingyou––Andwe’llall dance in the same oleshoe!“Samefour on to thenext!––dance the oceanwave!Thesameole boys, thesameole trail,Watchthat possum walk therail!Cir-cle six, and a-do cedo!Swing,everyone swing, and a––promenadehome!”
“Whowants a piano? Couldn’t hear it if yuh’ had it!” he cried, while the twelve couples paused218breathless. Then he wiped his face frankly and thoroughly with his handkerchief, caught Mary Hope’s hand in his, lifted his voice again in his contagious sing-song:
“Cir-cle eight, till you get straight!Swingthem ladies, like swingin’ on agate!Leftfoot up, and-a-right footdown––Makethat big foot jar theground!Prom-e-nade!Swingyore corner, if you ain’t tooslow!Nowyore pardner, and around yougo!For the––lasttime––and a-longtime––Youknow where, and a-I don’tcare!”
The dance was saved by the big cowpuncher with the peeling nose and the twinkly gray eyes. Mary Hope had never seen him before that day, but whenever she looked at him a lump came in her throat, a warm rush of sheer gratitude thrilled her. She did not learn his name––two or three men called him Burt, but he seemed to be a stranger in the country. Burt saved her dance and kept things moving until the sky was streaked with red and birds were twittering outside in the cottonwoods.
She wanted to thank him, to tell him a little of her gratitude. But when she went to look for him afterwards he was gone, and no one seemed to know just where he belonged. Which was strange, when you consider that in the Black Rim country every one knows everybody.
219CHAPTER EIGHTEENPEDDLED RUMORS
In the smoking compartment of a Pullman car that rocked westward from Pocatello two days after the Fourth, Lance sprawled his big body on a long seat, his head joggling against the dusty window, his mind sleepily recalling, round by round, a certain prize fight that had held him in Reno over the Fourth and had cost him some money and much disgust. The clicking of the car trucks directly underneath, the whirring of the electric fan over his head, the reek of tobacco smoke seemed to him to last for hours, seemed likely to go on forever. Above it all, rising stridently now and then in a disagreeable monotone, the harsh, faintly snarling voice of a man on the opposite seat blended unpleasantly with his dozing discomfort. For a long time the man had been talking, and Lance had been aware of a grating quality of the voice, that yet seemed humorous in its utterances, since his two listeners laughed frequently and made brief, profane comment that encouraged the talker to go on. Finally, as he slowly returned from the hazy borderland of slumber,220Lance became indifferently aware of the man’s words.
From under the peak of his plaid traveling cap Lance lifted his eyelids the length of his black lashes, measured the men with a half-minute survey and closed his eyes again. The face matched the voice. A harsh face, with bold blue eyes, black eyebrows that met over his nose, a mouth slightly prominent, hard and tilted downward at the corners. Over the harshness like a veil was spread a sardonic kind of humor that gave attraction to the man’s personality. In the monotone of his voice was threaded a certain dry wit that gave point to his observations. He was an automobile salesman, it appeared, and his headquarters were in Ogden, and he was going through to Shoshone on business connected with a delayed shipment of cars. But he was talking, when Lance first awoke to his monologue, of the sagebrush country through which the fast mail was reeling drunkenly, making up time that had been lost because of a washout that had held the train for an hour while two section crews sweated over a broken culvert.
“––And by gosh! the funniest thing I ever saw happened right up here in a stretch of country they call the Black Rim. If I was a story writer, I sure would write it up. Talk about the West being tame!––why, I can take you right now, within a few hours’ ride, to where men ride with guns on ’em just as much as they wear their pants. Only221reason they ain’t all killed off, I reckon, is because theyallpack guns.
“Hard-boiled? Say, there’s a bunch up there that’s never been curried below the knees––and never will be. They pulled off a stunt the Fourth that I’ll bet ain’t ever been duplicated anywhere on earth, and never will be. I was in Pocatello, and I went on up with the crowd from there, and got in on the show. And sa-ay, it was some show!
“They’ve got a feud up there that’s rock-bottomed as any feud you ever heard of in Kentucky. It’s been going on for years, and it’ll keep going on till the old folks all die off or move away––or land in the pen. Hasn’t been a killing in there for years, but that’s because they’re all so damn tough they know if one starts shooting it’ll spread like a prairie fire through dry grass.
“There’s an outfit in there––the Devil’s Tooth outfit. Far back as the country was settled––well, they say the first Lorrigan went up in there to get away from the draft in the Civil War, and headed a gang of outlaws that shot and hung more white men and Injuns than any outfit in the State––and that’s going some.
“They were killers from the first draw. Other settlers went in, and had to knuckle under. The Devil’s Tooth gang had the Black Rim in its fist. Father to son––they handed down the disposition––I could tell yuh from here to Boise yarns about that outfit.
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“Now, of course, things have tamed down. As I say, there hasn’t been a Devil’s Tooth killing for years. But it’s there, you know––it’s in the blood. It’s all under the surface. They’re a good-hearted bunch, but it’ll take about four generations to live down the reputation they’ve got, if they all turned Methodist preachers. And,” the grating voice paused for a minute, so that one caught the full significance of his hint, “if all yuh hear is true, religion ain’t struck the Devil’s Tooth yet. It ain’t my business to peddle rumors, and the time’s past when you can hang a man on suspicion––but if you read about the Devil’s Tooth outfit some time in the paper, remember I said it’s brewing. The present Tom Lorrigan ain’t spendingallhis time driving his cows to water. He was hauled up a few years ago, on a charge of rustling. An old Scotchman had him arrested. Tom was cleared––he had the best lawyer in the West––brought him from Boise, where they need good lawyers!––and got off clear. And since then he’s been laying low. That’s the one mistake he’s made, in my opinion. He never did a damn thing, never tried to kill the Scotchman, never acted up at all. And when you think of the breed of cats he is you’ll see yourself that the Black Rim is setting on a volcano.
“Tom Lorrigan has got more men working for him than any outfit in that country. He runs his own round-up and won’t have a rep––that’s a223representative––from any other outfit in his camp. His own men haze outside stock off his range. He’s getting rich. He ships more cattle, more horses than anybody in the country. He don’t have any truck with any of his neighbors, and his men don’t. They’re outside men, mostly. There ain’t a thing anybody can swear to––there ain’t a thing said out loud about the Devil’s Tooth. But it’s hinted and it’s whispered.
“So all this preamble prepares you for the funniest thing I ever saw pulled. But I guess I’m about the only one who saw how funny it was. I know the Black Rim don’t seem to see the joke, and I know the Devil’s Tooth don’t.
“You see, it’s so big and neighbors are so far apart that there ain’t any school district, and a few kids were getting school age, and no place to send ’em. So a couple of families got together and hired the daughter of this old Scotchman to teach school. I ain’t calling her by name––she’s a nice kid, and a nervy kid, and I can see where she thought she was doing the right thing.
“Well, she taught in a tumble-down little shack for a while, and one day this Tom Lorrigan come along, and saw how the girl and the kids were sitting there half froze, and he hazed ’em all home. Broke up the school. Being a Lorrigan, all he’d have to do would be to tell ’em to git––but it made a little stir, all right. The schoolma’am, she went right back the next morning and started in224again. Like shooing a setting hen off her nest, it was.
“Well, next thing they knew, the Devil’s Tooth had built a schoolhouse and said nothing about it. Tom’s a big-hearted cuss––I know Tom––tried to sell him a car, last fall. Darn near made it stick, too. I figured that Tom Lorrigan was maybe ashamed of busting up the school and making talk, so he put up a regular schoolhouse. Then one of his boys had been away to college––only one of the outfit that ever went beyond the Rim, as far as I know––and he gave a dance; a regular house-warming.
“Well, I wasn’t at that dance. I wish I had been. They packed in whisky by the barrel. Everybody got drunk, and everybody got to fighting. This young rooster from college licked a dozen or so, and then took the schoolma’am and drove clear to Jumpoff with her, and licked everybody in town before he left. Sa-ay, it musta been some dance, all right!
“Then––here comes the funny part. Everybody was all stirred up over the Lorrigans’ dance, and right in the middle of the powwow, blest if the Lorrigans didn’t buy a brand new piano and haul it to the schoolhouse. They say it was the college youth, that was stuck on the schoolma’am. Well, everybody out that way got to talking and gossiping––you know how it goes––until the schoolma’am, just to settle the talk, goes and gives a225dance to raise money to pay for the piano. She’s all right––I don’t think for a minute she’s anything butright––and it might have been old Tom himself that bought the piano. Anyway, she went and sent invitations all around, two dollars per invite, and got a big crowd. Had a picnic in the grove, and everything was lovely.
“But sa-ay! She forgot to invite the Lorrigans! Everybody in the country there, except the Devil’s Tooth outfit. I figure that she was afraid they might rough things up a little––and maybe she didn’t like to ask them to pay for something they’d already paid for––but anyway, just when the dance was going good, here came the whole Devil’s Tooth outfit with a four-horse team, and I’m darned if they didn’t walk right in there, in the middle of a dance, take the piano stool right out from under the schoolma’am, and haul the piano home! They––”
A loud guffaw from his friends halted the narrative there. Before the teller of the tale went on, Lance pulled his cap down over his eyes, got up and walked out and stood on the platform.
“They hauled the pianohome!” He scowled out at the reeling line of telegraph posts. “They––hauled––that piano––home!”
He lighted a cigar, took two puffs and threw the thing out over the rail. “She didn’t ask the Lorrigans––to her party. And dad––”
He whirled and went back into the smoking compartment.226He wanted to hear more. The seat he had occupied was still empty and he settled into it, his cap pulled over his eyes, a magazine before his face. The others paid no attention. The harsh-voiced man was still talking.
“Well, they can’t go on forever. They’re bound to slip up, soon or late. And now, of course, there’s a line-up against them. It’s in the blood and I don’t reckon they can change––but the country’s changing. I know of one man that’s in there now, working in the dark, trying to get the goods––but of course, it’s not my business to peddle that kind of stuff. I was tickled about the piano, though. The schoolma’am was game. She offered to give us back our two dollars per, but of course nobody was piker enough to take her up on it. We went ahead and had the dance with harmonicas and a fiddle, and made out all right. Looks to me like the schoolma’am’s all to the good. She’s got the dance money––”
It was of no use. Lance found he could not listen to that man talking about Mary Hope. To strike the man on his fish-like, hard-lipped mouth would only make matters worse, so he once more left the compartment and stood in the open doorway of the vestibule just beyond. The train, slowing to a stop at a tank station, jarred to a standstill. In the compartment behind him the man’s voice sounded loud and raucous now that the mechanical noises had ceased.
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“Well, I never knew it to fail––what’s in the blood will come out. They’ve lived there for three generations now. They’re killers, thieves at heart––human birds of prey, and it don’t matter if it is all under the surface. I say it’sthere.”
At that moment, Lance had the hunger to kill, to stop forever the harsh voice that talked on and on of the Lorrigans and their ingrained badness. He stepped outside, slamming the door shut behind him. The voice, fainter now, could still be heard. He swung down to the cinders, stood there staring ahead at the long train, counting the cars, watching the fireman run with his oil can and climb into the engine cab. He could no longer hear the voice, but he felt that he must forget it or go back and kill the man who owned it.
In the car ahead a little girl leaned out of the window, her curls whipping across her face. Jubilantly she waved her hand at him, shrilled a sweet, “Hello-oh. Whereyougoin’? I’m goin’ to my grandma’s house!”
The rigor left Lance’s jaw. He smiled, showing his teeth, saw that a brakeman was down inspecting a hot box on the forward truck of that car, and walked along to the window where the little girl leaned and waited, waving two sticky hands at him to hurry.
“Hello, baby. I know a grandma that’s going to be mighty happy, before long,” he said, standing just under the window and looking up at her.
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“D’you know my gran’ma? S’e lives in a green house an’ s’e’s got five––hundred baby kittens for me to see! An’ I’m goin’ to bring one home wis me––but Ido’nowhich one. D’you like yellow kittens, or litty gray kittens, or black ones?”
Gravely Lance studied the matter, his eyebrows pulled together, his mouth wearing the expression which had disturbed Mary Hope when he came to mend the lock on her door.
“I’d take––now, if your grandma has one that’s all spotted, you might take that, couldn’t you? Then some days you’d love the yellow spots, and some days you’d love the black spots, and some days––”
“Ooh! And I could call itallthe nice names I want to call it!” The little girl pressed her hands together rapturously. “When my kitty’s got its yellow-spotty day, I’ll call him Goldy, and when––”
The engine bell clanged warning, the wheels began slowly to turn.
“Ooh! You’ll get left and have to walk!” cried the little girl, in big-eyed alarm.
“All right, baby––you take the spotted one!” Lance called over his shoulder as he ran. He was smiling when he swung up the steps. No longer did he feel that he must kill the harsh-voiced man.
He went forward to his own section, sat down and stared out of the window. As the memory of the little girl faded he drifted into gloomily reviewing229the things he had heard said of his family. Were they really pariahs among their kind? Outlawed because of the blood that flowed in their veins?
Away in the back of his mind, pushed there because the thought was not pleasant, and because thinking could not make it pleasant, had been the knowledge that he was returning to a life with which he no longer seemed to be quite in tune. Two weeks had served to show him that he had somehow drifted away from his father and Duke and Al, that he had somehow come to look at life differently. He did not believe in the harsh man’s theory of their outlawry; yet he felt a reluctance toward meeting again their silent measurement of himself, their intangible aloofness.
The harsh-voiced man had dragged it all to the surface, roughly sketching for the delectation of his friends the very things which Lance had been deliberately covering from his own eyes. He had done more. He had told things that made Lance wince. To humiliate Mary Hope before the whole Black Rim, as they had done, to take away the piano which he had wanted her to have––for that Lance could have throttled his dad. It was like Tom to do it. Lance could not doubt that he had done it. He could picture the whole wretchedly cheap retaliation for the slight which Mary Hope had given them, and the picture tormented him, made him writhe mentally. But he could picture230also Mary Hope’s prim disapproval of them all, her deliberate omission of the Lorrigans from her list of invited guests, and toward that picture he felt a keen resentment.
The whole thing maddened him. The more, because he was in a sense responsible for it all. Just because he had not wanted that lonely look to cloud the blue eyes of her, just because he had not wanted her to be unhappy in her isolation, he had somehow brought to the surface all those boorish qualities which he had begun to hate in his family.
“Cheap––cheap as dirt!” he gritted once, and he included them all in the denunciation.
Furiously he wished that he had gone straight home, had not stopped in Reno for the fight. But on the heels of that he knew that he would have made the trouble worse, had he been at the Devil’s Tooth on the day of the Fourth. He would have quarreled with Tom, but there was scant hope that he could have prevented the piano-moving. Tom Lorrigan, as Lance had plenty of memories to testify, was not the man whom one could prevent from doing what he set out to do.
At a little junction Lance changed to the branch line, still dwelling fiercely upon his heritage, upon the lawless environment in which that heritage of violence had flourished. He was in the mood to live up to the Lorrigan reputation when he swung off the train at Jumpoff, but no man crossed his trail.
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So Lance carried with him the full measure of his rage against Mary Hope and the Devil’s Tooth, when he rode out of Jumpoff on a lean-flanked black horse that rolled a wicked eye back at the rider and carried his head high, looking for trouble along the trail.
232CHAPTER NINETEENMARY HOPE HAS MUCH TROUBLE
Mary Hope, still taking her own point of view, had troubles in plenty to bear. In her own way she was quite as furious as was Lance, felt quite as injured as did the Devil’s Tooth outfit, had all the humiliation of knowing that the Black Rim talked of nothing but her quarrel with the Lorrigans, and in addition had certain domestic worries of her own.
Her mother harped continually on the piano quarrel and the indignity of having been “slappit” by the painted Jezebel. But that was not what worried Mary Hope most, for she was long accustomed to her mother’s habit of dwelling tearfully on some particular wrong that had been done her. Mary Hope was worried over her father.
On the day of the Fourth he had stayed at home, tinkering up his machinery, making ready for haying that was soon to occupy all his waking hours,––and they would be as many as daylight would give him. He had been doing something to an old mower that should have gone to the junk233heap long ago, and with the rusty sickle he had managed to cut his hand very deeply, just under the ball of the thumb. He had not taken the trouble to cleanse the cut thoroughly, but had wrapped his handkerchief around the hand and gone glumly on with his work. Now, on the third day, Mary Hope had become frightened at the discoloration of the wound and the way in which his arm was swelling, and had begged him to let her drive him to Jumpoff where he could take the train to Lava and a doctor. As might be expected, he had refused to do anything of the kind. He would not spend the time, and he would not spend the money, and he thought that a poultice would draw out the swelling well enough. Mary Hope had no faith in poultices, and she was on the point of riding to Jumpoff and telegraphing for a doctor when her father cannily read her mind and forbade her so sternly that she quailed before him.
There was another thing, which she must do. She must take the money she had gotten from the dance and with it pay Tom Lorrigan for the schoolhouse, or stop the school altogether. Jim Boyle, when she had ridden over to the AJ to tell him, had said that she could do as she pleased about paying for the schoolhouse; but if she refused to teach his kids, he would get some one else who would. Jim Boyle seemed to feel no compunctions whatever about accepting favors from the234Devil’s Tooth. As to Sederson, the Swede, he was working for Boyle, and did what his boss said. So the matter was flung back upon Mary Hope for adjustment according to the dictates of her pride or conscience, call it which you will.
Her mother advised her to keep the money and buy another piano. But Mary Hope declared that she would not use the schoolhouse while it was a Lorrigan gift; whereupon Mother Douglas yielded the point grudgingly and told her to send Hugh, the gawky youth, to the Devil’s Tooth with the three hundred dollars and a note saying what the money was for. But her father would not permit Hugh to go, reiterating feverishly that he needed Hugh on the ranch. And with the pain racking him and making his temper something fearful to face, Mary Hope dared not argue with him.
So she herself set out with her money and her hurt pride and all her troubles, to pay the Devil’s Tooth outfit for the schoolhouse––approximately, since she had only a vague idea of the cost of the building––and then be quit of the Lorrigan patronage forever.
It happened that she found Tom at home and evidently in a temper not much milder than her father’s. Two of the Devil’s Tooth men were at the stable door when she rode up, and to them Tom was talking in a voice that sent shivers over Mary Hope when she heard it. Not loud and declamatory, like her father’s, but with a certain implacable235calm that was harder to face than stormy vituperation.
But she faced it, now that she was there and Tom had been warned of her coming by Coaley, who pointed his ears forward inquiringly when she neared the stable. The two cowpunchers gave Tom slanting glances and left, muttering under their breaths to each other as they led their sweaty horses into a farther corral.
Tom lifted his hand to his hat brim in mute recognition of her presence, gave her a swift inquiring look and turned Coaley into the stable with the saddle on. Mary Hope took one deep breath and, fumbling at a heavy little bag tied beside the fork of her saddle, plunged straight into her subject.
“I’ve brought the money I raised at the dance, Mr. Lorrigan,” she said. “Since you refused to take it for the piano, I have brought it to pay you for the schoolhouse––with Mr. Boyle’s approval. I have three hundred and twelve dollars. If that is not enough, I will pay you the balance later.” She felt secretly rather well satisfied with the speech, which went even better than her rehearsals of it on the way over.
Then, having untied the bag, she looked up, and her satisfaction slumped abruptly into perturbation. Tom was leaning back against the corral rails, with his arms folded––and justwhymust he lift his eyebrows and smile like Lance? She was going to hand him the bag, but her fingers236bungled and she dropped it in the six-inch dust of the trail.
Tom unfolded his arms, moved forward a pace, picked up the bag and offered it to her. “You’ve got the buying fever, looks like to me,” he observed coldly. “I haven’t got any schoolhouse to sell.”
“But you have! You built it, and––”
“I did build a shack up on the hill, awhile back,” Tom admitted in the same deliberate tone, “but I turned it over to Jim Boyle and the Swede and whoever else wanted to send their kids there to school.” Since Mary Hope refused to put out her hand for the bag, Tom began very calmly to retie it on her saddle. But she struck his hand away.
“I shall not take the money. I shall pay for the schoolhouse, Mr. Lorrigan. Unless I can pay for it I shall never teach school there another day!” Her voice shook with nervous tension. One did not lightly and unthinkingly measure wills with Tom Lorrigan.
“That’s your business, whether you teach school or not,” said Tom, holding the bag as though he still meant to tie it on the saddle.
“But if I don’t they will hire another teacher, and that will drive me away from home to earn money––” Mary Hope had not in the least intended to say that, which might be interpreted as a bid for sympathy.
“Well, Belle, she says no strange woman can use237that schoolhouse. They might not find anything to teach school in, if they tried that.”
“You’ve got to keep that money.” Mary Hope turned the Roman-nosed horse half away, meaning to leave Tom there with the money in his hand.
Tom reached calmly out and caught the horse by the bridle.
“I want to tell you something,” he drawled, in the voice which she had heard when she came up. “I haven’t‘got’to do anything. But I tell you what Iwilldo. If you don’t take this money back and go ahead with your school-teaching as if nothing had happened, I’ll burn that schoolhouse to the last chip in the yard. And this money I’ll take and throw down that crevice under the Tooth, up there. The money won’t do nobody any good, and the schoolhouse won’t be nothing at all but a black spot. You can suit yourself––it’s up to you.”
Mary Hope looked at him, opened her lips to defy him, and instead gave a small sob. Her Scotch blood chilled at the threat of such wanton destruction of property and money, but it was not that which made her afraid at that moment of Tom Lorrigan,––held her silent, glaring impotently.
She trembled while he tied the money to the saddle fork again, using a knot she had never seen tied before. She wanted to tell him how much she hated him, how much she hated the whole Lorrigan238family, how she would die before she ever entered the door of that schoolhouse again unless it was paid for and she could be free of obligation to him.
But when his head was bent, hiding all of his face but the chin, she had a wild fleeting notion that he was Lance, and that he would lift his head and smile at her. Yet when he lifted his head he was just Tom Lorrigan, with a hardness in his face which Lance did not have, and a glint in his eye that told her his will was inexorable, that he would do exactly what he said he would do, and perhaps more, if she opposed him.
Without a word she turned back, crushed under the sense of defeat. Useless destruction of property and money did not seem to mean anything at all to a Lorrigan, but to her the thought was horrible. She could not endure the thought of what he would do if she refused to use the schoolhouse. Much less could she endure the thought of entering the place again while it remained a Lorrigan gift.
Blindly fighting an hysterical impulse to cry aloud like a child over her hurt, she reined Jamie into the shortcut trail of the Slide. Coming down she had followed the wagon road, partly because the longer trail postponed a dreaded meeting, and partly because Jamie, being uncertain in his temper and inclined to panicky spells when things did not go just right with him, could not safely be239trusted on the Slide trail, which was strange to him.
Until she reached the narrow place along the shale side hill she did not realize what trail she was taking. Then, because she could not leave the trail and take the road without retracing her steps almost to the stable, she went on, giving Jamie an impatient kick with her heel and sending him snorting over the treacherous stuff in a high canter.
“Go on and break your neck and mine too, if ye like,” she sobbed. “Ye needn’t think I’ll give an inch toyou;it’s bad enough.” When Jamie, still snorting, still reckless with his feet, somehow managed to pass over the boulder-strewn stretch without breaking a leg, Mary Hope choked back the obstreperous lump in her throat and spoke again in a quiet fury of resentment. “Burn it he may if he likes; I shallnotput my foot again inside a house of the Lorrigans!”
Whereat Jamie threw up his head, shied at a white rock on the steep slope beneath, loped through the sagebrush where the trail was almost level, scrambled up a steep, deep-worn bit of trail, turned the sharp corner of the switch-back and entered that rift in the cap-rock known as the Slide.
Mary Hope had traveled that trail many times on Rab, a few years ago. She had always entered the Slide with a little thrill along her spine, knowing it for a place where Adventure might meet her240face to face––where Danger lurked and might one day spring out at her. To-day she thought nothing about it until Jamie squatted and tried to whirl back. Then she looked up and saw Adventure, Danger and Lance Lorrigan just ahead, where the Slide was steepest.
Lance pulled up his hired horse, his thoughts coming back with a jerk from the same disagreeable subject that had engrossed Mary Hope. The hired horse jumped, tried his best not to sit down, lunged forward to save himself, found himself held back with a strength that did not yield an inch, and paused wild-eyed, his hind feet slipping and scraping the rock.
Jamie in that moment was behaving much worse. Jamie, finding that he could not turn around, was backing down the Slide, every step threatening to land him in a heap. Mary Hope turned white, her eyes staring up at Lance a little above her. In that instant they both remembered the short turn of the switch-back, and the twelve-foot bank with the scrambling trail down which no horse could walk backwards and keep his legs under him.
“Loosen the reins and spur him!” Lance’s voice sounded hollow, pent within that rock-walled slit. In the narrow space he was crowding his own horse against the right wall so that he might dismount.
Mary Hope leaned obediently forward, the reins hanging loose. “Healwaysbacks up when he’s241scared,” she panted, when Jamie paid no attention.
Instinctively Lance’s hand felt for his rope. On the livery saddle there did happen to be a poor sort of grass-rope riata, cheap and stiff and clumsily coiled, but fortunately with a loop in the end.
“Don’t lasso Jamie! He always fights a rope. He’ll throw himself!” Mary Hope’s voice was strained and unnatural.
Lance flipped a kink out of the rope. In that narrow space the loop must be a small one; he had one swift, sickening vision of what might happen if the little loop tightened around her neck. “Put up your hands––close to your head,” he commanded her. “It’s all right. Don’t be afraid––it’s all right, girl––”
He shot the loop straight out and down at her, saw it settle over her head, slip over her elbows, her shoulders. “It’s all right––can you get off!”
She tried, but the space was too narrow to risk it, with Jamie still going backward in a brainless panic. He would have trampled her beneath him had she done so.
“Stay on––but be all ready to jump when he leaves the Slide. Don’t be afraid––it’s all right. He won’t hurt you; he won’t hurt you at all.” He was edging closer to the horse, holding the rope taut in his right hand, his left ready to catch Jamie by the bridle once he came near enough. His one fear was that the horse might fall before242he was out of the gash, and in falling might crush Mary Hope against the rocks.
As Lance came on, Jamie backed faster, his haunches dropped, his feet slipping under him. Lance dared not crowd him, dared not reach for the bridle, still more than an arm’s length away. So Jamie came out of the Slide backwards, saw with a sudden panic-stricken toss of his head that he had open daylight all around him, whirled short and gave one headlong leap away from the place that had terrified him so.
Lance jumped, reaching for Mary Hope as the horse went over the bank. By the length of his hand he missed her, but the rope pulled her free from Jamie, and she fell prone on the trail and lay still.
“Are you hurt? Good God! are you hurt?” Lance gathered her in his arms and carried her to where the rock wall made a shady band across the steep slope.
Mary Hope was very white, very limp, and her eyes were closed. On her cheeks he saw where tears had lately been. Her mouth had a pitiful little droop. He sat down, still holding her like a child, and felt tentatively of her arms, her shoulders, vaguely prepared to feel the crunch of a broken bone. There was no water nearer than the ranch. Jamie, having rolled over twice, was lying on his side near a scraggly buck-brush, looking back up the hill, apparently wondering whether243it would be worth while to get up. The hired horse, having found a niche wherein to set his hind feet, stood staring down through the Slide, afraid to come farther, unable to retreat.
One side of Mary Hope’s face was dusty, the skin roughened with small scratches where she had fallen. With his handkerchief Lance very gently wiped away the dust, took off her hat and fanned her face, watching absently two locks of hair that blew back and forth across her forehead with the breeze made by the swaying hat brim.
She was not dead! She could not be dead, with that short fall. Then he saw that she was breathing faintly, unevenly, and in another minute he saw her lashes quiver against her tanned cheek. But her eyes did not open, the color did not flow back into her face.
“Oh, girl––girl, wake up!” With a little shake he pulled her close to him. “Open your eyes. I want to see your eyes. I want to see if they are just as blue as ever. Girl––oh, you poor little girl!”
He had been hating her, furious at the insult she had given his family. Angry as he was with the Lorrigans, resenting fiercely what they had done, he had hated Mary Hope Douglas more, because the hurt was more personal, struck deep into a part of his soul that had grown tender. But he could not hate her now––not when she lay there in his arms with her tear-stained cheek against his244heart, her eyes shut, and with that pathetic droop to her lips. Gently he tucked back the locks of hair that kept blowing across her forehead. Very tenderly, with a whimsical pretense at self-pity, he upbraided her for the trouble she was giving him.
“Must I go clear down to the ranch and pack up water in my hat, and slosh it on your face? I’ll do that, girl, if you don’t open your eyes and look at me.You’renot hurt;areyou hurt? You’d better wake up and tell me, or I’ll have to take you right up in my arms and carry you all the way down to the house, and ride like heck for a doctor, and––”
“Ye will not!” she retorted faintly, and unexpectedly he was looking into her eyes, bluer than he had remembered them; troubled, questioning––but stubborn against his suggestion. She moved uneasily, and he lifted her to the bank beside him and put one arm behind her, so that she leaned against him.
“Oh, very well––then I will not. You’ll walk with me to the house, and we’ll let Belle––”
“I will not! Never in my life will I enter the house of a Lorrigan!” Mary Hope brushed a palm against her forehead, straightened herself as if she resented her weakness, wished to hold herself aloof from him. She did not look at Lance, but stared across the narrow valley to the sage-clothed bluff beyond.