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She was baiting him, tempting him to quarrel with her over the old grudge. Because she expected a reply, Lance made no answer whatever. He happened to have a dozen or so of nails in his coat pocket, left-overs from his assiduous carpentry on the house being builded for her comfort. The screws he possessed were too large, and he had no hammer. But no man worries over a missing hammer where rocks are plentiful, and Lance was presently pounding the lock into place, his back to Mary Hope, his thoughts swinging from his prospective party to the possible religious scruples of the Douglas family.
Mary Hope used to dance––a very little––he remembered, though she had not attended many dances. He recalled suddenly that a Christmas tree or a Fourth of July picnic had usually been the occasions when Mary Hope, with her skirts just hitting her shoe tops in front and sagging in an ungainly fashion behind, had teetered solemnly through a “square” dance with him. Mother Douglas herself had always sat very straight and prim on a bench, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes blinking disapprovingly at the ungodly ones who let out an exultant little yip now and then when they started exuberantly through the mazes of the “gran’-right-n-left.”
Would Mary Hope attend the party? Should he tell her about it and ask her to come? Naturally, he could not peacefully escort her partyward,––the140feud was still too rancorous for that. Or was it? At the Devil’s Tooth they spoke of old Scotty as an enemy, but they had cited no particular act of hostility as evidence of his enmity. At the Devil’s Tooth they spoke of the whole Black Rim country as enemy’s country. Lance began to wonder if it were possible that the Lorrigans had adopted unconsciously the role of black sheep, without the full knowledge or concurrence of the Black Rimmers.
He did what he could to make a workable lock of one that had been ready to fall to pieces before his father heaved against it; hammered in the loosened screws in the hinges, tossed the rock out into the scuffed sod before the shack, and picked up his hat. He had not once looked toward Mary Hope, but he turned now as if he were going to say good-by and take himself off; as if mending the lock had really been his errand, and no further interest held him there.
He surprised a strange, wistful look in Mary Hope’s eyes, a trembling of her lips. She seemed to be waiting, fearing that he meant to go without any further overtures toward friendship.
The Whipple shack was not large. Ten feet spanned the distance between them. Impulsively Lance covered that distance in three steps. At the table he stopped, leaned toward her with his palms braced upon the table, and stared full into Mary Hope’s disturbed eyes.
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“Girl,” he said, drawing the word softly along a vibrant note in his voice that sent a tremor through her, “Girl, you’re more lonesome than Scotch, and you’re more Scotch than the heather that grows in your front yard to make your mother cry for the Highlands she sees when her eyes blur with homesickness. You were crying when I came––crying because you’re lonely. It’s a big, wild country––the Black Rim. It’s a country for men to ride hell-whooping through the sage and camas grass, with guns slung at their hips, but it’s no country for a little person like you to try and carry on a feud because her father made one. You’re––too little!”
He did not touch her, his face did not come near her face. But in his eyes, in his voice, in the tender, one-sided little smile, there was something,––Mary Hope caught her breath, feeling as if she had been kissed.
“You little, lonesome girl! There’s going to be a party at Cottonwood Spring, a week from Friday night. It’s a secret––a secret for you. And you won’t tell a soul that you were the first to know––and you’ll come, you girl, because it’s your party. And not a soul will know it’s your party. If your father’s Scotch is too hard for dancing––you’ll come just the same. You’ll come, because the secret is for you. And––” He thought that he read something in her eyes and hastened to forestall her intention “––and you142won’t go near Cottonwood Spring before the time of the party, because that wouldn’t be playing fair.
“Don’t be lonely, girl. The world is full of pleasant things, just waiting to pop out at you from behind every bush. If you’re good and kind and honest with life, the Fates are going to give you the best they’ve got. Don’t be lonely! Just wait for the pleasant things in to-morrow and to-morrow––in all the to-morrows. And one of them, girl, is going to show you the sweetest thing in life. That’s love, you girl with the tears back of your Scotch blue eyes. But wait for it––and take the little pleasant things that minutes have hidden away in the to-morrows. And one of the pleasant times will be hidden at Cottonwood Spring, a week from Friday night. Wonder what it will be, girl. And if any one tries to tell it, put your hands over your ears, so that you won’t hear it. Wait––and keep wondering, and come to Cottonwood Spring next Friday night. Adios, girl.”
He looked into her eyes, smiling a little. Then, turning suddenly, he left her without a backward glance. Left her with nothing to spoil the haunting cadence of his voice, nothing to lift the spell of tender prophecy his words had laid upon her soul. When he was quite gone, when she heard the clatter of his horse’s hoofs upon the arid soil that surrounded the Whipple shack, Mary Hope still stared out through the open doorway, seeing nothing of the March barrenness, seeing only the143tender, inscrutable, tantalizing face of Lance Lorrigan,––tantalizing because she could not plumb the depths of his eyes, could not say how much of the tenderness was meant for her, how much was born of the deep music of his voice, the whimsical, one-sided smile.
And Lance, when he had ridden a furlong from the place, had dipped into a shallow draw and climbed the other side, turned half around in the saddle and looked back.
“Now, why did I go off and leave her like that? Like an actor walking off the stage to make room for the other fellow to come on and say his lines. There’s no other fellow––thank heck! And here are two miles we might be riding together––and me preaching to her about taking the little, pleasant things that come unexpectedly!” He swung his horse around in the trail, meaning to ride back; retraced his steps as far as the hollow, and turned again, shaking his head.
“Anybody could stop at the schoolhouse just as school’s out, and ride a couple of miles down the road with the schoolma’am––if she let him do it! Anybody could do that. But that isn’t the reason, why I’m riding on ahead. What the hell is the reason?”
He stopped again on the high level where he could look back and see the Whipple shack squatted forlornly in the gray stretch of sage with wide, brown patches of dead grass between the bushes.
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“Lonesome,” he named the wild expanse of unpeopled range land. “She’s terribly lonely––and sweet. Too lonely and sweet for me to play with, to ride a few miles with––and leave her lonelier than I found her. I couldn’t. There’s enough sadness now in those Scotch blue eyes. Damned if I’ll add more!”
He saw Mary Hope come from the shack, pause a minute on the doorstep, then walk out to where her horse was tied to the post. He lifted the reins, pricked his horse gently with the spurs and galloped away to Jumpoff, singing no more.
145CHAPTER TWELVESHE WILL, AND SHE WON’T
Cottonwood Spring was a dished-out oasis just under the easy slope of Devil’s Tooth Ridge. From no part of the Jumpoff trail could it be seen, and the surrounding slope did not offer much inducement to cattle in March, when water was plentiful; wherefore riders would scarcely wander into the saucer-like hollow that contained the cottonwoods and the spring. A picnic had once been held there, but the festivities had been marred by a severe thunderstorm that came just as a wordy quarrel between two drunken cowpunchers was fast nearing the gun-pulling stage. Lightning had struck the side hill just beyond the grove, and the shock of it had knocked down and stunned the two disputants, and three saddle horses standing in the muddy overflow from the spring. For this reason, perhaps, and because it was on Lorrigan land, the place had never thereafter been frequented save by the stock that watered there.
But from the head of the little basin a wide view was had of the broken land beyond Devil’s146Tooth. The spring was clear and cold and never affected by drouth. By following the easy slope around the point of the main trail from Jumpoff to the Lorrigan ranch, no road-building was necessary, and in summer the cottonwoods looked very cool and inviting––though at certain times they harbored buffalo gnats and many red ants that would bite, which rendered the shade less grateful than it looked. But to the Lorrigans it seemed an ideal site for a schoolhouse.
Ten days after they had planned the deed, the schoolhouse stood ready for the dance. In the lean-to shed, twelve shiny yellow desks that smelled strongly of varnish were stacked in their heavy paper swaddlings, waiting to be set in place when the dance was done. Belle herself had hemmed scrim curtains for the windows, which Riley had washed copiously. The blackboard, with the names of various Devil’s Tooth men and a “motto” or two scrawled upon it was in place; the globe was on the teacher’s desk, and the water bucket on its shelf in the corner, with a shiny new tin dipper hanging on a nail above it.
If you were to believe the frequent declarations, every puncher on the ranch had done his durnedest to put ’er up, and put ’er up right. Sam Pretty Cow had nailed a three-foot American flag to the front gable, and had landed on a nail when he jumped from the eaves. On the night of the dance he was hobbling around the chuck-wagon with147half a pound of salt pork bound to his foot, helping Riley, who had driven over to the spring early, burdened with the importance of his share in the entertainment.
A dance in the Black Rim country has all the effect of a dog fight in a small village with empty streets. No sooner does it start than one wonders where all the people came from.
At eight o’clock toiling horses drawing full loads of humanity began to appear over the rim of the hollow, to pick their way carefully down toward the lighted windows, urged by their drivers. Men on horseback made the descent more swiftly, with a clatter of small rocks kicked loose as they came. They encountered a four-wire fence, circled it to where a lantern, hung on a post, revealed a gate that lay flat on the ground to leave a welcoming space for teams and saddle horses to pass through.
Beside the schoolhouse, with two lanterns shedding a yellow glow on his thin, sandy hair, Riley, at the chuck-wagon, arranged doughnuts, sandwiches, pies and cakes to his liking, wiped his red hands frequently on his clean flour-sack apron, and held carefully unprofane conversation with the women who came fluttering over to him, their arms burdened.
“No, mom, sorry! I know I’m turnin’ down something that’s better than anything I got here, but this here party’s on the Lorrigans. No, mom, I got orders not to take in s’much as a sour pickle148from nobody. You jest put it back in the rig, whatever you got there, and consider’t you got some Sat’day bakin’ did up ahead.
“Yes, mom, it’s Lance’s party. He’s home for a visit, an’ he kinda wanted to have a dance an’ meet the folks, seein’ he’s been away quite a spell and kain’t stay long.
“Yes, mom, he’s goin’ back to college first the week.
“Hey! I wisht you’d tie up yore cayuses other side the shack. Folks’ll be comin’ around here for their supper, and they don’t wanta git their faces kicked off whilst they’re huntin’ grub to fill ’em.
“No, mom, we ain’t takin’ any cakes or nothin’ off nobody. Lance, he wanted to give this dance an’ give itright. Ain’t goin’ to cost nobody a thing but sore corns, t’night!”
Lance had hired an Italian violinist and his boy who played a harp much taller than himself and people coming from Jumpoff had brought them out. The Millers had come, with all their outfit. The AJ outfit was there to a man. The Swedes were present, sitting together in the corner by the water bucket, and the Conleys, who lived over by Camas Creek beyond the AJ, had come. The Conleys had sheep, and were not firmly settled in the Black Rim, sheepmen being looked at askance. There were families from nearer Jumpoff,––one really did wonder where they all came from, when the country seemed so wide and unpeopled.
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Lance was surprised to see how many were there who were total strangers. Until the dancing began the men stood outside and smoked, leaving the women and children to arrange themselves on benches along the wall inside. Lance knew the custom well enough, and he did not go in. But he tried to see who came with every load that was deposited within the circle of light on the narrow platform that embellished the front.
At nine o’clock, when the musicians were trying their instruments tentatively and even the most reluctant male was being drawn irresistibly to the humming interior, Lance frankly admitted to himself that he was not happy, and that his condition was the direct result of not having seen Mary Hope enter the door.
He sought out Tom, who was over at the chuck-wagon, taking an early cup of coffee. Tom blew away the steam that rose on the chill night air and eyed Lance. “Well, when do we make the speech? Or don’t we?” he demanded, taking a gulp and finding the coffee still too hot for comfort. “Don’t ask me to; I done my share when I built ’er. You can tell the bunch what she’s for.”
“Oh, what the heck do we want with a speech?” Lance remonstrated. “They know it’s a schoolhouse, unless they’re blind. And I thought maybe some one––you, probably, since you’re the one who hazed her out of the other place––would just tell Mary Hope to bring her books over here and150teach. And I thought, to cinch it, you could tell Jim Boyle that you felt you ought to do something toward a school, and since you couldn’t furnish any kids, you thought you’d furnish the house. That ought to be easy. It’s up to you, I should say. But I wouldn’t make any speech.”
Tom grunted, finished his coffee and proceeded to remove all traces of it from his lips with his best white handkerchief. “Where’s Jim Boyle at?” he asked, moving into the wide bar of dusk that lay between the lights of the chuck-wagon and the glow from the two windows facing that way.
“I believe I’d speak about it first to Mary Hope,” Lance suggested, coming behind him. “But she hasn’t come yet––”
As if she heard and deliberately moved to contradict him, Mary Hope danced past the window, the hand of a strange young man with a crisp white handkerchief pressed firmly between her shoulder blades. Mary Hope was dancing almost as solemnly as in the days of short skirts and sleek hair, her eyes apparently fixed upon the shoulder of her partner who gazed straight out over her head, his whole mind centered upon taking the brunt of collisions upon the point of his upraised elbow.
“I’ll ketch her when she’s through dancing,” promised Tom. But Lance had another thought.
“Let me tell Mary Hope, dad. I’m going to dance with her, and it will be easy.”
In the darkness Tom grinned and went on to151find Jim Boyle standing in a group of older men on the platform that served as a porch. Jim Boyle was smoking a cheap cigar brought out from Jumpoff by the section boss. He listened reflectively, looked at the glowing tip of the evil-smelling cigar, threw the thing from him and reached for his cigarette papers with an oath.
“Now, that’s damn white of yuh, Tom,” he said. “I leave it to the boys if it ain’t damn white. Not having no school district I’m puttin’ up the money outa my own pocket to pay the teacher. And havin’ four kids to feed and buy clothes for, I couldn’t afford to build no schoolhouse, I tell yuh those. And uh course, I didn’t like to go round askin’ fer help; but it’s damn white of yuh to step in an’ do yore share towards making the Rim look like it was civilized. Sederson, he’ll feel the same way about it. And I’m gitting a foreman that’s got a kid, school age; we sure’n hell do need a schoolhouse. Rim’s settlin’ up fast. I always said, Tom, that you was white. I leave it to the boys here.”
Inside, Lance was not finding it so easy to make the announcement. Last Tuesday, Mary Hope had not understood just why he had ridden on ahead of her for two miles––she could see the small dust cloud kicked up by his horse on the Jumpoff trail, so there could be no mistake––when he knew perfectly well that she must ride that way, when he could not have failed to see her152horse saddled and waiting at the door. It seemed to Mary Hope an obscure form of mockery to tell her not to be lonely––to tell her in a caressing tone that left with her all the effect of kisses––and then to ride away without one backward glance, one word of excuse. Until she had mounted and had seen him on the trail ahead, she had not realized how he had mocked her.
For days––until Friday, to be explicit––she had been quite determined not to go near Cottonwood Spring. Then she had suddenly changed her mind, dismissed school half an hour early, put old Rab in a lather on the way home, dressed herself and announced to her mother that she must ride into Jumpoff for school supplies, and that she would stay all night with the Kennedys. It had taken two years and the dignity of school-teacher to give Mary Hope the courage to announce things to her mother. As it was, she permitted her mother to explain as best she might to Hugh Douglas. Her courage did not reach to that long, uncompromising upper lip of her father’s.
She had folded her prettiest dress carefully into a flat bundle, had thrown it out of her window and left the house in her riding clothes. There was a saddle horse, Jamie, a Roman-nosed bay of uncertain temper and a high, rocking gait, which she sometimes used for long trips. She saddled him now and hurried away, thankful to be gone with153her package and her guilty conscience before her father arrived. She was very good friends with the Kennedys, at the section house. If there was a dance within forty miles, the Kennedys might be counted upon to attend; and that is how Mary Hope arrived at the schoolhouse with a load from Jumpoff. She had seen Lance standing near the door, and Lance had paid no attention to her, but had left an AJ man to claim the first two-step. Wherefore Lance walked straight into trouble when he went to Mary Hope and asked for the next dance with her.
“So sorry––it’s promised already,” said Mary Hope, in her primmest tone.
“There’s a dance after the next one,” he hinted, looking down from his more-than-six feet at her where she sat wedged between Mrs. Boyle and Jennie Miller.
“So sorry––but I think that one is promised also,” said Mary Hope.
Lance drew a corner of his lip between his teeth, let it go and lifted his eyebrows whimsically at Jennie Miller, whom he had once heard playing on her organ, and whom he had detested ever since with an unreasoning animosity born solely of her musical inability and her long neck that had on its side a brown mole with three coarse hairs in it.
“If Miss Douglas has two dances engaged in advance, it’s quite hopeless to hope for a dance with Miss Miller,” he said, maliciously drawing154the sentence through certain vibrant tones which experience had taught him had a certain pleasing effect upon persons. “Or is it hopeless? Are you engaged for every dance to-night, Miss Miller? And if you are, please may I stand beside you while you eat a sandwich at midnight?”
Jennie Miller giggled. “I ain’t as popular as all that,” she retorted, glancing at Mary Hope, sitting very straight and pretty beside her. “And if I was, I don’t go and promise everybody that asks. I might want to change my mind afterwards if some other fellow comes along I liked better––and I’ve saw too many fights start over a girl forgetting who she’s promised to dance with.”
“You don’t want to see a fight start now, do you?” Lance smiled down at her without in the least degree betraying to Mary Hope that he would like to pull Jennie Miller by force from that seat and occupy it himself.
“I never can see why men fight over things. I hate fights,” Miss Miller stammered, agitated by a wild feeling that perhaps she was going to be made love to.
“Then don’t forget that you are going to dance with me.” The music just then started again, and he offered her his arm with a certain import that made Mary Hope clench her hands.
Mary Hope was punished for her lie. She had not promised that dance, and so she sat on the155plank bench and saw Lance and Jennie Miller sway past her four times before a gawky youth who worked for her father caught sight of her and came over from the water-bucket corner to ask her for the dance. That was not the worst. On the fourth round of Lance and Jennie, and just as the gawky one was bowing stiffly before her, Lance looked at her over Jennie Miller’s shoulder, and smiled that tantalizing, Lorrigan smile that always left her uneasily doubtful of its meaning.
156CHAPTER THIRTEENA WAY HE HAD WITH HIM
It was at the chuck-wagon at midnight, while Riley and Sam Pretty Cow were serving tin cups of black coffee to a shuffling, too-hilarious crowd, that Lance next approached Mary Hope. She was standing on the outskirts of a group composed mostly of women, quite alone so far as cavaliers were concerned, for the gawky youth had gone after coffee. She was looking toward the sagebrush camp-fire around which a crowd of men had gathered with much horseplay at which they were laughing loudly, and she was wondering how best she could make Lance Lorrigan aware of her absolute indifference to him, when his voice drawled disconcertingly close to her ear:
“You’re not lonely now, you girl––and you did find a secret at Cottonwood Spring. A pleasant little secret, wasn’t it?”
Mary Hope’s hands became fists at her side, held close against her best frock. “I think the fellows over by the fire have discovered your pleasant secret,” she said, and did not turn her face toward him.
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With his arms folded and his eyebrows pulled together and his lip between his teeth, Lance stared down at her face, studying it in the flicker of the distant firelight and the two lanterns. If her combativeness roused in him any resentment, he did not permit it to show in his voice.
“Some of the fellows from Jumpoff brought a bottle or two. That’s no secret, except that I don’t know where they have it cachéd. The schoolhouse is your––”
“I heard it was included in the Lorrigan refreshments.”
“The schoolhouse is ready for your pleasure Monday morning,” Lance spoke with that perfect impersonal courtesy that is so exasperating to a person who listens for something to resent. “I knew of it, of course––dad wanted it kept for a surprise. And he wanted me to tell you. It’s the Lorrigan expression of their appreciation of the need of a school.”
The gawky youth came stumbling up, his outstretched hands carefully holding two tin cups filled with coffee close to the boiling point. Being a youth of good intentions, he tried very hard not to spill a drop. Being gawky, he stubbed his toe as he was rounding the group of women, and Mrs. Miller shrieked and swung back her hand, cuffing the gawky one straight into the thickest of the crowd. Other women screamed.
Lance reached a long arm and plucked the youth158out by the slack of his coat, shook him and propelled him into the darkness, where he collided violently with Sam Pretty Cow. Some one had been over-generous with Sam Pretty Cow. A drunken Indian is never quite safe. Sam Pretty Cow struck out blindly, yelling Piegan curses hoarsely as he fought. The crowd of men around the camp-fire came running. For a short space there was confusion, shouting, the shrill voices of scalded women denouncing the accident as a deliberate outrage.
Mrs. Miller whirled on Lance. “You pushed him on me! If that ain’t a Lorrigan trick!––”
“Yeah––what yuh mean? Throwin’ bilin’ hot coffee on––”
“Who says it’s a Lorrigan trick?”
“Might ’a’ known what to expect––”
“Get back here, away from the crowd. There may be shooting,” Lance muttered to Mary Hope, and pulled her to the rear of the wagon and around upon the farther side. She could not resist. His strength was beyond any hope of combating it with her small strength. Mrs. Miller, whose scalded shoulder led her to wild utterances without thought of their effect upon others, shouted at him as he hustled Mary Hope away:
“Yeah––run!You’re the one that done it––now run! That’s like a Lorrigan––do your dirty work and then crawl out and let somebody else take the blame! That kid never––”
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“Aw, come back and fight, you big sneak!” A drunken voice bellowed hoarsely, and a gunshot punctuated the command.
“Go on––get on the other side of the schoolhouse. Run! The fools will all start to shooting now!”
Mary Hope stopped stubbornly. “I will not!” she defied him; and Lance without more argument lifted her from the ground, stooped and tossed her under the wagon, much as he would have heaved a bag of oats out of the rain.
“Don’t you move until I tell you to,” he commanded her harshly, and ran back, diving into the thick of the crowd as though he were charging into a football scrimmage.
“Who was it called me back to fight? Put up your guns,––or keep them if you like. It’s all one to me!”
In the dim light he saw the gleam of a weapon raised before him, reached out and wrenched it away from the owner, and threw it far over his shoulder into the weeds. “Who said a Lorrigan run? I want that man!”
“I said it,” bellowed a whisky-flushed man whose face was strange to him. “I said it, and I say it agin. I say––a Lorrigan!”
He lifted his gun above the pressure of excited men and women. Lance sprung upward and forward, landed on some one’s foot, lunged again and got a grip on the hand that held the gun. With his160left hand he wrenched the gun away. With his right he pulled the man free of the crowd and out where there was room. The crowd––men, now, for the women had fled shrieking––surged that way.
“Stand back there! I’ll settle with this fellow alone.” He held the other fast, his arms as merciless as the grip of a grizzly, and called aloud:
“This is a Lorrigan dance, and the Lorrigans are going to have order. Those of you who brought chips on your shoulders, and whisky to soak the chips in, can drink your whisky and do your fighting among yourselves, off the Lorrigan ranch. We all came here to have fun. There’s music and room to dance, and plenty of chuck and plenty of coffee, and the dance is going right on without any fuss whatever.
“This poor boob here who thinks he wants to fight me just because I’m a Lorrigan, I never saw before. It wouldn’t be a fair fight, because he’s too drunk to do anything but make a fool of himself. There’s nothing to fight about, anyway. A fellow was carrying two cups of boiling hot coffee, and he stubbed his toe, and some one got scalded a little. That’s nothing to break up a dance over. The rest of you heard the noise and jumped at the conclusion there was trouble afoot. There isn’t. I think you all want to go on with the dance and have a good time, except perhaps a few who are drunk. They are at liberty to go off somewhere161and beat each other up to their hearts’ content. Come on, now, folks––get your partners for a square dance––andeverybody dance!”
His voice had held them listening. His words were not the words of a coward, yet they were a plea for peace, they seemed reasonable even to the half-drunken ones who had been the readiest to fight. The old-time range slogan, “Everybody dance!” sent three or four hurrying to find the girls they wanted. The trouble, it would appear, had ended as suddenly as it had begun and for a moment the tension relaxed.
The drunken one was still cursing, struggling unavailingly to tear himself away from Lance so that he could land a blow. Lance, looking out across the crowd, caught Belle’s glance and nodded toward the schoolhouse. Belle hurried away to find the musicians and set them playing, and a few couples strayed after her. But there were men who stayed, pushing, elbowing to see what would happen when Lance Lorrigan loosened his hold on the Jumpoff man.
Lance did not loosen his hold, however. He saw Tom, Al, three or four Devil’s Tooth men edging up, and sent them a warning shake of his head.
“Who knows this fellow? Where does he belong? I think his friends had better take care of him until he sobers up.”
“We’ll take care of him,” said another stranger, easing up to Lance. “He won’t hurt yuh; he was162only foolin’, anyway. Bill Kennedy, he always gits kinda happy when he’s had one or two.”
There was laughter in the crowd. Two or three voices were heard muttering together, and other laughs followed. Some one produced a bottle and offered the pugnacious one a drink. Lance let him go with a contemptuous laugh and went to where the Devil’s Tooth men now stood bunched close together, their backs to the chuck-wagon.
“We’ll have to clean up this crowd, before it’s over,” Al was saying to his father. “Might as well start right in and git ’er over with.”
“And have it said the Lorrigans can’t give a dance without having it end in rough-house!” Lance interrupted. “Cut out the idea of fighting that bunch. Keep them out of the house and away from the women, and let them have their booze down in the grove. That’s where I’ve seen a lot of them heading. Come on, boys; it takes just as much nerve not to fight as it does to kill off a dozen men. Isn’t that right, dad?”
“More,” said Tom laconically. “No, boys, we don’t want no trouble here. Come on in and dance. That’s yore job––to keep ’er moving peaceable. I’ll fire any man I ketch drinking Jumpoff booze. We’ve got better at the ranch. Come on!”
He led the way and his men followed him,––not as though they were particularly anxious to avoid trouble, but more like men who are trained to163obey implicitly a leader who has some definite purpose and refuses to be turned from it. Lance, walking a few steps in the rear, wondered at the discipline his father seemed to maintain without any apparent effort.
“And they say the Lorrigans are a tough outfit!” he laughed, when he had overtaken Tom. “Dad, you’ve got the bunch trained like soldiers. I was more afraid our boys would rough things up than I was worried over the stews.”
“Shucks! When we rough things up, it’s whenwewant it rough. Al, he was kinda excited. But at that, we may have to hogtie a few of them smart Alecks from town, before we can dance peaceable.”
Mary Hope, Lance discovered, was already in the schoolhouse. Also, several of the intoxicated were there, and the quadrille was being danced with so much zest that the whole building shook. That in itself was not unusual––Black Rim dances usually did become rather boisterous after supper––but just outside the door a bottle was being circulated freely, and two or three men had started toward the cottonwood grove for more. Duke, coming up to Lance where he stood in the doorway, pulled him to one side, where they could not be overheard.
“There’s going to be trouble here, sure’s you’re knee-high to a duck. Dad won’t let our bunch light into ’em, but they’ll be fighting amongst themselves inside an hour. You better slip it to164the women that the dance breaks up early. Give ’em a few more waltzes and two-steps, Lance, and then make it Home-Sweet-Home, if you don’t want to muss up your nice city clothes,” he added, with a laugh that was not altogether friendly.
“Mussing up nice city clothes is my favorite pastime,” Lance retorted, and went inside again to see who was doing all the whooping. The chief whooper, he discovered, was Bill Kennedy, the man whom he had very nearly thrashed. Mary Hope was looking her Scotch primmest. Lance measured the primness, saw that there was a vacant space beside her, and made his precarious way toward it, circling the dancers who swung close to the benches and trod upon the toes of the wall flowers in their enthusiasm. He reached the vacant space and sat down just in time to receive Bill Kennedy in his lap. But Bill was too happy just then to observe whose lap he landed in, and bounced up with a bellowing laugh to resume his gyrations.
“Don’t dance any more, girl,” Lance said, leaning so that he could make himself heard without shouting in the uproar. “It’s getting pretty wild––and it will be wilder. They must have hauled it out in barrels!”
Mary Hope looked at him, but she did not smile, did not answer.
“I’m sorry the secret is no nicer,” Lance went on. “Now the floor will have to be scrubbed165before a lady girl can come out and teach school here. I thought it would be great to have a house-warming dance,––but they’re making it too blamed warm!”
Some one slipped and fell, and immediately there was a struggling heap where others had fallen over the first. There were shrieks of laughter and an oath or two, an epithet and then a loud-flung threat.
Lance started up, saw that Tom and Al were heading that way, and took Mary Hope by the arm.
“It’s time little girls like you went home,” he said smiling, and somehow got her to the door without having her trampled upon. “Where are your wraps?”
“There,” said Mary Hope dazedly, and pointed to the corner behind them, where cloaks, hoods, hats and two sleeping children were piled indiscriminately.
Through the doorway men were crowding, two or three being pushed out only to be pushed in again by others eager to join the mêlée. In the rear of the room, near the musicians, two men were fighting. Lance, giving one glance to the fight and another to the struggling mass in the doorway, pushed up the window nearest them, lifted Mary Hope and put her out on the side hill. He felt of a coat or two, chose the heaviest, found something soft and furry like a cap, and followed her. Behind the door no one seemed to look.166A solid mass of backs was turned toward him when he wriggled through on his stomach.
“Where’s your horse?” he asked Mary Hope, while he slipped the coat on her and buttoned it.
“It does seem to me that a Lorrigan isalwaysmaking me put on a coat!” cried Mary Hope petulantly. “And now, this isn’t mine at all!”
“A non-essential detail. It’s a coat, and that’s all that matters. Where is your horse?”
“I haven’t any horse here––oh, they’re killing each other in there! The Kennedys brought me––and he’s that drunk, now––”
“Good heck! Bill Kennedy! Well, come on. You couldn’t go back with them, that’s sure. I’ll take you home, girl.” He was leading her by the arm to the fence behind the house. “Wait, I’ll lift a wire; can you crawl under?”
“Now, I’ve torn it! I heard it rip. And it isn’t my coat at all,” said Mary Hope. “Oh, they’re murdering one another! I should think you’d be ashamed, having a dance like––”
“Coats can be bought––and murdered men don’t swear like that. I’ll have to borrow Belle’s pintos, but we don’t care, do we? Come on. Here they are. Don’t get in until I get them untied and turned around. And when I say get in, you’d better make it in one jump. Are you game?”
“No Lorrigan will ever cry shame on a Douglas for a coward! You must be crazy, taking this awful team.”
167
“I am. I’m crazy to get you away from here before they start shooting, back there.” He spoke to the team gruffly and with a tone of authority that held them quiet, wondering at his audacity perhaps. He untied them, got the lines, stepped in and turned them around, the pintos backing and cramping the buckboard, lunging a little but too surprised to misbehave in their usual form.
“Get in––and hang on. There’s no road much––but we’ll make it, all right.”
Like the pintos, Mary Hope was too astonished to rebel. She got in.
The team went plunging up the hill, snorting now and then, swerving sharply away from rock or bush that threatened them with vague horrors in the clear starlight. Behind them surged the clamor of many voices shouting, the confused scuffling of feet, a revolver shot or two, and threading the whole the shrill, upbraiding voice of a woman.
“That’s Mrs. Miller,” Mary Hope volunteered jerkily. “She’s the one that was scalded.”
“It wasn’t her tongue that was hurt,” Lance observed, and barely saved the buckboard from upsetting on a rock as Rosa and Subrosa shied violently and simultaneously at a rabbit scuttling from a bush before them.
He swung the pintos to the right, jounced down into some sort of trail, and let them go loping along at their usual pace.
168
“Belle has her own ideas about horse-training,” Lance chuckled, steadying Subrosa with a twitch of the rein. “They’ll hit this gait all the way to your ranch.”
Mary Hope gave a gasp and caught him by the arm, shaking it a little as if she were afraid that otherwise he would not listen to her. “Oh, but I canna go home! I’ve a horse and my riding clothes in Jumpoff, and I must go for them and come home properly on horseback to-morrow! It’s because of the lie I told my mother, so that I could come to the dance with the Kennedys. Set me down here anywhere, Lance Lorrigan, and let me walk until the Kennedys overtake me! They’ll be coming soon, now––as soon as Bill Kennedy gets licket sober. You can stop the horses––surely you can stop them and let me out. But please,pleasedo not take me home to-night, in this party dress––and a coat that isna mine at all!”
“I’m not taking you home, girl. I’m taking you to Jumpoff. And it won’t matter to you whether Bill Kennedy is licked sober or not. And to-morrow I’ll find out who owns the coat. I’ll say I found it on the road somewhere. Who’s to prove I didn’t? Or if you disapprove of lying about it, I’ll bring it back and leave it beside the road.”
“It’s a lot of trouble I’m making for you,” said Mary Hope quite meekly, and let go his arm. “I should not have told the lie and gone to the dance.169And I canna wear my own coat home, because it’s there in the pile behind the door, and some one else will take it. So after all it will be known that I lied, and you may as well take me home now and let me face it.”
To this Lance made no reply. But when the pintos came rattling down the hill to where the Douglas trail led away to the right, he did not slow them, did not take the turn.
Mary Hope looked anxiously toward home, away beyond the broken skyline. A star hung big and bright on the point of a certain hill that marked the Douglas ranch. While she watched it, the star slid out of sight as if it were going down to warn Hugh Douglas that his daughter had told a lie and had gone to a forbidden place to dance with forbidden people, and was even now driving through the night with one of the Lorrigans,––perchance the wickedest of all the wicked Lorrigans, because he had been away beyond the Rim and had learned the wickedness of the cities.
She looked wistfully at the face of this wickedest of the Lorrigans, his profile seen dimly in the starlight. He did not look wicked. Under his hat brim she could see his brows, heavy and straight and lifted whimsically at the inner points, as though he were thinking of something amusing. His nose was fine and straight, too,––not at all like a beak, though her father had always maintained that the Lorrigans were but human vultures.170His mouth,––there was something in the look of his mouth that made her catch her breath; something tender, something that vaguely disturbed her, made her feel that it could be terribly stern if it were not so tender. He seemed to be smiling––not with his mouth, exactly, but away inside of his mind––and the smile showed just a little bit, at the corner of his lips. His chin was the Lorrigan chin absolutely; a nice chin to look at, with a little, long dimple down the middle. A chin that one would not want to oppose, would not want to see when the man who owned it was very angry.
Mary Hope had gone just so far in her analysis when Lance turned his head abruptly, unexpectedly, and looked full into her eyes.
“Don’t be afraid, girl. Don’t worry about the lie––about anything. It was a sweet little lie––it makes you just human and young and––sweet. Let them scold you, and smile, ’way down deep in your heart, and be glad you’re human enough to tell a lie now and then. Because if you hadn’t, we wouldn’t be driving all these miles together to save you a little of the scolding. Be happy. Be just a little bit happy to-night, won’t you, girl––you lonely little girl––with the blue, blue eyes!”
There it was again, that vibrant, caressing note in his voice. It was there in his eyes while he looked at her, on his lips while he spoke to her. But the next moment he looked ahead at the trail, spoke to Rosa who had flung her head around to171bite pettishly at Subrosa, who snapped back at her.
Mary Hope turned her face to the starlit rangeland. Again she breathed quickly, fought back tears, fought the feeling that she had been kissed. All through the silent ride that followed she fought the feeling, knew that it was foolish, that Lance knew nothing whatever about that look, that tone which so affected her. He did not speak again. He sat beside her, and she felt that he was thinking about her, felt that his heart was making love to her––hated herself fiercely for the feeling, fought it and felt it just the same.
“It’s just a way he has with him!” she told herself bitterly, when he swung the team up in front of the section house and helped her down. “He’d have the same way with him if he spoke to a––a rabbit! He doesna mean it––he doesna know and he doesna care!”
“Thank you, Mr. Lorrigan. It was very kind of you to bring me.” Her voice was prim and very Scotch, and gave no hint of all she had been thinking.
“I’m always kind––to myself,” laughed Lance, and lifted his hat and drove away.