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Sam lighted a cigarette, blew out the blazing match and laid the burnt stub carefully on a box. He smoked stolidly, gazing at the dingy wall before him.
“Bust them bronks in the corral,” he said at last, grinning briefly. “You stay long, you see me ride. Uh-huh––yo’ bet.”
“Well, yes. That’s all right. But why don’t you go with the outfit?” Lance leaned against the wall, arms folded, studying him. It was almost hopeless, trying to get anything out of Sam Pretty Cow; still, Lance tried it.
Sam Pretty Cow looked up at him, looked down at his bare feet that he had swung out of bed when Lance wakened him.
“Uh-huh. That’s why. That all right, I’m go. That ain’t all right, I’m don’ go. You bet.”
Lance tap-tapped his right arm with the fingers of his left hand, chewed his lip and looked at Sam Pretty Cow.
“Still, dad lets you stick around the outfit,” he drawled meaningly.
Sam Pretty Cow shot a quick glance toward him, looked at the door, relaxed again and studied his toes which he wriggled on the dirty floor.
“I’m good man, you bet. I’m mind my business.” He drew a long breath, glanced again from the door to Lance’s face. “Tom’s damn smart man––me, I’m mebby smarter. I dunno.”
Lance looked down at him, smiling strangely.321“Sam, I’m minding my business, too. I’m doing it by––not minding my own business. Tom Lorrigan’s a smart man––but I’m Tom Lorrigan’s son.”
Sam turned his foot over, looked critically at the calloused sole of it, turned it back again and blew a mouthful of smoke. “Yeah––uh-huh. You damn smart––you don’t like them damn jail. I’m don’t. We both smart, you bet.”
Lance lifted an eyebrow. “What’s the Piegan word foraccomplice, Sam?” he asked softly.
Sam Pretty Cow considered. “Me, I’m don’ know them damn word,” he decided.
“It’s a word that sends smart men to jail, Sam. It means the man that stays at home and––knows.”
Sam Pretty Cow tucked his feet under the thin blanket, laid his half-smoked cigarette on the box, with the burning end out over the edge.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. You bet.” He looked up at Lance, for the first time meeting his eyes squarely. “I’m know them damn word you call. Nh-hn. Long time I’m got that what it mean on my heart. You’re damn right.” He waited a minute, saw the Lorrigan look on Lance’s face, on his lips that smiled enigmatically. “Them Californy got bronks to bust?”
“Surest thing you know, Sam. But that’s all right. You stay.”
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Sam Pretty Cow looked doubtful as an Indian may ever be expected to look.
“You stay, Sam. There’ll be bronks to bust on the Devil’s Tooth for a long while yet.” He moved to the door, pulled it open and stood looking out. Only a few miles away Mary Hope lay asleep, loving him in her dreams, please God. Here, the Shadow hung black over the Devil’s Tooth. He turned to Sam Pretty Cow whose hand was stretched toward the smoky lamp.
“You forget that word, Sam. It doesn’t mean anything at all––to a Piegan. And Sam, if I’m not around to-morrow morning, you ride over to the Douglas ranch, and take back the horse I borrowed. Belle may want to send you to town. She’s there.”
Sam Pretty Cow’s eyes widened appreciably. “Uh-huh––all right. I’m go,” he promised, and blew out the light.
Lance went slowly up to the house and lay face downward on his bed.
323CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTHE DOPE
Traveling lightly, Lance had covered a hundred and fifty miles in four days, through country where trails were few and rough. He had made wide detours, had slept on the ground in his slicker, had eaten bacon and bannocks cooked in the small frying pan which he carried in the sack with his meager rations. He had missed altogether the Devil’s Tooth outfit, and was swinging back now by way of the Lava Beds, where Tom had said that they were going. It was because Tom had named that as his destination that Lance had ridden elsewhere to find him; good reasoning, but so far unproductive of results.
Four days, and he had not heard from Mary Hope, had learned nothing conclusive, either for or against the Devil’s Tooth. Some clues he had gleaned, some evidence that strengthened his suspicions, but nothing to make him feel that the trip had been worth the hardship.
Without knowing just why, he had ridden out expecting to learn the best or the worst and have done with nagging suspicion. It had seemed to324him that Fate meant to be kind, that his destiny and Mary Hope’s pointed the way to happiness. Now he was beginning to doubt. How was happiness possible, if the outlaw blood of the Lorrigans ran at high pressure through the veins of his family? He did not know to a certainty that it did, but until he knew that it did not he could never marry Mary Hope. He had to know. It had been pure madness, going to her as he had gone. While his horse plodded up the hill to where the lava outcroppings began, Lance meditated gloomily on the madness that had driven him to her. He had felt so sure of himself and his future, so much the master of his destiny and hers! Yet, even while he wooed her tempestuously he had known that it was madness, that Trouble was reaching even then to pluck him by the sleeve. Mary Hope and her stern, Scotch integrity linked to the blackened Lorrigan name that might soon stand on the roster of the State’s prison? It was impossible, inconceivable. He had been a hound to say to her what he had said.
True, when her mother was stricken he had been there to help her, to comfort her. But it would be small comfort to Mary Hope when the storm broke over the Devil’s Tooth.
“And I said Fate was with us––I said nothing could hurt her! And it will hurt her all her life.”
His sweaty horse paused to breathe, heaving a great sigh, looking discouragedly at the climb yet325before him. Lance came to himself and swung off, giving the horse an apologetic slap on the shoulder. “You ought to kick me cold, Sorry, for making you pack my hulking carcase up this hill. Why didn’t you stop at the bottom?”
Sorry looked at him, waited for Lance to take the lead, and climbed after him more briskly. He was a big-boned, well-muscled animal, but two hundred pounds had been a heavy load to carry up hill, and he was glad to be rid of it.
At the top Lance did not remount. The thickly strewn flat rocks made treacherous footing, and more than one man had taken a nasty fall because he had chosen to ride that mile of lava when he should have walked. It was somewhere along this stretch of rock outcropping that Shorty had broken his knee so that he would never ride again to the round-up.
Lance was walking along with his head down, brooding over his trouble, when he fancied he heard a faint halloo. Sorry stopped and craned his head. But Lance could see nothing save the barren stretch of lava and the monotonous wilderness beyond, with mountains in the far background and the Black Rim stretching grim on the left of him. He started on, thinking that perhaps some animal or bird was responsible for the sound. But he had gone but a short distance when it came again, more distinctly because he was half listening for it.
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He waited, made a guess at the location of the person who shouted, and turned that way, changing the reins from his right hand to his left and pulling his holstered six-shooter within easy reach of his hand. This was not the country, his was not the errand, for carelessness, and Lance was taking no risk.
As he walked his eyes roved continually over the brown expanse of rocks and stunted juniper that formed the Lava Beds. Behind him came Sorry, his worn shoes slipping now and then on a smooth rock, his head bobbing patiently, close to Lance’s shoulder. As so often happens, it was the horse that first discovered the object of their search. He pulled away from the direct line, looking and looking at what Lance, keen-eyed though he was, mistook for a black rock with a juniper bush growing beside it.
Lance turned that way, focussed his glasses upon the object and saw what had happened. A horse had fallen with its rider, the two lying together, the man pinned under the horse. A black horse which he recognized, and a big, red-faced cowpuncher with gray eyes that did not twinkle. While Lance looked, the man lifted his head, seemed to be staring straight into Lance’s face, opened his mouth and contorted his pain-racked face in a shout. It was strange to have the sound reach Lance’s ears thinned and weakened by distance, while the glasses brought the injured man327so close that he could see the wild look of entreaty in his eyes. Lance put up the glasses and began running, with Sorry stumbling and slipping behind him.
“I been here since morning,” the big cowpuncher chattered feverishly when Lance came up to him. “I’m fixed, all right! I was dozing and I didn’t jump and he caught me when he fell. I guess his leg is broke, but so is mine, fur’s that goes. I come down hard on a rock and I guess I broke some ribs or something. Hurt like hell for a few hours––it ain’t so bad now. Look out when you go to make him git up––if he rolls on me it’s all off. I guess it’s all off, anyway, but I don’t want to be squashed to death.”
Lance bit his lip. It was hard to hear the man talking, talking, in that rapid, headlong fashion, while his leg lay under the full weight of the black horse and the sun blazed on his uncovered head. It was hard to see his shirt all blood-soaked on the left side where he had fallen across an uptilted, thin-edged rock.
The horse, too, was in sorry state. A weed-grown crevice had cheated him with its semblance to sound footing, and he lay with front leg broken, groaning a little now and then while the man talked and talked. And while he examined the two it seemed to Lance that Fate was pointing, and saying that here, too, was one of the inscrutable instruments by which he worked out the destinies328of men. A slippery rock, a man riding that way half asleep––
“I’ll have to shoot this horse, I’m afraid,” Lance said pityingly. “His leg is broken––it’s the most merciful thing I can do. And if I try to lift him off you while he’s alive he may struggle––”
“Sure thing! Go on and shoot him! I woulda done it myself if you hadn’t come along purty soon. I knowed it would be all off with us both if we had to lay out all night, so I was going to finish us both off, when I seen you. Thought I’d take a gambling chance till dark––but the sun has been baking me to a crisp––”
“It’s all right––I’ll get you to a ranch. We’ll fix you up, so don’t think about the finish.” A little of the color had left Lance’s face. Shooting a horse was to him next thing to shooting a human. He had to do it, though. There was no other way.
He took the horse by the cheek-piece of the bridle, spoke to him gently, turned the head a little away from him so that the horse could not look him in the eyes. “Poor old fellow, it’s all I can do for you,” he muttered when he pulled his gun from the holster.
“Maybe you better do the same for me,” said the man, still speaking in the rapid tone which told of fever. “You ain’t able to heave him off me, are you?”
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“Sure, I’m able to. Lie still, now, and grit your teeth, old man. It may hurt, when I lift him off your leg. I’ll raise him up and put a rock under, and pull you out. Can you stand that?”
“Me? Hell, yes. Ain’t I been standing pain since before daylight? Me, I can stand anything if I have to!”
Yet he fainted when Lance took him by the shoulders and pulled him free, and Lance used half the water in the canteen on the saddle in bringing him back to consciousness. When the fellow opened his eyes, Lance remembered that he had half a pint of whisky in his coat pocket, and offered it to the injured one.
“Golly, that’s a life-saver!” he ejaculated when he had taken two swallows. He reached down and felt his crushed leg, grimacing at the pain of returning circulation.
“She’s busted all right. Bustedright, if I’m any judge. And my side––things are all busted up in there. I know it. Say, oldtimer, how do you figure you’re going to get me outa here? Do you know it’s all of ten miles to the nearest ranch? I’ve got a map of the whole country in my coat pocket. I’ll show yuh if you don’t know. You’re a stranger, I guess. I don’t recollect seeing yore horse before. I always know horses. What’s his brand?”
Lance did not say. He himself was wondering how he was going to get the man out of there. If330the fellow thought he was a stranger, all the better. Still, it did not matter much. Already the whisky was whipping the man’s brain to quicker action, loosening his tongue that had already been set wagging by fever.
“Think you can stand it to ride?” he asked solicitously. “I can heave you into the saddle, if you can stand being moved. I’d ride to the next ranch and bring a wagon––but the country’s too rough. A rig couldn’t get within five miles of here.”
“You’re right. Not even Belle Lorrigan’s buckboard could make it across that canyon on beyond. Say, speaking of the Lorrigans––” he hesitated, then plunged recklessly on. “I’m going to pass you some dope I’ve got on that outfit. The chances are I’m done for. The way my insides feel––and you do something for me, will you? If I cash in, you turn in this dope. We may as well ’tend to this business right now, before I tackle the job of riding.”
Lance stood looking down at him while he fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a small leather notebook and some papers.
“I’m a stock detective, see. My name’s Burt Brownlee. I was just about ready to turn in the dope and have the whole outfit pulled. Well, it’s all here. They been rustling right and left, see. But they’re cute––they’redamncute. We been trying to work up the case on the outside, and it seemed like somebody in the Black Rim was sending331stock out, and so I’ve been working on this end. Now here’s the data. I followed ’em, and I’ve got the dope. I know now how they work it, and my evidence and this dope here, that can be verified later on when the time comes, will put the whole bunch over the road, see. They’re outlaws––always have been––but they won’t be by the time they get outa the pen.”
“You better keep that,” Lance cut in gruffly. “Man, that’s nothing you want to be gabbling to a stranger. Shut up, and let me put you on my horse.”
“No, I want to tell yuh,” Burt insisted with all the obstinacy of a man half crazy with pain and whisky. “I want to tell yuh, and I’m going to tell yuh! Get down here and listen. Here’s a map, and here’s the brands they worked, and here’s how they worked ’em. And here’s the dates.”
On one knee Lance kneeled and listened, his jaws set hard together. Fast as the man talked the thoughts of Lance flew ahead, snatched at the significance of every detail, every bit of evidence. Some things puzzled Burt Brownlee, but Lance knew the answer to the puzzle while Burt talked and talked. Finally he laid his hand over the finely traced maps that showed secret trails, unguessed, hidden little draws where stolen stock had been concealed, all the fine threads that would weave the net close around the Lorrigans.
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“Here, put that stuff up. This is not getting you to a doctor, and this can wait. Put it up.”
“No, you take it. And if I don’t pull through, you turn it in. You keep it. I don’t want to be found dead with that dope onme––you can’t tell who might get hold of it.” He thrust the papers and the book eagerly into Lance’s unwilling hand.
“No-o, you can’t tell who might get hold of it,” Lance admitted, biting his lip. “Well, let me take your riding outfit off this horse and then we’ll go.”
While he pulled saddle and bridle off the dead horse, Burt Brownlee talked and talked and talked. He wanted more whisky, which Lance promised him he should have when he was ready to get on the horse. He told further evidence against the Devil’s Tooth, told how he had followed Tom for two days only to see him later at the ranch where he had returned while Burt had for a time lost the trail. On that trip, he said, he would have gotten the full details of one “job” had he not turned off to follow Tom Lorrigan.
While he worked Lance listened stoically. When he was ready to start he led Sorry close, lifted the fellow as tenderly as he could, saw him faint again with the pain, and somehow got him on the horse while he was still unconscious. Burt Brownlee was a big man, but he was not of great weight. Lance bound him to the saddle with his own riata, revived him with a little more whisky, and started for Conley’s, who lived nearest.
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It was ten miles to Conleys, as riders guessed the distance. Lance walked and led Sorry, and tried to hold Burt Brownlee in the saddle, and listened to his rambling talk, and gave him more whisky when he seemed ready to die. During certain intervals when Burt seemed lucid enough to realize his desperate condition, Lance heartened him with assurance that they were almost there.
On the way into the canyon Burt Brownlee suffered greatly on the steep trail, down which the horse must go with forward joltings that racked terribly the man’s crushed side. The whisky was gone; he had finished the scanty supply at the canyon’s crest, because he begged for it so hard that Lance could not steel himself to refuse. At the bottom Lance stopped Sorry, and put an arm around Burt. Lance’s face was set masklike in its forced calm, but his voice was very tender, with the deep, vibrant note Mary Hope loved so ardently.
“Lean against me, old man, and rest a minute. It’s pretty tough going, but you’re game. You’re dead game. You’ll make it. Wait. I’ll stand on this rock––now lean hard, and rest. Ho, there’s no whisky––water will have to do you, now. I’ve a little in my canteen, and when you’ve rested––”
“I’m going,” said Burt, lurching against Lance’s steady strength. “You’re a white man. That Lorrigan dope––don’t forget what I told you––turn it in––”
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Lance’s mouth twisted with sudden bitterness. “I won’t––forget,” he said. “I’ll turn it––in.”
“I’m––a goner. Just––stand and let me––lean––”
Lance stood, and let him lean, and with his handkerchief he very gently dried Burt’s cold, perspiring face. It seemed an endless time that he stood there. Now and then Burt clutched him with fingers that gripped his shoulders painfully, but Lance never moved. Once, when Sorry turned his head and looked back inquiringly, wondering why they did not go on, Lance spoke to the horse and his voice was calm and soothing. But when it was all over, Lance’s underlip was bleeding at the corner where he had bitten into it.
He walked into Conley’s yard an hour after that, his face drearily impassive, a dead man lashed to the saddle. He asked for paper and a pen, and in a firm, even handwriting he described tersely the manner of Burt Brownlee’s death, told where the dead horse and the saddle would be found, and as an afterthought, lest there be trouble in locating the spot, he drew a sketch of that particular part of the Lava Beds. He signed the statement, and had the excited Conleys, shaking man and half hysterical wife, sign also as witnesses. His matter-of-fact treatment of the affair impressed them to the point of receiving his instructions as though they were commands which must on no account be disobeyed in any particular.
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“I’ll be back and tell the coroner. He’ll want to see the horse and saddle, perhaps. Mr. Conley, you can find them without any trouble. If he wants an inquest, tell him I’ll be on hand. Thank you, Mrs. Conley,––no, I’ll not wait for anything to eat. I’m not hungry. I must get home. Good-by––sorry I can’t do any more for you.”
He mounted Sorry, pricked him into a gallop, and presently disappeared around a bend of the trail that led in the direction of the Devil’s Tooth ranch.
336CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENHOW ONE TRAIL ENDED
Darkness falls late on the Black Rim country in midsummer. It was just deepening from dusk when Lance rode up to the corral gate, pulled the saddle and bridle off Sorry with swift jerks that bespoke a haste born of high nervous tension, and strode up to the house. From the bunk house, when he passed, came the murmur of low-keyed voices. The outfit, then, was at home once more. From the shaded window of Belle’s bedroom a thin silver of light shone, where the blind was curled back at the edge, but the rest of the house was dark. He went in, moving softly, but Belle must have heard his step on the porch, for she came out with her bedroom lamp in her hand, the other raised to impress quiet upon him.
“Lance, honey! Where on earth have you been?” She set the lamp down on the table and came close, putting her arms around him, her eyes searching the impenetrable calm of his face, the veiled purpose behind his eyes. It was the Lorrigan fighting look; she had seen it once or twice in Tom’s face and it had frightened her. She was337frightened now, but her own intrepid soul pushed back her fear.
“Sh-sh, honey,” she whispered, though Lance had neither moved nor spoken since she touched him. “Sh-sh––Mary Hope and her mother are here, and they’re both asleep. I––honey, we were so worried, when you didn’t come back. That note you sent didn’t say athing, and I was afraid––And I was between the devil and the deep sea, honey. I couldn’t stay away from here, when I didn’t know––and I couldn’t leave Hope there, and the women that came flocking when they heard the news were justcowsfor brains. And the old lady won’t have a nurse and shewouldn’tlet me out of her sight––she keeps me singing about all the time she’s awake, or reciting poetry––Bobbie Burns, mostly, and Scott. Would you everthinkshe’d stand for Bobbie Burns? But I can do it as Scotch as she can, and she likes it.
“So she wouldn’t let me leave, and I couldn’t stay––and I had Hugh make up a bed in the spring wagon, and brought her over here. If you and Hope are going to be married right away, the old lady will need to be here, anyway. The doctor tried to talk hospital––he justtried. The old lady can write now with her left hand so we can make it out, and when he said hospital to her she––she almost swore.
“So it’s all right, Lance, honey––my God, Lance,what is it? Have you heard from Duke?”338She broke down suddenly, and clutched him in a way that reminded him poignantly of that dying man in the canyon. Her whisper became sibilant, terrified. “What is it?What has happened? Lance,tellme! Tom is here, and Al; they were here when we came, to-day––”
Lance took a deep breath. Very gently he leaned and kissed her on the forehead, reached back and pulled her hands away from his shoulders.
“It’s nothing, Belle. I’m––tired. And you––you surprised me. Will it waken them if I––clean up a little before I go to bed? I’ll––be careful.” He forced his eyes, his lips, to smile at her. “Good girl, Belle. I’m––you’re a trump. Now go back to bed. Lance is on the job––Lance won’t leave again like that––he’ll––settle down.”
He sat down on the nearest chair and pulled off his boots. He made an imperative gesture toward her bedroom, and Belle, giving him a strange, searching look, went in and closed the door after her. He gave a sigh of relief when she was gone, never dreaming how little he had imposed upon her.
In his stocking feet he went to the kitchen, found hot water in the teakettle, carried it to his room and shaved, cleansing his body as well as he could from the dust of the trip without making any sound that might disturb the sleeping invalid and Mary Hope. He dressed himself carefully as though he were339going to meet guests. The set look was still in his face when he stood before the dresser mirror, knotting the blue tie that harmonized best with the shirt he wore. He pulled the tan leather belt straight, so that the plain silver buckle was in the middle, took something off the bed and pushed it carefully inside the waistband of his trousers, on the left side, taking great care that its position was right to the fraction of an inch. He took his tan Oxford shoes in his hand, pulled open his door as quietly as any burglar could have done, stepped down upon the ground and put on the shoes, lacing them carefully, tucking in the bow ends fastidiously.
Then, moving very softly, he went down the path to the bunk-house, opened the door and walked in, never dreaming that Belle was no more than a dozen steps behind him, or that, when he closed the door, she was standing just outside, listening.
The blood of his actress mother carried him insouciantly over the pregnant silence that received him. He leaned negligently against the wall beside the closed door, his arms folded, his eyebrows tilted upward at the inner ends, his lips smiling quizzically.
“I’ve another funny story to tell you fellows,” he drawled, just before the silence became awkward. “Glad you’re all here––it’s too good to keep, too good to waste on part of the outfit. I want you all to get the kick. You’ll enjoy it––being340cattlemen. It’s a joke that was pulled on an outfit down in Arizona.”
Like a trained monologist, he had them listening, deceived by his smiling ease, waiting to hear the joke on the Arizona outfit. Tom and Al, at the table with some papers before them, papers that held figures and scribbled names, he quite overlooked. But they, too, listened to the story, were imposed upon by that quizzical smile, by his mimicry, by the bold, swift strokes with which he painted word pictures which their imaginations seized upon as fast as they were made.
It was Tom who first felt a suspicion of Lance’s purpose, and shifted his position a little, so that his right hand would be free. As he did so, without looking toward him Lance’s left fingers began tapping, tapping the muscles of his right arm; his right hand had sagged a little. Tom’s eyebrows pulled together. Quite well he knew that pose. He waited, listened with closer attention to the story.
Lance paused, as your skillfulraconteurusually does pause before the climax. His glance went impersonally over the faces of his audience. Most of them were leaning forward, a few were breathing hard. They were listening, straining unconsciously to get the meaning he withheld from them. Lance’s right hand sagged another half inch, his lips pulled sidewise in the enigmatical smile of the Lorrigans.
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“I lied, of course––about the outfit this joke is on. It’s really the Devil’s Tooth I’m talking about. But the kick remains, so listen, folks, just listen.
“I’m a Lorrigan. Two of you are Lorrigans, and you know what I mean when I say that. The rest of you had betterguesswhat I mean, if you don’t know––and guess right!
“I’m talking to you with my back against the wall––in more ways than one. Don’t think I’m fool enough not to know it. But you’re listening with your backs against another wall; I believe it is of stone, usually, and the windows have bars. I don’t think you’re such fools you fail to grasp my meaning. I’m talking––and you’re going to listen.
“What I said––well, I have the dope, you know. I know where you took that last bunch of stolen horses, and I know the date when you turned them over. I have a map or two––I know those secret trails you made, that lead into that hidden little basin that the Rim has not discovered yet. I’ve dope enough to indict the whole outfit on five separate counts––and any one of them will put every man of you in the pen for a term of years––well, from five to ten up to fifteen or twenty––a mere detail.
“I know why Duke didn’t come back. There’s a yellow streak in Duke, and he lost his nerve and drifted to parts unknown. Where, I’m not curious342to discover. It doesn’t matter, so long as his destinationremainsunknown.
“That’s the story. And now, here’s the point: Others, detectives working at the other end of the business, have an inkling of some of this dope. They haven’t got what I’ve got, but they may possibly get it. They may––possibly. And if they do––wel-ll––” He smiled at them, his eyebrows pointing his meaning, his fingers tapping, tapping on his arm.
“You’ve got to quit. Now, without turning the deal you’re working on, you’ve got to quit. Get that. Get it right into your souls. You men that have been hired to steal, you’ve got to drift. Where, does not concern me at all. Where Duke went is good––Parts Unknown. Or if it’s to hell––why, the going is good. Never better. You’ll go quicker, but there won’t be any coming back, so I advise––Parts Unknown.
“You two Lorrigans––I’m not thinking of you now as my brother and my father––the same advice applies to you. You’re Lorrigans. You’d rather fight it out than pull out, but you won’t. You’d rather kill me than go. That’s all right; I understand perfectly. But––I’m Lorrigan, too. You’ll go, or I’ll kill you. Tom Lorrigan, your hand is pret-ty close to your gun! But so is mine. You’d kill me, because I stand in the trail you’ve been traveling. But you wouldn’t kill me a damn bit quicker than I’d killyou! I do stand343in the trail––and you’re going to take another, both you Lorrigans.
“You had a debt––a bill of damages against the Black Rim. Wel-ll,” he smiled, “you’ve collected. Now, to-night, you write ‘paid’ across that bill. You tried to be honest, and the Black Rim wouldn’t give you credit for it; they tried to frame something on you, tried to send you ‘over the road’ on a damned, measly charge you weren’t small enough to be guilty of. I understand. The trail ends right here. You quit. You sit there ready to kill. But I’m just as ready as you are. You’ll quit, orI’ll kill you!”
He waited, watching Tom. Tom, watching Lance, got up and faced him cold-eyed, unafraid, weighing not chances, but values rather.
“You’d kill me, would you!” he asked, his voice matching the drawl of Lance.
“Sure, I’d kill you!” Lance smiled back.
Eyes on a level, the two stared at each other, smiling that deadly, Lorrigan smile, the smile of old Tom Lorrigan the killer.
“You would, all right,” Tom said. Then his stiffened muscles relaxed. A twinkle came into his eyes. “If you’re game enough to do that, kid, by God, I’m game enough to quit!”
Lance unfolded his arms, reached out with his open right hand and met Tom’s hand in a close grip. “That’s the stuff, dad! I knew you had it in you––I knew it!”
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Outside the door, Belle hugged her six-shooter to her breast and leaned against the wall, her knees shaking under her. “Thank God! Oh, thank God a Lorrigan can be bigger than all the Lorrigan blood that’s in him!” she whispered. “Oh, Lance, honey––oh, thank God!”
345CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTTHE MAKING OF NEW TRAILS
At the corral, that time-honored conference ground of all true range men, the three Lorrigans leaned their backs against the rails and talked things over in true range style: laconic phrases that stated their meaning without frills or mental reservations, and silences that carried their thoughts forward to the next utterance.
“Al can take the outfit and drift,” said Tom, as though he were discussing some detail of the round-up. “He knows where––and they can scatter, I’ll give ’em a horse apiece as a––a kinda bonus. I’ll have to stay, looks like. Fall round-up’s coming on.”
“Wel-ll,” said Lance, throwing an arm over a rail and drumming with his fingers, “I was raised on round-ups. I don’t suppose I’ve forgotten all about it. You might turn the management over to me for a year or so, and take a trip. Belle needs it, dad. I think I could keep things riding along, all right.”
“Sounds kinda like you had that idea for a346joker up your sleeve,” Al observed meaningly. “Are you plumb sure of that dope, Lance?”
Lance removed his arm from the corral rail, and reached into his pocket. “I didn’t think you had it in you, Al, to be that big a fool. But since you’ve said it, here’s the dope. Take it, dad. I said I’d turn it in, but I didn’t say who’d receive it. The stock detective that’s been camping on your trail for the last few weeks was killed on the Lava Beds to-day. I found him. He’s at Conley’s, now, waiting for the coroner. You might ride over, Al, and see for yourself. And on the way, you might ride up the Slide trail and take a look around the Tooth. You’ll see signs where he’s watched the ranch from up there. And you can go on down and find where he camped several times at Cottonwood Spring.
“The coroner won’t get on the job before to-morrow or next day, and it will take a little time, I suppose, for Brownlee’s employers to wake up and wonder what became of the evidence he was sent to collect. You’ll have, perhaps, a week in which to make your getaway. They’re waiting outside the Rim for the evidence this Burt Brownlee was collecting, so that they could make one big clean-up.
“I’m not setting myself up as a judge, or anything like that––but––well, the going’s good, right now. It may not be so good if you wait.”
He lighted a match and held it up so that Tom347could glance at the maps and skim the contents of the memorandum book. By the blaze of the match Lance’s face still looked rather hard, determined to see the thing through.
“You’d better burn that stuff, dad. And in the morning––how would it be if we went to town and got the legal end of my new job straightened out! I’ll want a Power of Attorney. You may be gone for some time. I suppose you know,” he added, “that Mary Hope and I are going to be married. So you and Belle can take a trip somewhere. They say it’s worth while going down to the big cattle country in the Argentine––South America, you know.”
Tom did not reply. He had lighted a second match and was studying attentively the data in Burt Brownlee’s book. The third match told him enough to convince him. He gave a snort when darkness enveloped them again.
“I sharpened my pencil pretty darn fine when I made out my bill against the Black Rim a few years ago––and by the humpin’ hyenas, these figures here kinda go to show I overcharged ’em. Some. Not so damn much, either, if you look at my side. Better get up the horses, Al, and you’n the boys take the trail. The kid’s right. The goin’s dern good, right now. Better’n what it will be.”
In the scuffed sand before the corral gate Tom made a small fire, with a few crumpled papers and348one small book, which he tore apart and fed, leaf by leaf, to the flames. The light showed him grimly smiling, when he tilted his head and looked up at Lance who watched him.
“So you’n the Douglas kid is figuring on getting hitched! Well, don’t ever try to eye her down like you done to yore dad. She’ll brain yuh, likely––if you wait long enough for her to make up her mind.”
Lance laughed. Up at the house Belle heard him and caught her breath. She stared hard at the three forms silhouetted like Rembrandt figures around the little fire, started toward them and stopped. She was a wise woman, was Belle. Some things a woman may know––and hide the knowledge deep in her heart, and in the hiding help her mate.
Black Rim folk, who always knew so much of their neighbors’ affairs, once more talked and chortled and surmised, and never came within a mile of the truth. The young college rooster had come home to the Devil’s Tooth, they gossiped, and had a row with Al; so Al left home, and Duke too. The Lorrigans always had been hard to get along with, but that Lance––he sure must be a caution to cats, the way he’d cleaned off the ranch.
Marrying the Douglas girl, and taking that paralyzed old lady right to the ranch, had probably had a lot to do with it. Lance might be willing to forget that old trouble with Scotty, but the rest of the349Lorrigans sure never would. And it was queer, too, how all that rustling talk petered out. Mebby there hadn’t been much in it, after all.
Not even Mary Hope guessed why she and Lance were left so completely in charge of the ranch. Sometimes, when the invalid was captious and showed too plainly that she preferred Belle’s playing and singing to the musical efforts of her own daughter, and scrawled impatient questions about Belle’s return, Mary Hope would wonder if Tom Lorrigan really hated her, and if her coming had practically driven him out of his own home. She would cry a little, then,––unless Lance happened to be somewhere near. If he were, there was no crying for Mary Hope.
“He’s a good son,” Mother Douglas once wrote, “I wish Aleck was alive, to see how the Lord has changed the Lorrigans.”
THE END
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