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[Illustration: "Put up your hands a little higher, Mr. Man!"]
RIM O' THE WORLD
BY
B. M. BOWER
AUTHOR OF
CHIP OF THE FLYING U, THE THUNDER BIRD, SKYRIDER, ETC.
FRONTISPIECE BY
ANTON OTTO FISCHER
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1919,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
I THE RIM AND WHAT LAY BENEATH IT 1
II THE LORRIGAN TREE GROWS THRIFTILY 16
III MARY HOPE DOUGLAS APPEARS 30
IV A MATTER OF BRANDS 44
V THEY RIDE AND THEY DO NOT TELL WHERE 57
VI BELLE MEETS AN EMERGENCY IN HER OWN WAY 67
VII THE NAME 82
VIII THE GAME 90
IX A LITTLE SCOTCH 102
X THE LORRIGAN WAY 118
XI LANCE RIDES AHEAD 133
XII SHE WILL, AND SHE WON'T 145
XIII A WAY HE HAD WITH HIM 156
XIV IN WHICH LANCE FINISHES ONE JOB 172
XV HE TACKLES ANOTHER 180
XVI ABOUT A PIANO 192
XVII THE LORRIGAN VIEWPOINT 204
XVIII PEDDLED RUMORS 219
XIX MARY HOPE HAS MUCH TROUBLE 232
XX AS HE LIVED, SO HE DIED 250
XXI LANCE TRAILS A MYSTERY 258
XXII LANCE RIDES ANOTHER TRAIL 272
XXIII LANCE PLAYS THE GAME 283
XXIV WHEN A LORRIGAN LOVES 297
XXV BELLE LORRIGAN WINS 312
XVI THE DOPE 323
XXVII HOW ONE TRAIL ENDED 336
XXVIII THE MAKING OF NEW TRAILS 345
RIM O' THE WORLD
CHAPTER ONE
THE RIM AND WHAT LAY BENEATH IT
Not all of the West is tamed and trained to run smoothly on pneumatic
tires and to talk more enthusiastically of the different "makes" of
cars than of bits and saddles. There are still wide stretches unknown
of tourists and movie men hunting locations for Western melodrama
where men live in the full flavor of adventure and romance and never
know it, because they have never known any other way to live.
In the Black Rim country there is such a place,--a wide, rough,
sage-grown expanse where cattle and horses and sheep scarce know the
look of barbed wire, and where brands are still the sole mark of
ownership. Set down between high mountain ranges, remote, sufficient
unto itself, rudely prosperous, the Black Rim country has yet to be
tamed.
Black Rim country is called bad. The men from Black Rim are eyed
askance when they burr their spur rowels down the plank sidewalks of
whatever little town they may choose to visit. A town dweller will not
quarrel with one of them. He will treat him politely, straightway seek
some acquaintance whom he wishes to impress, and jerk a thumb toward
the departing Black Rim man, and say importantly: "See that feller I
was talking with just now? That's one of them boys from the Black Rim.
Man, he'd kill yuh quick as look at yuh! He's bad. Yep. You want to
walk 'way round them birds from the Rim country. They're a hard-boiled
bunch up that way." And he would be as nearly correct in his estimate
as such men usually are.
Tom Lorrigan's father used to carry a rifle across his thighs when he
rode up the trail past Devil's Tooth Ridge to the benchland beyond,
where his cattle fed on the sweet bunch grass. He never would sit
close to a camp-fire at night save when his back was against a huge
boulder and he could keep the glare of the fire from his eyes. Indians
he killed as he killed rattlers, on the range theory that if they did
not get him then they might some other time, and that every dead
Indian counted one less to beware of. Tom Lorrigan's father was called
a bad man even in Black Rim country,--which meant a good deal.
Hard-bitted men of the Black Rim chose their words wisely when they
spoke to Tom's father; chose wisely their words when they spoke of
him, unless they had full faith in the listener's loyalty and
discretion.
Tom Lorrigan's father lived to be sixty,--chiefly because he was
"quick on the draw" and because he never missed anything that he shot
at. But at sixty, when he was still hated by many, loved by a very few
and feared by every one, he died,--crushed under his horse when it
fell on the Devil's Tooth trail one sleety day in midwinter.
Young Tom Lorrigan learned to shoot when he learned to ride, and he
was riding pitching horses before he could be certain which was p and
which was q in his dad's old spelling book. Which does not by any
means prove that young Tom was an ignoramus. Tom once had three
brothers, but these were somehow unlucky and one by one they dropped
out of the game of life. The oldest brother died with the smell of
burnt black powder in his nostrils, and Tom's father stood over the
body and called his dead son a fool for wearing his gun so it could
stick in the holster. "If I ever ketch yuh doin' a trick like that,
I'll thrash yuh till yuh can't stand," he admonished young Tom
sternly. Young Tom always remembered how his dad had looked when
brother Bill was shot.
The second brother was overtaken while riding a big sorrel horse that
did not happen to carry the Lorrigan brand. So he too died with the
smell of powder smoke in his nostrils, taking three of his pursuers
with him into the Dark Land. Him Tom's father cursed for being
caught.
So young Tom learned early two lessons of the Black Rim book of
wisdom: His gun must never stick in the holster; he must never get
caught by the law.
He was twenty when Brother Jim was drowned while trying to swim his
horse across the Snake in flood time on a dare. Young Tom raced along
the bank, frantically trying to cast his forty-foot rope across sixty
feet of rushing current that rolled Jim and his horse along to the
boil of rapids below. Young Tom was a long, long while forgetting the
terror in Jim's eyes, the helplessness of Jim's gloved hand which he
threw up to catch at the rope that never came within twenty feet of
him, and at the last, the hopeless good-by wave he sent Tom when he
whirled into the moil that pulled him under and never let him go. Tom
learned on the bank of the Snake another lesson: He must never be so
weak as to let another man badger him into doing something against his
own desires or judgment.
Jim's pitiful going left Tom in full possession of the Devil's Tooth
ranch and the cattle and horses that fed on the open range of the
Black Rim country,--and they were many. Young Tom was lonely, but his
loneliness was smothered under a consuming desire to add to his
possessions and to avoid the mistakes of his brothers and of his
father who had carelessly ridden where he should have walked.
Men of the Rim country frequently predicted that young Tom Lorrigan
would die with his boots on; preferably in mid-air. They said he was
going to be like his dad in more than looks, and that times were
changing and a man couldn't steal cattle and kill off anybody that
argued with him, and get away with it as Tom's father had done. They
complained that the country was getting too damn Sunday school, and
young Tom had better tame down a little before he got into trouble.
As Black Rim defines the word, Tom was quite as bad as they called
him. A handsome young dare-devil he was, slanting his glance
downward when he looked into the eyes of a six-foot man,--and
every inch of him good healthy bone and muscle. Women eyed him
pleasantly, wistful for his smile. Men spoke to him friendlywise
and consciously side-stepped his wrath. On the Black Rim range his
word was law, his law was made for himself and the wealth he hankered
for. That wealth he named a million dollars, and he named it often
because he liked the sound of the word. Without any ifs he declared
it. There was a million to be had in Idaho, was there not? Very well,
he would have his million, and he would have it in cattle and horses
and land. He would not go mucking in the gold mines for it; his
million should graze on the bunch grass. He wanted, he said, to see a
million dollars walking around. And since old Tom Lorrigan had
left him a mere forty thousand--according to the appraisers of the
Devil's Tooth estate--young Tom had a long way to go to see his dream
a reality.
Men of the Black Rim hinted that young Tom rode with a long rope;
meaning that his rope would reach the cattle of his neighbor cowmen if
they came in his way. But they only hinted, for unless they could
prove beyond the doubt of any twelve men in the county that his brand
was burned on any cattle save his own, they had no wish to offend. For
young Tom had learned well his three lessons from the fate of his
three brothers; his gun never stuck in its holster; he was wily and
not to be caught; he could neither be harried nor coaxed into setting
aside his own judgment while it seemed to him good.
You would think that young Tom would speedily find himself a mate
amongst the girls of the Black Rim country,--though they were as
scarce as princesses of the royal blood and choice was of necessity
restricted to a half-dozen or so. None of the girls he knew pleased
his fancy, untrained though that fancy might be. Instinct told him
that they were too tame, too commonplace to hold his interest for
long. A breathless dance or two, a kiss stolen in a shadowy corner,
and blushes and giggles and inane remonstrances that bored him
because he knew they would come. Tom had reached the sere age of
twenty-two when he began to wonder if he must go beyond the Black Rim
world for his wife, or resign himself to the fate of an old bachelor.
None of the Black Rim girls, he told himself grimly, should ever have
a share in that million.
Then that purple-lidded, putty-face jade we call Fate whimsically sent
him a mate; curious, I suppose, to see what would happen when the two
whose trails had lain so far apart should meet.
A girl from some far city she was; a small star that had twinkled
behind the footlights and had fled--or had fallen--to the Black Rim
country. Like many another, she had gone as far as her money would
take her. That it took her to the end of the little branch railroad
that stopped abruptly with its nose against a mountain twenty miles
from the Devil's Tooth ranch was a coincidence,--or the whim of Fate.
There she was, as strange to the outland as young Tom would have been
to the city whence she had come; thinking perhaps to start life afresh
in some little Western town; with no money to carry her back to the
outskirts of civilization, and no town wherein she might win fresh
successes. The train that had brought her panted upon a siding,
deserted, its boiler cooling, its engineer, fireman, conductor and
brakeman leaning over a bar in the shack that called itself a saloon.
To-morrow it would rattle back to the junction, if all went well and
the rails held fast to the ties, which was not certain.
The station's name was Jumpoff. The train's conductor, who had the
misfortune to be considered a humorist, liked to say that Jumpoff was
a knot at the end of the road to keep the track from unraveling. He
had told the girl that, on the long, jolty ride from the junction. The
girl replied that at any rate she liked the name.
What really held Jumpoff on the time-table in those days before it
became a real town were the stockyards, where the Black Rim cattle
came to start their journey to market. The trail over the mountains to
the main line was rough, with a two-day drive without water. Yet the
Black Rim country had many cattle, and a matter of a few tunnels and a
trestle or two let the railroad in by a short cut which minimized the
distance to the main line. The branch line paid a fair interest on the
investment,--but not with its passenger service.
The girl found herself stranded in a settlement whose business was
represented by one saloon, one section house, one stable, one
twelve-by-twelve depot and a store that was no more than an addition
to the saloon, with the bartender officiating in both places as
customers required his services. Times when cattle were being shipped,
the store was closed and the saloon had no rival.
It was while the girl was hesitating half-way between the store-saloon
and the section house, wondering which she would choose, that young
Tom Lorrigan galloped up to the hitch rail, stopped his horse in two
stiff-legged jumps, swung down and came toward her. Like a picture on
a wall calendar she looked to young Tom, who had never seen her like
in flesh and blood. He lifted his big, range hat, and she smiled at
him,--though it must have been a stage smile, she had so little heart
for smiling then.
Tom blinked as though he had looked at the sun. Such a smile he had
never seen in his life; nor such hair, like real, gold-colored silk
all in curls around her face; nor such eyes, which were blue as the
sky at twilight when the stars first begin to show.
"Jumpoff is not much of a town," said the girl and laughed to hide how
close she was to tears.
Young Tom caught his breath. He had thought that women had only two
forms of laughter, the giggle of youth or the cackle of age. He had
never dreamed that a woman could laugh like a mountain stream gurgling
down over the rocks. Immediately he visioned young ferns dripping
diamonds into a shadowed pool, though he did not attempt to formulate
the vision in words. His answer was obvious and had nothing to do with
gurgling brooks, or with ferns and shadowed pools.
"It sure ain't, Miss. Might you be looking for somebody in particular?"
"No-o--I'm just here. It would be a poor place to look for anybody,
wouldn't it?"
"Sure would." Young Tom found his courage and smiled, and the girl
looked at him again, as though she liked that white-toothed smile of
Tom's.
"Well, I started out to find the jumping-off place, and this sounded
like it on the railroad map. I guess it's It, all right; there's
nothing to do but jump."
Young Tom pulled his black eyebrows together, studying her. By her
speech she was human; therefore, in spite of her beauty that dazzled
him, she was not to be feared.
"You mean you ain't got any particular place to go from here?"
The girl tilted her head and stared up the mountain's steep,
pine-covered slope. She swung her head a little and looked at Tom. She
smiled bravely still, but he thought her eyes looked sorry for
something.
"Is there any particular place to go from here?" she asked him
wistfully, keeping the smile on her lips as the world had taught her
to do.
"Not unless you went back."
She shook her head. "No," she said, firmly, "I'll climb that mountain
and jump off the top before I'll go back."
Young Tom felt that she spoke in sober earnest in spite of her smile;
which was strange. He had seen men smile in deadly earnest,--his dad
had smiled when he reached for his gun to kill Buck Sanderson. But
women cried.
"Don't you know anybody at all, around here?"
"Not a soul--except you, and I don't know whether your name is Tom or
Bill."
"My name's Tom--Tom Lorrigan. Say! If you ain't got any place to
go--why--I've got a ranch and about twenty-five hundred head of cattle
and some horses. If you didn't mind marrying me, I could take you out
there and give yuh a home. I'd be plumb good to you, if you're willing
to take a chance."
The girl stood back and looked him over. Tall as Tom was she came
almost to his chin. He saw her eyes darken like the sky at dusk, and
it seemed to him quite possible that stars could shine in them.
"You'd be taking as great a chance as I would. I haven't any ranch or
any cattle, or anything at all but myself and two trunks full of
clothes and some things in my life I want to forget. And I have
sixty cents in my purse. I can't cook anything except to toast
marshmallows--"
"I've got a cook," put in young Tom quickly.
"And the clothes I've got would be a joke out here. And the things I
came out here to forget I shall never tell you--"
"I ain't interested enough to ask, or to listen if you told me," said
Tom.
"And myself can sing to you and dance to you, and I'm twenty years old
by the family Bible--"
"I'm twenty-two--makes it about right," said Tom.
"And if you should count fifty and ask me again--"
"Ten, twenty, thirty, forty-fifty, will you marry me?" obeyed Tom with
much alacrity.
"You might call me Belle. Belle Delavan. Well, I came to Jumpoff
because--I meant to jump. Yes, I'll marry you--and the Lord have mercy
on you, Tom Lorrigan, if I live to regret it."
"Amen. Same to you," grinned Tom. "It's an even break, anyway. They
don't claim I'm sprouting wings. They say I've got split hoofs in my
boots instead of feet, and wear my ears pointed at the top. But--but
no girl has got any loop on me. I've been straight, as far as women
goes. That's my record up to the present. If you can stand for a
little drinkin' and gamblin' and shootin'--"
Belle waved aside his self-depreciation. Young Tom was a handsome
devil, and his eyes were keen and clear and looked right into her own,
which was sufficient evidence of good faith for any woman with warm
blood in her body.
"Tom Lorrigan, I've eaten just three soda crackers, six marshmallows
and one orange since yesterday noon," said she irrelevantly. "I can't
be emotional when I'm half starved. Is there any place where I can get
a piece of bread or something?"
"My Lord! Think of me standing here and not thinkin' whether you'd had
dinner or not! Sure, you can have something to eat."
He took her by the arm, too penitent to be diffident over the
unaccustomed gallantry, and hustled her toward the section house. His
mind registered the fact that the bartender, the fireman, the brakeman
and the conductor would shortly apologize abjectly for standing
outside the saloon gawping at a lady, or they would need the immediate
ministrations of a doctor. He hoped the girl had not noticed them.
"They'll throw some grub together quick, over here," he explained to
the girl. "Everybody eats at the section house. It ain't much of a
place, but there ain't any other place. And while you're having dinner
I'll have the operator wire down to Lava for a marriage license to be
sent up on the next train. The saloon man is a justice of the peace,
and he'll marry us right away, soon as you eat. And--"
"Without a license? I know it's always done that way on the stage,
but--but this isn't going to be any stage marriage."
"Well, but the license will be all made out and on the way, and he'll
take my word for it and go ahead with the ceremony. If I tell him to,
he will. It will be all right; I'll _make_ it all right. And then I
can get a team from a ranch back here a ways, and take you right out
to Devil's Tooth. It's the best way. This ain't any place for a lady
to stay. You'll be comfortable out at the Devil's Tooth--it's clean,
anyway." He looked at her honest-eyed, and smiled again. "Yuh needn't
be afraid uh me. We're rough enough and tough enough, and we maybe
shoot up each other now and again, but we ain't like city folks; we
don't double-cross women. Not ever."
She said nothing, and when they had walked four steps farther he added
with a sincere wish to set her at ease: "I could take you to some
ranch and leave you till the license comes, if you think it wouldn't
be all right to get married now. But the womenfolks would talk your
arm off, and you wouldn't like it. And they'd talk about you when your
back was turned. But if Scotty goes ahead and married us, I don't see
why--"
"Oh, I'm not worrying about that. It's just cutting a corner instead
of walking around. I was thinking," said Belle Delavan, while she
dabbed at her lashes as though they were beaded with paint instead of
tears and she must be careful not to smear them, "I was just thinking
how--how _good_ you are. My God, I never knew they grew men like you,
outside of plays and poetry."
"Good!" echoed young Tom Lorrigan, feared of his kind for his badness.
His tone was hushed with amazement, all aglow with pleasure.
"_Good!_--my Lord!"
CHAPTER TWO
THE LORRIGAN TREE GROWS THRIFTILY
Young Tom Lorrigan had found his mate. Had he known more about life in
the big world beyond the Rim, he must have been amazed at his luck.
Once a man dropped dead in a poker game when he had staked his last
blue chip and drawn a royal flush. In the great game of hearts Tom had
drawn a royal flush, but he did not drop dead. Instead, he went right
on living, more determined than ever to own a million dollars' worth
of cattle and horses before he died, considerably before he died,
because he wanted to enjoy that million with Belle. And because of her
he wanted that million to be honest money.
Everything he did now, he did for Belle more than for himself. As a
matter of course she became his real reason for living. She was like
the sun. He took her for granted, never questioning the blessed warmth
of her presence, never stopping to wonder what life would be like if
he lost her. She was beautiful, with a beauty that never palled and
never paled. She laughed a great deal, and he never could keep
laughter from his own lips while he listened. When she sang she put
the meadow larks to shame, and afterwards when he rode the range alone
Tom would whistle strange, new melodies that the Black Rim country
never had heard before,--melodies which Belle had taught him
unconsciously with her singing. He did not know that it would have
astonished a city dweller to hear the bad man of Black Rim Country
whistling Schubert's "Serenade" while he rode after cattle, or
Wagner's "Prize Song," or "Creole Sue," perhaps, since Belle, with
absolute impartiality, sang everything that she had ever heard sung.
On billboards before eastern theatres Belle Delavan had been called
"The Girl with a Thousand Songs." Audiences had been invited by the
stage manager to name any selection they might choose, assured that
Belle would sing it from memory. No wonder that her singing never grew
stale to Tom Lorrigan!
But mostly she busied herself with little domesticities that somehow
never included cooking, and with driving helter-skelter over the range
with two horses hitched to a buckboard, following Tom when he rode
after cattle. Do you think she should logically have learned to ride?
She did try it once on the gentlest horse that Tom owned, which was
not too gentle to run away with Belle. She rode that horse just two
hundred yards before she jolted so far from the saddle that she could
not find it again until some time after, when they had caught the
horse and led him to the corral.
"Not any more for me, Tom Lorrigan!" she gasped, flapping her two
pretty hands in eloquent disgust when Tom rode up to her. "I wouldn't
get on a horse's back again to star for the Queen of England! I'll
take that team of he-devils you've been breaking to drive, and I'll
drive 'em or break every bone in their bodies. I'm willing to get
behind any horse you've got; but to get on their backs--excuse me!"
She limped painfully to the house with her yellow hair blowing around
her shoulders and across her lips that would smile in spite of her
mishap.
After that Belle drove the "he-devils" and others quite as devilish,
and risked her bones with perfect equanimity. She drove horses that
had to be thrown before the collar could be buckled on, and
"forefooted" before they would submit to the harness. Indeed, Belle
seemed to prefer that kind of horses. She wanted a team that could
keep pace with Tom,--and she had it. Her buckboard lasted a year,
with luck. She strewed the Devil's Tooth range with wheels and
doubletrees and splinters and hairpins, and scattered sunshiny
smiles and cuss-words and snatches of song wherever she went. And
since she went wherever eight bronco feet could take her, Black
Rim country came to know Belle Lorrigan as it knew Tom. Came to fear
Belle Lorrigan's wrath, which bettered the lightning for searing,
lashing sword-thrusts of venom; came to know her songs well enough
to hum snatches of them; came to laugh when she laughed,--and to
hope that the next laugh would not be aimed at them; came to
recognize her as a better shot than any one save Tom, who taught her.
At the country dances on the various ranches, Belle never missed
quadrille, two-step, waltz or schottische, and she danced by herself
or sang songs during the intervals, while the women of the range sat
stiffly along the walls on benches, stared at Belle and whispered
behind their weather-reddened hands, and tittered. She taught
big-jointed, bashful boys how to waltz, and she slapped a half-drunken
miner who squeezed her too tightly in a square dance. Slapped Tom also
when he came hurrying up to kill the miner, and told him to keep to
his own quarrels and save his powder for something worth while. She
didn't need help to step on a worm, she added, and took a youth by the
arm and led him off to dance. The miner, I may say to the curious, was
next seen in Hailey, heading south. He left a very good prospect up in
the hills and never went back to work out his assessments.
As you have probably guessed, Belle Lorrigan and the women of the
Black Rim country did not get on very well together. Black Rim women
thought that a woman who wore her hair in curls down her back--yellow
hair at that!--could not be any too good if the truth were known. They
declared to one another that a woman who did not talk about her past
life, who never so much as mentioned past illnesses, even, must have a
great deal to cover up. How did Tom Lorrigan get acquainted with her,
anyway? Through some marriage agency, they were willing to bet. And
how did a decent woman happen to have all the fancy clothes which
Belle Lorrigan possessed? And jewelry enough to stock a store with!
Three rings on one finger at one time and the same time was going it
pretty strong, in the opinion of the Black Rim ladies. They also
believed that she used paint and powder, which damned her beyond all
hope of redemption.
Poor Belle Lorrigan (Black Rim country spoke of her always as Belle
Lorrigan without in the least understanding why she remained an
individual personality to them instead of becoming merely Mrs.
Lorrigan--Mrs. Tom, even, since many of the Black Rim women were
designated by the nicknames of their husbands)! She would have been
glad to be friendly, simply because friendliness was in her blood and
would out. She would have been glad to receive them at the Devil's
Tooth ranch for one of those all-day visits which were the custom of
the country. But for a long while they did not come. Sometimes she
would meet a family bundled to the eyes against the chill winds of
Idaho, bumping over the rough roads on their way to visit some near
neighbor who lived only ten or fifteen miles away. She would flash
them a smile while she pulled up her bronco team out of the trail to
make a generous room for their passing, and she would shout something
pleasant as they went by. And after they had gone on she would shrug
her fine, broad shoulders and call them cats, going out to a
scratching, with all the kittens mewing along. She would flap a
hand--providing the bronco team left her a hand free to flap--and
shake her head, and say, "Not for mine, thank you!" And would be hurt
down deep in her heart where it did not show, because they never
stopped at her door.
But when the boys began to come, then came the neighbor women, making
formal two-hour calls upon the new mother, eager to see and to hear
and to go away and compare notes afterward. They talked much of the
names that Belle Lorrigan called her children. The first one she named
for the hero in her first play; wanting, I suppose, a souvenir of the
time when she was fifteen and had her first speaking part on the
stage. She called her first-born Algernon Adelbert. Algernon Adelbert
Lorrigan, grandson of old Tom Lorrigan! Think of that!
But Algernon Adelbert no sooner outgrew his cradle than he was known
to all and sundry as Al Lorrigan, so that no harm was done him in
giving him such a name. He grew up lusty and arrogant, a good deal of
a bully, six feet tall, a good rider--though, not so good a rider as
his dad--a good shot, willing to help gather that million together on
the chance that he might have a share in the spending.
Al was a youth who hunted trouble for the thrill of meeting it more
than half-way, but since Tom Lorrigan happened to be his father, Al
rode off the Devil's Tooth ranch before he became the rampant young
trouble-hunter. Belle had some anxious hours during the time Al was
gone, but she never once betrayed her anxiety; which is doing pretty
well for a mother.
The second was Marmaduke LeRoy, and the third and last she recklessly
christened Lancelot Montgomery. Marmaduke never learned to spell his
name correctly, and sometimes complained that Belle had gone and named
him after a mess of preserves,--meaning marmalade, I suppose. But as
he grew older he forgot his grievance. Belle was the only person who
could remember offhand his full name, and she never called him by it
except when she was very angry; when she usually attached so many
adjectives that Marmaduke LeRoy was quite submerged. Commonly he was
called Duke, which did well enough.
Tom used to study Duke through half-closed lids and the smoke of a
cigarette, and wonder which side of the family had a yellow streak;
not the Lorrigan side, so far as Tom could judge. Nor the Delavan
side either, if Belle lived true to type. To be sure, Belle refused to
ride a horse; but then Belle was a woman and women had whims. There
was no yellow about Belle, except her hair which was pure golden.
Duke would invariably lie to dodge punishment. According to his own
theory, Duke was always blameless, always the injured party, the boy
who does right and never is given credit for his virtues. Even Belle,
who would fight for her boys as a tigress fights for its young, looked
askance at Duke while she tried, motherlike, to cover his faults from
the keen eyes of Tom.
"I'd just like to know how you come by it," she once exclaimed
exasperatedly, when Duke was ten and Lance eight. "I'd sure chop one
limb off the family tree, if I knew which one gave you the gall to lie
to me and Tom. Duke, for heaven's sake take a licking just once
without trying to lay the blame on Al or Lance--and see how proud
you'll feel afterwards!"
"Aw--lickins hur-rt!" Duke had protested, rubbing the arm Belle had
gripped none too gently, and sidled away from her.
With her hands to her hips--gracefully posed there, as became an
actress--Belle regarded him fixedly. "My Gawd!" she whispered, owning
defeat before that invulnerable selfishness of Duke's.
Her tone stung even his young crocodile-hided sensibility. "You're
always blamin' me. You'n Tom think I do everything mean on this ranch!
You think Lance is an angel! He's your pet and you let him pick on me
an' you never say a word. Lance can do any darn thing he pleases, an'
so can Al. I'm goin' to run away, first thing you know. You can have
your sweet little angel pet of a doggone ole cowardly-calf Lance!"
Then he whined, "Aw--you lemme go! I never done it, I tell yuh! It was
Lance!"
Belle gritted her teeth while she shook him. "You yellow-hearted
little whelp. I _saw you_ chasing that colt around the corral till he
broke the fence! If Tom was to know about it he'd lick you good! Duke,
why _can't_ you be a man and take the blame yourself, just once? I'd
be--I'd be so proud o' you if you only told the truth about things.
Don't you know--it's only a coward that will lie to save his own
skin?"
"Lance is a bigger coward than I am, an' you never say a word to him.
You think Lance is perfect."
"I guess you're hopeless all right," Belle retorted. "It's just a
yellow streak in you somewhere. Living with the Lorrigans, I'm hoping
you'll outgrow it. The Lorrigans sure ain't yellow!"
"I chased Blackie some, Belle," Lance volunteered, peering down over
the stable eave at his irate mother. "Duke started in and got him
going good, and when he come fogging over to this side I flopped my
arms at him. Gee, but he did stop quick! I guess if you're going to
lick Duke, you better give me about four good licks for that, Belle.
And take 'em off Duke's licking. No use licking us both for the same
thing."
Belle tilted her yellow head and looked up at her beloved youngest,
grinning down at her cheerfully from the hay roof where he sprawled
head downward, flat on his stomach.
"Well, thank the Lord one Lorrigan has got the nerve to own up to a
thing. Come on down and get your four licks, then. I can be as square
as the next one. But Duke's got it coming to him for lying to me. Tell
me, Lance, did Duke chase Blackie through the fence?"
"Aw go on, Belle! What's matter with you, asking me what Duke done?
He's the feller to ask about that. I chased Blackie about four licks'
worth. Hurry up and let's get it over with. You know it ain't pleasant
for either of us!"
"Smarty!" yelled Duke, quick to read in Belle's face what softening
effect Lance had on her temper. "Tryin' to be smart--tryin' to be
George Wash'nton! You little liar, you know you chased Blackie more'n
what I done. Sneak out of it--yeah, that's you, every time. Own up
just enough to make Belle think you're an angel. Doggone the whole
doggone outfit!"
"_Now_ what?" Tom's voice broke in upon Duke's shrill tirade. From
the back of his horse Tom looked down quizzically upon them. "Duke,
what you been up to?"
"Aw, you always think it's me! Why don't you ask Lance what he's been
up to? Why don't you lick Lance for being on the stable? If I was to
get up there and tromp around in the hay and make it leak, I know what
_I'd_ git!"
Tom sent a glance up to where Lance was hastily scrambling down a
corner. "You'd better!" he commented sternly. Then he looked at Belle,
his eyes twinkling under his scowl.
"If you can't handle these young devils, Belle, turn 'em over to me.
I'll mighty quick settle their hash for 'em."
Belle gripped tighter the squirming Duke. "I'm not a cripple yet, Tom
Lorrigan. They've both got a licking coming to 'em, and if you'll
kindly walk off stage R. C. I'll go on with the scene. You weren't
cued to come on here."
"It's your show, Belle," Tom assented, and very obligingly rode to
the other side of the stable to unsaddle his horse, and grinned to
himself when the sound of wailing and pleading and promises of the
"I'll-never-do-it-again" variety came to his ears. Belle's lickings
were distinguished chiefly by their uproar.
"Belle wallops 'em like brandin' calves," Tom used to chuckle. "They
beller a plenty while it's going on, and kick up their heels when it's
all over. I wish't my dad had licked me like that when I was a kid.
You can gamble, when I was thrashed, I knowed it!"
Duke grew up to be a very good cowpuncher, however. He knew every draw
and dry wash, every creek bottom and every canyon on the Black Rim
range; knew almost as well as the owner how many cattle carried every
brand. In the Devil's Tooth round-ups Duke held his place alongside Al
as a top hand,--disputing now and then the right of young Lance to
compete with him, but never quite daring to bring his dispute to the
point where action would take the place of words.
"Duke's sure enough a bad man--with his face," Tom once snarled to
Belle. "Make it a talking match, and Duke could lick any old woman, in
the Black Rim country."
"There's been enough fighting Lorrigans, don't you think?" Belle
smiled back at him. "Duke's dad can fight hard enough for the whole
family. I didn't think you wanted your boys to be fighters."
"I don't. But I sure do want 'em to have the fightin' stuff in 'em,
whether it ever comes out or not. Take Lance, there. Lance ain't a
fighter, either; but by the Lord John, it's there! Once get Lance
started, and I'd back him against any three men in the Black Rim. It's
in him, if the play ever come up. And it's in Al. The Lorrigan is
strong in Al. But that Duke--"
"Honey, I think maybe it's the Delavan in Duke. I remember an old maid
aunt of mine that used to bolt the door and quarrel with my mother
through the keyhole. I guess maybe Duke has got a little touch of Aunt
Jane."
"Oh, sure! First I ever heard of Aunt Jane, Belle. Takes you to think
up a reason."
"And the Lorrigan will come out, honey. He's got the look, now and
then. It's in him, you'll see."
So that is how the Lorrigan boys grew up. They thought Belle the most
beautiful, the most wonderful woman in the world,--though they never
called her mother. Belle would not have it. She refused to become a
motherly, middle-aged person, and her boys were growing altogether too
big and too masterful to look upon a golden-curled, pink-cheeked,
honey-throated Amazon as other Black Rim sons looked upon their faded,
too often shrewish maternal parent. She was just Belle. They knew no
other like her, no one with whom they might compare her. We do not
compare the sun and the moon with other suns and moons. Like Tom, they
worshipped her in their hearts, and chummed with her even before they
had outgrown her stormy chastisements. They mended her buckboards and
her harness; they galloped alongside while she drove careening across
the range, her hair flying in the wind, her mouth smiling and showing
her white teeth. They danced with her,--and having Belle for a
teacher from the time they could toddle, you may guess how the
Lorrigan boys could dance. They sang the songs she taught them; they
tried to better her record at target practice and never did it; they
quarreled with her when her temper was up and dodged her when it
became too cyclonic.
They grew up without ever having ridden on the cars, save once or
twice to Lava. Black Rim was the rim of the world to them, and their
world held all that they yearned for. Belle sheltered them from too
much knowledge of that other world, which held the past she hated and
tried to forget. Much she taught them of city manners and the little
courtesies of life. She would box the ears of the boy who neglected to
rise and offer her a chair when she entered a room, and would smoke a
cigarette with him afterward. Once she whipped her six-shooter out of
its holster and shot a hole through the crown of Al's hat, as a
tactful reminder that gentlemen always remove their hats when they
come into a house. Al remembered, after that. At fourteen even the
hardiest youth feels a slight shock when a bullet jars through his hat
crown two inches above his hair.
CHAPTER THREE
MARY HOPE DOUGLAS APPEARS
Devil's Tooth ridge, which gave the Lorrigan ranch its name, was
really a narrow hogback with a huge rock spire at one end. Crudely it
resembled a lower jaw bone with one lone tooth remaining. Three
hundred feet and more the ridge upthrust its barren crest, and the
wagon road from the ranch crawled up over it in many switchbacks and
sharp turns, using a mile and a half in the climbing. They called it
the "dug road." Which meant that teams and scrapers and dynamite and
much toil had been necessary in the making, distinguishing it from
most Black Rim roads, which followed the line of least resistance
until many passings had worn a definite trail; whereupon that trail
became an established thoroughfare legalized by custom and not to be
lightly changed for another.
Over in the next valley, beyond Devil's Tooth ridge, Alexander
Douglas had made a ranch for himself and his family. Aleck Douglas was
as Scotch as his name. He shaved his long upper lip, so that it
looked longer and more uncompromising than was necessary even to
match the Aleck Douglas disposition. His hair was wiry and stood up
from a forehead that might be called beetling. His eyebrows were heavy
and came so near to meeting that Mary Hope used to wish that she
dared lay one small finger between father's eyebrows, just to see if
there would be room. His eyes were as close together as his thin
beak of a nose would permit, and his ears were long and narrow and set
flat against his head. He was tall and he was lank and he was honest
to his last bristling hair. He did not swear--though he could wither
one with vituperative epithets--and he did not smoke and he did not
drink--er--save a wee nip of Scotch "whusky" to break up a cold,
which frequently threatened his hardy frame. He was harshly
religious, and had there been a church in the Black Rim country you
would have seen Aleck Douglas drive early to its door every Sunday
morn, and sit straight-backed in a front pew and stare hard at the
minister through the longest of sermons,--providing, of course, that
church and minister were good Presbyterian.
He loved the dollars, how he did love his dollars! He loved his
cattle, because they represented dollars. He nursed them, dollars and
animals alike, and to lose one wrung the heart of him.
His wife was a meek little thing in his presence, as the wives of such
men as Aleck Douglas usually are. She also was rigidly honest,
dogmatically religious and frugal and hard-working and intolerant of
the sins of others.
Early she taught Mary Hope that beyond Devil's Tooth ridge lived those
wicked Lorrigans, whose souls were bartered to the devil and whose
evil ways were a stench in the nostrils of God. Mary Hope used to
wonder if God turned up his nose when there was a stench in his
nostrils,--for instance, when Belle Lorrigan hurtled past with her
bronks and her buckboard and her yellow hair flying. Mary Hope
wondered, too, what the Lorrigan boys had got from the devil in
exchange for their souls. Some magic, perhaps, that would protect them
from death and accident. Yet that seemed not true, for Al Lorrigan
broke his leg, one spring round-up. The devil ought to have saved his
horse from falling down with him, if the devil had Al Lorrigan's
soul.
That had happened when Mary Hope was twelve and Al Lorrigan was
eighteen. She heard her father tell her mother about it; and her
father had set his whiskered lip against his long, shaven upper lip
almost with a smack.
"They'll come to a bad end, all of them," he declared sententiously.
"Violent deaths had all the Lorrigans before them--all save Tom, and
the Lord but stays his hand for a time from that man. The wicked shall
flourish as a green bay tree."
"Father, how can a tree be green and then bay too!" Mary Hope
ventured to inquire. "Is it just a Bible tree, or does it flourish
somewhere really?"
Aleck Douglas hid his month behind his palm and coughed. "'Tis not bay
like a horse, child. 'Tis not the color that I'm speaking of."
"That painted Jezebel, Belle Lorrigan, drove past the house to-day
within a stone's throw," Mrs. Douglas informed her husband. "I wush,
Aleck, that ye would fence me a yard to keep the huzzy from driving
over my very doorstep. She had that youngest brat of hers in the seat
with her--that Lance. And as they went past on the keen gallop--and
the horses both in a lather of sweat--the boy impudently shook his
fist at me where I was glancing from my window. And his mother lookit
and laughed, the Jezebel!"
"Mother, Lance only waved his hand."
"And why should Lance be waving his hand when he should pass the
house? Did he think that a Douglas would come so low as to wave at a
Lorrigan?"
Mary Hope ducked her sleek little pig-tailed head outside the door and
shooed vehemently at a dingy black hen that happened to be passing.
Mary Hope knew that a Douglas had stooped so low as to wave back at
Lance Lorrigan, but it seemed unwise to tell her mother so.
When Mary Hope was permitted to have a gentle old cow-pony of her own,
she rode as often as she dared to Devil's Tooth ridge. By short cuts
down certain washes which the trail avoided with many winding detours,
she could lope to the foot of the ridge in forty minutes by the old
alarm clock which she carried one day in her arms to time the trip.
She could climb by another shortcut trail, to the Devil's Tooth in
twenty minutes. She could come down in fifteen, she discovered. In a
three-hour ride she could reach the-Devil's Tooth, spend a whole hour
looking down upon the ranch house of the wicked Lorrigans, and ride
home again. And by choosing the short cuts she practically eliminated
the chance of being observed.
If she could see Belle go tearing down the trail with her bronks and
her buckboard she would be horrifiedly happy. The painted Jezebel
fascinated Mary Hope, who had read all about that wicked woman in the
Bible, and had shivered in secret at her terrible fate. Belle Lorrigan
might never be eaten by dogs, since dogs are few in cattleland and are
kept strictly at home, but if Mary Hope's mother was any true
prophetess, the painted Jezebel's final doom would be quite as
horrible.
At the infrequent parties which the Douglas household countenanced,--such
as Christmas trees and Fourth of July picnics, Mary Hope would sit and
stare fixedly at Belle Lorrigan and wonder if all painted Jezebels
were beautiful and happy and smiling. If so, why was unadorned virtue
to be commended? Mary tried not to wish that her hair was yellow and hung
in curls, and that she had even white teeth and could sing and dance so
wonderfully that everything stopped and every one looked and listened
from the minute she began until she stopped.
More than anything else in her starved young life, Mary Hope wanted to
see the inside of the Lorrigan house. The painted Jezebel had a real
piano, and she could play it, people said. She played ungodly songs,
but Mary Hope had a venturesome spirit. She wanted to see an
instrument of the devil, hear the painted Jezebel play on it and sing
her ungodly songs.
One day when she had ridden to the top of the Devil's Tooth a great,
daring plan came to her. She wanted to ride down there--a half mile
down the bluff, a mile and a half by the road--but she would never
dare take that trail deliberately. Her father might hear of it, or her
mother. Nor could she ask the Lorrigans not to tell of her visit. But
if her horse ran away with her and took her down the ridge, she could
ask them to please not tell her father, because if he knew that her
horse ran away he would not let her ride again. It seemed to Mary Hope
that all the Lorrigans would sympathize with her dilemma. They would
probably ask her into the house. She would see the piano, and she
could ask the painted Jezebel to play on it. That would be only
polite. It did seem a shame that a girl thirteen years old, going on
fourteen, should never have seen or heard a piano. Mary Hope looked at
the sun and made breathless calculation. Having just arrived at the
Devil's Tooth, she had an hour to spend. And if she took the steep,
winding trail that the Lorrigans rode, the trail where old man
Lorrigan's horse had fallen down with him, she could be at the house
in a very few minutes.
"Ye look little enough like a runaway horse, ye wind-broken, spavined
old crow-bait, you!" she criticized Rab as he stood half asleep in the
sun. "I shall have to tell a lee about you, and for that God may
wither the tongue of me. I shall say that a rattler buzzed beneath
your nose--though perhaps I should say it was behind ye, Rab, else
they will wonder that ye didna run away home. If ye could but lift an
ear and roll the eye of you, wild-like, perhaps they will believe me.
But I dinna ken--I wouldna believe it mesel!"
Rab waggled an ear when she mounted, switched his tail pettishly when
she struck him with the quirt, reluctantly obeyed the rein, and set
his feet on the first steep pitch of the Devil's Tooth trail. Old as
he was, Rab had never gone down that trail and he chose his footing
circumspectly. It was no place for a runaway, as Mary Hope speedily
discovered when she had descended the first dip and entered the cleft
which the Lorrigans called the Slide.
A slide it was, and down it Rab slid on his rump. An old watercourse,
with sheer rock walls that formed the base of the Tooth itself. Had
there been room Mary Hope would have turned back. But the cleft was so
narrow that a pack horse must be adept at squeezing past protuberances
and gauging the width of its pack if it would travel the trail. A
sharp turn presently showed her the end of the cleft, and they emerged
thankfully upon a sage-grown shelf along which the trail proceeded
more gently.
Then came another cleft, with great boulders at the end, which a horse
must negotiate carefully if he would not break a leg or two. It was
here that old Tom Lorrigan had died under his horse before help came
that way. But Rab had covered many rough trails, and he picked his way
over the boulders safely,--though not as a runaway horse should have
traveled.
After that there came a treacherous bit of shale, across which Mary
Hope thought it best to lead her runaway steed which refused for a
time to venture farther. Being a Douglas she was obstinate. Being
obstinate, she would not turn back, especially since the trail would
be even worse in the climbing than it was in the descent. Rab, she
realized worriedly, could not slide up that narrow, rock-bottomed
cleft down which he had coasted so readily.
"They must be devil horses that ride this way, Rab," she sighed when
she had remounted on the lower margin of the shale. "And the Lorrigans
na doot have magic. But I dinna think that even they could run away
down it."
She struck Rab sharply with the quirt and dug in her heels. If Rab was
to run it must be immediately, for the level valley lay just below and
the Lorrigan house was around the next point of the hill.