went back the way they had come, so swiftly that even with shouting
she could not have made herself heard in that whooping wind. She
pulled Rab to a willing stand and stared after Tom, hating him with
her whole heart. Hating him for his domination of her from the moment
he entered the schoolhouse where he had no business at all to be;
hating him because even his bullying had been oddly gentle; hating him
most of all because he was so like Lance--and because he was not
Lance, who was away out in California, going to college, and had never
written her one line in all the time he had been gone.
Had it been Lance who rode up to the schoolhouse door, she would have
known how to meet and master the situation. She would not have been
afraid of Lance, she told herself savagely. She wouldn't have been
afraid of Tom--but the whole Black Rim was afraid of Tom. Well, just
wait until she happened some day to meet Lance! At least she would
make him pay! For two years of silence and brooding over his hardihood
for taking her to task for her unfriendliness, and for this new and
unbearable outrage, she would make Lance Lorrigan pay, if the fates
ever let them meet again.
CHAPTER TEN
THE LORRIGAN WAY
The Lorrigan family was dining comfortably in the light of a huge lamp
with a rose-tinted shade decorated with an extremely sinuous wreath of
morning glories trailing around the lower rim. A clatter of pots and
pans told that Riley was washing his "cookin' dishes" in the lean-to
kitchen that had been added to the house as an afterthought, the fall
before. Belle had finished her dessert of hot mince pie, and leaned
back now with a freshly lighted cigarette poised in her fingers.
"What have you got up your sleeve, Tom?" she asked abruptly, handing
Duke her silver matchbox in response to a gestured request for it.
"My arm," Tom responded promptly, pushing back his wristband to give
her the proof.
"Aw, cut out the comedy, Tom. You've been doing something that you're
holding out on us. I know that look in your eye; I ought, having you
and Lance to watch. You're near enough to double in a lead and not
even the manager know which is who. You've been doing something, and
Lance knows what it is. Now, I'll get it outa you two if I have to
shoot it out."
Lance, just returned from Berkeley during Easter holidays, lifted one
eyebrow at Tom, lowered one lid very slowly, and gave his mother a
level, sidelong glance.
"Your husband, my dear madame, has been engaged in a melodramatic role
created by himself. He is painfully undecided whether the hisses of
the orchestra attest his success as a villian; whether the whistling
up in the gallery demands an encore, or heralds an offering of
cabbages and ripe poultry fruit. I myself did not witness the
production, but I did chance to meet the star just as he was leaving
the stage. To me he confided the fact that he does not know whether it
was a one-act farce he put on, or a five-act tragedy played
accidentally hind-side before, with the villian-still-pursuing-her act
set first instead of fourth. I am but slightly versed in the drama as
played in the Black Rim the past two years. Perhaps if the star would
repeat his lines--"
"For-the-Lord-sake, Lance! As a dramatic critic you're the punkest
proposition I ever slammed my door against. Talk the way you were
brought up to talk and tell me the truth. What did Tom do, and how did
he do it?"
Lance drew his black eyebrows together, studying carefully the ethics
of the case. "Belle, you must remember that Dad is my father. Dad
must remember that you are my mother--technically speaking. By heck,
if it wasn't for remembering how you used to chase me up on the barn
every day or so with your quirt, I'd swear that you grew up with me
and are at this present moment at least two years younger than I am.
However, they _say_ you are my mother. And--do you want to know,
honestly, what dad has been doing?"
"I'm _going_ to know," Belle informed him trenchantly.
"Then let me tell you. I'll break it gently. Tom, your husband, the
self-confessed father of your offspring, to-day rode to an alleged
schoolhouse, threatened, ordered, and by other felonious devices hazed
three Swedes and the four Boyle kids out of the place and toward their
several homes and then when the schoolmarm very discreetly locked the
door and mildly informed him that she would brain him with a twig off
a sage-bush if he burst the lock, he straightway forgot that he was
old enough to have a son quite old enough to frighten, abduct and
otherwise lighten the monotonous life of said schoolmarm, and became a
bold, bad man. He bursted that door off its hinges--"
"You're a liar. I busted the lock," Tom grunted, without removing the
cigarette from his lips.
"He busted the lock of that door, madame; rushed in, wrested the sprig
of sage--"
"It was a club the size of my arm."
"Wrested the club from that schoolmarm, brutally and ferociously
forced her into her coat and hat, compelled her to mount her horse,
and then deliberately drove her away from that--"
"Shut up, Lance. You remind me of one of those monstrosities they
serve in the Lava House, that they call a combination salad. It's
about two-thirds wilted lettuce and the rest beets and carrots. I
don't ever eat them, but if I did they'd taste just like you sound."
"Oh, all right, then. With only two weeks' vacation I won't have time
for a real spree of Black Rim dialect and sober up in time for the
University. Let me mix it, Belle. I'll eat my own verbal combination
salad, if anybody has to. I won't ask you."
"You'll eat 'em, all right," Tom stated briefly, lifting an eyebrow at
him. "All I done, Belle, was to ride up to the Whipple shack to see
who was camped there. It was that Douglas girl and the Boyle kids and
them Swedes that live over beyond Boyle's. They was all setting there
having school,--with their overcoats on, half froze, and the wind
howling through like it was a corral fence. So when the Douglas girl
got her Scotch up and said she wouldn't turn 'em loose to go home, I
turned 'em loose myself and told 'em to beat it. And then I hazed her
home. Seems like they think that shack is good enough for women and
kids; but I wouldn't keep pigs in it, myself, without doing a lot of
fixing on it first."
"What dad seems to overlook is the attitude Boyle and old Scotty will
take, when they hear how Tom Lorrigan broke up school for 'em.
There'll be something drop, if you ask me--I hope it drops before I
have to leave."
Belle looked at him meditatively. "And where were you, Lance? With
Mary Hope?"
For answer, Lance smiled, with his mouth twisted a little to one side,
which made him resemble Tom more than ever. "A fellow sure does hate
to have his own father cut in--"
"So that's what ails you! Well, you may just as well know first as
last that Mary Hope hasn't spoken to one of us since the time they had
Tom up in court for stealing that yearling. You know how they acted;
and if you'd come home last summer instead of fooling around in
California, you'd know they haven't changed a darn bit. It's a shame.
I used to like Mary Hope. She always seemed kinda lonesome and half
scared--"
"She's got over it, then," Tom interrupted, chuckling. "She's got
spunk enough now for two of her size. Had that club lifted, ready to
brain me when I went in, just because I'd spoiled her rules for her.
If she had as much sense as she's got nerve--"
"Why don't they build her a schoolhouse, if they want her to teach?"
Belle pushed back her chair.
"Ever know the AJ to spend a cent they didn't have to?" Duke asked.
"Or old Scotty? The Swede ain't able. How're they paying her? This
ain't any school district."
"So much a head," Tom answered. "Not much, I reckon. The girl's got
nerve. I'll say that much for her. She was dodgin' clods of dirt from
the roof, and shivering and teaching to beat hell when I got there."
"They're going to be awful sore at you, Tom, for this," Belle
predicted. "They're going to say you did it because you hate the
Douglases, and it was Mary Hope teaching. Jim Boyle will side with old
Scotty, and there'll be the devil and all to pay. Did you tell those
kids why you sent 'em home?"
"I told the girl. No, I never told the kids. The Swedes had sense
enough to beat it when she let 'em out for recess. She got fighty over
that, and wouldn't let the school out and wait for good weather, so I
went out and told the Boyle kids to hit for home. Humpin' cats,
_somebody_ had to do something!
"So then the Scotch come out strong in the girl, and I made her go
home too. If I see 'em in that shack to-morrow, and the weather like
it is and like it's going to be, I'll send 'em home again. What in
thunder do I care what old Scotty and Jim Boyle says about it? If
they want a woman to learn their kids to read, they'd oughta give her
a better place than the Whipple shack to keep school in."
"They won't," said Belle. "A roof and four walls is all you can expect
of them. It's a shame. I expect Mary Hope is tickled to death to be
earning the money, too. She was taking music all winter in Pocatello,
I heard, and she and her mother saved up the money in nickels--Lord
knows how, the way old Scotty watches them!--to pay for the lessons.
It's a shame."
"What do they do for water? Old Man Whipple always hauled it in
barrels when he tried to hold down the camp." Al, tilting back his
chair, placidly picking his teeth, spoke for the first time.
"I didn't see no water barrel," Tom answered. "I reckon they make dry
camp. They had a stove that smoked, and three benches with some kinda
shelf for their books, and the girl was using a strip of tar-paper for
a blackboard. But there was no water."
"Say, what sort of country is this Black Rim, anyway?" Lance studied
the end of his cigarette, lifting his left eyebrow just as his father
had done five minutes before. "I hope to heck I haven't come home to
remodel the morals of the country, or to strut around and play
college-young-man like a boob; but on the square, folks, it looks to
me as though the Rim needs a lesson in citizenship. It doesn't mean
anything in our lives, whether there is a schoolhouse in the country
or not. Belle has looked out for us boys, in the matter of learning
the rudiments and a good deal besides. Say, Belle, do you know they
took my voice and fitted a glee club to it? I was the glee. And a
real, live professor told me I had technique. I told him I must have
caught it changing climates--but however, what you couldn't give us
with the books, you handed us with the quirt--and here and now I want
to say I appreciate it."
"All right, I appreciate your appreciation, and I wish to heaven you
wouldn't ramble all over the range when you start to say a thing.
That's one thing you learned in school that I'd like to take outa you
with a quirt."
"I was merely pointing out how we, ourselves, personally, do not need
a schoolhouse. But I was also saying that the Rim ought to have a
lesson in real citizenship. They call the Lorrigans bad. All right;
that's a fine running start. I'd say, let's give 'em a jolt. I'm game
to donate a couple of steers toward a schoolhouse--a _regular_
schoolhouse, with the Stars and Stripes on the front end, and a bench
behind the door for the water bucket, and a blackboard up in front,
and a woodshed behind--with a door into it so the schoolmarm needn't
put on her overshoes and mittens every time she tells one of the
Swedes to put a stick of wood in the stove. I'd like to do that, and
not say a darn word until it's ready to move into. And then I'd like
to stick my hands in my pockets and watch what the Rim would do about
it.
"I've wondered quite a lot, in the last two years, whether it's the
Black Rim or the Lorrigan outfit that's all wrong. I know all about
grandad and all the various and sundry uncles and forbears that earned
us the name of being bad; it makes darn interesting stuff to tell now
and then to some of the fellows who were raised in a prune orchard and
will sit and listen with watering mouths and eyes goggling. I've been
a hero, months on end, just for the things that my grandad did in the
seventies. Of course," he pulled his lips into their whimsical smile,
"I've touched up the family biography here and there and made heroes
of us all. But the fact remains there are degrees and differences in
badness. I've a notion that the Black Rim, taken by and large, is a
damn sight worse than the Devil's Tooth outfit. I'd like to try the
experiment of making the AJ and old Scotty ashamed of themselves. I'd
like to try a schoolhouse on 'em, and see if they're human enough to
appreciate it."
Duke, turning his head slowly, glanced at Al, and from him to Tom.
Without moving a muscle of their faces the two returned his look. Al
slid his cigarette stub thoughtfully into his coffee cup and let his
breath out carefully in a long sigh that was scarcely audible. Tom
took a corner of his lower lip between his teeth, matching Lance, who
had the same trick.
"Honey, that's fine of you! There aren't many that realize what a lot
of satisfaction there is in doing something big and generous and
making the other fellow ashamed of himself. And it would be a God's
mercy to Mary Hope, poor child. Leave it to the AJ and whatever other
outfit there is to send pupils, and Mary Hope could teach in the
Whipple shack till it rattled down on top of them. I know what the
place is. I put up there once in a hailstorm. It isn't fit for cattle,
as Tom says, unless they've fixed it a lot. I'll donate the furniture;
I'll make out the order right this evening for seats and blackboard
and a globe and everything, and make it a rush order!" Belle pushed
back her chair and came around to Lance, slipped her arms around his
neck and tousled his wavy mop of hair with her chin. "If the rest
won't come through you and I'll do it, honey--"
"Who said we wouldn't?" Tom got up, stretching his arms high above his
head,--which was very bad manners, but showed how supple he still was,
and how well-muscled. "No one ever called me a piker--and let me hear
about it. Sure, we'll build a schoolhouse for 'em, seeing they're too
cussed stingy to build one themselves. There's the lumber I had hauled
out for a new chicken house; to-morrow I'll have it hauled up to some
good building spot, and we'll have it done before the AJ wakes up to
the fact that anything's going on."
"I'll chip in enough to make her big enough for dances," volunteered
Duke. "Darn this riding fifteen or twenty miles to a dance!"
"I'll paint 'er, if you let me pick out the color," said Al. "Where
are you going to set 'er?"
"What's the matter with doing the thing in style, and giving a
house-warming dance, and turning it over to the neighborhood with a
speech?" bantered Lance, as they adjourned to the big living room,
taking the idea with them and letting it grow swiftly in enthusiasm.
"That would celebrate my visit, and I'd get a chance to size up the
Rim folks and see how they react to kindness. Lordy, folks, let's do
it!"
"We might," Belle considered the suggestion, while she thumbed the
latest mail-order catalogue, the size of a family bible and much more
assiduously studied. "They'd come, all right!" she added, with a
scornful laugh. "Even old Scotty would come, if he thought it wouldn't
cost him anything."
"Well, by heck, we won't _let_ it cost him anything!" Lance stood
leaning against the wall by the stove, his arms folded, the fingers of
his left hand tapping his right forearm. He did not know that this was
a Lorrigan habit, born of an old necessity of having the right hand
convenient to a revolver butt, and matched by the habit of carrying a
six-shooter hooked inside the trousers band on the left side.
Tom, studying Lance, thought how much he resembled his grandfather on
the night Buck Sanderson was killed in a saloon in Salmon City. Old
Tom had leaned against the wall at the end of the bar, with his arms
folded and his fingers tapping his right forearm, just as Lance was
doing now. He had lifted one eyebrow and pulled a corner of his lip
between his teeth when Buck came blustering in. Just as Lance smiled
at Duke's chaffing, Tom's father had smiled when Buck came swaggering
up to him with bold eyes full of fight and his right thumb hooked in
his chap belt. Old Tom had not moved; he had remained leaning
negligently against the wall with his arms folded. But the strike of a
snake was not so quick as the drop of his hand to his gun.
Tom was not much given to reminiscence; but to-night, seeing Lance
with two years of man-growth and the poise of town life upon him, he
slipped into a swift review of changing conditions and a vague
speculation upon the value of environment in the shaping of character.
Lance was all Lorrigan. He had turned Lorrigan in the two years of his
absence, which had somehow painted out his resemblance to Belle. His
hair had darkened to a brown that was almost black. His eyes had
darkened, his mouth had the Lorrigan twist. He had grown taller,
leaner, surer in his movements,--due to his enthusiasm for athletics
and the gym, though Tom had no means of knowing what had given him
that catlike quickness, the grace of perfect muscular coordination.
Tom thought it was the Lorrigan blood building Lance true to his
forbears as he passed naturally from youth to maturity. He wondered if
Lance, given the environment which had shaped his grandfather, would
have been a "killer," hated by many, feared by all.
Even now, if it came to the point of fighting, would not Lance fight
true to the blood, true to that Lorrigan trick of the folded arms and
the tapping fingers? Would not Lance--? Tom pulled his thoughts away
from following that last conjecture to its logical end. There were
matters in which it might be best not to include Lance, just as he had
been careful not to include Belle. For Lance might still be a good
deal like Belle, in spite of his Lorrigan looks and mannerisms. And
there were certain Lorrigan traits which would not bear any mixture of
Belle in the fiber.
"Well, now, that's all made out. I'll send to Salt Lake and get the
stuff quicker. Wake up, Tom, and tell us how long it will take to put
up the schoolhouse? Lance is going to give the dance--and there won't
be so much as a soggy chocolate cake accepted from the Rimmers. What
will you do, Lance? Put up a notice in Jumpoff?"
"Surely! A mysteriously worded affair, telling little and saying much.
Music and refresh--no, by heck, that sounds too wet and not solid
enough. Music and supper furnished free. Everybody welcome. Can't
Riley drive the chuck-wagon over and have the supper served by a
camp-fire? Golly, but I've been hungry for that old chuck-wagon! That
would keep all the mess of coffee and sandwiches out of the nice, new
schoolhouse."
"Who's going to hold their hat in front of the nice, new schoolhouse
till it's done and ready? And how're you going to let 'em know where
to come to, without giving away the secret?" Al, the practical,
stretched his long legs to the stove and thrust his hands deep into
his trousers pockets while he propounded these two conundrums. "Go on,
Lance. This is yore party."
Lance unfolded his arms and disposed his big body on a bearskin
covered lounge where he could take Belle's hand and pat it and
playfully pinch a finger now and then.
"To look at your hand, Belle, a fellow would swear that a blonde
manicure girl comes here twice a week," he said idly. "Where is the
schoolhouse going to be built? Why not put it just at the foot of the
ridge, at Cottonwood Spring? That's out of sight of the road, and if
the notice said 'Cottonwood Spring', folks would know where to head
for. It's close to the line of your land, isn't it, dad? A
yard--corral-size--fenced around the place would keep the cattle off
the doorstep, and they could water there just the same. If we're going
to do it, why not do it right?"
"I guess we could get down there with a load," Tom assented easily.
"I'd ruther have it on my land anyways."
"Don't think, Tom Lorrigan, that we'd ever take it back from Mary
Hope. No matter how Scotty acts up. But if they ever gave her the
double-cross and got some one else to teach--why it might be nice to
know it's our schoolhouse, on our land." Belle pulled her hand away
from Lance and went over to the piano. "It's all done but the
shingling," she said cheerfully. "Come on, Lance, see if you can sing
'Asleep in the Deep.' And then show me what you mean by saying you can
yodel now better than when I licked you the time you and Duke chased
the colt through the corral fence!"
"All done but the shingling--and I ain't got 'em bought yet!" grumbled
Tom, but was utterly disregarded in the sonorous chords of Belle's
prelude to the song.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LANCE RIDES AHEAD
At fifteen minutes to four on a certain Tuesday afternoon, the first
really pleasant day after the day of tearing, whooping wind that had
blown Tom into the role of school bully, Lance loped out upon the
trail that led past the Whipple shack a mile and a quarter farther on.
Ostensibly his destination was the town of Jumpoff, although it was
not the time of day when one usually started from the Devil's Tooth
ranch to the post-office, with three unimportant letters as an excuse
for the trip.
As he rode Lance sang lustily a love song, but he was not thinking
especially of Mary Hope. In two years more than one California girl
had briefly held his fancy, and memory of Mary Hope had slightly
dimmed. In his pocket were two letters, addressed to two California
towns. One letter had Miss Helene Somebody inscribed upon it, and on
the other was Miss Mildred Somebody Else. The love song, therefore,
had no special significance, save that Lance was young and perfectly
normal and liked the idea of love, without being hampered by any
definite form of it concentrated upon one girl.
For all that he had timed his trip so as to arrive at the Whipple
shack just about the time when Mary Hope would be starting home. He
was curious to see just how much or how little she had changed; to
know whether she still had that funny little Scotch accent that
manifested itself in certain phrasings, certain vowel sounds at
variance with good English pronunciation. He wanted to know just how
much Pocatello had done to spoil her. Beneath all was the primal
instinct of the young male dimly seeking the female whom his destiny
had ordained to be his mate.
As a young fellow shut in behind the Rim, with the outside world a
vast area over which his imagination wandered vaguely, Mary Hope had
appealed to him. She was the one girl in the Black Rim country whom he
would ride out of his way to meet, whose face, whose voice, lingered
with him pleasantly for days after he had seen her and talked with
her. He reflected, between snatches of song, that he might have
thought himself in love with Mary Hope, might even have married her,
had Belle not suddenly decided that he should go beyond the Rim and
learn the things she could not teach him. Belle must have wanted him,
her youngest, to be different from the rest. He wondered with a sudden
whimsical smile, whether she was satisfied with the result of his two
years of exile. Tom, he suspected, was not,--nor were Duke and Al.
The three seemed to hold themselves apart from him, to look upon him
as a guest rather than as one of the family returned after an absence.
They did not include him in their talk of range matters and the
business of the ranch. He had once observed in them a secret
embarrassment when he appeared unexpectedly, had detected a swift
change of tone and manner and subject.
Surely they could not think he had changed sufficiently to make him an
outsider, he meditated. Aside from his teasing of Belle, he had
dropped deliberately into the range vernacular, refraining only from
certain crudities of speech which grated on his ears. He had put on
his old clothes, he had tried to take his old place in the ranch work.
He had driven a four-horse team up the Ridge trail with lumber for the
schoolhouse, and had negotiated the rock descent to Cottonwood Spring
with a skill that pleased him mightily because it proved to him--and
to Tom and the boys--that his range efficiency had not lessened during
his absence. He had done everything the boys had done, except ride out
with them on certain long trips over the range. He had not gone simply
because they had made it quite plain that they did not want him.