house with a cook of their own, and this only the middle of March! In
two years the personnel of the bunk house had changed almost
completely. They were men whom he did not know, men who struck him as
"hard-boiled," though he could not have explained just wherein they
differed from the others. Sam Pretty Cow and Shorty he could hobnob
with as of yore,--Sam in particular giving him much pleasure with his
unbroken reserve, his unreadable Indian eyes and his wide-lipped grin.
The others were like Duke, Tom and Al,--slightly aloof, a bit guarded
in their manner.
"And I suppose Mary Hope will be absolutely spoiled, with small-town
dignity laid a foot deep over her Scotch primness. Still, a girl that
has the nerve to lift a club and threaten to brain Tom Lorrigan--"
He had forgotten the love song he was singing, and before he reached
farther in his musings he met the Swedes, who stared at him round-eyed
and did not answer his careless hello. A little farther, the Boyle
children rode up out of a dry wash, grinned bashfully at him and
hurried on.
A saddlehorse was tied to a post near the Whipple shack. With long
legs swinging slightly with the stride of his horse, reins held
high and loose in one hand, his big hat tilted over his forehead,
Lance rode up and dismounted as if his errand, though important, was
not especially urgent. The door stood open. He walked up, tapped
twice with his knuckles on the unpainted casing, and entered,
pulling off his hat and turning it round and round in his gloved
fingers while he ducked his head, pressed his lips together with a
humorous quirk, shuffled his spurred feet on the dirty floor and
bowed again as awkwardly as he could. In this manner he hoped to
draw some little spark of individuality from Mary Hope, who sat behind
her yellow-painted table and stared at him over her folded arms.
But Mary Hope, he observed, had been crying, and compunction seized
him suddenly.
"Well, what is it?" she asked him curtly, rubbing a palm down over one
cheek, with the motion obliterating a small rivulet of tears.
"If you please, ma'am, I was sent to mend a lock on a door."
"What lock? On what door?" Mary Hope passed a palm down her other
cheek, thus obliterating another rivulet that had ceased to flow tears
and was merely wet and itchy.
"If you please, ma'am, you can search me." Lance looked at her
innocently. "I didn't bring any lock with me, and I didn't bring any
door with me. But I've got some screws and three nails and--lots of
good intentions."
"Good intentions are very rare in this country," said Mary Hope, and
made meaningless marks on the bare tabletop with a blunt pencil.
Lance heard a twang of Scotch in the "very rare" which pleased him.
But he kept his position by the doorway, and he continued bashfully
turning his big hat round and round against his chest,--though the
action went oddly with the Lorrigan look and the athletic poise of
him. "Yes, ma'am. Quite rare," he agreed.
"In fact, I don't believe there is such a thing in the whole Black Rim
country," stated Mary Hope, plainly nonplussed at his presence and
behavior.
"Could I show you mine?" Lance advanced a step. He was not sure, at
that moment, whether he wanted to go with the play. Mary Hope was
better looking than when he had seen her last. She had lost a good
deal of the rusticity he remembered her to have possessed, but she was
either too antagonistic to carry on the farce, or she was waiting for
him to show his hand, to betray some self-consciousness. But the fact
that she looked at him straight in the eyes and neither frowned nor
giggled, set her apart from the ordinary range-bred girl.
"You talk like a country peddler. I'm willing to accept a sample, and
see if they are durable. Though I can't for the life of me see why
you'd be coming here with good intentions."
"I'd be mending a lock on a door. Is this the door, ma'am? And is this
the lock?"
Since the door behind him was the only door within five miles of them,
and since the lock dangled from a splintered casing, Mary Hope almost
smiled. "It is a door," she informed him. "And it is a lock that has
been broken by a Lorrigan."
She was baiting him, tempting him to quarrel with her over the old
grudge. Because she expected a reply, Lance made no answer whatever.
He happened to have a dozen or so of nails in his coat pocket,
left-overs from his assiduous carpentry on the house being builded for
her comfort. The screws he possessed were too large, and he had no
hammer. But no man worries over a missing hammer where rocks are
plentiful, and Lance was presently pounding the lock into place, his
back to Mary Hope, his thoughts swinging from his prospective party to
the possible religious scruples of the Douglas family.
Mary Hope used to dance--a very little--he remembered, though she had
not attended many dances. He recalled suddenly that a Christmas tree
or a Fourth of July picnic had usually been the occasions when Mary
Hope, with her skirts just hitting her shoe tops in front and sagging
in an ungainly fashion behind, had teetered solemnly through a
"square" dance with him. Mother Douglas herself had always sat very
straight and prim on a bench, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes
blinking disapprovingly at the ungodly ones who let out an exultant
little yip now and then when they started exuberantly through the
mazes of the "gran'-right-n-left."
Would Mary Hope attend the party? Should he tell her about it and
ask her to come? Naturally, he could not peacefully escort her
partyward,--the feud was still too rancorous for that. Or was it?
At the Devil's Tooth they spoke of old Scotty as an enemy, but they
had cited no particular act of hostility as evidence of his enmity.
At the Devil's Tooth they spoke of the whole Black Rim country as
enemy's country. Lance began to wonder if it were possible that
the Lorrigans had adopted unconsciously the role of black sheep,
without the full knowledge or concurrence of the Black Rimmers.
He did what he could to make a workable lock of one that had been
ready to fall to pieces before his father heaved against it; hammered
in the loosened screws in the hinges, tossed the rock out into the
scuffed sod before the shack, and picked up his hat. He had not once
looked toward Mary Hope, but he turned now as if he were going to say
good-by and take himself off; as if mending the lock had really been
his errand, and no further interest held him there.
He surprised a strange, wistful look in Mary Hope's eyes, a trembling
of her lips. She seemed to be waiting, fearing that he meant to go
without any further overtures toward friendship.
The Whipple shack was not large. Ten feet spanned the distance between
them. Impulsively Lance covered that distance in three steps. At the
table he stopped, leaned toward her with his palms braced upon the
table, and stared full into Mary Hope's disturbed eyes.
"Girl," he said, drawing the word softly along a vibrant note in his
voice that sent a tremor through her, "Girl, you're more lonesome than
Scotch, and you're more Scotch than the heather that grows in your
front yard to make your mother cry for the Highlands she sees when her
eyes blur with homesickness. You were crying when I came--crying
because you're lonely. It's a big, wild country--the Black Rim. It's a
country for men to ride hell-whooping through the sage and camas
grass, with guns slung at their hips, but it's no country for a little
person like you to try and carry on a feud because her father made
one. You're--too little!"
He did not touch her, his face did not come near her face. But in his
eyes, in his voice, in the tender, one-sided little smile, there was
something,--Mary Hope caught her breath, feeling as if she had been
kissed.
"You little, lonesome girl! There's going to be a party at Cottonwood
Spring, a week from Friday night. It's a secret--a secret for you. And
you won't tell a soul that you were the first to know--and you'll
come, you girl, because it's your party. And not a soul will know it's
your party. If your father's Scotch is too hard for dancing--you'll
come just the same. You'll come, because the secret is for you. And--"
He thought that he read something in her eyes and hastened to
forestall her intention "--and you won't go near Cottonwood Spring
before the time of the party, because that wouldn't be playing fair.
"Don't be lonely, girl. The world is full of pleasant things, just
waiting to pop out at you from behind every bush. If you're good and
kind and honest with life, the Fates are going to give you the best
they've got. Don't be lonely! Just wait for the pleasant things in
to-morrow and to-morrow--in all the to-morrows. And one of them, girl,
is going to show you the sweetest thing in life. That's love, you girl
with the tears back of your Scotch blue eyes. But wait for it--and
take the little pleasant things that minutes have hidden away in the
to-morrows. And one of the pleasant times will be hidden at Cottonwood
Spring, a week from Friday night. Wonder what it will be, girl. And if
any one tries to tell it, put your hands over your ears, so that you
won't hear it. Wait--and keep wondering, and come to Cottonwood Spring
next Friday night. Adios, girl."
He looked into her eyes, smiling a little. Then, turning suddenly, he
left her without a backward glance. Left her with nothing to spoil
the haunting cadence of his voice, nothing to lift the spell of
tender prophecy his words had laid upon her soul. When he was quite
gone, when she heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs upon the arid
soil that surrounded the Whipple shack, Mary Hope still stared out
through the open doorway, seeing nothing of the March barrenness,
seeing only the tender, inscrutable, tantalizing face of Lance
Lorrigan,--tantalizing because she could not plumb the depths of his
eyes, could not say how much of the tenderness was meant for her, how
much was born of the deep music of his voice, the whimsical,
one-sided smile.
And Lance, when he had ridden a furlong from the place, had dipped
into a shallow draw and climbed the other side, turned half around in
the saddle and looked back.
"Now, why did I go off and leave her like that? Like an actor walking
off the stage to make room for the other fellow to come on and say his
lines. There's no other fellow--thank heck! And here are two miles we
might be riding together--and me preaching to her about taking the
little, pleasant things that come unexpectedly!" He swung his horse
around in the trail, meaning to ride back; retraced his steps as far
as the hollow, and turned again, shaking his head.
"Anybody could stop at the schoolhouse just as school's out, and ride
a couple of miles down the road with the schoolma'am--if she let him
do it! Anybody could do that. But that isn't the reason, why I'm
riding on ahead. What the hell is the reason?"
He stopped again on the high level where he could look back and see
the Whipple shack squatted forlornly in the gray stretch of sage with
wide, brown patches of dead grass between the bushes.
"Lonesome," he named the wild expanse of unpeopled range land. "She's
terribly lonely--and sweet. Too lonely and sweet for me to play with,
to ride a few miles with--and leave her lonelier than I found her. I
couldn't. There's enough sadness now in those Scotch blue eyes. Damned
if I'll add more!"
He saw Mary Hope come from the shack, pause a minute on the doorstep,
then walk out to where her horse was tied to the post. He lifted the
reins, pricked his horse gently with the spurs and galloped away to
Jumpoff, singing no more.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHE WILL, AND SHE WON'T
Cottonwood Spring was a dished-out oasis just under the easy slope of
Devil's Tooth Ridge. From no part of the Jumpoff trail could it be
seen, and the surrounding slope did not offer much inducement to
cattle in March, when water was plentiful; wherefore riders would
scarcely wander into the saucer-like hollow that contained the
cottonwoods and the spring. A picnic had once been held there, but the
festivities had been marred by a severe thunderstorm that came just as
a wordy quarrel between two drunken cowpunchers was fast nearing the
gun-pulling stage. Lightning had struck the side hill just beyond the
grove, and the shock of it had knocked down and stunned the two
disputants, and three saddle horses standing in the muddy overflow
from the spring. For this reason, perhaps, and because it was on
Lorrigan land, the place had never thereafter been frequented save by
the stock that watered there.
But from the head of the little basin a wide view was had of the
broken land beyond Devil's Tooth. The spring was clear and cold and
never affected by drouth. By following the easy slope around the point
of the main trail from Jumpoff to the Lorrigan ranch, no road-building
was necessary, and in summer the cottonwoods looked very cool and
inviting--though at certain times they harbored buffalo gnats and many
red ants that would bite, which rendered the shade less grateful than
it looked. But to the Lorrigans it seemed an ideal site for a
schoolhouse.
Ten days after they had planned the deed, the schoolhouse stood ready
for the dance. In the lean-to shed, twelve shiny yellow desks that
smelled strongly of varnish were stacked in their heavy paper
swaddlings, waiting to be set in place when the dance was done. Belle
herself had hemmed scrim curtains for the windows, which Riley had
washed copiously. The blackboard, with the names of various Devil's
Tooth men and a "motto" or two scrawled upon it was in place; the
globe was on the teacher's desk, and the water bucket on its shelf in
the corner, with a shiny new tin dipper hanging on a nail above it.
If you were to believe the frequent declarations, every puncher on the
ranch had done his durnedest to put 'er up, and put 'er up right. Sam
Pretty Cow had nailed a three-foot American flag to the front gable,
and had landed on a nail when he jumped from the eaves. On the night
of the dance he was hobbling around the chuck-wagon with half a pound
of salt pork bound to his foot, helping Riley, who had driven over to
the spring early, burdened with the importance of his share in the
entertainment.
A dance in the Black Rim country has all the effect of a dog fight in
a small village with empty streets. No sooner does it start than one
wonders where all the people came from.
At eight o'clock toiling horses drawing full loads of humanity began
to appear over the rim of the hollow, to pick their way carefully down
toward the lighted windows, urged by their drivers. Men on horseback
made the descent more swiftly, with a clatter of small rocks kicked
loose as they came. They encountered a four-wire fence, circled it to
where a lantern, hung on a post, revealed a gate that lay flat on the
ground to leave a welcoming space for teams and saddle horses to pass
through.
Beside the schoolhouse, with two lanterns shedding a yellow glow on
his thin, sandy hair, Riley, at the chuck-wagon, arranged doughnuts,
sandwiches, pies and cakes to his liking, wiped his red hands
frequently on his clean flour-sack apron, and held carefully unprofane
conversation with the women who came fluttering over to him, their
arms burdened.
"No, mom, sorry! I know I'm turnin' down something that's better than
anything I got here, but this here party's on the Lorrigans. No, mom,
I got orders not to take in s'much as a sour pickle from nobody. You
jest put it back in the rig, whatever you got there, and consider't
you got some Sat'day bakin' did up ahead.
"Yes, mom, it's Lance's party. He's home for a visit, an' he kinda
wanted to have a dance an' meet the folks, seein' he's been away quite
a spell and kain't stay long.
"Yes, mom, he's goin' back to college first the week.
"Hey! I wisht you'd tie up yore cayuses other side the shack. Folks'll
be comin' around here for their supper, and they don't wanta git their
faces kicked off whilst they're huntin' grub to fill 'em.
"No, mom, we ain't takin' any cakes or nothin' off nobody. Lance, he
wanted to give this dance an' give it _right_. Ain't goin' to cost
nobody a thing but sore corns, t'night!"
Lance had hired an Italian violinist and his boy who played a harp
much taller than himself and people coming from Jumpoff had brought
them out. The Millers had come, with all their outfit. The AJ outfit
was there to a man. The Swedes were present, sitting together in the
corner by the water bucket, and the Conleys, who lived over by Camas
Creek beyond the AJ, had come. The Conleys had sheep, and were not
firmly settled in the Black Rim, sheepmen being looked at askance.
There were families from nearer Jumpoff,--one really did wonder where
they all came from, when the country seemed so wide and unpeopled.
Lance was surprised to see how many were there who were total
strangers. Until the dancing began the men stood outside and smoked,
leaving the women and children to arrange themselves on benches along
the wall inside. Lance knew the custom well enough, and he did not go
in. But he tried to see who came with every load that was deposited
within the circle of light on the narrow platform that embellished the
front.
At nine o'clock, when the musicians were trying their instruments
tentatively and even the most reluctant male was being drawn
irresistibly to the humming interior, Lance frankly admitted to
himself that he was not happy, and that his condition was the direct
result of not having seen Mary Hope enter the door.
He sought out Tom, who was over at the chuck-wagon, taking an early
cup of coffee. Tom blew away the steam that rose on the chill night
air and eyed Lance. "Well, when do we make the speech? Or don't we?"
he demanded, taking a gulp and finding the coffee still too hot for
comfort. "Don't ask me to; I done my share when I built 'er. You can
tell the bunch what she's for."
"Oh, what the heck do we want with a speech?" Lance remonstrated.
"They know it's a schoolhouse, unless they're blind. And I thought
maybe some one--you, probably, since you're the one who hazed her out
of the other place--would just tell Mary Hope to bring her books over
here and teach. And I thought, to cinch it, you could tell Jim Boyle
that you felt you ought to do something toward a school, and since you
couldn't furnish any kids, you thought you'd furnish the house. That
ought to be easy. It's up to you, I should say. But I wouldn't make
any speech."
Tom grunted, finished his coffee and proceeded to remove all traces of
it from his lips with his best white handkerchief. "Where's Jim Boyle
at?" he asked, moving into the wide bar of dusk that lay between the
lights of the chuck-wagon and the glow from the two windows facing
that way.
"I believe I'd speak about it first to Mary Hope," Lance suggested,
coming behind him. "But she hasn't come yet--"
As if she heard and deliberately moved to contradict him, Mary Hope
danced past the window, the hand of a strange young man with a crisp
white handkerchief pressed firmly between her shoulder blades. Mary
Hope was dancing almost as solemnly as in the days of short skirts and
sleek hair, her eyes apparently fixed upon the shoulder of her partner
who gazed straight out over her head, his whole mind centered upon
taking the brunt of collisions upon the point of his upraised elbow.
"I'll ketch her when she's through dancing," promised Tom. But Lance
had another thought.
"Let me tell Mary Hope, dad. I'm going to dance with her, and it will
be easy."
In the darkness Tom grinned and went on to find Jim Boyle standing in
a group of older men on the platform that served as a porch. Jim Boyle
was smoking a cheap cigar brought out from Jumpoff by the section
boss. He listened reflectively, looked at the glowing tip of the
evil-smelling cigar, threw the thing from him and reached for his
cigarette papers with an oath.
"Now, that's damn white of yuh, Tom," he said. "I leave it to the
boys if it ain't damn white. Not having no school district I'm puttin'
up the money outa my own pocket to pay the teacher. And havin' four
kids to feed and buy clothes for, I couldn't afford to build no
schoolhouse, I tell yuh those. And uh course, I didn't like to go
round askin' fer help; but it's damn white of yuh to step in an' do
yore share towards making the Rim look like it was civilized.
Sederson, he'll feel the same way about it. And I'm gitting a
foreman that's got a kid, school age; we sure'n hell do need a
schoolhouse. Rim's settlin' up fast. I always said, Tom, that you
was white. I leave it to the boys here."
Inside, Lance was not finding it so easy to make the announcement.
Last Tuesday, Mary Hope had not understood just why he had ridden
on ahead of her for two miles--she could see the small dust cloud
kicked up by his horse on the Jumpoff trail, so there could be no
mistake--when he knew perfectly well that she must ride that way, when
he could not have failed to see her horse saddled and waiting at
the door. It seemed to Mary Hope an obscure form of mockery to tell
her not to be lonely--to tell her in a caressing tone that left with
her all the effect of kisses--and then to ride away without one
backward glance, one word of excuse. Until she had mounted and had
seen him on the trail ahead, she had not realized how he had mocked
her.
For days--until Friday, to be explicit--she had been quite determined
not to go near Cottonwood Spring. Then she had suddenly changed her
mind, dismissed school half an hour early, put old Rab in a lather on
the way home, dressed herself and announced to her mother that she
must ride into Jumpoff for school supplies, and that she would stay
all night with the Kennedys. It had taken two years and the dignity of
school-teacher to give Mary Hope the courage to announce things to her
mother. As it was, she permitted her mother to explain as best she
might to Hugh Douglas. Her courage did not reach to that long,
uncompromising upper lip of her father's.
She had folded her prettiest dress carefully into a flat bundle, had
thrown it out of her window and left the house in her riding clothes.
There was a saddle horse, Jamie, a Roman-nosed bay of uncertain temper
and a high, rocking gait, which she sometimes used for long trips. She
saddled him now and hurried away, thankful to be gone with her
package and her guilty conscience before her father arrived. She was
very good friends with the Kennedys, at the section house. If there
was a dance within forty miles, the Kennedys might be counted upon to
attend; and that is how Mary Hope arrived at the schoolhouse with a
load from Jumpoff. She had seen Lance standing near the door, and
Lance had paid no attention to her, but had left an AJ man to claim
the first two-step. Wherefore Lance walked straight into trouble when
he went to Mary Hope and asked for the next dance with her.
"So sorry--it's promised already," said Mary Hope, in her primmest
tone.
"There's a dance after the next one," he hinted, looking down from his
more-than-six feet at her where she sat wedged between Mrs. Boyle and
Jennie Miller.
"So sorry--but I think that one is promised also," said Mary Hope.
Lance drew a corner of his lip between his teeth, let it go and lifted
his eyebrows whimsically at Jennie Miller, whom he had once heard
playing on her organ, and whom he had detested ever since with an
unreasoning animosity born solely of her musical inability and her
long neck that had on its side a brown mole with three coarse hairs in
it.
"If Miss Douglas has two dances engaged in advance, it's quite
hopeless to hope for a dance with Miss Miller," he said, maliciously
drawing the sentence through certain vibrant tones which experience
had taught him had a certain pleasing effect upon persons. "Or is it
hopeless? Are you engaged for every dance to-night, Miss Miller? And
if you are, please may I stand beside you while you eat a sandwich at
midnight?"
Jennie Miller giggled. "I ain't as popular as all that," she retorted,
glancing at Mary Hope, sitting very straight and pretty beside her.
"And if I was, I don't go and promise everybody that asks. I might
want to change my mind afterwards if some other fellow comes along I
liked better--and I've saw too many fights start over a girl
forgetting who she's promised to dance with."
"You don't want to see a fight start now, do you?" Lance smiled down
at her without in the least degree betraying to Mary Hope that he
would like to pull Jennie Miller by force from that seat and occupy it
himself.