Miller stammered, agitated by a wild feeling that perhaps she was
going to be made love to.
"Then don't forget that you are going to dance with me." The music
just then started again, and he offered her his arm with a certain
import that made Mary Hope clench her hands.
Mary Hope was punished for her lie. She had not promised that dance,
and so she sat on the plank bench and saw Lance and Jennie Miller
sway past her four times before a gawky youth who worked for her
father caught sight of her and came over from the water-bucket corner
to ask her for the dance. That was not the worst. On the fourth round
of Lance and Jennie, and just as the gawky one was bowing stiffly
before her, Lance looked at her over Jennie Miller's shoulder, and
smiled that tantalizing, Lorrigan smile that always left her uneasily
doubtful of its meaning.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A WAY HE HAD WITH HIM
It was at the chuck-wagon at midnight, while Riley and Sam Pretty Cow
were serving tin cups of black coffee to a shuffling, too-hilarious
crowd, that Lance next approached Mary Hope. She was standing on the
outskirts of a group composed mostly of women, quite alone so far as
cavaliers were concerned, for the gawky youth had gone after coffee.
She was looking toward the sagebrush camp-fire around which a crowd of
men had gathered with much horseplay at which they were laughing
loudly, and she was wondering how best she could make Lance Lorrigan
aware of her absolute indifference to him, when his voice drawled
disconcertingly close to her ear:
"You're not lonely now, you girl--and you did find a secret at
Cottonwood Spring. A pleasant little secret, wasn't it?"
Mary Hope's hands became fists at her side, held close against her
best frock. "I think the fellows over by the fire have discovered your
pleasant secret," she said, and did not turn her face toward him.
With his arms folded and his eyebrows pulled together and his lip
between his teeth, Lance stared down at her face, studying it in the
flicker of the distant firelight and the two lanterns. If her
combativeness roused in him any resentment, he did not permit it to
show in his voice.
"Some of the fellows from Jumpoff brought a bottle or two. That's no
secret, except that I don't know where they have it cached. The
schoolhouse is your--"
"I heard it was included in the Lorrigan refreshments."
"The schoolhouse is ready for your pleasure Monday morning," Lance
spoke with that perfect impersonal courtesy that is so exasperating to
a person who listens for something to resent. "I knew of it, of
course--dad wanted it kept for a surprise. And he wanted me to tell
you. It's the Lorrigan expression of their appreciation of the need of
a school."
The gawky youth came stumbling up, his outstretched hands carefully
holding two tin cups filled with coffee close to the boiling point.
Being a youth of good intentions, he tried very hard not to spill a
drop. Being gawky, he stubbed his toe as he was rounding the group of
women, and Mrs. Miller shrieked and swung back her hand, cuffing the
gawky one straight into the thickest of the crowd. Other women
screamed.
Lance reached a long arm and plucked the youth out by the slack
of his coat, shook him and propelled him into the darkness, where
he collided violently with Sam Pretty Cow. Some one had been
over-generous with Sam Pretty Cow. A drunken Indian is never quite
safe. Sam Pretty Cow struck out blindly, yelling Piegan curses
hoarsely as he fought. The crowd of men around the camp-fire came
running. For a short space there was confusion, shouting, the shrill
voices of scalded women denouncing the accident as a deliberate
outrage.
Mrs. Miller whirled on Lance. "You pushed him on me! If that ain't a
Lorrigan trick!--"
"Yeah--what yuh mean? Throwin' bilin' hot coffee on--"
"Who says it's a Lorrigan trick?"
"Might 'a' known what to expect--"
"Get back here, away from the crowd. There may be shooting," Lance
muttered to Mary Hope, and pulled her to the rear of the wagon and
around upon the farther side. She could not resist. His strength was
beyond any hope of combating it with her small strength. Mrs. Miller,
whose scalded shoulder led her to wild utterances without thought of
their effect upon others, shouted at him as he hustled Mary Hope
away:
"Yeah--_run!_ You're the one that done it--now run! That's like a
Lorrigan--do your dirty work and then crawl out and let somebody else
take the blame! That kid never--"
"Aw, come back and fight, you big sneak!" A drunken voice bellowed
hoarsely, and a gunshot punctuated the command.
"Go on--get on the other side of the schoolhouse. Run! The fools will
all start to shooting now!"
Mary Hope stopped stubbornly. "I will not!" she defied him; and Lance
without more argument lifted her from the ground, stooped and tossed
her under the wagon, much as he would have heaved a bag of oats out of
the rain.
"Don't you move until I tell you to," he commanded her harshly, and
ran back, diving into the thick of the crowd as though he were
charging into a football scrimmage.
"Who was it called me back to fight? Put up your guns,--or keep them
if you like. It's all one to me!"
In the dim light he saw the gleam of a weapon raised before him,
reached out and wrenched it away from the owner, and threw it far over
his shoulder into the weeds. "Who said a Lorrigan run? I want that
man!"
"I said it," bellowed a whisky-flushed man whose face was strange to
him. "I said it, and I say it agin. I say--a Lorrigan!"
He lifted his gun above the pressure of excited men and women. Lance
sprung upward and forward, landed on some one's foot, lunged again and
got a grip on the hand that held the gun. With his left hand he
wrenched the gun away. With his right he pulled the man free of the
crowd and out where there was room. The crowd--men, now, for the women
had fled shrieking--surged that way.
"Stand back there! I'll settle with this fellow alone." He held the
other fast, his arms as merciless as the grip of a grizzly, and called
aloud:
"This is a Lorrigan dance, and the Lorrigans are going to have order.
Those of you who brought chips on your shoulders, and whisky to soak
the chips in, can drink your whisky and do your fighting among
yourselves, off the Lorrigan ranch. We all came here to have fun.
There's music and room to dance, and plenty of chuck and plenty of
coffee, and the dance is going right on without any fuss whatever.
"This poor boob here who thinks he wants to fight me just because I'm
a Lorrigan, I never saw before. It wouldn't be a fair fight, because
he's too drunk to do anything but make a fool of himself. There's
nothing to fight about, anyway. A fellow was carrying two cups of
boiling hot coffee, and he stubbed his toe, and some one got scalded a
little. That's nothing to break up a dance over. The rest of you heard
the noise and jumped at the conclusion there was trouble afoot. There
isn't. I think you all want to go on with the dance and have a good
time, except perhaps a few who are drunk. They are at liberty to go
off somewhere and beat each other up to their hearts' content. Come
on, now, folks--get your partners for a square dance--and _everybody
dance!_"
His voice had held them listening. His words were not the words of a
coward, yet they were a plea for peace, they seemed reasonable even to
the half-drunken ones who had been the readiest to fight. The old-time
range slogan, "_Everybody dance!_" sent three or four hurrying to find
the girls they wanted. The trouble, it would appear, had ended as
suddenly as it had begun and for a moment the tension relaxed.
The drunken one was still cursing, struggling unavailingly to tear
himself away from Lance so that he could land a blow. Lance, looking
out across the crowd, caught Belle's glance and nodded toward the
schoolhouse. Belle hurried away to find the musicians and set them
playing, and a few couples strayed after her. But there were men who
stayed, pushing, elbowing to see what would happen when Lance Lorrigan
loosened his hold on the Jumpoff man.
Lance did not loosen his hold, however. He saw Tom, Al, three or four
Devil's Tooth men edging up, and sent them a warning shake of his
head.
"Who knows this fellow? Where does he belong? I think his friends had
better take care of him until he sobers up."
"We'll take care of him," said another stranger, easing up to Lance.
"He won't hurt yuh; he was only foolin', anyway. Bill Kennedy, he
always gits kinda happy when he's had one or two."
There was laughter in the crowd. Two or three voices were heard
muttering together, and other laughs followed. Some one produced a
bottle and offered the pugnacious one a drink. Lance let him go with a
contemptuous laugh and went to where the Devil's Tooth men now stood
bunched close together, their backs to the chuck-wagon.
"We'll have to clean up this crowd, before it's over," Al was saying
to his father. "Might as well start right in and git 'er over with."
"And have it said the Lorrigans can't give a dance without having it
end in rough-house!" Lance interrupted. "Cut out the idea of fighting
that bunch. Keep them out of the house and away from the women, and
let them have their booze down in the grove. That's where I've seen a
lot of them heading. Come on, boys; it takes just as much nerve not to
fight as it does to kill off a dozen men. Isn't that right, dad?"
"More," said Tom laconically. "No, boys, we don't want no trouble
here. Come on in and dance. That's yore job--to keep 'er moving
peaceable. I'll fire any man I ketch drinking Jumpoff booze. We've got
better at the ranch. Come on!"
He led the way and his men followed him,--not as though they were
particularly anxious to avoid trouble, but more like men who are
trained to obey implicitly a leader who has some definite purpose and
refuses to be turned from it. Lance, walking a few steps in the rear,
wondered at the discipline his father seemed to maintain without any
apparent effort.
"And they say the Lorrigans are a tough outfit!" he laughed, when he
had overtaken Tom. "Dad, you've got the bunch trained like soldiers. I
was more afraid our boys would rough things up than I was worried over
the stews."
"Shucks! When we rough things up, it's when _we_ want it rough. Al, he
was kinda excited. But at that, we may have to hogtie a few of them
smart Alecks from town, before we can dance peaceable."
Mary Hope, Lance discovered, was already in the schoolhouse. Also,
several of the intoxicated were there, and the quadrille was being
danced with so much zest that the whole building shook. That in itself
was not unusual--Black Rim dances usually did become rather boisterous
after supper--but just outside the door a bottle was being circulated
freely, and two or three men had started toward the cottonwood grove
for more. Duke, coming up to Lance where he stood in the doorway,
pulled him to one side, where they could not be overheard.
"There's going to be trouble here, sure's you're knee-high to a duck.
Dad won't let our bunch light into 'em, but they'll be fighting
amongst themselves inside an hour. You better slip it to the women
that the dance breaks up early. Give 'em a few more waltzes and
two-steps, Lance, and then make it Home-Sweet-Home, if you don't want
to muss up your nice city clothes," he added, with a laugh that was
not altogether friendly.
"Mussing up nice city clothes is my favorite pastime," Lance retorted,
and went inside again to see who was doing all the whooping. The chief
whooper, he discovered, was Bill Kennedy, the man whom he had very
nearly thrashed. Mary Hope was looking her Scotch primmest. Lance
measured the primness, saw that there was a vacant space beside her,
and made his precarious way toward it, circling the dancers who swung
close to the benches and trod upon the toes of the wall flowers in
their enthusiasm. He reached the vacant space and sat down just in
time to receive Bill Kennedy in his lap. But Bill was too happy just
then to observe whose lap he landed in, and bounced up with a
bellowing laugh to resume his gyrations.
"Don't dance any more, girl," Lance said, leaning so that he could
make himself heard without shouting in the uproar. "It's getting
pretty wild--and it will be wilder. They must have hauled it out in
barrels!"
Mary Hope looked at him, but she did not smile, did not answer.
"I'm sorry the secret is no nicer," Lance went on. "Now the floor will
have to be scrubbed before a lady girl can come out and teach school
here. I thought it would be great to have a house-warming dance,--but
they're making it too blamed warm!"
Some one slipped and fell, and immediately there was a struggling heap
where others had fallen over the first. There were shrieks of laughter
and an oath or two, an epithet and then a loud-flung threat.
Lance started up, saw that Tom and Al were heading that way, and took
Mary Hope by the arm.
"It's time little girls like you went home," he said smiling, and
somehow got her to the door without having her trampled upon. "Where
are your wraps?"
"There," said Mary Hope dazedly, and pointed to the corner behind
them, where cloaks, hoods, hats and two sleeping children were piled
indiscriminately.
Through the doorway men were crowding, two or three being pushed out
only to be pushed in again by others eager to join the melee. In the
rear of the room, near the musicians, two men were fighting. Lance,
giving one glance to the fight and another to the struggling mass in
the doorway, pushed up the window nearest them, lifted Mary Hope and
put her out on the side hill. He felt of a coat or two, chose the
heaviest, found something soft and furry like a cap, and followed her.
Behind the door no one seemed to look. A solid mass of backs was
turned toward him when he wriggled through on his stomach.
"Where's your horse?" he asked Mary Hope, while he slipped the coat on
her and buttoned it.
"It does seem to me that a Lorrigan is _always_ making me put on a
coat!" cried Mary Hope petulantly. "And now, this isn't mine at all!"
"A non-essential detail. It's a coat, and that's all that matters.
Where is your horse?"
"I haven't any horse here--oh, they're killing each other in there!
The Kennedys brought me--and he's that drunk, now--"
"Good heck! Bill Kennedy! Well, come on. You couldn't go back with
them, that's sure. I'll take you home, girl." He was leading her by
the arm to the fence behind the house. "Wait, I'll lift a wire; can
you crawl under?"
"Now, I've torn it! I heard it rip. And it isn't my coat at all," said
Mary Hope. "Oh, they're murdering one another! I should think you'd be
ashamed, having a dance like--"
"Coats can be bought--and murdered men don't swear like that. I'll
have to borrow Belle's pintos, but we don't care, do we? Come on. Here
they are. Don't get in until I get them untied and turned around. And
when I say get in, you'd better make it in one jump. Are you game?"
"No Lorrigan will ever cry shame on a Douglas for a coward! You must
be crazy, taking this awful team."
"I am. I'm crazy to get you away from here before they start shooting,
back there." He spoke to the team gruffly and with a tone of authority
that held them quiet, wondering at his audacity perhaps. He untied
them, got the lines, stepped in and turned them around, the pintos
backing and cramping the buckboard, lunging a little but too surprised
to misbehave in their usual form.
"Get in--and hang on. There's no road much--but we'll make it, all
right."
Like the pintos, Mary Hope was too astonished to rebel. She got in.
The team went plunging up the hill, snorting now and then, swerving
sharply away from rock or bush that threatened them with vague horrors
in the clear starlight. Behind them surged the clamor of many voices
shouting, the confused scuffling of feet, a revolver shot or two, and
threading the whole the shrill, upbraiding voice of a woman.
"That's Mrs. Miller," Mary Hope volunteered jerkily. "She's the one
that was scalded."
"It wasn't her tongue that was hurt," Lance observed, and barely saved
the buckboard from upsetting on a rock as Rosa and Subrosa shied
violently and simultaneously at a rabbit scuttling from a bush before
them.
He swung the pintos to the right, jounced down into some sort of
trail, and let them go loping along at their usual pace.
"Belle has her own ideas about horse-training," Lance chuckled,
steadying Subrosa with a twitch of the rein. "They'll hit this gait
all the way to your ranch."
Mary Hope gave a gasp and caught him by the arm, shaking it a little
as if she were afraid that otherwise he would not listen to her. "Oh,
but I canna go home! I've a horse and my riding clothes in Jumpoff,
and I must go for them and come home properly on horseback to-morrow!
It's because of the lie I told my mother, so that I could come to the
dance with the Kennedys. Set me down here anywhere, Lance Lorrigan,
and let me walk until the Kennedys overtake me! They'll be coming
soon, now--as soon as Bill Kennedy gets licket sober. You can stop the
horses--surely you can stop them and let me out. But please, _please_
do not take me home to-night, in this party dress--and a coat that
isna mine at all!"
"I'm not taking you home, girl. I'm taking you to Jumpoff. And it
won't matter to you whether Bill Kennedy is licked sober or not. And
to-morrow I'll find out who owns the coat. I'll say I found it on the
road somewhere. Who's to prove I didn't? Or if you disapprove of lying
about it, I'll bring it back and leave it beside the road."
"It's a lot of trouble I'm making for you," said Mary Hope quite
meekly, and let go his arm. "I should not have told the lie and gone
to the dance. And I canna wear my own coat home, because it's there
in the pile behind the door, and some one else will take it. So after
all it will be known that I lied, and you may as well take me home now
and let me face it."
To this Lance made no reply. But when the pintos came rattling down
the hill to where the Douglas trail led away to the right, he did not
slow them, did not take the turn.
Mary Hope looked anxiously toward home, away beyond the broken
skyline. A star hung big and bright on the point of a certain hill
that marked the Douglas ranch. While she watched it, the star slid out
of sight as if it were going down to warn Hugh Douglas that his
daughter had told a lie and had gone to a forbidden place to dance
with forbidden people, and was even now driving through the night with
one of the Lorrigans,--perchance the wickedest of all the wicked
Lorrigans, because he had been away beyond the Rim and had learned the
wickedness of the cities.
She looked wistfully at the face of this wickedest of the Lorrigans,
his profile seen dimly in the starlight. He did not look wicked. Under
his hat brim she could see his brows, heavy and straight and lifted
whimsically at the inner points, as though he were thinking of
something amusing. His nose was fine and straight, too,--not at all
like a beak, though her father had always maintained that the
Lorrigans were but human vultures. His mouth,--there was something in
the look of his mouth that made her catch her breath; something
tender, something that vaguely disturbed her, made her feel that it
could be terribly stern if it were not so tender. He seemed to be
smiling--not with his mouth, exactly, but away inside of his mind--and
the smile showed just a little bit, at the corner of his lips. His
chin was the Lorrigan chin absolutely; a nice chin to look at, with a
little, long dimple down the middle. A chin that one would not want to
oppose, would not want to see when the man who owned it was very
angry.
Mary Hope had gone just so far in her analysis when Lance turned his
head abruptly, unexpectedly, and looked full into her eyes.
"Don't be afraid, girl. Don't worry about the lie--about anything. It
was a sweet little lie--it makes you just human and young and--sweet.
Let them scold you, and smile, 'way down deep in your heart, and be
glad you're human enough to tell a lie now and then. Because if you
hadn't, we wouldn't be driving all these miles together to save you a
little of the scolding. Be happy. Be just a little bit happy to-night,
won't you, girl--you lonely little girl--with the blue, blue eyes!"
There it was again, that vibrant, caressing note in his voice. It was
there in his eyes while he looked at her, on his lips while he spoke
to her. But the next moment he looked ahead at the trail, spoke to
Rosa who had flung her head around to bite pettishly at Subrosa, who
snapped back at her.
Mary Hope turned her face to the starlit rangeland. Again she breathed
quickly, fought back tears, fought the feeling that she had been
kissed. All through the silent ride that followed she fought the
feeling, knew that it was foolish, that Lance knew nothing whatever
about that look, that tone which so affected her. He did not speak
again. He sat beside her, and she felt that he was thinking about her,
felt that his heart was making love to her--hated herself fiercely for
the feeling, fought it and felt it just the same.
"It's just a way he has with him!" she told herself bitterly, when he
swung the team up in front of the section house and helped her down.
"He'd have the same way with him if he spoke to a--a rabbit! He doesna
mean it--he doesna know and he doesna care!"
"Thank you, Mr. Lorrigan. It was very kind of you to bring me." Her
voice was prim and very Scotch, and gave no hint of all she had been
thinking.
"I'm always kind--to myself," laughed Lance, and lifted his hat and
drove away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN WHICH LANCE FINISHES ONE JOB
In the Traffic saloon, whither Lance had gone to find a fire and an
easy chair and something cheering to drink while he waited for the
pinto team to rest and eat, he found a sleepy bartender sprawled
before the stove, a black-and-white dog stretched flat on its side and
growling while it dreamed, and an all-pervading odor of alcoholic
beverages that appealed to him.
"A highball would make me happy, right now," he announced cheerfully,
standing over the bartender, rubbing his fingers numbed from the keen
air and from holding in the pintos, to which a slackened pull on the
bits meant a tacit consent to a headlong run.
"Been to the dance?" The bartender yawned widely and went to mix the
highball. "I been kinda waitin' up--but shucks! No tellin' when the
crowd'll git in--not if they drink all they took with 'em."
"They were working hard to do just that when I left." Lance stood back
to the stove. Having left in a hurry, without his overcoat, he was
chilled to the bone, though the night had been mild for that time of
the year. He hoped that the girl had not been uncomfortable--and
yawned while the thought held him. He drank his highball, warmed
himself comfortably and then, with some one's fur overcoat for a
blanket, he disposed his big body on a near-by pool table, never
dreaming that Mary Hope Douglas was remembering his tone, his words,
his silence even; analyzing, weighing, wondering how much he had
meant, or how little,--wondering whether she really hated him, whether
she might justly call her ponderings by any name save curiosity. Such
is the way of women the world over.
What Lance thought does not greatly matter. Such is the way of men
that their thoughts sooner or later crystallize into action. The
bartender would tell you that he went straight to sleep, with the fur
coat pulled up over his ears and his legs uncovered, his modishly-shod
feet extending beyond the end of the table. The bartender dozed in his
chair, thinking it not worth while to close up, because the dance
crowd might come straying in at any time with much noise and a great
thirst, to say nothing of the possibility of thirsty men coming on the
midnight freight that was always four or five hours late, and was now
much overdue.
The freight arrived. Three men entered the saloon, drank whisky,
talked for a few minutes and departed. The bartender took a long,
heat-warped poker and attacked the red clinkers in the body of the
stove, threw in a bucket of fresh coal, used the poker with good
effect on the choked draft beneath, and went back to his chair and his
dozing.