Reno for the fight. But on the heels of that he knew that he would
have made the trouble worse, had he been at the Devil's Tooth on the
day of the Fourth. He would have quarreled with Tom, but there was
scant hope that he could have prevented the piano-moving. Tom
Lorrigan, as Lance had plenty of memories to testify, was not the man
whom one could prevent from doing what he set out to do.
At a little junction Lance changed to the branch line, still dwelling
fiercely upon his heritage, upon the lawless environment in which that
heritage of violence had flourished. He was in the mood to live up to
the Lorrigan reputation when he swung off the train at Jumpoff, but no
man crossed his trail.
So Lance carried with him the full measure of his rage against Mary
Hope and the Devil's Tooth, when he rode out of Jumpoff on a
lean-flanked black horse that rolled a wicked eye back at the rider
and carried his head high, looking for trouble along the trail.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MARY HOPE HAS MUCH TROUBLE
Mary Hope, still taking her own point of view, had troubles in plenty
to bear. In her own way she was quite as furious as was Lance, felt
quite as injured as did the Devil's Tooth outfit, had all the
humiliation of knowing that the Black Rim talked of nothing but her
quarrel with the Lorrigans, and in addition had certain domestic
worries of her own.
Her mother harped continually on the piano quarrel and the indignity
of having been "slappit" by the painted Jezebel. But that was not what
worried Mary Hope most, for she was long accustomed to her mother's
habit of dwelling tearfully on some particular wrong that had been
done her. Mary Hope was worried over her father.
On the day of the Fourth he had stayed at home, tinkering up his
machinery, making ready for haying that was soon to occupy all his
waking hours,--and they would be as many as daylight would give him.
He had been doing something to an old mower that should have gone to
the junk heap long ago, and with the rusty sickle he had managed to
cut his hand very deeply, just under the ball of the thumb. He had not
taken the trouble to cleanse the cut thoroughly, but had wrapped his
handkerchief around the hand and gone glumly on with his work. Now, on
the third day, Mary Hope had become frightened at the discoloration of
the wound and the way in which his arm was swelling, and had begged
him to let her drive him to Jumpoff where he could take the train to
Lava and a doctor. As might be expected, he had refused to do anything
of the kind. He would not spend the time, and he would not spend the
money, and he thought that a poultice would draw out the swelling well
enough. Mary Hope had no faith in poultices, and she was on the point
of riding to Jumpoff and telegraphing for a doctor when her father
cannily read her mind and forbade her so sternly that she quailed
before him.
There was another thing, which she must do. She must take the money
she had gotten from the dance and with it pay Tom Lorrigan for the
schoolhouse, or stop the school altogether. Jim Boyle, when she had
ridden over to the AJ to tell him, had said that she could do as she
pleased about paying for the schoolhouse; but if she refused to teach
his kids, he would get some one else who would. Jim Boyle seemed to
feel no compunctions whatever about accepting favors from the Devil's
Tooth. As to Sederson, the Swede, he was working for Boyle, and did
what his boss said. So the matter was flung back upon Mary Hope for
adjustment according to the dictates of her pride or conscience, call
it which you will.
Her mother advised her to keep the money and buy another piano. But
Mary Hope declared that she would not use the schoolhouse while it was
a Lorrigan gift; whereupon Mother Douglas yielded the point grudgingly
and told her to send Hugh, the gawky youth, to the Devil's Tooth with
the three hundred dollars and a note saying what the money was for.
But her father would not permit Hugh to go, reiterating feverishly
that he needed Hugh on the ranch. And with the pain racking him and
making his temper something fearful to face, Mary Hope dared not argue
with him.
So she herself set out with her money and her hurt pride and
all her troubles, to pay the Devil's Tooth outfit for the
schoolhouse--approximately, since she had only a vague idea of
the cost of the building--and then be quit of the Lorrigan
patronage forever.
It happened that she found Tom at home and evidently in a temper not
much milder than her father's. Two of the Devil's Tooth men were at
the stable door when she rode up, and to them Tom was talking in a
voice that sent shivers over Mary Hope when she heard it. Not loud and
declamatory, like her father's, but with a certain implacable calm
that was harder to face than stormy vituperation.
But she faced it, now that she was there and Tom had been warned of
her coming by Coaley, who pointed his ears forward inquiringly when
she neared the stable. The two cowpunchers gave Tom slanting glances
and left, muttering under their breaths to each other as they led
their sweaty horses into a farther corral.
Tom lifted his hand to his hat brim in mute recognition of her
presence, gave her a swift inquiring look and turned Coaley into the
stable with the saddle on. Mary Hope took one deep breath and,
fumbling at a heavy little bag tied beside the fork of her saddle,
plunged straight into her subject.
"I've brought the money I raised at the dance, Mr. Lorrigan," she
said. "Since you refused to take it for the piano, I have brought it
to pay you for the schoolhouse--with Mr. Boyle's approval. I have
three hundred and twelve dollars. If that is not enough, I will pay
you the balance later." She felt secretly rather well satisfied with
the speech, which went even better than her rehearsals of it on the
way over.
Then, having untied the bag, she looked up, and her satisfaction
slumped abruptly into perturbation. Tom was leaning back against the
corral rails, with his arms folded--and just _why_ must he lift his
eyebrows and smile like Lance? She was going to hand him the bag, but
her fingers bungled and she dropped it in the six-inch dust of the
trail.
Tom unfolded his arms, moved forward a pace, picked up the bag and
offered it to her. "You've got the buying fever, looks like to me," he
observed coldly. "I haven't got any schoolhouse to sell."
"But you have! You built it, and--"
"I did build a shack up on the hill, awhile back," Tom admitted in the
same deliberate tone, "but I turned it over to Jim Boyle and the Swede
and whoever else wanted to send their kids there to school." Since
Mary Hope refused to put out her hand for the bag, Tom began very
calmly to retie it on her saddle. But she struck his hand away.
"I shall not take the money. I shall pay for the schoolhouse, Mr.
Lorrigan. Unless I can pay for it I shall never teach school there
another day!" Her voice shook with nervous tension. One did not
lightly and unthinkingly measure wills with Tom Lorrigan.
"That's your business, whether you teach school or not," said Tom,
holding the bag as though he still meant to tie it on the saddle.
"But if I don't they will hire another teacher, and that will drive me
away from home to earn money--" Mary Hope had not in the least
intended to say that, which might be interpreted as a bid for
sympathy.
"Well, Belle, she says no strange woman can use that schoolhouse.
They might not find anything to teach school in, if they tried that."
"You've got to keep that money." Mary Hope turned the Roman-nosed
horse half away, meaning to leave Tom there with the money in his
hand.
Tom reached calmly out and caught the horse by the bridle.
"I want to tell you something," he drawled, in the voice which she had
heard when she came up. "I haven't _'got'_ to do anything. But I tell
you what I _will_ do. If you don't take this money back and go ahead
with your school-teaching as if nothing had happened, I'll burn that
schoolhouse to the last chip in the yard. And this money I'll take and
throw down that crevice under the Tooth, up there. The money won't do
nobody any good, and the schoolhouse won't be nothing at all but a
black spot. You can suit yourself--it's up to you."
Mary Hope looked at him, opened her lips to defy him, and instead gave
a small sob. Her Scotch blood chilled at the threat of such wanton
destruction of property and money, but it was not that which made her
afraid at that moment of Tom Lorrigan,--held her silent, glaring
impotently.
She trembled while he tied the money to the saddle fork again, using a
knot she had never seen tied before. She wanted to tell him how much
she hated him, how much she hated the whole Lorrigan family, how she
would die before she ever entered the door of that schoolhouse again
unless it was paid for and she could be free of obligation to him.
But when his head was bent, hiding all of his face but the chin, she
had a wild fleeting notion that he was Lance, and that he would lift
his head and smile at her. Yet when he lifted his head he was just Tom
Lorrigan, with a hardness in his face which Lance did not have, and a
glint in his eye that told her his will was inexorable, that he would
do exactly what he said he would do, and perhaps more, if she opposed
him.
Without a word she turned back, crushed under the sense of defeat.
Useless destruction of property and money did not seem to mean
anything at all to a Lorrigan, but to her the thought was horrible.
She could not endure the thought of what he would do if she refused to
use the schoolhouse. Much less could she endure the thought of
entering the place again while it remained a Lorrigan gift.
Blindly fighting an hysterical impulse to cry aloud like a child over
her hurt, she reined Jamie into the shortcut trail of the Slide.
Coming down she had followed the wagon road, partly because the longer
trail postponed a dreaded meeting, and partly because Jamie, being
uncertain in his temper and inclined to panicky spells when things did
not go just right with him, could not safely be trusted on the Slide
trail, which was strange to him.
Until she reached the narrow place along the shale side hill she did
not realize what trail she was taking. Then, because she could not
leave the trail and take the road without retracing her steps almost
to the stable, she went on, giving Jamie an impatient kick with her
heel and sending him snorting over the treacherous stuff in a high
canter.
"Go on and break your neck and mine too, if ye like," she sobbed. "Ye
needn't think I'll give an inch to _you;_ it's bad enough." When
Jamie, still snorting, still reckless with his feet, somehow managed
to pass over the boulder-strewn stretch without breaking a leg, Mary
Hope choked back the obstreperous lump in her throat and spoke again
in a quiet fury of resentment. "Burn it he may if he likes; I shall
_not_ put my foot again inside a house of the Lorrigans!"
Whereat Jamie threw up his head, shied at a white rock on the steep
slope beneath, loped through the sagebrush where the trail was almost
level, scrambled up a steep, deep-worn bit of trail, turned the sharp
corner of the switch-back and entered that rift in the cap-rock known
as the Slide.
Mary Hope had traveled that trail many times on Rab, a few years ago.
She had always entered the Slide with a little thrill along her spine,
knowing it for a place where Adventure might meet her face to
face--where Danger lurked and might one day spring out at her. To-day
she thought nothing about it until Jamie squatted and tried to whirl
back. Then she looked up and saw Adventure, Danger and Lance Lorrigan
just ahead, where the Slide was steepest.
Lance pulled up his hired horse, his thoughts coming back with a jerk
from the same disagreeable subject that had engrossed Mary Hope. The
hired horse jumped, tried his best not to sit down, lunged forward to
save himself, found himself held back with a strength that did not
yield an inch, and paused wild-eyed, his hind feet slipping and
scraping the rock.
Jamie in that moment was behaving much worse. Jamie, finding that he
could not turn around, was backing down the Slide, every step
threatening to land him in a heap. Mary Hope turned white, her eyes
staring up at Lance a little above her. In that instant they both
remembered the short turn of the switch-back, and the twelve-foot bank
with the scrambling trail down which no horse could walk backwards and
keep his legs under him.
"Loosen the reins and spur him!" Lance's voice sounded hollow, pent
within that rock-walled slit. In the narrow space he was crowding his
own horse against the right wall so that he might dismount.
Mary Hope leaned obediently forward, the reins hanging loose. "He
_always_ backs up when he's scared," she panted, when Jamie paid no
attention.
Instinctively Lance's hand felt for his rope. On the livery saddle
there did happen to be a poor sort of grass-rope riata, cheap and
stiff and clumsily coiled, but fortunately with a loop in the end.
"Don't lasso Jamie! He always fights a rope. He'll throw himself!"
Mary Hope's voice was strained and unnatural.
Lance flipped a kink out of the rope. In that narrow space the loop
must be a small one; he had one swift, sickening vision of what might
happen if the little loop tightened around her neck. "Put up your
hands--close to your head," he commanded her. "It's all right. Don't
be afraid--it's all right, girl--"
He shot the loop straight out and down at her, saw it settle over her
head, slip over her elbows, her shoulders. "It's all right--can you
get off!"
She tried, but the space was too narrow to risk it, with Jamie still
going backward in a brainless panic. He would have trampled her
beneath him had she done so.
"Stay on--but be all ready to jump when he leaves the Slide. Don't be
afraid--it's all right. He won't hurt you; he won't hurt you at all."
He was edging closer to the horse, holding the rope taut in his right
hand, his left ready to catch Jamie by the bridle once he came near
enough. His one fear was that the horse might fall before he was out
of the gash, and in falling might crush Mary Hope against the rocks.
As Lance came on, Jamie backed faster, his haunches dropped, his feet
slipping under him. Lance dared not crowd him, dared not reach for the
bridle, still more than an arm's length away. So Jamie came out of the
Slide backwards, saw with a sudden panic-stricken toss of his head
that he had open daylight all around him, whirled short and gave one
headlong leap away from the place that had terrified him so.
Lance jumped, reaching for Mary Hope as the horse went over the bank.
By the length of his hand he missed her, but the rope pulled her free
from Jamie, and she fell prone on the trail and lay still.
"Are you hurt? Good God! are you hurt?" Lance gathered her in his arms
and carried her to where the rock wall made a shady band across the
steep slope.
Mary Hope was very white, very limp, and her eyes were closed. On her
cheeks he saw where tears had lately been. Her mouth had a pitiful
little droop. He sat down, still holding her like a child, and felt
tentatively of her arms, her shoulders, vaguely prepared to feel the
crunch of a broken bone. There was no water nearer than the ranch.
Jamie, having rolled over twice, was lying on his side near a scraggly
buck-brush, looking back up the hill, apparently wondering whether it
would be worth while to get up. The hired horse, having found a niche
wherein to set his hind feet, stood staring down through the Slide,
afraid to come farther, unable to retreat.
One side of Mary Hope's face was dusty, the skin roughened with small
scratches where she had fallen. With his handkerchief Lance very
gently wiped away the dust, took off her hat and fanned her face,
watching absently two locks of hair that blew back and forth across
her forehead with the breeze made by the swaying hat brim.
She was not dead! She could not be dead, with that short fall. Then he
saw that she was breathing faintly, unevenly, and in another minute he
saw her lashes quiver against her tanned cheek. But her eyes did not
open, the color did not flow back into her face.
"Oh, girl--girl, wake up!" With a little shake he pulled her close to
him. "Open your eyes. I want to see your eyes. I want to see if they
are just as blue as ever. Girl--oh, you poor little girl!"
He had been hating her, furious at the insult she had given his
family. Angry as he was with the Lorrigans, resenting fiercely what
they had done, he had hated Mary Hope Douglas more, because the hurt
was more personal, struck deep into a part of his soul that had grown
tender. But he could not hate her now--not when she lay there in his
arms with her tear-stained cheek against his heart, her eyes shut,
and with that pathetic droop to her lips. Gently he tucked back the
locks of hair that kept blowing across her forehead. Very tenderly,
with a whimsical pretense at self-pity, he upbraided her for the
trouble she was giving him.
"Must I go clear down to the ranch and pack up water in my hat, and
slosh it on your face? I'll do that, girl, if you don't open your eyes
and look at me. _You're_ not hurt; _are_ you hurt? You'd better wake
up and tell me, or I'll have to take you right up in my arms and carry
you all the way down to the house, and ride like heck for a doctor,
and--"
"Ye will not!" she retorted faintly, and unexpectedly he was looking
into her eyes, bluer than he had remembered them; troubled,
questioning--but stubborn against his suggestion. She moved uneasily,
and he lifted her to the bank beside him and put one arm behind her,
so that she leaned against him.
"Oh, very well--then I will not. You'll walk with me to the house, and
we'll let Belle--"
"I will not! Never in my life will I enter the house of a Lorrigan!"
Mary Hope brushed a palm against her forehead, straightened herself as
if she resented her weakness, wished to hold herself aloof from him.
She did not look at Lance, but stared across the narrow valley to the
sage-clothed bluff beyond.
"Why not? You've just come from the Lorrigans, haven't you?" Lance
studied her face. "You must have, or you wouldn't be on this trail."
"I went down to pay for the schoolhouse, since your father took the
piano away.--And he would not take the money, and he said he would
burn the house if I don't teach in it--and I'll die before ever I'll
open the door again, unless he takes the money. And he said if I left
the money he would throw it down the crevice yonder--and he would _do_
it! And do you think I'll be under any obligation to Tom Lorrigan? You
called my father hard, but your father is the hardest man that ever
lived. The Lorrigans shall _not_--"
Lance laughed, set her hat wrong side before on her head, tucked the
elastic band under her chin, laughed again when she pettishly removed
it and set the hat straight. "I wouldn't worry over the schoolhouse
right now--nor Tom Lorrigan either," he said. "Look at your horse down
there. If you're all right, I'll go down and see how many bones he's
broken. You had a chance for a nasty pile-up. Do you know that?"
"I'm grateful," said Mary Hope soberly. "But it was Lorrigan meanness
brought me here; it was a Lorrigan got me into the trouble now, and a
Lorrigan got me out of it. It's _always_ the Lorrigans."
"Yes, and a Lorrigan's got to see you a little farther before you're
through with them, so cheer up." Lance laughed again, an amused
little chuckle that was calculated to take the droop out of Mary
Hope's lips, and failed completely.
He saw her cheeks were reddening, saw too that her face gave evidence
of no particular bodily pain. She had probably fainted from fright,
more than anything else, he decided, and her fright was now forgotten
in her animosity. He slid off the bank, went down to where Jamie lay,
took him by the bridle and urged him to stand. Which Jamie, after one
or two scrambling attempts, managed to do. But the horse was hurt. He
could scarcely hobble to the trail.
Without paying any visible attention to Mary Hope, Lance removed her
saddle from Jamie, and brought it up to where she sat dispiritedly
watching him. His manner was brisk, kind enough, but had an aloofness
which made her keenly aware that he accepted her adherence to the feud
and tacitly took his own place with the Lorrigans. Over this emergency
she felt that he had unspokenly set a flag of truce. His attitude
depressed her.
"There are just two things to do," he said, laying the saddle at her
feet. "You may ride that livery horse back home, and I'll come along
to-morrow and pick him up and take him in with me to Jumpoff; or you
can let me go down to the ranch and bring up a gentle horse, and you
can ride that home. I can get him when I come out to-morrow with my
traps. I advise you to take the gentle horse from the ranch, after the
shake-up you've had. This town horse is not easy gaited, by any means.
Your horse I'll manage to get down to the ranch and do what I can for
him. It's his shoulder, I think, from the way he acts. He may be all
right after a while."
Mary Hope looked distressfully at Jamie, standing dejected where Lance
had left him, his head sagging, every line of him showing how sick of
life he was. She glanced swiftly up at Lance, bent her head suddenly
and pressed the tips of her fingers along her cheek bones, wiping away
tears that came brimming over her eyelids.
"You'd better let me bring up a horse and take you home," Lance urged,
the caressing note creeping into his voice.
"Oh, no! I can't! I--what do I care how I get home? But if your father
won't take the money--You don't _know!_ The whole Rim talks and
gossips until I wish I were dead! And I can't go on using the
schoolhouse--and Tom Lorrigan says if I don't--" She was crying at
last, silently, miserably, her face hidden behind her hands.
"He'll take the money." Lance, after an indeterminate minute while he
watched her, laid his hand lightly on her shoulder. "I'll see that dad
takes it. And I'll give you a bill of sale that ought to shut the
Black Rim mouths. I'm a Lorrigan and I'm not going to apologize for
the blood that's in me, but I want you to know that if I had been home
on the night of the Fourth the Lorrigans wouldn't have done the rotten
cheap thing they did."
Mary Hope heard him tearing a leaf out of his memorandum book, looked
up at him while he wrote rapidly. Without any comment whatever he gave
her the paper, went up to where the hired horse stood, and coaxed it
down through the Slide. Quickly, with the deftness that told of
lifelong intimacy with horses and saddles, he set her own saddle on
the hired horse, while Mary Hope read the terse bill of sale that set
forth the legal "Ten dollars and other valuable considerations," and
was signed "Thomas Lorrigan, per L. M. Lorrigan." It all seemed very
businesslike, and heartened her so much that she was willing to be
nice to Lance Lorrigan. But Lance remained strictly neutral.
"I'll lead him up the Slide for you," he said unemotionally when the
horse was ready. "After he's over that, I think you'll be all right;
you're a good rider. And you need not feel under any obligations then
to the Lorrigans. I was practically through with the horse, anyway,
and it will be no trouble at all to drive by your place and get him
to-morrow."
"I can lead him up--" Mary Hope began, but Lance had already turned
the horse and started him up the Slide, so there was nothing for her
to do but follow.
At the top she gave him the money bag, which he took without any words
whatever on the subject. He held the horse until she had mounted, made
sure that she was all right, chilled by his perfect politeness her
nervous overture toward a more friendly parting, lifted his hat and
turned immediately to go back down the Slide.
Mary Hope glanced back over her shoulder and saw his bobbing hat
crown. "Ah, he's just a Lorrigan, and I hate them all. But he let me
pay--I'm quits with them now--and I'll never in my life speak to one
of them again!"
CHAPTER TWENTY
AS HE LIVED, SO HE DIED
Belle Lorrigan, with Lance beside her on the one seat of the swaying
buckboard, swung through the open gate of the Douglas yard and drove
to the sun-baked, empty corral. In the doorway of the house, as they
dashed past, the bent body of Mother Douglas appeared. She stood
staring after them, her eyes blurred with tears. "It's that huzzy, the
Lorrigan woman," she said flatly, wiping her face on her checked
apron, stiffly starched and very clean. "Do you go, Mary Hope, and get
them the horse they've come for. If Hugh were here--"