be mailed. No, I'm not going to the funeral. I don't enjoy having my
face slapped--and being called a painted Jezebel," she added dryly.
Under his breath Lance muttered something and went into the house, not
looking at Belle or making her any reply.
"Lance," said Belle to the pintos, "thinks we're rough and tough and
just about half civilized. Lord, when you take a Lorrigan and educate
him and _polish_ him, you sure have got a combination that's hard to
go up against. Two years--and my heavens, I don't _know_ Lance any
more! I never thought any Lorrigan could feaze _me_--but there's
something about Lance--"
In the house Lance was not showing any of the polish which Belle had
mentioned rather regretfully. He was kneeling before a trunk, throwing
books and pipes and socks and soft-toned silk shirts over his
shoulder, looking for something which he seemed in a great haste to
find. When his fingers, prying deep among his belongings, closed upon
the thing he sought, he brought it up, frowning abstractedly.
A black leather case, small and curved, opened when he unbuckled the
confining strap. A binocular, small but extremely efficient in its
magnifying power he withdrew, dusting the lenses with the sleeve of
his shirt. He had bought the glasses because some one had advised him
to take a pair along when he went with a party of friends to the top
of Mount Tamalpais one Sunday. And because he had an instinctive
dislike for anything but the best obtainable, he had bought the
highest-priced glasses he could find in San Francisco,--and perhaps
the smallest. He buckled them back into their case, slapped them into
his pocket and closed the trunk lid with a bang. From the mantel in
the living room he gleaned a box of cartridges for an extra
six-shooter, which he cleaned and loaded carefully and tucked inside
the waistband of his trousers, on the left side, following an instinct
that brought him close to his grandfather, that old killer whom all
men feared to anger.
"The horse and the hat; he thought it was dad he was trailing!" he
said to himself, with his teeth clamped tight together. "Oh, well,
when it comes to that kind of a game--"
He went out and down to the corral, watered Coaley and mounted again,
taking the trail across pastures to Squaw Creek.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LANCE RIDES ANOTHER TRAIL
With a two-days' growth of beard on his chin and jaws, a new, hard
look in his eyes and the general appearance of a man who has been
riding long and has slept in all his clothes, Lance rode quietly up to
the corral gate and dismounted. A certain stiffness was in his walk
when he led Coaley inside and turned a stirrup up over the saddle
horn, his gloved fingers dropping to the latigo. Lance was tired--any
one could see that at a glance. That he was preoccupied, and that his
preoccupation was not pleasant, was also evident to the least
observing eye.
Tom, coming out of the bunk house, studied him with narrowed lids as
he came walking leisurely down to the corral. Tom's movements also
betrayed a slight stiffness of the muscles, as though he had ridden
hard and long. He did not hurry. Lance had pulled off the saddle and
the sweaty blanket and the bridle, and had turned Coaley into the
corral before he knew that some one was coming. Even then he did not
turn to look. He was staring hard at a half-dozen horses grouped in
the farther corner of the corral,--horses with gaunt flanks and the
wet imprint of saddles. They were hungrily nosing fresh piles of hay,
and scarcely looked up when Coaley trotted eagerly up to join them.
Six of them--a little more than half of the outfit that had ridden
away the other night.
"Well! I see you helped yourself to a new saddle horse," Tom observed
significantly, coming up behind Lance.
"Yes. Coaley acted lonesome, shut up in the box stall. Thought a
little riding would do him good." Lance's eyes met Tom's calmly,
almost as if the two were mere acquaintances.
"You give him a plenty, looks like. Where yuh been?"
"I? Oh--just riding around." Lance stooped indifferently to untie his
slicker and blanket from the saddle.
"Thought I'd like to use him myself. Thinking some of riding into town
this afternoon," Tom said, still studying Lance.
"Well, if you want to ride Coaley, he's good for it. I'd say he has
more miles in him yet than any of that bunch over there." With slicker
and blanket roll Lance started for the house.
Tom did not say anything. He was scowling thoughtfully after Lance
when Belle, coming from the chicken house with a late hatching of
fluffy little chicks in her hat, looked at him inquiringly. To her
Tom turned with more harshness than he had shown for many a long day.
"Schoolin' don't seem to set good on a Lorrigan," he said. "How long's
he goin' to stay this time?"
"Why, honey, don't you _want_ Lance home? He rode Coaley--but that's
no crime. Lance wouldn't hurt him, he's too good a rider and he never
was hard on horses. And Coaley just goes _wild_ when he has to stand
shut up all day--"
"Oh, it ain't riding Coaley, altogether. He can ride Coaley and be
darned. It's the new airs he's putting on that don't set good with me,
Belle. You wanted to make something of Lance, and now, by Henry,
you'll have to name the job you've made of him--I'd hate to!"
Belle put a hand into the cheeping huddle in her hat, lifted out a
chick and held it to her cheek. "Why, you're just imagining that Lance
is different," she contended, stifling her own recognition of the
change. "He'll settle right down amongst the boys--"
"The boys ain't cryin' to have him, Belle. Black Rimmers had ought to
stay Black Rimmers, or get out and stay out. Lance ain't either one
thing or the other."
"Why, Tom Lorrigan!" Belle dropped the chick into her hat and tucked
the hat under her arm. Her eyes began to sparkle a little. "I don't
think Lance liked it about the piano, but he's the same Lance he
always was. I've watched him, and he hasn't said a thing or done a
thing outa the way--he's just the _dearest_ great big fellow! And I
can't for the life of me see why you and the whole outfit hang back
from him like he was a stranger. Education ain't catching, Tom. And
Lance don't put on any airs at all, so why in the name of heaven you
all--"
"Well, well, don't get all excited, Belle. But if education was
ketching, a lot of the boys would be rollin' their beds. I'm going to
town. Anything yuh want brought out?"
Belle did not answer. She went away to the house with her hatful of
chicks, and put them into a box close to the stove until the mother
hen made sure whether the four other eggs were anything more than just
stale eggs. It would have been hard for Belle to explain just what the
heaviness in her heart portended. Certainly it was not in her nature
to worry over trifles,--yet these were apparent trifles that worried
her. On the surface of the Devil's Tooth life only faint ripples
stirred, but Belle felt somehow as though she were floating in a frail
boat over a quiet pool from whose depths some unspeakable monster
might presently thrust an ominous head and drag her under.
In the crude yet wholly adequate bathroom she heard a great splashing,
and guessed that it was Lance, refreshing himself after his trip.
That, she supposed, was another point that set him apart from the
other boys. From June to September, whenever any of the male
inhabitants of the Devil's Tooth felt the need of ablutions beyond the
scope of a blue enamel wash basin, he took a limp towel and rode down
across the pasture to the creek, and swam for half an hour or so in a
certain deep pool. Sometimes all of the boys went, at sundown, and
filled the pool with their splashings. Only Lance availed himself of
tub and soap and clean towels, and shaved every morning before
breakfast.
She heard him moving about in his room, heard him go into the kitchen
and ask Riley what the chances were for something to eat. She did not
follow him, but she waited, expecting that he would come into the
living room afterwards. She went to the piano and drummed a few bars
of a new dance hit Lance had brought home for her, and with her head
turned sidewise listened to the sound of his footsteps in the next
room, his occasional, pleasantly throaty tones answering Riley's
high-pitched, nasal twang.
Her eyes blurred with unreasoning tears. He was her youngest. He was
so big, so handsome, so like Tom,--yet so different! She did not
believe that Tom could really see anything to cavil at in Lance's
presence, in his changed personality. Tom, she thought, was secretly
as proud of Lance as she was, and only pretended to sneer at him to
hide that pride. The constraint would soon wear off, and Lance would
be one of the boys again.
The screen door slammed. With a lump in her throat, Belle went to a
window and looked out. Lance, in his new Stetson and a fresh shirt and
gray trousers tucked into his riding boots, was on his way to the
stable again. She watched him pick up a rope and go into the far
corral where a few extra saddle horses dozed through the hot
afternoon. She saw him return, leading a chunky little roan. Saw him
throw his saddle on the horse. Saw him ride off--the handsomest young
fellow in all the Black Rim--but with apparently never a thought that
his mother might like a word with him, since he had been gone for two
days without any explanation or any excuse. Which was not like Lance,
who had always before remembered to be nice to Belle.
Up the Slide trail Lance rode, perhaps two hours behind Tom. The marks
of Coaley's hoofs were still fresh in the trail, but Lance did not
appear to see them at all. He let the roan scramble over the shale as
he would, let him take his own pace among the boulders and up through
the Slide. At the top he put him into an easy lope which did not
slacken until he reached the descent on the other side of the Ridge.
Presently, because the roan was an ambitious young horse and eager to
reach the end of the trail, and Lance was too preoccupied to care
what pace he traveled, they arrived at Cottonwood Spring, circled the
wire fence and whipped in through the open gate at a gallop.
The little schoolhouse was deserted. Lance dismounted and looked in,
saw it still dismal with the disorder of the last unfortunate dance.
It was evident that there had been no school since the Fourth of
July.
Then he remembered that Mary Hope's father had been sick all of the
week, and it was now only two days since the funeral. She would not be
teaching school so soon after his death.
He closed the door and remounted, his face somber. He had wanted to
see Mary Hope. Since the morning after Scotty died he had fought a
vague, disquieting sense of her need of him. There had been times when
it seemed almost as though she had called to him across the distance;
that she wished to see him. To-day he had obeyed the wordless call. He
still felt her need of him, but since she was not at the school he
hesitated. The schoolhouse was in a measure neutral ground. Riding
over to the Douglas ranch was another matter entirely. Too keenly had
he felt the cold animosity of Mother Douglas, the wild, impotent hate
of old Scotty mouthing threats and accusations and vague prophecies of
future disaster to the Lorrigans. He rode slowly out through the gate
and took the trail made by the Devil's Tooth team when they hauled
down the materials for the schoolhouse. The chunky roan climbed
briskly, contentedly rolling the cricket in his bit. The little
burring sound of it fitted itself somehow to the thought reiterating
through Lance's tired brain. "She wouldn't want me--to come. She
wouldn't--want me--to come."
The roan squatted and ducked sidewise, and Lance raised his head. Down
the rough trail rode a big cowpuncher with sun-reddened face and an
air of great weariness. His horse plodded wearily, thin-flanked, his
black hair sweat-roughened and dingy. The rider looked at Lance with
red-veined eyes, the inflamed lids showing sleepless nights.
"How'r yuh?" he greeted perfunctorily, as they passed each other.
"Howdy," said Lance imperturbably, and rode on.
Lance's eyebrows pulled together. He had no need of looking back; he
had seen a great deal in the one glance he had given the stranger. He
scrutinized the trail, measured with his eyes the size and the shape
of the horse's footprints.
After a little he left the wagon road and put the roan to the steep
climb up the trail to the great Tooth of the ridge. He still frowned,
still rode with bent head, his eyes on the trail. But now he was
alert, conscious of his surroundings, thinking of every yard of ground
they covered.
At a little distance from the base of the Tooth he dismounted, tying
the restive roan to a bush to prevent him from wandering around,
nibbling investigatingly at weeds, bushes, all the things that
interest a young horse.
Slowly, walking carefully on rocks, Lance approached the Tooth. A new
look was in his face now,--a look half tender, half angry because of
the tenderness. Several times he had met Mary Hope here at the Tooth,
when he was just a long-legged youth with a fondness for teasing, and
she was a slim, wide-eyed little thing in short skirts and sunbonnet.
Always the meetings had pretended to be accidental, and always Mary
Hope had seemed very much interested in the magnificent outlook and
very slightly interested in him.
From the signs, some one else was much interested in the view. Lance
came upon a place where a man had slipped with one foot and left the
deep mark of his boot in the loose, gravelly soil. Sitting on a
boulder, he made a leisurely survey of the place and counted three
cigarette stubs that had fallen short of the crevice toward which they
had evidently been flung. How many had gone into the crevice he could
not tell. He slid off the boulder and, walking on a rock shelf that
jutted out from the huge upthrust rock, examined the place very
thoroughly.
At a certain spot where Mary Hope had been fond of sitting on the rock
shelf with her straight little back against the Tooth's smooth side,
a splendid view of the Devil's Tooth ranch was to be had. The house
itself was hidden in a cottonwood grove that Belle had planted when
she was a bride, but the corrals, the pastures, the road up the Ridge
was plainly visible. And in the shallow crack in the rock was another
cigarette end, economically smoked down to a three-quarter-inch stub.
Lance returned by way of the shelf to the outcropping of rocks that
would leave no trace of his passing. He untied and mounted the roan
and circled the vicinity cautiously. Two hundred yards away, down the
slope and on a small level place where the brush grew thick, he found
where a horse had stood for hours. He looked at the hoofprints, turned
back and rode down the schoolhouse trail again, following the tracks
of the fagged black horse.
When another fifty yards would bring the basin in sight, Lance turned
off the trail and dismounted, tied the roan again and went forward
slowly, his eyes intent on the tops of the trees around Cottonwood
Spring. A rattler buzzed suddenly, and he stopped, looked to see where
the snake was coiled, saw it withdraw its mottled gray body from under
a rabbit weed and drag sinuously away, its ugly head lifted a little,
eyes watching him venomously. An unwritten law of the West he broke by
letting the snake go. Again he moved forward, from bush to bush, from
boulder to boulder. When all of the basin and the grove were revealed
to him, he stopped, removed his gray range hat and hung it on a
near-by bush. He took his small field glasses from his pocket, dusted
the lenses deliberately and, leaning forward across a rock with his
elbows steadied on the stone and the glasses to his eyes, he swept
foot by foot the grove.
He was some minutes in discovering a black horse well within the outer
fringe of the cottonwoods, switching mechanically at the flies and
mosquitoes that infested the place, and throwing his head impatiently
to his side now and then when the sting was too sharp to ignore. With
the glasses he could see the sweat-roughened hide ripple convulsively
to dislodge the pestering insects, could see the flaring nostrils as
the horse blew out the dust gathered from his hungry nosing amongst
the coarse grass and weeds. The man Lance did not at once discover,
but after a little he saw him rolled in canvas to protect himself from
the mosquitoes. He seemed already fast asleep.
"He needs it," said Lance grimly, with his twisted smile, and went
back to the roan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LANCE PLAYS THE GAME
That night Lance sauntered into the bunk house, placidly ignoring the
fact that Tom was there, and that some sort of intermittent conference
was taking place. Cool and clean and silk-shirted and freshly shaved,
the contrast was sharp between him and the men sprawled on their beds
or sitting listlessly around the table playing keno. Tom lifted an
eyebrow at him; Lance sent him a look to match and went over to the
card players.
They did not want him in the bunk house. He who had spent nearly all
of his life on the Devil's Tooth ranch knew that he was not wanted.
They did not want him to know that he was not wanted, and by their
very effort to hide it did they betray themselves.
"Didn't go to Jumpoff after all, dad," Lance remarked idly, a rising
inflection turning the phrase into a question.
Tom grunted and got up to go. His men cast furtive glances at one
another, looked at Lance from under their brows, noted the silk
shirt and the low, tan Oxfords, and the texture and cut of his
gray trousers with the tan leather belt that had a small silver
buckle. Plain as it was they knew that buckle was silver. They saw
how clean-cut was the hairline at the back of his head and over his
ears--sure sign that he was "citified." And toward the man who is
citified your purely range-bred product cherishes a distinct if
secret grudge. His immaculate presence made them all feel frowsy and
unwashed and ill-clad. And to hide how conscious he was of his own
deficiencies, the man who sat nearest Lance lifted his hat and
rumpled his hair still more.
"Duke and Al didn't get in yet, eh?" Lance picked up an extra deck of
cards and began to shuffle them absent-mindedly but nevertheless
dexterously.
"Nope--they stayed out," replied a blond man named Winters. They
called him "Chilly."
"Hot weather for working cattle," Lance observed indifferently.
"Yeah--sure is," responded Ed Moran, who was low-browed and dark and
had an ugly jaw.
"Yeah--_damn_ hot," testified Jim Bloom. "How's Californy for
weather?"
"Oh-h--it has all kinds, same as here." Lance did not want to talk
about California just then, but he followed the lead easily enough.
"You can get anything you want in California. In two hours you can go
from twenty-five feet of snow to orange groves. You can have it all
green, fruit trees and roses blooming in midwinter, or you can hit
into desert worse than anything Idaho can show."
"Yep--that's right, all right. Great place, Californy," Chilly tried
to make his voice sound enthusiastic, and failed. "Great place."
"Speaking about climate--" Lance sat down on a corner of the table,
eased his trousers over his knees, crossed his tan Oxfords and began
a story. It was a long story, and for some time it was not at all
apparent that he was getting anywhere with it. He shuffled the deck
of cards while he talked, and the keno game, interrupted when he
began, trailed off into "Who's play is it?" and finally ceased
altogether. That was when Lance's Jewish dialect began to be funny
enough to make even Chilly Winters laugh. At the end there was a
general cachinnation.
"But that's only a sample of the stuff they pull out there, on
tourists," said Lance, when the laughter had subsided to a few belated
chuckles. "There's another one. It isn't funny--but I'm going to
_make_ it funny. You'll think it's funny--but it isn't, really."
He told that one and made them think it was funny. At least they
laughed, and laughed again when he had finished.
"Now here's another. This one really is funny--but you won't feel like
laughing at it. I'll tell it so you won't."
He told that story and saw it fall flat. "You see?" He flipped the
cards, tossed them on the table with a whimsical gesture. "It isn't
what you do in this world--it's how you do it that counts. I'm sitting
on your keno game, am I? All right, I'll get off."
He went out as abruptly as he had entered, and he paused long enough
outside to know that a silence marked his going. Then he heard Ed
Koran's voice depreciating him. Frankly he listened, lighting a
cigarette.
"Aw--his mother was an actress, wasn't she? _That_ guy ain't going to
cut no ice around here whatever."
"Looks an awful darn lot like Tom," ventured Chilly. "I dunno--you
take a Lorrigan--"
"Him? Lorrigan? Why, say! He may _look_ like a Lorrigan, but he ain't
one. Tom's damn right. He don't set in. Why, like as not he'd--"
"Aw, cut out the gabbling!" Ed's voice growled again. "It's yore play,
Bob."
Stepping softly, Lance went on to the house. "I just--_look_ like
one!" he repeated under his breath. "Fine! At any rate," he added
dryly, "I've proved that I _can_ go into the bunk house now and
then."
He went up and sang songs with Belle then, until after ten o'clock. He
would have sung longer, but it happened that in the middle of a
particularly pleasing "Ah-_ee_, oh-_ee_, hush-a-bye-_ba-by_"
yodel, Tom put his head out of the bedroom and implored Lance to
for-the-Lord-sake go up on the Ridge to howl. So Lance forbore to
finish the "ah-_ee_, oh-_ee_," much to Belle's disappointment.
"But you know Tom's been out riding hard and not getting much sleep,
so I guess maybe we better cut out the concert, honey," she told
Lance, getting up and laying her plump, brown arms across his
shoulders. "My heavens, Lance, you kinda make me think the clock's set
back thirty years, when I look at you. You're Tom, all over--and I did
think you were going to be like me."
Lance scowled just a little. "No, I'm not Tom all over--I'm Lance all
over."
"You're Lorrigan all over," Belle persisted. "And you're just like Tom
when he was your age. Good Lord, how time does slip away! Tom used to
be so full of fun and say such funny things--and now it's just ride
and ride and work, and eat and sleep. Honey, I want you to know that
I'm glad you learned something a little different. What's the use of
having a million, if you work yourself to death getting it? Look at
the boys--look at Al and Duke. They're like old men, the last year or
two. We used to have such good times on the ranch, but we don't any
more--nobody ever thinks of anything but work."
She lowered her voice to a whisper, her arms still lying on Lance's
shoulders, her clouded blue eyes looking up into his. "That trouble
with Scotty Douglas kind of--changed Tom and the boys. You went away.
You've changed too, but in a different way. It _soured_ them, just a
little. Tom wants to make his million quick and get outa here. I was
glad when you stirred things up a little, last spring, and gave that
dance. Or I was glad, till it ended up the way it did. It was the
first dance we'd been to since you left, Lance! And I thought it would
kind of patch up a little more friendliness with the folks around
here. But it didn't. It just made a lot of talk and trouble--and,
Lance, honey, I'm awfully darn sorry about that piano. It's down in
the chicken house this minute. Tom wouldn't even have it in the house.
And now, I don't suppose there ever will be any chance to make friends
with any one. Tom--well, all of us were so _darn_ mad to think she
never even asked us--"
"Don't care any more about that, Belle. Please don't. And by the way,
I took the money Mary Hope wanted to give dad for the schoolhouse.
Perhaps he didn't tell you, but he threatened to burn the house down
if she left the money, so I took it and gave her a bill of sale in his
name. I wish you'd keep the money. And some day, maybe dad will take
it."