Late in the afternoon a few of the ranchers rode hastily homeward to "do the chores," but the Lava and Pocatello crowd remained, and began to drift up to the schoolhouse and drum on the piano that was actually going to pay for itself and free Mary Hope's pride from its burden.

By sundown a dozen energetic couples were waltzing while a Pocatello dentist with a stiff, sandy pompadour chewed gum and played loudly, with much arm movement and very little rhythm; so very little rhythm that the shuffling feet frequently ceased shuffling, and expostulations rose high above his thunderous chords.

By dusk the overworked ranch women had fed the last hungry mouth and put away the fragments of home-baked cakes and thick sandwiches, and were forming a solid line of light shirtwaists and dark skirts along the wall. The dance was really beginning.

As before, groups of men stood around outside and smoked and slapped at mosquitoes—except that at Lance's party there had been no mosquitoes to slap—and talked in undertones the gossip of the ranges. If now and then the name of Lorrigan was mentioned, there was no Lorrigan present to hear. At intervals the "floor manager" would come to the door and call out numbers: "Number one, and up to and including sixteen, git your pardners fer a two-step!" Whereupon certain men would pinch out the glow of their cigarettes and grind the stubs into the sod under their heels, and go in to find partners. With that crowd, not all could dance at once; Mary Hope remembered pridefully that there had been no dancing by numbers at the party Lance Lorrigan gave.

What a terrible dance that had been! A regular rowdy affair. And this crowd, big as it was, had as yet shown no disposition to rowdyism. It surely did make a difference, thought Mary Hope, what kind of people sponsored an entertainment. With the Devil's Tooth outfit as the leaders, who could expect anything but trouble?

Then she caught herself thinking, with a vague heaviness in her heart, how Lance had taken her away from that other dance; of that long, wonderful, silent ride through the starlight; how careful he had been of her—how tender! But it was only the way he had with him, she later reminded herself impatiently, and smiled over her shoulder at the whirling couples who danced to the music she made; and thought of the money that made her purse heavy as lead, the money that would wipe out her debt to the Lorrigans,—to Lance, if it really were Lance who had bought the piano.

A faint sound came to her through the open window, the rattle of a wagon coming down the hill in the dark. More people were coming to the dance, which meant more money to give to the Lorrigans. Mary Hope smiled again and played faster; so fast that more than one young man shook his head at her as he circled past, and puffed ostentatiously, laughing at the pace she set. She had a wild vision of other dances which she would give—Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's—and pay the Lorrigans for everything they had done; for the books, for the schoolhouse, everything. She felt that then, and then only, could she face Lance Lorrigan level-eyed, cool, calm, feeling herself a match for him.

The rattle of the wagon sounded nearer, circled the yard, came in at the gate. Mary Hope was giving the dancers the fastest two-step she could play, and she laughed aloud. More people were coming to the dance, and there might not be coffee and sandwiches enough at midnight,—she had over three hundred dollars already.

The dancers whirled past, parted to right and left, stopped all at once. Mary Hope, still playing, looked over her shoulder—into the dark, impenetrable gaze of Tom Lorrigan, standing there in his working clothes, with his big, black Stetson on his head and his six-shooter in its holster on his hip. Behind him Mary Hope saw Al and Duke and Belle, and behind them other Devil's Tooth men, cowboys whom she only knew slightly from meeting them sometimes in the trail as she rode to and from school. The cowboys seemed to be facing the other way, holding back the crowd near the door.

Mary Hope looked again into Tom's face, looked at Belle. Her fingers strayed uncertainly over the keys, making discords. She half rose, then sat down again. The room, all at once, seemed very still.

"I'm sorry to disturb yuh," Tom said, touching his hat brim and lifting his eyebrows at her, half smiling with his lips pulled to one side, like Lance—oh, maddeningly like Lance!—"but I've come after the piano."

Mary Hope gasped. Her arms went out instinctively across the keyboard, as if she would protect the instrument from his defaming touch.

"I'll have to ask yuh to move," said Tom. "Sorry to disturb yuh."

"I—I'm going to pay for it," said Mary Hope, finding her voice faint and husky. She had an odd sensation that this was a nightmare. She had dreamed so often of the dance and of the Lorrigans.

"I paid for it long ago. I bought the piano—I've come after it."

Mary Hope slid off the stool, stood facing him, her eyes very blue. After all, he was not Lance. "You can't have it!" she said. "I won't let you take it. I'm raising money to pay you for it, and I intend to keep it." She reached for her purse, but Tom restrained her with a gesture.

"It ain't for sale," he said, with that hateful smile that always made her wonder just what lay behind it. "I own it, and I ain't thinking of selling. Here's the shipping bill and the guarantee and all; I brought 'em along to show you, in case you got curious about whose piano it is. You see the number on the bill—86945. You'll find it tallies with the number in the case, if you want to look. Pete, Ed, John, take it and load it in the wagon."

"Well, now, see here! This is an outrage! How much is the darn thing worth, anyway? This crowd is not going to stand by and see a raw deal like this pulled off." It was the Pocatello dentist, and he was very much excited.

"You saw a raw deal, and stood for it, when you saw the Lorrigans cold-shouldered out of the dance," Belle flashed at him. "We've stood for a lot, but this went a little beyond our limit."

"We're not going to stand for anything like this, you know!" Another man—also from Lava—shouldered his way up to them.

"Git outa the way, or you'll git tromped on!" cried Pete over his shoulder as he backed, embracing the piano and groping for handholds.

The Lava man gripped Pete, trying to pull him away. Pete kicked back viciously with a spurred heel. The Lava man yelled and retreated, limping.

Just how it happened, no two men or women afterward agreed in the telling. But somehow the merrymakers, who were merry no longer, went back and back until they were packed solidly at the sides and near the door, a few squeezing through it when they were lucky enough to find room. Behind them came four of the Devil's Tooth men with six-shooters, looking the crowd coldly in the eyes. Behind these came the piano, propelled by those whom Tom had named with the tone of authority.

The crowd squeezed closer against the wall as the piano went past them. There was not so much noise and confusion as one would expect. Then, at the last, slim, overworked, round-shouldered Mother Douglas, who had done little save pray and weep and work and scold all her life, walked up and slapped Belle full on the cheek.

"Ye painted Jezebel!" she cried, her eyes burning. "Long have I wanted to smack ye for your wickedness and the brazen ways of ye—ye painted Jezebel!"

Blind, dazed with anger, Belle struck back.

"Don't you touch my mother! Shame on you! Shame on you all! I didna ask you for your favors, for any gifts—and you gave them and then you come and take them—" This was the voice of Mary Hope, shrill with rage.

"You gave a dance in a house built for you by the Lorrigans, on Lorrigan land, and you danced to the music of a Lorrigan piano—and the Lorrigans were not good enough to be asked to come! Get outa my way, Hope Douglas—and take your mother with you. Call me a painted Jezebel, will she?"

The piano was outside, being loaded into the wagon, where Riley sat on the seat, chewing tobacco grimly and expectorating copiously, without regard for those who came close. Outside there was also much clamor of voices. A lantern held high by a Devil's Tooth man who had a gun in the other, lighted the platform and the wagon beside it.

At the last, Tom Lorrigan himself went back after the stool, and the room silenced so that his footsteps sounded loud on the empty floor. He looked at Mary Hope, looked at her mother, looked at the huddled, whispering women, the gaping children. He swung out of his course and slipped one arm around Belle and so led her outside, the stool swinging by one leg in the other hand.

"A painted Jezebel!" Belle said under her breath when they were outside the ring of light. "My God, Tom, think of that!"

Mary Hope had never in her life suffered such humiliation. It seemed to her that she stood disgraced before the whole world, that there was no spot wherein she might hide her shame. Her mother was weeping hysterically because she had been "slappit by the painted Jezebel" and because Aleck was not there to avenge her. The Pocatello and Lava crowd seemed on the point of leaving, and were talking very fast in undertones that made Mary Hope feel that they were talking about her. The rattle of the Lorrigan wagon hauling the piano away, the click of the horses' feet as the Devil's Tooth riders convoyed the instrument, made her wince, and want to put her palms over her ears to shut out the sound of it.

But she was Scotch, and a Douglas. There was no weak fiber that would let her slump before this emergency. She went back to the little platform, stood beside the desk that held the globe and the dictionary and a can of flowers, and rapped loudly with the ruler from the Pocatello hardware store. By degrees the room ceased buzzing with excited talk, the shuffling feet stood still.

"I am very sorry," said Mary Hope clearly, "that your pleasure has—has been interrupted. It seems there has been a misunderstanding about the piano. I thought that I could buy it for the school, and for that reason I gave this dance. But it seems—that—I'm terribly sorry the dance has been spoiled for you, and if the gentlemen who bought tickets will please step this way, I will return your money."

She had to clench her teeth to keep her lips from trembling. Her hands shook so that she could scarcely open her handbag. But her purpose never faltered, her eyes were blue and sparkling when she looked out over the crowd. She waited. Feet scuffled the bare floor, voices whispered, but no man came toward her.

"I want to return your money," she said sharply, "because without the piano I suppose you will not want to dance, and—"

"Aw, the dickens!" cried a big, good-natured cowpuncher with a sun-peeled nose and twinkly gray eyes. "I guess we all have danced plenty without no piano music. There's mouth harps in this crowd, and there's a fiddle. Git yore pardners for a square dance!" And under his breath, to his immediate masculine neighbors he added: "To hell with the Lorrigans and their piano!"

Mary Hope could have hugged that cowpuncher who hastily seized her hand and swung her into place as the first couple in the first set.

When the three sets were formed he called the dance figures in a sonorous tone that swept out through the open windows and reached the ears of the Lorrigans as they rode away.

"Honor yore pardner—and the lady on your left! Join eight hands, an' a-circle to the left! Break an Indian trail home in the Indian style, with the lady in the lead! Swing the lady behind you once in a while!— The lady behind you once in a while!— Now your pardner, and go hog wild!"

The fiddle and two mouth harps were scarcely heard above the rhythmic stamping of feet, the loud chant of the caller, who swung Mary Hope clear of the floor whenever he put his arm around her.

"A—second couple out, and a-cir-cle four! Lay-dees do ce do! You swing me, an' I'll swing you— And we'll all dance in the same ole shoe!

"Same four on to the next!—dance the ocean wave! The same ole boys, the same ole trail, Watch that possum walk the rail! Cir-cle six, and a-do ce do! Swing, every one swing, and a—promenade home!"

"Who wants a piano? Couldn't hear it if yuh' had it!" he cried, while the twelve couples paused breathless. Then he wiped his face frankly and thoroughly with his handkerchief, caught Mary Hope's hand in his, lifted his voice again in his contagious sing-song:

"Cir-cle eight, till you get straight! Swing them ladies, like swingin' on a gate! Left foot up, and-a-right foot down— Make that big foot jar the ground! Prom-e-nade! Swing yore corner, if you ain't too slow! Now yore pardner, and around you go! For the—last time—and a-long time— You know where, and a-I don't care!"

The dance was saved by the big cowpuncher with the peeling nose and the twinkly gray eyes. Mary Hope had never seen him before that day, but whenever she looked at him a lump came in her throat, a warm rush of sheer gratitude thrilled her. She did not learn his name—two or three men called him Burt, but he seemed to be a stranger in the country. Burt saved her dance and kept things moving until the sky was streaked with red and birds were twittering outside in the cottonwoods.

She wanted to thank him, to tell him a little of her gratitude. But when she went to look for him afterwards he was gone, and no one seemed to know just where he belonged. Which was strange, when you consider that in the Black Rim country every one knows everybody.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

PEDDLED RUMORS

In the smoking compartment of a Pullman car that rocked westward from Pocatello two days after the Fourth, Lance sprawled his big body on a long seat, his head joggling against the dusty window, his mind sleepily recalling, round by round, a certain prize fight that had held him in Reno over the Fourth and had cost him some money and much disgust. The clicking of the car trucks directly underneath, the whirring of the electric fan over his head, the reek of tobacco smoke seemed to him to last for hours, seemed likely to go on forever. Above it all, rising stridently now and then in a disagreeable monotone, the harsh, faintly snarling voice of a man on the opposite seat blended unpleasantly with his dozing discomfort. For a long time the man had been talking, and Lance had been aware of a grating quality of the voice, that yet seemed humorous in its utterances, since his two listeners laughed frequently and made brief, profane comment that encouraged the talker to go on. Finally, as he slowly returned from the hazy borderland of slumber, Lance became indifferently aware of the man's words.

From under the peak of his plaid traveling cap Lance lifted his eyelids the length of his black lashes, measured the men with a half-minute survey and closed his eyes again. The face matched the voice. A harsh face, with bold blue eyes, black eyebrows that met over his nose, a mouth slightly prominent, hard and tilted downward at the corners. Over the harshness like a veil was spread a sardonic kind of humor that gave attraction to the man's personality. In the monotone of his voice was threaded a certain dry wit that gave point to his observations. He was an automobile salesman, it appeared, and his headquarters were in Ogden, and he was going through to Shoshone on business connected with a delayed shipment of cars. But he was talking, when Lance first awoke to his monologue, of the sagebrush country through which the fast mail was reeling drunkenly, making up time that had been lost because of a washout that had held the train for an hour while two section crews sweated over a broken culvert.

"—And by gosh! the funniest thing I ever saw happened right up here in a stretch of country they call the Black Rim. If I was a story writer, I sure would write it up. Talk about the West being tame!—why, I can take you right now, within a few hours' ride, to where men ride with guns on 'em just as much as they wear their pants. Only reason they ain't all killed off, I reckon, is because they all pack guns.

"Hard-boiled? Say, there's a bunch up there that's never been curried below the knees—and never will be. They pulled off a stunt the Fourth that I'll bet ain't ever been duplicated anywhere on earth, and never will be. I was in Pocatello, and I went on up with the crowd from there, and got in on the show. And sa-ay, it was some show!

"They've got a feud up there that's rock-bottomed as any feud you ever heard of in Kentucky. It's been going on for years, and it'll keep going on till the old folks all die off or move away—or land in the pen. Hasn't been a killing in there for years, but that's because they're all so damn tough they know if one starts shooting it'll spread like a prairie fire through dry grass.

"There's an outfit in there—the Devil's Tooth outfit. Far back as the country was settled—well, they say the first Lorrigan went up in there to get away from the draft in the Civil War, and headed a gang of outlaws that shot and hung more white men and Injuns than any outfit in the State—and that's going some.

"They were killers from the first draw. Other settlers went in, and had to knuckle under. The Devil's Tooth gang had the Black Rim in its fist. Father to son—they handed down the disposition—I could tell yuh from here to Boise yarns about that outfit.

"Now, of course, things have tamed down. As I say, there hasn't been a Devil's Tooth killing for years. But it's there, you know—it's in the blood. It's all under the surface. They're a good-hearted bunch, but it'll take about four generations to live down the reputation they've got, if they all turned Methodist preachers. And," the grating voice paused for a minute, so that one caught the full significance of his hint, "if all yuh hear is true, religion ain't struck the Devil's Tooth yet. It ain't my business to peddle rumors, and the time's past when you can hang a man on suspicion—but if you read about the Devil's Tooth outfit some time in the paper, remember I said it's brewing. The present Tom Lorrigan ain't spending all his time driving his cows to water. He was hauled up a few years ago, on a charge of rustling. An old Scotchman had him arrested. Tom was cleared—he had the best lawyer in the West—brought him from Boise, where they need good lawyers!—and got off clear. And since then he's been laying low. That's the one mistake he's made, in my opinion. He never did a damn thing, never tried to kill the Scotchman, never acted up at all. And when you think of the breed of cats he is you'll see yourself that the Black Rim is setting on a volcano.

"Tom Lorrigan has got more men working for him than any outfit in that country. He runs his own round-up and won't have a rep—that's a representative—from any other outfit in his camp. His own men haze outside stock off his range. He's getting rich. He ships more cattle, more horses than anybody in the country. He don't have any truck with any of his neighbors, and his men don't. They're outside men, mostly. There ain't a thing anybody can swear to—there ain't a thing said out loud about the Devil's Tooth. But it's hinted and it's whispered.

"So all this preamble prepares you for the funniest thing I ever saw pulled. But I guess I'm about the only one who saw how funny it was. I know the Black Rim don't seem to see the joke, and I know the Devil's Tooth don't.

"You see, it's so big and neighbors are so far apart that there ain't any school district, and a few kids were getting school age, and no place to send 'em. So a couple of families got together and hired the daughter of this old Scotchman to teach school. I ain't calling her by name—she's a nice kid, and a nervy kid, and I can see where she thought she was doing the right thing.

"Well, she taught in a tumble-down little shack for a while, and one day this Tom Lorrigan come along, and saw how the girl and the kids were sitting there half froze, and he hazed 'em all home. Broke up the school. Being a Lorrigan, all he'd have to do would be to tell 'em to git—but it made a little stir, all right. The schoolma'am, she went right back the next morning and started in again. Like shooing a setting hen off her nest, it was.

"Well, next thing they knew, the Devil's Tooth had built a schoolhouse and said nothing about it. Tom's a big-hearted cuss—I know Tom—tried to sell him a car, last fall. Darn near made it stick, too. I figured that Tom Lorrigan was maybe ashamed of busting up the school and making talk, so he put up a regular schoolhouse. Then one of his boys had been away to college—only one of the outfit that ever went beyond the Rim, as far as I know—and he gave a dance; a regular house-warming.

"Well, I wasn't at that dance. I wish I had been. They packed in whisky by the barrel. Everybody got drunk, and everybody got to fighting. This young rooster from college licked a dozen or so, and then took the schoolma'am and drove clear to Jumpoff with her, and licked everybody in town before he left. Sa-ay, it musta been some dance, all right!

"Then—here comes the funny part. Everybody was all stirred up over the Lorrigans' dance, and right in the middle of the powwow, blest if the Lorrigans didn't buy a brand new piano and haul it to the schoolhouse. They say it was the college youth, that was stuck on the schoolma'am. Well, everybody out that way got to talking and gossiping—you know how it goes—until the schoolma'am, just to settle the talk, goes and gives a dance to raise money to pay for the piano. She's all right—I don't think for a minute she's anything but right—and it might have been old Tom himself that bought the piano. Anyway, she went and sent invitations all around, two dollars per invite, and got a big crowd. Had a picnic in the grove, and everything was lovely.

"But sa-ay! She forgot to invite the Lorrigans! Everybody in the country there, except the Devil's Tooth outfit. I figure that she was afraid they might rough things up a little—and maybe she didn't like to ask them to pay for something they'd already paid for—but anyway, just when the dance was going good, here came the whole Devil's Tooth outfit with a four-horse team, and I'm darned if they didn't walk right in there, in the middle of a dance, take the piano stool right out from under the schoolma'am, and haul the piano home! They—"

A loud guffaw from his friends halted the narrative there. Before the teller of the tale went on, Lance pulled his cap down over his eyes, got up and walked out and stood on the platform.

"They hauled the piano home!" He scowled out at the reeling line of telegraph posts. "They—hauled—that piano—home!"

He lighted a cigar, took two puffs and threw the thing out over the rail. "She didn't ask the Lorrigans—to her party. And dad—"

He whirled and went back into the smoking compartment. He wanted to hear more. The seat he had occupied was still empty and he settled into it, his cap pulled over his eyes, a magazine before his face. The others paid no attention. The harsh-voiced man was still talking.

"Well, they can't go on forever. They're bound to slip up, soon or late. And now, of course, there's a line-up against them. It's in the blood and I don't reckon they can change—but the country's changing. I know of one man that's in there now, working in the dark, trying to get the goods—but of course, it's not my business to peddle that kind of stuff. I was tickled about the piano, though. The schoolma'am was game. She offered to give us back our two dollars per, but of course nobody was piker enough to take her up on it. We went ahead and had the dance with harmonicas and a fiddle, and made out all right. Looks to me like the schoolma'am's all to the good. She's got the dance money—"

It was of no use. Lance found he could not listen to that man talking about Mary Hope. To strike the man on his fish-like, hard-lipped mouth would only make matters worse, so he once more left the compartment and stood in the open doorway of the vestibule just beyond. The train, slowing to a stop at a tank station, jarred to a standstill. In the compartment behind him the man's voice sounded loud and raucous now that the mechanical noises had ceased.

"Well, I never knew it to fail—what's in the blood will come out. They've lived there for three generations now. They're killers, thieves at heart—human birds of prey, and it don't matter if it is all under the surface. I say it's there."

At that moment, Lance had the hunger to kill, to stop forever the harsh voice that talked on and on of the Lorrigans and their ingrained badness. He stepped outside, slamming the door shut behind him. The voice, fainter now, could still be heard. He swung down to the cinders, stood there staring ahead at the long train, counting the cars, watching the fireman run with his oil can and climb into the engine cab. He could no longer hear the voice, but he felt that he must forget it or go back and kill the man who owned it.

In the car ahead a little girl leaned out of the window, her curls whipping across her face. Jubilantly she waved her hand at him, shrilled a sweet, "Hello-oh. Where you goin'? I'm goin' to my grandma's house!"

The rigor left Lance's jaw. He smiled, showing his teeth, saw that a brakeman was down inspecting a hot box on the forward truck of that car, and walked along to the window where the little girl leaned and waited, waving two sticky hands at him to hurry.

"Hello, baby. I know a grandma that's going to be mighty happy, before long," he said, standing just under the window and looking up at her.

"D'you know my gran'ma? S'e lives in a green house an' s'e's got five—hundred baby kittens for me to see! An' I'm goin' to bring one home wis me—but I do'no which one. D'you like yellow kittens, or litty gray kittens, or black ones?"

Gravely Lance studied the matter, his eyebrows pulled together, his mouth wearing the expression which had disturbed Mary Hope when he came to mend the lock on her door.

"I'd take—now, if your grandma has one that's all spotted, you might take that, couldn't you? Then some days you'd love the yellow spots, and some days you'd love the black spots, and some days—"

"Ooh! And I could call it all the nice names I want to call it!" The little girl pressed her hands together rapturously. "When my kitty's got its yellow-spotty day, I'll call him Goldy, and when—"

The engine bell clanged warning, the wheels began slowly to turn.

"Ooh! You'll get left and have to walk!" cried the little girl, in big-eyed alarm.

"All right, baby—you take the spotted one!" Lance called over his shoulder as he ran. He was smiling when he swung up the steps. No longer did he feel that he must kill the harsh-voiced man.

He went forward to his own section, sat down and stared out of the window. As the memory of the little girl faded he drifted into gloomily reviewing the things he had heard said of his family. Were they really pariahs among their kind? Outlawed because of the blood that flowed in their veins?

Away in the back of his mind, pushed there because the thought was not pleasant, and because thinking could not make it pleasant, had been the knowledge that he was returning to a life with which he no longer seemed to be quite in tune. Two weeks had served to show him that he had somehow drifted away from his father and Duke and Al, that he had somehow come to look at life differently. He did not believe in the harsh man's theory of their outlawry; yet he felt a reluctance toward meeting again their silent measurement of himself, their intangible aloofness.

The harsh-voiced man had dragged it all to the surface, roughly sketching for the delectation of his friends the very things which Lance had been deliberately covering from his own eyes. He had done more. He had told things that made Lance wince. To humiliate Mary Hope before the whole Black Rim, as they had done, to take away the piano which he had wanted her to have—for that Lance could have throttled his dad. It was like Tom to do it. Lance could not doubt that he had done it. He could picture the whole wretchedly cheap retaliation for the slight which Mary Hope had given them, and the picture tormented him, made him writhe mentally. But he could picture also Mary Hope's prim disapproval of them all, her deliberate omission of the Lorrigans from her list of invited guests, and toward that picture he felt a keen resentment.

The whole thing maddened him. The more, because he was in a sense responsible for it all. Just because he had not wanted that lonely look to cloud the blue eyes of her, just because he had not wanted her to be unhappy in her isolation, he had somehow brought to the surface all those boorish qualities which he had begun to hate in his family.

"Cheap—cheap as dirt!" he gritted once, and he included them all in the denunciation.

Furiously he wished that he had gone straight home, had not stopped in 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—"

From somewhere within the house the voice of Aleck Douglas rose suddenly in a high-keyed vindictive chanting. Mother Douglas turned, but the old man came with a rush across the floor, brushed past her and went swaying drunkenly to the corral, shouting meaningless threats. After him went Mary Hope, her eyes wide, her skirt flapping about her ankles as she ran.

"Oh, please do not pay any attention to father!" she cried, hurrying to overtake him before he reached the buckboard. "He's out of his head with pain, and he will not have a doctor—Father! listen! They only came for the horse I borrowed yesterday—they're going directly—come back and get into your bed, father!"

Aleck Douglas was picking up a broken neck yoke for a weapon when Lance sprang out over a wheel and grappled with him. The old man's right arm was swollen to twice its natural size and bandaged to his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath fetid with the fever that burned him when he turned his face close to Lance.

"It's his arm makes him crazy," said Mary Hope breathlessly. "Last night it began, and mother and I cannot keep him in his bed, and we don't know what to do! He will not have a doctor, he says—"

"He'd better have," said Belle shortly, hanging to the pintos that danced and snorted at the excitement. "I'll send one out. Lance, you better stay here and look after him—he'll kill somebody yet. Aren't there any men on the place, for heaven's sake?"

Mary Hope said there wasn't, that Hugh was not expected back before night. They had bought a horse from the Millers, and it had jumped the fence and gone home, and Hugh had gone after it. Then she ran to do what she could to calm her father. Scotty, it would seem, wanted to drive the Lorrigans off his land because they were thieves and cutthroats and had come there to rob him boldly in the broad light of day.

"Bat him on the head if you have to, Lance," Belle called, cold-eyed but capable. "He'll get sunstroke out here in this heat. And if you can get him into the house you had better tie him down till a doctor comes." Then she left, with the pintos circling in a lope to get out through the gate and into the trail.

The last she saw of them, Lance and Mary Hope were both struggling with the old man, forcing him foot by foot to the house, where Mother Douglas stood on the doorstep crying, with her apron to her face.

She had the tough little team in a white lather, with their stubborn heads hanging level with their knees, when she stopped at the little railroad station and sent a peremptory wire to the Lava doctor who was most popular in the Black Rim. She waited until he arrived on the train which he luckily had time to catch, and then, the pintos having somewhat recovered under the solicitous rubbing-down of a hollow-chested stableman, she hustled the doctor and his black case into the buckboard and made the return drive in one hour and fifty minutes, which was breaking even her own record, who was called the hardest driver in the whole Rim country.

They found Lance with his coat off and the perspiration streaming down his face, battling with Aleck Douglas who was raving still of the Lorrigans and threatening to kill this one who would not leave him alone to die in peace. Mary Hope and her mother were in the hot little kitchen where the last of the sunlight streamed through the faded green mosquito netting that sagged in and out as the breeze of sundown pushed through lazily.

The Lava doctor did not say much. He quieted the raving with his hypodermic needle, removed the amateurish bandage from the hand and the arm, looked at the wound, applied a cooling lotion, and dexterously wound on a fresh bandage. It seemed very little, Mary Hope thought dully, for a doctor to come all the way from Lava to do.

He would stay all night, he said. And the Lorrigans went home silent, depressed, even Belle finding nothing to say.

"I'll ride over in the morning and see how he is," Lance observed, as the tired little team climbed the Devil's Tooth Ridge. "I'll have to get the horse, anyway."

The next morning, when he arrived rather early, he learned from Mary Hope that her father had died just before daylight, and that Hugh had not come back, and the doctor wanted to be taken to Jumpoff, and she could not leave her mother there alone, and a coffin must be ordered, and she did not know what to do. She was past tears, it seemed to Lance. She was white and worn and worried, and there was something in her eyes that made them too tragic to look at. He stood just outside the kitchen door and talked with her in a low voice so that Mother Douglas, weeping audibly in the kitchen, need not know he was there.

"The doctor can ride that livery horse in," he said soothingly. "And I'll wire to Lava for anything that you want, and notify any friends you would like to have come and see you through this." He was very careful not to accent the word friends, but Mary Hope gave him a quick, pathetic glance when he said it.

"You've been kind—I—I can't say just what I would like to say—but you've been kinder than some friends would be."

She left the doorstep and walked with him to the stable, Lance leading his horse and slowing his pace to match her weary steps. "It—seems unreal, like something I'm dreaming. And—and I hope you won't pay any attention to what father—said. He was out of his mind, and while he had the belief, he—"

"I'd rather not talk about that," Lance interrupted quietly. "Your father believed that we're all of us thieves, that we stole his stock. Perhaps you believe it—I don't know. We've a hard name, got when the country was hard and it took hard men to survive. I don't think the Lorrigans, when you come right down to it, were any worse than their neighbors. They're no worse now. They got the name of being worse, just because they were—well, stronger; harder to bully, harder to defeat. The Lorrigans could hold their own and then some. They're still holding their own. There never was a Lorrigan ever yet backed down from anything, so I'm not going to back down from the name the Rim has given us. I'm glad I'm a Lorrigan. But I'm not glad to have you hate me for it."

They were at the stable door, which Mary Hope pulled open. The hired horse stood in the second stall. Lance dropped the reins of his own horse, turned to Mary Hope and laid his hands on her shoulders, looking down enigmatically into her upturned, troubled face.

"Girl, don't let us worry you at all. You've got trouble enough, and I'm going to do all I can to help you through it. I'll send out friends; and then the Lorrigans won't bother you. We won't come to the funeral, because your father wouldn't like to see us around, and your mother wouldn't like to see us around, and you—"

"Oh, don't!" Mary Hope drooped her face until her forehead rested on Lance's arm.

Lance quivered a little. "Girl—girl, what is it about you that drives a man mad with tenderness for you, sometimes?" He slipped his free arm around her shoulders, pressed her close. "Oh, girl—girl! Don't hate Lance—just because he's a Lorrigan. Be fairer than that." He bent his head to kiss her, drew himself suddenly straight, his brows frowning.

"There—run back and ask your mother what all she would like to have done for her in town, and tell the doctor that I'll have the horse ready for him in about two minutes. And be game—just go on being game. Your friends will be here just as soon as I can get them here." He turned into the stable and began saddling the horse.

Mary Hope, after a moment of indecision, went back to the house, walking slowly, as though she dreaded entering again to take up the heavy burden of sorrow that must be borne with all its sordid details, all the meaningless little conventions that attend the passing of a human soul. She had not loved her father very much. He was not a man to be loved. But his going was a bereavement, would leave a desolate emptiness in her life. Her mother would fill with weeping reminiscence the hours she would have spent in complaining of his harshness. She herself must somehow take charge of the ranch, must somehow fill her father's place that seemed all at once so big, so important in her world.

She looked back, wistfully, saw Lance leading out the horse. He had told her to be game—to go on being game. She wondered if he knew just how hard it was going to be for her. He had said that the Lorrigans were strong, were harder to defeat, had always held their own. He was proud because of their strength! She lifted her head, carefully wiped the tears from her cheeks—Mary Hope seemed always to be wiping tears from her cheeks lately!—and opened the door. The Lorrigans? Very well, there was also the Douglas blood, and that was not weaker than the Lorrigan.

She was quite calm, quite impersonal when she gave Lance a list of the pitifully small errands she and her mother would be grateful if he would perform for them. Her lips did not quiver, her hands did not tremble when she took her father's old red morocco wallet from the bureau drawer and gave Lance money to pay for the things they would need. Or if he would just hand the list to the Kennedys, she told him, they would be glad to attend to everything and save him the bother. They would come out at once, and perhaps Mrs. Smith would come. She thanked him civilly for the trouble he had already taken and added a message of thanks for Belle. She thanked him for the use of the horse and for attending to the schoolhouse matter for her. She was so extremely thankful that Lance exploded in one two-word oath when he rode away. Whereupon the doctor, who knew nothing of Lance's thoughts, looked at him in astonishment.



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

LANCE TRAILS A MYSTERY

Lance, rising at what he considered an early hour—five in the morning may well be considered early,—went whistling down to the corral to see what plans were on for the day. It was the day of Aleck Douglas's funeral, but the Devil's Tooth outfit would be represented only by a wreath of white carnations which Belle had ordered sent up from Pocatello. White carnations and Aleck Douglas did not seem to harmonize, but neither did the Devil's Tooth and Aleck Douglas, and the white wreath would be much less conspicuous and far more acceptable than the Lorrigans, Lance was thinking.

He paused at the bunk-house and looked in. The place was deserted. He walked through it to the kitchen where the boys ate—the chuck-house, they called it—and found nothing to indicate that a meal had been eaten there lately. He went out and down to the stable, where Sam Pretty Cow was just finishing his stall cleaning. Shorty, who now had a permanently lame leg from falling under his horse up in the Lava Beds a year ago, was limping across the first corral with two full milk buckets in his hands.

"Say, what time does this ranch get up, for heck sake?" Lance inquired of Sam Pretty Cow, stepping aside so that Sam might carry in a forkful of fresh hay.

"I dunno—long time ago." Sam Pretty Cow turned the hay sidewise and went in to stuff his fragrant burden into the manger.

"I was going out with the boys, if they went anywhere. Where have they all headed for, Sam? I could overtake them, maybe."

Sam Pretty Cow, returning to the doorway, shifted a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other and grinned.

"I dunno, me," he responded amiably.

"You don't know? Didn't dad say anything? Didn't the boys?" And then, with faint exasperation, "Doesn't any one ever talk any more on this ranch?"

Sam Pretty Cow gave him a swift, oblique glance and spat accurately at a great horsefly that had lighted on a board end.

"Not much, you bet. Nh-hn."

Lance called to Shorty, who had set his milk buckets down that he might open the little gate that swung inward,—the gate which horses were not supposed to know anything about.

"Oh-h, Shorty! Where did dad and the boys go this morning?"

Shorty turned slowly, pulling the gate open and propping it with a stick until he had set the buckets through. Deliberation was in his manner, deliberation was in his speech.

"Las' night, you mean. They hit out right after midnight."

"Well, where did they go?" Lance ground his cigarette under his heel.

"You might ask 'em when they git back," Shorty suggested cryptically, and closed the gate just as carefully as if forty freedom-hungry horses were milling inside the corral.

Lance watched him go and turned to Sam Pretty Cow who, having thrust his hay fork behind a brace in the stable wall, was preparing to vary his tobacco-chewing with a smoke.

"What's the mystery, Sam? Where did they go? I'm here to stay, and I'm one of the family—I think—and you may as well tell me."

Sam Pretty Cow lipped the edge of his cigarette paper, folded it down smoothly on the tiny roll of tobacco, leaned his body backward and painstakingly drew a match from the small pocket of his grimy blue overalls.

"I'm don' know nothing," he vouchsafed equably. "I'm don' ask nothing. I'm don' hear nothing. You bet. Nh-hn—yore damn right."

From under his lashes Lance watched Sam Pretty Cow. "I was over helping hold old Scotty in his bed, the other day," he said irrelevantly. "He was crazy—out of his head. He kept yelling that the Lorrigans were stealing his stock. He kept saying that a few more marks with a straight branding iron would turn his Eleven into an NL, ANL, DNL, LNL—any one of the Devil's Tooth brands. Crazy with fever, he was."

Sam Pretty Cow studied the match, decided which was the head of it, and drew it sharply along his boot sole.

"Yeah—yo're damn right. Crazy, you bet yore life. Uh-huh."

"He said the Miller's Block brand could easily be turned into the N Block—Belle's brand. He said horses had been run off the range—"

"He's dead," Sam observed unemotionally. "You bet. He's gettin' fun'ral to-day."

"How long will the boys be out?" Lance pulled a splinter off the rail beside him and began separating the fibers with his finger nails that were too well cared for to belong to the Black Rim folk.

"I dunno, me."

"Scotty sure was crazy, Sam. He tried twice to kill me. Once he jumped up and ran into the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife off the table and came at me. He thought I was there to rob him. He called me Tom."

"Yeah," said Sam Pretty Cow, blowing smoke. "He's damn lucky you ain't Tom. Uh-huh—you bet."

Lance lifted his eyebrows, was silent while he watched Shorty limping down from the house, this time with table scraps for the chickens.

"Scotty was certainly crazy," Lance turned again to Sam. "Over and over he kept saying, while he looked up at the ceiling, 'The Lorrigan days are numbered. Though the wicked flourish like a green bay tree, they shall perish as dry grass. The days are numbered—their evil days are numbered.'"

Sam Pretty Cow smoked, flicked the ash from his cigarette with a coppery forefinger, looked suddenly full at Lance and grinned widely.

"Uh-huh. So's them stars numbered, all right. I dunno, me. Tom Lorrigan's damn smart man." He reached down for an old bridle and grinned again. "Scotty, I guess he don' say how many numbers them days is, you bet." He started off, trailing his bridle reins carelessly in the dust.

"If you're going to catch up a horse, Sam, I wish you'd haze in the best one on the ranch for me."

Sam Pretty Cow paused, half turned, spat meditatively into the dust and jerked a thumb toward the stable.

"Me, I dunno. Bes' horse on the ranch is in them box stall. Them's Coaley. I guess you don' want Coaley, huh?"

Lance bit his lip, looking at Sam Pretty Cow intently.

"You needn't catch up a horse for me, Sam. I'll ride Coaley," he said smoothly. Which brought a surprised grunt from Sam Pretty Cow, Indian though he was, accustomed though he was to the ways of the Lorrigans.

But it was not his affair if Lance and his father quarreled when Tom returned. Indeed, Tom might not return very soon, in which case he would not hear anything about Lance's audacity unless Lance himself told it. Sam Pretty Cow would never mention it, and Shorty would not say a word. Shorty never did say anything if he could by any means keep silence.

Lance returned to the house, taking long strides that, without seeming hurried, yet suggested haste. He presently came down the path again, this time with a blanket roll and a sack with lumpy things tied in the bottom. He wore chaps, his spurs, carried a yellow slicker over his arm. On his head was a black Stetson, one of Tom's discarded old hats.

He led Coaley from the box stall where he had never before seen him stand, saddled him, tied his bundles compactly behind the cantle, mounted and rode down the trail, following the hoof prints that showed freshest in the loose, gravelly sand. Coaley, plainly glad to be out of his prison, stepped daintily along in a rocking half trot that would carry him more miles in a day than any other horse in the country could cover, and bring him to the journey's end with springy gait and head held proudly, ears twitching, ready for more miles if his rider wanted more.

The tracks led up the road to the Ridge, turned sharply off where the brush grew scanty among the flat rocks that just showed their faces above the surface of the arid soil. Lance frowned and followed. For a long way he skirted the rim rock that edged the sheer bluff. A scant furlong away, on his right, a trail ran west to the broken land of Indian Creek. But since the horsemen had chosen to keep to the rocky ground along the rim, Lance followed.

He had gone perhaps a mile along the bluff when Coaley began to toss up his head and perk his ears backward, turning now and then to look. Lance was sunk too deep in bitter introspection to observe these first warning movements which every horseman knows. He was thinking of Mary Hope, who would be waking now to a day of sorrowful excitement. Thinking, too, of old Aleck Douglas and the things that he had said in his raving.

What Douglas had shouted hoarsely was not true, of course. He did not believe,—and yet, there was Shorty's enigmatical answer to a simple question; there was Sam Pretty Cow, implying much while he actually said very little; there was this unheralded departure of all the Devil's Tooth riders in the night, in the season between round-ups. There was Coaley feeling fit for anything, shut up in the box stall while Tom rode another horse; and here was Lance himself taking the trail of the Devil's Tooth outfit at a little after sunrise on a horse tacitly forbidden to all riders save Tom.

Coaley, in a place where he must pick his way between boulders, paused and lifted his head, staring back the way they had come. Lance roused himself from gloomy speculations and looked back also, but he could not see anything behind them save a circling hawk and the gray monotone of the barren plateau, so he urged Coaley in among the boulders.

There must be something back there, of course. Coaley was too intelligent a horse to make a mistake. But it might be some drifting range stock, or perhaps a stray horse. Certainly it was no one from the Devil's Tooth, for Sam Pretty Cow had set off to mend a fence in the lower pasture, and Shorty never rode a horse nowadays for more than a half mile or so; and six o'clock in the morning would be rather early for chance riders from any other ranch. With a shrug, Lance dismissed the matter from his mind.

Where a faint, little-used trail went obliquely down the bluff to the creek bottom, Lance saw again the hoofprints which the rocky ground had failed to reveal. He could see no reason for taking this roundabout course to go up the creek, but he sent Coaley down the trail, reached the bottom and discovered that the tracks once more struck off into rocky ground. His face hardened until his resemblance to Tom became more marked than usual, but where the tracks led he followed. Too often had he trailed stray horses in the past to be puzzled now, whether he could see the hoofprints or not.

They must have made for the other side of the creek, gone up Wild Horse gulch or the Little Squaw. There was just one place where they could cross the creek without bogging in the tricky mud that was almost as bad as quicksand. He therefore pulled out of the rocky patch and made straight for the crossing. He would soon know if they had crossed there. If they had not, then they would have turned again up Squaw Creek, and it would be short work cutting straight across to the only possible trail to the higher country.

He had covered half of the distance to the creek when Coaley again called his attention to something behind him. This time Lance glimpsed what looked very much like the crown of a hat moving in a dry wash that he had crossed not more than five minutes before. He pulled up, studied the contour of the ground behind him, looked ahead, saw the mark of a shod hoof between two rocks. The hoof mark pointed toward the crossing. Lance, however, turned down another small depression where the soil lay bare and Coaley left clean imprints, trotted along it until a welter of rocks made bad footing for the horse, climbed out and went on level. Farther up the valley an abrupt curve in Squaw Creek barred his way with scraggly, thin willow growth that had winding cow trails running through it. Into one of these Lance turned, rode deep into the sparse growth, stopped where the trail swung round a huge, detached boulder, dismounted and dropped Coaley's reins to the ground and retraced his steps some distance from the trail, stepping on rocks here and there and keeping off damp spots.

He reached the thin edge of the grove, stood behind a stocky bush and waited. In two or three minutes—they seemed ten to Lance—he saw the head and shoulders of a rider just emerging from the gully he himself had so lately followed.

Back on Coaley, following the winding trail, Lance pondered the matter. The way he had come was no highway—no trail that any rider would follow on any business save one. But just why should he be followed? He had thought at first that some one was trailing the Devil's Tooth outfit, as he had been doing, but now it seemed plain that he himself was the quarry.

He flicked the reins on Coaley's satiny neck, and the horse broke at once into a springy, swift trot, following the purposeless winding of the cow path. When they emerged upon the other side where the creek gurgled over a patch of rocks like cobblestones, Lance stopped and let him take a sip or two of water, then struck off toward the bluff, letting Coaley choose his own pace, taking care that he kept to low ground where he could not be seen.

For an hour he rode and came to the junction of Mill Creek and the Squaw. Then, climbing through chokecherry thickets up a draw that led by winding ways to higher ground, Lance stopped and scrutinized the bottomland over which he had passed. Coaley stood alert, watching also that back trail, his ears turned forward, listening. After a moment, he began to take little mincing steps sidewise, pulling impatiently at the reins. As plainly as a horse could tell it, Coaley implored Lance to go on. But Lance waited until, crossing an open space, he saw a rider coming along at a shambling trot on the trail he had himself lately followed.

He frowned thoughtfully, turned Coaley toward home and rode swiftly in a long, distance-devouring lope.

He reached the ranch somewhere near ten o'clock, surprising Belle in the act of harnessing her pintos to a new buckboard at which they shied hypocritically. Belle stared at him round-eyed over the backs of her team.

"My good Lord, Lance! You—you could be Tom's twin, in that hat and on that horse! What you been doing—doubling for him in a lead?"

Lance swung down and came toward her. "Belle, where did dad and the boys go?"

"Oh—fussing with the stock," said Belle vaguely, her eyes clouding a little. "We're getting so many cattle it keeps Tom on the go day and night, seems to me. And he will keep buying more all the while. Did—did you want to go with them, honey? I guess Tom never thought you might. You've been away so long. You'd better not ride Coaley, Lance. Tom would just about murder you if he caught you at it. And where did you get hold of that hat?"

Lance laughed queerly. "I just picked it off the table as I came out. Mine is too new and stiff yet. This seemed to fit. And Coaley's better off under the saddle than he is in the stable, Belle. He's a peach—I always did want to ride Coaley, but I never had the nerve till I got big enough to lick dad."

He caught Belle in a quick, breath-taking hug, kissed her swiftly on the cheek and turned Coaley into the corral with the saddle still on.

"Are you going over—to the funeral?" he asked as he closed the gate.

"I'm going to town, and I've got the letters you left on the table to 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.