He was some minutes in discovering a black horse well within the outer fringe of the cottonwoods, switching mechanically at the flies and mosquitoes that infested the place, and throwing his head impatiently to his side now and then when the sting was too sharp to ignore. With the glasses he could see the sweat-roughened hide ripple convulsively to dislodge the pestering insects, could see the flaring nostrils as the horse blew out the dust gathered from his hungry nosing amongst the coarse grass and weeds. The man Lance did not at once discover, but after a little he saw him rolled in canvas to protect himself from the mosquitoes. He seemed already fast asleep.

"He needs it," said Lance grimly, with his twisted smile, and went back to the roan.



CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

LANCE PLAYS THE GAME

That night Lance sauntered into the bunk house, placidly ignoring the fact that Tom was there, and that some sort of intermittent conference was taking place. Cool and clean and silk-shirted and freshly shaved, the contrast was sharp between him and the men sprawled on their beds or sitting listlessly around the table playing keno. Tom lifted an eyebrow at him; Lance sent him a look to match and went over to the card players.

They did not want him in the bunk house. He who had spent nearly all of his life on the Devil's Tooth ranch knew that he was not wanted. They did not want him to know that he was not wanted, and by their very effort to hide it did they betray themselves.

"Didn't go to Jumpoff after all, dad," Lance remarked idly, a rising inflection turning the phrase into a question.

Tom grunted and got up to go. His men cast furtive glances at one another, looked at Lance from under their brows, noted the silk shirt and the low, tan Oxfords, and the texture and cut of his gray trousers with the tan leather belt that had a small silver buckle. Plain as it was they knew that buckle was silver. They saw how clean-cut was the hairline at the back of his head and over his ears—sure sign that he was "citified." And toward the man who is citified your purely range-bred product cherishes a distinct if secret grudge. His immaculate presence made them all feel frowsy and unwashed and ill-clad. And to hide how conscious he was of his own deficiencies, the man who sat nearest Lance lifted his hat and rumpled his hair still more.

"Duke and Al didn't get in yet, eh?" Lance picked up an extra deck of cards and began to shuffle them absent-mindedly but nevertheless dexterously.

"Nope—they stayed out," replied a blond man named Winters. They called him "Chilly."

"Hot weather for working cattle," Lance observed indifferently.

"Yeah—sure is," responded Ed Moran, who was low-browed and dark and had an ugly jaw.

"Yeah—damn hot," testified Jim Bloom. "How's Californy for weather?"

"Oh-h—it has all kinds, same as here." Lance did not want to talk about California just then, but he followed the lead easily enough. "You can get anything you want in California. In two hours you can go from twenty-five feet of snow to orange groves. You can have it all green, fruit trees and roses blooming in midwinter, or you can hit into desert worse than anything Idaho can show."

"Yep—that's right, all right. Great place, Californy," Chilly tried to make his voice sound enthusiastic, and failed. "Great place."

"Speaking about climate—" Lance sat down on a corner of the table, eased his trousers over his knees, crossed his tan Oxfords and began a story. It was a long story, and for some time it was not at all apparent that he was getting anywhere with it. He shuffled the deck of cards while he talked, and the keno game, interrupted when he began, trailed off into "Who's play is it?" and finally ceased altogether. That was when Lance's Jewish dialect began to be funny enough to make even Chilly Winters laugh. At the end there was a general cachinnation.

"But that's only a sample of the stuff they pull out there, on tourists," said Lance, when the laughter had subsided to a few belated chuckles. "There's another one. It isn't funny—but I'm going to make it funny. You'll think it's funny—but it isn't, really."

He told that one and made them think it was funny. At least they laughed, and laughed again when he had finished.

"Now here's another. This one really is funny—but you won't feel like laughing at it. I'll tell it so you won't."

He told that story and saw it fall flat. "You see?" He flipped the cards, tossed them on the table with a whimsical gesture. "It isn't what you do in this world—it's how you do it that counts. I'm sitting on your keno game, am I? All right, I'll get off."

He went out as abruptly as he had entered, and he paused long enough outside to know that a silence marked his going. Then he heard Ed Koran's voice depreciating him. Frankly he listened, lighting a cigarette.

"Aw—his mother was an actress, wasn't she? That guy ain't going to cut no ice around here whatever."

"Looks an awful darn lot like Tom," ventured Chilly. "I dunno—you take a Lorrigan—"

"Him? Lorrigan? Why, say! He may look like a Lorrigan, but he ain't one. Tom's damn right. He don't set in. Why, like as not he'd—"

"Aw, cut out the gabbling!" Ed's voice growled again. "It's yore play, Bob."

Stepping softly, Lance went on to the house. "I just—look like one!" he repeated under his breath. "Fine! At any rate," he added dryly, "I've proved that I can go into the bunk house now and then."

He went up and sang songs with Belle then, until after ten o'clock. He would have sung longer, but it happened that in the middle of a particularly pleasing "Ah-ee, oh-ee, hush-a-bye-ba-by" yodel, Tom put his head out of the bedroom and implored Lance to for-the-Lord-sake go up on the Ridge to howl. So Lance forbore to finish the "ah-ee, oh-ee," much to Belle's disappointment.

"But you know Tom's been out riding hard and not getting much sleep, so I guess maybe we better cut out the concert, honey," she told Lance, getting up and laying her plump, brown arms across his shoulders. "My heavens, Lance, you kinda make me think the clock's set back thirty years, when I look at you. You're Tom, all over—and I did think you were going to be like me."

Lance scowled just a little. "No, I'm not Tom all over—I'm Lance all over."

"You're Lorrigan all over," Belle persisted. "And you're just like Tom when he was your age. Good Lord, how time does slip away! Tom used to be so full of fun and say such funny things—and now it's just ride and ride and work, and eat and sleep. Honey, I want you to know that I'm glad you learned something a little different. What's the use of having a million, if you work yourself to death getting it? Look at the boys—look at Al and Duke. They're like old men, the last year or two. We used to have such good times on the ranch, but we don't any more—nobody ever thinks of anything but work."

She lowered her voice to a whisper, her arms still lying on Lance's shoulders, her clouded blue eyes looking up into his. "That trouble with Scotty Douglas kind of—changed Tom and the boys. You went away. You've changed too, but in a different way. It soured them, just a little. Tom wants to make his million quick and get outa here. I was glad when you stirred things up a little, last spring, and gave that dance. Or I was glad, till it ended up the way it did. It was the first dance we'd been to since you left, Lance! And I thought it would kind of patch up a little more friendliness with the folks around here. But it didn't. It just made a lot of talk and trouble—and, Lance, honey, I'm awfully darn sorry about that piano. It's down in the chicken house this minute. Tom wouldn't even have it in the house. And now, I don't suppose there ever will be any chance to make friends with any one. Tom—well, all of us were so darn mad to think she never even asked us—"

"Don't care any more about that, Belle. Please don't. And by the way, I took the money Mary Hope wanted to give dad for the schoolhouse. Perhaps he didn't tell you, but he threatened to burn the house down if she left the money, so I took it and gave her a bill of sale in his name. I wish you'd keep the money. And some day, maybe dad will take it."

"Tom never told me a word about it," Belle whispered pitifully, dropping her forehead on Lance's broad chest. "Honey, it never used to be this way. He used to tell me things. But now, he doesn't—much. Last spring, when he built the schoolhouse and all, I was so glad! It was more like old times, and I thought—but the fight turned him and the boys again, and now they're just as far off as ever. Lance, I don't whine. You never heard Belle whine in your life, did you, honey? But I'll tell you this: The only things that haven't changed, on the Devil's Tooth, are Riley and the pintos. And even they let you drive 'em to Jumpoff and back last spring without busting things up. They're getting old, I guess. Maybe we're all getting old. Still, Rosa and Subrosa are only ten past, and I haven't had a birthday for years—

"It's—Lance, do you mind if Belle lets go and tells you things, just this once? You've changed, some, but not like the rest. Please, Lance, I want to lean against you and—and feel how strong you are—"

A great tenderness, a great, overwhelming desire to comfort his mother, who had never let him call her mother, seized Lance. His arms closed around her and he backed to an armchair and sat down on it, holding her close.

"Don't care, Belle—it's all right. It's going to be all right. I'm just Lance, but I'm a man—and men were made to take care of their women. Talk to me—tell me what's been eating your heart out, lately. It's in your eyes. I saw it when I came home last spring, and I see it now every time I look at you."

"You've seen it, honey?" Belle's whisper was against his ear. She did not look at his face. "There's nothing to see, but—one feels it. Tom's good to me—but he isn't close to me, any more. The boys are good to me—but they're like strangers. They don't talk about things, the way they used to do. They come and go."

Lance's big, well-kept hand went up to smooth her hair with a comforting, caressing movement infinitely sweet to Belle. "I know," he said quietly.

"And it isn't anything, of course. But the old boys have gone, and these new ones—Lance, what is the matter with the Devil's Tooth ranch? Tell me, for heaven's sake, if I'm getting to be an old woman with notions!"

"You'll never be an old woman," said Lance in the tone Mary Hope built her day-dreams around. "Age has nothing to do with you—you just are. But as to notions—well, you may have. Women do have them, I believe." He kissed her hair and added, "What do you think is the matter with the ranch?"

"I don't know. When I try to pin it to one thing, there's nothing to put a pin in. Not a thing. You remember Cheyenne? I was afraid Tom would kill him, after the trial. You know it was practically proven that he was a spy, and was working to get something on the outfit. I was on the warpath myself, over that trial. I would a shot up a few in that courtroom if Tom had been convicted. You know and I know that Tom didn't have a thing to do with that darned, spotted yearling of Scotty's.

"But Cheyenne just—just faded out of existence. Tom's never mentioned him from the day of the trial to this. And I know he hates the whole Rim, and won't have anything much to do with anybody—but he acts just as if nothing had happened, as if nobody had ever tried to make him out a cow thief. He won't talk about it. He won't talk about anything much. When we're alone he just sits and thinks. And honey, the Lorrigans have always been men that did things.

"He and the boys woke up, and the ranch acted human about the schoolhouse, but it's other times, when there's no excitement around, that I feel as if—I don't know what. It's something underneath. Something that never comes to the top. Something that's liable to reach up and grab." She put a hand up and patted Lance's lean, hard jaw. "I'd shoot any one that said Belle Lorrigan's afraid—but that's about what it amounts to," she finished with a little mirthless laugh.

"Belle Lorrigan's not afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of. You've lived in the Rim too long, Belle, and you've been watching dad and the boys chasing that million. I've seen other men working at it, and it always gets hold of them until they don't seem to care for anything else. Now, I know an ageless lady who's going to bed and forget all about her nerves and her notions. Or if she doesn't forget, she'll remember too that she has somebody around who knows—and who cares a heap for his mother." Lance pulled her close and kissed her comfortingly.

"That helps," whispered Belle. "You've changed, too—but not like the rest, thank God. And I thought maybe you had noticed things—"

"I have noticed that the Devil's Tooth is mighty busy chasing dollars on the hoof," soothed Lance. "It has left our Belle alone too much, and it has gotten on her nerves. Go to bed, woman—and dream of pleasant things."

He took her by the shoulders and pushed her playfully to the very door of her bedroom, gave her another kiss and turned the knob for her, and watched her go in with a smile on her face. His own smile lasted only until the door was closed. He went to the lamp, blew it out and entered his own room, removed his shoes and dropped them on the floor with more noise than was considerate of his father's slumber, lighted his lamp and moved aimlessly about the room for a time.

He sat down on the edge of the bed while he smoked a cigarette, his elbows on his knees, his thoughts traveling far trails. Abruptly he rose, put on a pair of well-worn tennis shoes, opened a door leading outside and went quietly down to the corrals.

The first corral he crossed and found it empty of any horses save the pintos and Coaley. The second corral held three horses, one of them the chunky roan he had ridden that afternoon. The third and largest corral was empty, the gate swinging open.

"All right—no horses caught up for night-riding—yet," he said to himself, and returned to the house, leaving the straighter path to pass close to the bunk house. He listened there for a full two minutes, decided that it would take at least five men to do all of that snoring, and went to bed thankful for the comfort of a felt mattress under his tired body.

The next day passed without any incidents save trivial ones that did not count. Lance rode to the creek with his trout-rod and reel—more citified innovations which the ranch eyed askance—and spent four hours loitering along the bank, his fly floating uselessly over shallow pools where was never a fish. It was not the right time of day for fishing, but Lance seemed to have forgotten the lore he had learned along that same creek and others farther away.

Sometimes he could be seen from the ranch buildings, more often he could not. When he could not be seen was when he was crouched among the rocks, studying the Devil's Tooth Ridge with his powerful glasses.

"Hope he's comfortable," he said once, when, satisfied that his guess was correct, he put the glasses away and settled down seriously to fishing.

He rode home with four trout, and Riley fried them for supper. During supper Lance criticized Squaw Creek, and hinted that Mill Creek and Lava Creek were better fishing waters, and that he meant to try them.

That night at eleven o'clock he made another silent tour of the corrals and went to bed feeling pretty sure that the ranch would show its present complement of men in the morning.

On the second day, four of the hired cowboys rode in at sundown, and with them came Al. Their horses were fagged. They themselves were dirty, hungry, tired. Their faces were glum—and the glumness remained even after they had washed and eaten ravenously. Al did not come to the house at all, but stayed down in the bunk house, whither Tom presently went. Lance did not follow.

Belle looked worried and asked Lance constrainedly if he knew why Duke had not come with the others. Lance laughed.

"Duke? Oh—he's on the trail of another dollar. By heck, Belle, I'm afraid you've raised one son to be a shirk. I don't seem to need all of that dollar chasing to make me happy."

Tom came in then, glanced swiftly from one to the other, said something unimportant, rolled a cigarette with elaborate care, and observed that Duke would find it hot, riding all the way to Shoshone, and that he'd be darned if he'd go that far for any girl. He sat down and disposed himself comfortably, got up, muttered something about forgetting to turn Coaley out, and left the house.

Belle turned and looked at Lance. "Honey, it's that kind of thing—"

"I used to think, Belle, that you had the bluest eyes in the whole world," Lance drawled quizzically. "They're blue enough, in all conscience—by heck, Belle! Does a Lorrigan always love blue eyes?"

"I was going to say that—"

"You were going to say that you were not going to say a darned thing, madam. You need a vacation, a trip somewhere. Why don't you beat it, and get your nerves smoothed down a little?"

"Lance, you don't believe Duke—"

"Belle, your boys are old enough to think of girls a little bit, now and then. Even your baby thinks of girls—a little bit. Now and then. I'm going fishing, Belle. I'm going to fish where there are fish. And if I'm not back by the clock, for heck's sake don't get yourself excited and call me a mystery."

She called after him. "Lance, come back here and tell me the truth! You don't believe—"

"Belle, I'll tell you the truth. Sure, I'll tell you the truth. I tell you to cut out this worrying over nothing. Why, don't you know the world is plumb full of real things to worry about?" He came close, patting her on the shoulder as one pats a child who feels abused for slight cause. "This notion of yours—it's all damned nonsense. Cut it out."

He went off whistling, and Belle gazed after him dubiously, yet reassured in spite of herself. After all, there was nothing.



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WHEN A LORRIGAN LOVES

Followed a day of sweltering heat, when the horses in the corral switched flies and sweated doing nothing; when all of the chickens crawled under the coolest shelter they could find, and panted with their wings spread away from their bodies; when the wind was like a blast from an open furnace, and no man of his own choice remained in the sun.

In the shade of the biggest haystack, Tom and Al squatted on their boot heels with their faces toward the corral and the houses beyond, and talked for two hours in low monotones while they broke spears of fragrant hay into tiny bits and snapped the bits from them with thumb and finger. From the house porch Lance saw them there and wondered what they were talking about so long. He even meditated committing the crime of eavesdropping, but he decided against it. Even if there had been any point from which he could approach the two unseen, his soul rebelled against such tactics employed in cold blood.

Devil's Tooth Ranch dragged somehow through its third day of inaction, and that night prepared itself to sleep if possible, though the hot wind still blew half a gale and the sky was too murky to show any stars.

Daylight found Lance awake and brooding as he had done ever since his return. He heard no sound in the house, and after a while he dressed and went down to the bunk house. It was empty. No extra horses had been corralled the night before, of that he was sure. Yet the boys were gone again, and with them had gone Tom and Al. He looked and saw Coaley in the box stall.

On this morning Lance asked no questions of Sam Pretty Cow or Shorty, who presently appeared and went listlessly about their tasks. He returned to the house, heard Riley grinding coffee, and dressed for riding while he waited for breakfast. He was drinking his first cup of coffee when Belle appeared in a thin blue kimono and a lacey breakfast cap which Lance knew had been ordered from the big, dog-eared catalogue on the living room table. He roused himself from scowling meditation and gave her a smile.

"Sleep any?"

"Not much," sighed Belle. "Tom—" she stopped and looked at Lance hesitatingly. "Tom had to push the cattle back from Lava Bed way—he says this weather's drying up Lava Creek and the stock'll suffer if they're left drifting up and down the mud-holes where they've watered all summer. He took the boys and started about two in the morning—to get out of the heat. I—I didn't think you'd want to go, honey—"

"You thought right. I didn't want to go; it's too hot," Lance assured her, and refrained from looking at her face and the pathetic cheerfulness she was trying so hard to make real.

"It's sultry. I thought yesterday I couldn't stand another hour of that wind—but now I wish it would blow. It's going to storm—"

"Yes. It's going to storm." Lance set down his empty cup. "I may go fishing, Belle. Don't look for me back—I may ride over and see how the AJ is making out. The little Boyle girl is not married yet, I hope?"

"Oh—no. No, she isn't. Lance, honey—"

Lance waited beside her chair, but Belle seemed to forget that she had anything to say. She sat leaning her head on one hand, the other stirring her coffee absent-mindedly. "Don't get caught out," she said apathetically.

"I won't." Lance lifted the lace frill of the cap and kissed her temple lightly. "Go back to bed. It's too early for you to be up."

At the stable Sam Pretty Cow looked a question, grunted and went on with his stall cleaning. Lance saddled Coaley, tied on an emergency ration of grub.

"Fishin's good t'day. Storm's coming. Uh-huh—you bet," Sam Pretty Cow observed as Lance mounted.

"Maybe," Lance assented non-committally and rode away.

There were no horse tracks in the trail, yet Lance followed it doggedly, the new-risen sun burning his back through two thin shirts. He seemed in no doubt this morning as to the course he should take. He scarcely gave a glance at the trail. His eyes were staring straight before him at a sullen row of blue-black "thunder heads" that showed above the gray skyline. Yet he did not see them, did not give a thought to their meaning.

He was thinking poignantly of Mary Hope, fighting the vivid impression which a dream last night had left with him. In his dream Mary Hope had stood at her door, with her hands held out to him beseechingly, and called and called: "Lance! Oh, Lance! I dinna hate you because you're a Lorrigan—Oh, Lance!"

It had been a curious dream from start to finish. Curious because, in various forms, this was the third time he had seen her stand with hands outstretched, calling to him. He did not believe in dreams. He had neither patience for presentiments nor faith in anything that bordered on the occult.

It had been against much inner protest that he had ridden to the schoolhouse in obedience to the persistent idea that she needed him. That he had not found her there seemed to him conclusive proof that there was nothing in telepathy. The dreams, he felt sure, were merely a continuation of that persistent idea—and the persistent idea, he was beginning to believe, was but a perverse twist given to his own longing for her.

"—And I can't go to her—not yet. Not while the Lorrigan name—" What came before, what came after those incomplete phrases he would not permit his mind to formulate in words. But he could not shake off the effect of the dream, could not stifle altogether the impulse that plucked at his resolve.

For more than an hour he rode and tried to fix his mind upon the thing he had set out to do. He knew perfectly well where he was going—and it was not to see Mary Hope. Neither was his destination Lava Creek nor the drying range on either side. His first two days of hard riding had been not altogether fruitless, and he had enough to think of without thinking of Mary Hope. Certain cold facts stared at him, and gibbered their sinister meaning, and dared him to ride on and discover other facts, blood-brothers of these that haunted him o' nights.

Coaley, feeling his rider's mood, sensing also the portent of the heavy, heat-saturated atmosphere and the rolling thunder heads, slowed his springy trot to a walk and tossed his head uneasily from side to side. Then, quite without warning, Lance wheeled the horse short around and touched the reeking flanks with his heels.

"I'm seventeen kinds of a damn fool—but I can't stand any more of this!" he muttered savagely, and rode at a sharp trot with his back to the slow-gathering storm.

He found Mary Hope half a mile from the Douglas house, at the edge of the meadow round which Hugh was driving a mower, the steady, metallic clicking of the shuttle-like sickle sounding distinct from the farther side of the motionless green expanse. Mary Hope was standing leaning against one lone little poplar tree, her hat in her hand, and her eyes staring dully into the world of sorrowful thoughts. Relief and a great, hungry tenderness flooded the soul of Lance when he saw her. He pulled up and swung off beside her.

"Girl—thank the good God you're all right," he said, and took her in his arms, the veins on his temples beating full with his hot blood. "I had to come. I had to see you. You've haunted me. Your voice has called me—I was afraid—I had to come—and now I'm not going to let you go. Oh, girl, you're mine! By all the powers of heaven and earth, you're mine! The Lorrigan name—what does it matter? You're mine—I love you. You'll love me. I'll make you love me. You'll love me till you won't care who I am or who you are, or whether there are any other people in the world—you'll love me so! And I'll love you always, always,—to death and beyond, and beyond what lies after that. Girl, girl—you do need me! You need my love. You need it because it's the biggest thing in the world—and your love is going to match it. We'll get married—we'll make a world of our own, just you and I. We won't care where we make it—it will be our world, the world of our love. Are you game? Are you game to love Lance the way Lance loves you? Oh, girl, tell me!"

A chill breath swept them like the memory of her father's hate. A deep, basso rumble drowned whatever reply she stammered. He sheltered her in his arms, kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair, went back to her lips again.

"Oh, girl—when a Lorrigan loves—!" He cried softly, exultantly. "I tried not to—but I had to love you. It's Fate. Are you afraid to love me back? Are you afraid?"

"No Lorrigan can cry coward to a Douglas," Mary Hope panted. "But—but my mother will be that—"

"My mother will be that—all of that, and more," Lance stopped her, still exulting in her love. "All the Lorrigans—what does it matter? Life's for you and me to live, you girl with the bluest eyes in the world. When will you marry me? To-day? Tell me to-day!"

"Oh!" gasped Mary Hope, breathless still from the suddenness of it all. "Oh, not to-day—oh, but the headlong way you have! I—I canna think. I—"

"I don't want you to think. I didn't ask you to think. Just love me—that's all. And marry me soon, Girl-with-the-blue-eyes. Soon. It must be soon—sooner than to-morrow—"

Splittingly the thunder crashed close behind them, a vivid white line cleaving sharply the snarling clouds. Like a sleeper Lance opened the eyes he had closed against her hair and lifted his head. "I must take you home," he said more calmly. "It's going to storm—hard. But let me tell you, sweetheart,—it can't storm as hard as I can love. I'll take you home, and then you'll marry me."

Mary Hope's face was pale and radiant. She did not say that she would marry him—nor did she say that she would not. Her eyes were misty with tears until she winked hard, when they shone softly. Lance had never seen them so blue. She stood still, her hands clasped together tightly while he gathered up the reins and mounted. He pulled his foot from the left stirrup, reached down to her and smiled. Never had she seen him smile like that. Never had she seen that look in his eyes. She breathed deep, reached up and caught the saddle horn, put her foot in the stirrup and let him lift her beside him.

Against Coaley's nervous pull at the bit Lance held a steadying hand and laughed. "It's Fate, girl. Let the storm come. We'll beat it—it can't hurt us. Nothing can hurt us now." He had to shout above the crashing thunder. "Do you love me, sweetheart?" His eyes, close to her own, flamed softly, making Mary Hope think dizzily of altar fires.

"I do—I do!" She gasped. "Oh, I cannot think how I love you—it scares me to think!" Her arm was around his neck, her face was turned to his.

He saw her lips form the words, guessed what it was she was saying. The crash on crash of thunder beat the sound of her voice to nothingness. The white glare of the lightning flashes blinded them. Coaley, quivering, his nostrils belling until they showed all red within, his big eyes staring, forged ahead, fighting the bit.

"He's rinning away wi' us!" shouted Lance, his lips close to her ear, and laughed boyishly.

"Mother—" he heard her say, and pulled her higher in his arms, so that he could be sure that she heard him.

"I'll just pick your little old mother up in my arms and make her love me, too!" he cried. "Nothing can spoil our love—nothing!"

As though the gods themselves chided his temerity, the very heavens split and shattered all sound with rending uproar. Coaley squatted, stopped and stood shaking, his heart pounding so that Lance felt its tremulous tattoo against his thigh. The rumbling after-note of the thunder seemed like silence.

"It struck close. That shed—look!" Lance's voice was no longer the voice of the young male whose love would override Fate itself. It was the voice of the man who will meet emergencies quietly, unflinchingly, and soothe the woman's fear. "Don't be afraid—it's all right, sweetheart."

He forced Coaley to go on. He smiled at Mary Hope's pallor, he reassured her as they neared her home. A shed, sufficiently detached to keep its fire to itself, was blazing. The wind puffed suddenly from nowhere and waved the high, yellow flames like torn ribbons. Great globules of water splashed upon them from the pent torrent above. Coaley galloped through the gate, passed the house, shied at something lying on the ground, stopped abruptly when Lance pulled sharply on the bit.

"Girl—sweetheart—be game!" Lance said sternly when Mary Hope screamed.

He let her to the ground, swung off and passed her, running to the pitifully still little figure of Mother Douglas lying in the pathway, her checked apron flapping, its starchy stiffness showing limp dark spots where the raindrops splashed.

"She's only shocked. She's all right—stop that screaming! Good God, girl, where's your nerve?"

His severity steadied her. Mary Hope stopped screaming, both hands held tightly over her mouth. Lance was already on his way to the house, carrying Mother Douglas like a sleeping child in his arms. And the rain came, a white curtain of water that drenched them to the skin in the first ten seconds.

On the bed where Aleck Douglas had stared at the ceiling, and raved, and died, Lance laid her carefully as though he feared to waken her. He tore open the faded calico dress at the throat, laid his ear upon her heart.

"She's alive, sweetheart," he said hearteningly. "It's only a shock. Bring a basin of water. We'll have her all right in no time."

He worked over the old woman, using all the means he could remember or invent, while the house shook with the fury of the wind, and the lightning dazzled them and the rain drummed incessantly on the roof. Mary Hope watched him, her eyes wide, her lips refusing to form any words. For her own sake he sent her on many little errands, kept her busy at useless little tasks. After what seemed an interminable time he stood looking down at the gently heaving breast.

"How game is my girl?" he asked, taking Mary Hope in his arms. "Is she game enough to stay here while Lance goes for a doctor? It won't be long—" He paused while he made a rapid mental calculation of the distance, and of what a horse may endure. "Three hours. Will my girl be brave enough to stay here three hours? I'll call the man who was mowing—if I can find him. But that will take minutes. Three hours—and you won't weaken, will you, dear?"

Mary Hope leaned against him, clutched him, shivered at the crashing thunder. "It's awful," she moaned. "I'm afraid you might be hit—"

"Afraid? A Douglas not as game as a Lorrigan?" He shook her, lifted his eyebrows at her, pursed his lips at her, shook her again and kissed her. "I can't love a girl who's afraid of thunder. Your mother's all right, you know. We saw where that bolt struck—fifty yards, almost, from where she was. She got a shock, that's all. But we'll have a doctor here and make him take the responsibility. And I'll be back in three hours, and you're going to be game—just as game as you've always been."

He pulled his hat down over his eyes, buttoned his wet coat to the chin, laid his hand for a minute over the faintly pulsating heart of Mother Douglas, swept Mary Hope up in his arms and kissed her again, pulled open the door and was gone.

Through a rain-blurred window Mary Hope saw him run to the stable, lead out Coaley who had taken refuge there, vault into the saddle without troubling about the stirrup, and come thundering back past the house and out of the gate, his head bent to the storm.

She looked at the clock. Three hours? He could never do it in three hours! She went back and knelt beside the bed, and prayed as her mother had taught her to pray. And not all of her petition was for her mother. Every lightning flash, every crack, every distant boom of the thunder made her cringe. Lance—Lance was out in the storm, at the mercy of its terrible sword-thrusts that seemed to smite even the innocent. Her mother—even her own mother, who had held unswervingly to her faith—even she had been struck down!

A mile down the road Lance was leaning forward, encouraging Coaley to more speed, because there the trail ran level and fairly free from rocks. Later, he pulled the horse down to a walk, breathing him up a hill; let him trot down the slope beyond, picked him into a swift gallop when they again struck the level. He gauged, with coldblooded attention to certain rough miles in the journey, just how swiftly Coaley could cover ground and live. He knew horses. He knew Coaley, and he knew that never yet had Coaley been pushed to the actual limit of his endurance. But the girl Lance loved—ah, it was a Lorrigan who loved!—was back there alone, and she would be counting the minutes. It might be that he might return to find her weeping over her dead. So Lance counted miles and a horse's strength, and bent to the storm and rode.

Ten minutes past the hour, and he was snapping orders to the telegraph operator. The storm, happily, had swept on down the canyon and had given Jumpoff little more than a wetting and a few lightning flashes.

"And order out a special engine and coach,—what do I care what it will cost? I'll pay. Wire your Lava chief that the money is here. Send the doctor on ahead of the regular train—can't wait for that."

He had the Lorrigan habit of carrying a good deal of money on his person, and he counted out banknotes until the operator lifted his hand and said it was enough. He slammed out, then, mounted and rode to a livery stable and gave orders there.

"—And I'll buy the damn team, so kill 'em if you have to. Only get the doctor out there." He was in the saddle and gone again before the stableman had recovered from his sag-jawed astonishment.

"Guess there's something in that talk of him and the Douglas girl," the stableman gossiped to a friend while he harnessed his swiftest team.

In ten minutes under the three hours Lance stopped at the house, went in and saw that Mary Hope was still being game, and was very glad to be in his arms, and that Mother Douglas was alive and staring up at the ceiling, her face set in a deadly kind of calm.

"She moves her eyes to me, sometimes—she's been awake for almost an hour. But she hasn't moved—" Her voice broke.

"It's all right—the doctor is on his way. And I'm here, sweetheart—you won't be alone again. Where's that man of yours? I'll send him over with a note to Belle. She'll come—she's a wonder with sick folks."

"Mother—I'm afraid mother wouldn't let her—she's that set!"

Lance looked at the corpse-like figure with the wide-open eyes and a flicker of the lids now and then to show that she was alive, and swallowed a lump in his throat. Mother Douglas would probably not know who was with her, he thought.

Coaley, the proud-spirited, shambled slowly to the stable, his head drooping, his eyes dulled with exhaustion. He had done his part. Lance rubbed him down, blanketed him, working swiftly, his thoughts with Mary Hope and her love and her fresh grief. He found Hugh, scribbled a note to Belle and got him started on Jamie.

Mother Douglas moved her eyes, stared at him sharply when he went to her. But she did not speak, did not move a muscle of her face. The heart of Lance went heavy, but he could smile still at Mary Hope and tell her that it was all right, and that the doctor ought to be there in an hour or so, and that Belle would come, and that he loved her, loved her, loved her.



CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

BELLE LORRIGAN WINS

In the second-best suit of Aleck Douglas, with his wrists showing strong and shapely below the coat sleeves, and wrinkles across his back, Lance turned his own steaming apparel before the kitchen fire and waited to hear what the doctor had to say.

In his mind was a great wonder at the inscrutable operations of Fate, that had twice brought tragedy into the Douglas house while he himself was permitted to bring all his love, which without the tragedies might have been rejected; which had sent him hurrying to Mary Hope on this day of all the days when he had longed to come. He could not believe that blind Chance had irresponsibly twisted the threads of Mary Hope's life so that these things had come upon her. He was abashed, humbled, filled with awe of the tremendous forces that rule our destinies. For perhaps the first time in his life he stood face to face with something beyond his understanding, something against which his arrogant young strength was powerless.

The doctor presently came to him, beckoned him to the doorway and preceded him into the rain-washed yard, where the late afternoon sun shone with dazzling brightness after the storm.

"I think she'll live through this," the doctor began abruptly. "It was not the lightning, altogether, though she undoubtedly did receive a severe shock. There has been a predisposition to paralysis, which is the true nature of this attack. Her right side is completely paralyzed, and so far as I can determine after a more-or-less superficial examination, her vocal chords are also affected, making speech impossible. Her left arm is not affected, and her mind seems fairly normal. Too much work, too much worry, too much monotony—and she has reached the time of life when these things are most apt to occur. Her husband's death was undoubtedly a contributary cause. With proper medical attention she may recover from this attack—partially, at least. She should be removed to a good hospital, or a trained nurse placed in charge of the case here. That will be expensive. Do you know whether the family can afford—"

"The family can afford anything she needs, anything that will give her a chance," Lance told him brusquely.

"She will probably be an invalid as long as she lives," the doctor went on. "She will be a great care. Are there any relatives, other than the girl? It's a tremendous burden to fall on her shoulders, Mr. Lorrigan."

"The burden," said Lance, "will not fall on her shoulders. I don't mind telling you that Miss Douglas and I will be married very soon. As soon as possible."

The doctor brightened visibly. "Congratulations, Mr. Lorrigan! I should strongly advise you, then, to have the old lady removed to a nice, quiet hospital. You will not want the care of her—young people should not be handicapped in that way. I can make the necessary arrangements. She should not be subjected to the discomforts of the journey just at present—it's a long way by team, and a long way by train. I should like to have her as quiet as possible for a few days, at least."

"We'll look after that," said Lance, and hurried in to tell Mary Hope that her mother was not going to die, and that Belle was coming—he could hear the rattle of the buckboard.

"I don't know what mother will say," Mary Hope began, and stopped and hid her eyes behind her hands. Her mother, poor soul, could not say anything. It seemed terrible to Mary Hope that her mother must lie there and endure the presence of the painted Jezebel in her home, and be unable to utter one word of denunciation, one bitter reproach. It was like a judgment; and she could not bear the thought that her mother must suffer it. A judgment, or treachery on her part,—the terrible treason of a child betraying her mother.

"It's all right, girl; you don't know our Belle. We'll just leave it to her. She'll find a way. And I'll go out now and tell her all about it, and leave her to manage."

"I'll go," Mary Hope decided unexpectedly. "I have things to say—you shall not go, Lance Lorrigan. You will please let me see her alone—first. I'm that afraid of Belle Lorrigan I could creep under the table and hide! And so I shall go alone to her."

Lance surrendered, and rolled a cigarette and smoked it in the kitchen, and wondered if a cigarette had ever been smoked in that house before, and whether the ghost of Aleck Douglas was somewhere near, struggling vainly against the inevitable. It certainly was unbelievable that a Lorrigan should be there, master—in effect, at least—of the Douglas household, wearing the shoddy garments of Aleck Douglas, and finding them at least three sizes too small.

They were an unconscionably long time out there,—those two women who meant so much to him. He glanced in at Mother Douglas, in bed now and looking terribly shrunken and old. The doctor was with her, sitting close to the bed and leaning forward a little, watching her eyes while he talked soothingly. Lance was not wanted there, either. He returned to the kitchen and put more wood in the stove, and felt tentatively his drying clothes.

Belle came in, holding Mary Hope by the hand. The eyes of both were moist, shining, blue as the sky outside.

"Lance, honey, I'm glad," she whispered, kissing him on the cheek. "Hope told me. And don't you two kids worry about me. I'll win my way somehow. I always have—and I guess maybe you've got it in you, too, Lance. It sure took something more than Lorrigan nerve to win Mary Hope—though I'll admit Lorrigan nerve won me. No, I won't go in there now. Don't tell her I'm here, we'll wait awhile."

It was dusk, and the lamp had not yet been lighted. Through the unshaded window Mother Douglas could look out at the first pale stars. The doctor had gone. The house was very quiet, the snapping of the kitchen fire, the steady tick-tock, tick-tock of the old-fashioned clock blending with, rather than breaking, the silence.

Mother Douglas closed her eyes. Her groping left hand ceased its aimless plucking at a yarn knot in the patchwork comforter. Her breath came evenly—Mary Hope wondered if she slept. A hand fell on Mary Hope's shoulder, though she had not heard a footfall. She seemed prepared, seemed to know what she must do. She slipped out of the chair, and Belle slipped into it. Mother Douglas opened her eyes, turned them that way; infinite weariness marked the glance. Her left hand resumed again its vague groping, the work-worn fingers plucking at the coverlet.

Sitting there in the dusk, her fingers faintly outlined in the old wooden armchair in which Aleck Douglas had been wont to sit and brood somberly over his work and his wrongs, Belle began softly to sing:

"Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?"

The withered hand lay still, the fingers clutching tightly a fold of cotton cloth. Mother Douglas looked and closed her eyes. Leaning close, when the song was finished, Belle saw that the grim lips were trembling, that tears were slipping down the too calm face. With her handkerchief she wiped away the tears, and sang again. The "Girl with a Thousand Songs" had many Scottish melodies in her repertoire, and the years had not made her forget.

At the last, the groping left hand reached painfully across, found Belle's hand waiting, and closed on it tightly. Whenever Belle stopped singing the hand would clutch hers. When she began again the fingers would relax a little. It was not much, but it was enough.

In the kitchen Mary Hope moved quietly about, cooking supper, straining and putting away the milk Hugh brought in. In the kitchen Lance sat and watched her, and made love to her with his big eyes, with his voice that made of the most commonplace remark a caress.

But that night, when Mary Hope was asleep and Belle was dozing beside the stricken woman, Lance saddled Jamie and led Coaley home. And while he rode, black Trouble rode with him and Love could not smile and beat back the spectre with his fists, but hid his face and whimpered, and was afraid.

For Lance was face to face again with that sinister, unnamed Something that hung over the Devil's Tooth ranch. He might forget it for a few hours, engrossed with his love and in easing this new trouble that had come to Mary Hope; he might forget, but that did not make his own trouble any the less menacing, any the less real.

He could not tell her so, now while she had this fresh worry over her mother, but Lance knew—and while he rode slowly he faced the knowledge—that he could not marry Mary Hope while the cloud hung over the Devil's Tooth. And that there was a cloud, a black, ominous cloud from which the lightning might be expected to strike and blast the Lorrigans, he could not deny. It was there. He knew it, knew just how loud were its mutterings, knew that it was gathering swiftly, pushing up over the horizon faster than did the storm of the morning.

He would not put Coaley down the Slide trail, but took him around by the wagon road. They plodded along at a walk, Coaley's stiffened muscles giving him the gait of an old horse. There had been no urgent need to take Coaley home at once, but it was an excuse, and Lance used it. He could not think,—he could not face his own trouble when he was near Mary Hope. She drove everything else from his mind, and Lance knew that some things must not be driven from his mind. He had set himself to do certain things. Now, with Mary Hope loving him, there was all the more reason why he should do them.

The ranch seemed deserted, though of course it was late and he knew that every one would be in bed. He found a lantern, put Coaley into the box stall again, and spent a long time rubbing him down and carrying him fresh hay and water. He went up then and roused Sam Pretty Cow, who was sleeping in the small cabin he had elected to make his own private habitation on the ranch. Sam Pretty Cow told him that no one had come home as yet.

"Two, three days, I dunno. Mebby Tom comes then," he hazarded, blinking at Lance. "This too quick. Nobody comes back same day, you bet."

Lance stood looking down at him, scowling thoughtfully. "Sam, you've been a long time with the outfit. You've been a good man. You aren't crippled up—and you're the best rider of the bunch of us. Why don't you go out any more?"

Sam lighted a cigarette, blew out the blazing match and laid the burnt stub carefully on a box. He smoked stolidly, gazing at the dingy wall before him.

"Bust them bronks in the corral," he said at last, grinning briefly. "You stay long, you see me ride. Uh-huh—yo' bet."

"Well, yes. That's all right. But why don't you go with the outfit?" Lance leaned against the wall, arms folded, studying him. It was almost hopeless, trying to get anything out of Sam Pretty Cow; still, Lance tried it.

Sam Pretty Cow looked up at him, looked down at his bare feet that he had swung out of bed when Lance wakened him.

"Uh-huh. That's why. That all right, I'm go. That ain't all right, I'm don' go. You bet."

Lance tap-tapped his right arm with the fingers of his left hand, chewed his lip and looked at Sam Pretty Cow.

"Still, dad lets you stick around the outfit," he drawled meaningly.

Sam Pretty Cow shot a quick glance toward him, looked at the door, relaxed again and studied his toes which he wriggled on the dirty floor.

"I'm good man, you bet. I'm mind my business." He drew a long breath, glanced again from the door to Lance's face. "Tom's damn smart man—me, I'm mebby smarter. I dunno."

Lance looked down at him, smiling strangely. "Sam, I'm minding my business, too. I'm doing it by—not minding my own business. Tom Lorrigan's a smart man—but I'm Tom Lorrigan's son."

Sam turned his foot over, looked critically at the calloused sole of it, turned it back again and blew a mouthful of smoke. "Yeah—uh-huh. You damn smart—you don't like them damn jail. I'm don't. We both smart, you bet."

Lance lifted an eyebrow. "What's the Piegan word for accomplice, Sam?" he asked softly.

Sam Pretty Cow considered. "Me, I'm don' know them damn word," he decided.

"It's a word that sends smart men to jail, Sam. It means the man that stays at home and—knows."

Sam Pretty Cow tucked his feet under the thin blanket, laid his half-smoked cigarette on the box, with the burning end out over the edge.

"Uh-huh. Yeah. You bet." He looked up at Lance, for the first time meeting his eyes squarely. "I'm know them damn word you call. Nh-hn. Long time I'm got that what it mean on my heart. You're damn right." He waited a minute, saw the Lorrigan look on Lance's face, on his lips that smiled enigmatically. "Them Californy got bronks to bust?"

"Surest thing you know, Sam. But that's all right. You stay."

Sam Pretty Cow looked doubtful as an Indian may ever be expected to look.

"You stay, Sam. There'll be bronks to bust on the Devil's Tooth for a long while yet." He moved to the door, pulled it open and stood looking out. Only a few miles away Mary Hope lay asleep, loving him in her dreams, please God. Here, the Shadow hung black over the Devil's Tooth. He turned to Sam Pretty Cow whose hand was stretched toward the smoky lamp.

"You forget that word, Sam. It doesn't mean anything at all—to a Piegan. And Sam, if I'm not around to-morrow morning, you ride over to the Douglas ranch, and take back the horse I borrowed. Belle may want to send you to town. She's there."

Sam Pretty Cow's eyes widened appreciably. "Uh-huh—all right. I'm go," he promised, and blew out the light.

Lance went slowly up to the house and lay face downward on his bed.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE DOPE

Traveling lightly, Lance had covered a hundred and fifty miles in four days, through country where trails were few and rough. He had made wide detours, had slept on the ground in his slicker, had eaten bacon and bannocks cooked in the small frying pan which he carried in the sack with his meager rations. He had missed altogether the Devil's Tooth outfit, and was swinging back now by way of the Lava Beds, where Tom had said that they were going. It was because Tom had named that as his destination that Lance had ridden elsewhere to find him; good reasoning, but so far unproductive of results.

Four days, and he had not heard from Mary Hope, had learned nothing conclusive, either for or against the Devil's Tooth. Some clues he had gleaned, some evidence that strengthened his suspicions, but nothing to make him feel that the trip had been worth the hardship.

Without knowing just why, he had ridden out expecting to learn the best or the worst and have done with nagging suspicion. It had seemed to him that Fate meant to be kind, that his destiny and Mary Hope's pointed the way to happiness. Now he was beginning to doubt. How was happiness possible, if the outlaw blood of the Lorrigans ran at high pressure through the veins of his family? He did not know to a certainty that it did, but until he knew that it did not he could never marry Mary Hope. He had to know. It had been pure madness, going to her as he had gone. While his horse plodded up the hill to where the lava outcroppings began, Lance meditated gloomily on the madness that had driven him to her. He had felt so sure of himself and his future, so much the master of his destiny and hers! Yet, even while he wooed her tempestuously he had known that it was madness, that Trouble was reaching even then to pluck him by the sleeve. Mary Hope and her stern, Scotch integrity linked to the blackened Lorrigan name that might soon stand on the roster of the State's prison? It was impossible, inconceivable. He had been a hound to say to her what he had said.

True, when her mother was stricken he had been there to help her, to comfort her. But it would be small comfort to Mary Hope when the storm broke over the Devil's Tooth.

"And I said Fate was with us—I said nothing could hurt her! And it will hurt her all her life."

His sweaty horse paused to breathe, heaving a great sigh, looking discouragedly at the climb yet before him. Lance came to himself and swung off, giving the horse an apologetic slap on the shoulder. "You ought to kick me cold, Sorry, for making you pack my hulking carcase up this hill. Why didn't you stop at the bottom?"

Sorry looked at him, waited for Lance to take the lead, and climbed after him more briskly. He was a big-boned, well-muscled animal, but two hundred pounds had been a heavy load to carry up hill, and he was glad to be rid of it.

At the top Lance did not remount. The thickly strewn flat rocks made treacherous footing, and more than one man had taken a nasty fall because he had chosen to ride that mile of lava when he should have walked. It was somewhere along this stretch of rock outcropping that Shorty had broken his knee so that he would never ride again to the round-up.

Lance was walking along with his head down, brooding over his trouble, when he fancied he heard a faint halloo. Sorry stopped and craned his head. But Lance could see nothing save the barren stretch of lava and the monotonous wilderness beyond, with mountains in the far background and the Black Rim stretching grim on the left of him. He started on, thinking that perhaps some animal or bird was responsible for the sound. But he had gone but a short distance when it came again, more distinctly because he was half listening for it.

He waited, made a guess at the location of the person who shouted, and turned that way, changing the reins from his right hand to his left and pulling his holstered six-shooter within easy reach of his hand. This was not the country, his was not the errand, for carelessness, and Lance was taking no risk.

As he walked his eyes roved continually over the brown expanse of rocks and stunted juniper that formed the Lava Beds. Behind him came Sorry, his worn shoes slipping now and then on a smooth rock, his head bobbing patiently, close to Lance's shoulder. As so often happens, it was the horse that first discovered the object of their search. He pulled away from the direct line, looking and looking at what Lance, keen-eyed though he was, mistook for a black rock with a juniper bush growing beside it.

Lance turned that way, focussed his glasses upon the object and saw what had happened. A horse had fallen with its rider, the two lying together, the man pinned under the horse. A black horse which he recognized, and a big, red-faced cowpuncher with gray eyes that did not twinkle. While Lance looked, the man lifted his head, seemed to be staring straight into Lance's face, opened his mouth and contorted his pain-racked face in a shout. It was strange to have the sound reach Lance's ears thinned and weakened by distance, while the glasses brought the injured man so close that he could see the wild look of entreaty in his eyes. Lance put up the glasses and began running, with Sorry stumbling and slipping behind him.

"I been here since morning," the big cowpuncher chattered feverishly when Lance came up to him. "I'm fixed, all right! I was dozing and I didn't jump and he caught me when he fell. I guess his leg is broke, but so is mine, fur's that goes. I come down hard on a rock and I guess I broke some ribs or something. Hurt like hell for a few hours—it ain't so bad now. Look out when you go to make him git up—if he rolls on me it's all off. I guess it's all off, anyway, but I don't want to be squashed to death."

Lance bit his lip. It was hard to hear the man talking, talking, in that rapid, headlong fashion, while his leg lay under the full weight of the black horse and the sun blazed on his uncovered head. It was hard to see his shirt all blood-soaked on the left side where he had fallen across an uptilted, thin-edged rock.

The horse, too, was in sorry state. A weed-grown crevice had cheated him with its semblance to sound footing, and he lay with front leg broken, groaning a little now and then while the man talked and talked. And while he examined the two it seemed to Lance that Fate was pointing, and saying that here, too, was one of the inscrutable instruments by which he worked out the destinies of men. A slippery rock, a man riding that way half asleep—

"I'll have to shoot this horse, I'm afraid," Lance said pityingly. "His leg is broken—it's the most merciful thing I can do. And if I try to lift him off you while he's alive he may struggle—"

"Sure thing! Go on and shoot him! I woulda done it myself if you hadn't come along purty soon. I knowed it would be all off with us both if we had to lay out all night, so I was going to finish us both off, when I seen you. Thought I'd take a gambling chance till dark—but the sun has been baking me to a crisp—"

"It's all right—I'll get you to a ranch. We'll fix you up, so don't think about the finish." A little of the color had left Lance's face. Shooting a horse was to him next thing to shooting a human. He had to do it, though. There was no other way.

He took the horse by the cheek-piece of the bridle, spoke to him gently, turned the head a little away from him so that the horse could not look him in the eyes. "Poor old fellow, it's all I can do for you," he muttered when he pulled his gun from the holster.

"Maybe you better do the same for me," said the man, still speaking in the rapid tone which told of fever. "You ain't able to heave him off me, are you?"

"Sure, I'm able to. Lie still, now, and grit your teeth, old man. It may hurt, when I lift him off your leg. I'll raise him up and put a rock under, and pull you out. Can you stand that?"

"Me? Hell, yes. Ain't I been standing pain since before daylight? Me, I can stand anything if I have to!"

Yet he fainted when Lance took him by the shoulders and pulled him free, and Lance used half the water in the canteen on the saddle in bringing him back to consciousness. When the fellow opened his eyes, Lance remembered that he had half a pint of whisky in his coat pocket, and offered it to the injured one.

"Golly, that's a life-saver!" he ejaculated when he had taken two swallows. He reached down and felt his crushed leg, grimacing at the pain of returning circulation.

"She's busted all right. Busted right, if I'm any judge. And my side—things are all busted up in there. I know it. Say, oldtimer, how do you figure you're going to get me outa here? Do you know it's all of ten miles to the nearest ranch? I've got a map of the whole country in my coat pocket. I'll show yuh if you don't know. You're a stranger, I guess. I don't recollect seeing yore horse before. I always know horses. What's his brand?"

Lance did not say. He himself was wondering how he was going to get the man out of there. If the fellow thought he was a stranger, all the better. Still, it did not matter much. Already the whisky was whipping the man's brain to quicker action, loosening his tongue that had already been set wagging by fever.

"Think you can stand it to ride?" he asked solicitously. "I can heave you into the saddle, if you can stand being moved. I'd ride to the next ranch and bring a wagon—but the country's too rough. A rig couldn't get within five miles of here."

"You're right. Not even Belle Lorrigan's buckboard could make it across that canyon on beyond. Say, speaking of the Lorrigans—" he hesitated, then plunged recklessly on. "I'm going to pass you some dope I've got on that outfit. The chances are I'm done for. The way my insides feel—and you do something for me, will you? If I cash in, you turn in this dope. We may as well 'tend to this business right now, before I tackle the job of riding."

Lance stood looking down at him while he fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a small leather notebook and some papers.

"I'm a stock detective, see. My name's Burt Brownlee. I was just about ready to turn in the dope and have the whole outfit pulled. Well, it's all here. They been rustling right and left, see. But they're cute—they're damn cute. We been trying to work up the case on the outside, and it seemed like somebody in the Black Rim was sending stock out, and so I've been working on this end. Now here's the data. I followed 'em, and I've got the dope. I know now how they work it, and my evidence and this dope here, that can be verified later on when the time comes, will put the whole bunch over the road, see. They're outlaws—always have been—but they won't be by the time they get outa the pen."

"You better keep that," Lance cut in gruffly. "Man, that's nothing you want to be gabbling to a stranger. Shut up, and let me put you on my horse."

"No, I want to tell yuh," Burt insisted with all the obstinacy of a man half crazy with pain and whisky. "I want to tell yuh, and I'm going to tell yuh! Get down here and listen. Here's a map, and here's the brands they worked, and here's how they worked 'em. And here's the dates."

On one knee Lance kneeled and listened, his jaws set hard together. Fast as the man talked the thoughts of Lance flew ahead, snatched at the significance of every detail, every bit of evidence. Some things puzzled Burt Brownlee, but Lance knew the answer to the puzzle while Burt talked and talked. Finally he laid his hand over the finely traced maps that showed secret trails, unguessed, hidden little draws where stolen stock had been concealed, all the fine threads that would weave the net close around the Lorrigans.

"Here, put that stuff up. This is not getting you to a doctor, and this can wait. Put it up."

"No, you take it. And if I don't pull through, you turn it in. You keep it. I don't want to be found dead with that dope on me—you can't tell who might get hold of it." He thrust the papers and the book eagerly into Lance's unwilling hand.

"No-o, you can't tell who might get hold of it," Lance admitted, biting his lip. "Well, let me take your riding outfit off this horse and then we'll go."

While he pulled saddle and bridle off the dead horse, Burt Brownlee talked and talked and talked. He wanted more whisky, which Lance promised him he should have when he was ready to get on the horse. He told further evidence against the Devil's Tooth, told how he had followed Tom for two days only to see him later at the ranch where he had returned while Burt had for a time lost the trail. On that trip, he said, he would have gotten the full details of one "job" had he not turned off to follow Tom Lorrigan.

While he worked Lance listened stoically. When he was ready to start he led Sorry close, lifted the fellow as tenderly as he could, saw him faint again with the pain, and somehow got him on the horse while he was still unconscious. Burt Brownlee was a big man, but he was not of great weight. Lance bound him to the saddle with his own riata, revived him with a little more whisky, and started for Conley's, who lived nearest.

It was ten miles to Conleys, as riders guessed the distance. Lance walked and led Sorry, and tried to hold Burt Brownlee in the saddle, and listened to his rambling talk, and gave him more whisky when he seemed ready to die. During certain intervals when Burt seemed lucid enough to realize his desperate condition, Lance heartened him with assurance that they were almost there.

On the way into the canyon Burt Brownlee suffered greatly on the steep trail, down which the horse must go with forward joltings that racked terribly the man's crushed side. The whisky was gone; he had finished the scanty supply at the canyon's crest, because he begged for it so hard that Lance could not steel himself to refuse. At the bottom Lance stopped Sorry, and put an arm around Burt. Lance's face was set masklike in its forced calm, but his voice was very tender, with the deep, vibrant note Mary Hope loved so ardently.

"Lean against me, old man, and rest a minute. It's pretty tough going, but you're game. You're dead game. You'll make it. Wait. I'll stand on this rock—now lean hard, and rest. Ho, there's no whisky—water will have to do you, now. I've a little in my canteen, and when you've rested—"

"I'm going," said Burt, lurching against Lance's steady strength. "You're a white man. That Lorrigan dope—don't forget what I told you—turn it in—"

Lance's mouth twisted with sudden bitterness. "I won't—forget," he said. "I'll turn it—in."

"I'm—a goner. Just—stand and let me—lean—"

Lance stood, and let him lean, and with his handkerchief he very gently dried Burt's cold, perspiring face. It seemed an endless time that he stood there. Now and then Burt clutched him with fingers that gripped his shoulders painfully, but Lance never moved. Once, when Sorry turned his head and looked back inquiringly, wondering why they did not go on, Lance spoke to the horse and his voice was calm and soothing. But when it was all over, Lance's underlip was bleeding at the corner where he had bitten into it.

He walked into Conley's yard an hour after that, his face drearily impassive, a dead man lashed to the saddle. He asked for paper and a pen, and in a firm, even handwriting he described tersely the manner of Burt Brownlee's death, told where the dead horse and the saddle would be found, and as an afterthought, lest there be trouble in locating the spot, he drew a sketch of that particular part of the Lava Beds. He signed the statement, and had the excited Conleys, shaking man and half hysterical wife, sign also as witnesses. His matter-of-fact treatment of the affair impressed them to the point of receiving his instructions as though they were commands which must on no account be disobeyed in any particular.

"I'll be back and tell the coroner. He'll want to see the horse and saddle, perhaps. Mr. Conley, you can find them without any trouble. If he wants an inquest, tell him I'll be on hand. Thank you, Mrs. Conley,—no, I'll not wait for anything to eat. I'm not hungry. I must get home. Good-by—sorry I can't do any more for you."

He mounted Sorry, pricked him into a gallop, and presently disappeared around a bend of the trail that led in the direction of the Devil's Tooth ranch.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

HOW ONE TRAIL ENDED

Darkness falls late on the Black Rim country in midsummer. It was just deepening from dusk when Lance rode up to the corral gate, pulled the saddle and bridle off Sorry with swift jerks that bespoke a haste born of high nervous tension, and strode up to the house. From the bunk house, when he passed, came the murmur of low-keyed voices. The outfit, then, was at home once more. From the shaded window of Belle's bedroom a thin silver of light shone, where the blind was curled back at the edge, but the rest of the house was dark. He went in, moving softly, but Belle must have heard his step on the porch, for she came out with her bedroom lamp in her hand, the other raised to impress quiet upon him.

"Lance, honey! Where on earth have you been?" She set the lamp down on the table and came close, putting her arms around him, her eyes searching the impenetrable calm of his face, the veiled purpose behind his eyes. It was the Lorrigan fighting look; she had seen it once or twice in Tom's face and it had frightened her. She was frightened now, but her own intrepid soul pushed back her fear.

"Sh-sh, honey," she whispered, though Lance had neither moved nor spoken since she touched him. "Sh-sh—Mary Hope and her mother are here, and they're both asleep. I—honey, we were so worried, when you didn't come back. That note you sent didn't say a thing, and I was afraid—And I was between the devil and the deep sea, honey. I couldn't stay away from here, when I didn't know—and I couldn't leave Hope there, and the women that came flocking when they heard the news were just cows for brains. And the old lady won't have a nurse and she wouldn't let me out of her sight—she keeps me singing about all the time she's awake, or reciting poetry—Bobbie Burns, mostly, and Scott. Would you ever think she'd stand for Bobbie Burns? But I can do it as Scotch as she can, and she likes it.

"So she wouldn't let me leave, and I couldn't stay—and I had Hugh make up a bed in the spring wagon, and brought her over here. If you and Hope are going to be married right away, the old lady will need to be here, anyway. The doctor tried to talk hospital—he just tried. The old lady can write now with her left hand so we can make it out, and when he said hospital to her she—she almost swore.

"So it's all right, Lance, honey—my God, Lance, what is it? Have you heard from Duke?" She broke down suddenly, and clutched him in a way that reminded him poignantly of that dying man in the canyon. Her whisper became sibilant, terrified. "What is it? What has happened? Lance, tell me! Tom is here, and Al; they were here when we came, to-day—"

Lance took a deep breath. Very gently he leaned and kissed her on the forehead, reached back and pulled her hands away from his shoulders.

"It's nothing, Belle. I'm—tired. And you—you surprised me. Will it waken them if I—clean up a little before I go to bed? I'll—be careful." He forced his eyes, his lips, to smile at her. "Good girl, Belle. I'm—you're a trump. Now go back to bed. Lance is on the job—Lance won't leave again like that—he'll—settle down."

He sat down on the nearest chair and pulled off his boots. He made an imperative gesture toward her bedroom, and Belle, giving him a strange, searching look, went in and closed the door after her. He gave a sigh of relief when she was gone, never dreaming how little he had imposed upon her.

In his stocking feet he went to the kitchen, found hot water in the teakettle, carried it to his room and shaved, cleansing his body as well as he could from the dust of the trip without making any sound that might disturb the sleeping invalid and Mary Hope. He dressed himself carefully as though he were going to meet guests. The set look was still in his face when he stood before the dresser mirror, knotting the blue tie that harmonized best with the shirt he wore. He pulled the tan leather belt straight, so that the plain silver buckle was in the middle, took something off the bed and pushed it carefully inside the waistband of his trousers, on the left side, taking great care that its position was right to the fraction of an inch. He took his tan Oxford shoes in his hand, pulled open his door as quietly as any burglar could have done, stepped down upon the ground and put on the shoes, lacing them carefully, tucking in the bow ends fastidiously.

Then, moving very softly, he went down the path to the bunk-house, opened the door and walked in, never dreaming that Belle was no more than a dozen steps behind him, or that, when he closed the door, she was standing just outside, listening.

The blood of his actress mother carried him insouciantly over the pregnant silence that received him. He leaned negligently against the wall beside the closed door, his arms folded, his eyebrows tilted upward at the inner ends, his lips smiling quizzically.

"I've another funny story to tell you fellows," he drawled, just before the silence became awkward. "Glad you're all here—it's too good to keep, too good to waste on part of the outfit. I want you all to get the kick. You'll enjoy it—being cattlemen. It's a joke that was pulled on an outfit down in Arizona."

Like a trained monologist, he had them listening, deceived by his smiling ease, waiting to hear the joke on the Arizona outfit. Tom and Al, at the table with some papers before them, papers that held figures and scribbled names, he quite overlooked. But they, too, listened to the story, were imposed upon by that quizzical smile, by his mimicry, by the bold, swift strokes with which he painted word pictures which their imaginations seized upon as fast as they were made.

It was Tom who first felt a suspicion of Lance's purpose, and shifted his position a little, so that his right hand would be free. As he did so, without looking toward him Lance's left fingers began tapping, tapping the muscles of his right arm; his right hand had sagged a little. Tom's eyebrows pulled together. Quite well he knew that pose. He waited, listened with closer attention to the story.

Lance paused, as your skillful raconteur usually does pause before the climax. His glance went impersonally over the faces of his audience. Most of them were leaning forward, a few were breathing hard. They were listening, straining unconsciously to get the meaning he withheld from them. Lance's right hand sagged another half inch, his lips pulled sidewise in the enigmatical smile of the Lorrigans.

"I lied, of course—about the outfit this joke is on. It's really the Devil's Tooth I'm talking about. But the kick remains, so listen, folks, just listen.

"I'm a Lorrigan. Two of you are Lorrigans, and you know what I mean when I say that. The rest of you had better guess what I mean, if you don't know—and guess right!

"I'm talking to you with my back against the wall—in more ways than one. Don't think I'm fool enough not to know it. But you're listening with your backs against another wall; I believe it is of stone, usually, and the windows have bars. I don't think you're such fools you fail to grasp my meaning. I'm talking—and you're going to listen.

"What I said—well, I have the dope, you know. I know where you took that last bunch of stolen horses, and I know the date when you turned them over. I have a map or two—I know those secret trails you made, that lead into that hidden little basin that the Rim has not discovered yet. I've dope enough to indict the whole outfit on five separate counts—and any one of them will put every man of you in the pen for a term of years—well, from five to ten up to fifteen or twenty—a mere detail.

"I know why Duke didn't come back. There's a yellow streak in Duke, and he lost his nerve and drifted to parts unknown. Where, I'm not curious to discover. It doesn't matter, so long as his destination remains unknown.

"That's the story. And now, here's the point: Others, detectives working at the other end of the business, have an inkling of some of this dope. They haven't got what I've got, but they may possibly get it. They may—possibly. And if they do—wel-ll—" He smiled at them, his eyebrows pointing his meaning, his fingers tapping, tapping on his arm.

"You've got to quit. Now, without turning the deal you're working on, you've got to quit. Get that. Get it right into your souls. You men that have been hired to steal, you've got to drift. Where, does not concern me at all. Where Duke went is good—Parts Unknown. Or if it's to hell—why, the going is good. Never better. You'll go quicker, but there won't be any coming back, so I advise—Parts Unknown.

"You two Lorrigans—I'm not thinking of you now as my brother and my father—the same advice applies to you. You're Lorrigans. You'd rather fight it out than pull out, but you won't. You'd rather kill me than go. That's all right; I understand perfectly. But—I'm Lorrigan, too. You'll go, or I'll kill you. Tom Lorrigan, your hand is pret-ty close to your gun! But so is mine. You'd kill me, because I stand in the trail you've been traveling. But you wouldn't kill me a damn bit quicker than I'd kill you! I do stand in the trail—and you're going to take another, both you Lorrigans.

"You had a debt—a bill of damages against the Black Rim. Wel-ll," he smiled, "you've collected. Now, to-night, you write 'paid' across that bill. You tried to be honest, and the Black Rim wouldn't give you credit for it; they tried to frame something on you, tried to send you 'over the road' on a damned, measly charge you weren't small enough to be guilty of. I understand. The trail ends right here. You quit. You sit there ready to kill. But I'm just as ready as you are. You'll quit, or I'll kill you!"

He waited, watching Tom. Tom, watching Lance, got up and faced him cold-eyed, unafraid, weighing not chances, but values rather.

"You'd kill me, would you!" he asked, his voice matching the drawl of Lance.

"Sure, I'd kill you!" Lance smiled back.

Eyes on a level, the two stared at each other, smiling that deadly, Lorrigan smile, the smile of old Tom Lorrigan the killer.

"You would, all right," Tom said. Then his stiffened muscles relaxed. A twinkle came into his eyes. "If you're game enough to do that, kid, by God, I'm game enough to quit!"

Lance unfolded his arms, reached out with his open right hand and met Tom's hand in a close grip. "That's the stuff, dad! I knew you had it in you—I knew it!"

Outside the door, Belle hugged her six-shooter to her breast and leaned against the wall, her knees shaking under her. "Thank God! Oh, thank God a Lorrigan can be bigger than all the Lorrigan blood that's in him!" she whispered. "Oh, Lance, honey—oh, thank God!"



CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE MAKING OF NEW TRAILS

At the corral, that time-honored conference ground of all true range men, the three Lorrigans leaned their backs against the rails and talked things over in true range style: laconic phrases that stated their meaning without frills or mental reservations, and silences that carried their thoughts forward to the next utterance.

"Al can take the outfit and drift," said Tom, as though he were discussing some detail of the round-up. "He knows where—and they can scatter, I'll give 'em a horse apiece as a—a kinda bonus. I'll have to stay, looks like. Fall round-up's coming on."

"Wel-ll," said Lance, throwing an arm over a rail and drumming with his fingers, "I was raised on round-ups. I don't suppose I've forgotten all about it. You might turn the management over to me for a year or so, and take a trip. Belle needs it, dad. I think I could keep things riding along, all right."

"Sounds kinda like you had that idea for a joker up your sleeve," Al observed meaningly. "Are you plumb sure of that dope, Lance?"

Lance removed his arm from the corral rail, and reached into his pocket. "I didn't think you had it in you, Al, to be that big a fool. But since you've said it, here's the dope. Take it, dad. I said I'd turn it in, but I didn't say who'd receive it. The stock detective that's been camping on your trail for the last few weeks was killed on the Lava Beds to-day. I found him. He's at Conley's, now, waiting for the coroner. You might ride over, Al, and see for yourself. And on the way, you might ride up the Slide trail and take a look around the Tooth. You'll see signs where he's watched the ranch from up there. And you can go on down and find where he camped several times at Cottonwood Spring.

"The coroner won't get on the job before to-morrow or next day, and it will take a little time, I suppose, for Brownlee's employers to wake up and wonder what became of the evidence he was sent to collect. You'll have, perhaps, a week in which to make your getaway. They're waiting outside the Rim for the evidence this Burt Brownlee was collecting, so that they could make one big clean-up.

"I'm not setting myself up as a judge, or anything like that—but—well, the going's good, right now. It may not be so good if you wait."

He lighted a match and held it up so that Tom could glance at the maps and skim the contents of the memorandum book. By the blaze of the match Lance's face still looked rather hard, determined to see the thing through.

"You'd better burn that stuff, dad. And in the morning—how would it be if we went to town and got the legal end of my new job straightened out! I'll want a Power of Attorney. You may be gone for some time. I suppose you know," he added, "that Mary Hope and I are going to be married. So you and Belle can take a trip somewhere. They say it's worth while going down to the big cattle country in the Argentine—South America, you know."

Tom did not reply. He had lighted a second match and was studying attentively the data in Burt Brownlee's book. The third match told him enough to convince him. He gave a snort when darkness enveloped them again.

"I sharpened my pencil pretty darn fine when I made out my bill against the Black Rim a few years ago—and by the humpin' hyenas, these figures here kinda go to show I overcharged 'em. Some. Not so damn much, either, if you look at my side. Better get up the horses, Al, and you'n the boys take the trail. The kid's right. The goin's dern good, right now. Better'n what it will be."

In the scuffed sand before the corral gate Tom made a small fire, with a few crumpled papers and one small book, which he tore apart and fed, leaf by leaf, to the flames. The light showed him grimly smiling, when he tilted his head and looked up at Lance who watched him.

"So you'n the Douglas kid is figuring on getting hitched! Well, don't ever try to eye her down like you done to yore dad. She'll brain yuh, likely—if you wait long enough for her to make up her mind."

Lance laughed. Up at the house Belle heard him and caught her breath. She stared hard at the three forms silhouetted like Rembrandt figures around the little fire, started toward them and stopped. She was a wise woman, was Belle. Some things a woman may know—and hide the knowledge deep in her heart, and in the hiding help her mate.

Black Rim folk, who always knew so much of their neighbors' affairs, once more talked and chortled and surmised, and never came within a mile of the truth. The young college rooster had come home to the Devil's Tooth, they gossiped, and had a row with Al; so Al left home, and Duke too. The Lorrigans always had been hard to get along with, but that Lance—he sure must be a caution to cats, the way he'd cleaned off the ranch.

Marrying the Douglas girl, and taking that paralyzed old lady right to the ranch, had probably had a lot to do with it. Lance might be willing to forget that old trouble with Scotty, but the rest of the Lorrigans sure never would. And it was queer, too, how all that rustling talk petered out. Mebby there hadn't been much in it, after all.

Not even Mary Hope guessed why she and Lance were left so completely in charge of the ranch. Sometimes, when the invalid was captious and showed too plainly that she preferred Belle's playing and singing to the musical efforts of her own daughter, and scrawled impatient questions about Belle's return, Mary Hope would wonder if Tom Lorrigan really hated her, and if her coming had practically driven him out of his own home. She would cry a little, then,—unless Lance happened to be somewhere near. If he were, there was no crying for Mary Hope.

"He's a good son," Mother Douglas once wrote, "I wish Aleck was alive, to see how the Lord has changed the Lorrigans."

THE END



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May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

JOHN BARLEYCORN. Illustrated by H. T. Dunn.

This remarkable book is a record of the author's own amazing experiences. This big, brawny world rover, who has been acquainted with alcohol from boyhood, comes out boldly against John Barleycorn. It is a string of exciting adventures, yet it forcefully conveys an unforgetable idea and makes a typical Jack London book.

THE VALLEY OF THE MOON. Frontispiece by George Harper.

The story opens in the city slums where Billy Roberts, teamster and ex-prize fighter, and Saxon Brown, laundry worker, meet and love and marry. They tramp from one end of California to the other, and in the Valley of the Moon find the farm paradise that is to be their salvation.