B. M. Bower

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From Devil’s Tooth they came, and from Lava Bed way, and from the rough sandstone ridges of Mill Creek. Two by two the riders, mere moving dots at first against a monotone of the rangeland, took form as they neared the common center. Red cattle, black cattle, spotted and dingy white, with bandy-legged, flat-bodied calves keeping close to their mothers, kicking up their heels in sheer joy of their new life when the pace slowed a little, seeking a light lunch whenever the cows stopped to cast a wary glance back at their pursuer. ”

“ Comprehensively he surveyed the mean little room, bare of everything save three benches with crude shelves before them, a kitchen table and a yellow-painted chair with two-thirds of the paint worn off under the incessant scrubbing of mother Douglas. The three Swedes, their rusty overcoats buttoned to their necks, goggled at him round-eyed over the tops of their new spelling books, then ducked and grinned at one another. The four Boyle children, also bundled in wraps, exchanged sidelong glances and pulled themselves up alert and expectant in their seats. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of course, he would fight––to the last dollar; but there were nights when he doubted the power of his dollars to save him.
It was during those nights that the lawless blood of the Lorrigans ran swiftly through the veins of Tom, who had set himself to win a million honestly. It was then that he remembered his quiet, law-abiding years regretfully, as time wasted; a thankless struggle toward the regard of his fellow men. Of what avail to plod along the path of uprightness when no man would point to him and say, “There is an honest man.” ”

“ He knew the horse that Tom was riding. It was a big, shiny black that always carried its head up; a high-stepping horse that a man could recognize anywhere. No, he didn’t know of any other horse in the country just like it. He admitted that if he hadn’t been sure of the horse he would not have been sure it was Tom. He did not think Tom saw him at all. He was riding along next the bank, in the shadow. He had gone on home, and the next day he heard that Scotty Douglas claimed the Lorrigans had rustled a yearling from him. ”

“ The devil ought to have saved his horse from falling down with him, if the devil had Al Lorrigan’s soul.
That had happened when Mary Hope was twelve and Al Lorrigan was eighteen. She heard her father tell her mother about it; and her father had set his whiskered lip against his long, shaven upper lip almost with a smack.
“They’ll come to a bad end, all of them,” he declared sententiously. “Violent deaths had all the Lorrigans before them––all save Tom, and the Lord but stays his hand for a time from that man. The wicked shall flourish as a green bay tree.” ”

“ Tom Lorrigan may have seen bigger fusses made over smaller matters than the hide of a spotty yearlin’, but his boys never had.
No country is so isolated that gossip cannot find it out. The story of the spotted yearling went speeding through the country. Men made thin excuses to ride miles out of their way that they might air their opinions and hear some fresh bit of news, some conjecture that grew to a rumor and was finally repeated broadcast as truth. Children cringed and wept while necks were scrubbed relentlessly, for a fever of “visiting” attacked the women of the range. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ Mary Hope was punished for her lie. She had not promised that dance, and so she sat on the 155 plank bench and saw Lance and Jennie Miller sway past her four times before a gawky youth who worked for her father caught sight of her and came over from the water-bucket corner to ask her for the dance. That was not the worst. On the fourth round of Lance and Jennie, and just as the gawky one was bowing stiffly before her, Lance looked at her over Jennie Miller’s shoulder, and smiled that tantalizing, Lorrigan smile that always left her uneasily doubtful of its meaning. ”

“ Mary Hope would never admit to herself that this small detail interested her, but she thought of it the moment Jim Boyle suggested the old Whipple shack as a schoolhouse.
Tom Lorrigan, riding home from Jumpoff after two days spent in Lava, pulled his horse down to a walk and then stopped him in the trail while he stared hard at the Whipple shack. Five horses walked uneasily around inside the corral, manes and tails whipping in the gale that blew cold from out the north. From the bent stovepipe of the shack a wisp of smoke was caught and bandied here and there above the pole-and-dirt roof. ”

“ He untied them, got the lines, stepped in and turned them around, the pintos backing and cramping the buckboard, lunging a little but too surprised to misbehave in their usual form.
“Get in––and hang on. There’s no road much––but we’ll make it, all right.”
Like the pintos, Mary Hope was too astonished to rebel. She got in.
The team went plunging up the hill, snorting now and then, swerving sharply away from rock or bush that threatened them with vague horrors in the clear starlight. ”

“ But in his eyes, in his voice, in the tender, one-sided little smile, there was something,––Mary Hope caught her breath, feeling as if she had been kissed.
“You little, lonesome girl! There’s going to be a party at Cottonwood Spring, a week from Friday night. It’s a secret––a secret for you. And you won’t tell a soul that you were the first to know––and you’ll come, you girl, because it’s your party. And not a soul will know it’s your party. If your father’s Scotch is too hard for dancing––you’ll come just the same. You’ll come, because the secret is for you. ”

“ Young Tom Lorrigan had found his mate. Had he known more about life in the big world beyond the Rim, he must have been amazed at his luck. Once a man dropped dead in a poker game when he had staked his last blue chip and drawn a royal flush. In the great game of hearts Tom had drawn a royal flush, but he did not drop dead. Instead, he went right on living, more determined than ever to own a million dollars’ worth of cattle and horses before he died, considerably before he died, because he wanted to enjoy that million with Belle. ”

“ 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, 211 could she face Lance Lorrigan level-eyed, cool, calm, feeling herself a match for him. ”

“ Sam Pretty Cow had nailed a three-foot American flag to the front gable, and had landed on a nail when he jumped from the eaves. On the night of the dance he was hobbling around the chuck-wagon with 147 half a pound of salt pork bound to his foot, helping Riley, who had driven over to the spring early, burdened with the importance of his share in the entertainment.
A dance in the Black Rim country has all the effect of a dog fight in a small village with empty streets. No sooner does it start than one wonders where all the people came from. ”

“ There may be shooting,” Lance muttered to Mary Hope, and pulled her to the rear of the wagon and around upon the farther side. She could not resist. His strength was beyond any hope of combating it with her small strength. Mrs. Miller, whose scalded shoulder led her to wild utterances without thought of their effect upon others, shouted at him as he hustled Mary Hope away:
“Yeah––run! You’re the one that done it––now run! That’s like a Lorrigan––do your dirty work and then crawl out and let somebody else take the blame! ”

“ And it isn’t my coat at all,” said Mary Hope. “Oh, they’re murdering one another! I should think you’d be ashamed, having a dance like––”
“Coats can be bought––and murdered men don’t swear like that. I’ll have to borrow Belle’s pintos, but we don’t care, do we? Come on. Here they are. Don’t get in until I get them untied and turned around. And when I say get in, you’d better make it in one jump. Are you game?”
“No Lorrigan will ever cry shame on a Douglas for a coward! You must be crazy, taking this awful team.” ”

“ To Mary Hope, reared in a household where dollars were precious things, that last item was the most amazing of all. The Lorrigans must be rich,––as rich as they were wicked. She thrilled anew at her own daring.
Belle brought lemonade, wonderful lemonade, with an egg beaten to yellow froth and added the last minute. Mary Hope sipped and marveled. After that, Belle played on the piano and sang songs which Mary Hope had never heard before and which she thought must be the songs the angels sang in Heaven, although there was nothing to suggest harps or hallelujahs. ”

“ Mary Hope had gone just so far in her analysis when Lance turned his head abruptly, unexpectedly, and looked full into her eyes.
“Don’t be afraid, girl. Don’t worry about the lie––about anything. It was a sweet little lie––it makes you just human and young and––sweet. Let them scold you, and smile, ’way down deep in your heart, and be glad you’re human enough to tell a lie now and then. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At a gallop they took the first sandy slope of the climb, and Belle let them go. They were tough––many’s the time they had hit the level on top of the ridge without slowing to a walk on the way up. They had no great load to pull, and if it pleased them to lope instead of trot, Belle would never object.
As she sat jouncing on the seat of a buckboard with rattly spokes in all of the four wheels and a splintered dashboard where Subrosa landed his heels one day when he had backed before he kicked, one felt that she would have made a magnificent charioteer. ”

“ At eight o’clock toiling horses drawing full loads of humanity began to appear over the rim of the hollow, to pick their way carefully down toward the lighted windows, urged by their drivers. Men on horseback made the descent more swiftly, with a clatter of small rocks kicked loose as they came. They encountered a four-wire fence, circled it to where a lantern, hung on a post, revealed a gate that lay flat on the ground to leave a welcoming space for teams and saddle horses to pass through. ”