The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  When he reached the place, he saw a man ride out of the brush farther along, into clear moonlight. It was Tom Lorrigan; yes, he was sure of that. 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.

  Later, Tom’s lawyer asked him why he had not spoken to Tom. The AJ man replied that he didn’t know—he wasn’t very close; not close enough for talking unless he hollered.

  That was all very well, and Black Rim perked its ears, thinking that the case looked bad for Tom. Very bad indeed.

  But Tom’s lawyer proved very adroitly that the AJ man had not been in Jumpoff at the time he claimed. He had been with his own outfit, and if he had ridden past Squaw Butte that night he must have gone out from the ranch and come back again. Which led very naturally to the question, Why?

  On the other hand, why had Tom Lorrigan ridden to Squaw Butte that night? He himself explained that later on. He said that he had gone over to see if there was any hide in the willows as Douglas had claimed. He had not found any.

  Thus two men admitted having been in the neighborhood of the stolen hide on that night. Tom’s lawyer was quick to seize the coincidence, and make the most of it. Why, he asked mildly, might not the AJ outfit have stolen the yearling? What was the AJ man doing there? Why not suspect him of having placed the hide in the crevice where it had later been found? That night the hide had been removed from the willows where Douglas had first discovered it. Douglas had gone back the next day after it, and it had been missing. It was not until several days later that he had found it in the crevice. Why assume that Tom Lorrigan had removed it?

  “If I’d set out to caché that hide,” Tom here interposed, “I’d have buried it. Only a darn fool would leave evidence like that laying around in sight.”

  For this the court reprimanded him, but he had seen several of the jury nod their heads, unconsciously agreeing with him. And although his remark was never put on record, it stuck deep in the minds of the jury and had its influence later on. They remembered that the Lorrigans were no fools, and they considered the attempt at concealing the hide a foolish one—not to say childish.

  Tom’s lawyer did not argue openly that a conspiracy had been hatched against Tom Lorrigan, but he so presented the case in his closing argument to the jury that each man believed he saw an angle to the affair which the defense had overlooked. It appeared to the jury to be a “frame-up.” For instance, why had Cheyenne, a Lorrigan man, ridden over to the Douglas ranch and remained outside by the corral for a long time, talking with Aleck Douglas, before he went inside to call on the Douglas girl? Sam Pretty Cow impassively testified to that. He had been riding over to see a halfbreed girl that worked for the Blacks, and he had cut through the Douglas ranch to save time. He saw Cheyenne’s horse at the corral.

  “Me, I dunno what she’s doin’ on that place. Cheyenne, he’s in camp when I’m go. I’m stop by the haystack. I’m see Cheyenne talk to Scotty. That don’t look good, you bet.”

  A full week the trial lasted, while the lawyers wrangled over evidence and technicalities, and the judge ruled out evidence and later ruled it in again. A full week Tom slept in the county jail,—and for all their bad reputation, it was the first time a Lorrigan had lain down behind a bolted door to sleep, had opened his eyes to see the dawn light painting the wall with the shadow of bars.

  There were nights when his optimism failed him, when Tom lay awake trying to adjust himself to the harrying thought that long, caged years might be his portion. Nights when he doubted the skill of his “law-sharp” to free him from the deadweight of the Lorrigan reputation and the malice of his neighbors. 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.”

  “They’ve give me the name, and I ain’t got the game,” cried Tom bitterly, in the quiet of his cell. “Whether I go to the pen or whether I don’t, they better stand from under. They’ll sure know a Lorrigan’s livin’ in the Black Rim before I’m done.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE GAME

  At the long table in the living room of the Devil’s Tooth ranch Tom Lorrigan sat and sharpened an indelible pencil with the razor-edged small blade of his jackknife. On the open space which Tom had cleared with the sweep of his arm, a large-sized tablet of glazed and ruled paper, with George Washington pictured in red and blue and buff on the cover, received the wood parings from the pencil. It may have been significant that Tom was careful in his work and made the pencil very sharp.

  Across the room, Belle swung around on the piano stool and looked at him. “Honey, if you’re going to make out the order to Montgomery, Ward, I’d like to send on for some more music. I’ve been going over that new list—”

  “I ain’t,” said Tom, removing his cigarette from the corner of his mouth and blowing the tiny, blue-painted shavings off George Washington’s face. “You go ahead and make out the order yourself.”

  Belle eyed the pencil-sharpening and sent a keen glance at Tom’s face. “Well, honey, from the way you’re squaring up to that tablet, I thought you was going to send on for a new buckboard and mower.”

  Tom bent his head and blew again, gave George a sardonic grin and turned him face-down on the table, so that the ruled paper lay ready to his hand.

  “Right now I’m going to figure up what that dang spotty yearlin’ of old Scotty’s cost me,” he stated grimly. “And there’s some other Black Rimmers I’ve got a bill against.”

  “Hope you don’t try holding your breath till you collect,” Belle retorted. “Honey, you’d best leave the Black Rimmers alone. I feel as if we’d had enough excitement enough for a while. I wouldn’t start anything more right now, if I was you. Every last one of them is ready to jump on your neck—and the Lord only knows why, unless it’s because you didn’t steal that darned spotted yearling! Some folks sure do love to see the other fellow up to his eyebrows in trouble. They were sitting there in that courtroom just wishing you would be sent up. I saw it in their faces, Tom. And that old rock-hearted Scotchman looked as if he’s just lost two bits when the jury said ‘Not guilty.’”

  “Mh-m—hm-m—that’s what I’m figuring on now,” said Tom, and bent to his problem. “My old dad woulda gone out and shot up a few, but times are changed and we’re all getting so damn civilized we’ve got to stack the cards or quit the game. Belle, what do you reckon it’s worth to a man to be hauled into court and called a cow thief?”

  Belle’s lips pressed together. “I don’t know, Tom—but I know what it would have cost ’em if they had sent you over the road. I had a gun on me, and when that jury foreman stood up to give the verdict, it was looking him in the eye through a buttonhole in my coat. Him and Cheyenne and old Scotty and two or three more would sure have got theirs, if he hadn’t said, ‘Not guilty.’”

  “Lord bless yuh, I knew it all the time. Next time we go to court you’ll leave the artillery at home, old girl. I like to got heart failure there for a minute, till I seen you ease down and lay your hand in your lap.” He looked at her and laughed a little. “I’ve got a bill of damages against several of the folks around here, but I ain’t fool enough to try and collect with a six-gun.”

  He settled h
imself to his task, writing at the top of the page the name of Aleck Douglas and after that “Dr.” A full page he covered with items set against the names of various neighbors. When he had finished he folded the paper neatly and put it away with other important memoranda, picked up his big gray Stetson and went over to kiss Belle full on her red lips, and to smooth her hair, with a reassuring pat on her plump shoulder as a final caress.

  “Don’t you worry none about the Black Rimmers,” he said, “and don’t you worry about me. I’ve got to ride high, wide and handsome now to make up the time and money I lost on account of the spotty yearlin’, and maybe I won’t be home so much. But I ain’t quarreling with my neighbors, nor getting into any kind of ruckus whatever.”

  With the stilted, slightly stiff-legged gait born of long hours in the saddle and of high-heeled riding boots, he walked unhurriedly to the corral where the boys were just driving in a herd of horses.

  Few of them showed saddle marks, all of them snorted and tossed untrimmed manes and tails as they clattered against the stout poles, circling the big corral in a cloud of dust and a thunder of hoof beats. Pulling his hat down over his black brows to secure it against the wind, Tom climbed the corral fence and straddled the top rail that he might scan the herd.

  “Pretty good-looking bunch, dad,” said Al, reining up beside Tom. “We had to ride some to get ’em in—they’re sure snuffy. What you going to do with ’em? Break out a few?”

  “Some. Did yuh take notice, Al, that Coaley come within an ace of sending me over the road? That there AJ man swore to the horse when he wouldn’t never have swore to me, but they all took it as a cinch it was me he saw, because nobody else ever rides Coaley. And by the Lord John, Al, that’s the last time any man’s going to swear to me in the dark by the horse I’m ridin’. The Devil’s Tooth outfit is going to have a lot more saddle horses broke gentle than what they’ve got now. And just between me and you, Al, any more night-ridin’ that’s done in this outfit ain’t going to be done on cayuses that can be told a mile off on a dark night!”

  “You’re durn tootin’, dad.” Al grinned while he moistened the edge of his rolled cigarette. “I thought at the time that Coaley was liable to be a damn expensive horse for you to be ridin’.” His eyes traveled over the restless herd, singling out this horse and that for brief study. “There’s some right speedy stuff in that bunch,” he said. “They’ve got the look of stayers, some of ’em. Take that there bay over there by the post: He’s got a chest on him like a lion—and look at them legs! There’d be a good horse for you, dad.”

  “One, maybe.” Tom spat into the dust and, impelled by Al’s example, drew his own cigarette papers from his shirt pocket. “I’m thinkin’ of breakin’ all we’ve got time for this summer. Darn this here makin’ one horse your trademark!”

  Up at the house, Riley appeared in the kitchen doorway and gave a long halloo while he wiped his big freckled hand on his flour-sack apron. “Hoo-ee! Come an’ git it!” He waited a moment, until he saw riders dismounting and leading their horses into the little corral. Then he turned back to pour the coffee into the big, thick, white cups standing in single file around the long oil-cloth-covered table in the end of the kitchen nearest the side door where the boys would presently come trooping in to slide loose-jointedly into their places on the long, shiny benches.

  Tom pinched out the blaze of his match and threw one long leg back over the corral fence. His glance went to the riders beyond the big corral.

  “Where’s Lance at!” he called to Al, who was riding around to the little corral.

  “You can search me. He quit us when we got the horses into the corral, and rode off up the Slide trail. If I was to make a guess, I would say that he went to meet Mary Hope. They been doing that right frequent ever since she quit coming here. ’Tain’t no skin off my nose—but Lance, he’s buildin’ himself a mess uh trouble with old Scotty, sure as you’re a foot high.”

  “Darn fool kid—let the old folks git to scrappin’ amongst themselves, and the young ones start the lovemakin’! I never knowed it to fail; but you can skin me for a coyote if I know what makes ’em do it.” Grumbling to himself, Tom climbed down and followed Al. “You can tell Riley I’ll be late to dinner,” he said, when he had come up to where Al was pulling the saddle off his horse. “I ain’t much on buttin’ into other folks’ love affairs, but I reckon it maybe might be a good idea to throw a scare into them two. I’m plumb sick of Scotch—wouldn’t take it in a highball right now if you was to shove one under my nose!”

  Al laughed, looking over his shoulder at Tom while he loosened the latigo. “If you can throw a scare into Lance, you sure are a dinger,” he bantered. “That youth is some heady.”

  “Looks to me like it runs in the family,” Tom retorted. “You’re some heady yourself, if you ever took notice. And I don’t give a damn how heady any of you kids are; you can’t run any rannies on your dad, and you want to put that down in your little red book so you won’t forgit it!”

  He led Coaley from the stable, mounted and rode away up the Slide trail, more than half ashamed of his errand. To interfere in a love affair went against the grain, but to let a Lorrigan make love to a Douglas on the heels of the trial was a pill so bitter that he refused to swallow it.

  He urged Coaley up the trail, his eyes somber with resentment whenever he saw the fresh hoofprints of Lance’s horse in the sandy places. Of the three boys, Lance was his favorite, and it hurt him to think that Lance had so little of the Lorrigan pride that he would ride a foot out of his way to speak to any one of the Douglas blood.

  Up the Slide went Coaley, his head held proudly erect upon his high, arched neck, his feet choosing daintily the little rough places in the rock where long experience had taught him he would not slip. Big as Tom was, Coaley carried him easily and reached the top without so much as a flutter in the flanks to show that the climb had cost him an effort.

  “It’s a dang darn shame I got to straddle strange horses just because there ain’t another in the country like you, Coaley,” he muttered, leaning forward to smooth the silky hide under the crinkly mane. “It’s going to set hard, now I’m tellin’ yuh, to throw my saddle on some plain, ordinary cayuse. But it’s a bet I can’t afford to overlook; they made that plain enough.”

  Coaley pricked up his ears and looked, his big, bright eyes taking in the shadow of a horse beside a clump of wild currant bushes that grew in the very base of the Devil’s Tooth. Tom grunted and rode over that way, Coaley walking slowly, his knees bending springily like a dancer feeling out his muscles.

  Lance stood with his back toward them. His hat was pushed far back on his head, and he was looking at Mary Hope, who leaned against the rock and stared down into the valley below. Her hair, Tom observed, was not “slicked back” today. It had been curled a little, probably on rags twisted in after she had gone to bed and taken out before she arose in the morning, lest her mother discover her frivolity and lecture her long,—and, worse still, make her wet a comb and take all of the curl out. A loose strand blew across her tanned cheek, so that she reached up absently and tucked it behind her ear, where it would not stay for longer than a minute.

  “I am sure I didna know you would be here,” she said, without taking her eyes off the valley. “It is a view I like better than most, and I have a right to ride where I please. And I have no wish to ride out of my way to be friends with any one that tried to make my father out a liar and an unjust man. He may be hard, but he is honest. And that is more than some—”

  “More than some can say—us Lorrigans, for instance!”

  “I didna say that, but if the coat fits, you can put it on.”

  Mary Hope bit her lip and lashed a weed with her quirt. “All of this is none of my doing,” she added, with a dullness in her voice that may have meant either regret or resentment. “You hate my father, and you are mad because I canna side with you and hate him too. I am sorry the trouble came up, but I canna see how you expect me to go on coming
to see your mither when you know my father would never permit it.”

  “You say that like you were speaking a piece. How long did you lay awake last night, making it up? You can’t make me swallow that, anyway. Your father never permitted you to come in the first place, and you know it. You made believe that old skate ran away with you down the trail, and that you couldn’t stop him. You’ve been coming over to our place ever since, and you never asked old Scotty whether he would permit it or not. I’m not saying anything about myself, but it hurts Belle to have you throw her down right now. Under the circumstances it makes her feel as if you thought we were thieves and stole your dad’s yearling.”

  “I’m not saying anything like that.”

  “Maybe you’re not, but you sure are acting it. If you don’t think that, why don’t you go on taking music lessons from Belle? What made you stop, all of a sudden?”

  “That,” said Mary Hope stiffly, “is my own affair, Lance Lorrigan.”

  “It’s mine, let me tell you. It’s mine, because it hits Belle; and what hits her hits me. If you think she isn’t good enough for you to visit, why in thunder have you been coming all this while? She isn’t any worse than she was two months ago, is she?”

  “I’m not saying that she is.”

  “Well, you’re acting it, and that’s a darn sight worse.”

  “You ought to know that with all this trouble between your father and my father—”

  “Well, can you tell me when they ever did have any truck together? Your father doesn’t hate our outfit a darn bit worse than he ever did. He found a chance to knife us, that’s all. It isn’t that he never wanted to before.”