The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  The Boyle children, kicking and quirting their two horses—riding double, in the Black Rim country, was considered quite comfortable enough for children—were already on their way home. Mary Hope looked at their hurried retreat and turned furiously, meaning to overtake them and order them back. Tom Lorrigan, she reminded herself, might force her to leave the schoolhouse, but he would scarcely dare to carry his abuse farther.

  She had gone perhaps ten rods when came a pounding of hoofs, and Coaley’s head and proudly arched neck heaved alongside poor, draggle-maned old Rab.

  “You’re headed wrong. Have I got to haze yuh all the way home? Might as well. I want to tell yore dad a few things.”

  He twitched the reins, and Coaley obediently shouldered Rab out of the trail and turned him neatly toward the Douglas ranch. Even Rab was Scotch, it would seem. He laid his ears flat, swung his head unexpectedly, and bared his teeth at Coaley. But Coaley was of the Lorrigans. He did not bare his teeth and threaten; he reached out like a rattler and nipped Rab’s neck so neatly that a spot the size of a quarter showed pink where the hair had been. Rab squealed, whirled and kicked, but Coaley was not there at that particular moment. He came back with the battle light in his eyes, and Rab clattered away in a stiff-legged run. After him went Coaley, loping easily, with high, rabbit jumps that told how he would love to show the speed that was in him, if only Tom would loosen the reins a half inch.

  For a mile Tom kept close to Rab’s heels. Then, swinging up alongside, he turned to Mary Hope, that baffling half smile on his lips and the look in his eyes that had never failed to fill her with trepidation.

  “I ain’t blaming yuh for being Scotch and stubborn,” he said, “but you notice there’s something beats it four ways from the jack. Yo go on home, now, and don’t yuh go back to that board cullender till the weather warms up. And tell yore folks that Tom Lorrigan broke up yore school for yuh, so they wouldn’t have to break up a case of pneumonia.”

  Mary Hope was framing a sentence of defiance when Coaley wheeled and went back the way they had come, so swiftly that even with shouting she could not have made herself heard in that whooping wind. She pulled Rab to a willing stand and stared after Tom, hating him with her whole heart. Hating him for his domination of her from the moment he entered the schoolhouse where he had no business at all to be; hating him because even his bullying had been oddly gentle; hating him most of all because he was so like Lance—and because he was not Lance, who was away out in California, going to college, and had never written her one line in all the time he had been gone.

  Had it been Lance who rode up to the schoolhouse door, she would have known how to meet and master the situation. She would not have been afraid of Lance, she told herself savagely. She wouldn’t have been afraid of Tom—but the whole Black Rim was afraid of Tom. Well, just wait until she happened some day to meet Lance! At least she would make him pay! For two years of silence and brooding over his hardihood for taking her to task for her unfriendliness, and for this new and unbearable outrage, she would make Lance Lorrigan pay, if the fates ever let them meet again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE LORRIGAN WAY

  The Lorrigan family was dining comfortably in the light of a huge lamp with a rose-tinted shade decorated with an extremely sinuous wreath of morning glories trailing around the lower rim. A clatter of pots and pans told that Riley was washing his “cookin’ dishes” in the lean-to kitchen that had been added to the house as an afterthought, the fall before. Belle had finished her dessert of hot mince pie, and leaned back now with a freshly lighted cigarette poised in her fingers.

  “What have you got up your sleeve, Tom?” she asked abruptly, handing Duke her silver matchbox in response to a gestured request for it.

  “My arm,” Tom responded promptly, pushing back his wristband to give her the proof.

  “Aw, cut out the comedy, Tom. You’ve been doing something that you’re holding out on us. I know that look in your eye; I ought, having you and Lance to watch. You’re near enough to double in a lead and not even the manager know which is who. You’ve been doing something, and Lance knows what it is. Now, I’ll get it outa you two if I have to shoot it out.”

  Lance, just returned from Berkeley during Easter holidays, lifted one eyebrow at Tom, lowered one lid very slowly, and gave his mother a level, sidelong glance.

  “Your husband, my dear madame, has been engaged in a melodramatic role created by himself. He is painfully undecided whether the hisses of the orchestra attest his success as a villian; whether the whistling up in the gallery demands an encore, or heralds an offering of cabbages and ripe poultry fruit. I myself did not witness the production, but I did chance to meet the star just as he was leaving the stage. To me he confided the fact that he does not know whether it was a one-act farce he put on, or a five-act tragedy played accidentally hind-side before, with the villian-still-pursuing-her act set first instead of fourth. I am but slightly versed in the drama as played in the Black Rim the past two years. Perhaps if the star would repeat his lines—”

  “For-the-Lord-sake, Lance! As a dramatic critic you’re the punkest proposition I ever slammed my door against. Talk the way you were brought up to talk and tell me the truth. What did Tom do, and how did he do it?”

  Lance drew his black eyebrows together, studying carefully the ethics of the case. “Belle, you must remember that Dad is my father. Dad must remember that you are my mother—technically speaking. By heck, if it wasn’t for remembering how you used to chase me up on the barn every day or so with your quirt, I’d swear that you grew up with me and are at this present moment at least two years younger than I am. However, they say you are my mother. And—do you want to know, honestly, what dad has been doing?”

  “I’m going to know,” Belle informed him trenchantly.

  “Then let me tell you. I’ll break it gently. Tom, your husband, the self-confessed father of your offspring, today rode to an alleged schoolhouse, threatened, ordered, and by other felonious devices hazed three Swedes and the four Boyle kids out of the place and toward their several homes and then when the schoolmarm very discreetly locked the door and mildly informed him that she would brain him with a twig off a sage-bush if he burst the lock, he straightway forgot that he was old enough to have a son quite old enough to frighten, abduct and otherwise lighten the monotonous life of said schoolmarm, and became a bold, bad man. He bursted that door off its hinges—”

  “You’re a liar. I busted the lock,” Tom grunted, without removing the cigarette from his lips.

  “He busted the lock of that door, madame; rushed in, wrested the sprig of sage—”

  “It was a club the size of my arm.”

  “Wrested the club from that schoolmarm, brutally and ferociously forced her into her coat and hat, compelled her to mount her horse, and then deliberately drove her away from that—”

  “Shut up, Lance. You remind me of one of those monstrosities they serve in the Lava House, that they call a combination salad. It’s about two-thirds wilted lettuce and the rest beets and carrots. I don’t ever eat them, but if I did they’d taste just like you sound.”

  “Oh, all right, then. With only two weeks’ vacation I won’t have time for a real spree of Black Rim dialect and sober up in time for the University. Let me mix it, Belle. I’ll eat my own verbal combination salad, if anybody has to. I won’t ask you.”

  “You’ll eat ’em, all right,” Tom stated briefly, lifting an eyebrow at him. “All I done, Belle, was to ride up to the Whipple shack to see who was camped there. It was that Douglas girl and the Boyle kids and them Swedes that live over beyond Boyle’s. They was all setting there having school,—with their overcoats on, half froze, and the wind howling through like it was a corral fence. So when the Douglas girl got her Scotch up and said she wouldn’t turn ’em loose to go home, I turned ’em loose myself and told ’em to beat it. And then I hazed her home. Seems like they think that shack is good enough for women and kids; but I wouldn’t keep pi
gs in it, myself, without doing a lot of fixing on it first.”

  “What dad seems to overlook is the attitude Boyle and old Scotty will take, when they hear how Tom Lorrigan broke up school for ’em. There’ll be something drop, if you ask me—I hope it drops before I have to leave.”

  Belle looked at him meditatively. “And where were you, Lance? With Mary Hope?”

  For answer, Lance smiled, with his mouth twisted a little to one side, which made him resemble Tom more than ever. “A fellow sure does hate to have his own father cut in—”

  “So that’s what ails you! Well, you may just as well know first as last that Mary Hope hasn’t spoken to one of us since the time they had Tom up in court for stealing that yearling. You know how they acted; and if you’d come home last summer instead of fooling around in California, you’d know they haven’t changed a darn bit. It’s a shame. I used to like Mary Hope. She always seemed kinda lonesome and half scared—”

  “She’s got over it, then,” Tom interrupted, chuckling. “She’s got spunk enough now for two of her size. Had that club lifted, ready to brain me when I went in, just because I’d spoiled her rules for her. If she had as much sense as she’s got nerve—”

  “Why don’t they build her a schoolhouse, if they want her to teach?” Belle pushed back her chair.

  “Ever know the AJ to spend a cent they didn’t have to?” Duke asked. “Or old Scotty? The Swede ain’t able. How’re they paying her? This ain’t any school district.”

  “So much a head,” Tom answered. “Not much, I reckon. The girl’s got nerve. I’ll say that much for her. She was dodgin’ clods of dirt from the roof, and shivering and teaching to beat hell when I got there.”

  “They’re going to be awful sore at you, Tom, for this,” Belle predicted. “They’re going to say you did it because you hate the Douglases, and it was Mary Hope teaching. Jim Boyle will side with old Scotty, and there’ll be the devil and all to pay. Did you tell those kids why you sent ’em home?”

  “I told the girl. No, I never told the kids. The Swedes had sense enough to beat it when she let ’em out for recess. She got fighty over that, and wouldn’t let the school out and wait for good weather, so I went out and told the Boyle kids to hit for home. Humpin’ cats, somebody had to do something!

  “So then the Scotch come out strong in the girl, and I made her go home too. If I see ’em in that shack tomorrow, and the weather like it is and like it’s going to be, I’ll send ’em home again. What in thunder do I care what old Scotty and Jim Boyle says about it? If they want a woman to learn their kids to read, they’d oughta give her a better place than the Whipple shack to keep school in.”

  “They won’t,” said Belle. “A roof and four walls is all you can expect of them. It’s a shame. I expect Mary Hope is tickled to death to be earning the money, too. She was taking music all winter in Pocatello, I heard, and she and her mother saved up the money in nickels—Lord knows how, the way old Scotty watches them!—to pay for the lessons. It’s a shame.”

  “What do they do for water? Old Man Whipple always hauled it in barrels when he tried to hold down the camp.” Al, tilting back his chair, placidly picking his teeth, spoke for the first time.

  “I didn’t see no water barrel,” Tom answered. “I reckon they make dry camp. They had a stove that smoked, and three benches with some kinda shelf for their books, and the girl was using a strip of tar-paper for a blackboard. But there was no water.”

  “Say, what sort of country is this Black Rim, anyway?” Lance studied the end of his cigarette, lifting his left eyebrow just as his father had done five minutes before. “I hope to heck I haven’t come home to remodel the morals of the country, or to strut around and play college-young-man like a boob; but on the square, folks, it looks to me as though the Rim needs a lesson in citizenship. It doesn’t mean anything in our lives, whether there is a schoolhouse in the country or not. Belle has looked out for us boys, in the matter of learning the rudiments and a good deal besides. Say, Belle, do you know they took my voice and fitted a glee club to it? I was the glee. And a real, live professor told me I had technique. I told him I must have caught it changing climates—but however, what you couldn’t give us with the books, you handed us with the quirt—and here and now I want to say I appreciate it.”

  “All right, I appreciate your appreciation, and I wish to heaven you wouldn’t ramble all over the range when you start to say a thing. That’s one thing you learned in school that I’d like to take outa you with a quirt.”

  “I was merely pointing out how we, ourselves, personally, do not need a schoolhouse. But I was also saying that the Rim ought to have a lesson in real citizenship. They call the Lorrigans bad. All right; that’s a fine running start. I’d say, let’s give ’em a jolt. I’m game to donate a couple of steers toward a schoolhouse—a regular schoolhouse, with the Stars and Stripes on the front end, and a bench behind the door for the water bucket, and a blackboard up in front, and a woodshed behind—with a door into it so the schoolmarm needn’t put on her overshoes and mittens every time she tells one of the Swedes to put a stick of wood in the stove. I’d like to do that, and not say a darn word until it’s ready to move into. And then I’d like to stick my hands in my pockets and watch what the Rim would do about it.

  “I’ve wondered quite a lot, in the last two years, whether it’s the Black Rim or the Lorrigan outfit that’s all wrong. I know all about grandad and all the various and sundry uncles and forbears that earned us the name of being bad; it makes darn interesting stuff to tell now and then to some of the fellows who were raised in a prune orchard and will sit and listen with watering mouths and eyes goggling. I’ve been a hero, months on end, just for the things that my grandad did in the seventies. Of course,” he pulled his lips into their whimsical smile, “I’ve touched up the family biography here and there and made heroes of us all. But the fact remains there are degrees and differences in badness. I’ve a notion that the Black Rim, taken by and large, is a damn sight worse than the Devil’s Tooth outfit. I’d like to try the experiment of making the AJ and old Scotty ashamed of themselves. I’d like to try a schoolhouse on ’em, and see if they’re human enough to appreciate it.”

  Duke, turning his head slowly, glanced at Al, and from him to Tom. Without moving a muscle of their faces the two returned his look. Al slid his cigarette stub thoughtfully into his coffee cup and let his breath out carefully in a long sigh that was scarcely audible. Tom took a corner of his lower lip between his teeth, matching Lance, who had the same trick.

  “Honey, that’s fine of you! There aren’t many that realize what a lot of satisfaction there is in doing something big and generous and making the other fellow ashamed of himself. And it would be a God’s mercy to Mary Hope, poor child. Leave it to the AJ and whatever other outfit there is to send pupils, and Mary Hope could teach in the Whipple shack till it rattled down on top of them. I know what the place is. I put up there once in a hailstorm. It isn’t fit for cattle, as Tom says, unless they’ve fixed it a lot. I’ll donate the furniture; I’ll make out the order right this evening for seats and blackboard and a globe and everything, and make it a rush order!” Belle pushed back her chair and came around to Lance, slipped her arms around his neck and tousled his wavy mop of hair with her chin. “If the rest won’t come through you and I’ll do it, honey—”

  “Who said we wouldn’t?” Tom got up, stretching his arms high above his head,—which was very bad manners, but showed how supple he still was, and how well-muscled. “No one ever called me a piker—and let me hear about it. Sure, we’ll build a schoolhouse for ’em, seeing they’re too cussed stingy to build one themselves. There’s the lumber I had hauled out for a new chicken house; tomorrow I’ll have it hauled up to some good building spot, and we’ll have it done before the AJ wakes up to the fact that anything’s going on.”

  “I’ll chip in enough to make her big enough for dances,” volunteered Duke. “Darn this riding fifteen or twenty miles to a dance!
”

  “I’ll paint ’er, if you let me pick out the color,” said Al. “Where are you going to set ’er?”

  “What’s the matter with doing the thing in style, and giving a house-warming dance, and turning it over to the neighborhood with a speech?” bantered Lance, as they adjourned to the big living room, taking the idea with them and letting it grow swiftly in enthusiasm. “That would celebrate my visit, and I’d get a chance to size up the Rim folks and see how they react to kindness. Lordy, folks, let’s do it!”

  “We might,” Belle considered the suggestion, while she thumbed the latest mail-order catalogue, the size of a family bible and much more assiduously studied. “They’d come, all right!” she added, with a scornful laugh. “Even old Scotty would come, if he thought it wouldn’t cost him anything.”

  “Well, by heck, we won’t let it cost him anything!” Lance stood leaning against the wall by the stove, his arms folded, the fingers of his left hand tapping his right forearm. He did not know that this was a Lorrigan habit, born of an old necessity of having the right hand convenient to a revolver butt, and matched by the habit of carrying a six-shooter hooked inside the trousers band on the left side.

  Tom, studying Lance, thought how much he resembled his grandfather on the night Buck Sanderson was killed in a saloon in Salmon City. Old Tom had leaned against the wall at the end of the bar, with his arms folded and his fingers tapping his right forearm, just as Lance was doing now. He had lifted one eyebrow and pulled a corner of his lip between his teeth when Buck came blustering in. Just as Lance smiled at Duke’s chaffing, Tom’s father had smiled when Buck came swaggering up to him with bold eyes full of fight and his right thumb hooked in his chap belt. Old Tom had not moved; he had remained leaning negligently against the wall with his arms folded. But the strike of a snake was not so quick as the drop of his hand to his gun.