by B. M. Bower
He stopped again on the high level where he could look back and see the Whipple shack squatted forlornly in the gray stretch of sage with wide, brown patches of dead grass between the bushes.
“Lonesome,” he named the wild expanse of unpeopled range land. “She’s terribly lonely—and sweet. Too lonely and sweet for me to play with, to ride a few miles with—and leave her lonelier than I found her. I couldn’t. There’s enough sadness now in those Scotch blue eyes. Damned if I’ll add more!”
He saw Mary Hope come from the shack, pause a minute on the doorstep, then walk out to where her horse was tied to the post. He lifted the reins, pricked his horse gently with the spurs and galloped away to Jumpoff, singing no more.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHE WILL, AND SHE WON’T
Cottonwood Spring was a dished-out oasis just under the easy slope of Devil’s Tooth Ridge. From no part of the Jumpoff trail could it be seen, and the surrounding slope did not offer much inducement to cattle in March, when water was plentiful; wherefore riders would scarcely wander into the saucer-like hollow that contained the cottonwoods and the spring. A picnic had once been held there, but the festivities had been marred by a severe thunderstorm that came just as a wordy quarrel between two drunken cowpunchers was fast nearing the gun-pulling stage. Lightning had struck the side hill just beyond the grove, and the shock of it had knocked down and stunned the two disputants, and three saddle horses standing in the muddy overflow from the spring. For this reason, perhaps, and because it was on Lorrigan land, the place had never thereafter been frequented save by the stock that watered there.
But from the head of the little basin a wide view was had of the broken land beyond Devil’s Tooth. The spring was clear and cold and never affected by drouth. By following the easy slope around the point of the main trail from Jumpoff to the Lorrigan ranch, no road-building was necessary, and in summer the cottonwoods looked very cool and inviting—though at certain times they harbored buffalo gnats and many red ants that would bite, which rendered the shade less grateful than it looked. But to the Lorrigans it seemed an ideal site for a schoolhouse.
Ten days after they had planned the deed, the schoolhouse stood ready for the dance. In the lean-to shed, twelve shiny yellow desks that smelled strongly of varnish were stacked in their heavy paper swaddlings, waiting to be set in place when the dance was done. Belle herself had hemmed scrim curtains for the windows, which Riley had washed copiously. The blackboard, with the names of various Devil’s Tooth men and a “motto” or two scrawled upon it was in place; the globe was on the teacher’s desk, and the water bucket on its shelf in the corner, with a shiny new tin dipper hanging on a nail above it.
If you were to believe the frequent declarations, every puncher on the ranch had done his durnedest to put ’er up, and put ’er up right. 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 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.
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.
Beside the schoolhouse, with two lanterns shedding a yellow glow on his thin, sandy hair, Riley, at the chuck-wagon, arranged doughnuts, sandwiches, pies and cakes to his liking, wiped his red hands frequently on his clean flour-sack apron, and held carefully unprofane conversation with the women who came fluttering over to him, their arms burdened.
“No, mom, sorry! I know I’m turnin’ down something that’s better than anything I got here, but this here party’s on the Lorrigans. No, mom, I got orders not to take in s’much as a sour pickle from nobody. You jest put it back in the rig, whatever you got there, and consider’t you got some Sat’day bakin’ did up ahead.
“Yes, mom, it’s Lance’s party. He’s home for a visit, an’ he kinda wanted to have a dance an’ meet the folks, seein’ he’s been away quite a spell and kain’t stay long.
“Yes, mom, he’s goin’ back to college first the week.
“Hey! I wisht you’d tie up yore cayuses other side the shack. Folks’ll be comin’ around here for their supper, and they don’t wanta git their faces kicked off whilst they’re huntin’ grub to fill ’em.
“No, mom, we ain’t takin’ any cakes or nothin’ off nobody. Lance, he wanted to give this dance an’ give it right. Ain’t goin’ to cost nobody a thing but sore corns, t’night!”
Lance had hired an Italian violinist and his boy who played a harp much taller than himself and people coming from Jumpoff had brought them out. The Millers had come, with all their outfit. The AJ outfit was there to a man. The Swedes were present, sitting together in the corner by the water bucket, and the Conleys, who lived over by Camas Creek beyond the AJ, had come. The Conleys had sheep, and were not firmly settled in the Black Rim, sheepmen being looked at askance. There were families from nearer Jumpoff,—one really did wonder where they all came from, when the country seemed so wide and unpeopled.
Lance was surprised to see how many were there who were total strangers. Until the dancing began the men stood outside and smoked, leaving the women and children to arrange themselves on benches along the wall inside. Lance knew the custom well enough, and he did not go in. But he tried to see who came with every load that was deposited within the circle of light on the narrow platform that embellished the front.
At nine o’clock, when the musicians were trying their instruments tentatively and even the most reluctant male was being drawn irresistibly to the humming interior, Lance frankly admitted to himself that he was not happy, and that his condition was the direct result of not having seen Mary Hope enter the door.
He sought out Tom, who was over at the chuck-wagon, taking an early cup of coffee. Tom blew away the steam that rose on the chill night air and eyed Lance. “Well, when do we make the speech? Or don’t we?” he demanded, taking a gulp and finding the coffee still too hot for comfort. “Don’t ask me to; I done my share when I built ’er. You can tell the bunch what she’s for.”
“Oh, what the heck do we want with a speech?” Lance remonstrated. “They know it’s a schoolhouse, unless they’re blind. And I thought maybe some one—you, probably, since you’re the one who hazed her out of the other place—would just tell Mary Hope to bring her books over here and teach. And I thought, to cinch it, you could tell Jim Boyle that you felt you ought to do something toward a school, and since you couldn’t furnish any kids, you thought you’d furnish the house. That ought to be easy. It’s up to you, I should say. But I wouldn’t make any speech.”
Tom grunted, finished his coffee and proceeded to remove all traces of it from his lips with his best white handkerchief. “Where’s Jim Boyle at?” he asked, moving into the wide bar of dusk that lay between the lights of the chuck-wagon and the glow from the two windows facing that way.
“I believe I’d speak about it first to Mary Hope,” Lance suggested, coming behind him. “But she hasn’t come yet—”
As if she heard and deliberately moved to contradict him, Mary Hope danced past the window, the hand of a strange young man with a crisp white handkerchief pressed firmly between her shoulder blades. Mary Hope was dancing almost as solemnly as in the days of short skirts and sleek hair, her eyes apparently fixed upon the shoulder of her partner who gazed straight out over her head, h
is whole mind centered upon taking the brunt of collisions upon the point of his upraised elbow.
“I’ll ketch her when she’s through dancing,” promised Tom. But Lance had another thought.
“Let me tell Mary Hope, dad. I’m going to dance with her, and it will be easy.”
In the darkness Tom grinned and went on to find Jim Boyle standing in a group of older men on the platform that served as a porch. Jim Boyle was smoking a cheap cigar brought out from Jumpoff by the section boss. He listened reflectively, looked at the glowing tip of the evil-smelling cigar, threw the thing from him and reached for his cigarette papers with an oath.
“Now, that’s damn white of yuh, Tom,” he said. “I leave it to the boys if it ain’t damn white. Not having no school district I’m puttin’ up the money outa my own pocket to pay the teacher. And havin’ four kids to feed and buy clothes for, I couldn’t afford to build no schoolhouse, I tell yuh those. And uh course, I didn’t like to go round askin’ fer help; but it’s damn white of yuh to step in an’ do yore share towards making the Rim look like it was civilized. Sederson, he’ll feel the same way about it. And I’m gitting a foreman that’s got a kid, school age; we sure’n hell do need a schoolhouse. Rim’s settlin’ up fast. I always said, Tom, that you was white. I leave it to the boys here.”
Inside, Lance was not finding it so easy to make the announcement. Last Tuesday, Mary Hope had not understood just why he had ridden on ahead of her for two miles—she could see the small dust cloud kicked up by his horse on the Jumpoff trail, so there could be no mistake—when he knew perfectly well that she must ride that way, when he could not have failed to see her horse saddled and waiting at the door. It seemed to Mary Hope an obscure form of mockery to tell her not to be lonely—to tell her in a caressing tone that left with her all the effect of kisses—and then to ride away without one backward glance, one word of excuse. Until she had mounted and had seen him on the trail ahead, she had not realized how he had mocked her.
For days—until Friday, to be explicit—she had been quite determined not to go near Cottonwood Spring. Then she had suddenly changed her mind, dismissed school half an hour early, put old Rab in a lather on the way home, dressed herself and announced to her mother that she must ride into Jumpoff for school supplies, and that she would stay all night with the Kennedys. It had taken two years and the dignity of school-teacher to give Mary Hope the courage to announce things to her mother. As it was, she permitted her mother to explain as best she might to Hugh Douglas. Her courage did not reach to that long, uncompromising upper lip of her father’s.
She had folded her prettiest dress carefully into a flat bundle, had thrown it out of her window and left the house in her riding clothes. There was a saddle horse, Jamie, a Roman-nosed bay of uncertain temper and a high, rocking gait, which she sometimes used for long trips. She saddled him now and hurried away, thankful to be gone with her package and her guilty conscience before her father arrived. She was very good friends with the Kennedys, at the section house. If there was a dance within forty miles, the Kennedys might be counted upon to attend; and that is how Mary Hope arrived at the schoolhouse with a load from Jumpoff. She had seen Lance standing near the door, and Lance had paid no attention to her, but had left an AJ man to claim the first two-step. Wherefore Lance walked straight into trouble when he went to Mary Hope and asked for the next dance with her.
“So sorry—it’s promised already,” said Mary Hope, in her primmest tone.
“There’s a dance after the next one,” he hinted, looking down from his more-than-six feet at her where she sat wedged between Mrs. Boyle and Jennie Miller.
“So sorry—but I think that one is promised also,” said Mary Hope.
Lance drew a corner of his lip between his teeth, let it go and lifted his eyebrows whimsically at Jennie Miller, whom he had once heard playing on her organ, and whom he had detested ever since with an unreasoning animosity born solely of her musical inability and her long neck that had on its side a brown mole with three coarse hairs in it.
“If Miss Douglas has two dances engaged in advance, it’s quite hopeless to hope for a dance with Miss Miller,” he said, maliciously drawing the sentence through certain vibrant tones which experience had taught him had a certain pleasing effect upon persons. “Or is it hopeless? Are you engaged for every dance tonight, Miss Miller? And if you are, please may I stand beside you while you eat a sandwich at midnight?”
Jennie Miller giggled. “I ain’t as popular as all that,” she retorted, glancing at Mary Hope, sitting very straight and pretty beside her. “And if I was, I don’t go and promise everybody that asks. I might want to change my mind afterwards if some other fellow comes along I liked better—and I’ve saw too many fights start over a girl forgetting who she’s promised to dance with.”
“You don’t want to see a fight start now, do you?” Lance smiled down at her without in the least degree betraying to Mary Hope that he would like to pull Jennie Miller by force from that seat and occupy it himself.
“I never can see why men fight over things. I hate fights,” Miss Miller stammered, agitated by a wild feeling that perhaps she was going to be made love to.
“Then don’t forget that you are going to dance with me.” The music just then started again, and he offered her his arm with a certain import that made Mary Hope clench her hands.
Mary Hope was punished for her lie. She had not promised that dance, and so she sat on the 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.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A WAY HE HAD WITH HIM
It was at the chuck-wagon at midnight, while Riley and Sam Pretty Cow were serving tin cups of black coffee to a shuffling, too-hilarious crowd, that Lance next approached Mary Hope. She was standing on the outskirts of a group composed mostly of women, quite alone so far as cavaliers were concerned, for the gawky youth had gone after coffee. She was looking toward the sagebrush camp-fire around which a crowd of men had gathered with much horseplay at which they were laughing loudly, and she was wondering how best she could make Lance Lorrigan aware of her absolute indifference to him, when his voice drawled disconcertingly close to her ear:
“You’re not lonely now, you girl—and you did find a secret at Cottonwood Spring. A pleasant little secret, wasn’t it?”
Mary Hope’s hands became fists at her side, held close against her best frock. “I think the fellows over by the fire have discovered your pleasant secret,” she said, and did not turn her face toward him.
With his arms folded and his eyebrows pulled together and his lip between his teeth, Lance stared down at her face, studying it in the flicker of the distant firelight and the two lanterns. If her combativeness roused in him any resentment, he did not permit it to show in his voice.
“Some of the fellows from Jumpoff brought a bottle or two. That’s no secret, except that I don’t know where they have it cachéd. The schoolhouse is your—”
“I heard it was included in the Lorrigan refreshments.”
“The schoolhouse is ready for your pleasure Monday morning,” Lance spoke with that perfect impersonal courtesy that is so exasperating to a person who listens for something to resent. “I knew of it, of course—dad wanted it kept for a surprise. And he wanted me to tell you. It’s the Lorrigan expression of their appreciation of the need of a school.”
The gawky youth came stumbling up, his outstretched hands carefully holding two tin cups filled with coffee close to the boiling point. Being a youth of good intentions, he tried very hard not to spill a drop. Being gawky, he stubbed his toe as he was rounding the group of women, and M
rs. Miller shrieked and swung back her hand, cuffing the gawky one straight into the thickest of the crowd. Other women screamed.
Lance reached a long arm and plucked the youth out by the slack of his coat, shook him and propelled him into the darkness, where he collided violently with Sam Pretty Cow. Some one had been over-generous with Sam Pretty Cow. A drunken Indian is never quite safe. Sam Pretty Cow struck out blindly, yelling Piegan curses hoarsely as he fought. The crowd of men around the camp-fire came running. For a short space there was confusion, shouting, the shrill voices of scalded women denouncing the accident as a deliberate outrage.
Mrs. Miller whirled on Lance. “You pushed him on me! If that ain’t a Lorrigan trick!—”
“Yeah—what yuh mean? Throwin’ bilin’ hot coffee on—”
“Who says it’s a Lorrigan trick?”
“Might ’a’ known what to expect—”
“Get back here, away from the crowd. 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! That kid never—”
“Aw, come back and fight, you big sneak!” A drunken voice bellowed hoarsely, and a gunshot punctuated the command.
“Go on—get on the other side of the schoolhouse. Run! The fools will all start to shooting now!”
Mary Hope stopped stubbornly. “I will not!” she defied him; and Lance without more argument lifted her from the ground, stooped and tossed her under the wagon, much as he would have heaved a bag of oats out of the rain.