The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  At four-thirty however the task was accomplished. At the spring, Lance scrubbed the water bucket clean, washed the dipper, placed them behind the door. He got wearily into the borrowed fur coat, took a last comprehensive survey of the room from the doorway, went back to erase certain sentences scrawled on the blackboard by some would-be humorist, took another look at the work of his aching hands, and went away with the coffeepot in his hand and the screwdriver showing its battered wooden handle from the top of his pocket. He was too tired to feel any glow of accomplishment, any great joy in the thought of Mary Hope’s pleasure. He was not even sure that she would feel any pleasure.

  His chief emotion was a gloomy satisfaction in knowing that the place was once more presentable, that it was ready for Mary Hope to hang up her hat and ring her little bell and start right in teaching. That what the Lorrigans had set out to do, the Lorrigans had done.

  At the ranch he found Riley at the bunk house wrangling with the boys over his lost wardrobe. In Riley’s opinion it was a darned poor idea of a darned poor joke, and it took a darned poor man to perpetrate it. Lance’s arrival scarcely interrupted the jangle of voices. The boys had bruises of their own to nurse, and they had scant sympathy for Riley, and they told him so.

  Lance went into the house. He supposed he would have to replace Riley’s clothes, which he did, very matter-of-factly and without any comment whatever, restitution being in this case a mere matter of sorting out three suits of his own underwear, which were much better than Riley’s, and placing them on the cook’s bed.

  “That you, Lance? Where in the world have you been all this while? I came mighty near going gunning after the man that stole my team, let me tell you—and I would have, if Tom hadn’t found your horse tied up to the fence and guessed you’d gone to take Mary Hope home. But I must say, honey, you never followed any short cut!”

  This was much easier than Lance had expected, so he made shift to laugh, though it hurt his lip cruelly. “Had to take her to Jumpoff, Belle. Then I had to clean up that crowd of toughs that—”

  “You cleaned up Tom’s leavin’s, then!” Belle made grim comment through Lance’s closed door. “I didn’t think there was enough left of ’em to lick, by the time our boys got through. Haven’t you been to bed yet, for heaven’s sake!”

  “I’m going to bed,” mumbled Lance, “when I’ve had a bath and a meal. And tomorrow, Belle, I think I’ll hit the trail for ’Frisco. Hope you don’t mind if I leave a few days early. I’ve got to stop off anyway to see a fellow in Reno I promised—any hot water handy?”

  There was a perceptible pause before Belle answered, and then it was not about the bath water. She would not have been Belle Lorrigan if she had permitted a quiver in her voice, yet it made Lance thoughtful.

  “Honey, I don’t blame you for going. I expect we are awful rough—and you’d notice it, coming from civilized folks. But—you know, don’t you, that the Lorrigans never spoiled your party for you? It—it just happened that the Jumpoff crowd brought whisky out from town. We tried to make it pleasant—and it won’t happen again—”

  “Bless your heart!” Clad with superb simplicity in a bathrobe, Lance appeared unexpectedly and gathered her into his arms. “If you think I’m getting so darn civilized I can’t stay at home, take a look at me! By heck, Belle, I’ll bet there isn’t a man in the whole Black Rim that got as much fun out of that scrap as I did! But I’ve got to go.” He patted her reassuringly on the head, laid his good cheek against hers for a minute and turned abruptly away into his own room. He closed the door and stood absent-mindedly feeling his swollen hand. “I’ve got to go,” he repeated under his breath. “I might get foolish if I stayed. Darned if I’ll make a fool of myself over any girl!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ABOUT A PIANO

  In the lazy hour just after a satisfying dinner, Lance stood leaning over an end of the piano, watching Belle while she played—he listened and smoked a cigarette and looked as though he hadn’t a thing on his mind.

  “I remember you used to sing that a lot for the little Douglas girl,” he observed idly. “She used to sit and look at you—my word, but her eyes were the bluest, the lonesomest eyes I ever saw! She seemed to think you were next to angels when you sang. I saw it in her face, but I was too much of a kid then to know what it was.” He lighted a fresh cigarette, placed it between Belle’s lips so that she need not stop playing while she smoked, and laughed as if he were remembering something funny.

  “She always looked so horrified when she saw you smoking,” he said. “And so adoring when you sang, and so lonesome when she had to ride away. She was a queer kid—and she’s just as unexpected now—just as Scotch. Didn’t you find her that way, dad?”

  “She was Scotch enough,” Tom mumbled from his chair by the fire. “Humpin’ hyenas! She was like handlin’ a wildcat!”

  “The poor kid never did have a chance to be human,” said Belle, and ceased playing for a moment. “Good heavens, how she did enjoy the two hours I gave her at the piano! She’s got the makings of a musician, if she could keep at it.”

  “We-ell—” Having artfully led Belle to this point, Lance quite as artfully edged away from it. “You gave her all the chance you could. And she ought to be able to go on, if she wants to. I suppose old Scotty’s human enough to get her something to play on.”

  “Him? Human!” Tom shifted in his chair. “If pianos could breed and increase into a herd, and he could ship a carload every fall, Scotty might spend a few dollars on one.”

  “It’s a darned shame,” Belle exclaimed, dropping her fingers to the keys again. “Mary Hope just starves for everything that makes life worth living. And that old devil—”

  “Say—don’t make me feel like a great, overgrown money-hog,” Lance protested. “A girl starving for music, because she hasn’t a piano to play on. And a piano costs, say, three or four hundred dollars. Of course, we’ve got the money to buy one—I suppose I could dig up the price myself. I was thinking I’d stake our schoolhouse to a library. That’s something it really needs. But a piano—I wish you hadn’t said anything about starving. I know I’d hate to go hungry for music, but—”

  “Well, humpin’ hyenas! I’ll buy the girl a piano. I guess it won’t break the outfit to pay out a few more dollars, now we’ve started. We’re outlaws, anyway—might as well add one more crime to the list. Only, it don’t go to the Douglas shack—it goes into the schoolhouse. Lance, you go ahead and pick out some books and ship ’em on to the ranch, and I’ll see they get over there. Long as we’ve started fixin’ up a school, we may as well finish the job up right. By Henry, I’ll show the Black Rim that there ain’t anything small about the Lorrigans, anyway!”

  “Dad, I think you’re showin’ yourself a real sport,” Lance laughed. “We-ell, if you’re game to buy a piano, I’m game to buy books. We staked Black Rim to a school, so we’ll do the job right. And by the way, Belle, if you’re going to get me to Jumpoff in time for that evening train, don’t you think it’s about time you started?”

  That is how it happened that Mary Hope walked into the schoolhouse one Monday and found a very shiny new piano standing across one corner of the room where the light was best. On the top was a pile of music. In another corner of the room stood a bookcase and fifty volumes; she counted them in her prim, frugal way that she had learned from her mother. They were books evidently approved by some Board of Education for school libraries, and did not interest her very much. Not when a piano stood in the other corner.

  She was early, so she opened it and ran her fingers over the keys. She knew well enough who had brought it there, and her mouth was pressed into a straight line, her eyes were troubled.

  The Lorrigans—always the Lorrigans! Why did they do these things when no one expected goodness or generosity from them? Why had they built the schoolhouse—and then given a dance where every one got drunk and the whole thing ended in a fight? Every one said it was the Lorrigans who had brought the whisky. Some on
e told her they had a five-gallon keg of it in the shed behind the schoolhouse, and she thought it must be true, the way all the men had acted. And why had they burned the Whipple shack and all the school books, so that she could not have school until more books were bought?—an expense which the Swedes, at least, could ill afford.

  Why had Lance taken her to Jumpoff, away from the fighting, and then gone straight to the saloon and gotten so drunk that he fought every one in town before he left in the morning? Why had he never come near her again? And now that he was back in California, why did he ignore her completely, and never send so much as a picture postal to show that he gave her a thought now and then?

  Mary Hope would not play the piano that day. She was more stern than usual with her pupils, and would not so much as answer them when they asked her where the piano and all the books had come from. Which was a foolish thing to do, since the four Boyle children were keen enough to guess, and sure to carry the news home, and to embellish the truth in true range-gossip style.

  Mary Hope fully decided that she would have the piano hauled back to the Lorrigans. Later, she was distressed because she could think of no one who would take the time or the trouble to perform the duty, and a piano she had to admit is not a thing you can tie behind the cantle of your saddle, or carry under your arm. The books were a different matter. They were for the school. But the piano—well, the piano was for Mary Hope Douglas, and Mary Hope Douglas did not mean to be patronized in this manner by Lance Lorrigan or any of his kin.

  But she was a music-hungry little soul, and that night after she was sure that the children had ridden up over the basin’s brim and were out of hearing, Mary Hope sat down and began to play. When she began to play she began to cry, though she was hardly conscious of her tears. She seemed to hear Lance Lorrigan again, saying, “Don’t be lonely, you girl. Take the little pleasant things that come—” She wondered, in a whispery, heart-achey way, if he had meant the piano when he said that. If he had meant—just a piano, and a lot of books for school!

  * * * *

  The next thing that she realized was that the light was growing dim, and that her throat was aching, and that she was playing over and over a lovesong that had the refrain:

  “Come back to me, sweetheart, and love me as before––

  Come back to me, sweetheart, and leave me nevermore!”

  Which was perfectly imbecile, a song she had always hated because of its sickly sentimentality. She had no sweetheart, and having none, she certainly did not want him back. But she admitted that there was a certain melodious swing to the tune, and that her fingers had probably strayed into the rhythm of it while she was thinking of something totally different.

  The next day she played a little at noontime for the children, and when school was over she played for two hours. And the next day after that slipped away—she really had meant to ride over to the AJ, or send a note by the children, asking Jim Boyle if he could please remove the piano and saying that she felt it was too expensive a gift for the school to accept from the Lorrigans.

  On the third day she really did send a prim little note to Jim Boyle, and she received a laconic reply, wholly characteristic of the Black Rim’s attitude toward the Devil’s Tooth outfit.

  “Take all you can git and git all you can without going to jale. That’s what the Lorrigans are doing, Yrs truly,

  “J. A. Boyle.”

  It was useless to ask her father. She had known that all along. When Alexander Douglas slipped the collars up on the necks of his horses, he must see where money would be gained from the labor. And there was no money for the Douglas pocket in hauling a piano down the Devil’s Tooth Ridge.

  But the whole Black Rim was talking about it. Mary Hope felt sure that they were saying ill-natured things behind her back. Never did she meet man or woman but the piano was mentioned. Sometimes she was asked, with meaning smiles, how she had come to stand in so well with the Devil’s Tooth. She knew that they were all gossiping of how Lance Lorrigan had taken her home from the dance, with Belle Lorrigan’s bronco team. She had been obliged to return a torn coat to Mrs. Miller, and to receive her own and a long lecture on the wisdom of choosing one’s company with some care. She had been obliged to beg Mrs. Miller not to mention the matter to her parents, and the word had gone round, and had reached Mother Douglas—and you can imagine how pleasant that made home for Mary Hope.

  Because she was lonely, and no one seemed willing to take it away, she kept the piano. She played it, and while she played she wept because the Rim folk simply would not understand how little she wanted the Lorrigans to do things for her. And then, one day, she hit upon a plan of redeeming herself, for regaining the self-respect she felt was slipping from her with every day that the piano stood in the schoolhouse.

  She would give a series of dances—they would be orderly, well-behaved dances, with no refreshments stronger than coffee and lemonade!—and she would sell tickets, and invite every one she knew, and beg them to come and help to pay for the school piano.

  Even her mother approved that plan, though she did not approve dances. “But the folk are that sinfu’ they canna bide wi’ any pleasure save the hoppin’ aboot wi’ their arms around the waist of a woman,” she sighed. “A church social wad be far more tae my liking, Hope—if we had only a church!”

  “Well, since there isn’t any church, and people won’t go to anything but a dance, I shall have to get the money with dances,” Mary Hope replied with some asperity. The subject was beginning to wear her nerves. “Pay for it I shall, if it takes all my teacher’s salary for five years! I wish the Lorrigans had minded their own business. I’ve heard nothing but piano ever since it came there. I hate the Lorrigans! Sometimes I almost hate the piano.”

  “Ye shud hae thought on all that before ye accepit a ride home wi’ young Lance, wi’ a coat ye didna own on your back, and disobedience in your heart. ’Tis the worst of them a’ ye chose to escort ye, Hope, and if he thought he could safely presume to gi’ ye a present like yon piano, ye hae but yersel’ tae blame for it.”

  “He didn’t give it!” cried Mary Hope, her eyes ablaze with resentment. “He wasna here when it came. I havena heard from him and I dinna want to hear from him. It was Belle Lorrigan gave the piano, as I’ve said a million times. And I shall pay for it—”

  “Not from your ain pocket will ye pay. Ye can give the dance—and if ye make it the Fourth of July, with a picnic in the grove, and a dance in the schoolhouse afterwards, ’tis possible Jeanie may come up from Pocatello wi’ friends—and twa dollars wad no be too much to ask for a day and a night of entertainment.”

  “Well, mother! When you do—” Mary Hope bit her tongue upon the remainder of the sentence. She had very nearly told her mother that when she did choose to be human she had a great head for business.

  It was a fine, practical idea, and Mary Hope went energetically about its development. She consulted Mrs. Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy also had friends in Pocatello, and she obligingly gave the names of them all. She strongly advised written invitations, with a ticket enclosed and the price marked plainly. She said it was a crying shame the way the Lorrigans had conducted their dance, and that Mary Hope ought to be very careful and not include any of that rough bunch in this dance.

  “Look how that young devil, Lance Lorrigan, abused my Bill, right before everybody!” she cited, shifting her youngest child, who was teething, to her hip that she might gesticulate more freely. “And look how they all piled into our crowd and beat ’em up! Great way to do—give a dance and then beat up the folks that come to it! And look at what Lance done right here in town—as if it wasn’t enough, what they done out there! Bill’s got a crick in his back yet, where Lance knocked him over the edge of a card table. You pay ’em for the piano, Hope; I’ll help yuh scare up a crowd. But don’t you have none of the Lorrigans, or there’ll be trouble sure!”

  Mary Hope flushed. “I could hardly ask the Lorrigans to come and help pay for their own present,” she poi
nted out in her prim tone. “I had never intended to ask the Lorrigans.”

  “Well, maybe not. But if you did ask them, I know lots of folks that wouldn’t go a step—and my Bill’s one,” said Mrs. Kennedy.

  So much depends upon one’s point of view. Black Rim gossip, which persisted in linking Mary Hope’s name with Lance Lorrigan, grinned among themselves while they mentioned the piano, the schoolhouse, and the library as evidence of Lance’s being “stuck on her.” The Boyle children had frequently tattled to Mary Hope what they heard at home. Lance had done it all because he was in love with her.

  * * * *

  Denial did not mend matters, even if Mary Hope’s pride had not rebelled against protesting that the gossip was not true. Lance Lorrigan was not in love with her. Over and over she told herself so, fiercely and with much attention to evidence which she considered convincing. Only twice she had seen him in the two weeks of his visit. Once he had come to mend the lock his father had broken, and he had taken her home from the dance because of the fighting. Never had he made love to her.… Here she would draw a long breath and wonder a little, and afterwards shake her head and say to herself that he thought no more of her than of Jennie Miller. He—he just had a way with him.

  Mary Hope’s point of view was, I think, justifiable. Leaving out the intolerable implication that Lance had showered benefits upon her, she felt that the Lorrigans had been over-generous. The schoolhouse and the books might be accepted as a public-spirited effort to do their part. But the piano, since it had not been returned, must be paid for. And it seemed to Mary Hope that the Lorrigans themselves would deeply resent being invited to a dance openly given for the purpose of raising money to repay them. It would never do; she could not ask them to come.

  Moreover, if the Lorrigans came there would be trouble, whether there was whisky or not. At the house-warming dance the Lorrigans had practically cleaned out the crowd and sent them home long before daylight. There had been no serious shooting—the Lorrigans had fought with their fists and had somehow held the crowd back from the danger-line of gun-play. But Mary Hope feared there would be a killing the next time that the Jumpoff crowd and the Lorrigans came together.