by B. M. Bower
She tried to be just, but she had heard only one side of the affair,—which was not the Lorrigan side. Whispers had long been going round among the Black Rim folk; sinister whispers that had to do with cattle and horses that had disappeared mysteriously from the Rim range. Mary Hope could not help hearing the whispers, could not help wondering if underneath them there was a basis of truth. Her father still believed, in spite of Tom’s exoneration, that his spotty yearling had gone down the gullets of Devil’s Tooth men. She did not know, but it seemed to her that where every one hinted at the same thing, there must be some truth in their hints.
All of which proves, I think, that Mary Hope’s point of view was the only one that she could logically hold, living as she did in the camp of the enemy; having, as she had, a delicate sense of propriety, and wanting above all things to do nothing crude and common. As she saw it, she simply could not ask any of the Lorrigans to her picnic and dance on the Fourth of July.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE LORRIGAN VIEWPOINT
I have said that much depends upon one’s point of view. Mary Hope’s viewpoint was not shared by the Devil’s Tooth. They had one of their own, and to them it seemed perfectly logical, absolutely justifiable.
They heard all about the Fourth of July picnic and dance, to be held at Cottonwood Spring and in the schoolhouse of their own building. Immediately they remembered that Cottonwood Spring was on Lorrigan land, that Lorrigan money had paid for the material that went into the schoolhouse, that Lorrigan labor had built it, Lorrigan generosity had given it over to the public as represented by Mary Hope Douglas and the children who came to her to be taught. In their minds loomed the fact that Lorrigan money had bought books for the school, and that Tom Lorrigan himself had paid close to four hundred dollars for the piano.
They heard that invitations were being sent broadcast, that a crowd was coming from Pocatello, from Lava, from Jumpoff—invited to come and spend a day and night in merry-making. Yet no invitation came to the Devil’s Tooth ranch, not a word was said to them by Mary Hope, not a hint that they were expected, or would be welcome.
Belle met Mary Hope in the trail one day, just a week before the Fourth. Mary Hope was riding home from school; Belle was driving out from Jumpoff. It is the custom of the outland places for acquaintances to stop for a bit of friendly conversation when they meet, since meetings are so far between. But, though Belle slowed the pintos to a walk, Mary Hope only nodded, said, “How do you do,” and rode on.
“She looked guilty,” Belle reported wrathfully to Tom and the boys at the supper table. “Guilty as sin. She seemed to be afraid I was going to ask her if I couldn’t come to her dance. The little fool! Does she think for a minute I’d go? She hasn’t so much as thanked you for that piano, Tom. She hasn’t said one word.”
“Well, I didn’t put my name and ad-dress on it,” Tom palliated the ingratitude while he buttered a hot biscuit generously. “And there wasn’t any name on the books to show who bought ’em. Maybe she thinks—”
“I don’t care what she thinks! It’s the way she acts that counts. Everybody in Jumpoff has got invitations to her picnic and dance. They say it’s to pay us for the piano—and they think she’s doing some wonderful stunt. And we’re left out in the cold!”
“We never was in where it was right warm, since I can remember,” said Al. “Except when we made it warm ourselves.”
“Sam Pretty Cow was saying yesterday—” and Duke repeated a bit of gossip that had a gibe at the Lorrigans for its point. “He got it over to Hitchcocks. It come from the Douglases. I guess Mary Hope don’t want nothing of us—except what she can get out of us. We been a good thing, all right—easy marks.”
Duke had done the least for her and therefore felt qualified to say the most. His last sentence did its work. Tom pulled his eyebrows together, drew his lip between his teeth and leaned back in his chair, thinking deeply, his eyes glittering between his half-closed lids.
“Easy marks, ay?” he snorted. “The Lorrigans have been called plenty of things, fur back as I can remember, but by the humpin’ hyenas, they never was called easy marks before!”
That was Tom’s last comment on the subject. Belle, not liking the look on his face, because she knew quite well what it portended, passed him two kinds of preserves and changed the subject. Al and Duke presently left for the bunk house. Mary Hope’s party and her evident intention to slight the Lorrigans was not mentioned again for days.
But Tom’s wrath was smoldering. He was not hasty. He waited. He himself met Mary Hope in the trail one day, lifted his hat to her without a word and rode on. Mary Hope let him go with a chilly nod and a murmured greeting which was no more than an empty form. Certainly she did not read Tom’s mind, did not dream that he was thinking of the piano,—and from an angle that had never once presented itself to her.
So, now that you see how both were justified in their opinions, as formed from different points of view, let me tell you what happened.
Mary Hope had her picnic, with never a thunderstorm to mar the day. Which is unusual, since a picnic nearly always gets itself rained upon. She had sent out more than a hundred invitations—tickets two dollars, please—and there were more who invited themselves and had to be supplied with tickets cut hastily out of pasteboard boxes that had held sandwiches.
Mary Hope was jubilant. Mother Douglas, as official hostess, moved here and there among the women who fussed over the baskets and placated with broken pieces of cake their persistent offspring. Mother Douglas actually smiled, though her face plainly showed that it was quite unaccustomed to the expression, and tilted the smile downward at the corners. Mother Douglas was a good woman, but she had had little in her life to bring smiles, and her habitual expression was one of mournful endurance.
* * * *
It was sultry, and toward evening the mosquitoes swarmed out of the lush grass around the spring and set the horses stamping and moving about uneasily. But it was a very successful picnic, with all the chatter, all the gourmandizing, all the gossip, all the childish romping in starched white frocks, all the innocuous pastimes that one expects to find at picnics.
Mary Hope wondered how in the world they were all going to find room inside the schoolhouse to dance. She had been frugal in the matter of music, dreading to spend any money in hiring professional musicians, lest she might not have enough people to justify the expense. Now she wished nervously that she had done as Lance Lorrigan had done, and brought musicians from Lava. Of course, there had been no piano when Lance gave his party, which was different. She herself meant to play, and Art Miller had brought his fiddle, and Jennie had volunteered to “chord” with him. But, Mary Hope felt much nervous apprehension lest these Pocatello and Lava people should think it was just Scotch stinginess on her part.
Late in the afternoon a few of the ranchers rode hastily homeward to “do the chores,” but the Lava and Pocatello crowd remained, and began to drift up to the schoolhouse and drum on the piano that was actually going to pay for itself and free Mary Hope’s pride from its burden.
By sundown a dozen energetic couples were waltzing while a Pocatello dentist with a stiff, sandy pompadour chewed gum and played loudly, with much arm movement and very little rhythm; so very little rhythm that the shuffling feet frequently ceased shuffling, and expostulations rose high above his thunderous chords.
By dusk the overworked ranch women had fed the last hungry mouth and put away the fragments of home-baked cakes and thick sandwiches, and were forming a solid line of light shirtwaists and dark skirts along the wall. The dance was really beginning.
As before, groups of men stood around outside and smoked and slapped at mosquitoes—except that at Lance’s party there had been no mosquitoes to slap—and talked in undertones the gossip of the ranges. If now and then the name of Lorrigan was mentioned, there was no Lorrigan present to hear. At intervals the “floor manager” would come to the door and call out numbers: “Number one, and up to and including s
ixteen, git your pardners fer a two-step!” Whereupon certain men would pinch out the glow of their cigarettes and grind the stubs into the sod under their heels, and go in to find partners. With that crowd, not all could dance at once; Mary Hope remembered pridefully that there had been no dancing by numbers at the party Lance Lorrigan gave.
What a terrible dance that had been! A regular rowdy affair. And this crowd, big as it was, had as yet shown no disposition to rowdyism. It surely did make a difference, thought Mary Hope, what kind of people sponsored an entertainment. With the Devil’s Tooth outfit as the leaders, who could expect anything but trouble?
Then she caught herself thinking, with a vague heaviness in her heart, how Lance had taken her away from that other dance; of that long, wonderful, silent ride through the starlight; how careful he had been of her—how tender! But it was only the way he had with him, she later reminded herself impatiently, and smiled over her shoulder at the whirling couples who danced to the music she made; and thought of the money that made her purse heavy as lead, the money that would wipe out her debt to the Lorrigans,—to Lance, if it really were Lance who had bought the piano.
A faint sound came to her through the open window, the rattle of a wagon coming down the hill in the dark. 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, could she face Lance Lorrigan level-eyed, cool, calm, feeling herself a match for him.
The rattle of the wagon sounded nearer, circled the yard, came in at the gate. Mary Hope was giving the dancers the fastest two-step she could play, and she laughed aloud. More people were coming to the dance, and there might not be coffee and sandwiches enough at midnight,—she had over three hundred dollars already.
The dancers whirled past, parted to right and left, stopped all at once. Mary Hope, still playing, looked over her shoulder—into the dark, impenetrable gaze of Tom Lorrigan, standing there in his working clothes, with his big, black Stetson on his head and his six-shooter in its holster on his hip. Behind him Mary Hope saw Al and Duke and Belle, and behind them other Devil’s Tooth men, cowboys whom she only knew slightly from meeting them sometimes in the trail as she rode to and from school. The cowboys seemed to be facing the other way, holding back the crowd near the door.
Mary Hope looked again into Tom’s face, looked at Belle. Her fingers strayed uncertainly over the keys, making discords. She half rose, then sat down again. The room, all at once, seemed very still.
“I’m sorry to disturb yuh,” Tom said, touching his hat brim and lifting his eyebrows at her, half smiling with his lips pulled to one side, like Lance—oh, maddeningly like Lance!—“but I’ve come after the piano.”
Mary Hope gasped. Her arms went out instinctively across the keyboard, as if she would protect the instrument from his defaming touch.
“I’ll have to ask yuh to move,” said Tom. “Sorry to disturb yuh.”
“I—I’m going to pay for it,” said Mary Hope, finding her voice faint and husky. She had an odd sensation that this was a nightmare. She had dreamed so often of the dance and of the Lorrigans.
“I paid for it long ago. I bought the piano—I’ve come after it.”
Mary Hope slid off the stool, stood facing him, her eyes very blue. After all, he was not Lance. “You can’t have it!” she said. “I won’t let you take it. I’m raising money to pay you for it, and I intend to keep it.” She reached for her purse, but Tom restrained her with a gesture.
“It ain’t for sale,” he said, with that hateful smile that always made her wonder just what lay behind it. “I own it, and I ain’t thinking of selling. Here’s the shipping bill and the guarantee and all; I brought ’em along to show you, in case you got curious about whose piano it is. You see the number on the bill—86945. You’ll find it tallies with the number in the case, if you want to look. Pete, Ed, John, take it and load it in the wagon.”
“Well, now, see here! This is an outrage! How much is the darn thing worth, anyway? This crowd is not going to stand by and see a raw deal like this pulled off.” It was the Pocatello dentist, and he was very much excited.
“You saw a raw deal, and stood for it, when you saw the Lorrigans cold-shouldered out of the dance,” Belle flashed at him. “We’ve stood for a lot, but this went a little beyond our limit.”
“We’re not going to stand for anything like this, you know!” Another man—also from Lava—shouldered his way up to them.
“Git outa the way, or you’ll git tromped on!” cried Pete over his shoulder as he backed, embracing the piano and groping for handholds.
The Lava man gripped Pete, trying to pull him away. Pete kicked back viciously with a spurred heel. The Lava man yelled and retreated, limping.
Just how it happened, no two men or women afterward agreed in the telling. But somehow the merrymakers, who were merry no longer, went back and back until they were packed solidly at the sides and near the door, a few squeezing through it when they were lucky enough to find room. Behind them came four of the Devil’s Tooth men with six-shooters, looking the crowd coldly in the eyes. Behind these came the piano, propelled by those whom Tom had named with the tone of authority.
The crowd squeezed closer against the wall as the piano went past them. There was not so much noise and confusion as one would expect. Then, at the last, slim, overworked, round-shouldered Mother Douglas, who had done little save pray and weep and work and scold all her life, walked up and slapped Belle full on the cheek.
“Ye painted Jezebel!” she cried, her eyes burning. “Long have I wanted to smack ye for your wickedness and the brazen ways of ye—ye painted Jezebel!”
Blind, dazed with anger, Belle struck back.
“Don’t you touch my mother! Shame on you! Shame on you all! I didna ask you for your favors, for any gifts—and you gave them and then you come and take them—” This was the voice of Mary Hope, shrill with rage.
“You gave a dance in a house built for you by the Lorrigans, on Lorrigan land, and you danced to the music of a Lorrigan piano—and the Lorrigans were not good enough to be asked to come! Get outa my way, Hope Douglas—and take your mother with you. Call me a painted Jezebel, will she?”
The piano was outside, being loaded into the wagon, where Riley sat on the seat, chewing tobacco grimly and expectorating copiously, without regard for those who came close. Outside there was also much clamor of voices. A lantern held high by a Devil’s Tooth man who had a gun in the other, lighted the platform and the wagon beside it.
* * * *
At the last, Tom Lorrigan himself went back after the stool, and the room silenced so that his footsteps sounded loud on the empty floor. He looked at Mary Hope, looked at her mother, looked at the huddled, whispering women, the gaping children. He swung out of his course and slipped one arm around Belle and so led her outside, the stool swinging by one leg in the other hand.
“A painted Jezebel!” Belle said under her breath when they were outside the ring of light. “My God, Tom, think of that!”
Mary Hope had never in her life suffered such humiliation. It seemed to her that she stood disgraced before the whole world, that there was no spot wherein she might hide her shame. Her mother was weeping hysterically because she had been “slappit by the painted Jezebel” and because Aleck was not there to avenge her. The Pocatello and Lava crowd seemed on the point of leaving, and were talking very fast in undertones that made Mary Hope feel that they were talking about her. The rattle of the Lorrigan wagon hauling the piano away, the click of the horses’ feet as the Devil’s Tooth riders convoyed the instrument, made her wince, and want to put her palms over her ears to shut ou
t the sound of it.
But she was Scotch, and a Douglas. There was no weak fiber that would let her slump before this emergency. She went back to the little platform, stood beside the desk that held the globe and the dictionary and a can of flowers, and rapped loudly with the ruler from the Pocatello hardware store. By degrees the room ceased buzzing with excited talk, the shuffling feet stood still.
“I am very sorry,” said Mary Hope clearly, “that your pleasure has—has been interrupted. It seems there has been a misunderstanding about the piano. I thought that I could buy it for the school, and for that reason I gave this dance. But it seems—that—I’m terribly sorry the dance has been spoiled for you, and if the gentlemen who bought tickets will please step this way, I will return your money.”
She had to clench her teeth to keep her lips from trembling. Her hands shook so that she could scarcely open her handbag. But her purpose never faltered, her eyes were blue and sparkling when she looked out over the crowd. She waited. Feet scuffled the bare floor, voices whispered, but no man came toward her.
“I want to return your money,” she said sharply, “because without the piano I suppose you will not want to dance, and—”
“Aw, the dickens!” cried a big, good-natured cowpuncher with a sun-peeled nose and twinkly gray eyes. “I guess we all have danced plenty without no piano music. There’s mouth harps in this crowd, and there’s a fiddle. Git yore pardners for a square dance!” And under his breath, to his immediate masculine neighbors he added: “To hell with the Lorrigans and their piano!”