Rim o' the World

“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, to-day 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 pigs 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 to-morrow, 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; to-morrow 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.

Tom was not much given to reminiscence; but to-night, seeing Lance with two years of man-growth and the poise of town life upon him, he slipped into a swift review of changing conditions and a vague speculation upon the value of environment in the shaping of character. Lance was all Lorrigan. He had turned Lorrigan in the two years of his absence, which had somehow painted out his resemblance to Belle. His hair had darkened to a brown that was almost black. His eyes had darkened, his mouth had the Lorrigan twist. He had grown taller, leaner, surer in his movements,–due to his enthusiasm for athletics and the gym, though Tom had no means of knowing what had given him that catlike quickness, the grace of perfect muscular coordination. Tom thought it was the Lorrigan blood building Lance true to his forbears as he passed naturally from youth to maturity. He wondered if Lance, given the environment which had shaped his grandfather, would have been a “killer,” hated by many, feared by all.

Even now, if it came to the point of fighting, would not Lance fight true to the blood, true to that Lorrigan trick of the folded arms and the tapping fingers? Would not Lance–? Tom pulled his thoughts away from following that last conjecture to its logical end. There were matters in which it might be best not to include Lance, just as he had been careful not to include Belle. For Lance might still be a good deal like Belle, in spite of his Lorrigan looks and mannerisms. And there were certain Lorrigan traits which would not bear any mixture of Belle in the fiber.

“Well, now, that’s all made out. I’ll send to Salt Lake and get the stuff quicker. Wake up, Tom, and tell us how long it will take to put up the schoolhouse? Lance is going to give the dance–and there won’t be so much as a soggy chocolate cake accepted from the Rimmers. What will you do, Lance? Put up a notice in Jumpoff?”

“Surely! A mysteriously worded affair, telling little and saying much. Music and refresh–no, by heck, that sounds too wet and not solid enough. Music and supper furnished free. Everybody welcome. Can’t Riley drive the chuck-wagon over and have the supper served by a camp-fire? Golly, but I’ve been hungry for that old chuck-wagon! That would keep all the mess of coffee and sandwiches out of the nice, new schoolhouse.”

“Who’s going to hold their hat in front of the nice, new schoolhouse till it’s done and ready? And how’re you going to let ’em know where to come to, without giving away the secret?” Al, the practical, stretched his long legs to the stove and thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets while he propounded these two conundrums. “Go on, Lance. This is yore party.”

Lance unfolded his arms and disposed his big body on a bearskin covered lounge where he could take Belle’s hand and pat it and playfully pinch a finger now and then.

“To look at your hand, Belle, a fellow would swear that a blonde manicure girl comes here twice a week,” he said idly. “Where is the schoolhouse going to be built? Why not put it just at the foot of the ridge, at Cottonwood Spring? That’s out of sight of the road, and if the notice said ‘Cottonwood Spring’, folks would know where to head for. It’s close to the line of your land, isn’t it, dad? A yard–corral-size–fenced around the place would keep the cattle off the doorstep, and they could water there just the same. If we’re going to do it, why not do it right?”

“I guess we could get down there with a load,” Tom assented easily. “I’d ruther have it on my land anyways.”

“Don’t think, Tom Lorrigan, that we’d ever take it back from Mary Hope. No matter how Scotty acts up. But if they ever gave her the double-cross and got some one else to teach–why it might be nice to know it’s our schoolhouse, on our land.” Belle pulled her hand away from Lance and went over to the piano. “It’s all done but the shingling,” she said cheerfully. “Come on, Lance, see if you can sing ‘Asleep in the Deep.’ And then show me what you mean by saying you can yodel now better than when I licked you the time you and Duke chased the colt through the corral fence!”

“All done but the shingling–and I ain’t got ’em bought yet!” grumbled Tom, but was utterly disregarded in the sonorous chords of Belle’s prelude to the song.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LANCE RIDES AHEAD

At fifteen minutes to four on a certain Tuesday afternoon, the first really pleasant day after the day of tearing, whooping wind that had blown Tom into the role of school bully, Lance loped out upon the trail that led past the Whipple shack a mile and a quarter farther on. Ostensibly his destination was the town of Jumpoff, although it was not the time of day when one usually started from the Devil’s Tooth ranch to the post-office, with three unimportant letters as an excuse for the trip.

As he rode Lance sang lustily a love song, but he was not thinking especially of Mary Hope. In two years more than one California girl had briefly held his fancy, and memory of Mary Hope had slightly dimmed. In his pocket were two letters, addressed to two California towns. One letter had Miss Helene Somebody inscribed upon it, and on the other was Miss Mildred Somebody Else. The love song, therefore, had no special significance, save that Lance was young and perfectly normal and liked the idea of love, without being hampered by any definite form of it concentrated upon one girl.

For all that he had timed his trip so as to arrive at the Whipple shack just about the time when Mary Hope would be starting home. He was curious to see just how much or how little she had changed; to know whether she still had that funny little Scotch accent that manifested itself in certain phrasings, certain vowel sounds at variance with good English pronunciation. He wanted to know just how much Pocatello had done to spoil her. Beneath all was the primal instinct of the young male dimly seeking the female whom his destiny had ordained to be his mate.

As a young fellow shut in behind the Rim, with the outside world a vast area over which his imagination wandered vaguely, Mary Hope had appealed to him. She was the one girl in the Black Rim country whom he would ride out of his way to meet, whose face, whose voice, lingered with him pleasantly for days after he had seen her and talked with her. He reflected, between snatches of song, that he might have thought himself in love with Mary Hope, might even have married her, had Belle not suddenly decided that he should go beyond the Rim and learn the things she could not teach him. Belle must have wanted him, her youngest, to be different from the rest. He wondered with a sudden whimsical smile, whether she was satisfied with the result of his two years of exile. Tom, he suspected, was not,–nor were Duke and Al. The three seemed to hold themselves apart from him, to look upon him as a guest rather than as one of the family returned after an absence. They did not include him in their talk of range matters and the business of the ranch. He had once observed in them a secret embarrassment when he appeared unexpectedly, had detected a swift change of tone and manner and subject.

Surely they could not think he had changed sufficiently to make him an outsider, he meditated. Aside from his teasing of Belle, he had dropped deliberately into the range vernacular, refraining only from certain crudities of speech which grated on his ears. He had put on his old clothes, he had tried to take his old place in the ranch work. He had driven a four-horse team up the Ridge trail with lumber for the schoolhouse, and had negotiated the rock descent to Cottonwood Spring with a skill that pleased him mightily because it proved to him–and to Tom and the boys–that his range efficiency had not lessened during his absence. He had done everything the boys had done, except ride out with them on certain long trips over the range. He had not gone simply because they had made it quite plain that they did not want him.

Nor did the hired cowboys want him with them,–ten of them in the bunk house with a cook of their own, and this only the middle of March! In two years the personnel of the bunk house had changed almost completely. They were men whom he did not know, men who struck him as “hard-boiled,” though he could not have explained just wherein they differed from the others. Sam Pretty Cow and Shorty he could hobnob with as of yore,–Sam in particular giving him much pleasure with his unbroken reserve, his unreadable Indian eyes and his wide-lipped grin. The others were like Duke, Tom and Al,–slightly aloof, a bit guarded in their manner.

“And I suppose Mary Hope will be absolutely spoiled, with small-town dignity laid a foot deep over her Scotch primness. Still, a girl that has the nerve to lift a club and threaten to brain Tom Lorrigan–”

He had forgotten the love song he was singing, and before he reached farther in his musings he met the Swedes, who stared at him round-eyed and did not answer his careless hello. A little farther, the Boyle children rode up out of a dry wash, grinned bashfully at him and hurried on.

A saddlehorse was tied to a post near the Whipple shack. With long legs swinging slightly with the stride of his horse, reins held high and loose in one hand, his big hat tilted over his forehead, Lance rode up and dismounted as if his errand, though important, was not especially urgent. The door stood open. He walked up, tapped twice with his knuckles on the unpainted casing, and entered, pulling off his hat and turning it round and round in his gloved fingers while he ducked his head, pressed his lips together with a humorous quirk, shuffled his spurred feet on the dirty floor and bowed again as awkwardly as he could. In this manner he hoped to draw some little spark of individuality from Mary Hope, who sat behind her yellow-painted table and stared at him over her folded arms. But Mary Hope, he observed, had been crying, and compunction seized him suddenly.

“Well, what is it?” she asked him curtly, rubbing a palm down over one cheek, with the motion obliterating a small rivulet of tears.

“If you please, ma’am, I was sent to mend a lock on a door.”

“What lock? On what door?” Mary Hope passed a palm down her other cheek, thus obliterating another rivulet that had ceased to flow tears and was merely wet and itchy.

“If you please, ma’am, you can search me.” Lance looked at her innocently. “I didn’t bring any lock with me, and I didn’t bring any door with me. But I’ve got some screws and three nails and–lots of good intentions.”

“Good intentions are very rare in this country,” said Mary Hope, and made meaningless marks on the bare tabletop with a blunt pencil.

Lance heard a twang of Scotch in the “very rare” which pleased him. But he kept his position by the doorway, and he continued bashfully turning his big hat round and round against his chest,–though the action went oddly with the Lorrigan look and the athletic poise of him. “Yes, ma’am. Quite rare,” he agreed.

“In fact, I don’t believe there is such a thing in the whole Black Rim country,” stated Mary Hope, plainly nonplussed at his presence and behavior.

“Could I show you mine?” Lance advanced a step. He was not sure, at that moment, whether he wanted to go with the play. Mary Hope was better looking than when he had seen her last. She had lost a good deal of the rusticity he remembered her to have possessed, but she was either too antagonistic to carry on the farce, or she was waiting for him to show his hand, to betray some self-consciousness. But the fact that she looked at him straight in the eyes and neither frowned nor giggled, set her apart from the ordinary range-bred girl.