Rim o' the World

“You talk like a country peddler. I’m willing to accept a sample, and see if they are durable. Though I can’t for the life of me see why you’d be coming here with good intentions.”

“I’d be mending a lock on a door. Is this the door, ma’am? And is this the lock?”

Since the door behind him was the only door within five miles of them, and since the lock dangled from a splintered casing, Mary Hope almost smiled. “It is a door,” she informed him. “And it is a lock that has been broken by a Lorrigan.”

She was baiting him, tempting him to quarrel with her over the old grudge. Because she expected a reply, Lance made no answer whatever. He happened to have a dozen or so of nails in his coat pocket, left-overs from his assiduous carpentry on the house being builded for her comfort. The screws he possessed were too large, and he had no hammer. But no man worries over a missing hammer where rocks are plentiful, and Lance was presently pounding the lock into place, his back to Mary Hope, his thoughts swinging from his prospective party to the possible religious scruples of the Douglas family.

Mary Hope used to dance–a very little–he remembered, though she had not attended many dances. He recalled suddenly that a Christmas tree or a Fourth of July picnic had usually been the occasions when Mary Hope, with her skirts just hitting her shoe tops in front and sagging in an ungainly fashion behind, had teetered solemnly through a “square” dance with him. Mother Douglas herself had always sat very straight and prim on a bench, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes blinking disapprovingly at the ungodly ones who let out an exultant little yip now and then when they started exuberantly through the mazes of the “gran’-right-n-left.”

Would Mary Hope attend the party? Should he tell her about it and ask her to come? Naturally, he could not peacefully escort her partyward,–the feud was still too rancorous for that. Or was it? At the Devil’s Tooth they spoke of old Scotty as an enemy, but they had cited no particular act of hostility as evidence of his enmity. At the Devil’s Tooth they spoke of the whole Black Rim country as enemy’s country. Lance began to wonder if it were possible that the Lorrigans had adopted unconsciously the role of black sheep, without the full knowledge or concurrence of the Black Rimmers.

He did what he could to make a workable lock of one that had been ready to fall to pieces before his father heaved against it; hammered in the loosened screws in the hinges, tossed the rock out into the scuffed sod before the shack, and picked up his hat. He had not once looked toward Mary Hope, but he turned now as if he were going to say good-by and take himself off; as if mending the lock had really been his errand, and no further interest held him there.

He surprised a strange, wistful look in Mary Hope’s eyes, a trembling of her lips. She seemed to be waiting, fearing that he meant to go without any further overtures toward friendship.

The Whipple shack was not large. Ten feet spanned the distance between them. Impulsively Lance covered that distance in three steps. At the table he stopped, leaned toward her with his palms braced upon the table, and stared full into Mary Hope’s disturbed eyes.

“Girl,” he said, drawing the word softly along a vibrant note in his voice that sent a tremor through her, “Girl, you’re more lonesome than Scotch, and you’re more Scotch than the heather that grows in your front yard to make your mother cry for the Highlands she sees when her eyes blur with homesickness. You were crying when I came–crying because you’re lonely. It’s a big, wild country–the Black Rim. It’s a country for men to ride hell-whooping through the sage and camas grass, with guns slung at their hips, but it’s no country for a little person like you to try and carry on a feud because her father made one. You’re–too little!”

He did not touch her, his face did not come near her face. But in his eyes, in his voice, in the tender, one-sided little smile, there was something,–Mary Hope caught her breath, feeling as if she had been kissed.

“You little, lonesome girl! There’s going to be a party at Cottonwood Spring, a week from Friday night. It’s a secret–a secret for you. And you won’t tell a soul that you were the first to know–and you’ll come, you girl, because it’s your party. And not a soul will know it’s your party. If your father’s Scotch is too hard for dancing–you’ll come just the same. You’ll come, because the secret is for you. And–” He thought that he read something in her eyes and hastened to forestall her intention “–and you won’t go near Cottonwood Spring before the time of the party, because that wouldn’t be playing fair.

“Don’t be lonely, girl. The world is full of pleasant things, just waiting to pop out at you from behind every bush. If you’re good and kind and honest with life, the Fates are going to give you the best they’ve got. Don’t be lonely! Just wait for the pleasant things in to-morrow and to-morrow–in all the to-morrows. And one of them, girl, is going to show you the sweetest thing in life. That’s love, you girl with the tears back of your Scotch blue eyes. But wait for it–and take the little pleasant things that minutes have hidden away in the to-morrows. And one of the pleasant times will be hidden at Cottonwood Spring, a week from Friday night. Wonder what it will be, girl. And if any one tries to tell it, put your hands over your ears, so that you won’t hear it. Wait–and keep wondering, and come to Cottonwood Spring next Friday night. Adios, girl.”

He looked into her eyes, smiling a little. Then, turning suddenly, he left her without a backward glance. Left her with nothing to spoil the haunting cadence of his voice, nothing to lift the spell of tender prophecy his words had laid upon her soul. When he was quite gone, when she heard the clatter of his horse’s hoofs upon the arid soil that surrounded the Whipple shack, Mary Hope still stared out through the open doorway, seeing nothing of the March barrenness, seeing only the tender, inscrutable, tantalizing face of Lance Lorrigan,–tantalizing because she could not plumb the depths of his eyes, could not say how much of the tenderness was meant for her, how much was born of the deep music of his voice, the whimsical, one-sided smile.

And Lance, when he had ridden a furlong from the place, had dipped into a shallow draw and climbed the other side, turned half around in the saddle and looked back.

“Now, why did I go off and leave her like that? Like an actor walking off the stage to make room for the other fellow to come on and say his lines. There’s no other fellow–thank heck! And here are two miles we might be riding together–and me preaching to her about taking the little, pleasant things that come unexpectedly!” He swung his horse around in the trail, meaning to ride back; retraced his steps as far as the hollow, and turned again, shaking his head.

“Anybody could stop at the schoolhouse just as school’s out, and ride a couple of miles down the road with the schoolma’am–if she let him do it! Anybody could do that. But that isn’t the reason, why I’m riding on ahead. What the hell is the reason?”

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, his 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 to-night, 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 Mrs. 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!–”