by Bower, B M
Belle had led Rosa from the stable and was cautiously fastening the neck yoke in place when the sheriff and Aleck Douglas rode around the corner of the stable. Rosa shied and snorted and reared, and Belle used the rein-ends for a whiplash until Rosa decided that she would better submit to authority and keep her hide whole. She stood fairly quiet after that, with little nipping dance-steps in one spot, while Belle fastened buckles and snaps and trace chains. Subrosa, having had his tantrum, contented himself with sundry head-shakings and snorts. When the team was “hooked up” to Belle’s satisfaction, she tied them both firmly to the corral with short ropes, and finally turned her attention to her visitors.
“Howdy, Mr. Douglas? Fine day we’re having,” she greeted the dour Scotchman amiably.
The sheriff coughed behind his hand, looked sidelong at his companion, rode a step or two nearer to Belle, swung a leg over the cantle of his saddle. Perhaps he expected Aleck Douglas to introduce him, but he did not wait for the formality.
“Mrs. Lorrigan, I’m sheriff of the county,” he began ingratiatingly, when his two feet were on the ground.
“You are?” Belle flashed a row of very white teeth. “You sure don’t look it. I’d have taken you for a regular human being.”
“Mr. Douglas, here, would like to take a look at some hides Mr. Lorrigan has got curing. He thinks possibly––”
“’Tis useless to cover the truth wi’ saft words, shuriff,” Douglas interrupted glumly. “’Tis stolen cattle we are tracing, and ’tis here we wad look for the hides of them. I hae guid reason––”
“You’ll find my husband at the round-up. Before you do any searching, you had better go and have a talk with him. When he’s gone strangers don’t go prowling around this ranch.”
“We’ll have our talk with him after we’ve taken a look around,” the sheriff amended, grinning a little. “It’s just a matter of form––nothing you need to object to, one way or the other. I don’t suppose we’ll find anything––”
“No, I don’t suppose you will. Not unless you find it on the road back. I hate to seem unfriendly, but I’ll just have to ask you to crawl on your horse and go see Tom about it.”
“Now, we don’t want any unpleasantness at all, Mrs. Lorrigan. But this man has swore out a warrant––”
“Shucks! What he does never did interest me one way or the other, and does not now. I’m telling you there’ll be no snooping around here while Tom’s away.”
“Oh, well, now!” The sheriff rather prided himself on his ability to “handle folks peaceable,” as he expressed it. He injected a little more of the oil of persuasiveness into his voice. It was his standard recipe for avoiding trouble with a woman. “You don’t think for a minute I’d take advantage of his absence, Mrs. Lorrigan? Nothing like that at all. We just want to see if a certain cowhide is here. If it isn’t, then we won’t need to bother Tom at all, maybe. Get down, Mr. Douglas, and we’ll just have a look around. Mrs. Lorrigan ain’t going to make no objections to that.”
Belle smiled. “Oh, yes, she is. She’s going to do quite a lot of objecting. You better stay right where you are, Scotty. You’re a heap safer.”
The sheriff began to lose patience. “Now, look here, Mrs. Lorrigan! You’re dealing with the law, you know. We can’t have any nonsense.”
“We won’t have,” Belle assured him placidly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to beat into your head. Why, good Lord! Can’t you take the hint and see I’m trying not to have any trouble with yuh? I don’t want to have to run you off the ranch––but as you say, there’s not going to be any nonsense. I said, go. I’m waiting to see if you’ve got sense enough to do it.”
“Sa-ay! Just look here now! Do you know it’s a State’s prison offense to resist an officer!” The sheriff’s face was growing red.
Belle laughed. “Sure. But I’m not. You––you’re irresistible! And I don’t know you’re an officer.”
This went over the sheriff’s head and was wasted, though Aleck Douglas pulled down his mouth at the corners as though he was afraid he might smile if he were not careful.
The sheriff took up his bridle reins, preparing to lead his horse over to a post and tie him. He glanced at Belle and saw that she had a six-shooter in her hand and a glitter in her eyes. Quite naturally he hesitated. Then, at a perfectly plain signal from the gun, he turned his palms toward her at a level with his shoulders.
“You needn’t tie up. Crawl into the saddle and drift.”
“I’ve got a search warrant––”
“You can keep it and show it to Tom. And get off this ranch just as quick as that horse can take you. I’ll have you both arrested for trespassing. I’m not taking your word for anything, you see. I don’t know anything about your warrant––hey, Riley!” This to the cook, who came, taking steps as long as his legs would let him, and swinging a damp dishcloth in one moist red hand.
“Riley, here’s a man claims he’s the sheriff and that he’s got a warrant to search the ranch. I don’t believe a word of it, and I’ve ordered him off the place. I wouldn’t for the world resist an officer of the law––put your hands up a little higher, Mr. Man!––but when Tom ain’t home no stranger is going to come snooping around here if I can stop him. Ain’t that right, Riley?”
“That’s right, Belle,” Riley acquiesced, working his oversized Adam’s apple convulsively. (Riley, by the way, would just as readily have approved of murder if Belle had asked for his approval.)
“Well, you’re a witness that I’m from Missouri. I’ve told this man to go tell his troubles to Tom. If he’s honest he’ll do it. If he don’t go in about ten seconds, I’m going to throw a bullet through his hat. Then if he hangs around, I shall shoot him in his left leg just about six inches above the knee. I can do it, can’t I, Riley?”
“Well, now, you shore can, Belle!” Riley nodded his head emphatically. “If you say six, I’d shore gamble a year’s wages it won’t be five, or seven. Six inches above his knee goes, if you say six.”
“All right. I’m just defending the ranch when Tom’s gone. You hear me, Mr. Man. Now, you git!”
The sheriff turned and opened his mouth to protest, and Belle shot the promised bullet through his hat crown. The sheriff ducked and made a wild scramble for the stirrup.
“Open your mouth again and I’ll be awfully tempted to shoot that crooked tooth out of it,” Belle observed. “And in ten seconds, remember, you’re going to get––”
The sheriff still had two of the ten seconds to spare when he left, Aleck Douglas following him glumly.
“It’s him, all right. It’s the sheriff, Belle,” Riley informed her, while they watched the two clatter up the road to where the real grade began. “What’s eatin’ on ’em? Likely he did have a search warrant.”
“He can use it, after I’m through. Old Scotty is trailing some rustled stock, they claim. They came here looking for hides. You keep an eye out, Riley, and see if they keep going. I guess they will––they’ll go after Tom. I’m going to have a look at those cowhides in the old shed.”
“Better let me,” Riley offered. “It ain’t any job for a woman nohow. You watch the trail and I’ll look.”
Belle would not even consider the proposition. The Lorrigan reputation never had troubled her much,––but it sent her now to the shed where hides were kept stored until the hide buyer made his next annual visit through the country. She did not believe that she would find any brand save the various combinations of the NL monogram, but she meant to make sure before any stranger was given access to the place.
The job was neither easy nor pleasant, but she did it thoroughly. Riley, roosting meditatively on the top rail of the corral where he could watch the road down the bluff, craned his long neck inquiringly toward her when she returned.
“Nothing but NL stuff, just as I thought,” said Belle, holding her hands as far away from her face as possible. “I knew Tom wouldn’t have any stolen hides on the place––but it was best to make s
ure.”
“No ma’am, he wouldn’t. I’m shore surprised they’d come and try to find any. Looks bad to me, Belle. Looks to me like somebody is shore tryin’ to start somethin’. There’s plenty in the Black Rim would like to see Tom railroaded to the pen––plenty. Looks to me like they’re aimin’ to pin something on him. No, sir, I don’t like it. Uh course,” he went on, letting himself loose-jointedly to the ground, “they couldn’t get nothing on Tom––not unless they framed something. But I wouldn’t put it a-past ’em to do it. No, ma’am, I wouldn’t.”
“Your bread’s burning, Riley. I can smell it. Don’t you never think they’ll frame on Tom. They may try it––but that’s as far as they’ll get. They don’t want to start anything with the Lorrigans!”
“Well, I left the oven door open. She ain’t burning to hurt. Yuh see, Scotty Douglas, he’s religious and he don’t never pack a gun. Them kind’s bad to tangle up with; awful bad. There ain’t nothing much a man can do with them religious birds. Them not being armed, you can’t shoot––it’s murder. And that kinda ties a man’s hands, as yuh might say. They always take advantage of it, invariable. No, ma’am, it looks bad.”
“It’ll look worse––for them that tries any funny business with this outfit,” Belle assured him. “Go along and ’tend to your baking. You know I hate burnt bread. I’m going to drive over and see what they’re up to.”
She untied Rosa and Subrosa, and because she was in a hurry she permitted Riley to hold them by the bits while she climbed in, got the lines firmly in one hand and her blacksnake in the other. Not often did she deign to accept assistance, and Riley was all aquiver with gratified vanity at this mark of her favor.
“Turn ’em loose––and get to that bread!” she cried, and circled the pintos into the road. “You, Sub! Cut that out, now––settle down! Rosa! Stead-dy, I ain’t any Ben Hur pulling off a chariot race, remember!”
At a gallop they took the first sandy slope of the climb, and Belle let them go. They were tough––many’s the time they had hit the level on top of the ridge without slowing to a walk on the way up. They had no great load to pull, and if it pleased them to lope instead of trot, Belle would never object.
As she sat jouncing on the seat of a buckboard with rattly spokes in all of the four wheels and a splintered dashboard where Subrosa landed his heels one day when he had backed before he kicked, one felt that she would have made a magnificent charioteer. Before she had gone half a mile her hair was down and whipping behind her like a golden pennant. Her big range hat would have gone sailing had it not been tied under her chin with buckskin strings. Usually she sang as she hurtled through space, but to-day the pintos missed her voice.
Five miles out on the range she overtook the sheriff and Aleck Douglas riding to the round-up. Aleck Douglas seldom rode faster than a jogging trot, and the sheriff was not particularly eager for his encounter with Tom Lorrigan. For that matter, no sheriff had ever been eager to encounter a Lorrigan. The Lorrigan family had always been counted a hazard in the office of the sheriff, though of a truth the present generation had remained quiescent so far and the law had not heretofore reached its arm toward them.
The two men looked back, saw Belle coming and parted to let her pass. Belle yelled to her team and went by with never a glance toward either, and the two stared after her without a word until she had jounced down into a shallow draw and up the other side, the pintos never slowing their lope.
“Well, I’m darned!” ejaculated the sheriff. His name, by the way, was Perry. “I’ve heard tell of Belle Lorrigan drivin’ hell-whoopin’ over the country with a team of bronks, but I kinda thought they was stretching the truth. I guess not, though, if that’s a sample.”
“The woman hersel’ is no so bad. ’Tis the men folk that are black wi’ sin. Drinkin’, swearin’, gamblin’ thieves they be, and ’tis well they should be taught a lesson.” The Douglas head wagged self-righteously.
“Maybe it would be a good idea to go back and search the ranch now, while she’s gone.” The sheriff pulled up, considering. “I didn’t want any trouble with her; I never do quarrel with a woman if I can get around it any way. She’s a holy terror. I guess I’ll just ride back and take a look at them hides.”
Aleck Douglas eyed him sardonically, thinking perhaps of the black-edged bullet hole that showed plainly in the sheriff’s hat-crown.
“’Tis a deal safer wi’ the woman oot of the way,” he agreed drily.
The sheriff nodded and turned back.
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE NAME
Tom Lorrigan may have seen bigger fusses made over smaller matters than the hide of a spotty yearlin’, but his boys never had.
No country is so isolated that gossip cannot find it out. The story of the spotted yearling went speeding through the country. Men made thin excuses to ride miles out of their way that they might air their opinions and hear some fresh bit of news, some conjecture that grew to a rumor and was finally repeated broadcast as truth. Children cringed and wept while necks were scrubbed relentlessly, for a fever of “visiting” attacked the women of the range. Miles they would travel to visit a neighbor. And there they talked and talked and talked, while the guest in neighborly fashion dried the dinner dishes for the hostess in hot, fly-infested kitchens.
Aleck Douglas, infuriated by the contemptuous attitude which Tom had taken toward him and his spotty yearling, and by his failure to find any incriminating evidence on the Devil’s Tooth ranch, swore to a good many suspicions which he called facts, and had Tom arrested. The sheriff had taken two deputies along with him, because he fully expected that the Lorrigans would “go on the warpath” as Belle had done. He was vastly astonished and somewhat chagrined when Tom gave a snort, handed over his gun, and turned to one of his boys.
“Al,” said Tom, “you go ahead with the round-up while I go in and fix this up. May take a few days––depends on the gait I can get ’em to travel. I’ll have to rustle me a lawyer, too. But you know what to do; keep ’er moving till I get back.”
Black Rim country talked and chortled and surmised, and wondered what made Tom so darned meek about it. They did not accuse him of any lack of nerve; being a Lorrigan, his nerve could scarcely be questioned. Opinion was about evenly divided. A few declared that Tom had something up his sleeve, and there would be a killing yet. Others insisted that Tom knew when he was backed into a corner. Old Scotty Douglas had him dead to rights, they said, and Tom knew better than to run on the rope. Men and women assumed the gift of prophecy, and all prophesied alike. Tom Lorrigan would go “over the road”; for how long they could only guess according to their secret hopes. Some predicted a fifteen-year term for Tom. Others thought that he might get off lightly––say with five or six years. They based their opinion on the fact that men have been sent to the penitentiary for fifteen years, there to repent of stealing a calf not yet past the age of prime veal. And it is not so long since men were hanged for stealing a horse; witness Tom’s brother, who would surely have been lynched had he not been shot. Witness also divers other Lorrigans whose careers had been shortened by their misdeeds.
Much of the talk was peddled to Tom and the boys under the guise of friendship. Having lived all of his life in the Black Rim country, Tom knew how much the friendship was worth, knew that the Black Rim folk had drawn together like a wolf pack, and were waiting only until he was down before they rushed in to rend him and his family. Old grudges were brought out and aired secretly. It would go hard with the Lorrigan family if Tom were found guilty. Although he sensed the covert malice behind the smiles men gave him, he would not yield one inch from his mocking disparagement of the whole affair. He laid down a law or two to his boys, and bade them hold their tongues and go their way and give no heed to the clacking.
“The show ain’t over till the curtain’s down for good,” he said, borrowing a phrase from Belle. “We got a long time yet to live in the Black Rim. We’ll be right here when the smoke li
fts. Hang and rattle now, and keep your mouths shut. This here’s the law-sharp’s job. I’m payin’ him darn good money for it, too. When he’s through, then we’ll play. But mark this down in yore little red book, boys: The less yuh say right now, the stronger we can play the game when we’re ready.”
“If they do railroad yuh, dad, leave it to us. They’ll be a sorry looking bunch when we’re through,” said Lance, and meant every word of it.
“They won’t railroad me.” Tom snorted and laughed his contempt of the whole affair. “I ain’t ever used the law to fight with before––but shucks! When a scrap gets outside of gun range, one club’s about the same as another to me.”
Optimism is a good thing, but it does not altogether serve, as Tom discovered at the trial.
Evidence was produced which astonished him. For instance, an AJ man had seen him riding over by Squaw Butte, on the night after Douglas had accused him of stealing the spotted yearling. The AJ man seemed embarrassed at his sudden prominence in the case, and kept turning his big range hat round and round on one knee as he sat in the chair sacred to those who bore witness to the guilt or innocence of their fellow men in Black Rim country. He did not often look up, and when he did he swallowed convulsively, as though something stuck in his throat. But his story sounded matter-of-fact and honest.
He had ridden past Squaw Butte the night after Tom Lorrigan was accused by Douglas. Yes, he knew it was that night, because next day he heard about the fuss over at Devil’s Tooth. He had been on his way from Jumpoff and had cut across country because he was late. There was a moon, and he had seen a man riding across an open space between the creek and the willows. The man had gone in among the willows. The AJ man had not thought much about it, though he did wonder a little, too. It was late for a man to be riding around on the range.
