by Bower, B M
“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!”
Mary Hope could have hugged that cowpuncher who hastily seized her hand and swung her into place as the first couple in the first set.
When the three sets were formed he called the dance figures in a sonorous tone that swept out through the open windows and reached the ears of the Lorrigans as they rode away.
“Honor yore pardner––and the lady on your left!
Join eight hands, an’ a-circle to the left!
Break an Indian trail home in the Indian style, with the
lady in the lead!
Swing the lady behind you once in a while!––
The lady behind you once in a while!––
Now your pardner, and go hog wild!”
The fiddle and two mouth harps were scarcely heard above the rhythmic stamping of feet, the loud chant of the caller, who swung Mary Hope clear of the floor whenever he put his arm around her.
“A––second couple out, and a-cir-cle four!
Lay-dees do ce do!
You swing me, an’ I’ll swing you––
And we’ll all dance in the same ole shoe!
“Same four on to the next!––dance the ocean wave!
The same ole boys, the same ole trail,
Watch that possum walk the rail!
Cir-cle six, and a-do ce do!
Swing, every one swing, and a––promenade home!”
“Who wants a piano? Couldn’t hear it if yuh’ had it!” he cried, while the twelve couples paused breathless. Then he wiped his face frankly and thoroughly with his handkerchief, caught Mary Hope’s hand in his, lifted his voice again in his contagious sing-song:
“Cir-cle eight, till you get straight!
Swing them ladies, like swingin’ on a gate!
Left foot up, and-a-right foot down––
Make that big foot jar the ground!
Prom-e-nade!
Swing yore corner, if you ain’t too slow!
Now yore pardner, and around you go!
For the––last time––and a-long time––
You know where, and a-I don’t care!”
The dance was saved by the big cowpuncher with the peeling nose and the twinkly gray eyes. Mary Hope had never seen him before that day, but whenever she looked at him a lump came in her throat, a warm rush of sheer gratitude thrilled her. She did not learn his name––two or three men called him Burt, but he seemed to be a stranger in the country. Burt saved her dance and kept things moving until the sky was streaked with red and birds were twittering outside in the cottonwoods.
She wanted to thank him, to tell him a little of her gratitude. But when she went to look for him afterwards he was gone, and no one seemed to know just where he belonged. Which was strange, when you consider that in the Black Rim country every one knows everybody.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PEDDLED RUMORS
In the smoking compartment of a Pullman car that rocked westward from Pocatello two days after the Fourth, Lance sprawled his big body on a long seat, his head joggling against the dusty window, his mind sleepily recalling, round by round, a certain prize fight that had held him in Reno over the Fourth and had cost him some money and much disgust. The clicking of the car trucks directly underneath, the whirring of the electric fan over his head, the reek of tobacco smoke seemed to him to last for hours, seemed likely to go on forever. Above it all, rising stridently now and then in a disagreeable monotone, the harsh, faintly snarling voice of a man on the opposite seat blended unpleasantly with his dozing discomfort. For a long time the man had been talking, and Lance had been aware of a grating quality of the voice, that yet seemed humorous in its utterances, since his two listeners laughed frequently and made brief, profane comment that encouraged the talker to go on. Finally, as he slowly returned from the hazy borderland of slumber, Lance became indifferently aware of the man’s words.
From under the peak of his plaid traveling cap Lance lifted his eyelids the length of his black lashes, measured the men with a half-minute survey and closed his eyes again. The face matched the voice. A harsh face, with bold blue eyes, black eyebrows that met over his nose, a mouth slightly prominent, hard and tilted downward at the corners. Over the harshness like a veil was spread a sardonic kind of humor that gave attraction to the man’s personality. In the monotone of his voice was threaded a certain dry wit that gave point to his observations. He was an automobile salesman, it appeared, and his headquarters were in Ogden, and he was going through to Shoshone on business connected with a delayed shipment of cars. But he was talking, when Lance first awoke to his monologue, of the sagebrush country through which the fast mail was reeling drunkenly, making up time that had been lost because of a washout that had held the train for an hour while two section crews sweated over a broken culvert.
“––And by gosh! the funniest thing I ever saw happened right up here in a stretch of country they call the Black Rim. If I was a story writer, I sure would write it up. Talk about the West being tame!––why, I can take you right now, within a few hours’ ride, to where men ride with guns on ’em just as much as they wear their pants. Only reason they ain’t all killed off, I reckon, is because they all pack guns.
“Hard-boiled? Say, there’s a bunch up there that’s never been curried below the knees––and never will be. They pulled off a stunt the Fourth that I’ll bet ain’t ever been duplicated anywhere on earth, and never will be. I was in Pocatello, and I went on up with the crowd from there, and got in on the show. And sa-ay, it was some show!
“They’ve got a feud up there that’s rock-bottomed as any feud you ever heard of in Kentucky. It’s been going on for years, and it’ll keep going on till the old folks all die off or move away––or land in the pen. Hasn’t been a killing in there for years, but that’s because they’re all so damn tough they know if one starts shooting it’ll spread like a prairie fire through dry grass.
“There’s an outfit in there––the Devil’s Tooth outfit. Far back as the country was settled––well, they say the first Lorrigan went up in there to get away from the draft in the Civil War, and headed a gang of outlaws that shot and hung more white men and Injuns than any outfit in the State––and that’s going some.
“They were killers from the first draw. Other settlers went in, and had to knuckle under. The Devil’s Tooth gang had the Black Rim in its fist. Father to son––they handed down the disposition––I could tell yuh from here to Boise yarns about that outfit.
“Now, of course, things have tamed down. As I say, there hasn’t been a Devil’s Tooth killing for years. But it’s there, you know––it’s in the blood. It’s all under the surface. They’re a good-hearted bunch, but it’ll take about four generations to live down the reputation they’ve got, if they all turned Methodist preachers. And,” the grating voice
paused for a minute, so that one caught the full significance of his hint, “if all yuh hear is true, religion ain’t struck the Devil’s Tooth yet. It ain’t my business to peddle rumors, and the time’s past when you can hang a man on suspicion––but if you read about the Devil’s Tooth outfit some time in the paper, remember I said it’s brewing. The present Tom Lorrigan ain’t spending all his time driving his cows to water. He was hauled up a few years ago, on a charge of rustling. An old Scotchman had him arrested. Tom was cleared––he had the best lawyer in the West––brought him from Boise, where they need good lawyers!––and got off clear. And since then he’s been laying low. That’s the one mistake he’s made, in my opinion. He never did a damn thing, never tried to kill the Scotchman, never acted up at all. And when you think of the breed of cats he is you’ll see yourself that the Black Rim is setting on a volcano.
“Tom Lorrigan has got more men working for him than any outfit in that country. He runs his own round-up and won’t have a rep––that’s a representative––from any other outfit in his camp. His own men haze outside stock off his range. He’s getting rich. He ships more cattle, more horses than anybody in the country. He don’t have any truck with any of his neighbors, and his men don’t. They’re outside men, mostly. There ain’t a thing anybody can swear to––there ain’t a thing said out loud about the Devil’s Tooth. But it’s hinted and it’s whispered.
“So all this preamble prepares you for the funniest thing I ever saw pulled. But I guess I’m about the only one who saw how funny it was. I know the Black Rim don’t seem to see the joke, and I know the Devil’s Tooth don’t.
“You see, it’s so big and neighbors are so far apart that there ain’t any school district, and a few kids were getting school age, and no place to send ’em. So a couple of families got together and hired the daughter of this old Scotchman to teach school. I ain’t calling her by name––she’s a nice kid, and a nervy kid, and I can see where she thought she was doing the right thing.
“Well, she taught in a tumble-down little shack for a while, and one day this Tom Lorrigan come along, and saw how the girl and the kids were sitting there half froze, and he hazed ’em all home. Broke up the school. Being a Lorrigan, all he’d have to do would be to tell ’em to git––but it made a little stir, all right. The schoolma’am, she went right back the next morning and started in again. Like shooing a setting hen off her nest, it was.
“Well, next thing they knew, the Devil’s Tooth had built a schoolhouse and said nothing about it. Tom’s a big-hearted cuss––I know Tom––tried to sell him a car, last fall. Darn near made it stick, too. I figured that Tom Lorrigan was maybe ashamed of busting up the school and making talk, so he put up a regular schoolhouse. Then one of his boys had been away to college––only one of the outfit that ever went beyond the Rim, as far as I know––and he gave a dance; a regular house-warming.
“Well, I wasn’t at that dance. I wish I had been. They packed in whisky by the barrel. Everybody got drunk, and everybody got to fighting. This young rooster from college licked a dozen or so, and then took the schoolma’am and drove clear to Jumpoff with her, and licked everybody in town before he left. Sa-ay, it musta been some dance, all right!
“Then––here comes the funny part. Everybody was all stirred up over the Lorrigans’ dance, and right in the middle of the powwow, blest if the Lorrigans didn’t buy a brand new piano and haul it to the schoolhouse. They say it was the college youth, that was stuck on the schoolma’am. Well, everybody out that way got to talking and gossiping––you know how it goes––until the schoolma’am, just to settle the talk, goes and gives a dance to raise money to pay for the piano. She’s all right––I don’t think for a minute she’s anything but right––and it might have been old Tom himself that bought the piano. Anyway, she went and sent invitations all around, two dollars per invite, and got a big crowd. Had a picnic in the grove, and everything was lovely.
“But sa-ay! She forgot to invite the Lorrigans! Everybody in the country there, except the Devil’s Tooth outfit. I figure that she was afraid they might rough things up a little––and maybe she didn’t like to ask them to pay for something they’d already paid for––but anyway, just when the dance was going good, here came the whole Devil’s Tooth outfit with a four-horse team, and I’m darned if they didn’t walk right in there, in the middle of a dance, take the piano stool right out from under the schoolma’am, and haul the piano home! They––”
A loud guffaw from his friends halted the narrative there. Before the teller of the tale went on, Lance pulled his cap down over his eyes, got up and walked out and stood on the platform.
“They hauled the piano home!” He scowled out at the reeling line of telegraph posts. “They––hauled––that piano––home!”
He lighted a cigar, took two puffs and threw the thing out over the rail. “She didn’t ask the Lorrigans––to her party. And dad––”
He whirled and went back into the smoking compartment. He wanted to hear more. The seat he had occupied was still empty and he settled into it, his cap pulled over his eyes, a magazine before his face. The others paid no attention. The harsh-voiced man was still talking.
“Well, they can’t go on forever. They’re bound to slip up, soon or late. And now, of course, there’s a line-up against them. It’s in the blood and I don’t reckon they can change––but the country’s changing. I know of one man that’s in there now, working in the dark, trying to get the goods––but of course, it’s not my business to peddle that kind of stuff. I was tickled about the piano, though. The schoolma’am was game. She offered to give us back our two dollars per, but of course nobody was piker enough to take her up on it. We went ahead and had the dance with harmonicas and a fiddle, and made out all right. Looks to me like the schoolma’am’s all to the good. She’s got the dance money––”
It was of no use. Lance found he could not listen to that man talking about Mary Hope. To strike the man on his fish-like, hard-lipped mouth would only make matters worse, so he once more left the compartment and stood in the open doorway of the vestibule just beyond. The train, slowing to a stop at a tank station, jarred to a standstill. In the compartment behind him the man’s voice sounded loud and raucous now that the mechanical noises had ceased.
“Well, I never knew it to fail––what’s in the blood will come out. They’ve lived there for three generations now. They’re killers, thieves at heart––human birds of prey, and it don’t matter if it is all under the surface. I say it’s there.”
At that moment, Lance had the hunger to kill, to stop forever the harsh voice that talked on and on of the Lorrigans and their ingrained badness. He stepped outside, slamming the door shut behind him. The voice, fainter now, could still be heard. He swung down to the cinders, stood there staring ahead at the long train, counting the cars, watching the fireman run with his oil can and climb into the engine cab. He could no longer hear the voice, but he felt that he must forget it or go back and kill the man who owned it.
In the car ahead a little girl leaned out of the window, her curls whipping across her face. Jubilantly she waved her hand at him, shrilled a sweet, “Hello-oh. Where you goin’? I’m goin’ to my grandma’s house!”
The rigor left Lance’s jaw. He smiled, showing his teeth, saw that a brakeman was down inspecting a hot box on the forward truck of that car, and walked along to the window where the little girl leaned and waited, waving two sticky hands at him to hurry.
“Hello, baby. I know a grandma that’s going to be mighty happy, before long,” he said, standing just under the window and looking up at her.
“D’you know my gran’ma? S’e lives in a green house an’ s’e’s got five––hundred baby kittens for me to see! An’ I’m goin’ to bring one home wis me––but I do’no which one. D’you like yellow kittens, or litty gray kittens, or black ones?”
Gravely Lance studied the matter, his eyebrows pulled together, his mouth wearing the expression w
hich had disturbed Mary Hope when he came to mend the lock on her door.
“I’d take––now, if your grandma has one that’s all spotted, you might take that, couldn’t you? Then some days you’d love the yellow spots, and some days you’d love the black spots, and some days––”
“Ooh! And I could call it all the nice names I want to call it!” The little girl pressed her hands together rapturously. “When my kitty’s got its yellow-spotty day, I’ll call him Goldy, and when––”
The engine bell clanged warning, the wheels began slowly to turn.
“Ooh! You’ll get left and have to walk!” cried the little girl, in big-eyed alarm.
“All right, baby––you take the spotted one!” Lance called over his shoulder as he ran. He was smiling when he swung up the steps. No longer did he feel that he must kill the harsh-voiced man.
He went forward to his own section, sat down and stared out of the window. As the memory of the little girl faded he drifted into gloomily reviewing the things he had heard said of his family. Were they really pariahs among their kind? Outlawed because of the blood that flowed in their veins?
Away in the back of his mind, pushed there because the thought was not pleasant, and because thinking could not make it pleasant, had been the knowledge that he was returning to a life with which he no longer seemed to be quite in tune. Two weeks had served to show him that he had somehow drifted away from his father and Duke and Al, that he had somehow come to look at life differently. He did not believe in the harsh man’s theory of their outlawry; yet he felt a reluctance toward meeting again their silent measurement of himself, their intangible aloofness.
The harsh-voiced man had dragged it all to the surface, roughly sketching for the delectation of his friends the very things which Lance had been deliberately covering from his own eyes. He had done more. He had told things that made Lance wince. To humiliate Mary Hope before the whole Black Rim, as they had done, to take away the piano which he had wanted her to have––for that Lance could have throttled his dad. It was like Tom to do it. Lance could not doubt that he had done it. He could picture the whole wretchedly cheap retaliation for the slight which Mary Hope had given them, and the picture tormented him, made him writhe mentally. But he could picture also Mary Hope’s prim disapproval of them all, her deliberate omission of the Lorrigans from her list of invited guests, and toward that picture he felt a keen resentment.
