The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  Lance’s big, well-kept hand went up to smooth her hair with a comforting, caressing movement infinitely sweet to Belle. “I know,” he said quietly.

  “And it isn’t anything, of course. But the old boys have gone, and these new ones—Lance, what is the matter with the Devil’s Tooth ranch? Tell me, for heaven’s sake, if I’m getting to be an old woman with notions!”

  “You’ll never be an old woman,” said Lance in the tone Mary Hope built her day-dreams around. “Age has nothing to do with you—you just are. But as to notions—well, you may have. Women do have them, I believe.” He kissed her hair and added, “What do you think is the matter with the ranch?”

  “I don’t know. When I try to pin it to one thing, there’s nothing to put a pin in. Not a thing. You remember Cheyenne? I was afraid Tom would kill him, after the trial. You know it was practically proven that he was a spy, and was working to get something on the outfit. I was on the warpath myself, over that trial. I would a shot up a few in that courtroom if Tom had been convicted. You know and I know that Tom didn’t have a thing to do with that darned, spotted yearling of Scotty’s.

  “But Cheyenne just—just faded out of existence. Tom’s never mentioned him from the day of the trial to this. And I know he hates the whole Rim, and won’t have anything much to do with anybody—but he acts just as if nothing had happened, as if nobody had ever tried to make him out a cow thief. He won’t talk about it. He won’t talk about anything much. When we’re alone he just sits and thinks. And honey, the Lorrigans have always been men that did things.

  “He and the boys woke up, and the ranch acted human about the schoolhouse, but it’s other times, when there’s no excitement around, that I feel as if—I don’t know what. It’s something underneath. Something that never comes to the top. Something that’s liable to reach up and grab.” She put a hand up and patted Lance’s lean, hard jaw. “I’d shoot any one that said Belle Lorrigan’s afraid—but that’s about what it amounts to,” she finished with a little mirthless laugh.

  “Belle Lorrigan’s not afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’ve lived in the Rim too long, Belle, and you’ve been watching dad and the boys chasing that million. I’ve seen other men working at it, and it always gets hold of them until they don’t seem to care for anything else. Now, I know an ageless lady who’s going to bed and forget all about her nerves and her notions. Or if she doesn’t forget, she’ll remember too that she has somebody around who knows—and who cares a heap for his mother.” Lance pulled her close and kissed her comfortingly.

  “That helps,” whispered Belle. “You’ve changed, too—but not like the rest, thank God. And I thought maybe you had noticed things—”

  “I have noticed that the Devil’s Tooth is mighty busy chasing dollars on the hoof,” soothed Lance. “It has left our Belle alone too much, and it has gotten on her nerves. Go to bed, woman—and dream of pleasant things.”

  He took her by the shoulders and pushed her playfully to the very door of her bedroom, gave her another kiss and turned the knob for her, and watched her go in with a smile on her face. His own smile lasted only until the door was closed. He went to the lamp, blew it out and entered his own room, removed his shoes and dropped them on the floor with more noise than was considerate of his father’s slumber, lighted his lamp and moved aimlessly about the room for a time.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed while he smoked a cigarette, his elbows on his knees, his thoughts traveling far trails. Abruptly he rose, put on a pair of well-worn tennis shoes, opened a door leading outside and went quietly down to the corrals.

  The first corral he crossed and found it empty of any horses save the pintos and Coaley. The second corral held three horses, one of them the chunky roan he had ridden that afternoon. The third and largest corral was empty, the gate swinging open.

  “All right—no horses caught up for night-riding—yet,” he said to himself, and returned to the house, leaving the straighter path to pass close to the bunk house. He listened there for a full two minutes, decided that it would take at least five men to do all of that snoring, and went to bed thankful for the comfort of a felt mattress under his tired body.

  The next day passed without any incidents save trivial ones that did not count. Lance rode to the creek with his trout-rod and reel—more citified innovations which the ranch eyed askance—and spent four hours loitering along the bank, his fly floating uselessly over shallow pools where was never a fish. It was not the right time of day for fishing, but Lance seemed to have forgotten the lore he had learned along that same creek and others farther away.

  Sometimes he could be seen from the ranch buildings, more often he could not. When he could not be seen was when he was crouched among the rocks, studying the Devil’s Tooth Ridge with his powerful glasses.

  “Hope he’s comfortable,” he said once, when, satisfied that his guess was correct, he put the glasses away and settled down seriously to fishing.

  He rode home with four trout, and Riley fried them for supper. During supper Lance criticized Squaw Creek, and hinted that Mill Creek and Lava Creek were better fishing waters, and that he meant to try them.

  That night at eleven o’clock he made another silent tour of the corrals and went to bed feeling pretty sure that the ranch would show its present complement of men in the morning.

  On the second day, four of the hired cowboys rode in at sundown, and with them came Al. Their horses were fagged. They themselves were dirty, hungry, tired. Their faces were glum—and the glumness remained even after they had washed and eaten ravenously. Al did not come to the house at all, but stayed down in the bunk house, whither Tom presently went. Lance did not follow.

  Belle looked worried and asked Lance constrainedly if he knew why Duke had not come with the others. Lance laughed.

  “Duke? Oh—he’s on the trail of another dollar. By heck, Belle, I’m afraid you’ve raised one son to be a shirk. I don’t seem to need all of that dollar chasing to make me happy.”

  Tom came in then, glanced swiftly from one to the other, said something unimportant, rolled a cigarette with elaborate care, and observed that Duke would find it hot, riding all the way to Shoshone, and that he’d be darned if he’d go that far for any girl. He sat down and disposed himself comfortably, got up, muttered something about forgetting to turn Coaley out, and left the house.

  Belle turned and looked at Lance. “Honey, it’s that kind of thing—”

  “I used to think, Belle, that you had the bluest eyes in the whole world,” Lance drawled quizzically. “They’re blue enough, in all conscience—by heck, Belle! Does a Lorrigan always love blue eyes?”

  “I was going to say that—”

  “You were going to say that you were not going to say a darned thing, madam. You need a vacation, a trip somewhere. Why don’t you beat it, and get your nerves smoothed down a little?”

  “Lance, you don’t believe Duke—”

  “Belle, your boys are old enough to think of girls a little bit, now and then. Even your baby thinks of girls—a little bit. Now and then. I’m going fishing, Belle. I’m going to fish where there are fish. And if I’m not back by the clock, for heck’s sake don’t get yourself excited and call me a mystery.”

  She called after him. “Lance, come back here and tell me the truth! You don’t believe—”

  “Belle, I’ll tell you the truth. Sure, I’ll tell you the truth. I tell you to cut out this worrying over nothing. Why, don’t you know the world is plumb full of real things to worry about?” He came close, patting her on the shoulder as one pats a child who feels abused for slight cause. “This notion of yours—it’s all damned nonsense. Cut it out.”

  He went off whistling, and Belle gazed after him dubiously, yet reassured in spite of herself. After all, there was nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  WHEN A LORRIGAN LOVES

  Followed a day of sweltering heat, when the horses in the corral switched flies and sweated doing nothing; w
hen all of the chickens crawled under the coolest shelter they could find, and panted with their wings spread away from their bodies; when the wind was like a blast from an open furnace, and no man of his own choice remained in the sun.

  In the shade of the biggest haystack, Tom and Al squatted on their boot heels with their faces toward the corral and the houses beyond, and talked for two hours in low monotones while they broke spears of fragrant hay into tiny bits and snapped the bits from them with thumb and finger. From the house porch Lance saw them there and wondered what they were talking about so long. He even meditated committing the crime of eavesdropping, but he decided against it. Even if there had been any point from which he could approach the two unseen, his soul rebelled against such tactics employed in cold blood.

  Devil’s Tooth Ranch dragged somehow through its third day of inaction, and that night prepared itself to sleep if possible, though the hot wind still blew half a gale and the sky was too murky to show any stars.

  Daylight found Lance awake and brooding as he had done ever since his return. He heard no sound in the house, and after a while he dressed and went down to the bunk house. It was empty. No extra horses had been corralled the night before, of that he was sure. Yet the boys were gone again, and with them had gone Tom and Al. He looked and saw Coaley in the box stall.

  On this morning Lance asked no questions of Sam Pretty Cow or Shorty, who presently appeared and went listlessly about their tasks. He returned to the house, heard Riley grinding coffee, and dressed for riding while he waited for breakfast. He was drinking his first cup of coffee when Belle appeared in a thin blue kimono and a lacey breakfast cap which Lance knew had been ordered from the big, dog-eared catalogue on the living room table. He roused himself from scowling meditation and gave her a smile.

  “Sleep any?”

  “Not much,” sighed Belle. “Tom—” she stopped and looked at Lance hesitatingly. “Tom had to push the cattle back from Lava Bed way—he says this weather’s drying up Lava Creek and the stock’ll suffer if they’re left drifting up and down the mud-holes where they’ve watered all summer. He took the boys and started about two in the morning—to get out of the heat. I—I didn’t think you’d want to go, honey—”

  “You thought right. I didn’t want to go; it’s too hot,” Lance assured her, and refrained from looking at her face and the pathetic cheerfulness she was trying so hard to make real.

  “It’s sultry. I thought yesterday I couldn’t stand another hour of that wind—but now I wish it would blow. It’s going to storm—”

  “Yes. It’s going to storm.” Lance set down his empty cup. “I may go fishing, Belle. Don’t look for me back—I may ride over and see how the AJ is making out. The little Boyle girl is not married yet, I hope?”

  “Oh—no. No, she isn’t. Lance, honey—”

  Lance waited beside her chair, but Belle seemed to forget that she had anything to say. She sat leaning her head on one hand, the other stirring her coffee absent-mindedly. “Don’t get caught out,” she said apathetically.

  “I won’t.” Lance lifted the lace frill of the cap and kissed her temple lightly. “Go back to bed. It’s too early for you to be up.”

  At the stable Sam Pretty Cow looked a question, grunted and went on with his stall cleaning. Lance saddled Coaley, tied on an emergency ration of grub.

  “Fishin’s good t’day. Storm’s coming. Uh-huh—you bet,” Sam Pretty Cow observed as Lance mounted.

  “Maybe,” Lance assented non-committally and rode away.

  There were no horse tracks in the trail, yet Lance followed it doggedly, the new-risen sun burning his back through two thin shirts. He seemed in no doubt this morning as to the course he should take. He scarcely gave a glance at the trail. His eyes were staring straight before him at a sullen row of blue-black “thunder heads” that showed above the gray skyline. Yet he did not see them, did not give a thought to their meaning.

  He was thinking poignantly of Mary Hope, fighting the vivid impression which a dream last night had left with him. In his dream Mary Hope had stood at her door, with her hands held out to him beseechingly, and called and called: “Lance! Oh, Lance! I dinna hate you because you’re a Lorrigan—Oh, Lance!”

  It had been a curious dream from start to finish. Curious because, in various forms, this was the third time he had seen her stand with hands outstretched, calling to him. He did not believe in dreams. He had neither patience for presentiments nor faith in anything that bordered on the occult.

  It had been against much inner protest that he had ridden to the schoolhouse in obedience to the persistent idea that she needed him. That he had not found her there seemed to him conclusive proof that there was nothing in telepathy. The dreams, he felt sure, were merely a continuation of that persistent idea—and the persistent idea, he was beginning to believe, was but a perverse twist given to his own longing for her.

  “—And I can’t go to her—not yet. Not while the Lorrigan name—” What came before, what came after those incomplete phrases he would not permit his mind to formulate in words. But he could not shake off the effect of the dream, could not stifle altogether the impulse that plucked at his resolve.

  For more than an hour he rode and tried to fix his mind upon the thing he had set out to do. He knew perfectly well where he was going—and it was not to see Mary Hope. Neither was his destination Lava Creek nor the drying range on either side. His first two days of hard riding had been not altogether fruitless, and he had enough to think of without thinking of Mary Hope. Certain cold facts stared at him, and gibbered their sinister meaning, and dared him to ride on and discover other facts, blood-brothers of these that haunted him o’ nights.

  Coaley, feeling his rider’s mood, sensing also the portent of the heavy, heat-saturated atmosphere and the rolling thunder heads, slowed his springy trot to a walk and tossed his head uneasily from side to side. Then, quite without warning, Lance wheeled the horse short around and touched the reeking flanks with his heels.

  “I’m seventeen kinds of a damn fool—but I can’t stand any more of this!” he muttered savagely, and rode at a sharp trot with his back to the slow-gathering storm.

  He found Mary Hope half a mile from the Douglas house, at the edge of the meadow round which Hugh was driving a mower, the steady, metallic clicking of the shuttle-like sickle sounding distinct from the farther side of the motionless green expanse. Mary Hope was standing leaning against one lone little poplar tree, her hat in her hand, and her eyes staring dully into the world of sorrowful thoughts. Relief and a great, hungry tenderness flooded the soul of Lance when he saw her. He pulled up and swung off beside her.

  “Girl—thank the good God you’re all right,” he said, and took her in his arms, the veins on his temples beating full with his hot blood. “I had to come. I had to see you. You’ve haunted me. Your voice has called me—I was afraid—I had to come—and now I’m not going to let you go. Oh, girl, you’re mine! By all the powers of heaven and earth, you’re mine! The Lorrigan name—what does it matter? You’re mine—I love you. You’ll love me. I’ll make you love me. You’ll love me till you won’t care who I am or who you are, or whether there are any other people in the world—you’ll love me so! And I’ll love you always, always,—to death and beyond, and beyond what lies after that. Girl, girl—you do need me! You need my love. You need it because it’s the biggest thing in the world—and your love is going to match it. We’ll get married—we’ll make a world of our own, just you and I. We won’t care where we make it—it will be our world, the world of our love. Are you game? Are you game to love Lance the way Lance loves you? Oh, girl, tell me!”

  A chill breath swept them like the memory of her father’s hate. A deep, basso rumble drowned whatever reply she stammered. He sheltered her in his arms, kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair, went back to her lips again.

  “Oh, girl—when a Lorrigan loves—!” He cried softly, exultantly. “I tried not to—but I had to love you. It’s Fate. Are you
afraid to love me back? Are you afraid?”

  “No Lorrigan can cry coward to a Douglas,” Mary Hope panted. “But—but my mother will be that—”

  “My mother will be that—all of that, and more,” Lance stopped her, still exulting in her love. “All the Lorrigans—what does it matter? Life’s for you and me to live, you girl with the bluest eyes in the world. When will you marry me? Today? Tell me today!”

  “Oh!” gasped Mary Hope, breathless still from the suddenness of it all. “Oh, not today—oh, but the headlong way you have! I—I canna think. I—”

  “I don’t want you to think. I didn’t ask you to think. Just love me—that’s all. And marry me soon, Girl-with-the-blue-eyes. Soon. It must be soon—sooner than tomorrow—”

  Splittingly the thunder crashed close behind them, a vivid white line cleaving sharply the snarling clouds. Like a sleeper Lance opened the eyes he had closed against her hair and lifted his head. “I must take you home,” he said more calmly. “It’s going to storm—hard. But let me tell you, sweetheart,—it can’t storm as hard as I can love. I’ll take you home, and then you’ll marry me.”

  Mary Hope’s face was pale and radiant. She did not say that she would marry him—nor did she say that she would not. Her eyes were misty with tears until she winked hard, when they shone softly. Lance had never seen them so blue. She stood still, her hands clasped together tightly while he gathered up the reins and mounted. He pulled his foot from the left stirrup, reached down to her and smiled. Never had she seen him smile like that. Never had she seen that look in his eyes. She breathed deep, reached up and caught the saddle horn, put her foot in the stirrup and let him lift her beside him.

  Against Coaley’s nervous pull at the bit Lance held a steadying hand and laughed. “It’s Fate, girl. Let the storm come. We’ll beat it—it can’t hurt us. Nothing can hurt us now.” He had to shout above the crashing thunder. “Do you love me, sweetheart?” His eyes, close to her own, flamed softly, making Mary Hope think dizzily of altar fires.