Rim o' the World

But she faced it, now that she was there and Tom had been warned of her coming by Coaley, who pointed his ears forward inquiringly when she neared the stable. The two cowpunchers gave Tom slanting glances and left, muttering under their breaths to each other as they led their sweaty horses into a farther corral.

Tom lifted his hand to his hat brim in mute recognition of her presence, gave her a swift inquiring look and turned Coaley into the stable with the saddle on. Mary Hope took one deep breath and, fumbling at a heavy little bag tied beside the fork of her saddle, plunged straight into her subject.

“I’ve brought the money I raised at the dance, Mr. Lorrigan,” she said. “Since you refused to take it for the piano, I have brought it to pay you for the schoolhouse–with Mr. Boyle’s approval. I have three hundred and twelve dollars. If that is not enough, I will pay you the balance later.” She felt secretly rather well satisfied with the speech, which went even better than her rehearsals of it on the way over.

Then, having untied the bag, she looked up, and her satisfaction slumped abruptly into perturbation. Tom was leaning back against the corral rails, with his arms folded–and just why must he lift his eyebrows and smile like Lance? She was going to hand him the bag, but her fingers bungled and she dropped it in the six-inch dust of the trail.

Tom unfolded his arms, moved forward a pace, picked up the bag and offered it to her. “You’ve got the buying fever, looks like to me,” he observed coldly. “I haven’t got any schoolhouse to sell.”

“But you have! You built it, and–”

“I did build a shack up on the hill, awhile back,” Tom admitted in the same deliberate tone, “but I turned it over to Jim Boyle and the Swede and whoever else wanted to send their kids there to school.” Since Mary Hope refused to put out her hand for the bag, Tom began very calmly to retie it on her saddle. But she struck his hand away.

“I shall not take the money. I shall pay for the schoolhouse, Mr. Lorrigan. Unless I can pay for it I shall never teach school there another day!” Her voice shook with nervous tension. One did not lightly and unthinkingly measure wills with Tom Lorrigan.

“That’s your business, whether you teach school or not,” said Tom, holding the bag as though he still meant to tie it on the saddle.

“But if I don’t they will hire another teacher, and that will drive me away from home to earn money–” Mary Hope had not in the least intended to say that, which might be interpreted as a bid for sympathy.

“Well, Belle, she says no strange woman can use that schoolhouse. They might not find anything to teach school in, if they tried that.”

“You’ve got to keep that money.” Mary Hope turned the Roman-nosed horse half away, meaning to leave Tom there with the money in his hand.

Tom reached calmly out and caught the horse by the bridle.

“I want to tell you something,” he drawled, in the voice which she had heard when she came up. “I haven’t ‘got’ to do anything. But I tell you what I will do. If you don’t take this money back and go ahead with your school-teaching as if nothing had happened, I’ll burn that schoolhouse to the last chip in the yard. And this money I’ll take and throw down that crevice under the Tooth, up there. The money won’t do nobody any good, and the schoolhouse won’t be nothing at all but a black spot. You can suit yourself–it’s up to you.”

Mary Hope looked at him, opened her lips to defy him, and instead gave a small sob. Her Scotch blood chilled at the threat of such wanton destruction of property and money, but it was not that which made her afraid at that moment of Tom Lorrigan,–held her silent, glaring impotently.

She trembled while he tied the money to the saddle fork again, using a knot she had never seen tied before. She wanted to tell him how much she hated him, how much she hated the whole Lorrigan family, how she would die before she ever entered the door of that schoolhouse again unless it was paid for and she could be free of obligation to him.

But when his head was bent, hiding all of his face but the chin, she had a wild fleeting notion that he was Lance, and that he would lift his head and smile at her. Yet when he lifted his head he was just Tom Lorrigan, with a hardness in his face which Lance did not have, and a glint in his eye that told her his will was inexorable, that he would do exactly what he said he would do, and perhaps more, if she opposed him.

Without a word she turned back, crushed under the sense of defeat. Useless destruction of property and money did not seem to mean anything at all to a Lorrigan, but to her the thought was horrible. She could not endure the thought of what he would do if she refused to use the schoolhouse. Much less could she endure the thought of entering the place again while it remained a Lorrigan gift.

Blindly fighting an hysterical impulse to cry aloud like a child over her hurt, she reined Jamie into the shortcut trail of the Slide. Coming down she had followed the wagon road, partly because the longer trail postponed a dreaded meeting, and partly because Jamie, being uncertain in his temper and inclined to panicky spells when things did not go just right with him, could not safely be trusted on the Slide trail, which was strange to him.

Until she reached the narrow place along the shale side hill she did not realize what trail she was taking. Then, because she could not leave the trail and take the road without retracing her steps almost to the stable, she went on, giving Jamie an impatient kick with her heel and sending him snorting over the treacherous stuff in a high canter.

“Go on and break your neck and mine too, if ye like,” she sobbed. “Ye needn’t think I’ll give an inch to you; it’s bad enough.” When Jamie, still snorting, still reckless with his feet, somehow managed to pass over the boulder-strewn stretch without breaking a leg, Mary Hope choked back the obstreperous lump in her throat and spoke again in a quiet fury of resentment. “Burn it he may if he likes; I shall not put my foot again inside a house of the Lorrigans!”

Whereat Jamie threw up his head, shied at a white rock on the steep slope beneath, loped through the sagebrush where the trail was almost level, scrambled up a steep, deep-worn bit of trail, turned the sharp corner of the switch-back and entered that rift in the cap-rock known as the Slide.

Mary Hope had traveled that trail many times on Rab, a few years ago. She had always entered the Slide with a little thrill along her spine, knowing it for a place where Adventure might meet her face to face–where Danger lurked and might one day spring out at her. To-day she thought nothing about it until Jamie squatted and tried to whirl back. Then she looked up and saw Adventure, Danger and Lance Lorrigan just ahead, where the Slide was steepest.

Lance pulled up his hired horse, his thoughts coming back with a jerk from the same disagreeable subject that had engrossed Mary Hope. The hired horse jumped, tried his best not to sit down, lunged forward to save himself, found himself held back with a strength that did not yield an inch, and paused wild-eyed, his hind feet slipping and scraping the rock.

Jamie in that moment was behaving much worse. Jamie, finding that he could not turn around, was backing down the Slide, every step threatening to land him in a heap. Mary Hope turned white, her eyes staring up at Lance a little above her. In that instant they both remembered the short turn of the switch-back, and the twelve-foot bank with the scrambling trail down which no horse could walk backwards and keep his legs under him.

“Loosen the reins and spur him!” Lance’s voice sounded hollow, pent within that rock-walled slit. In the narrow space he was crowding his own horse against the right wall so that he might dismount.

Mary Hope leaned obediently forward, the reins hanging loose. “He always backs up when he’s scared,” she panted, when Jamie paid no attention.

Instinctively Lance’s hand felt for his rope. On the livery saddle there did happen to be a poor sort of grass-rope riata, cheap and stiff and clumsily coiled, but fortunately with a loop in the end.

“Don’t lasso Jamie! He always fights a rope. He’ll throw himself!” Mary Hope’s voice was strained and unnatural.

Lance flipped a kink out of the rope. In that narrow space the loop must be a small one; he had one swift, sickening vision of what might happen if the little loop tightened around her neck. “Put up your hands–close to your head,” he commanded her. “It’s all right. Don’t be afraid–it’s all right, girl–”

He shot the loop straight out and down at her, saw it settle over her head, slip over her elbows, her shoulders. “It’s all right–can you get off!”

She tried, but the space was too narrow to risk it, with Jamie still going backward in a brainless panic. He would have trampled her beneath him had she done so.

“Stay on–but be all ready to jump when he leaves the Slide. Don’t be afraid–it’s all right. He won’t hurt you; he won’t hurt you at all.” He was edging closer to the horse, holding the rope taut in his right hand, his left ready to catch Jamie by the bridle once he came near enough. His one fear was that the horse might fall before he was out of the gash, and in falling might crush Mary Hope against the rocks.

As Lance came on, Jamie backed faster, his haunches dropped, his feet slipping under him. Lance dared not crowd him, dared not reach for the bridle, still more than an arm’s length away. So Jamie came out of the Slide backwards, saw with a sudden panic-stricken toss of his head that he had open daylight all around him, whirled short and gave one headlong leap away from the place that had terrified him so.

Lance jumped, reaching for Mary Hope as the horse went over the bank. By the length of his hand he missed her, but the rope pulled her free from Jamie, and she fell prone on the trail and lay still.

“Are you hurt? Good God! are you hurt?” Lance gathered her in his arms and carried her to where the rock wall made a shady band across the steep slope.

Mary Hope was very white, very limp, and her eyes were closed. On her cheeks he saw where tears had lately been. Her mouth had a pitiful little droop. He sat down, still holding her like a child, and felt tentatively of her arms, her shoulders, vaguely prepared to feel the crunch of a broken bone. There was no water nearer than the ranch. Jamie, having rolled over twice, was lying on his side near a scraggly buck-brush, looking back up the hill, apparently wondering whether it would be worth while to get up. The hired horse, having found a niche wherein to set his hind feet, stood staring down through the Slide, afraid to come farther, unable to retreat.

One side of Mary Hope’s face was dusty, the skin roughened with small scratches where she had fallen. With his handkerchief Lance very gently wiped away the dust, took off her hat and fanned her face, watching absently two locks of hair that blew back and forth across her forehead with the breeze made by the swaying hat brim.

She was not dead! She could not be dead, with that short fall. Then he saw that she was breathing faintly, unevenly, and in another minute he saw her lashes quiver against her tanned cheek. But her eyes did not open, the color did not flow back into her face.

“Oh, girl–girl, wake up!” With a little shake he pulled her close to him. “Open your eyes. I want to see your eyes. I want to see if they are just as blue as ever. Girl–oh, you poor little girl!”

He had been hating her, furious at the insult she had given his family. Angry as he was with the Lorrigans, resenting fiercely what they had done, he had hated Mary Hope Douglas more, because the hurt was more personal, struck deep into a part of his soul that had grown tender. But he could not hate her now–not when she lay there in his arms with her tear-stained cheek against his heart, her eyes shut, and with that pathetic droop to her lips. Gently he tucked back the locks of hair that kept blowing across her forehead. Very tenderly, with a whimsical pretense at self-pity, he upbraided her for the trouble she was giving him.

“Must I go clear down to the ranch and pack up water in my hat, and slosh it on your face? I’ll do that, girl, if you don’t open your eyes and look at me. You’re not hurt; are you hurt? You’d better wake up and tell me, or I’ll have to take you right up in my arms and carry you all the way down to the house, and ride like heck for a doctor, and–”

“Ye will not!” she retorted faintly, and unexpectedly he was looking into her eyes, bluer than he had remembered them; troubled, questioning–but stubborn against his suggestion. She moved uneasily, and he lifted her to the bank beside him and put one arm behind her, so that she leaned against him.

“Oh, very well–then I will not. You’ll walk with me to the house, and we’ll let Belle–”

“I will not! Never in my life will I enter the house of a Lorrigan!” Mary Hope brushed a palm against her forehead, straightened herself as if she resented her weakness, wished to hold herself aloof from him. She did not look at Lance, but stared across the narrow valley to the sage-clothed bluff beyond.

“Why not? You’ve just come from the Lorrigans, haven’t you?” Lance studied her face. “You must have, or you wouldn’t be on this trail.”

“I went down to pay for the schoolhouse, since your father took the piano away.–And he would not take the money, and he said he would burn the house if I don’t teach in it–and I’ll die before ever I’ll open the door again, unless he takes the money. And he said if I left the money he would throw it down the crevice yonder–and he would do it! And do you think I’ll be under any obligation to Tom Lorrigan? You called my father hard, but your father is the hardest man that ever lived. The Lorrigans shall not–”

Lance laughed, set her hat wrong side before on her head, tucked the elastic band under her chin, laughed again when she pettishly removed it and set the hat straight. “I wouldn’t worry over the schoolhouse right now–nor Tom Lorrigan either,” he said. “Look at your horse down there. If you’re all right, I’ll go down and see how many bones he’s broken. You had a chance for a nasty pile-up. Do you know that?”

“I’m grateful,” said Mary Hope soberly. “But it was Lorrigan meanness brought me here; it was a Lorrigan got me into the trouble now, and a Lorrigan got me out of it. It’s always the Lorrigans.”

“Yes, and a Lorrigan’s got to see you a little farther before you’re through with them, so cheer up.” Lance laughed again, an amused little chuckle that was calculated to take the droop out of Mary Hope’s lips, and failed completely.

He saw her cheeks were reddening, saw too that her face gave evidence of no particular bodily pain. She had probably fainted from fright, more than anything else, he decided, and her fright was now forgotten in her animosity. He slid off the bank, went down to where Jamie lay, took him by the bridle and urged him to stand. Which Jamie, after one or two scrambling attempts, managed to do. But the horse was hurt. He could scarcely hobble to the trail.

Without paying any visible attention to Mary Hope, Lance removed her saddle from Jamie, and brought it up to where she sat dispiritedly watching him. His manner was brisk, kind enough, but had an aloofness which made her keenly aware that he accepted her adherence to the feud and tacitly took his own place with the Lorrigans. Over this emergency she felt that he had unspokenly set a flag of truce. His attitude depressed her.

“There are just two things to do,” he said, laying the saddle at her feet. “You may ride that livery horse back home, and I’ll come along to-morrow and pick him up and take him in with me to Jumpoff; or you can let me go down to the ranch and bring up a gentle horse, and you can ride that home. I can get him when I come out to-morrow with my traps. I advise you to take the gentle horse from the ranch, after the shake-up you’ve had. This town horse is not easy gaited, by any means. Your horse I’ll manage to get down to the ranch and do what I can for him. It’s his shoulder, I think, from the way he acts. He may be all right after a while.”

Mary Hope looked distressfully at Jamie, standing dejected where Lance had left him, his head sagging, every line of him showing how sick of life he was. She glanced swiftly up at Lance, bent her head suddenly and pressed the tips of her fingers along her cheek bones, wiping away tears that came brimming over her eyelids.

“You’d better let me bring up a horse and take you home,” Lance urged, the caressing note creeping into his voice.

“Oh, no! I can’t! I–what do I care how I get home? But if your father won’t take the money–You don’t know! The whole Rim talks and gossips until I wish I were dead! And I can’t go on using the schoolhouse–and Tom Lorrigan says if I don’t–” She was crying at last, silently, miserably, her face hidden behind her hands.

“He’ll take the money.” Lance, after an indeterminate minute while he watched her, laid his hand lightly on her shoulder. “I’ll see that dad takes it. And I’ll give you a bill of sale that ought to shut the Black Rim mouths. I’m a Lorrigan and I’m not going to apologize for the blood that’s in me, but I want you to know that if I had been home on the night of the Fourth the Lorrigans wouldn’t have done the rotten cheap thing they did.”

Mary Hope heard him tearing a leaf out of his memorandum book, looked up at him while he wrote rapidly. Without any comment whatever he gave her the paper, went up to where the hired horse stood, and coaxed it down through the Slide. Quickly, with the deftness that told of lifelong intimacy with horses and saddles, he set her own saddle on the hired horse, while Mary Hope read the terse bill of sale that set forth the legal “Ten dollars and other valuable considerations,” and was signed “Thomas Lorrigan, per L. M. Lorrigan.” It all seemed very businesslike, and heartened her so much that she was willing to be nice to Lance Lorrigan. But Lance remained strictly neutral.

“I’ll lead him up the Slide for you,” he said unemotionally when the horse was ready. “After he’s over that, I think you’ll be all right; you’re a good rider. And you need not feel under any obligations then to the Lorrigans. I was practically through with the horse, anyway, and it will be no trouble at all to drive by your place and get him to-morrow.”

“I can lead him up–” Mary Hope began, but Lance had already turned the horse and started him up the Slide, so there was nothing for her to do but follow.

At the top she gave him the money bag, which he took without any words whatever on the subject. He held the horse until she had mounted, made sure that she was all right, chilled by his perfect politeness her nervous overture toward a more friendly parting, lifted his hat and turned immediately to go back down the Slide.

Mary Hope glanced back over her shoulder and saw his bobbing hat crown. “Ah, he’s just a Lorrigan, and I hate them all. But he let me pay–I’m quits with them now–and I’ll never in my life speak to one of them again!”