CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN WHICH LANCE FINISHES ONE JOB
In the Traffic saloon, whither Lance had gone to find a fire and aneasy chair and something cheering to drink while he waited for thepinto team to rest and eat, he found a sleepy bartender sprawledbefore the stove, a black-and-white dog stretched flat on its side andgrowling while it dreamed, and an all-pervading odor of alcoholicbeverages that appealed to him.
"A highball would make me happy, right now," he announced cheerfully,standing over the bartender, rubbing his fingers numbed from the keenair and from holding in the pintos, to which a slackened pull on thebits meant a tacit consent to a headlong run.
"Been to the dance?" The bartender yawned widely and went to mix thehighball. "I been kinda waitin' up--but shucks! No tellin' when thecrowd'll git in--not if they drink all they took with 'em."
"They were working hard to do just that when I left." Lance stood backto the stove. Having left in a hurry, without his overcoat, he waschilled to the bone, though the night had been mild for that time ofthe year. He hoped that the girl had not been uncomfortable--andyawned while the thought held him. He drank his highball, warmedhimself comfortably and then, with some one's fur overcoat for ablanket, he disposed his big body on a near-by pool table, neverdreaming that Mary Hope Douglas was remembering his tone, his words,his silence even; analyzing, weighing, wondering how much he hadmeant, or how little,--wondering whether she really hated him, whethershe might justly call her ponderings by any name save curiosity. Suchis the way of women the world over.
What Lance thought does not greatly matter. Such is the way of menthat their thoughts sooner or later crystallize into action. Thebartender would tell you that he went straight to sleep, with the furcoat pulled up over his ears and his legs uncovered, his modishly-shodfeet extending beyond the end of the table. The bartender dozed in hischair, thinking it not worth while to close up, because the dancecrowd might come straying in at any time with much noise and a greatthirst, to say nothing of the possibility of thirsty men coming on themidnight freight that was always four or five hours late, and was nowmuch overdue.
The freight arrived. Three men entered the saloon, drank whisky,talked for a few minutes and departed. The bartender took a long,heat-warped poker and attacked the red clinkers in the body of thestove, threw in a bucket of fresh coal, used the poker with goodeffect on the choked draft beneath, and went back to his chair and hisdozing.
During the clamor of the fire-building Lance turned over, drawing uphis feet and straightway extending them again; making a sleepy, futileclutch at the fur coat, that had slipped off his shoulders when heturned. The bartender reached out and flung the coat up on Lance'sshoulders, and bit off a chew of tobacco and stowed it away in hischeek. Presently he dozed again.
Dawn seeped in through the windows. Lance, lying flat on his stomachwith his face on his folded arms, slept soundly. The unpaintedbuildings across the street became visible in the gloomy, lifelessgray of a sunless morning. With the breeze that swept a flurry of graydust and a torn newspaper down the street, came the rattle of a wagon,the sound of voices mingled in raucous, incoherent wrangling.
"They're comin'," yawned the bartender, glancing at the sleeper on thepool table. "Better wake up; they're comin' pickled and fighty,judgin' by the sound."
Lance sighed, turned his face away from the light and slept on,untroubled by the nearing tumult.
Galloping horses came first, _ka-lup, ka-lup, ka-lup_, a sharpstaccato on the frosted earth. The rattle of the wagon ceased,resumed, stopped outside the saloon. Other galloping horsemen came upand stopped. The door was flung open violently, letting in men withunfinished sentences hot on their tongues.
"Next time a Lorrigan dance comes off--"
"What I'd a done, woulda--"
"Fix them damn Lorrigans!"
Detached phrases, no one man troubling to find a listener, the wordscame jumbled to the ears of Lance, who fancied himself in thebunk-house at home, with the boys just in from a ride somewhere. Hewas wriggling into a freshly uncomfortable posture on the table whenthe fur coat was pulled off him, letting the daylight suddenly intohis eyes as his brain emerged from the fog of sleep.
"And here's the--guy that run away from me!" Bill Kennedy jerked offhis hat and brought it down with a slap on Lance's face. "Run off totown, by jiminy, and hid! Run--"
Half asleep as he was--rather, just shocked awake--Lance heavedhimself off the table and landed one square blow on Bill Kennedy'spurple jaw. Bill staggered, caught himself and came back, arms up andfists guarding his face. Lance disentangled his feet from the furcoat, kicked it out of his way and struck again just as Kennedy wasslugging at him.
At the bar the long line of men whirled, glasses in hand, to watch thefight. But it did not last long. Kennedy was drunk, and Lance was not.So presently Kennedy was crawling on his knees amongst some overturnedchairs, and Lance was facing the crowd, every inch of him itching tofight.
"Who was it said he was going to fix them damn Lorrigans?" hedemanded, coming at them warily. "I'm not packing a gun, but I'd liketo lick a few of you fellows that tried to rough-house the dance Igave. Didn't cost you a cent; music, supper, everything furnished foryou folks to have a good time--and the way you had it was to wreck theplace like the rotten-souled hoodlums you are. Now, who is it wants tofix the damn Lorrigans?"
"Me, for one; what yuh go'n take my girl away from me for?" a flushedyouth cried, and flung the dregs of his whisky glass at Lance. Therewas not more than a half teaspoon in the glass, but the intent wasplain enough.
Lance walked up and knocked that young man staggering half across theroom, slapped with the flat of his hand another who leered at him,whirled to meet some one who struck him a glancing blow on the ear,and flung him after the first.
"You're all of you drunk--it's a one-sided fight all the way through,"he cried, parrying a blow from Kennedy, who had gotten to his feet andcame at him again mouthing obscenity. "But I'll lick you, if youinsist."
His coat had hampered him until it obligingly slit up the back. Hewriggled out of the two halves, tore off his cuffs, and went after thecrowd with his bare fists. Some one lifted a chair threateningly, andLance seized it and sent it crashing through a window. Some one elsethrew a beer mug, but he ducked in time and broke a knuckle on thefront teeth of the thrower. He saw a gap in the teeth, saw the manedge out of the fray spitting blood while he made for the door, andfelt that the blow was worth a broken knuckle.
It was not a pretty fight. Such fights never are pretty. Lance himselfwas not a pretty sight, when he had finished. There had beenshooting--but even in Jumpoff one hesitated to shoot down an unarmedman, so that the bar fixtures suffered most. Lance came out of it witha fragment of shirt hanging down his chest like a baby's bib, a cutlip that bled all over his chin, a cheek skinned and swelling rapidly,the bad knuckle and the full flavor of victory.
The saloon looked as though cattle had been driven through it. BillKennedy lay sprawled over a card table, whimpering inarticulatelybecause he had lost his gun at the dance. The flushed youth who hadrashly claimed Mary Hope as his girl was outside with a washbasintrying to stop his nose from bleeding. Others were ministering totheir hurts as best they might, muttering the thoughts that they darednot express aloud.
Lance looked up from examination of his knuckle, caressed his cut lipwith the tip of his tongue, pulled the fragment of shirt down as faras possible, gently rubbed his swelling cheek, and turned to thebartender.
"I never licked a man yet and sent him home thirsty," he said. "Set itout for the boys--and give me another highball. Then if you'll lend mea coat and a pair of gloves, I'll go home."
Peace was ratified in whisky drunk solemnly. Lance paid, and turned togo. One of the vanquished wabbled up to him and held out his hand toshake.
"You damn Lorrigans, you got us comin' and goin'," he complained, "butshake, anyway. I'm Irish meself, and I know a rale fight when I seeit. What we didn't git at the dance before we left, by h
eavins yougive us when we got into town--so I'm one that's game to say it was afine dance and not a dull momint anywhere!"
"That's something," Lance grinned wryly and wriggled into the furovercoat which the bartender generously lent him. He rejected thegloves when he found that his hands were puffed and painful, and wentout to find breakfast.
Over a thick white cup of dubious coffee and a plate of stickyhot-cakes he meditated glumly on the general unappreciativeness of theworld in general, and of the Black Rim in particular. What hadhappened at the schoolhouse he could only surmise, but from certainfragmentary remarks he had overheard he guessed that the schoolhouseprobably had suffered as much as the saloon. Black Rim, it would seem,was determined that the Lorrigans should go on living up to theirreputations, however peacefully inclined the Lorrigans might be.
Two disquieting thoughts he took with him to the stable when he wentafter the pinto team: Mary Hope would say that it was not a pleasantsurprise which he had given her at Cottonwood Spring. And Belle,--hewas not at all sure whether he was too big for Belle's quirt to findthe tender places on his legs, but he was very sure that the Irishmanspoke the truth. There would still be no dull moments for Lance whenhe confronted the owner of that pinto team.