Rim o' the World

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  PEDDLED RUMORS

  In the smoking compartment of a Pullman car that rocked westward fromPocatello two days after the Fourth, Lance sprawled his big body on along seat, his head joggling against the dusty window, his mindsleepily recalling, round by round, a certain prize fight that hadheld him in Reno over the Fourth and had cost him some money and muchdisgust. The clicking of the car trucks directly underneath, thewhirring of the electric fan over his head, the reek of tobacco smokeseemed to him to last for hours, seemed likely to go on forever. Aboveit all, rising stridently now and then in a disagreeable monotone, theharsh, faintly snarling voice of a man on the opposite seat blendedunpleasantly with his dozing discomfort. For a long time the man hadbeen talking, and Lance had been aware of a grating quality of thevoice, that yet seemed humorous in its utterances, since his twolisteners laughed frequently and made brief, profane comment thatencouraged the talker to go on. Finally, as he slowly returned fromthe hazy borderland of slumber, Lance became indifferently aware ofthe man's words.

  From under the peak of his plaid traveling cap Lance lifted hiseyelids the length of his black lashes, measured the men with ahalf-minute survey and closed his eyes again. The face matched thevoice. A harsh face, with bold blue eyes, black eyebrows that met overhis nose, a mouth slightly prominent, hard and tilted downward at thecorners. Over the harshness like a veil was spread a sardonic kind ofhumor that gave attraction to the man's personality. In the monotoneof his voice was threaded a certain dry wit that gave point to hisobservations. He was an automobile salesman, it appeared, and hisheadquarters were in Ogden, and he was going through to Shoshone onbusiness connected with a delayed shipment of cars. But he wastalking, when Lance first awoke to his monologue, of the sagebrushcountry through which the fast mail was reeling drunkenly, making uptime that had been lost because of a washout that had held the trainfor an hour while two section crews sweated over a broken culvert.

  "--And by gosh! the funniest thing I ever saw happened right up herein a stretch of country they call the Black Rim. If I was a storywriter, I sure would write it up. Talk about the West beingtame!--why, I can take you right now, within a few hours' ride, towhere 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 curriedbelow the knees--and never will be. They pulled off a stunt the Fourththat I'll bet ain't ever been duplicated anywhere on earth, and neverwill be. I was in Pocatello, and I went on up with the crowd fromthere, 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 everheard of in Kentucky. It's been going on for years, and it'll keepgoing on till the old folks all die off or move away--or land in thepen. Hasn't been a killing in there for years, but that's becausethey're all so damn tough they know if one starts shooting it'llspread like a prairie fire through dry grass.

  "There's an outfit in there--the Devil's Tooth outfit. Far back as thecountry was settled--well, they say the first Lorrigan went up inthere to get away from the draft in the Civil War, and headed a gangof outlaws that shot and hung more white men and Injuns than anyoutfit in the State--and that's going some.

  "They were killers from the first draw. Other settlers went in, andhad to knuckle under. The Devil's Tooth gang had the Black Rim in itsfist. Father to son--they handed down the disposition--I could tellyuh from here to Boise yarns about that outfit.

  "Now, of course, things have tamed down. As I say, there hasn't been aDevil's Tooth killing for years. But it's there, you know--it's in theblood. It's all under the surface. They're a good-hearted bunch, butit'll take about four generations to live down the reputation they'vegot, if they all turned Methodist preachers. And," the grating voicepaused for a minute, so that one caught the full significance of hishint, "if all yuh hear is true, religion ain't struck the Devil'sTooth yet. It ain't my business to peddle rumors, and the time's pastwhen you can hang a man on suspicion--but if you read about theDevil's Tooth outfit some time in the paper, remember I said it'sbrewing. The present Tom Lorrigan ain't spending _all_ his timedriving his cows to water. He was hauled up a few years ago, on acharge of rustling. An old Scotchman had him arrested. Tom wascleared--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'sbeen laying low. That's the one mistake he's made, in my opinion. Henever did a damn thing, never tried to kill the Scotchman, never actedup at all. And when you think of the breed of cats he is you'll seeyourself that the Black Rim is setting on a volcano.

  "Tom Lorrigan has got more men working for him than any outfit in thatcountry. He runs his own round-up and won't have a rep--that's arepresentative--from any other outfit in his camp. His own men hazeoutside 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 withany 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 outloud 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 sawpulled. But I guess I'm about the only one who saw how funny it was. Iknow the Black Rim don't seem to see the joke, and I know the Devil'sTooth don't.

  "You see, it's so big and neighbors are so far apart that there ain'tany school district, and a few kids were getting school age, and noplace to send 'em. So a couple of families got together and hired thedaughter of this old Scotchman to teach school. I ain't calling her byname--she's a nice kid, and a nervy kid, and I can see where shethought she was doing the right thing.

  "Well, she taught in a tumble-down little shack for a while, and oneday this Tom Lorrigan come along, and saw how the girl and the kidswere sitting there half froze, and he hazed 'em all home. Broke up theschool. Being a Lorrigan, all he'd have to do would be to tell 'em togit--but it made a little stir, all right. The schoolma'am, she wentright back the next morning and started in again. Like shooing asetting hen off her nest, it was.

  "Well, next thing they knew, the Devil's Tooth had built a schoolhouseand said nothing about it. Tom's a big-hearted cuss--I knowTom--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 theschool and making talk, so he put up a regular schoolhouse. Then oneof his boys had been away to college--only one of the outfit thatever went beyond the Rim, as far as I know--and he gave a dance; aregular house-warming.

  "Well, I wasn't at that dance. I wish I had been. They packed inwhisky by the barrel. Everybody got drunk, and everybody got tofighting. This young rooster from college licked a dozen or so, andthen took the schoolma'am and drove clear to Jumpoff with her, andlicked everybody in town before he left. Sa-ay, it musta been somedance, all right!

  "Then--here comes the funny part. Everybody was all stirred up overthe Lorrigans' dance, and right in the middle of the powwow, blest ifthe Lorrigans didn't buy a brand new piano and haul it to theschoolhouse. They say it was the college youth, that was stuck on theschoolma'am. Well, everybody out that way got to talking andgossiping--you know how it goes--until the schoolma'am, just to settlethe 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 perinvite, and got a big crowd. Had a picnic in the grove, and everythingwas lovely.

  "But sa-ay! She forgot to invite the Lorrigans! Everybody in thecountry there, except the Devil's Tooth outfit. I figure that she wasafraid they might rough things up a little--and maybe she didn't liketo 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 Toothoutfit with a four-horse team, and I'm darned if they didn't walkright in there, in the middle of a d
ance, take the piano stool rightout from under the schoolma'am, and haul the piano home! They--"

  A loud guffaw from his friends halted the narrative there. Before theteller 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 oftelegraph posts. "They--hauled--that piano--home!"

  He lighted a cigar, took two puffs and threw the thing out over therail. "She didn't ask the Lorrigans--to her party. And dad--"

  He whirled and went back into the smoking compartment. He wanted tohear more. The seat he had occupied was still empty and he settledinto it, his cap pulled over his eyes, a magazine before his face. Theothers paid no attention. The harsh-voiced man was still talking.

  "Well, they can't go on forever. They're bound to slip up, soon orlate. And now, of course, there's a line-up against them. It's in theblood 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 toget the goods--but of course, it's not my business to peddle that kindof stuff. I was tickled about the piano, though. The schoolma'am wasgame. She offered to give us back our two dollars per, but of coursenobody was piker enough to take her up on it. We went ahead and hadthe dance with harmonicas and a fiddle, and made out all right. Looksto me like the schoolma'am's all to the good. She's got the dancemoney--"

  It was of no use. Lance found he could not listen to that man talkingabout Mary Hope. To strike the man on his fish-like, hard-lipped mouthwould only make matters worse, so he once more left the compartmentand 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 thecompartment behind him the man's voice sounded loud and raucous nowthat 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 isall under the surface. I say it's _there_."

  At that moment, Lance had the hunger to kill, to stop forever theharsh voice that talked on and on of the Lorrigans and their ingrainedbadness. He stepped outside, slamming the door shut behind him. Thevoice, fainter now, could still be heard. He swung down to thecinders, stood there staring ahead at the long train, counting thecars, watching the fireman run with his oil can and climb into theengine cab. He could no longer hear the voice, but he felt that hemust 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 curlswhipping across her face. Jubilantly she waved her hand at him,shrilled a sweet, "Hello-oh. Where _you_ goin'? I'm goin' to mygrandma's house!"

  The rigor left Lance's jaw. He smiled, showing his teeth, saw that abrakeman was down inspecting a hot box on the forward truck of thatcar, and walked along to the window where the little girl leaned andwaited, waving two sticky hands at him to hurry.

  "Hello, baby. I know a grandma that's going to be mighty happy, beforelong," 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 gotfive--hundred baby kittens for me to see! An' I'm goin' to bring onehome wis me--but I _do'no_ which one. D'you like yellow kittens, orlitty gray kittens, or black ones?"

  Gravely Lance studied the matter, his eyebrows pulled together, hismouth wearing the expression which had disturbed Mary Hope when hecame to mend the lock on her door.

  "I'd take--now, if your grandma has one that's all spotted, you mighttake 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!" Thelittle girl pressed her hands together rapturously. "When my kitty'sgot 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, inbig-eyed alarm.

  "All right, baby--you take the spotted one!" Lance called over hisshoulder as he ran. He was smiling when he swung up the steps. Nolonger did he feel that he must kill the harsh-voiced man.

  He went forward to his own section, sat down and stared out of thewindow. As the memory of the little girl faded he drifted intogloomily reviewing the things he had heard said of his family. Werethey really pariahs among their kind? Outlawed because of the bloodthat flowed in their veins?

  Away in the back of his mind, pushed there because the thought was notpleasant, and because thinking could not make it pleasant, had beenthe knowledge that he was returning to a life with which he no longerseemed to be quite in tune. Two weeks had served to show him that hehad somehow drifted away from his father and Duke and Al, that he hadsomehow come to look at life differently. He did not believe in theharsh man's theory of their outlawry; yet he felt a reluctance towardmeeting again their silent measurement of himself, their intangiblealoofness.

  The harsh-voiced man had dragged it all to the surface, roughlysketching for the delectation of his friends the very things whichLance had been deliberately covering from his own eyes. He had donemore. He had told things that made Lance wince. To humiliate Mary Hopebefore the whole Black Rim, as they had done, to take away the pianowhich he had wanted her to have--for that Lance could have throttledhis dad. It was like Tom to do it. Lance could not doubt that he haddone it. He could picture the whole wretchedly cheap retaliation forthe slight which Mary Hope had given them, and the picture tormentedhim, made him writhe mentally. But he could picture also Mary Hope'sprim disapproval of them all, her deliberate omission of the Lorrigansfrom her list of invited guests, and toward that picture he felt akeen resentment.

  The whole thing maddened him. The more, because he was in a senseresponsible for it all. Just because he had not wanted that lonelylook to cloud the blue eyes of her, just because he had not wanted herto be unhappy in her isolation, he had somehow brought to the surfaceall those boorish qualities which he had begun to hate in his family.

  "Cheap--cheap as dirt!" he gritted once, and he included them all inthe denunciation.

  Furiously he wished that he had gone straight home, had not stopped inReno for the fight. But on the heels of that he knew that he wouldhave made the trouble worse, had he been at the Devil's Tooth on theday of the Fourth. He would have quarreled with Tom, but there wasscant hope that he could have prevented the piano-moving. TomLorrigan, as Lance had plenty of memories to testify, was not the manwhom one could prevent from doing what he set out to do.

  At a little junction Lance changed to the branch line, still dwellingfiercely upon his heritage, upon the lawless environment in which thatheritage of violence had flourished. He was in the mood to live up tothe Lorrigan reputation when he swung off the train at Jumpoff, but noman crossed his trail.

  So Lance carried with him the full measure of his rage against MaryHope and the Devil's Tooth, when he rode out of Jumpoff on alean-flanked black horse that rolled a wicked eye back at the riderand carried his head high, looking for trouble along the trail.