Rim o' the World
CHAPTER TWENTY
AS HE LIVED, SO HE DIED
Belle Lorrigan, with Lance beside her on the one seat of the swayingbuckboard, swung through the open gate of the Douglas yard and droveto the sun-baked, empty corral. In the doorway of the house, as theydashed past, the bent body of Mother Douglas appeared. She stoodstaring after them, her eyes blurred with tears. "It's that huzzy, theLorrigan woman," she said flatly, wiping her face on her checkedapron, stiffly starched and very clean. "Do you go, Mary Hope, and getthem the horse they've come for. If Hugh were here--"
From somewhere within the house the voice of Aleck Douglas rosesuddenly in a high-keyed vindictive chanting. Mother Douglas turned,but the old man came with a rush across the floor, brushed past herand went swaying drunkenly to the corral, shouting meaninglessthreats. After him went Mary Hope, her eyes wide, her skirt flappingabout her ankles as she ran.
"Oh, please do not pay any attention to father!" she cried, hurryingto overtake him before he reached the buckboard. "He's out of his headwith pain, and he will not have a doctor--Father! listen! They onlycame for the horse I borrowed yesterday--they're going directly--comeback and get into your bed, father!"
Aleck Douglas was picking up a broken neck yoke for a weapon whenLance sprang out over a wheel and grappled with him. The old man'sright arm was swollen to twice its natural size and bandaged to hisshoulder. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath fetid with the feverthat burned him when he turned his face close to Lance.
"It's his arm makes him crazy," said Mary Hope breathlessly. "Lastnight it began, and mother and I cannot keep him in his bed, and wedon't know _what_ to do! He will not have a doctor, he says--"
"He'd better have," said Belle shortly, hanging to the pintos thatdanced and snorted at the excitement. "I'll send one out. Lance, youbetter stay here and look after him--he'll kill somebody yet. Aren'tthere any men on the place, for heaven's sake?"
Mary Hope said there wasn't, that Hugh was not expected back beforenight. They had bought a horse from the Millers, and it had jumped thefence and gone home, and Hugh had gone after it. Then she ran to dowhat she could to calm her father. Scotty, it would seem, wanted todrive the Lorrigans off his land because they were thieves andcutthroats and had come there to rob him boldly in the broad light ofday.
"Bat him on the head if you have to, Lance," Belle called, cold-eyedbut capable. "He'll get sunstroke out here in this heat. And if youcan get him into the house you had better tie him down till a doctorcomes." Then she left, with the pintos circling in a lope to get outthrough the gate and into the trail.
The last she saw of them, Lance and Mary Hope were both strugglingwith the old man, forcing him foot by foot to the house, where MotherDouglas stood on the doorstep crying, with her apron to her face.
She had the tough little team in a white lather, with their stubbornheads hanging level with their knees, when she stopped at the littlerailroad station and sent a peremptory wire to the Lava doctor who wasmost popular in the Black Rim. She waited until he arrived on thetrain which he luckily had time to catch, and then, the pintoshaving somewhat recovered under the solicitous rubbing-down of ahollow-chested stableman, she hustled the doctor and his black caseinto the buckboard and made the return drive in one hour and fiftyminutes, which was breaking even her own record, who was called thehardest driver in the whole Rim country.
They found Lance with his coat off and the perspiration streamingdown his face, battling with Aleck Douglas who was raving still of theLorrigans and threatening to kill this one who would not leave himalone to die in peace. Mary Hope and her mother were in the hot littlekitchen where the last of the sunlight streamed through the fadedgreen mosquito netting that sagged in and out as the breeze of sundownpushed through lazily.
The Lava doctor did not say much. He quieted the raving with hishypodermic needle, removed the amateurish bandage from the hand andthe arm, looked at the wound, applied a cooling lotion, anddexterously wound on a fresh bandage. It seemed very little, Mary Hopethought dully, for a doctor to come all the way from Lava to do.
He would stay all night, he said. And the Lorrigans went home silent,depressed, even Belle finding nothing to say.
"I'll ride over in the morning and see how he is," Lance observed, asthe tired little team climbed the Devil's Tooth Ridge. "I'll have toget the horse, anyway."
The next morning, when he arrived rather early, he learned from MaryHope that her father had died just before daylight, and that Hugh hadnot come back, and the doctor wanted to be taken to Jumpoff, and shecould not leave her mother there alone, and a coffin must be ordered,and she did not know _what_ to do. She was past tears, it seemed toLance. She was white and worn and worried, and there was something inher eyes that made them too tragic to look at. He stood just outsidethe kitchen door and talked with her in a low voice so that MotherDouglas, weeping audibly in the kitchen, need not know he was there.
"The doctor can ride that livery horse in," he said soothingly. "AndI'll wire to Lava for anything that you want, and notify any friendsyou would like to have come and see you through this." He was verycareful not to accent the word friends, but Mary Hope gave him aquick, pathetic glance when he said it.
"You've been kind--I--I can't say just what I would like to say--butyou've been kinder than some friends would be."
She left the doorstep and walked with him to the stable, Lance leadinghis horse and slowing his pace to match her weary steps. "It--seemsunreal, like something I'm dreaming. And--and I hope you won't pay anyattention to what father--said. He was out of his mind, and while hehad the belief, he--"
"I'd rather not talk about that," Lance interrupted quietly. "Yourfather believed that we're all of us thieves, that we stole his stock.Perhaps you believe it--I don't know. We've a hard name, got when thecountry was hard and it took hard men to survive. I don't think theLorrigans, when you come right down to it, were any worse than theirneighbors. They're no worse now. They got the name of being worse,just because they were--well, stronger; harder to bully, harder todefeat. The Lorrigans could hold their own and then some. They'restill holding their own. There never was a Lorrigan ever yet backeddown from anything, so I'm not going to back down from the name theRim has given us. I'm _glad_ I'm a Lorrigan. But I'm not glad to haveyou hate me for it."
They were at the stable door, which Mary Hope pulled open. The hiredhorse stood in the second stall. Lance dropped the reins of his ownhorse, turned to Mary Hope and laid his hands on her shoulders,looking down enigmatically into her upturned, troubled face.
"Girl, don't let us worry you at all. You've got trouble enough, andI'm going to do all I can to help you through it. I'll send outfriends; and then the Lorrigans won't bother you. We won't come to thefuneral, because your father wouldn't like to see us around, and yourmother wouldn't like to see us around, and you--"
"Oh, don't!" Mary Hope drooped her face until her forehead rested onLance's arm.
Lance quivered a little. "Girl--girl, what is it about you that drivesa man mad with tenderness for you, sometimes?" He slipped his free armaround her shoulders, pressed her close. "Oh, girl--girl! Don't hateLance--just because he's a Lorrigan. Be fairer than that." He benthis head to kiss her, drew himself suddenly straight, his browsfrowning.
"There--run back and ask your mother what all she would like to havedone for her in town, and tell the doctor that I'll have the horseready for him in about two minutes. And be game--just go on beinggame. Your friends will be here just as soon as I can get them here."He turned into the stable and began saddling the horse.
Mary Hope, after a moment of indecision, went back to the house,walking slowly, as though she dreaded entering again to take up theheavy burden of sorrow that must be borne with all its sordid details,all the meaningless little conventions that attend the passing of ahuman soul. She had not loved her father very much. He was not a manto be loved. But his going was a bereavement, would leave a desolateemptiness in her life. Her mother would fill with weeping reminiscencethe h
ours she would have spent in complaining of his harshness. Sheherself must somehow take charge of the ranch, must somehow fill herfather's place that seemed all at once so big, so important in herworld.
She looked back, wistfully, saw Lance leading out the horse. He hadtold her to be game--to go on being game. She wondered if he knew justhow hard it was going to be for her. He had said that the Lorriganswere strong, were harder to defeat, had always held their own. He wasproud because of their strength! She lifted her head, carefully wipedthe tears from her cheeks--Mary Hope seemed always to be wiping tearsfrom her cheeks lately!--and opened the door. The Lorrigans? Verywell, there was also the Douglas blood, and that was not weaker thanthe Lorrigan.
She was quite calm, quite impersonal when she gave Lance a list of thepitifully small errands she and her mother would be grateful if hewould perform for them. Her lips did not quiver, her hands did nottremble when she took her father's old red morocco wallet from thebureau drawer and gave Lance money to pay for the things they wouldneed. Or if he would just hand the list to the Kennedys, she told him,they would be glad to attend to everything and save him the bother.They would come out at once, and perhaps Mrs. Smith would come. Shethanked him civilly for the trouble he had already taken and added amessage of thanks for Belle. She thanked him for the use of the horseand for attending to the schoolhouse matter for her. She was soextremely thankful that Lance exploded in one two-word oath when herode away. Whereupon the doctor, who knew nothing of Lance's thoughts,looked at him in astonishment.