CHAPTER NINE
A LITTLE SCOTCH
In the Black Rim country March is a month of raw winds and cold rains,with sleet and snow and storm clouds tumbling high in the West andspreading to the East, where they hang lowering at the earth and thenreturn to empty their burden of moisture upon the shrinking livethings below.
In the thinly settled places March is also the time when children goshivering to school, harried by weather that has lost a little of itsdeadliness. In January and February their lives would not be safe fromsudden blizzards, but by the middle of March they may venture forthupon the quest of learning.
Black Rim country was at best but scantily supplied with schools, andon the Devil's Tooth range seven young Americans--three of themadopted from Sweden--were in danger of growing up in deplorableignorance of what learning lies hidden in books. A twelve-mile stretchof country had neither schoolhouse, teacher nor school officersempowered to establish a school. Until the Swedish family moved into ashack on the AJ ranch there had not been children enough to make ateacher worth while. But the Swedish family thirsted for knowledge ofthe English language, and their lamenting awoke the father of fourpurely range-bred products to a sense of duty toward his offspring.
Wherefore Mary Hope Douglas, home from two winters in Pocatello, whereshe had lived with a cousin twice removed and had gone to school andhad learned much, was one day invited to teach a school in the Devil'sTooth neighborhood.
True, there was no schoolhouse, but there was a deserted old shack onthe road to Jumpoff. A few benches and a stove and table wouldtransform it into a seat of learning, and there were an old shed andcorral where the pupils might keep their saddle horses during schoolhours. She would be paid five dollars a month per head, Jim Boyle ofthe AJ further explained. Seven "heads" at five dollars each wouldamount to thirty-five dollars a month, and Mary Hope felt her heartjump at the prospect of earning so much money of her own. Moreover, toteach school had long been her secret ambition, the solid foundationof many an air castle. She forthwith consented to become the veryfirst school-teacher in the Devil's Tooth neighborhood, which hopedsome day to become a real school district.
She would have to ride five miles every morning and evening, and hermorning ride would carry her five miles nearer the Lorrigan ranch,two of them along their direct trail to Jumpoff. Mary Hope would neveradmit to herself that this small detail interested her, but shethought of it the moment Jim Boyle suggested the old Whipple shack asa schoolhouse.
Tom Lorrigan, riding home from Jumpoff after two days spent in Lava,pulled his horse down to a walk and then stopped him in the trailwhile he stared hard at the Whipple shack. Five horses walked uneasilyaround inside the corral, manes and tails whipping in the gale thatblew cold from out the north. From the bent stovepipe of the shack awisp of smoke was caught and bandied here and there above thepole-and-dirt roof. It seemed incredible to Tom that squatters couldhave come in and taken possession of the place in his short absence,but there was no other explanation that seemed at all reasonable.
Squatters were not welcome on the Devil's Tooth range. Tom rode up tothe shack, dismounted and let Coaley's reins drop to the ground. Hehesitated a minute before the door, in doubt as to the necessity forknocking. Then his knuckles struck the loose panel twice, and he heardthe sound of footsteps. Tom pulled his hat down tighter on hisforehead and waited.
When Mary Hope Douglas pulled open the door, astonishment held themboth dumb. He had not seen the girl for more than a year,--he was notcertain at first that it was she. But there was no mistaking thoseeyes of hers, Scotch blue and uncompromisingly direct in their gaze.Tom pulled loose and lifted the hat that he had just tightened, and asshe backed from the doorway he entered the shack without quite knowingwhy he should do so. Comprehensively he surveyed the mean little room,bare of everything save three benches with crude shelves before them,a kitchen table and a yellow-painted chair with two-thirds of thepaint worn off under the incessant scrubbing of mother Douglas. Thethree Swedes, their rusty overcoats buttoned to their necks, goggledat him round-eyed over the tops of their new spelling books, thenducked and grinned at one another. The four Boyle children, alsobundled in wraps, exchanged sidelong glances and pulled themselves upalert and expectant in their seats.
"School, eh?" Tom observed, turning as Mary Hope pushed the door shutagainst the wind that rattled the small shack and came toward himshivering and pulling her sweater collar closer about her neck. "Whendid this happen?"
"When I started teaching here, Mr. Lorrigan." Then, mindful of hermanners, she tempered the pertness with a smile. "And that wasyesterday. Will you sit down?"
"No, thanks--I just stopped to see who was livin' here, and--" Hebroke off to look up at the dirt roof. A clod the size of his fist hadbeen loosened by the shaking of the wind, and plumped down in themiddle of the teacher's desk. With the edge of his palm he swept clodand surrounding small particles of dirt into his hat crown, andcarried them to the door.
"There's an empty calf shed over at the ranch that would make a betterschoolhouse than this," he observed. "It's got a shingle roof."
Mary Hope was picking small lumps of dirt out of her hair, which shewore in a pompadour that disclosed a very nice forehead. "I just lovea roof with shingles on it," she smiled.
"H'm." Tom looked up at the sagging poles with the caked mud showingin the cracks between where the poles had shrunken and warped underthe weight. A fresh gust of wind rattled dust into his eyes, and theoldest Swede chortled an abrupt "Ka-hugh!" that set the other sixtittering.
"Silence! _Shame_ on you!" Mary Hope reproved them sternly, rapping onthe kitchen table with a foot rule of some soft wood that blazonedalong its length the name of a Pocatello hardware store. "Get to workthis instant or I shall be compelled to keep you all in at recess."
"You better haze 'em all home at recess, and get where it's warmbefore you catch your death of cold," Tom advised, giving first aid tohis eye with a corner of his white-dotted blue handkerchief. "Thisain't fit for cattle, such a day as this."
"A north wind like this would blow through anything," Mary Hopeloyally defended the shack. "It was quite comfortable yesterday."
"I wouldn't send a dog here to school," said Tom. "Can't they dig upany better place than this for you to teach in?"
"The parents of these children are paying out of their own pockets tohave them taught, as it is."
"They'll be paying out of their own pockets to have them planted, ifthey ain't careful," Tom predicted dryly. "How're you fixed forfirewood? Got enough to keep warm on a hot day?"
Mary Hope smiled faintly. "Mr. Boyle hauled us a load of sage brush,and the boys chop wood mornings and noons--it's a punishment when theydon't behave, or if they miss their lessons. But--the stove doesn'tseem to draw very well, in this wind. It smokes more than it throwsout heat." She added hastily, "It drew all right yesterday. It's thiswind."
"What you going to do if this wind keeps up? It's liable to blow for aweek or two, this time of year."
"Why--we'll manage to get along all right. They'd probably be outplaying in it anyway, if they weren't in school."
"Oh. And what about you?" Tom looked at her, blinking rapidly with hisleft eye that was growing bloodshot and watery.
"I? Why, I've lived here all my life, and I ought to be used to alittle bad weather."
"Hunh." Tom shivered in the draught. "So have I lived here all mylife; but I'll be darned if I would want to sit in this shack all day,the way the wind whistles through it."
"You might do it, though--if it was your only way of earning money,"Mary Hope suggested shrewdly.
"Well, I might," Tom admitted, "but I sure would stop up a fewcracks."
"We've hardly got settled yet," said Mary Hope. "I intend to stuff thecracks with rags just as soon as possible. Is your eye still paining?That dirt is miserable stuff to stick in a person's eye. Shall I tryand get it out? Yesterday I got some in mine, and I had an awfultime."
She dismissed the children pri
mly, with a self-conscious dignity andsome chagrin at their boorish clatter, their absolute ignorance ofdiscipline. "I shall ring the bell in ten minutes," she told themwhile they scuffled to the door. "I shall give you two minutes afterthe bell rings to get into your seats and be prepared for duty. Everyminute after that must be made up after school."
"Ay skoll go home now, sen you skoll not keep me by school from tanminootes," the oldest of the Swedes stopped long enough to bellow ather from the doorway. "Ole og Helge skoll go med. Ve got long way fromschool, og ve don't be by dark ven ve come by home!"
He seized the square tobacco boxes, originally made to hold a poundof "plug cut," and afterwards dedicated to whatever use a ranch manmight choose to put them. Where schools flourished, the tobacco boxeswere used for lunch. The Swedes carried three tied in flour sacks andfastened to the saddles. The wind carried them at a run to the corral.The two smaller boys, Ole and Helge, rode, one behind the other, onone horse, a flea-bitten gray with an enlarged knee and a habit oftraveling with its neck craned to the left. Christian, the leader ofthe revolt, considered himself well-mounted on a pot-bellied bay thatcould still be used to round up cattle, if the drive was not more thana couple of miles. Looking after them from the window that faced thecorral, Tom could not wonder that they were anxious to start early.
"You better let the rest go, too," he advised the perturbed teacher,looking out at the four Boyle children huddled in the shelter of theshack, the skirts of the girl whipping in the wind like a pillowslipon a clothesline in a gale. "There ain't any sense trying to teachschool in a place like this, in such weather. Don't you know them kidshave got all of twelve miles to ride, facing this wind most of theway? And you've got to ride five miles; and when the sun drops it'sgoing to be raw enough to put icicles on your ribs under the skin.Tell 'em to go home. Pore little devils, I wouldn't ask a cow-critterto face this wind after sundown."
"You do not understand that I must have discipline in this school, Mr.Lorrigan. To-morrow I shall have to punish those Swedes for leavingschool without permission. I shall make an example of Christian, forhis impudence. I do not think he will want to disobey me again, verysoon!" Mary Hope took her handkerchief from her pocket, refusing toconsider for one moment the significance of its flapping in the windwhile the windows and doors were closed.
"You're just plain stubborn," Tom said bluntly. "You've no businesshanging out in a place like this!"
"I've the business of teaching school, Mr. Lorrigan. I suppose that isas important to me as your business is to you. And I can't permit mypupils to rebel against my authority. You would not let your mendictate to you, would you?"
"They would have a right to call for their time if I asked them to dosome damfool thing like sitting in this shack with the wind blowingthrough it at forty miles an hour."
"I am sorry, Mr. Lorrigan, that I must remind you that gentlemen donot indulge in profanity before a lady."
"Oh, hell! What have I said that was outa the way? I wasn't cussing; Iwas telling you what your father and mother ought to tell you, andwhat they would if they didn't think more of a few dollars than theydo of their kid's health. But I don't reckon it's my put-in; onlyit's any man's business to see that women and kids don't freeze todeath. And by the humpin' hyenas--"
With her lips in a straight line, her eyes very hard and bright andwith a consciousness of heaping coals of fire on the head of an enemyof her house, Mary Hope had twisted a corner of her handkerchief intoa point, moistened it by the simple and primitive method of placingthe point between her lips, and was preparing to remove the dirt fromTom's watering eye, the ball of which was a deep pink from irritation.But Tom swung abruptly away from her, went stilting on his high heelsto the door, pulled it open with a yank and rounded the corner wherethe four Boyle children stood leaning against the house, their chilledfingers clasped together so that two hands made one fist, their teethchattering while they discussed the Swedes and tried to mimicChristian's very Swedish accent.
"_Og_ is _and_," said Minnie Boyle. "And _skoll_ is _shall_. Swede'seasy. And _med_ means _with_--"
"Aw, it's just the way they try to say it in English," Fred Boylecontradicted. "It ain't Swede--but gee, when the Scotch and the Swedegoes in the air to-morrow, I bet there'll be fun. If Mary Hope triesto lick Chris--"
"You kids straddle your cayuses and hit for home," Tom interruptedthem. "There ain't going to be any more school to-day. Them yourhorses in the shed? Well, you hump along and saddle up and beat it.Go!"
He did not speak threateningly, at least he did not speak angrily. Butthe four Boyle children gave him one affrighted glance and started ona run for the corral, looking back over their shoulders now and thenas if they expected a spatter of bullets to follow them.
At the corral gate Minnie Boyle stopped and turned as though she meantto retrace her steps to the house, but Tom waved her back. So Minniewent home weeping over the loss of a real dinner-bucket and a slatesponge which she was afraid the Swedes might steal from her if theycame earlier to school than she.
When Tom turned to reenter the shack for a final word with Mary Hope,and to let her give first aid to his eye if she would, he found thatsmall person standing just behind him with set lips and clenched fistsand her hair blowing loose from its hairpins.
"Mr. Tom Lorrigan, you can just call those children back!" she cried,her lips bluing in the cold gale that beat upon her. "Do you thinkthat with all your lawlessness you can come and break up my school?You have bullied my father--"
"I'd do worse than bully him, if I had him in handy reach right now,"Tom drawled, and took her by the shoulder and pushed her inside. "Anyman that will let a woman sit all day in a place like this--and Idon't care a damn if you are earning money doing it!--oughta have hisneck wrung. I'm going to saddle your horse for yuh while you bundleup. And then you're going home, if I have to herd yuh like I would awhite heifer. I always have heard of Scotch stubbornness--but there'ssomething beats that all to thunder. Git yore things on. Yore horsewill be ready in about five minutes."
He bettered his estimate, returning in just four minutes to find thedoor locked against him. "Don't you _dare_ come in here!" Mary Hopecalled out, her voice shrill with excitement. "I--I'll _brain_ you!"
"Oh, you will, will yuh?" Whereupon Tom heaved himself against thedoor and lurched in with the lock dangling.
Mary Hope had a stick of wood in her two hands, but she had not thatother essential to quick combat, the courage to swing the club on theinstant of her enemy's appearance. She hesitated, backed andthreatened him futilely.
"All right--fine! Scotch stubbornness--and not a damn thing to back itup! Where's your coat? Here. Git into it." Without any prelude, anyapology, he wrested the stick of wood from her, pulled her coat off anail near by, and held it outspread, the armholes convenient to herhands. With her chin shivering, Mary Hope obeyed the brute strength ofthe man. She dug her teeth into her lip and thrust her armsspitefully into the coat sleeves.
"Here's yo're hat. Better tie it on, if yuh got anything to tie itwith. Here."
He twitched his big silk neckerchief from his neck, pulled her towardhim with a gentle sort of brutality, and tied the neckerchief over herhat and under her chin. He did it exactly as though he was handling acalf that he did not wish to frighten or hurt.
"Got any mittens? Gloves? Put 'em on."
Standing back in the corner behind the door, facing Tom's bigness andhis inexorable strength, Mary Hope put on her Indian tanned, beadedbuckskin gloves that were in the pockets of her coat. Tom waited untilshe had tucked the coatsleeves inside the gauntlets. He took her bythe arm and pulled her to the door, pushed her through it and held herwith one hand, gripping her arm while he fastened the door by thesimple method of pulling it shut so hard that it jammed in the casing.He led her to where her horse stood backed to the wind and tailwhipping between his legs, and his eyes blinking half shut against theswirls of dust dug out of the dry sod of the grassland. Without anyspoken command, Tom took the reins and fl
ipped them up over Rab'sneck, standing forward and close to the horse's shoulder. Mary Hopeknew that she must mount or be lifted bodily into the saddle. Shemounted, tears of wrath spilling from her eyes and making her cheekscold where they trickled down.
The Boyle children, kicking and quirting their two horses--ridingdouble, in the Black Rim country, was considered quite comfortableenough for children--were already on their way home. Mary Hope lookedat their hurried retreat and turned furiously, meaning to overtakethem and order them back. Tom Lorrigan, she reminded herself, mightforce her to leave the schoolhouse, but he would scarcely dare tocarry his abuse farther.
She had gone perhaps ten rods when came a pounding of hoofs, andCoaley's head and proudly arched neck heaved alongside poor,draggle-maned old Rab.
"You're headed wrong. Have I got to haze yuh all the way home? Mightas well. I want to tell yore dad a few things."
He twitched the reins, and Coaley obediently shouldered Rab out of thetrail and turned him neatly toward the Douglas ranch. Even Rab wasScotch, it would seem. He laid his ears flat, swung his headunexpectedly, and bared his teeth at Coaley. But Coaley was of theLorrigans. He did not bare his teeth and threaten; he reached out likea rattler and nipped Rab's neck so neatly that a spot the size of aquarter showed pink where the hair had been. Rab squealed, whirled andkicked, but Coaley was not there at that particular moment. He cameback with the battle light in his eyes, and Rab clattered away in astiff-legged run. After him went Coaley, loping easily, with high,rabbit jumps that told how he would love to show the speed that was inhim, if only Tom would loosen the reins a half inch.
For a mile Tom kept close to Rab's heels. Then, swinging up alongside,he turned to Mary Hope, that baffling half smile on his lips and thelook in his eyes that had never failed to fill her with trepidation.
"I ain't blaming yuh for being Scotch and stubborn," he said, "but younotice there's something beats it four ways from the jack. Yo go onhome, now, and don't yuh go back to that board cullender till theweather warms up. And tell yore folks that Tom Lorrigan broke up yoreschool for yuh, so they wouldn't have to break up a case ofpneumonia."
Mary Hope was framing a sentence of defiance when Coaley wheeled andwent back the way they had come, so swiftly that even with shoutingshe could not have made herself heard in that whooping wind. Shepulled Rab to a willing stand and stared after Tom, hating him withher whole heart. Hating him for his domination of her from the momenthe entered the schoolhouse where he had no business at all to be;hating him because even his bullying had been oddly gentle; hating himmost of all because he was so like Lance--and because he was notLance, who was away out in California, going to college, and had neverwritten her one line in all the time he had been gone.
Had it been Lance who rode up to the schoolhouse door, she would haveknown how to meet and master the situation. She would not have beenafraid of Lance, she told herself savagely. She wouldn't have beenafraid of Tom--but the whole Black Rim was afraid of Tom. Well, justwait until she happened some day to meet Lance! At least she wouldmake him pay! For two years of silence and brooding over his hardihoodfor taking her to task for her unfriendliness, and for this new andunbearable outrage, she would make Lance Lorrigan pay, if the fatesever let them meet again.