a word to him. You think Lance is perfect.”
“I guess you’re hopeless all right,” Belle retorted. “It’s just a yellow streak in you somewhere. Living with the Lorrigans, I’m hoping you’ll outgrow it. The Lorrigans sure ain’t yellow!”
“I chased Blackie some, Belle,” Lance volunteered, peering down over the stable eave at his irate mother. “Duke started in and got him going 25 good, and when he come fogging over to this side I flopped my arms at him. Gee, but he did stop quick! I guess if you’re going to lick Duke, you better give me about four good licks for that, Belle. And take ’em off Duke’s licking. No use licking us both for the same thing.”
Belle tilted her yellow head and looked up at her beloved youngest, grinning down at her cheerfully from the hay roof where he sprawled head downward, flat on his stomach.
“Well, thank the Lord one Lorrigan has got the nerve to own up to a thing. Come on down and get your four licks, then. I can be as square as the next one. But Duke’s got it coming to him for lying to me. Tell me, Lance, did Duke chase Blackie through the fence?”
“Aw go on, Belle! What’s matter with you, asking me what Duke done? He’s the feller to ask about that. I chased Blackie about four licks’ worth. Hurry up and let’s get it over with. You know it ain’t pleasant for either of us!”
“Smarty!” yelled Duke, quick to read in Belle’s face what softening effect Lance had on her temper. “Tryin’ to be smart––tryin’ to be George Wash’nton! You little liar, you know you chased Blackie more’n what I done. Sneak out of it––yeah, that’s you, every time. Own up just enough to make Belle think you’re an angel. Doggone the whole doggone outfit!”
“Now what?” Tom’s voice broke in upon 26 Duke’s shrill tirade. From the back of his horse Tom looked down quizzically upon them. “Duke, what you been up to?”
“Aw, you always think it’s me! Why don’t you ask Lance what he’s been up to? Why don’t you lick Lance for being on the stable? If I was to get up there and tromp around in the hay and make it leak, I know what I’d git!”
Tom sent a glance up to where Lance was hastily scrambling down a corner. “You’d better!” he commented sternly. Then he looked at Belle, his eyes twinkling under his scowl.
“If you can’t handle these young devils, Belle, turn ’em over to me. I’ll mighty quick settle their hash for ’em.”
Belle gripped tighter the squirming Duke. “I’m not a cripple yet, Tom Lorrigan. They’ve both got a licking coming to ’em, and if you’ll kindly walk off stage R. C. I’ll go on with the scene. You weren’t cued to come on here.”
“It’s your show, Belle,” Tom assented, and very obligingly rode to the other side of the stable to unsaddle his horse, and grinned to himself when the sound of wailing and pleading and promises of the “I’ll-never-do-it-again” variety came to his ears. Belle’s lickings were distinguished chiefly by their uproar.
“Belle wallops ’em like brandin’ calves,” Tom used to chuckle. “They beller a plenty while it’s going on, and kick up their heels when it’s all over. 27 I wish’t my dad had licked me like that when I was a kid. You can gamble, when I was thrashed, I knowed it!”
Duke grew up to be a very good cowpuncher, however. He knew every draw and dry wash, every creek bottom and every canyon on the Black Rim range; knew almost as well as the owner how many cattle carried every brand. In the Devil’s Tooth round-ups Duke held his place alongside Al as a top hand,––disputing now and then the right of young Lance to compete with him, but never quite daring to bring his dispute to the point where action would take the place of words.
“Duke’s sure enough a bad man––with his face,” Tom once snarled to Belle. “Make it a talking match, and Duke could lick any old woman, in the Black Rim country.”
“There’s been enough fighting Lorrigans, don’t you think?” Belle smiled back at him. “Duke’s dad can fight hard enough for the whole family. I didn’t think you wanted your boys to be fighters.”
“I don’t. But I sure do want ’em to have the fightin’ stuff in ’em, whether it ever comes out or not. Take Lance, there. Lance ain’t a fighter, either; but by the Lord John, it’s there! Once get Lance started, and I’d back him against any three men in the Black Rim. It’s in him, if the play ever come up. And it’s in Al. The Lorrigan is strong in Al. But that Duke––”
28
“Honey, I think maybe it’s the Delavan in Duke. I remember an old maid aunt of mine that used to bolt the door and quarrel with my mother through the keyhole. I guess maybe Duke has got a little touch of Aunt Jane.”
“Oh, sure! First I ever heard of Aunt Jane, Belle. Takes you to think up a reason.”
“And the Lorrigan will come out, honey. He’s got the look, now and then. It’s in him, you’ll see.”
So that is how the Lorrigan boys grew up. They thought Belle the most beautiful, the most wonderful woman in the world,––though they never called her mother. Belle would not have it. She refused to become a motherly, middle-aged person, and her boys were growing altogether too big and too masterful to look upon a golden-curled, pink-cheeked, honey-throated Amazon as other Black Rim sons looked upon their faded, too often shrewish maternal parent. She was just Belle. They knew no other like her, no one with whom they might compare her. We do not compare the sun and the moon with other suns and moons. Like Tom, they worshipped her in their hearts, and chummed with her even before they had outgrown her stormy chastisements. They mended her buckboards and her harness; they galloped alongside while she drove careening across the range, her hair flying in the wind, her mouth smiling and showing her white teeth. They danced with 29 her,––and having Belle for a teacher from the time they could toddle, you may guess how the Lorrigan boys could dance. They sang the songs she taught them; they tried to better her record at target practice and never did it; they quarreled with her when her temper was up and dodged her when it became too cyclonic.
They grew up without ever having ridden on the cars, save once or twice to Lava. Black Rim was the rim of the world to them, and their world held all that they yearned for. Belle sheltered them from too much knowledge of that other world, which held the past she hated and tried to forget. Much she taught them of city manners and the little courtesies of life. She would box the ears of the boy who neglected to rise and offer her a chair when she entered a room, and would smoke a cigarette with him afterward. Once she whipped her six-shooter out of its holster and shot a hole through the crown of Al’s hat, as a tactful reminder that gentlemen always remove their hats when they come into a house. Al remembered, after that. At fourteen even the hardiest youth feels a slight shock when a bullet jars through his hat crown two inches above his hair.
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CHAPTER THREE
MARY HOPE DOUGLAS APPEARS
Devil’s Tooth ridge, which gave the Lorrigan ranch its name, was really
