“They’ll throw some grub together quick, over here,” he explained to the girl. “Everybody eats at the section house. It ain’t much of a place, but there ain’t any other place. And while you’re having dinner I’ll have the operator wire down to Lava for a marriage license to be sent up on the next train. The saloon man is a justice of the peace, and he’ll marry us right away, soon as you eat. And––”
“Without a license? I know it’s always done that way on the stage, but––but this isn’t going to be any stage marriage.”
“Well, but the license will be all made out and 14 on the way, and he’ll take my word for it and go ahead with the ceremony. If I tell him to, he will. It will be all right; I’ll make it all right. And then I can get a team from a ranch back here a ways, and take you right out to Devil’s Tooth. It’s the best way. This ain’t any place for a lady to stay. You’ll be comfortable out at the Devil’s Tooth––it’s clean, anyway.” He looked at her honest-eyed, and smiled again. “Yuh needn’t be afraid uh me. We’re rough enough and tough enough, and we maybe shoot up each other now and again, but we ain’t like city folks; we don’t double-cross women. Not ever.”
She said nothing, and when they had walked four steps farther he added with a sincere wish to set her at ease: “I could take you to some ranch and leave you till the license comes, if you think it wouldn’t be all right to get married now. But the womenfolks would talk your arm off, and you wouldn’t like it. And they’d talk about you when your back was turned. But if Scotty goes ahead and married us, I don’t see why––”
“Oh, I’m not worrying about that. It’s just cutting a corner instead of walking around. I was thinking,” said Belle Delavan, while she dabbed at her lashes as though they were beaded with paint instead of tears and she must be careful not to smear them, “I was just thinking how––how good you are. My God, I never knew they grew men like you, outside of plays and poetry.” 15
“Good!” echoed young Tom Lorrigan, feared of his kind for his badness. His tone was hushed with amazement, all aglow with pleasure. “Good!––my Lord!”
16
CHAPTER TWO
THE LORRIGAN TREE GROWS THRIFTILY
Young Tom Lorrigan had found his mate. Had he known more about life in the big world beyond the Rim, he must have been amazed at his luck. Once a man dropped dead in a poker game when he had staked his last blue chip and drawn a royal flush. In the great game of hearts Tom had drawn a royal flush, but he did not drop dead. Instead, he went right on living, more determined than ever to own a million dollars’ worth of cattle and horses before he died, considerably before he died, because he wanted to enjoy that million with Belle. And because of her he wanted that million to be honest money.
Everything he did now, he did for Belle more than for himself. As a matter of course she became his real reason for living. She was like the sun. He took her for granted, never questioning the blessed warmth of her presence, never stopping to wonder what life would be like if he lost her. She was beautiful, with a beauty that never palled and never paled. She laughed a great deal, 17 and he never could keep laughter from his own lips while he listened. When she sang she put the meadow larks to shame, and afterwards when he rode the range alone Tom would whistle strange, new melodies that the Black Rim country never had heard before,––melodies which Belle had taught him unconsciously with her singing. He did not know that it would have astonished a city dweller to hear the bad man of Black Rim Country whistling Schubert’s “Serenade” while he rode after cattle, or Wagner’s “Prize Song,” or “Creole Sue,” perhaps, since Belle, with absolute impartiality, sang everything that she had ever heard sung. On billboards before eastern theatres Belle Delavan had been called “The Girl with a Thousand Songs.” Audiences had been invited by the stage manager to name any selection they might choose, assured that Belle would sing it from memory. No wonder that her singing never grew stale to Tom Lorrigan!
But mostly she busied herself with little domesticities that somehow never included cooking, and with driving helter-skelter over the range with two horses hitched to a buckboard, following Tom when he rode after cattle. Do you think she should logically have learned to ride? She did try it once on the gentlest horse that Tom owned, which was not too gentle to run away with Belle. She rode that horse just two hundred yards before she jolted so far from the saddle that she could not 18 find it again until some time after, when they had caught the horse and led him to the corral.
“Not any more for me, Tom Lorrigan!” she gasped, flapping her two pretty hands in eloquent disgust when Tom rode up to her. “I wouldn’t get on a horse’s back again to star for the Queen of England! I’ll take that team of he-devils you’ve been breaking to drive, and I’ll drive ’em or break every bone in their bodies. I’m willing to get behind any horse you’ve got; but to get on their backs––excuse me!” She limped painfully to the house with her yellow hair blowing around her shoulders and across her lips that would smile in spite of her mishap.
After that Belle drove the “he-devils” and others quite as devilish, and risked her bones with perfect equanimity. She drove horses that had to be thrown before the collar could be buckled on, and “forefooted” before they would submit to the harness. Indeed, Belle seemed to prefer that kind of horses. She wanted a team that could keep pace with Tom,––and she had it. Her buckboard lasted a year, with luck. She strewed the Devil’s Tooth range with wheels and doubletrees and splinters and hairpins, and scattered sunshiny smiles and cuss-words and snatches of song wherever she went. And since she went wherever eight bronco feet could take her, Black Rim country came to know Belle Lorrigan as it knew Tom. Came to fear Belle Lorrigan’s wrath, which bettered 19 the lightning for searing, lashing sword-thrusts of venom; came to know her songs well enough to hum snatches of them; came to laugh when she laughed,––and to hope that the next laugh would not be aimed at them; came to recognize her as a better shot than any one save Tom, who taught her.
At the country dances on the various ranches, Belle never missed quadrille, two-step, waltz or schottische, and she danced by herself or sang songs during the intervals, while the women of the range sat stiffly along the walls on benches, stared at Belle and whispered behind their weather-reddened hands, and tittered. She taught big-jointed, bashful boys how to waltz, and she slapped a half-drunken miner who squeezed her too tightly in a square dance. Slapped Tom also when he came hurrying up to kill the miner, and told him to keep to his own quarrels and save his powder for something worth while. She didn’t need help to step on a worm, she added, and took a youth by the arm and led him off to dance. The miner, I may say to the curious, was next seen in Hailey, heading south. He left a very good prospect up in the hills and never went back to work out his assessments.
As you have probably guessed, Belle Lorrigan and the women of the Black Rim country did not get on very well together. Black Rim women thought that a woman who wore her hair in curls 20 down her back––yellow hair at that!––could not be any too good if the truth were known. They declared to one another that a woman who did not talk about her past life, who never so much as mentioned past illnesses, even, must have a great deal to cover up. How did Tom Lorrigan get acquainted with her, anyway? Through some marriage agency, they were willing to bet. And how did a decent woman happen to have all the fancy clothes which Belle Lorrigan possessed? And jewelry enough to stock a store with! Three rings on one