Rim o' the World. B. M. Bower

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ waggled an ear when she mounted, switched his tail pettishly when she struck him with the quirt, reluctantly obeyed the rein, and set his feet on the first steep pitch of the Devil’s Tooth trail. Old as he was, Rab had never gone down that trail and he chose his footing circumspectly. It was no place for a runaway, as Mary Hope speedily discovered when she had descended the first dip and entered the cleft which the Lorrigans called the Slide.

      37

      A slide it was, and down it Rab slid on his rump. An old watercourse, with sheer rock walls that formed the base of the Tooth itself. Had there been room Mary Hope would have turned back. But the cleft was so narrow that a pack horse must be adept at squeezing past protuberances and gauging the width of its pack if it would travel the trail. A sharp turn presently showed her the end of the cleft, and they emerged thankfully upon a sage-grown shelf along which the trail proceeded more gently.

      Then came another cleft, with great boulders at the end, which a horse must negotiate carefully if he would not break a leg or two. It was here that old Tom Lorrigan had died under his horse before help came that way. But Rab had covered many rough trails, and he picked his way over the boulders safely,––though not as a runaway horse should have traveled.

      After that there came a treacherous bit of shale, across which Mary Hope thought it best to lead her runaway steed which refused for a time to venture farther. Being a Douglas she was obstinate. Being obstinate, she would not turn back, especially since the trail would be even worse in the climbing than it was in the descent. Rab, she realized worriedly, could not slide up that narrow, rock-bottomed cleft down which he had coasted so readily.

      “They must be devil horses that ride this way, 38 Rab,” she sighed when she had remounted on the lower margin of the shale. “And the Lorrigans na doot have magic. But I dinna think that even they could run away down it.”

      She struck Rab sharply with the quirt and dug in her heels. If Rab was to run it must be immediately, for the level valley lay just below and the Lorrigan house was around the next point of the hill.

      Rab would not run. He stopped abruptly and kicked with both feet. Mary Hope struck him again, a little harder, and Rab kicked again, more viciously. The trail was much better for kicking than for running, but Mary Hope would not accept the compromise, and at last Rab yielded to the extent of loping cautiously down the last steep declivity. When he reached level ground he laid back his ears and galloped as fast as his stiffened shoulders would let him. So Mary Hope very nearly achieved a dashing pace as she neared the corrals of the wicked Lorrigans.

      “Well! Yuh traveling, or just goin’ somewhere?” A young voice yelled at her as she went past the stable.

      “My horse––is––he rinned away wi’ me!” screamed Mary Hope, her pigtails snapping as Rab slowed up and stopped.

      “He rinned away wi’ you? When? You musta been purty young for riding when that horse rinned away!” Lance came toward her, grinning 39 and slapping his hat against his fringed chaps before he set it upon his head; an uncommonly handsome head, by the way, with the Lorrigan’s dark eyes and hair and his mother’s provocative mouth. “Well, seeing your horse ain’t going to rin no further, you might as well git down and stay awhile.”

      “I will not. I didna come to visit, if you please.”

      Mary Hope’s cheeks were hot but confusion could not break her Scotch spirit.

      “Want to borrow something?” Lance stood looking at her with much enjoyment. A girl in short skirts was fair game for any one’s teasing, especially when she blushed as easily as did Mary Hope. “Want to borrow a horse that will rin away wi’ you.”

      “Lance, you devil, get out and leave the girl alone. I’m ashamed of you! Haven’t you got any manners at all?––after all the willows and the good powder I’ve wasted on you! Get back to that pasture fence before I take a club to you for such acting!”

      Before Belle’s wrath Lance retreated, and Mary Hope found the courage to wrinkle her nose at him when he glanced her way. “He rinned away to save himself a whupping,” she commented, and made sure that he heard it, and hoped that he would realize that she spoke “Scotchy” just for his special benefit.

      40

      “All right for you, Belle Lorrigan!” Lance called back, retaliating for Mary Hope’s grimace by a kiss thrown brazenly in the expectation of seeing her face grow redder; which it did immediately. “Careful of that horse––he might rinned away again!”

      “That’ll do for you, young man!” Whereupon Belle picked up a small stone and threw it with such accurate aim that Lance’s hat went off. “Good thing for you that I haven’t got a gun on me, or I’d dust your heels for you!” Then she turned to Mary Hope, who was listening with titillating horror to the painted Jezebel’s unorthodox method of reproving her offspring. “Get right down, honey, and come in and rest. And don’t mind Lance; he’s an awful tease, especially when he likes a person. Tie your horse to the fence––or turn him in the corral, if he’ll let you catch him again.”

      “I––I don’t believe I could stop. I––I only came by because I––my horse––” Mary Hope stammered and blushed so red that her freckles were invisible. After all, it was very hard to tell a lie, she discovered.

      “There’s something I like about this horse,” said Belle, running her plump white hand down the nose of Rab. “He’s neighborly, anyway. He brought you here against your will, I can see that. And now he’s here he sort of takes it for granted you’ll be friendly and stop a while. Don’t you 41 think you ought to be as friendly as your horse, honey?”

      “I––I am friendly. I––I always wished I could come and see you. But mother––mother doesna visit much among the neighbors; she––she’s always busy.”

      “I don’t visit much, myself,” said Belle dryly. “But that ain’t saying I can’t be friendly. Come on in, and we’ll have some lemonade.”

      Sheer astonishment brought Mary Hope down from her horse. All her life she had taken it for granted that lemonade was sacred to the Fourth of July picnics, just as oranges grew for Christmas trees only. She followed Belle dumbly into the house, and once inside she remained dumb with awe at what seemed to her to be the highest pinnacle of grandeur.

      There was the piano with a fringed scarf draped upon its top, and pictures in frames standing upon the scarf in orderly rows. There were many sheets of music,––and never a hymn book. There were great chairs with deep upholstery which Mary observed with amazement was not red plush, nor even blue plush, yet which appealed to her instincts for beauty. There was no center table with fringed spread and family album and a Bible and a conch shell. Instead there was a long table before a window––a table littered with all sorts of things: a box of revolver cartridges, a rifle laid down in the middle of scattered newspapers, a 42 bottle of oil, more music, a banjo, a fruit jar that did duty as a vase for wild flowers, a half-finished, braided quirt and four silver dollars lying where they had been carelessly flung down. To Mary Hope, reared in a household where dollars were precious things, that last item was the most amazing of all. The Lorrigans must be rich,––as rich as they were wicked. She thrilled anew at her own daring.

      Belle brought lemonade, wonderful lemonade, with an egg beaten to yellow froth and added the last minute. Mary Hope sipped and marveled. After that, Belle played on the piano and sang songs which Mary Hope had never heard before and which she thought must be the songs the angels sang in Heaven, although there was nothing to suggest harps or hallelujahs. СКАЧАТЬ