“Must I go clear down to the ranch and pack up water in my hat, and slosh it on your face? I’ll do that, girl, if you don’t open your eyes and look at me. You’re not hurt; are you hurt? You’d better wake up and tell me, or I’ll have to take you right up in my arms and carry you all the way down to the house, and ride like heck for a doctor, and––”
“Ye will not!” she retorted faintly, and unexpectedly he was looking into her eyes, bluer than he had remembered them; troubled, questioning––but stubborn against his suggestion. She moved uneasily, and he lifted her to the bank beside him and put one arm behind her, so that she leaned against him.
“Oh, very well––then I will not. You’ll walk with me to the house, and we’ll let Belle––”
“I will not! Never in my life will I enter the house of a Lorrigan!” Mary Hope brushed a palm against her forehead, straightened herself as if she resented her weakness, wished to hold herself aloof from him. She did not look at Lance, but stared across the narrow valley to the sage-clothed bluff beyond.
“Why not? You’ve just come from the Lorrigans, haven’t you?” Lance studied her face. “You must have, or you wouldn’t be on this trail.”
“I went down to pay for the schoolhouse, since your father took the piano away.––And he would not take the money, and he said he would burn the house if I don’t teach in it––and I’ll die before ever I’ll open the door again, unless he takes the money. And he said if I left the money he would throw it down the crevice yonder––and he would do it! And do you think I’ll be under any obligation to Tom Lorrigan? You called my father hard, but your father is the hardest man that ever lived. The Lorrigans shall not––”
Lance laughed, set her hat wrong side before on her head, tucked the elastic band under her chin, laughed again when she pettishly removed it and set the hat straight. “I wouldn’t worry over the schoolhouse right now––nor Tom Lorrigan either,” he said. “Look at your horse down there. If you’re all right, I’ll go down and see how many bones he’s broken. You had a chance for a nasty pile-up. Do you know that?”
“I’m grateful,” said Mary Hope soberly. “But it was Lorrigan meanness brought me here; it was a Lorrigan got me into the trouble now, and a Lorrigan got me out of it. It’s always the Lorrigans.”
“Yes, and a Lorrigan’s got to see you a little farther before you’re through with them, so cheer 246 up.” Lance laughed again, an amused little chuckle that was calculated to take the droop out of Mary Hope’s lips, and failed completely.