At the top she gave him the money bag, which he took without any words whatever on the subject. He held the horse until she had mounted, made sure that she was all right, chilled by his perfect politeness her nervous overture toward a more friendly parting, lifted his hat and turned immediately to go back down the Slide.
Mary Hope glanced back over her shoulder and saw his bobbing hat crown. “Ah, he’s just a Lorrigan, and I hate them all. But he let me pay––I’m quits with them now––and I’ll never in my life speak to one of them again!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
AS HE LIVED, SO HE DIED
Belle Lorrigan, with Lance beside her on the one seat of the swaying buckboard, swung through the open gate of the Douglas yard and drove to the sun-baked, empty corral. In the doorway of the house, as they dashed past, the bent body of Mother Douglas appeared. She stood staring after them, her eyes blurred with tears. “It’s that huzzy, the Lorrigan woman,” she said flatly, wiping her face on her checked apron, stiffly starched and very clean. “Do you go, Mary Hope, and get them the horse they’ve come for. If Hugh were here––”
From somewhere within the house the voice of Aleck Douglas rose suddenly in a high-keyed vindictive chanting. Mother Douglas turned, but the old man came with a rush across the floor, brushed past her and went swaying drunkenly to the corral, shouting meaningless threats. After him went Mary Hope, her eyes wide, her skirt flapping about her ankles as she ran.
“Oh, please do not pay any attention to father!” 251 she cried, hurrying to overtake him before he reached the buckboard. “He’s out of his head with pain, and he will not have a doctor––Father! listen! They only came for the horse I borrowed yesterday––they’re going directly––come back and get into your bed, father!”
Aleck Douglas was picking up a broken neck yoke for a weapon when Lance sprang out over a wheel and grappled with him. The old man’s right arm was swollen to twice its natural size and bandaged to his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath fetid with the fever that burned him when he turned his face close to Lance.