“One, maybe.” Tom spat into the dust and, impelled by Al’s example, drew his own cigarette papers from his shirt pocket. “I’m thinkin’ of breakin’ all we’ve got time for this summer. Darn this here makin’ one horse your trademark!”
Up at the house, Riley appeared in the kitchen doorway and gave a long halloo while he wiped his big freckled hand on his flour-sack apron. “Hoo-ee! Come an’ git it!” He waited a moment, until 95 he saw riders dismounting and leading their horses into the little corral. Then he turned back to pour the coffee into the big, thick, white cups standing in single file around the long oil-cloth-covered table in the end of the kitchen nearest the side door where the boys would presently come trooping in to slide loose-jointedly into their places on the long, shiny benches.
Tom pinched out the blaze of his match and threw one long leg back over the corral fence. His glance went to the riders beyond the big corral.
“Where’s Lance at!” he called to Al, who was riding around to the little corral.
“You can search me. He quit us when we got the horses into the corral, and rode off up the Slide trail. If I was to make a guess, I would say that he went to meet Mary Hope. They been doing that right frequent ever since she quit coming here. ’Tain’t no skin off my nose––but Lance, he’s buildin’ himself a mess uh trouble with old Scotty, sure as you’re a foot high.”
“Darn fool kid––let the old folks git to scrappin’ amongst themselves, and the young ones start the lovemakin’! I never knowed it to fail; but you can skin me for a coyote if I know what makes ’em do it.” Grumbling to himself, Tom climbed down and followed Al. “You can tell Riley I’ll be late to dinner,” he said, when he had come up to where Al was pulling the saddle off his horse. 96 “I ain’t much on buttin’ into other folks’ love affairs, but I reckon it maybe might be a good idea to throw a scare into them two. I’m plumb sick of Scotch––wouldn’t take it in a highball right now if you was to shove one under my nose!”
Al laughed, looking over his shoulder at Tom while he loosened the latigo. “If you can throw a scare into Lance, you sure are a dinger,” he bantered. “That youth is some heady.”
“Looks to me like it runs in the family,” Tom retorted. “You’re some heady yourself, if you ever took notice. And I don’t give a damn how heady any of you kids are; you can’t run any rannies on your dad, and you want to put that down in your little red book so you won’t forgit it!”
He led Coaley from the stable, mounted and rode away up the Slide trail, more than half ashamed of his errand. To interfere in a love affair went against the grain, but to let a Lorrigan make love to a Douglas on the heels of the trial was a pill so bitter that he refused to swallow it.
He urged Coaley up the trail, his eyes somber with resentment whenever he saw the fresh hoofprints of Lance’s horse in the sandy places. Of the three boys, Lance was his favorite, and it hurt him to think that Lance had so little of the Lorrigan pride that he would ride a foot out of his way to speak to any one of the Douglas blood.