“Oh, you will, will yuh?” Whereupon Tom heaved himself against the door and lurched in with the lock dangling.
Mary Hope had a stick of wood in her two hands, but she had not that other essential to quick combat, the courage to swing the club on the instant of her enemy’s appearance. She hesitated, backed and threatened him futilely.
“All right––fine! Scotch stubbornness––and not a damn thing to back it up! Where’s your coat? Here. Git into it.” Without any prelude, any apology, he wrested the stick of wood from her, pulled her coat off a nail near by, and held it outspread, the armholes convenient to her hands. With her chin shivering, Mary Hope obeyed the brute strength of the man. She dug 114 her teeth into her lip and thrust her arms spitefully into the coat sleeves.
“Here’s yo’re hat. Better tie it on, if yuh got anything to tie it with. Here.”
He twitched his big silk neckerchief from his neck, pulled her toward him with a gentle sort of brutality, and tied the neckerchief over her hat and under her chin. He did it exactly as though he was handling a calf that he did not wish to frighten or hurt.
“Got any mittens? Gloves? Put ’em on.”
Standing back in the corner behind the door, facing Tom’s bigness and his inexorable strength, Mary Hope put on her Indian tanned, beaded buckskin gloves that were in the pockets of her coat. Tom waited until she had tucked the coatsleeves inside the gauntlets. He took her by the arm and pulled her to the door, pushed her through it and held her with one hand, gripping her arm while he fastened the door by the simple method of pulling it shut so hard that it jammed in the casing. He led her to where her horse stood backed to the wind and tail whipping between his legs, and his eyes blinking half shut against the swirls of dust dug out of the dry sod of the grassland. Without any spoken command, Tom took the reins and flipped them up over Rab’s neck, standing forward and close to the horse’s shoulder. Mary Hope knew that she must mount or be lifted bodily into the saddle. She mounted, tears of wrath spilling 115 from her eyes and making her cheeks cold where they trickled down.
The Boyle children, kicking and quirting their two horses––riding double, in the Black Rim country, was considered quite comfortable enough for children––were already on their way home. Mary Hope looked at their hurried retreat and turned furiously, meaning to overtake them and order them back. Tom Lorrigan, she reminded herself, might force her to leave the schoolhouse, but he would scarcely dare to carry his abuse farther.
She had gone perhaps ten rods when came a pounding of hoofs, and Coaley’s head and proudly arched neck heaved alongside poor, draggle-maned old Rab.
“You’re headed wrong. Have I got to haze yuh all the way home? Might as well. I want to tell yore dad a few things.”