In the lazy hour just after a satisfying dinner, Lance stood leaning over an end of the piano, watching Belle while she played––he listened and smoked a cigarette and looked as though he hadn’t a thing on his mind.
“I remember you used to sing that a lot for the little Douglas girl,” he observed idly. “She used to sit and look at you––my word, but her eyes were the bluest, the lonesomest eyes I ever saw! She seemed to think you were next to angels when you sang. I saw it in her face, but I was too much of a kid then to know what it was.” He lighted a fresh cigarette, placed it between Belle’s lips so that she need not stop playing while she smoked, and laughed as if he were remembering something funny.
“She always looked so horrified when she saw you smoking,” he said. “And so adoring when you sang, and so lonesome when she had to ride away. She was a queer kid––and she’s just as unexpected now––just as Scotch. Didn’t you find her that way, dad?”
“She was Scotch enough,” Tom mumbled from 193 his chair by the fire. “Humpin’ hyenas! She was like handlin’ a wildcat!”
“The poor kid never did have a chance to be human,” said Belle, and ceased playing for a moment. “Good heavens, how she did enjoy the two hours I gave her at the piano! She’s got the makings of a musician, if she could keep at it.”
“We-ell––” Having artfully led Belle to this point, Lance quite as artfully edged away from it. “You gave her all the chance you could. And she ought to be able to go on, if she wants to. I suppose old Scotty’s human enough to get her something to play on.”
“Him? Human!” Tom shifted in his chair. “If pianos could breed and increase into a herd, and he could ship a carload every fall, Scotty might spend a few dollars on one.”
“It’s a darned shame,” Belle exclaimed, dropping her fingers to the keys again. “Mary Hope just starves for everything that makes life worth living. And that old devil––”
“Say––don’t make me feel like a great, overgrown money-hog,” Lance protested. “A girl starving for music, because she hasn’t a piano to play on. And a piano costs, say, three or four hundred dollars. Of course, we’ve got the money to buy one––I suppose I could dig up the price myself. I was thinking I’d stake our schoolhouse to a library. That’s something it really needs. But a piano––I wish you hadn’t said anything 194 about starving. I know I’d hate to go hungry for music, but––”
“Well, humpin’ hyenas! I’ll buy the girl a piano. I guess it won’t break the outfit to pay out a few more dollars, now we’ve started. We’re outlaws, anyway––might as well add one more crime to the list. Only, it don’t go to the Douglas shack––it goes into the schoolhouse. Lance, you go ahead and pick out some books and ship ’em on to the ranch, and I’ll see they get over there. Long as we’ve started fixin’ up a school, we may as well finish the job up right. By Henry, I’ll show the Black Rim that there ain’t anything small about the Lorrigans, anyway!”