CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PEDDLED RUMORS
In the smoking compartment of a Pullman car that rocked westward from Pocatello two days after the Fourth, Lance sprawled his big body on a long seat, his head joggling against the dusty window, his mind sleepily recalling, round by round, a certain prize fight that had held him in Reno over the Fourth and had cost him some money and much disgust. The clicking of the car trucks directly underneath, the whirring of the electric fan over his head, the reek of tobacco smoke seemed to him to last for hours, seemed likely to go on forever. Above it all, rising stridently now and then in a disagreeable monotone, the harsh, faintly snarling voice of a man on the opposite seat blended unpleasantly with his dozing discomfort. For a long time the man had been talking, and Lance had been aware of a grating quality of the voice, that yet seemed humorous in its utterances, since his two listeners laughed frequently and made brief, profane comment that encouraged the talker to go on. Finally, as he slowly returned from the hazy borderland of slumber, 220 Lance became indifferently aware of the man’s words.
From under the peak of his plaid traveling cap Lance lifted his eyelids the length of his black lashes, measured the men with a half-minute survey and closed his eyes again. The face matched the voice. A harsh face, with bold blue eyes, black eyebrows that met over his nose, a mouth slightly prominent, hard and tilted downward at the corners. Over the harshness like a veil was spread a sardonic kind of humor that gave attraction to the man’s personality. In the monotone of his voice was threaded a certain dry wit that gave point to his observations. He was an automobile salesman, it appeared, and his headquarters were in Ogden, and he was going through to Shoshone on business connected with a delayed shipment of cars. But he was talking, when Lance first awoke to his monologue, of the sagebrush country through which the fast mail was reeling drunkenly, making up time that had been lost because of a washout that had held the train for an hour while two section crews sweated over a broken culvert.
“––And by gosh! the funniest thing I ever saw happened right up here in a stretch of country they call the Black Rim. If I was a story writer, I sure would write it up. Talk about the West being tame!––why, I can take you right now, within a few hours’ ride, to where men ride with guns on ’em just as much as they wear their pants. Only 221 reason they ain’t all killed off, I reckon, is because they all pack guns.
“Hard-boiled? Say, there’s a bunch up there that’s never been curried below the knees––and never will be. They pulled off a stunt the Fourth that I’ll bet ain’t ever been duplicated anywhere on earth, and never will be. I was in Pocatello, and I went on up with the crowd from there, and got in on the show. And sa-ay, it was some show!
“They’ve got a feud up there that’s rock-bottomed as any feud you ever heard of in Kentucky. It’s been going on for years, and it’ll keep going on till the old folks all die off or move away––or land in the pen. Hasn’t been a killing in there for years, but that’s because they’re all so damn tough they know if one starts shooting it’ll spread like a prairie fire through dry grass.
“There’s an outfit in there––the Devil’s Tooth outfit. Far back as the country was settled––well, they say the first Lorrigan went up in there to get away from the draft in the Civil War, and headed a gang of outlaws that shot and hung more white men and Injuns than any outfit in the State––and that’s going some.
“They were killers from the first draw. Other settlers went in, and had to knuckle under. The Devil’s Tooth gang had the Black Rim in its fist. Father to son––they handed down the disposition––I could tell yuh from here to Boise yarns about that outfit.