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Updated: June 21, 2025
With a two-days' growth of beard on his chin and jaws, a new, hard look in his eyes and the general appearance of a man who has been riding long and has slept in all his clothes, Lance rode quietly up to the corral gate and dismounted. A certain stiffness was in his walk when he led Coaley inside and turned a stirrup up over the saddle horn, his gloved fingers dropping to the latigo.
Tom lifted his hand to his hat brim in mute recognition of her presence, gave her a swift inquiring look and turned Coaley into the stable with the saddle on. Mary Hope took one deep breath and, fumbling at a heavy little bag tied beside the fork of her saddle, plunged straight into her subject. "I've brought the money I raised at the dance, Mr. Lorrigan," she said.
Tom would just about murder you if he caught you at it. And where did you get hold of that hat?" Lance laughed queerly. "I just picked it off the table as I came out. Mine is too new and stiff yet. This seemed to fit. And Coaley's better off under the saddle than he is in the stable, Belle. He's a peach I always did want to ride Coaley, but I never had the nerve till I got big enough to lick dad."
As plainly as a horse could tell it, Coaley implored Lance to go on. But Lance waited until, crossing an open space, he saw a rider coming along at a shambling trot on the trail he had himself lately followed. He frowned thoughtfully, turned Coaley toward home and rode swiftly in a long, distance-devouring lope.
He twitched the reins, and Coaley obediently shouldered Rab out of the trail and turned him neatly toward the Douglas ranch. Even Rab was Scotch, it would seem. He laid his ears flat, swung his head unexpectedly, and bared his teeth at Coaley. But Coaley was of the Lorrigans.
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. Up the Slide went Coaley, his head held proudly erect upon his high, arched neck, his feet choosing daintily the little rough places in the rock where long experience had taught him he would not slip.
Tom grunted and rode over that way, Coaley walking slowly, his knees bending springily like a dancer feeling out his muscles. Lance stood with his back toward them. His hat was pushed far back on his head, and he was looking at Mary Hope, who leaned against the rock and stared down into the valley below. Her hair, Tom observed, was not "slicked back" to-day.
The white glare of the lightning flashes blinded them. Coaley, quivering, his nostrils belling until they showed all red within, his big eyes staring, forged ahead, fighting the bit. "He's rinning away wi' us!" shouted Lance, his lips close to her ear, and laughed boyishly. "Mother " he heard her say, and pulled her higher in his arms, so that he could be sure that she heard him.
He wore chaps, his spurs, carried a yellow slicker over his arm. On his head was a black Stetson, one of Tom's discarded old hats. He led Coaley from the box stall where he had never before seen him stand, saddled him, tied his bundles compactly behind the cantle, mounted and rode down the trail, following the hoof prints that showed freshest in the loose, gravelly sand.
If they had not, then they would have turned again up Squaw Creek, and it would be short work cutting straight across to the only possible trail to the higher country. He had covered half of the distance to the creek when Coaley again called his attention to something behind him.
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