outside and smoked,
leaving the women and children to arrange themselves on benches along
the wall inside. Lance knew the custom well enough, and he did not go
in. But he tried to see who came with every load that was deposited
within the circle of light on the narrow platform that embellished the
front.

At nine o'clock, when the musicians were trying their instruments
tentatively and even the most reluctant male was being drawn
irresistibly to the humming interior, Lance frankly admitted to
himself that he was not happy, and that his condition was the direct
result of not having seen Mary Hope enter the door.

He sought out Tom, who was over at the chuck-wagon, taking an early
cup of coffee. Tom blew away the steam that rose on the chill night
air and eyed Lance. "Well, when do we make the speech? Or don't we?"
he demanded, taking a gulp and finding the coffee still too hot for
comfort. "Don't ask me to; I done my share when I built 'er. You can
tell the bunch what she's for."

"Oh, what the heck do we want with a speech?" Lance remonstrated.
"They know it's a schoolhouse, unless they're blind. And I thought
maybe some one--you, probably, since you're the one who hazed her out
of the other place--would just tell Mary Hope to bring her books over
here and teach. And I thought, to cinch it, you could tell Jim Boyle
that you felt you ought to do something toward a school, and since you
couldn't furnish any kids, you thought you'd furnish the house. That
ought to be easy. It's up to you, I should say. But I wouldn't make
any speech."

Tom grunted, finished his coffee and proceeded to remove all traces of
it from his lips with his best white handkerchief. "Where's Jim Boyle
at?" he asked, moving into the wide bar of dusk that lay between the
lights of the chuck-wagon and the glow from the two windows facing
that way.

"I believe I'd speak about it first to Mary Hope," Lance suggested,
coming behind him. "But she hasn't come yet--"

As if she heard and deliberately moved to contradict him, Mary Hope
danced past the window, the hand of a strange young man with a crisp
white handkerchief pressed firmly between her shoulder blades. Mary
Hope was dancing almost as solemnly as in the days of short skirts and
sleek hair, her eyes apparently fixed upon the shoulder of her partner
who gazed straight out over her head, his whole mind centered upon
taking the brunt of collisions upon the point of his upraised elbow.

"I'll