pe that the Lorrigans themselves would deeply
resent being invited to a dance openly given for the purpose of
raising money to repay them. It would never do; she could not ask them
to come.

Moreover, if the Lorrigans came there would be trouble, whether there
was whisky or not. At the house-warming dance the Lorrigans had
practically cleaned out the crowd and sent them home long before
daylight. There had been no serious shooting--the Lorrigans had fought
with their fists and had somehow held the crowd back from the
danger-line of gun-play. But Mary Hope feared there would be a killing
the next time that the Jumpoff crowd and the Lorrigans came together.

She tried to be just, but she had heard only one side of the
affair,--which was not the Lorrigan side. Whispers had long been going
round among the Black Rim folk; sinister whispers that had to do with
cattle and horses that had disappeared mysteriously from the Rim
range. Mary Hope could not help hearing the whispers, could not help
wondering if underneath them there was a basis of truth. Her father
still believed, in spite of Tom's exoneration, that his spotty
yearling had gone down the gullets of Devil's Tooth men. She did not
know, but it seemed to her that where every one hinted at the same
thing, there must be some truth in their hints.

All of which proves, I think, that Mary Hope's point of view was the
only one that she could logically hold, living as she did in the camp
of the enemy; having, as she had, a delicate sense of propriety, and
wanting above all things to do nothing crude and common. As she saw
it, she simply could _not_ ask any of the Lorrigans to her picnic and
dance on the Fourth of July.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE LORRIGAN VIEWPOINT

I have said that much depends upon one's point of view. Mary Hope's
viewpoint was not shared by the Devil's Tooth. They had one of their
own, and to them it seemed perfectly logical, absolutely justifiable.

They heard all about the Fourth of July picnic and dance, to be held
at Cottonwood Spring and in the schoolhouse of their own building.
Immediately they remembered that Cottonwood Spring was on Lorrigan
land, that Lorrigan money had paid for the material that went into the
schoolhouse, that Lorrigan labor had built it, Lorrigan generosity had
given it over to the public as represented by Mary Hope Douglas and
the children who came to her to be taught. In their minds loomed the
fact that Lorrigan m