as soon to occupy all his
waking hours,--and they would be as many as daylight would give him.
He had been doing something to an old mower that should have gone to
the junk heap long ago, and with the rusty sickle he had managed to
cut his hand very deeply, just under the ball of the thumb. He had not
taken the trouble to cleanse the cut thoroughly, but had wrapped his
handkerchief around the hand and gone glumly on with his work. Now, on
the third day, Mary Hope had become frightened at the discoloration of
the wound and the way in which his arm was swelling, and had begged
him to let her drive him to Jumpoff where he could take the train to
Lava and a doctor. As might be expected, he had refused to do anything
of the kind. He would not spend the time, and he would not spend the
money, and he thought that a poultice would draw out the swelling well
enough. Mary Hope had no faith in poultices, and she was on the point
of riding to Jumpoff and telegraphing for a doctor when her father
cannily read her mind and forbade her so sternly that she quailed
before him.

There was another thing, which she must do. She must take the money
she had gotten from the dance and with it pay Tom Lorrigan for the
schoolhouse, or stop the school altogether. Jim Boyle, when she had
ridden over to the AJ to tell him, had said that she could do as she
pleased about paying for the schoolhouse; but if she refused to teach
his kids, he would get some one else who would. Jim Boyle seemed to
feel no compunctions whatever about accepting favors from the Devil's
Tooth. As to Sederson, the Swede, he was working for Boyle, and did
what his boss said. So the matter was flung back upon Mary Hope for
adjustment according to the dictates of her pride or conscience, call
it which you will.

Her mother advised her to keep the money and buy another piano. But
Mary Hope declared that she would not use the schoolhouse while it was
a Lorrigan gift; whereupon Mother Douglas yielded the point grudgingly
and told her to send Hugh, the gawky youth, to the Devil's Tooth with
the three hundred dollars and a note saying what the money was for.
But her father would not permit Hugh to go, reiterating feverishly
that he needed Hugh on the ranch. And with the pain racking him and
making his temper something fearful to face, Mary Hope dared not argue
with him.

So she herself set out with her money and her hurt pride and
all her troubles, to pay the Devil's Tooth outfit