houlder and saw his bobbing hat
crown. "Ah, he's just a Lorrigan, and I hate them all. But he let me
pay--I'm quits with them now--and I'll never in my life speak to one
of them again!"

CHAPTER TWENTY

AS HE LIVED, SO HE DIED

Belle Lorrigan, with Lance beside her on the one seat of the swaying
buckboard, swung through the open gate of the Douglas yard and drove
to the sun-baked, empty corral. In the doorway of the house, as they
dashed past, the bent body of Mother Douglas appeared. She stood
staring after them, her eyes blurred with tears. "It's that huzzy, the
Lorrigan woman," she said flatly, wiping her face on her checked
apron, stiffly starched and very clean. "Do you go, Mary Hope, and get
them the horse they've come for. If Hugh were here--"

From somewhere within the house the voice of Aleck Douglas rose
suddenly in a high-keyed vindictive chanting. Mother Douglas turned,
but the old man came with a rush across the floor, brushed past her
and went swaying drunkenly to the corral, shouting meaningless
threats. After him went Mary Hope, her eyes wide, her skirt flapping
about her ankles as she ran.

"Oh, please do not pay any attention to father!" she cried, hurrying
to overtake him before he reached the buckboard. "He's out of his head
with pain, and he will not have a doctor--Father! listen! They only
came for the horse I borrowed yesterday--they're going directly--come
back and get into your bed, father!"

Aleck Douglas was picking up a broken neck yoke for a weapon when
Lance sprang out over a wheel and grappled with him. The old man's
right arm was swollen to twice its natural size and bandaged to his
shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath fetid with the fever
that burned him when he turned his face close to Lance.

"It's his arm makes him crazy," said Mary Hope breathlessly. "Last
night it began, and mother and I cannot keep him in his bed, and we
don't know _what_ to do! He will not have a doctor, he says--"

"He'd better have," said Belle shortly, hanging to the pintos that
danced and snorted at the excitement. "I'll send one out. Lance, you
better stay here and look after him--he'll kill somebody yet. Aren't
there any men on the place, for heaven's sake?"

Mary Hope said there wasn't, that Hugh was not expected back before
night. They had bought a horse from the Millers, and it had jumped the
fence and gone home, and Hugh had gone after it. Then she ran to do
what she could to