d, and rode
back whence he had come, never glancing over his shoulder but
nevertheless keenly alert for the sound of voices.

He was not quite through the Slide when he heard the hoof beats of
Lance's horse come clicking down over the rocks. Tom smiled to himself
as he rode on, never looking back.

CHAPTER NINE

A LITTLE SCOTCH

In the Black Rim country March is a month of raw winds and cold rains,
with sleet and snow and storm clouds tumbling high in the West and
spreading to the East, where they hang lowering at the earth and then
return to empty their burden of moisture upon the shrinking live
things below.

In the thinly settled places March is also the time when children go
shivering to school, harried by weather that has lost a little of its
deadliness. In January and February their lives would not be safe from
sudden blizzards, but by the middle of March they may venture forth
upon the quest of learning.

Black Rim country was at best but scantily supplied with schools, and
on the Devil's Tooth range seven young Americans--three of them
adopted from Sweden--were in danger of growing up in deplorable
ignorance of what learning lies hidden in books. A twelve-mile stretch
of country had neither schoolhouse, teacher nor school officers
empowered to establish a school. Until the Swedish family moved into a
shack on the AJ ranch there had not been children enough to make a
teacher worth while. But the Swedish family thirsted for knowledge of
the English language, and their lamenting awoke the father of four
purely range-bred products to a sense of duty toward his offspring.

Wherefore Mary Hope Douglas, home from two winters in Pocatello, where
she had lived with a cousin twice removed and had gone to school and
had learned much, was one day invited to teach a school in the Devil's
Tooth neighborhood.

True, there was no schoolhouse, but there was a deserted old shack on
the road to Jumpoff. A few benches and a stove and table would
transform it into a seat of learning, and there were an old shed and
corral where the pupils might keep their saddle horses during school
hours. She would be paid five dollars a month per head, Jim Boyle of
the AJ further explained. Seven "heads" at five dollars each would
amount to thirty-five dollars a month, and Mary Hope felt her heart
jump at the prospect of earning so much money of her own. Moreover, to
teach school had long been her secret ambition, the solid found