red
Duke. "Darn this riding fifteen or twenty miles to a dance!"

"I'll paint 'er, if you let me pick out the color," said Al. "Where
are you going to set 'er?"

"What's the matter with doing the thing in style, and giving a
house-warming dance, and turning it over to the neighborhood with a
speech?" bantered Lance, as they adjourned to the big living room,
taking the idea with them and letting it grow swiftly in enthusiasm.
"That would celebrate my visit, and I'd get a chance to size up the
Rim folks and see how they react to kindness. Lordy, folks, let's do
it!"

"We might," Belle considered the suggestion, while she thumbed the
latest mail-order catalogue, the size of a family bible and much more
assiduously studied. "They'd come, all right!" she added, with a
scornful laugh. "Even old Scotty would come, if he thought it wouldn't
cost him anything."

"Well, by heck, we won't _let_ it cost him anything!" Lance stood
leaning against the wall by the stove, his arms folded, the fingers of
his left hand tapping his right forearm. He did not know that this was
a Lorrigan habit, born of an old necessity of having the right hand
convenient to a revolver butt, and matched by the habit of carrying a
six-shooter hooked inside the trousers band on the left side.

Tom, studying Lance, thought how much he resembled his grandfather on
the night Buck Sanderson was killed in a saloon in Salmon City. Old
Tom had leaned against the wall at the end of the bar, with his arms
folded and his fingers tapping his right forearm, just as Lance was
doing now. He had lifted one eyebrow and pulled a corner of his lip
between his teeth when Buck came blustering in. Just as Lance smiled
at Duke's chaffing, Tom's father had smiled when Buck came swaggering
up to him with bold eyes full of fight and his right thumb hooked in
his chap belt. Old Tom had not moved; he had remained leaning
negligently against the wall with his arms folded. But the strike of a
snake was not so quick as the drop of his hand to his gun.

Tom was not much given to reminiscence; but to-night, seeing Lance
with two years of man-growth and the poise of town life upon him, he
slipped into a swift review of changing conditions and a vague
speculation upon the value of environment in the shaping of character.
Lance was all Lorrigan. He had turned Lorrigan in the two years of his
absence, which had somehow painted out his resemblance to Belle. His
hair had darkened to a bro