the money to buy one--I suppose I could dig up the
price myself. I was thinking I'd stake our schoolhouse to a library.
That's something it really needs. But a piano--I wish you hadn't said
anything about starving. I know I'd hate to go hungry for music,
but--"

"Well, humpin' hyenas! I'll buy the girl a piano. I guess it won't
break the outfit to pay out a few more dollars, now we've started.
We're outlaws, anyway--might as well add one more crime to the list.
Only, it don't go to the Douglas shack--it goes into the schoolhouse.
Lance, you go ahead and pick out some books and ship 'em on to the
ranch, and I'll see they get over there. Long as we've started fixin'
up a school, we may as well finish the job up right. By Henry, I'll
show the Black Rim that there ain't anything small about the
Lorrigans, anyway!"

"Dad, I think you're showin' yourself a real sport," Lance laughed.
"We-ell, if you're game to buy a piano, I'm game to buy books. We
staked Black Rim to a school, so we'll do the job right. And by the
way, Belle, if you're going to get me to Jumpoff in time for that
evening train, don't you think it's about time you started?"

That is how it happened that Mary Hope walked into the schoolhouse one
Monday and found a very shiny new piano standing across one corner of
the room where the light was best. On the top was a pile of music. In
another corner of the room stood a bookcase and fifty volumes; she
counted them in her prim, frugal way that she had learned from her
mother. They were books evidently approved by some Board of Education
for school libraries, and did not interest her very much. Not when a
piano stood in the other corner.

She was early, so she opened it and ran her fingers over the keys. She
knew well enough who had brought it there, and her mouth was pressed
into a straight line, her eyes were troubled.

The Lorrigans--always the Lorrigans! Why did they do these things when
no one expected goodness or generosity from them? Why had they built
the schoolhouse--and then given a dance where every one got drunk and
the whole thing ended in a fight? Every one said it was the Lorrigans
who had brought the whisky. Some one told her they had a five-gallon
keg of it in the shed behind the schoolhouse, and she thought it must
be true, the way all the men had acted. And why had they burned the
Whipple shack and all the school books, so that she could not have
school until more books were bought?--an exp