n you think of the breed of cats he is you'll see
yourself that the Black Rim is setting on a volcano.

"Tom Lorrigan has got more men working for him than any outfit in that
country. He runs his own round-up and won't have a rep--that's a
representative--from any other outfit in his camp. His own men haze
outside stock off his range. He's getting rich. He ships more cattle,
more horses than anybody in the country. He don't have any truck with
any of his neighbors, and his men don't. They're outside men, mostly.
There ain't a thing anybody can swear to--there ain't a thing said out
loud about the Devil's Tooth. But it's hinted and it's whispered.

"So all this preamble prepares you for the funniest thing I ever saw
pulled. But I guess I'm about the only one who saw how funny it was. I
know the Black Rim don't seem to see the joke, and I know the Devil's
Tooth don't.

"You see, it's so big and neighbors are so far apart that there ain't
any school district, and a few kids were getting school age, and no
place to send 'em. So a couple of families got together and hired the
daughter of this old Scotchman to teach school. I ain't calling her by
name--she's a nice kid, and a nervy kid, and I can see where she
thought she was doing the right thing.

"Well, she taught in a tumble-down little shack for a while, and one
day this Tom Lorrigan come along, and saw how the girl and the kids
were sitting there half froze, and he hazed 'em all home. Broke up the
school. Being a Lorrigan, all he'd have to do would be to tell 'em to
git--but it made a little stir, all right. The schoolma'am, she went
right back the next morning and started in again. Like shooing a
setting hen off her nest, it was.

"Well, next thing they knew, the Devil's Tooth had built a schoolhouse
and said nothing about it. Tom's a big-hearted cuss--I know
Tom--tried to sell him a car, last fall. Darn near made it stick, too.
I figured that Tom Lorrigan was maybe ashamed of busting up the
school and making talk, so he put up a regular schoolhouse. Then one
of his boys had been away to college--only one of the outfit that
ever went beyond the Rim, as far as I know--and he gave a dance; a
regular house-warming.

"Well, I wasn't at that dance. I wish I had been. They packed in
whisky by the barrel. Everybody got drunk, and everybody got to
fighting. This young rooster from college licked a dozen or so, and
then took the schoolma'am and drove clear to Jumpoff wit