learned from Mary
Hope that her father had died just before daylight, and that Hugh had
not come back, and the doctor wanted to be taken to Jumpoff, and she
could not leave her mother there alone, and a coffin must be ordered,
and she did not know _what_ to do. She was past tears, it seemed to
Lance. She was white and worn and worried, and there was something in
her eyes that made them too tragic to look at. He stood just outside
the kitchen door and talked with her in a low voice so that Mother
Douglas, weeping audibly in the kitchen, need not know he was there.

"The doctor can ride that livery horse in," he said soothingly. "And
I'll wire to Lava for anything that you want, and notify any friends
you would like to have come and see you through this." He was very
careful not to accent the word friends, but Mary Hope gave him a
quick, pathetic glance when he said it.

"You've been kind--I--I can't say just what I would like to say--but
you've been kinder than some friends would be."

She left the doorstep and walked with him to the stable, Lance leading
his horse and slowing his pace to match her weary steps. "It--seems
unreal, like something I'm dreaming. And--and I hope you won't pay any
attention to what father--said. He was out of his mind, and while he
had the belief, he--"

"I'd rather not talk about that," Lance interrupted quietly. "Your
father believed that we're all of us thieves, that we stole his stock.
Perhaps you believe it--I don't know. We've a hard name, got when the
country was hard and it took hard men to survive. I don't think the
Lorrigans, when you come right down to it, were any worse than their
neighbors. They're no worse now. They got the name of being worse,
just because they were--well, stronger; harder to bully, harder to
defeat. The Lorrigans could hold their own and then some. They're
still holding their own. There never was a Lorrigan ever yet backed
down from anything, so I'm not going to back down from the name the
Rim has given us. I'm _glad_ I'm a Lorrigan. But I'm not glad to have
you hate me for it."

They were at the stable door, which Mary Hope pulled open. The hired
horse stood in the second stall. Lance dropped the reins of his own
horse, turned to Mary Hope and laid his hands on her shoulders,
looking down enigmatically into her upturned, troubled face.

"Girl, don't let us worry you at all. You've got trouble enough, and
I'm going to do all I can to help you through it.