been enough fighting Lorrigans, don't you think?" Belle
smiled back at him. "Duke's dad can fight hard enough for the whole
family. I didn't think you wanted your boys to be fighters."

"I don't. But I sure do want 'em to have the fightin' stuff in 'em,
whether it ever comes out or not. Take Lance, there. Lance ain't a
fighter, either; but by the Lord John, it's there! Once get Lance
started, and I'd back him against any three men in the Black Rim. It's
in him, if the play ever come up. And it's in Al. The Lorrigan is
strong in Al. But that Duke--"

"Honey, I think maybe it's the Delavan in Duke. I remember an old maid
aunt of mine that used to bolt the door and quarrel with my mother
through the keyhole. I guess maybe Duke has got a little touch of Aunt
Jane."

"Oh, sure! First I ever heard of Aunt Jane, Belle. Takes you to think
up a reason."

"And the Lorrigan will come out, honey. He's got the look, now and
then. It's in him, you'll see."

So that is how the Lorrigan boys grew up. They thought Belle the most
beautiful, the most wonderful woman in the world,--though they never
called her mother. Belle would not have it. She refused to become a
motherly, middle-aged person, and her boys were growing altogether too
big and too masterful to look upon a golden-curled, pink-cheeked,
honey-throated Amazon as other Black Rim sons looked upon their faded,
too often shrewish maternal parent. She was just Belle. They knew no
other like her, no one with whom they might compare her. We do not
compare the sun and the moon with other suns and moons. Like Tom, they
worshipped her in their hearts, and chummed with her even before they
had outgrown her stormy chastisements. They mended her buckboards and
her harness; they galloped alongside while she drove careening across
the range, her hair flying in the wind, her mouth smiling and showing
her white teeth. They danced with her,--and having Belle for a
teacher from the time they could toddle, you may guess how the
Lorrigan boys could dance. They sang the songs she taught them; they
tried to better her record at target practice and never did it; they
quarreled with her when her temper was up and dodged her when it
became too cyclonic.

They grew up without ever having ridden on the cars, save once or
twice to Lava. Black Rim was the rim of the world to them, and their
world held all that they yearned for. Belle sheltered them from too
much knowledge of that other world, which