held the past she hated and
tried to forget. Much she taught them of city manners and the little
courtesies of life. She would box the ears of the boy who neglected to
rise and offer her a chair when she entered a room, and would smoke a
cigarette with him afterward. Once she whipped her six-shooter out of
its holster and shot a hole through the crown of Al's hat, as a
tactful reminder that gentlemen always remove their hats when they
come into a house. Al remembered, after that. At fourteen even the
hardiest youth feels a slight shock when a bullet jars through his hat
crown two inches above his hair.

CHAPTER THREE

MARY HOPE DOUGLAS APPEARS

Devil's Tooth ridge, which gave the Lorrigan ranch its name, was
really a narrow hogback with a huge rock spire at one end. Crudely it
resembled a lower jaw bone with one lone tooth remaining. Three
hundred feet and more the ridge upthrust its barren crest, and the
wagon road from the ranch crawled up over it in many switchbacks and
sharp turns, using a mile and a half in the climbing. They called it
the "dug road." Which meant that teams and scrapers and dynamite and
much toil had been necessary in the making, distinguishing it from
most Black Rim roads, which followed the line of least resistance
until many passings had worn a definite trail; whereupon that trail
became an established thoroughfare legalized by custom and not to be
lightly changed for another.

Over in the next valley, beyond Devil's Tooth ridge, Alexander
Douglas had made a ranch for himself and his family. Aleck Douglas was
as Scotch as his name. He shaved his long upper lip, so that it
looked longer and more uncompromising than was necessary even to
match the Aleck Douglas disposition. His hair was wiry and stood up
from a forehead that might be called beetling. His eyebrows were heavy
and came so near to meeting that Mary Hope used to wish that she
dared lay one small finger between father's eyebrows, just to see if
there would be room. His eyes were as close together as his thin
beak of a nose would permit, and his ears were long and narrow and set
flat against his head. He was tall and he was lank and he was honest
to his last bristling hair. He did not swear--though he could wither
one with vituperative epithets--and he did not smoke and he did not
drink--er--save a wee nip of Scotch "whusky" to break up a cold,
which frequently threatened his hardy frame. He was harshly
religious, and had