"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 with her, and licked everybody in town before he left. Sa-ay, it musta been some dance, all right!