"Honey, that's fine of you! There aren't many that realize what a lot of satisfaction there is in doing something big and generous and making the other fellow ashamed of himself. And it would be a God's mercy to Mary Hope, poor child. Leave it to the AJ and whatever other outfit there is to send pupils, and Mary Hope could teach in the Whipple shack till it rattled down on top of them. I know what the place is. I put up there once in a hailstorm. It isn't fit for cattle, as Tom says, unless they've fixed it a lot. I'll donate the furniture; I'll make out the order right this evening for seats and blackboard and a globe and everything, and make it a rush order!" Belle pushed back her chair and came around to Lance, slipped her arms around his neck and tousled his wavy mop of hair with her chin. "If the rest won't come through you and I'll do it, honey--" "Who said we wouldn't?" Tom got up, stretching his arms high above his head,--which was very bad manners, but showed how supple he still was, and how well-muscled. "No one ever called me a piker--and let me hear about it. Sure, we'll build a schoolhouse for 'em, seeing they're too cussed stingy to build one themselves. There's the lumber I had hauled out for a new chicken house; to-morrow I'll have it hauled up to some good building spot, and we'll have it done before the AJ wakes up to the fact that anything's going on." "I'll chip in enough to make her big enough for dances," volunteered Duke. "Darn this riding fifteen or twenty miles to a dance!" "I'll paint 'er, if you let me pick out the color," said Al. "Where are you going to set 'er?" "What's the matter with doing the thing in style, and giving a house-warming dance, and turning it over to the neighborhood with a speech?" bantered Lance, as they adjourned to the big living room, taking the idea with them and letting it grow swiftly in enthusiasm. "That would celebrate my visit, and I'd get a chance to size up the Rim folks and see how they react to kindness. Lordy, folks, let's do it!" "We might," Belle considered the suggestion, while she thumbed the latest mail-order catalogue, the size of a family bible and much more assiduously studied. "They'd come, all right!" she added, with a scornful laugh. "Even old Scotty would come, if he thought it wouldn't cost him anything." "Well, by heck, we won't _let_ it cost him anything!" Lance stood leaning against the wall by the stove, his arms folded, the fingers of his left hand tapping his right forearm. He did not know that this was a Lorrigan habit, born of an old necessity of having the right hand convenient to a revolver butt, and matched by the habit of carrying a six-shooter hooked inside the trousers band on the left side.