The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

by George W. Ogden

  CHAPTER VII

  THE EASIEST LESSON

  "Why do they always begin the conjugations on _love_?"

  There was no perplexity in Joan's eyes as she asked the question;rather, a dreamy and far-away look, the open book face-downward on theground beside her.

  "Because it's a good example of the first termination, I suppose,"Mackenzie replied, his eyes measuring off the leagues with her own, asif they together sought the door that opened out of that gray landinto romance that quiet summer afternoon.

  "It was that way in the Spanish grammar," said Joan, shaking her head,unconvinced by the reason he advanced. "There are plenty of words inthe first termination that are just as short. Why? You're the teacher;you ought to know."

  She said it banteringly, as if she dared him to give the reason. Hiseyes came back from their distant groping, meeting hers with gentleboldness. So for a little while he looked silently into her appealingeyes, then turned away.

  "Maybe, Joan, because it is the easiest lesson to learn and thehardest to forget," he said.

  Joan bent her gaze upon the ground, a flush tinting her brown face,plucking at the grass with aimless fingers.

  "Anyway, we've passed it," said she.

  "No, it recurs all through the book; it's something that can't be leftout of it, any more than it can be left out of life. Well, it doesn'tneed to trouble you and me."

  "No; we could use some other word," said Joan, turning her face away.

  "But mean the same, Joan. I had an old maid English teacher when I wasa boy who made us conjugate _to like_ instead of the more intimate andtender word. Poor old soul! I hope it saved her feelings and eased herregrets."

  "Maybe she'd had a romance," said Joan.

  "I hope so; there's at least one romance coming to every woman in thisworld. If she misses it she's being cheated."

  Mackenzie took up the Latin grammar, marking off her next lesson, andpiling it on with unsparing hand, too. Yet not in accord with TimSullivan's advice; solely because his pupil was one of extraordinarycapacity. There was no such thing as discouraging Joan; she absorbedlearning and retained it, as the sandstone absorbs oil under thepressure of the earth, holding it without wasting a drop until the dayit gladdens man in his exploration.

  So with Joan. She was storing learning in the undefiled reservoir ofher mind, to be found like unexpected jewels by some hand in aftertime. As she followed the sheep she carried her books; at night, longafter Charley had gone to sleep, she sat with them by the lanternlight in the sheep-wagon. Unspoiled by the diversions and distractionswhich divide the mind of the city student, she acquired and held amonth's tasks in a week. The thirsty traveler in the desert places hadcome to the oasis of her dreams.

  Daily Joan rode to the sheep-camp where Mackenzie was learning thebusiness of running sheep under Dad Frazer. There were no holidays inthe term Joan had set for herself, no unbending, no relaxation fromher books. Perhaps she did not expect her teacher to remain there inthe sheeplands, shut away from the life that he had breathed so longand put aside for what seemed to her an unaccountable whim.

  "You'll be reading Caesar by winter," Mackenzie told her as sheprepared to ride back to her camp. "You'll have to take it slowerthen; we can't have lessons every day."

  "Why not?" She was standing beside her horse, hat in hand, her richhair lifting in the wind from her wise, placid brow. Her books she hadstrapped to the saddle-horn; there was a yellow slicker at thecantle.

  "You'll be at home, I'll be out here with the sheep. I expect aboutonce a week will be as often as we can make it then."

  "I'll be out here on the range," she said, shaking her determinedhead, "a sheepman's got to stick with his flock through all kinds ofweather. If I run home for the winter I'll have to hire a herder, andthat would eat my profits up; I'd never get away from here."

  "Maybe by the time you've got enough money to carry out your plans,Joan, you'll not want to leave."

  "You've got to have education to be able to enjoy money. Some of thesheepmen in this country--yes, most of them--would be better men ifthey were poor. Wealth is nothing to them but a dim consciousness of anew power. It makes them arrogant and unbearable. Did you ever seeMatt Hall?"

  "I still have that pleasure in reserve. But I think you'll find it'srefinement, rather than learning, that a person needs to enjoy wealth.That comes more from within than without."

  "The curtain's down between me and everything I want," Joan said, awistful note of loneliness in her low, soft voice. "I'm going to rideaway some day and push it aside, and see what it's been keeping fromme all the years of my longing. Then, maybe, when I'm satisfied I'llcome back and make money. I've got sense enough to see it's here to bemade if a person's got the sheep to start with and the range to runthem on."

  "Yes, you'll have to go," said he, in what seemed sad thoughtfulness,"to learn it all; I can't teach you the things your heart desires mostto know. Well, there are bitter waters and sweet waters, Joan; we'vegot to drink them both."

  "It's the same way here," she said, "only we've got sense enough toknow the alkali holes before we drink out of them."

  "But people are not that wise the world over, Joan."

  Joan stood in silent thought, her far-reaching gaze on the dim curtainof haze which hung between her and the world of men's activities,strivings, and lamentations.

  "If I had the money I'd go as soon--as soon as I knew a little more,"she said. "But I've got to stick; I made that bargain with dad--he'dnever give me the money, but he'll buy me out when I've got enough tostake me."

  "Your father was over this morning."

  "Yes, I know."

  "He thinks _my_ education's advanced far enough to trust me with aband of sheep. I'm going to have charge of the flock I've been runninghere with Dad Frazer."

  "I heard about it."

  "And you don't congratulate me on becoming a paid sheepherder, myfirst step on the way to flockmaster!"

  "I don't know that you're to be congratulated," she returned, facinghim seriously. "All there is to success here is brute strength andendurance against storms and winter weather--it don't take any brains.Out there where you've been and I'm going, there must be somethingbigger and better for a man, it seems to me. But maybe men get tiredof it--I don't know."

  "You'll understand it better when you go there, Joan."

  "Yes, I'll understand a lot of things that are locked up to me now.Well, I don't want to go as much all the time now as I did--only inspells sometimes. If you stay here and teach me, maybe I'll get overit for good."

  Joan laughed nervously, half of it forced, her face averted.

  "If I could teach you enough to keep you here, Joan, I'd think it wasthe biggest thing I'd ever done."

  "I don't want to know any more if it means giving up," she said.

  "It looks like giving up to you, Joan, but I've only started," hecorrected her, in gentle spirit.

  "I oughtn't talk that way to you," she said, turning to himcontritely, her earnest eyes lifted to his, "it's none of my businesswhat you do. If you hadn't come here I'd never have heard of--of_amare_, maybe."

  Joan bent her head, a flush over her brown cheeks, a smile of mischiefat the corners of her mouth. Mackenzie laughed, but strained andunnaturally, his own tough face burning with a hot tide of mountingblood.

  "Somebody else would have taught you--you'd have conjugated it inanother language, maybe," he said.

  "Yes, you say it's the easiest lesson to learn," she nodded, soberlynow. "Have you taught it to many--many--girls?"

  "According to the book, Joan," he returned; "only that way."

  Joan drew a deep breath, and looked away over the hills, and smiled.But she said no more, after the way of one who has relieved the mindon a doubted point.

  "I expect I'll be getting a taste of the lonesomeness here of nightspretty soon," Mackenzie said, feeling himself in an awkward, yet notunpleasant situation with this frank girl's rather impertinentquestion still burning in his heart. "Dad'
s going to leave me to takecharge of another flock."

  "I'll try to keep you so busy you'll not have it very bad," she said.

  "Yes, and you'll pump your fount of knowledge dry in a hurry if youdon't slow down a little," he returned. "At the pace you've set you'llhave to import a professor to take you along, unless one strays infrom somewhere."

  "I don't take up with strays," said Joan, rather loftily.

  "I think Dad's getting restless," Mackenzie said, hastening to coverhis mistake.

  "He goes away every so often," Joan explained, "to see his Mexicanwife down around El Paso somewhere."

  "Oh, that explains it. He didn't mention her to me."

  "He will, all right. He'll cut out to see her in a little while, morethan likely, but he'll come drifting back with the shearers in thespring like he always does. It seems to me like everybody comes backto the sheep country that's ever lived in it a while. I wonder if I'dwant to come back, too?"

  It was a speculation upon which Mackenzie did not feel called to makecomment. Time alone would prove to Joan where her heart lay anchored,as it proves to all who go wandering in its own bitter way at last.

  "I don't seem to want to go away as long as I'm learning something,"Joan confessed, a little ashamed of the admission, it appeared, fromher manner of refusing to lift her head.

  Mackenzie felt a great uplifting in his heart, as a song cheers itwhen it comes gladly at the close of a day of perplexity and doubt andtoil. He reached out his hand as if to touch her and tell her how thisdawning of his hope made him glad, but withdrew it, dropping it at hisside as she looked up, a lively color in her cheeks.

  "As long as you'll stay and teach me, there isn't any particular usefor me to leave, is there?" she inquired.

  "If staying here would keep you, Joan, I'd never leave," he told her,his voice so grave and earnest that it trembled a little on the lownotes.

  Joan drew her breath again with that long inspiration which was like asatisfied sigh.

  "Well, I must go," she said.

  But she did not move, and Mackenzie, drawing nearer, put out his handin his way of silent appeal again.

  "Not that I don't want you to know what there is out there," he said,"but because I'd save you the disappointment, the disillusionment, andthe heartache that too often go with the knowledge of the world. You'dbe better for it if you never knew, living here undefiled like aspring that comes out of the rocks into the sun."

  "Well, I must go," said Joan, sighing with repletion again, but takingno step toward her waiting horse.

  Although it was a moment which seemed full of things to be said,neither had words for it, but stood silently while the day went out inglory around them. Dad Frazer was bringing his murmuring flock home tothe bedding-ground on the hillside below the wagon; the wind was lowas a lover's breath, lifting Joan's russet hair from her pure, placidbrow.

  And she must go at last, with a word of parting from the saddle, andher hand held out to him in a new tenderness as if going home were athing to be remembered. And as Mackenzie took it there rose in hismemory the lines:

  _Touch hands and part with laughter, Touch lips and part with tears._

  Joan rode away against the sun, which was red upon the hill, and stoodfor a little moment sharply against the fiery sky to wave him afarewell.

  "So easily learned, Joan; so hard to forget," said Mackenzie, speakingas if he sent his voice after her, a whisper on the wind, although shewas half a mile away. A moment more, and the hill stood empty betweenthem. Mackenzie turned to prepare supper for the coming of Dad Frazer,who would complain against books and the nonsense contained in them ifthe food was not on the board when he came up the hill.