Again a silence stood between them, Mackenzie considering many things, not the least of them being this remarkable girl’s life among the sheep and the rough characters of the range, no wonder in him over her impatience to be away from it. It seemed to him that Tim Sullivan might well spare her the money for schooling, as well as fend her against the dangers and hardships of the range by keeping her at home these summer days.
“It looks to me like a hard life for a girl,” he said; “no diversions, none of the things that youth generally values and craves. Don’t you ever have any dances or anything––camp meetings or picnics?”
“They have dances over at Four Corners sometimes––Hector Hall wanted me to go to one with him about a year ago. He had his nerve to ask me, the little old sheep-thief!”
“Well, I should think so.”
“He’s been doubly sore at us ever since I turned him down. I looked for him to come over and shoot up my camp some night for a long time, but I guess he isn’t that bad.”
“So much to his credit.”
“But I wish sometimes I’d gone with him. Maybe it would have straightened things out. You know, when you stay here on the range, Mr. Mackenzie, you’re on a level with everybody else, no matter what you think of yourself. You can’t get out of the place they make for you in their estimation of you. Hector Hall never will believe I’m too good to go to a dance with him. He’ll be sore about it all his life.”
“A man naturally would have regrets, Miss Sullivan. Maybe that’s as far as it goes with Hector Hall, maybe he’s only sore at heart for the honor denied.”
“That don’t sound like real talk,” said Joan.
Mackenzie grinned at the rebuke, and the candor and frankness in which it was administered, thinking that Joan would have a frigid time of it out in the world if she applied such outspoken rules to its flatteries and mild humbugs.
“Let’s be natural then,” he suggested, considering as he spoke that candor was Joan’s best defense in her position on the range. Here she sat out under the stars with him, miles from the nearest habitation, miles from her father’s house, her small protector asleep in the wagon, and thought no more of it than a chaperoned daughter of the city in an illuminated drawing-room. A girl had to put men in their places and keep them there under such circumstances, and nobody knew better how to do it than Joan.
“I’ll try your patience and good humor when you start out to teach me,” she told him, “for I’ll want to run before I learn to walk.”
“We’ll see how it goes in a few days; I’ve sent for the books.”
“I’ll make a good many wild breaks,” she said, “and tumble around a lot, I know, but there won’t be anybody to laugh at me––but you.” She paused as if considering the figure she would make at the tasks she awaited with such impatience, then added under her breath, almost in a whisper, as if it was not meant for him to hear: “But you’ll never laugh at me for being hungry to learn.”
Mackenzie attempted neither comment nor reply to this, feeling that it was Joan’s heart speaking to herself alone. He looked away over the sleeping sheeplands, vast as the sea, and as mysterious under the starlight, thinking that it would require more than hard lessons and unusual tasks to discourage this girl. She stood at the fountain-edge, leaning with dry lips to drink, her wistful eyes strong to probe the mysteries which lay locked in books yet strange to her, but wiser in her years than many a man who had skimmed a college course. There was a vast difference between knowledge and learning, indeed; it never had been so apparent to him as in the presence of that outspoken girl of the sheep range that summer night.
What would the world do with Joan Sullivan if she ever broke her fetters and went to it? How would it accept her faith and frankness, her high scorn for the deceits upon which it fed? Not kindly, he knew. There would be disillusionment ahead for her, and bitter awakening from long-wrapping dreams. If he could teach her to be content in the wide freedom of that place he would accomplish the greatest service that he could bring her in the days of her untroubled youth. Discourage her, said Tim Sullivan. Mackenzie felt that this was not his job.
“Maybe Charley’s right about it,” she said, her voice low, and soft with that inherited gentleness which must have come from Tim Sullivan’s mother, Mackenzie thought. “He’s a wise kid, maybe I would want to come back faster than I went away. But I get so tired of it sometimes I walk up and down out here by the wagon half the night, and wear myself out making plans that I may never be able to put through.”
“It’s just as well,” he told her, nodding again in his solemn, weighty fashion; “everybody that amounts to anything has this fever of unrest. Back home we used to stack the wheat to let it sweat and harden. You’re going through that. It takes the grossness out of us.”
“Have you gone through it?”
“Years of it; over the worst of it now, I hope.”
“And you came here. Was that the kind of an ambition you had? Was that all your dreams brought you?”
“But I’ve seen more here than I ever projected in my schemes, Miss Joan. I’ve seen the serenity of the stars in this vastness; I’ve felt the wind of freedom on my face.” And to himself: “And I have seen the firelight leap in a maiden’s eyes, and I have looked deep into the inspiring fountain of her soul.” But there was not the boldness in him, nor the desire to risk her rebuke again, to bring it to his lips.
“Do you think you’ll like it after you get over the lonesomeness?”
“Yes, if I take the lonesomeness.”
“You’ll take it, all right. But if you ever do work up to be a sheepman, and of course you will if you stick to the range long enough, you’ll never be able to leave again. Sheep tie a person down like a houseful of children.”
“Maybe I’d never want to go. I’ve had my turn at it out there; I’ve been snubbed and discounted, all but despised, because I had a little learning and no money to go with it. I can hide my little learning here, and nobody seems to care about the money. Yes, I think I’ll stay on the range.”
Joan turned her face away, and he knew the yearning was in her eyes as they strained into the starlit horizon after the things she had never known.
“I don’t see what could ever happen that would make me want to stay here,” she said at last. She got up with the sudden nimbleness of a deer, so quickly that Mackenzie though she must be either startled or offended, but saw in a moment it was only her natural way of moving in the untrammeled freedom of her lithe, strong limbs.
“You’ll find a soft place on the side of the hill somewhere to sleep,” she said, turning toward the wagon. “I’m going to pile in. Good night.”
Mackenzie sat again by the ashes of the little fire after giving her good night. He felt that he had suffered in her estimation because of his lowly ambition to follow her father, and the hundred other obscure heroes of the sheep country, and become a flockmaster, sequestered and safe among the sage-gray hills.
Joan expected more of a man who was able to teach school; expected lofty aims, far-reaching ambitions. But that was because Joan did not know the world that lifted the lure of its flare beyond the rim of her horizon. She must taste it to understand, and come back with a bruised heart to the shelter of her native hills.
And this lonesomeness of which she had been telling him, this dread sickness that fell upon a man in those solitudes, and drained away his courage and hope––must he experience it, like a disease of adolescence from which few escape? He did not believe it. Joan had said she was immune to it, having been born in its atmosphere, knowing nothing but solitude and silence, in which there was no strange nor fearful thing.
But she fretted under a discontent that made her miserable, even though it did not strain her reason like the lonesomeness. Something was wanting to fill her life. He cast about him, wondering what it could be, wishing that he might supply it and take away the shadow out of her eyes.
It was his last thought as he fell asleep in a little swa
le below the wagon where the grass was tall and soft––that he might find what was lacking to make Joan content with the peace and plenty of the sheeplands, and supply that want.
* * *
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 the ground 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, as if they together sought the door that opened out of that gray land into 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 in the 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. His eyes came back from their distant groping, meeting hers with gentle boldness. So for a little while he looked silently into her appealing eyes, then turned away.
“Maybe, Joan, because it is the easiest lesson to learn and the hardest 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 left out of it, any more than it can be left out of life. Well, it doesn’t need 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 was a boy who made us conjugate to like instead of the more intimate and tender word. Poor old soul! I hope it saved her feelings and eased her regrets.”
“Maybe she’d had a romance,” said Joan.
“I hope so; there’s at least one romance coming to every woman in this world. If she misses it she’s being cheated.”
Mackenzie took up the Latin grammar, marking off her next lesson, and piling it on with unsparing hand, too. Yet not in accord with Tim Sullivan’s advice; solely because his pupil was one of extraordinary capacity. There was no such thing as discouraging Joan; she absorbed learning and retained it, as the sandstone absorbs oil under the pressure of the earth, holding it without wasting a drop until the day it gladdens man in his exploration.
So with Joan. She was storing learning in the undefiled reservoir of her mind, to be found like unexpected jewels by some hand in after time. As she followed the sheep she carried her books; at night, long after Charley had gone to sleep, she sat with them by the lantern light in the sheep-wagon. Unspoiled by the diversions and distractions which divide the mind of the city student, she acquired and held a month’s tasks in a week. The thirsty traveler in the desert places had come to the oasis of her dreams.
Daily Joan rode to the sheep-camp where Mackenzie was learning the business of running sheep under Dad Frazer. There were no holidays in the term Joan had set for herself, no unbending, no relaxation from her books. Perhaps she did not expect her teacher to remain there in the sheeplands, shut away from the life that he had breathed so long and put aside for what seemed to her an unaccountable whim.
“You’ll be reading Caesar by winter,” Mackenzie told her as she prepared to ride back to her camp. “You’ll have to take it slower then; we can’t have lessons every day.”
“Why not?” She was standing beside her horse, hat in hand, her rich hair lifting in the wind from her wise, placid brow. Her books she had strapped to the saddle-horn; there was a yellow slicker at the cantle.
“You’ll be at home, I’ll be out here with the sheep. I expect about once a week will be as often as we can make it then.”
“I’ll be out here on the range,” she said, shaking her determined head, “a sheepman’s got to stick with his flock through all kinds of weather. If I run home for the winter I’ll have to hire a herder, and that 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 the sheepmen in this country––yes, most of them––would be better men if they were poor. Wealth is nothing to them but a dim consciousness of a new power. It makes them arrogant and unbearable. Did you ever see Matt Hall?”
“I still have that pleasure in reserve. But I think you’ll find it’s refinement, 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, a wistful note of loneliness in her low, soft voice. “I’m going to ride away some day and push it aside, and see what it’s been keeping from me all the years of my longing. Then, maybe, when I’m satisfied I’ll come back and make money. I’ve got sense enough to see it’s here to be made if a person’s got the sheep to start with and the range to run them 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 most to know. Well, there are bitter waters and sweet waters, Joan; we’ve got to drink them both.”
“It’s the same way here,” she said, “only we’ve got sense enough to know 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 curtain of 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’d never give me the money, but he’ll buy me out when I’ve got enough to stake me.”
“Your father was over this morning.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He thinks my education’s advanced far enough to trust me with a band of sheep. I’m going to have charge of the flock I’ve been running here with Dad Frazer.”
“I heard about it.”
“And you don’t congratulate me on becoming a paid sheepherder, my first step on the way to flockmaster!”
“I don’t know that you’re to be congratulated,” she returned, facing him seriously. “All there is to success here is brute strength and endurance against storms and winter weather––it don’t take any brains. Out there where you’ve been and I’m going, there must be something bigger and better for a man, it seems to me. But maybe men get tired of 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 in spells sometimes. If you stay here and teach me, maybe I’ll get over it 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 was the 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,” he corrected her, in gentle spirit.
“I oughtn’t talk that way to you,” she said, turning to him contritely, her earnest eyes lifted to his, “it’s none of my business what 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 mischief at the corners of her mouth. Mackenzie laughed, but strained and unnaturally, his own tough face burning with a hot tide of mounting blood.
“Somebody else would have taught you––you’d have conjugated it in another language, maybe,” he said.
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sp; “Yes, you say it’s the easiest lesson to learn,” she nodded, soberly now. “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 mind on a doubted point.
“I expect I’ll be getting a taste of the lonesomeness here of nights pretty soon,” Mackenzie said, feeling himself in an awkward, yet not unpleasant situation with this frank girl’s rather impertinent question still burning in his heart. “Dad’s going to leave me to take charge 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 you don’t slow down a little,” he returned. “At the pace you’ve set you’ll have to import a professor to take you along, unless one strays in from somewhere.”
“I don’t take up with strays,” said Joan, rather loftily.
“I think Dad’s getting restless,” Mackenzie said, hastening to cover his mistake.
“He goes away every so often,” Joan explained, “to see his Mexican wife 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, more than likely, but he’ll come drifting back with the shearers in the spring like he always does. It seems to me like everybody comes back to the sheep country that’s ever lived in it a while. I wonder if I’d want to come back, too?”
It was a speculation upon which Mackenzie did not feel called to make comment. 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.
The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Page 6