The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

by Ogden, George W

  But there was no work in Joan that day, nothing but troubled speculation on what form Hector Hall’s revenge would take, and when the stealthy blow of his resentment would fall. Try as he would, Mackenzie could not fasten her mind upon the books. She would begin with a brave resolution, only to wander away, the book closed presently upon her thumb, her eyes searching the hazy hills where trouble lay out of sight. At last she gave it up, with a little catching sob, tears in her honest eyes.

  “They’ll kill you––I know they will!” she said.

  “I don’t think they will,” he returned, abstractedly, “but even if they do, Rachel, there’s nobody to grieve.”

  “Rachel? My name isn’t Rachel,” said Joan, a little hurt. For it was not in flippancy or banter that he had called her out of her name; his eyes were not within a hundred leagues of that place, his heart away with them, it seemed, when he spoke.

  He turned to her, a color of embarrassment in his brown face.

  “I was thinking of another story, Joan.”

  “Of another girl,” she said, perhaps a trifle resentfully. At least Mackenzie thought he read a resentful note in the quick rejoinder, a resentful flash of color in her cheek.

  “Yes, but a mighty old girl, Joan,” he confessed, smiling with a feeling of lightness around his heart.

  “Somebody you used to know?” face turned away, voice light in a careless, artificial note.

  “She was a sheepman’s daughter,” he said.

  “Did you know her down at Jasper?”

  “No, I never knew her at all, Rach––Joan. That was a long, long time ago.”

  Joan brightened at this news. She ceased denying him her face, even smiled a little, seeming to forget Hector Hall and his pending vengeance.

  “Well, what about her?” she asked.

  He told her which Rachel he had in mind, but Joan only shook her head and looked troubled.

  “I never read the Bible; we haven’t even got one.”

  He told her the story, beginning with Jacob’s setting out, and his coming to the well with the great stone at its mouth which the maidens could not roll away.

  “So Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Rachel’s sheep,” he said, pausing with that much of it, looking off down the draw between the hills in a mind-wandering way. Joan touched his arm, impatient with such disjointed narrative.

  “What did he do then?”

  “Why, he kissed her.”

  “I think he was kind of fresh,” said Joan. But she laughed a little, blushing rosily, a bright light in her eyes. “Tell me the rest of it, John.”

  Mackenzie went on with the ancient pastoral tale of love. Joan was indignant when she heard how Laban gave Jacob the weak-eyed girl for a wife in place of his beloved Rachel, for whom he had worked the seven years.

  “Jake must have been a bright one!” said she. “How could the old man put one over on him like that?”

  “You’ll have to read the story,” said Mackenzie. “It’s sundown; don’t you think you’d better be going back to camp, Joan?”

  But Joan was in no haste to leave. She walked with him as he worked the sheep to their bedding-ground, her bridle-rein over her arm. She could get back to camp before dark, she said; Charley would not be worried.

  Joan could not have said as much for herself. Her eyes were pools of trouble, her face was anxious and strained. She went silently beside Mackenzie while the dogs worked the sheep along with more than human patience, almost human intelligence. Frequently she looked into his face with a plea dumbly eloquent, but did not again put her fear for him into words. Only when she stood beside her horse near the sheep-wagon, ready to mount and leave him to his solitary supper, she spoke of Hector Hall’s revolvers, which Mackenzie had unstrapped and put aside.

  “What are you going to do with them, John?”

  She had fallen into the use of that familiar address only that day, moved by the tenderness of the old tale he had told her, perhaps; drawn nearer to him by the discovery of a gentle sentiment in him which she had not known before. He heard it with a warm uplifting of the heart, all without reason, he knew, for it was the range way to be familiar on a shorter acquaintance than theirs.

  “I’m going to give them back to him,” he said. “I’ve been carrying them around ever since he left them in the hope he’d get ashamed of himself and come for them.”

  Joan started at the sound of galloping hoofs, which rose suddenly out of complete silence as the riders mounted the crest behind them.

  “I guess he’s coming for them now,” she said.

  There were two riders coming down the slope toward them at a pace altogether reckless. Mackenzie saw at a glance that neither of them was Hector Hall, but one a woman, her loose garments flapping as she rode.

  “It’s Swan Carlson and his wife!” he said, unable to cover his amazement at the sight.

  “What do you suppose they’re doing over here?” Joan drew a little nearer as she spoke, her horse shifting to keep by her side.

  “No telling. Look how that woman rides!”

  There was enough in her wild bearing to excite admiration and wonder, even in one who had not seen her under conditions which promised little of such development. She came on at Swan’s side, leaning forward a little, as light and sure in the saddle as any cowboy on the range. They bore down toward the sheep-wagon as if they had no intention of halting, jerking their horses up in Indian fashion a few feet from where Mackenzie and Joan stood. The animals slid on stiff legs, hoofs plowing the soft ground, raising a cloud of dust which dimmed the riders momentarily.

  Neither of the abrupt visitors spoke. They sat silently staring, not a rod between them and the two on foot, the woman as unfriendly of face as the man. And Swan Carlson had not improved in this feature since Mackenzie parted from him in violence a few weeks before. His red hair was shorter now, his drooping mustache longer, the points of it reaching two inches below his chin. He was gaunt of cheek, hollow of eyes, like a man who had gone hungry or suffered a sorrow that ate away his heart.

  His wife had improved somewhat in outward appearance. Her face had filled, the pathetic uncertainty had gone from her eyes. She was not uncomely as she sat astride her good bay horse, her divided skirt of corduroy wide on its flanks, a man’s gray shirt laced over her bosom, the collar open, showing the fairness of her neck. Her abundant hair was braided, and wound closely about her head like a cap. Freedom had made a strange alteration in her. It seemed, indeed, as if Swan Carlson had breathed into her the breath of his own wild soul, making her over according to the desire of his heart.

  Mackenzie stepped out in invitation for Swan to state the occasion of his boisterous visit, and stood waiting in silence while the two strange creatures continued to stare. Swan lifted his hand in a manner of salutation, no change either of friendship or animosity in his lean, strong face.

  “You got a woman, huh? Well, how’ll you trade?”

  Swan glanced from his wife to Joan as he spoke. If there was any recollection in him of the hard usage he had received at Mackenzie’s hands, it did not seem to be bitter.

  “Ride on,” said Mackenzie.

  Mrs. Carlson urged her horse with sudden start close to where Joan stood, leaned far over her saddle and peered into the girl’s face. Joan, affronted by the savage impertinence, met her eyes defiantly, not giving an inch before the unexpected charge.

  In that pose of defiant challenge Swan Carlson’s woman peered into the face of the girl whose freshness and beauty had drawn the wild banter from her man’s bold lips. Then, a sudden sweep of passion in her face, she lifted her rawhide quirt and struck Joan a bitter blow across the shoulder and neck. Mackenzie sprang between them, but Mrs. Carlson, her defiance passed in that one blow, did not follow it up. Swan opened wide his great mouth and pealed out his roaring laughter, not a line of mirth softening in his face, not a gleam of it in his eyes. It was a sound without a note to express human warmth, or human satisfaction.

  Joa
n flamed up like a match in oil. She dropped her bridle-reins, springing back a quick step, turning her eyes about for some weapon by which she might retaliate. Hector Hall’s pistols hung on the end-gate of the sheep-wagon not more than twenty feet away. It seemed that Joan covered the distance in a bound, snatched one of the guns and fired. Her own horse stood between her and the wild range woman, which perhaps accounted for her miss. Mackenzie was holding her wrist before she could shoot again.

  Swan let out another roar of heartless laughter, and together with his woman galloped down the hill. Ahead of them the sheep were assembled, packed close in their huddling way of seeking comfort and courage in numbers, just beginning to compose themselves for the night. Straight into the flock Swan Carlson and his woman rode, trampling such as could not rise and leap aside, crushing such lambs as were not nimble enough or wise enough to run.

  “I’ll kill her, I’ll kill her!” said Joan.

  She panted, half crying, struggling to free her arm that she might fire again.

  “All right, let ’em have it!” Mackenzie said, seeing the havoc among the sheep.

  Swan and his woman rode like a whirlwind through the flock, the dogs after them with sharp cries, the frightened bleating of the lambs, the beating of two thousand hoofs, adding to the confusion of what had been a peaceful pastoral scene but a few minutes before. Joan cut loose at the disturbers of this peace, emptying the revolver quickly, but without effect.

  Half way through the herd Swan leaned down and caught a lamb by the leg, swung it around his head as lightly as a man would wave his hat, and rode on with it in savage triumph. Mackenzie snatched the rifle from the wagon. His shot came so close to Swan that he dropped the lamb. The woman fell behind Swan, interposing herself as a shield, and in this formation they rode on, sweeping down the narrow thread of green valley, galloping wildly away into the sanctuary of the hills.

  Mackenzie stood, gun half lifted, and watched them go without another shot, afraid to risk it lest he hit the woman. He turned to Joan, who stood by, white with anger, the empty revolver in her hand.

  “Are you hurt, Joan?” he asked, in foolish weakness, knowing very well that she was.

  “No, she didn’t hurt me––but I’ll kill her for it!” said Joan.

  She was trembling; her face was bloodless in the cold anger that shook her. There was a red welt on her neck, purple-marked on its ridge where the rawhide had almost cut her tender skin.

  “Swan Carlson has pulled his woman down to his savage level at last,” Mackenzie said.

  “She’s worse than he is; she’s a range wolf!”

  “I believe she is. But it always happens that way when a person gets to going.”

  “With those two and the Hall boys you’ll not have a ghost of a chance to hold this range, John. You’d better let me help you begin working the sheep over toward my camp tonight.”

  “No, I’m going to stay here.”

  “Swan and that woman just rode through here to get the lay of your camp. More than likely they’ll come over and burn you out tonight––pour coal oil on the wagon and set it afire.”

  “Let ’em; I’ll not be in it.”

  “They’ll worry you night and day, kill your sheep, maybe kill you, if you don’t come away. It isn’t worth it; dad was right about it. For the sake of peace, let them have it, John.”

  Mackenzie stood in silence, looking the way Swan and his woman had gone, the gun held as if ready to lift and fire at the showing of a hat-crown over the next hill. He seemed to be considering the situation. Joan studied his face with eager hopefulness, bending forward a bit to see better in the failing light.

  “They’ve got to be shown that a master has come to the sheep country,” he said, in low voice, as if to himself. “I’ll stay and prove it to all of them at once.”

  Joan knew there was no use to argue or appeal. She dropped the matter there, and Mackenzie put the gun away.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t anything to put on it,” he said, looking at the red welt on her neck.

  “I’m sorry I missed her,” said Joan.

  “It isn’t so much the sting of a blow, I know,” he comforted, “as the hurt of the insult. Never mind it, Joan; she’s a vicious, wild woman, jealous because Swam took notice of you.”

  “It was a great compliment!”

  “I wish I had some balm for it that would cure it in a second, and take away the memory of the way it was done,” said he, very softly.

  “I’ll kill her,” flared Joan.

  “I don’t like to hear you say that, Joan,” he chided, and reached and laid his hand consolingly upon the burning mark.

  Joan caught her breath as if he had touched her skin with ice. He withdrew his hand quickly, blaming himself for the rudeness of his rough hand.

  “You didn’t hurt me, John,” she said, her eyes downcast, the color of warm blood playing over her face.

  “I might have,” he blamed himself, in such seriousness as if it were the gravest matter he had risked, and not the mere touching of a blood-red welt upon a simple maiden’s neck.

  “I’ll be over early in the morning to see if you’re all right,” she told him as she turned again to her horse.

  “If you can come, even to show yourself on the hill,” said he.

  “Show myself? Why, a person would think you were worrying about me.”

  “I am, Joan. I wish you would give up herding sheep, let the share and the prospect and all of it go, and have your father put a herder in to run that band for you.”

  “They’ll not hurt me; as mean as they are they’ll not fight a woman. Anyway, I’m not over the deadline.”

  “There’s something prowling this range that doesn’t respect lines, Joan.”

  “You mean the grizzly?”

  “Yes, the grizzly that rides a horse.”

  “Dad Frazer thinks you were mistaken on that, John.”

  “I know. Dad Frazer thinks I’m a better schoolteacher than I’ll ever be a sheepman, I guess. But I’ve met bears enough that I don’t have to imagine them. Keep your gun close by you tonight, and every night.”

  “I will,” she promised, moved by the earnestness of his appeal.

  Dusk was thickening into darkness over the sheeplands; the dogs were driving the straggling sheep back to the bedding-ground, where many of them already lay in contentment, quickly over the flurry of Swan Carlson’s passing. Joan stood at her stirrup, her face lifted to the heavens, and it was white as an evening primrose under the shadow of her hat. She lingered as if there remained something to say or be said, something to give or to take, before leaving her friend and teacher alone to face the dangers of the night. Perhaps she thought of Rachel, and the kiss her kinsman gave her when he rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and lifted up his voice and wept.

  Mackenzie stood a little apart, thinking his own swift-running thoughts, quickening under the leap of his own eager blood. But no matter for Jacob’s precedent, Mackenzie had no excuse of even distant relationship to offer for such familiarity. The desire was urging, but the justification was not at hand. So Joan rode away unkissed, and perhaps wondering why.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XI

  HECTOR HALL SETS A BEACON

  Mackenzie sat a long time on his hill that night, his ear turned to the wind, smoking his pipe and thinking the situation over while listening for the first sound of commotion among the sheep. He had pledged himself to Tim and Joan that he would not quit the sheep country without proving that he had in him the mettle of a flockmaster. Hector Hall had been given to understand the same thing. In fact, Mackenzie thought, it looked as if he had been running with his eyes shut, making boastful pledges.

  He might have to hedge on some of them, or put them through at a cost far beyond the profit. It came that way to a boaster of his intentions sometimes, especially so when a man spoke too quickly and assumed too much. Here he was standing face to a fight that did not appear to promise much more glory in the win
ning than in the running away.

  There had been peace in that part of the sheep country a long time; Mackenzie had come to Jasper, even, long after the feuds between the flockmasters and cattlemen had worn themselves out save for an outbreak of little consequence in the far places now and then. But the peace of this place had been a coward’s peace, paid for in money and humiliation. A thing like that was not to be expected of Tim Sullivan, although from a business reasoning he doubtless was right about it.

  It was Mackenzie’s work now to clean up the camp of the Hall brothers, along with Swan Carlson, and put an end to their bullying and edging over on Tim Sullivan’s range, or take up his pack and trudge out of the sheep country as he had come. By staying there and fighting for Tim Sullivan’s interests he might arrive in time at a dusty consequence, his fame, measured in thousands of sheep, reaching even to Jasper and Cheyenne, and perhaps to the stock-yards commission offices in Omaha and Chicago.

  “John Mackenzie, worth twenty thousand, or fifty thousand sheep.”

  That would be the way they would know him; that would be the measure of his fame. By what sacrifice, through what adventure, how much striving and hard living he might come to the fame of twenty thousand sheep, no man would know or care. There in the dusty silences of that gray-green land he would bury the man and the soul that reached upward in him with pleasant ambitions, to become a creature over sheep. Just a step higher than the sheep themselves, wind-buffeted, cold-cursed, seared and blistered and hardened like a callous through which the urging call of a man’s duty among men could pierce no more.

  But it had its compensations, on the other hand. There must be a vast satisfaction in looking back over the small triumphs won against tremendous forces, the successful contest with wild winter storm, ravaging disease, night-prowling beasts. Nature was the big force arrayed against a flockmaster, and it was unkind and menacing seven months out of the year. That must be the secret of a flockmaster’s satisfaction with himself and his lot, Mackenzie thought; he could count himself a fit companion for the old gods, if he knew anything about them, after his victory over every wild force that could be bent against him among those unsheltered hills.