The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

by Ogden, George W

  Still, it should not concern him. Once he had believed there was a budding blossom on his hitherto dry branch of romance; if he had been so ungenerous as to take advantage of Joan’s loneliness and urge the promise to florescence, they might have been riding down out of the sheeplands together that day.

  It would have been a venture, too, he admitted. For contact with the world of men must prove a woman, even as the hardships of the range must prove a man. Perhaps the unlimited variety displayed before her eyes would have made Joan dissatisfied with her plain choice.

  At that moment it came to him that perhaps Joan was to be tested and proved here, even as he was being tested in Tim Sullivan’s balance for his fitness to become a master over sheep. Here were two fair samples of men out of the world’s assorted stock––himself and Reid. One of them, deliberate, calm, assured of his way, but with little in his hand; the other a grig that could reel and spin in the night-lights, and flutter to a merry tune.

  With Mackenzie the rewards of life would come to her slowly, but with a sweet savor of full understanding and appreciation as they were won. Many of them most desired might never be attained; many more might be touched and withdrawn in the mockery that fate practices so heartlessly upon men. Reid could convey her at once over the rough summits which men and women wear their hearts threadbare to attain. With Reid the journey would begin where, with the best hoping, it must in his own company almost end.

  “It was unlucky for Earl that he killed Matt Hall,” said Joan, taking up another thread of thought in her discursive, unfixed humor of that day.

  “It’s unfortunate for any man to have to kill another, I guess. But it has to be done sometimes.”

  “Matt deserved it, all right––he ought have been killed for his mean face long ago––but it’s turned Earl’s head, haven’t you noticed? He thinks he’s got one foot on each side of this range, herdin’ everybody between his legs.”

  “He’ll get over it in a little while.”

  “He’s not got brains enough to hold him down when the high winds begin to blow. If he’s a fair sample of what they’ve got in Omaha, I’ll cross it off my map when I begin to travel.”

  “Dad says he’s got the lonesomeness.”

  “More of the cussedness.”

  Her words warmed Mackenzie like a precious cordial. At every one of them in derogation of Reid his heart jumped, seeming to move him by its tremendous vibration a little nearer to her. He felt that it was traitorous exultation at the expense of one who had befriended him to a limit beyond which it is hard for a man to go, but he could not drown the exhilaration of a reborn hope in even the deepest waters of his gratitude.

  Somebody ought to tell Joan what they had designed for her in company with Earl Reid; somebody ought to tell her, but it was not his place. It was strange that she had read the young man’s weakness so readily. Mackenzie had noted more than once before in his life that those who live nearest to nature are the most apt in reading all her works.

  “He’ll never stay here through a winter,” Joan predicted, with certainty that admitted no argument. “Give him a touch of twenty-two below, and a snow on a high wind, and send him out to bed down the sheep where it’ll blow over them! I can see him right now. You’ll do it, all right, and I’ll have to, like I have done many a time. But we’re not like Earl. Earl’s got summer blood.”

  Mackenzie took her hand, feeling it tremble a little, seeing her face grow pale. The sun was red on the hill, the sheep were throwing long shadows down the slope as they grazed lazily, some of them standing on knees to crop the lush bunch grass.

  “Yes, Joan, you and I are of different blood,” he said. “We are of the blood of the lonesome places, and we’ll turn back to them always from our wandering and seeking contentment among the press of men. He can’t have you––Earl Reid can’t have you––ever in this world!”

  So it was out, and from his own mouth, and all his reserve was nothing, and his silent pledging but as an idle word. Joan was looking at him with wide and serious eyes.

  “Earl Reid?”

  “Earl Reid,” he nodded. “I’d be a coward to give you up to him.”

  Joan was not trembling now. She put her free hand over Mackenzie’s where it gripped her fingers so hard that Earl Reid might have been on the opposite side of her, trying to rive her away from him by force; she looked up into his eyes and smiled. And there were flecks of golden brown in Joan’s eyes, like flakes of metal from her rich hair. They seemed to increase, and to sparkle like jewels struck through placid water by strong sunbeams as she looked up into his face.

  “I thought dad had made some kind of a deal with him,” she said, nodding in her wise way, a truant strand of hair on her calm forehead. “They didn’t tell me anything, but I knew from the way dad looked at me out of the corners of his eyes that he had a trade of some kind on. Tell me about it, John.”

  There was no explanation left to Mackenzie but the degrading truth, and he gave it to her as Tim Sullivan had given it to him.

  “They had their nerve!” said Joan, flushed with resentment.

  “It’s all off, as far as it affects you and me,” Mackenzie said, fetching his brows together in a frown of denial. “Reid can’t have you, not even if he comes into two million when the old man dies.”

  “No,” said Joan softly, her hand stroking his, her eyes downcast, the glow of the new-old dawn upon her cheek; “there’s only room for one Jacob on this range.”

  “I thought I owed it to Reid, as a matter of honor between men, to step aside and let him have you, according to the plan. But that was a mistake. A man can’t pay his debts by robbing his heart that way.”

  “I saw something was holding you back, John,” said the wise Joan.

  Mackenzie started as if she had thrust him with a needle, felt his telltale blood flare red in his face, but grinned a little as he turned to her, meeting her eye to eye.

  “So, you saw through me, did you, Joan?”

  “When you called me Rachel that day.”

  “I nearly told you that time,” he sighed.

  “You might have, John,” said she, a bit accusingly; “you didn’t owe him anything then––that was before he came.”

  “I respected you too much to take advantage of your coming to me that way for your lessons day by day, Joan. I had to fight to keep it back.”

  “I tried to pull it out of you,” Joan said, as serious as a penitent, although there was a smile breaking on her lips as she turned her face away.

  “I’d never want to do anything, or say anything, that would lower your respect for me one little degree, Joan,” he said, still clinging to her hand as though he feared he had not quite won her, and must hold her fast by his side for the final word.

  “I know you wouldn’t, John,” said she, her voice shaking a little, and low beneath her breath.

  “I wouldn’t want to––to––go as far as Jacob went that first time he saw Rachel,” said he in desperation, his grip tightening on her fingers, sweat bursting on his brow. “I wouldn’t want to––I’d want to, all right, but I wouldn’t even––even–––”

  Joan looked up at him with calm, placid eyes, with pale cheeks, with yearning lips, a flutter in her heart that made her weak. She nodded, anxious to help him to his climax, but not bold, not bolder than himself, indeed, and he was shaking like a sick man in the sun.

  “Unless I could make it holy, unless you could understand it so, I wouldn’t even––I wouldn’t so much as–––” He took her face between his hands, and bent over her, and a glad little sob trembled between Joan’s lips as she rested her hands on his shoulders for the benediction of his kiss.

  Joan did not stay to help him bring in the sheep that day, for there was nothing left for her to wonder over, or stand wistfully by her saddle waiting to receive. Neither was there any sound of weeping as she rode up the hill, for the male custom of expressing joy in that way had gone out of fashion on the sheep ranges of this world l
ong before John Mackenzie’s day.

  Nothing that he could owe a man could equal what he had gained that hour, Mackenzie thought, standing there with heart as light as the down of cottonwood. With his great debt paid to Earl Reid, even to the measure of his own life, he would still leave the world a rich man. He had come into the fresh pastures of romance at last.

  Joan waved him good-bye from the hilltop and went on, the understanding of his fortune growing on him as he recalled her eyes in that moment when she closed them to his salute upon her lips. She gave up that first kiss that she ever had yielded to any man as though he had reached down and plucked it out of her heart.

  Let them go on planning for years of labor, let them go on scheming for inheritances, and piece their broken arrangements together as they might when they found he had swept Joan out of their squalid calculations as a rider stoops and lifts a kerchief from the ground. There would be bitterness and protestations, and rifts in his own bright hopes, as well.

  But if Tim Sullivan would not give her up to him with the good grace of a man, Mackenzie said, smiling and smiling like a daft musician, he would take her from both of them and ride away with her into the valleys of the world which she was so hungry in her young heart to behold.

  He rounded his sheep to their hillside, and made his fire, a song in his heart, but his lips sealed, for he was a silent man. And at dusk there came riding into his camp a man, whose coat was at his cantle, who was belted with pistols, who roved his eye with cautious look as he halted and gave the shepherd good evening. Mackenzie invited him down to the hospitality of the camp, which the stranger accepted with hearty grace.

  “I was lookin’ for a young feller by the name of Reid; you’re not the man,” the stranger said with finality, after one more shrewd look into Mackenzie’s face.

  “My name’s Mackenzie––Reid’s running a band of sheep for the same outfit about five miles east of here.”

  The stranger said nothing more, being busy at that moment unsaddling his horse, which he hobbled and turned to graze. He came over to the fire where Mackenzie was baking biscuits in a tilted pan, and sat down, dusty from his day’s ride.

  “I’m the sheriff of this county,” he announced, not going into the detail of his name. Mackenzie nodded his acknowledgment, the sheriff keeping his hungry eye on the pan. “I took a cut across here from servin’ some subpoenas in a murder case on some fellers up on Farewell Creek,” he explained, “to see how that feller Reid’s behavin’.”

  “I haven’t heard any complaint,” Mackenzie told him, wondering why this official interest. The sheriff seemed satisfied with what he heard, and made no further inquiry or explanation until after he had eaten his supper. As he smoked a cracked cigar which he took from the pocket of his ornate vest, he talked.

  “I didn’t know anything about that boy when Sullivan put him in here on the range,” he said, “but the other day I got a letter from the sheriff in Omaha askin’ me to keep my eye on him. The news of Reid’s killin’ Matt Hall got over to Omaha. You know Reid, he’s under sentence of three years in the pen.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah. Daddy got him paroled to Sullivan’s sheep ranch to serve it. If he breaks over here he goes to the pen. That’s the way he stands.”

  “In that case, he’ll more than likely stay it out.”

  “He will if he’s wise. He’s been a kind of a streak of wildness, the sheriff in Omaha said. Sent me his full history, three pages. Married somebody a year or so ago, but the old man got him out of that by buyin’ off the girl. Then he started out forgin’, and pushed it so hard the old man refused to make good any more. But he didn’t want to see the kid go to the pen, and he’s here. I got to keep my eye on him to see he don’t break over.”

  The sheriff stretched out when he had finished his cigar and went to sleep in a blanket provided by his host. He was up with dawn, ready to resume his journey. Mackenzie pressed him to stay for breakfast, but he said he wanted to make a start before the sun and reach Sullivan’s ranch-house.

  “Does Sullivan know how things stand with Reid?” Mackenzie inquired.

  “I reckon he must. If he don’t he soon will. Kind of watch that feller, will you, and slip me word if he shows any signs of streakin’ out of the country.”

  “No, I’ve got my eye full looking after two thousand sheep. That’s up to Sullivan, he’s responsible for Reid.”

  The sheriff turned a sharp look of suspicion on Mackenzie, but said nothing. He led his horse down to the little stream for water, and came leading it back, a cast of disfavor in his face.

  “You’re a bad bunch up in here,” he said, “you and Carlson and Hall. If there’s any more killin’ and fightin’ up this way I’ll come in and clean you all out. Where did you say that feller was at?”

  Mackenzie told him again, and he rode off to take a look at Reid, and put what caution into his ear he had a mind to give. Mackenzie saw him blend into the gloom of early morning with a feeling of self-felicitation on his act of yesterday. He was inspired yesterday when he took Joan under his protection and laid claim to her in his own right.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XVI

  REID BEGINS HIS PLAY

  Dad Frazer came back after five days, diminished in facial outline on account of having submitted his stubble beard to the barber at Four Corners. In reverse of all speculation on Mackenzie’s part, this operation did not improve the old man’s appearance. Dad’s face was one of the kind that are built to carry a beard; without it his weaknesses were too apparent to the appraising eye.

  Dad made glowing report of his success with the widow at Four Corners. Preliminaries were smoothed; he had left the widow wearing his ring.

  “We’ll jump the broomstick in about a month from now,” Dad said, full of satisfaction for his business stroke. “I aim to settle down and quit my roamin’, John.”

  “And your marrying, too, I hope, you old rascal!”

  “Yes, this one will be my last, I reckon. I don’t mind, though; I’ve had doin’s enough with women in my day.”

  “Is she a good looker, Dad?”

  “Well, I’ve seen purtier ones and I’ve seen uglier ones, John. No, she ain’t what you might call stylish, I guess, but she’s all right for me. She’s a little off in one leg, but not enough to hurt.”

  “That’s a slight blemish in a lady with money in the bank, Dad.”

  “I look at it that way, on the sensible side. Good looks is all right in a woman, but that ain’t all a man needs to make him easy in his mind. Well, she did lose the sight of her left eye when she was a girl, but she can see a dollar with the other one further than I can see a wagon wheel.”

  “No gentleman would stop at the small trifle of an eye. What else, Dad?”

  “Nothing else, only she’s carryin’ a little more meat right now than a woman likes to pack around in hot weather. I don’t mind that; you know, I like mine fat; you can’t get ’em too fat for me.”

  “I’ve heard you say so. How much does she weigh?”

  “Well, I guess close to three hundred, John. If she was taller, it wouldn’t show so much on her––she can walk under my arm. But it’s surprisin’ how that woman can git around after them sheep!”

  Dad added this hopefully, as if bound to append some redeeming trait to all her physical defects.

  “How many does she own?”

  “About four thousand. Not much of a band, but a lot more than I ever could lay claim to. She’s got a twelve-thousand acre ranch, owns every foot of it, more than half of it under fence. What do you think of that? Under fence! Runs them sheep right inside of that bull-wire fence, John, where no wolf can’t git at ’em. There ain’t no bears down in that part of the country. Safe? Safer’n money in the bank, and no expense of hirin’ a man to run ’em.”

  “It looks like you’ve landed on a feather bed, Dad.”

  “Ain’t I? What does a man care about a little hobble, or one eye, or a little chunk of
fat, when he can step into a layout like that?”

  “Why didn’t you lead her up to the hitching-rack while you were there? Somebody else is likely to pick your plum while your back’s turned.”

  “No, I don’t reckon. She’s been on the tree quite a spell; she ain’t the kind you young fellers want, and the old ones is most generally married off or in the soldiers’ home. Well, she’s got a little cross of Indian and Mexican in her, anyway; that kind of keeps ’em away, you know.”

  It was no trouble to frame a mental picture of Dad’s inamorata. Black, squat, squint; a forehead a finger deep, a voice that would carry a mile. Mackenzie had seen that cross of Mexican and Indian blood, with a dash of debased white. They were not the kind that attracted men outside their own mixed breed, but he hadn’t a doubt that this one was plenty good enough, and handsome enough, for Dad.

  Mackenzie left the old man with this new happiness in his heart, through which a procession of various-hued women had worn a path during the forty years of his taking in marriage one month and taking leave the next. Dad wasn’t nervous over his prospects, but calm and calculative, as became his age. Mackenzie went smiling now and then as he thought of the team the black nondescript and the old fellow would make.

  He found Reid sitting on a hilltop with his face in his hands, surly and out of sorts, his revolver and belt on the ground beside him as if he had grown weary of their weight. He gave a short return to Mackenzie’s unaffected greeting and interested inquiry into the conduct of the sheep and the dogs during his absence.

  Reid’s eyes were shot with inflamed veins, as if he had been sitting all night beside a smoky fire. When Mackenzie sat near him the wind bore the pollution of whisky from his breath. Reid made a show of being at his ease, although the veins in his temples were swollen in the stress of what must have been a splitting headache. He rolled a cigarette with nonchalance almost challenging, and smoked in silence, the corners of his wide, salamander mouth drawn down in a peculiar scoffing.