The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

by Ogden, George W

  “No, I could not show you the money and go away with you leaving Swan living behind,” she said at last, as if she had decided it finally in her mind. “That I have told Earl Reid. Swan would follow me to the edge of the world; he would strangle my neck between his hands and throw me down dead at his feet.”

  “He’d have a right to if you did him that kind of a trick,” Mackenzie said.

  “Earl Reid comes with promises,” she said, unmindful of Mackenzie; “he sits close by me in the dark, he holds me by the hand. But kiss me I will not permit; that yet belongs to Swan.” She looked up, sweeping Mackenzie with her appealing eyes. “But if you would kill him, then my lips would be hot for your kiss, brave man––I would bend down and draw your soul into mine through a long, long kiss!”

  “Hush!” Mackenzie commanded, sternly. “Such thoughts belong to Swan, as much as the other. Don’t talk that way to me––I don’t want to hear any more of it.”

  Hertha sat looking at him, that cast of dull hopelessness in her face again, the light dead in her eyes.

  “There are strange noises that I hear in the night,” she said, woefully; “there is a dead child that never drew breath pressed against my heart.”

  “You’d better go back to your wagon,” he suggested, getting to his feet.

  “There is no wagon, only a canvas spread over the brushes, where I lie like a wolf in a hollow. A beast I am become, among the beasts of the field!”

  “Come––I’ll go with you,” he offered, holding out his hand to lift her.

  She did not seem to notice him, but sat stroking her face as if to ease a pain out of it, or open the fount of her tears which much weeping must have drained long, long ago.

  Mackenzie believed she was going insane, in the slow-preying, brooding way of those who are not strong enough to withstand the cruelties of silence and loneliness on the range.

  “Where is your woman?” she asked again, lifting her face suddenly.

  “I have no woman,” he told her, gently, in great pity for her cruel burden under which she was so unmistakably breaking.

  “I remember, you told me you had no woman. A man should have a woman; he goes crazy of the lonesomeness on the sheep range without a woman.”

  “Will Swan be over tomorrow?” Mackenzie asked, thinking to take her case up with the harsh and savage man and see if he could not be moved to sending her away.

  “I do not know,” she returned coldly, her manner changing like a capricious wind. She rose as she spoke, and walked away, disappearing almost at once in the darkness.

  Mackenzie stood looking the way she went, listening for the sound of her going, but she passed so surely among the shrubs and over the uneven ground that no noise attended her. It was as though her failing mind had sharpened her with animal caution, or that instinct had come forward in her to take the place of wit, and serve as her protection against dangers which her faculties might no longer safeguard.

  Even the dogs seemed to know of her affliction, as wild beasts are believed by some to know and accept on a common plane the demented among men. They knew at once that she was not going to harm the sheep. When she left camp they stretched themselves with contented sighs to their repose.

  And that was “the lonesomeness” as they spoke of it there. A dreadful affliction, a corrosive poison that gnawed the heart hollow, for which there was no cure but comradeship or flight. Poor Hertha Carlson was denied both remedies; she would break in a little while now, and run mad over the hills, her beautiful hair streaming in the wind.

  And Reid had it; already it had struck deep into his soul, turning him morose, wickedly vindictive, making him hungry with an unholy ambition to slay. Joan must have suffered from the same disorder. It was not so much a desire in her to see what lay beyond the blue curtain of the hills as a longing for companionship among them.

  But Joan would put away her unrest; she had found a cure for the lonesomeness. Her last word to him that day was that she did not want to leave the sheep range now; that she would stay while he remained, and fare as he fared.

  Rachel must have suffered from the lonesomeness, ranging her sheep over the Mesopotamian plain; Jacob had it when he felt his heart dissolve in tears at the sight of his kinswoman beside the well of Haran. But Joan was safe from it now; its insidious poison would corrode in her heart no more.

  Poor Hertha Carlson, deserving better than fate had given her with sheep-mad Swan! She could not reason without violence any longer, so often she had been subjected to its pain.

  “It will be a thousand wonders if she doesn’t kill him herself,” Mackenzie said, sitting down with new thoughts.

  The news of Swan’s buying Hall out was important and unexpected. Free to leave the country now, Hall very likely would be coming over to balance accounts. There was his old score against Mackenzie for his humiliation at the hands of the apprentice sheepherder, which doubtless had grown more bitter day by day; and there was his double account against Reid and Mackenzie for the loss of his sheep-killing brother. Mackenzie hoped that he would go away and let matters stand as they were.

  And Swan. It had not been all a jest, then, when he proposed trading his woman for Mackenzie’s. What a wild, irresponsible, sheep-mad man he was! But he hardly would attempt any violence toward Joan, even though he “spoke of her in the night.”

  From Carlson, Mackenzie’s thoughts ran out after Reid. Contempt rose in him, and deepened as he thought of the mink-faced youth carrying his deceptive poison into the wild Norseman’s camp. But insane as she was, racked by the lonesomeness to be away from that unkindly land, Hertha Carlson remained woman enough to set a barrier up that Reid, sneak that he was, could not cross.

  What a condition she had made, indeed! Nothing would beguile her from it; only its fulfilment would bend her to yield to his importunities. It was a shocking mess that Reid had set for himself to drink some day, for Swan Carlson would come upon them in their hand-holding in his hour, as certainly as doom.

  And there was the picture of the red-haired giant of the sheeplands and that flat-chested, sharp-faced youth drinking beside the sheep-wagon in the night. There was Swan, lofty, cold, unbending; there was Reid, the craft, the knowledge of the world’s under places written on his brow, the deceit that he practiced against his host hidden away in his breast.

  Mackenzie sighed, putting it from him like a nightmare that calls a man from his sleep by its false peril, wringing sweat from him in its agony. Let them bind in drink and sever in blood, for all that he cared. It was nothing to him, any way they might combine or clash. Joan was his; that was enough to fill his world.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XVIII

  SWAN CARLSON’S DAY

  Dad Frazer came over the hills next morning after the dew was gone. Mackenzie saw him from afar, and was interested to note that he was not alone. That is to say, not immediately accompanied by anybody, yet not alone for a country where a quarter of a mile between men is rather close company.

  Somebody was coming on after the old shepherd, holding about the same distance behind him in spite of little dashes down slopes that Dad made when for a moment out of sight. Mackenzie’s wonder over this peculiar behavior grew as the old man came near, and it was discovered to the eye that his persistent shadow was a woman.

  Dad wasted neither words nor breath on his explanation when he came panting up the slope that brought him to the place where Mackenzie stood above his sheep.

  “It’s that dad-burned Rabbit!” he said.

  There was something between vexation and respect in Dad’s voice. He turned to look back as he spoke. Rabbit had mounted the hilltop just across the dip, where she stood looking over at her shifty-footed lord, two sheep-dogs at her side.

  “How did she locate you?” Mackenzie inquired, not in the least displeased over this outreaching of justice after the fickle old man.

  “She’s been trailin’ me four years!” Dad whispered, his respect for Rabbit’s powers on the scent unmistaka
ble.

  “That’s a long time to hold a cold trail. Rabbit must be some on the track!”

  “You can’t beat them Indians follerin’ a man if they set their heads to it. Well, it’s all off with the widow-lady at Four Corners now––Rabbit’s got me nailed. You see them sheep-dogs? Them dogs they’d jump me the minute Rabbit winked at ’em––they’d chaw me up like a couple of lions. She’s raised ’em up to do it, dad-burn her! Had my old vest to learn ’em the scent.”

  “A man never ought to leave his old vest behind him when he runs away from his wife,” said Mackenzie, soberly. “But it looks to me like a woman with the sticking qualities Rabbit’s got isn’t a bad one to stay married to. How in the world could a reservation squaw find her way around to follow you all this time?”

  “She’s educated, dang her; she went to the sisters’ mission. She can read and write a sight better than me. She’s too smart for a squaw, bust her greasy eyes! Yes, and I’ll never dast to lay a hand on her with them dogs around. They’d chaw me up quicker’n a man could hang up his hat.”

  Rabbit composed herself after her patient but persistent way, sitting among the bushes with only her head showing, waiting for Dad’s next move.

  “You’re married to her regularly, are you, Dad?”

  “Priest marriage, dang it all!” said Dad, hopelessly.

  “Then it is all off with the one-eyed widow.”

  “Yes, and them four thousand sheep, and that range all under fence, dang my melts!”

  “What are you going to do about Rabbit?”

  “It ain’t what am I goin’ to do about her, John, but what she’s goin’ to do about me. She’ll never leave me out of her sight a minute as long as I live. I reckon I’ll have to stay right here and run sheep for Tim, and that widow-lady wonderin’ why I don’t show up!”

  “You might do worse, Dad.”

  “Yes, I reckon I might. Rabbit she’s as good as any man on the range handlin’ sheep, she can draw a man’s pay wherever she goes. I guess I could put her to work, and that’d help some.”

  Dad brightened a bit at that prospect, and drew his breath with a new hope. Even with the widow gone from his calculations, the future didn’t promise all loss.

  “But I bet you I’ll shoot them two dogs the first time I can draw a bead on ’em!” Dad declared.

  “Maybe if you’ll treat Rabbit the right way she’ll sell them. Call her over, Dad; I’d like to get acquainted with her.”

  Dad beckoned with his hand, but Rabbit did not stir; waved his hat to emphasize his command; Rabbit remained quiet among the bushes, the top of her black head in plain view.

  “She’s afraid we’ve hatched up some kind of a trick between us to work off on her,” said Dad.

  “You can’t blame her for being a little distrustful, Dad. But let her go; I’ll meet her at your camp one of these days.”

  “Yes, you’ll meet her over there, all right, for she’s goin’ to stick to me till I’m under ground. That’s one time too many I married––just one time too many!”

  “I suppose a man can overdo it; I’ve heard it said.”

  “If I hadn’t ’a’ left that blame vest!”

  “Yes, that seems to be where you blundered. You’ll know better next time, Dad.”

  “Yes, but there never will be no next time,” Dad sighed.

  “Have you seen Reid over your way this morning?”

  “No, I ain’t seen him. Is he still roamin’ and restless?”

  “He left yesterday; I thought he was going to the ranch.”

  “Didn’t pass my way. That feller’s off, I tell you, John; he’s one of the kind that can’t stand the lonesomeness. Leave him out here alone two months, and he’d put a bullet in his eye.”

  “It seems to me like it’s a land of daftness,” Mackenzie said.

  “You’ll find a good many cracked people all over the sheep country––I’m kind o’ cracked myself. I must be, or I never would ’a’ left that vest.”

  Dad took off his hat to smooth his sweeping curled locks, as white as shredded asbestos, and full of the same little gleams that mineral shows when a block of it from the mine is held in the sun. His beard was whitening over his face again, like a frost that defied the heat of day, easing its hollows and protuberances, easing some of the weakness that the barber’s razor had laid so pitilessly bare. In a few days more he would appear himself again, and be ready for the sheep-shears in due time.

  “I reckon I’ll have to make the best of the place I’m in, but for a man of puncture, as the feller said, like I used to think I was, I sure did miscombobble it when I married that educated squaw. No woman I ever was married to in my life ever had sense enough to track a man like that woman’s follered me. She sure is a wonder on the scent.”

  Patiently Rabbit was sitting among the bushes, waiting the turn of events, not to be fooled again, not to be abandoned, if vigilance could insure her against such distress. Mackenzie’s admiration for the woman grew with Dad’s discomfiture over his plight. There was an added flavor of satisfaction for him in the old man’s blighted career. Wise Rabbit, to have a priest marriage, and wiser still to follow this old dodger of the sheeplands and bring him up with a short halter in the evening of his days.

  “I’ll go on back and look after them sheep,” said Dad, with a certain sad inflection of resignation; “there’s nothing else to be done. I was aimin’ to serve notice on Tim to find another man in my place, but I might as well keep on. Well, I can set in the shade, anyhow, and let Rabbit do the work––her and them blame dogs.”

  Dad sighed. It helped a great deal to know that Rabbit could do the work. He looked long toward the spot where his unshaken wife kept her watch on him, but seemed to be looking over her head, perhaps trying to measure all he had lost by this coming between him and the one-eyed widow-lady of Four Corners.

  “I wonder if I could git you to write a letter over to that widow and tell her I’m dead?” he asked.

  “I’ll do it if you want me to. But you’re not dead yet, Dad––you may outlive Rabbit and marry the widow at last.”

  “I never was no lucky man,” said Dad, smoothing his gleaming hair. “A man that’s married and nailed down to one place is the same as dead; he might as well be in his grave. If I’d ’a’ got that widow-lady I’d ’a’ had the means and the money to go ridin’ around and seein’ the sights from the end of one of them cars with a brass fence around it. But I’m nailed down now, John; I’m cinched.”

  Dad was so melancholy over his situation that he went off without more words, a thing unheard of for him. He gave Rabbit a wide fairway as he passed. When he was a respectable distance ahead the squaw rose from her bush and followed, such determination in her silent movements as to make Dad’s hope for future freedom hollow indeed. The old man was cinched at last; Mackenzie was glad that it was so.

  The sound of Carlson’s sheep was still near that morning, and coming nearer, as whoever attended them ranged them slowly along. Mackenzie went a little way across the hill in that direction, but could not see the shepherd, although the sheep were spread on the slope just before him. It was a small flock, numbering not above seven hundred. Mackenzie was puzzled why Swan wanted to employ his own or his wife’s time in grazing so small a number, when four times as many could be handled as easily.

  This question was to be answered for him very soon, and in a way which he never had imagined. Yet there was no foreboding of it in the calm noonday as he prepared his dinner in the shade of some welcome willows, the heat glimmering over the peaceful hills.

  It was while Mackenzie sat dozing in the fringe of shade such as a hedge would cast at noonday that the snarl of fighting dogs brought him up to a realization of what was going forward among the sheep. His own flock had drifted like a slow cloud to the point of the long ridge, and there Swan Carlson’s band had joined it. The two flocks were mingling now, and on the edge of the confused mass his own dogs and Carlson’s were fighting.

&
nbsp; Swan was not in sight; nobody seemed to be looking after the sheep; it appeared as if they had been left to drift as they might to this conjunction with Mackenzie’s flock. Mackenzie believed Mrs. Carlson had abandoned her charge and fled Swan’s cruelty, but he did not excuse himself for his own stupidity in allowing the flocks to come together as he ran to the place where his dogs and Carlson’s fought.

  The sheep were becoming more hopelessly mingled through this commotion on their flank. Mackenzie was beating the enraged dogs apart when Swan Carlson came running around the point of the hill.

  Swan immediately took part in the mêlée of gnashing, rolling, rearing dogs, laying about among them with impartial hand, quickly subduing them to obedience. He stood looking stonily at Mackenzie, unmoved by anger, unflushed by exertion. In that way he stood silent a little while, his face untroubled by any passion that rolled in his breast.

  “You’re runnin’ your sheep over on my grass––what?” said Swan.

  “You’re a mile over my range,” Mackenzie accused.

  “You’ve been crowdin’ over on me for a month,” Swan said, “and I didn’t say nothing. But when a man tries to run his sheep over amongst mine and drive ’em off, I take a hand.”

  “If anybody’s tryin’ such a game as that, it’s you,” Mackenzie told him. “Get ’em out of here, and keep ’em out.”

  “I got fifteen hundred in that band––you’ll have to help me cut ’em out,” said Swan.

  “You had about seven hundred,” Mackenzie returned, dispassionately, although it broke on him suddenly what the big flockmaster was trying to put through.