The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

by Ogden, George W

  “I hoped you’d marry Joan,” said Mary, with a sympathetic little sigh. “I don’t like Earl Reid.”

  “Mary?” said Mackenzie. Mary looked up inquiringly. “Can you keep a secret for me, Mary?”

  “Try me, John.”

  “I am going to marry Joan.”

  “Oh, you’ve got it all settled? Did Joan wear your ring when she went home?”

  “No, she didn’t wear my ring, Mary, but she would have worn it if I’d seen her before she was sent away.”

  “I thought you were at the bottom of it, John,” the wise Mary said. “You know, dad’s taken her sheep away from her, and she had a half-interest in at least a thousand head.”

  “I didn’t know that, but it will not make any difference to Joan and me. But why hasn’t she been over to see me, Mary?”

  “Oh, dad’s sore at her because she put her foot down flat when she heard it was fixed for her to marry Earl. She told dad to take his sheep and go to the devil––she was going to go away and work somewhere else. He made her go home and stay there like a rabbit in a box––wouldn’t let her have a horse.”

  “Of course; I might have known it. I wonder if she knows I’m up?”

  “She knows, all right. Charley slips word to her.”

  “Charley’s a good fellow, and so are you,” Mackenzie said, giving Mary his hand.

  “You’ll get her, and it’s all right,” Mary declared, in great confidence. “It’ll take more than bread and water to tame Joan.”

  “Is that all they’re giving her?”

  “That’s dad’s idea of punishment––he’s put most of us on bread and water one time or another. But mother has ideas of her own what a kid ought to have to eat.”

  Mary smiled over the recollection, and Mackenzie joined her. Joan would not grow thin with that mother on the job.

  They talked over the prospects ahead of Joan and himself in the most comfortable way, leaving nothing unsaid that hope could devise or courage suggest. A long time Mackenzie remained with his little sister, who would have been dear to him for her own sweet sake if she had not been dearer because of her blood-tie to Joan. When he was leaving, he said:

  “If anybody gets curious about my coming over to see you, Mary, you might let them think I’m making love to you. It would help both of us.”

  Mary turned her eyes without moving her head, looking at him across her nose in the arch way she had, and smiled with a deep knowingness.

  “Not so bad!” said she.

  They let it go at that, understanding each other very well indeed.

  Mackenzie returned to Dad’s camp thinking that the way to becoming a flockmaster was a checkered one, and filled with more adventures, harsh and gentle, than he ever had believed belonged to his apportionment in life. But he could not blame Tim Sullivan for placing Reid above him in rating on account of the encounters they had shared, or for bending down a bit in his manner, or taking him for a soft one who could be led into long labors on the promise of an uncertain reward.

  Truly, he had been only second best all the way through, save for that “lucky blow,” as Tim called it, that had laid Swan out in the first battle. Now Swan and he were quits, a blow on each side, nobody debtor any more, and Reid was away ahead of anybody who had figured in the violence that Mackenzie had brought into the sheeplands with him as an unwelcome stranger lets in a gust of wind on a winter night.

  In spite of all this, the vocation of sheepman never appeared so full of attractive possibilities to Mackenzie as it looked that hour. All his old calculations were revived, his first determination proved to him how deeply it had taken root. He had come into the sheep country to be a flockmaster, and a flockmaster he would be. Because he was fighting his way up to it only confirmed him in the belief that he was following a destined course, and that he should cut a better figure in the end, somehow, than he had made at the beginning.

  Tim Sullivan thought him simple; he looked at him with undisguised humor in his eyes, not taking the trouble to turn his back when he laughed. And they had taken Joan away out of his hands, like a gold-piece snatched from a child. But that was more to his credit than his disgrace, for it proved that they feared him more than they scorned him, let them laugh as they might.

  But it was time for him to begin putting the credits over on the other side of the book. Mackenzie took it up with Dad Frazer that evening, Rabbit sitting by in her quiet way with a nod and a smile now and then when directly addressed.

  “I don’t think you’re able to go over there and let that feller off,” Dad objected. “You can’t tell about Swan; he may come round lookin’ for more trouble, and you not half the man you was before him and that dog chawed you up that way.”

  “I think I’ll make out, Dad. I’ll keep my eyes open this time, anyhow.”

  “He may not be able to slip up on you any more, but if he crowds a fuss where’ll you be at, with that hand hardly able to hold a gun?”

  “It will be different this time if he does. I’m going back to the sheep in the morning, Dad. I’ve got to get busy, and keep busy if I ever make good at this game.”

  Dad grunted around his pipestem, his charge being burned down to the wood, and the savor too sweet on his tongue to lose even a whiff by giving room for a word in the door of his mouth. Presently the fire fried and blubbered down in the pipe to the last atrocious smell, and there followed the noise of more strong twist-tobacco being milled between the old shepherd’s rasping palms. Rabbit toddled off to bed without a word; Dad put a match to his new charge, the light making him blink, discovering his curiously sheared face with its picturesque features strong, its weakness under the shadows.

  “What did you think of Mary?” he inquired, free to discuss the ladies, now Rabbit was gone.

  “Mary’s a little bit of all right, Dad.”

  “Yes, and not such a little bit, either. Mary’s some chunk of a girl; she’ll grow up to a woman that suits my eye. You could do worse than set your cap for that little lady, it seems to me, John.”

  “Any man could. She’s got a lively eye, and wise head, too, if I’m not away off.”

  “She looks soft when you first glance her, but she’s as deep as a well. Mary ain’t the build of a girl that fools a man and throws him down. Now, you take Joan, a kind of a high-headed touch-me-not, with that gingerbread hair and them eyes that don’t ever seem to be in fifty-five mile of you when you’re talkin’ to her. I tell you, the man that marries her’s got trouble up his sleeve. He’ll wake up some morning and find her gone off with some other man.”

  “What makes you think that, Dad?”

  “Not satisfied with what she’s got, always lookin’ off over the hill like a breachy cow calculatin’ on how much better the grazin’d be if she could hop the fence and go tearin’ off over there. Joan ain’t the kind that settles down to nuss babies and make a man a home. Mary is. That’s the difference between them two girls.”

  “Maybe you’re right about it, Dad––I expect you are. You ought to know women if any man does.”

  “Well, neither one of ’em ain’t a woman in the full meanin’ of the word,” Dad reflected, “but they’ve got the marks on ’em of what they’ll turn out to be. The man that marries Mary he’ll play safe; the feller that gits Joan takes on a gamble. If she ever does marry Reid he’ll not keep her seven months. Shucks! I married a red-headed woman one time back in Oklahomey, and that blame woman run off with a horse-doctor inside of three months. I never did hear tell of that fool woman any more.”

  “I don’t agree with you on the way you’ve got Joan sized up, no difference if your wife did run off with a horse-doctor. Her hair ain’t red, anyway.”

  “Might as well be. You ain’t so much of a hand at readin’ people, anyhow, John; before you marry you ought to see a fortune-teller and have your hand read. You got away off on Reid, holdin’ up for him agin’ my judgment when he first come here on the range––don’t you remember?”

  “I didn’t
want to pass judgment on him in advance; that was all, Dad.”

  “Course, you couldn’t be expected to know men and women like us fellers that’s batted around among ’em all our lives, and you shut up with a houseful of kids teachin’ ’em cipherin’ and spellin’. I never did see a schoolteacher in my life, man or woman, that you couldn’t take on the blind side and beat out of their teeth, not meanin’ any disrespect to you or any of ’em, John.”

  “Oh, sure not. I understand what you mean.”

  “I mean you’re too trustful, too easy to take folks at their word. You’re kids in your head-works, and you always will be. I advise you strong, John, to have somebody read your hand.”

  “Even before marrying Mary?”

  “We-el-l, you might be safe in marryin’ Mary. If I’d ’a’ had my hand read last spring before I come up here to this range I bet I’d ’a’ missed the trap I stumbled into. I’d ’a’ been warned to look out for a dark woman, like I was warned once before, and I bet you a dime I’d ’a’ looked out, too! Oh, well, it’s too late now. I guess I was fated.”

  “Everybody’s fated; we’re all branded.”

  “I’ve heard it said, and I’m beginnin’ to believe it. Well, I don’t know as I’d ’a’ been any better off if I’d ’a’ got that widow-lady. Rabbit ain’t so bad. She can take care of me when I git old, and maybe she’ll treat me better’n a stranger would.”

  “Don’t you have any doubt about it in the world. It was a lucky day for you when Rabbit found you and saved you from the Four Corners widow.”

  “Yes, I expect that woman she’d ’a’ worked me purty hard––she had a drivin’ eye. But a feller’s got one consolation in a case where his woman ribs him a little too hard; the road’s always open for him to leave, and a woman’s nearly always as glad to see a man go as he is to git away.”

  “There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work both ways. But fashions are changing, Dad; they go to the divorce courts now.”

  “That costs too much, and it’s too slow. Walk out and leave the door standin’ open after you; that’s always been my way. They keep a lookin’ for you to come back for a month or two; then they marry some other man. Well, all of ’em but Rabbit, I reckon.”

  “She was the one that remembered.”

  “That woman sure is some on the remember, John. Well, I ought ’a’ had my hand read. A man’s a fool to start anything without havin’ it done.”

  Dad nursed his regret in silence, his face dim in the starlight. Mackenzie was off with his own thoughts; they might have been miles apart instead of two yards, the quiet of the sheeplands around them. Then Dad:

  “So you’re thinkin’ of Mary, are you, John?”

  Mackenzie laughed a little, like an embarrassed lover.

  “Well, I’ve got my eye on her,” he said.

  “No gamble about Mary,” Dad said, in deep earnestness. “Give her a couple of years to fill out and widen in and you’ll have a girl that’ll do any man’s eyes good to see. I thought for a while you had some notions about Joan, and I’m glad to see you’ve changed your mind. Joan’s too sharp for a trustin’ feller like you. She’d run off with some wool-buyer before you’d been married a year.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXV

  ONE MAN’S JOKE

  Mackenzie went across the hills next morning to relieve Reid of his watch over the sheep, feeling almost as simple as Dad and the rest of them believed him to be. He was too easy, he had been too easy all along. If he had beaten Hector Hall into a blue lump that day he sent him home without his guns; if he had pulled his weapon at Swan Carlson’s first appearance when the giant Swede drove his flock around the hill that day, and put a bullet between his eyes, Tim Sullivan and the rest of them would have held him in higher esteem.

  Reid would have held him in greater respect for it, also, and it might not have turned out so badly for Joan. He wondered how Reid would receive him, and whether they would part in no greater unfriendliness than at present.

  Reid was not with the sheep when Mackenzie arrived where they fed. The flock was widely scattered, as if the shepherd had been gone a long time, the dogs seemingly indifferent to what befell, showing a spirit of insubordination and laziness when Mackenzie set them about their work. Mackenzie spent the morning getting the flock together, noting its diminished numbers with quickly calculating eye.

  Reid must have been leaving the sheep pretty much to themselves for the wolves to take that heavy toll. Strange that Sullivan had not noticed it and put a trustworthy herder in charge. But Sullivan was more than a little afraid to show himself for long on that part of his lease, and perhaps had not taken the time to run his eye over the sheep. It was a matter to be laid before his attention at once. Mackenzie did not want this loss charged against him as another example of his unfitness to become a master over sheep on the profit-sharing plan.

  It was past noon when Reid returned, coming riding from Swan Carlson’s range. He came only near enough to Mackenzie to see who it was, galloping on to the wagon. There he unsaddled his horse and turned it to graze, setting about immediately to get his dinner. Mackenzie waited for a summons when the meal was ready, but received none. Presently he saw that Reid had no intention of calling him in, for he was sitting down selfishly alone.

  Mackenzie determined there was not going to be any avoidance on his part. If unpleasantness must rise between them Reid would be the one to set it stewing, and it looked from a distance as if this were his intention. Mackenzie went to camp, his coat on his arm.

  Reid had finished his dinner when Mackenzie arrived. He was sitting in the shade of some low bushes, his hat on the ground, smoking a cigarette. He looked up at the sound of Mackenzie’s approach, smiling a little, waving his cigarette in greeting.

  “Hello, Jacob,” he said.

  Mackenzie felt the hot blood rush to his face, but choked down whatever hot words rose with it. But he could not suppress the indignation, the surprise, that came with the derisive hail. It seemed that the range, vast, silent, selfish, melancholy as it was, could not keep a secret. What did Reid know about any Jacob and Rachel romance? How had he learned of that?

  “How’re you makin’ it, Earl?” Mackenzie returned, pleasantly enough. And to himself: “He listened, the scoundrel––sneaked up on us and heard it all!”

  “Oh, well enough,” said Reid, coughing huskily.

  If well enough, a little more of it would do for him, Mackenzie thought, noting with surprise the change that had come over Reid since they last met. The improvement that had begun in him during his first weeks on the range had not continued. Opposed to it, a decline appeared to have fastened upon him, making his flaccid cheeks thinner, his weary eyes more tired, his slight frame lighter by many pounds. Only his voice was unchanged. That was hearty and quick, resonant of enjoyment in life and a keenness in the pursuits of its pleasures. Reid’s voice was his most valuable possession, Mackenzie knew; it was the vehicle that had carried him into the graces of many transitory friends.

  “I thought Tim had sent some old taller-heel over to let me off––I didn’t know it was you,” said Reid, lying with perfect ease.

  “Taller-heel enough, I guess,” Mackenzie returned, detached and inattentive as it seemed, his mind fixed on dinner.

  “I didn’t think you’d be able to get out so soon from what Dad told me. Been havin’ some trouble with your hand?”

  “It’s all right now.” Mackenzie was making use of it to shake the coffeepot, only to find that Reid had drained it to the grounds.

  “If I’d recognized you, Jacob, I’d made a double allowance,” Reid said, lifting the corner of his big, unfeeling mouth in a twitching grin.

  “You might cut out that Jacob stuff, wherever you got it,” Mackenzie told him, not much interested in it, apparently.

  “Can’t you take a joke, Mackenzie?” Reid made the inquiry in surprised voice, with a well-simulated inflection of injury.

  “But I don’t want it
rubbed in, Reid.”

  Reid grunted, expressive of derision and contempt, smoking on in silence while Mackenzie threw himself together a hasty meal. Frequently Reid coughed, always cupping his hand before his mouth as if to conceal from himself as well as others the portentous harshness of the sound.

  “Did Sullivan send you over?” Reid inquired at last.

  “He said for me to come when I was able, but he didn’t set any time. I concluded I was all right, and came.”

  “Well, you can go back; I don’t need you.”

  “That’s for Sullivan to say.”

  “On the dead, Mackenzie, I don’t see how it’s going to be comfortable with me and you in camp together.”

  “The road’s open, Earl.”

  “I wish it was open out of this damned country!” Reid complained. In his voice Mackenzie read the rankling discontent of his soul, wearing itself out there in the freedom that to him was not free, chafing and longing and fretting his heart away as though the distant hills were the walls of a prison, the far horizon its bars.

  “Sullivan wants you over at the ranch,” Mackenzie told him, moved to pitying kindness for him, although he knew that it was wasted and undeserved.

  “I’d rather stay over here, I’d rather hear the coyotes howl than that pack of Sullivan kids. That’s one-hell of a family for a man to have to marry into, Mackenzie.”

  “I’ve seen men marry into worse,” Mackenzie said.

  Reid got up in morose impatience, flinging away his cigarette, went to the wagon, looked in, slammed the little canvas door with its mica window shut with a bang, and turned back.

  There seemed little of the carelessness, the easy spirit that had made him so adaptable at first to his surroundings, which Reid had brought with him into the sheeplands left in him now. He was sullen and downcast, consumed by the gnawing desire to be away out of his prison. Mackenzie studied him furtively as he compounded his coffee and set it to boil on the little fire, thinking that it required more fortitude, indeed, to live out a sentence such as Reid faced in the open than behind a lock. Here, the call to be away was always before a man; the leagues of freedom stretched out before his eyes. It required some holding in on a man’s part to restrain his feet from taking the untrammeled way to liberty under such conditions, more than he would have believed Reid capable of, more than he expected him to be equal to much longer.