Mackenzie took the lantern from the corner where Reid had set it in his studious play for the advantage that did not come to his hand, and turned back to the closed door. Reid lay as he had fallen, Carlson’s revolver by his side. Mackenzie stepped over him and tried the door. It was unlocked, fastened only by the iron thumb-latch.
A moment Mackenzie stood, lifting the lantern to light the small room to its corners, then went in, peering and exploring into every shadow.
“Great God! She wasn’t here at all! And I’ve killed a man for that!” he said.
He turned to the open door, stifled by remorse for what he had done, although he had done it in a fight that had been pushed upon him, as all his fights in the sheeplands had been pushed. He might have taken Swan at his manly offer to fight hand-to-hand to see who should open the door; or he might have allowed him to open it, and saved all violence between them.
And this was the end of Earl Reid’s bluff to Carlson that he would deliver Joan to him there, bargained for and sold after the wild and lawless reasoning of the Norse flockmaster. And Swan had drawn his weapon with a glad light in his face, and stood up to him like a man.
“Throw it down here, Mackenzie––you can’t get by with it this time!”
Mackenzie looked up from his daze of remorseful panic, slowly, amazedly, not fully realizing that it was a human voice he heard, to see Reid where he had scrambled to his knees, Carlson’s gun in one hand, the other thrown out to support his unsteady body.
“You can have it, Earl,” Mackenzie said, with the relief in his voice of a man who has heard good tidings.
“Hurry!” said Reid, in voice strained and dry.
“My gun’s empty; you can have it too. I’m through,” Mackenzie said.
As he spoke, Mackenzie jerked the lantern sharply, putting it out. Reid fired. Mackenzie felt the shot strike his thigh like the flip of a switch when one rides through a thicket. He threw himself upon Reid, and held his arm while the desperate youth fired his remaining shots into the wall.
Mackenzie shook Reid until he dropped the empty revolver, then took him by the neck and pushed him to the open door. And there the morning was spreading, showing the trees outlined against the east.
“Come out here and we’ll talk it over, Reid.” Mackenzie said.
Reid had nothing to say. He was sullen, uncontrite. Mackenzie waited a little while for him to speak, holding him harshly by the collar.
“Well, there’s the road out of this country,” Mackenzie said, seeing he would not speak. “This is the last trick you’ll ever try to throw here on me or anybody else. I suppose you came here on one of Carlson’s horses; go and get it, and when you start, head south.”
Mackenzie felt the leg of his trousers wet from the blood of his wound, and began to have some concern lest an artery had been cut. But this he put off investigating until he heard Reid ride out to the dim road in front of Carlson’s cabin, and go his way out of the sheeplands to whatever destiny lay ahead.
Then Mackenzie looked himself over, to find that it was not a serious wound. He bound up the hurt with his handkerchief, and turned his face away from that tragic spot among the cottonwoods, their leaves moving with a murmur as of falling rain in the cool morning wind.
* * *
CHAPTER XXIX
SHEEPMAN––AND MORE
“So I just took his gun away from him and slapped him and sent him on,” said Joan.
“I thought that must have been the way of it,” Mackenzie said, sighing as if his last trouble had left him.
“When he tried to make me believe I wasn’t within seven miles of Dad Frazer’s camp I got my suspicions up. The idea of that little town rat trying to mix me up on my range! Well, I was a little off on my estimate of where the wagons were, but that was because they’d been moved so many times while I was over home.”
“I figured it that way, Joan.”
“But what do you suppose he was tryin’ to pull off on me, John, bringing me out here on the pretense you’d been all shot up in the fight with Hector Hall and wanted me?”
“I don’t know, Joan,” Mackenzie said, lying like the “kind of a gentleman” he was.
“I thought maybe the little fool wanted to make me marry him so he could get some money out of dad.”
“Maybe that was it, Joan; I pass it up.”
“Dad Frazer says Earl was crazy from the lonesomeness and killing Matt Hall.”
“I think he must have been, Joan. It’s over––let’s forget it if we can.”
“Yes, you haven’t done a thing but fight since you struck this range,” Joan sighed.
Mackenzie was lying up in Rabbit’s hospital again, undergoing treatment for the bullet wound in his thigh. He had arrived at Dad Frazer’s camp at sunrise, weak from the drain of his hurt, to find Joan waiting for him on the rise of the hill. She hurried him into Rabbit’s hands, leaving explanations until later. They had come to the end of them now.
But Mackenzie made the reservation of Reid’s atrocious, insane scheme in bringing Joan from home on the pretext that the schoolmaster had fallen wounded to death in the fight with Hector Hall, and lay calling for her with his wasting breath. Mackenzie knew that it was better for her faith in mankind for all her future years, and for the peace of her soul, that she should never know.
“My dad was here a little while ago––he’s gone over to put a man in to take care of your sheep, but he’ll be along back here this evening. He wants to talk some business with you, he said.”
“Well, we’re ready for him, Joan,” Mackenzie said. And the look that passed between them, and the smile that lighted their lips, told that their business had been talked and disposed of already, let Tim Sullivan propose what he might.
“I’ll leave it to you, John,” said Joan, blushing a little, her eyes downcast in modesty, but smiling and smiling like a growing summer day.
Tim Sullivan arrived toward evening, entering the sheep-wagon softly, his loud tongue low in awe for this fighting man.
“How are you, John? How are you, lad?” he whispered, coming on his toes to the cot, his face as expressive of respect as if he had come into the presence of the dead.
Mackenzie grinned over this great mark of respect in the flockmaster of Poison Creek.
“I’m all right,” he said.
Tim sat on an upended box, leaning forward, hat between his knees, mouth open a bit, looking at Mackenzie as if he had come face to face with a miracle.
“You’re not hurted much, lad?” he inquired, lifting his voice a little, the wonder of it gradually passing away.
“Not much. I’ll be around again in nine or ten days, Rabbit says.”
“You will,” said Tim, eloquently decisive, as though his heart emptied itself of a great responsibility, “you will that, and as good as a new man!”
“She’s better than any doctor I ever saw.”
“She is that!” said Tim, “and cheaper, too.”
His voice grew a little louder, coming thus to familiar ground in the discussion of values and costs. But the awe of this man who went fighting his way was still big in the flockmaster’s eyes. He sat leaning, elbows on thighs, mouth still open, as respectfully awed as if he had just come out of a church. Then, after a little while, looking around for Joan:
“What was he up to, John? What was he tryin’ to do with my girl?”
Mackenzie told him, in few words and plain, pledging him to keep the truth of it from Joan all his days. Tim’s face grew pale through the deep brown of sun and wind. He put his hand to his throat, unbuttoning his collar with trembling fingers.
“But she was too smart for him!” he said. “I’ve brought her up a match for any of them town fellers––they can’t put anything like that over on my little Joan. And you didn’t know but she was there, locked in and bound hand and foot, lad? And you fought old Swan and laid him cold at last, hand to hand, man to man! Lord! And you done it for my little Joan!”
“Let’s forg
et it,” Mackenzie said, uncomfortable under the praise.
“It’s easy said, lad, but not so easy done. A man remembers a thing the like of that with gratitude to his last hour. And we thought you an easy-goin’ man, that could be put on and wasn’t able to hold your own,” said Tim, confessing more in his momentary softness than he would have done on reflection.
“We thought you was only a schoolteacher, wrapped up in rhymes and birds!”
“Just a plain simpleton that would eat out of anybody’s hand,” Mackenzie grinned.
“Not a simpleton, lad; not a simpleton. But maybe soft in your ways of dealin’ with other men, lettin’ ’em go when you ought to knocked ’em cold, the way you let Hall go the day you took his guns off of him. But we couldn’t see deep in you, lad; you’re no simpleton, lad––no simpleton at all.”
Tim spoke in soothing conciliation, as if he worked to salve over the old hurts of injustice, or as if he dealt with the mishap of a child to whom words were more comforting than balm. He was coming back to his regular sheepman form, crafty, conciliatory; never advancing one foot without feeling ahead with the other. But the new respect that had come over him for Mackenzie could not be put wholly aside, even though Tim might have the disposition to do it. Tim’s voice was still small in his mouth, his manner softened by awe.
“You’ve shown the mettle of a sheepman,” Tim said, “and more. There’ll be peace and quiet on this range now.”
“I brought nothing but trouble to it. You had peace and quiet before I came.”
“Trouble was here, lad, but we dodged it. There wasn’t a man of us had the courage to face it and put it down like you’ve done it. Carlson and them Halls robbed me year in and year out, and stole the range I paid rent on from under my feet. Swan stole sheep from me all the time that boy was runnin’ them next him there––I miss about three hundred from the flock today.”
“Reid sold them to him, but didn’t get his money. He complained about it to Swan last night.”
“He’d do it,” nodded Tim; “his father before him done it. It runs in the blood of them Reids to steal. I’ll have them three hundred sheep back out of Swan’s widow tomorrow.”
“Is she over there with the sheep?”
“I didn’t see her around.”
“The poor creature’s crazy from her hard usage and suffering. I think somebody ought to go over there and help her straighten things out.”
“I’ll see to it,” Tim promised. “Yes, it must be done. Now that wild devil’s dead we must be neighborly with the widow and give her a chance. I’ll see to it tomorrow. Where’s my Joan?”
“She’s making some broth for my supper.”
“That’s right, that’s right––she’ll care for you, lad; I’ll leave her here with Rabbit to care for you. Sure. She was for you, all along. I couldn’t see it.”
“Well, you’ve got it right this time,” Mackenzie said.
Tim beamed. He rubbed his hands, great satisfaction in his face.
“I’ll find somebody else for my Mary––we’ll consider her no more,” he said. “Let you go on with Joan in the bargain in place of Mary, and give me three years for her, and the day you marry her I’ll drive over to you a thousand sheep.”
“Nothing doing,” said Mackenzie.
“Two years, we’ll say––two instead of three, John. Joan will be her own man in two years; she’ll be twenty-one. And the day you marry her I’ll make it fifteen hundred sheep.”
“She’s her own man now under the laws of this state, and I’m taking her without a single head of sheep. You can keep them all––Joan is enough for me.”
Tim was a greatly injured man. His face lengthened two inches, a look of reproach came into his eyes; he seemed on the point of dissolving in tears.
“You’re not goin’ to quit me and take away my girl, the best one of my flock, my ewe lamb, my Joan? I didn’t think you’d turn on me like that, lad; I didn’t think you had it in your heart!”
“You took away Joan’s ewe lambs, and her buck lambs, and all her lambs, more than a thousand of them, after she’d served you through sun and storm and earned them like a man. No, I don’t think I could trust you two years, Mr. Sullivan; I don’t believe your memory would hold you to a bargain that long, seeing that it would be in the family, especially.”
“I’ll give Joan back her flock, to run it like she was runnin’ it, and I’ll put it in writin’ with you both. Two years, we’ll say, John––two short easy years.”
“No.”
“Don’t you throw away your chances now, John, don’t you do it, lad. If you marry my Joan now I’ll give you not a sheep, not one blind wether! But if you’ll stay by me a year for her I’ll give you a weddin’ at the end of that time they’ll put big in the papers at Cheyenne, and I’ll hand over to you three thousand sheep, in your own name.”
“I’m not thinking as much about sheep as I was three months ago,” said Mackenzie, yawning as though he had grown tired of the subject. “Joan and I have made our plans; you can approve them or turn them down. We’re going away when we’re married.”
“Goin’ away!” said Tim, his voice betraying the hollowness of his heart.
“But we’re coming back–––”
“Comin’ back?” said Tim, gladness in every note.
“Joan’s heart is in the sheep range––she couldn’t tear it away if she tried. She thought she wanted to go, but I’ll have hard work to get her farther than Jasper. Joan had the lonesomeness; she’s cured now.”
“She had, poor gerrel! I didn’t see it, but I see it now. But you’ll be comin’ back!”
“Yes. Joan and I belong on the sheep range––we’re both too simple and confiding to run around loose in the world.”
Tim was looking at Mackenzie, his head tipped to one side a little in his great, new interest, his greater, newer understanding.
“You’ll come back and make it home?” said he.
“Home,” Mackenzie nodded. “There’s no other place that calls. You can welcome us or turn us away, but we’ll find a place on the range, and I’ve got money enough to buy us a little band of sheep.”
“No need, lad, no need for that. What I have I’ll divide with you the day you come home, for I’ve made a place in my heart for you that’s the place of a son,” said Tim.
Mackenzie knew the flockmaster had reached a point at last where he would stand, writing or no writing, for there was the earnestness of truth in his voice, the vibrant softness of affection. He gave the flockmaster his hand, saying no word. Tim took it between his own as if he held a woman’s, and held it so while he spoke:
“And the place is here for you when you come back be it a year from now or five years. You’re a sheepman now, John.”
“And I’m more,” said Mackenzie, with a contented sigh. “I’m a sheepwoman’s man.”
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