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“Let him go,” he said. And to Mackenzie: “Don’t try to throw any tricks on me, bud, but waltz around and get me them guns.”
“They’re hanging on the end of the coupling-pole; get them yourself,” Mackenzie returned, resentful of this treatment, humiliated to such depths by this disgrace that had overtaken him that he cared little for the moment whether he should live or die.
Hall spoke a low, mumbled, unintelligible word to the one who stood behind Mackenzie, and another gun pressed coldly against the back of the apprentice sheepman’s neck. Hall went to the end of the wagon, found his pistols, struck a match to inspect them. In the light of the expiring match at his feet Mackenzie could see the ex-cattleman buckling on the guns.
“Bud, you’ve been actin’ kind of rash around here,” Hall said, in insolent satisfaction with the turn of events. “You had your lucky day with me, like you had with Swan Carlson, but I gave you a sneak’s chance to leave the country while the goin’ was good. If you ever leave it now the wind’ll blow you out. Back him up to that wagon wheel!”
Mackenzie was at the end of his tractable yielding to commands, seeing dimly what lay before him. He lashed out in fury at the man who pressed the weapon to his neck, twisting round in a sweep of passion that made the night seem to burst in a rain of fire, careless of what immediate danger he ran. The fellow fired as Mackenzie swung round, the flash of the flame hot on his neck.
“Don’t shoot him, you fool!” Hector Hall interposed, his voice a growl between his teeth.
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Mackenzie’s quick blows seemed to fall impotently on the body of the man who now grappled with him, face to face, Hector Hall throwing himself into the tangle from the rear. Mackenzie, seeing his assault shaping for a speedy end in his own defeat, now attempted to break away and seek shelter in the dark among the bushes. He wrenched free for a moment, ducked, ran, only to come down in a few yards with Hector Hall on his back like a catamount.
Fighting every inch of the way, Mackenzie was dragged back to the wagon, where his captors backed him against one of the hind wheels and bound him, his arms outstretched across the spokes in the manner of a man crucified.
They had used Mackenzie illy in that fight to get him back to the wagon; his face was bleeding, a blow in the mouth had puffed his lips. His hat was gone, his shirt torn open on his bosom, but a wild rage throbbed in him which lifted him above the thought of consequences as he strained at the ropes which held his arms.
They left his feet free, as if to mock him with half liberty in the ordeal they had set for him to face. One mounted the front wagon wheel near Mackenzie, and the light of slow-coming dawn on the sky beyond him showed his hand uplifted as if he sprinkled something over the wagon sheet. The smell of kerosene spread through the still air; a match crackled on the wagon tire. A flash, a sudden springing of flame, a roar, and the canvas was enveloped in fire.
Mackenzie leaned against his bonds, straining away from the sudden heat, the fast-running fire eating the119canvas from the bows, the bunk within, and all the furnishings and supplies, on fire. There seemed to be no wind, a merciful circumstance, for a whip of the high-striving flames would have wrapped him, stifling out his life in a moment.
Hall and the other man, who had striven with Mackenzie in such powerful silence, had drawn away from the fire beyond his sight to enjoy the thing they had done. Mackenzie, turning his fearful gaze over his shoulder, calculated his life in seconds. The fire was at his back, his hair was crinkling in the heat of it, a little moving breath of wind to fill the sudden vacuum drew a tongue of blaze with sharp threat against his cheek.
In a moment the oil-drenched canvas would be gone, the flaming contents of the wagon, the woodwork of box and running gears left to burn more slowly, and his flesh and bones must mingle ashes with the ashes, to be blown on the wind, as Hector Hall had so grimly prophesied. What a pitiful, poor, useless ending of all his calculations and plans!
A shot at the top of the hill behind the wagon, a rush of galloping hoofs; another shot, and another. Below him Hall and his comrade rode away, floundering in haste through the sleeping flock, the one poor dog left out of Mackenzie’s three tearing after them, venting his impotent defiance in sharp yelps of the chase.
Joan. Mackenzie knew it was Joan before she came riding into the firelight, throwing herself from the horse before it stopped. Through the pain of his despair––above the rebellious resentment of the thing that fate had played upon him this bitter gray morning;120above the anguish of his hopeless moment, the poignant striving of his tortured soul to meet the end with resolution and calm defiance worthy a man––he had expected Joan.
Why, based on what reason, he could not have told, then nor in the years that came afterward. But always the thought of Joan coming to him like the wings of light out of the east.
And so Joan had come, as he strained on his bound arms to draw his face a few inches farther from the fire, as he stifled in the smoke and heavy gases of the burning oil; Joan had come, and her hand was cool on his forehead, her voice was tender in his ear, and she was leading him into the blessed free air, the east widening in a bar of light like a waking eye.
Joan was panting, the knife that had cut his bonds still open in her hand. They stood face to face, a little space between them, her great eyes pouring their terrified sympathy into his soul. Neither spoke, a daze over them, a numbness on their tongues, the dull shock of death’s close passing bewildering and deep.
Mackenzie breathed deeply, his brain clearing out of its racing whirl, and became conscious of Joan’s hand grasping his. Behind them the ammunition in the burning wagon began to explode, and Joan, shuddering as with cold, covered her white face with her hands and sobbed aloud.
Mackenzie touched her shoulder.
“Joan! O Joan, Joan!” he said.
Joan, shivering, her shoulders lifted as if to fend against a winter blast, only cried the harder into her121hands. He stood with hand touching her shoulder lightly, the quiver of her body shaking him to the heart. But no matter how inviting the opening, a man could not speak what rose in his heart to say, standing as he stood, a debtor in such measure. To say what he would have said to Joan, he must stand clear and towering in manliness, no taint of humiliation on his soul.
Mackenzie groaned in spirit, and his words were a groan, as he said again:
“Joan! O Joan, Joan!”
“I knew they’d come tonight––I couldn’t sleep.”
“Thank God for your wakefulness!” said he.
She was passing out of the reefs of terror, calming as a wind falls at sunset. Mackenzie pressed her arm, drawing her away a little.
“That ammunition––we’d better–––”
“Yes,” said Joan, and went with him a little farther down the slope.
Mackenzie put his hand to his face where the flames had licked it, and to the back of his head where his scorched hair broke crisply under his palm. Joan looked at him, the aging stamp of waking and worry in her face, exclaiming pityingly when she saw his hurts.
“It served me right; I stumbled into their hands like a blind kitten!” he said, not sparing himself of scorn.
“It’s a cattleman’s trick; many an older hand than you has gone that way,” she said.
“But if I’d have waked and watched like you, Joan, they wouldn’t have got me. I started to watch, but I didn’t keep it up like you. When I should have been awake, I was sleeping like a sluggard.”
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“The cowards!” said Joan.
“I let one of them sneak up behind me, after they’d clubbed two of the dogs to death, and grab me and get my gun! Great God! I deserve to be burned!”
“Hush!” she chided, fearfully. “Hush!”
“One of them was Hector Hall––he came after his guns. If I’d been a man, the shadow of a man, I’d made him swallow them the day I took––the time he left them here.”
“Matt was with him,” said Joan. “You couldn’t do anything; no man could do anything, against Matt Hall.”
“They handled me like a baby,” said he, bitterly, “and I, and I, wanting to be a sheepman! No wonder they think I’m a soft and simple fool up here, that goes on the reputation of a lucky blow!”
“There’s a man on a horse,” said Joan. “He’s coming this way.”
The rider broke down the hillside as she spoke, riding near the wreckage of the burning wagon, where he halted a moment, the strong light of the fire on his face: Swan Carlson, hatless, his hair streaming, his great mustache pendant beside his stony mouth. He came on toward them at once. Joan laid her hand on her revolver.
“You got a fire here,” said Swan, stopping near them, leaning curiously toward them as if he peered at them through smoke.
“Yes,” Mackenzie returned.
“I seen it from over there,” said Swan. “I come over to see if you needed any help.”
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“Thank you, not now. It’s gone; nothing can be done.”
“I smelt coal oil,” said Swan, throwing back his head, sniffing the air like a buck. “Who done it?”
“Some of your neighbors,” said Mackenzie.
“I knowed they would,” Swan nodded. “Them fellers don’t fight like me and you, they don’t stand up like a man. When I seen you take that feller by the leg that day and upset him off of his horse and grab his guns off of him, I knowed he’d burn you out.”
Joan, forgetting her fear and dislike of Swan Carlson in her interest of what he revealed, drew a little nearer to him.
“Were you around here that day, Swan?” she asked.
“Yes, I saw him upset that feller, little bird,” Swan said, leaning again from his saddle, his long neck stretched to peer into her face. “He’s a good man, but he ain’t as good a man as me.”
Swan was barefooted, just as he had leaped from his bunk in the sheep-wagon to ride to the fire. There was a wild, high pride in his cold, handsome face as he sat up in the saddle as if to show Joan his mighty bulk, and he stretched out his long arms like an eagle on its crag flexing its pinions in the morning sun.
“Did he––did Hector Hall sling a gun on Mr. Mackenzie that time?” she asked, pressing forward eagerly.
“Never mind, Joan––let that go,” said Mackenzie, putting his arm before her to stay her, speaking hastily, as if to warn her back from a danger.
“He didn’t have time to sling a gun on him,” said Swan, great satisfaction in his voice as he recalled the124scene. “Your man he’s like a cat when he jumps for a feller, but he ain’t got the muscle in his back like me.”
“There’s nobody in this country like you, Swan,” said Joan, pleased with him, friendly toward him, for his praise of the one he boldly called her man.
“No, I can roll ’em all,” Swan said, as gravely as if he would be hung on the testimony. “You ought to have me for your man; then you’d have somebody no feller on this range would burn out.”
“You’ve got a wife, Swan,” Joan said, with gentle reproof, but putting the proposal from her as if she considered it a jest.
“I’m tired of that one,” Swan confessed, frankly. Then to Mackenzie: “I’ll fight you for her.” He swung half way out of the saddle, as if to come to the ground and start the contest on the moment, hung there, looking Mackenzie in the face, the light of morning revealing the marks of his recent battle. “Not now, you’ve had a fight already,” said Swan, settling back into the saddle. “But when you brace up, then I’ll fight you for her. What?”
“Any time,” Mackenzie told him, speaking easily, as if humoring the whim of some irresponsible person.
With a sudden start of his horse Swan rode close to Joan, Mackenzie throwing himself between them, catching the bridle, hurling the animal back. Swan did not take notice of the interference, only leaned far over, stretching his long neck, his great mustaches like the tusks of an old walrus, and strained a long look into Joan’s face. Then he whirled his horse and galloped away, not turning a glance behind.
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Joan watched him go, saying nothing for a little while. Then:
“I think he’s joking,” she said.
“I suppose he is,” Mackenzie agreed, although he had many doubts.
They turned to look at the wagon again, the popping of ammunition having ceased. The woodwork was all on fire; soon it would be reduced to bolts and tires. Joan’s spirits seemed to have risen with the broadening of day, in spite of Swan Carlson’s visit and his bold jest, if jest he meant it to be. She laughed as she looked at the sheep, huddled below them in attitude of helpless fright.
“Poor little fools!” she said. “Well, I must go back to Charley. Don’t tell dad I was over here, please, John. He wouldn’t like it if he knew I’d butted in this way––he’s scared to death of the Halls.”
“I don’t see how I’m to keep him from knowing it,” Mackenzie said, “and I don’t see why he shouldn’t know. He’d have been out a cheap herder if it hadn’t been for you.”
“No, you mustn’t tell him, you mustn’t let anybody know I was here, John,” she said, lifting her eyes to his in an appeal far stronger than words. “It wouldn’t do for dad––for anybody––to know I was here. You don’t need to say anything about them tying––doing––that.”
Joan shuddered again in that chilling, horrified way, turning from him to hide what he believed he had read in her words and face before.
It was not because she feared to have her father know she had come riding to his rescue in the last hours of126her troubled night; not because she feared his censure or his anger, or wanted to conceal her deed for reasons of modesty from anyone. Only to spare him the humiliation of having his failure known, Mackenzie understood. That was her purpose, and her sole purpose, in seeking his pledge to secrecy.
It would hurt him to have it go abroad that he had allowed them to sneak into his camp, seize him, disarm him, bind him, and set the fire that was to make ashes of him for the winds to blow away. It would do for him with Tim Sullivan entirely if that should become known, with the additional humiliation of being saved from this shameful death by a woman. No matter how immeasurable his own gratitude, no matter how wide his own pride in her for what she had done, the sheep country never would be able to see it with his eyes. It would be another smirch for him, and such a deep one as to obscure him and his chances there forever.
Joan knew it. In her generosity, her interest for his future, she wanted her part in it to remain unknown.
“You must promise me, John,” she said. “I’ll never come to take another lesson unless you promise me.”
“I promise you, God bless you, Joan!” said he.
127CHAPTER XIIONE COMES TO SERVE
An hour after midday there came riding over the hills Tim Sullivan and a stranger. They stopped at the ruins of the sheep-wagon, where Tim dismounted and nosed around, then came on down the draw, where Mackenzie was ranging the sheep.
Tim was greatly exercised over the loss of the wagon. He pitched into Mackenzie about it as soon as he came within speaking distance.
“How did you do it––kick over the lantern?” he inquired, his face cloudy with ill-held wrath.
Mackenzie explained, gruffly and in few words, how the wagon was fired, sparing his own perilous adventure and the part that Joan had borne in it. This slowed Tim down, and set him craning his neck over the country to see if any further threat of violence impended on the horizon.
“Them Hall boys ought to be men enough not to do me a trick like that after the way I’ve give in to them on this side of the range,” he said. Then to Mackenzie, sharply: “It wouldn’t ’a’ happened if you hadn’t took Hector’s guns away from him that time. A sheepman’s got no right to be fightin’ around on the range. If he wants to brawl and scrap, let him do it when he goes to town, the way the cowboys used to.”
“Maybe you’re right; I’m beginning to think you are,” Mackenzie returned.
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“Right? Of course I’m right. A sheepman’s got to set his head to business, and watchin’ the corners to prevent losses like this that eats up the profit, and not go around with his sleeves rolled up and his jaw slewed, lookin’ for a fight. And if he starts one he’s got to have the backbone and the gizzard to hold up his end of it, and not let ’em put a thing like this over on him. Why wasn’t you in the wagon last night watchin’ it?”
“Because I’ve been expecting them to burn it.”
“Sure you’ve been expectin’ ’em to burn you out, and you hid in the brush with your tail between your legs like a kicked pup and let ’em set my new wagon afire. How did you git your face bunged up that way?”
“I fell down,” Mackenzie said, with a sarcasm meant only for himself, feeling that he had described his handling of the past situation in a word.
“Runnin’ off, I reckon. Well, I tell you, John, it won’t do, that kind of business won’t do. Them Hall boys are mighty rough fellers, too rough for a boy like you that’s been runnin’ with school children all his life. You got some kind of a lucky hitch on Hector when you stripped that belt and guns off of him––I don’t know how you done it; it’s a miracle he didn’t nail you down with lead––but that kind of luck won’t play into a man’s hands one time in a thousand. You never ought ’a’ started anything with them fellers unless you had the weight in your hind-quarters to keep it goin’.”
“You’re right,” said Mackenzie, swallowing the rebuke like a bitter pill.
“Right? You make me tired standin’ there and takin’ it like a sick cat! If you was half the man I took you129to be when you struck this range you’d resent a callin’ down like I’m givin’ you. But you don’t resent it, you take it, like you sneaked and let them fellers burn that wagon and them supplies of mine. If you was expectin’ ’em to turn that kind of a trick you ought ’a’ been right there in that wagon, watchin’ it––there’s where you had a right to be.”
“I suppose there’s where I’d been if I had your nerve, Sullivan,” Mackenzie said, his slow anger taking place of the humiliation that had bent him down all morning like a shameful load. “Everybody on this range knows you’re a fighting man––you’ve fought the wind gettin’ away from this side of the range every time you saw smoke, you’ve got a reputation for standing out for your rights like a man with a gizzard in him as big as a sack of bran! Sure, I know all about the way you’ve backed out of here and let Carlson and the Halls bluff you out of the land you pay rent on, right along. If I had your nerve–––”
Tim’s face flamed as if he had risen from turning batter-cakes over a fire. He made a smoothing, adjusting, pacificating gesture with his hands, looking with something between deep concern and shame over his shoulder at the man who accompanied him, and who sat off a few feet in his saddle, a grin over his face.
“Now, John, I don’t mean for you to take it that I’m throwin’ any slur over your courage for the way things has turned out––I don’t want you to take it that way at all, lad,” said Tim.
“I’m not a fighting man”––Mackenzie was getting hotter as he went on––“everybody in here knows that130by now, I guess. You guessed wrong, Sullivan, when you took me for one and put me over here to hold this range for you that this crowd’s been backing you off of a little farther each spring. You’re the brave spirit that’s needed here––if somebody could tie you and hold you to face the men that have robbed you of the best range you’ve got. I put down my hand; I get out of the way for you when it comes to the grit to put up a fight.”
“Oh, don’t take it to heart what I’ve been sayin’, lad. A man’s hot under the collar when he sees a dirty trick like that turned on him, but it passes off like sweat, John. Let it go, boy, let it pass.”
“You sent me in here expecting me to fight, and when I don’t always come out on top you rib me like the devil’s own for it. You expected me to fight to hold this grass, but you didn’t expect me to lose anything at all. Well, I’ll hold the range for you, Sullivan; you don’t need to lose any sleep over that. But if I’m willing to risk my skin to do it, by thunder, you ought to be game enough to stand the loss of a wagon without a holler that can be heard to Four Corners!”
“You’re doin’ fine holdin’ my range that I pay solid money to Uncle Sam for, you’re doin’ elegant fine, lad. I was hasty, my tongue got out from under the bit, boy. Let it pass; don’t you go holdin’ it against an old feller like me that’s got the worry of forty-odd thousand sheep on his mind day and night.”
“It’s easy enough to say, but it don’t let you out. You’ve got no call to come here and wade into me without knowing anything about the circumstances.”
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“Right you are, John, sound and right. I was hasty, I was too hot. You’ve done fine here, you’re the first man that’s ever stood up to them fellers and held ’em off my grass. You’ve done things up like a man, John. I give it to you––like a man.”
“Thanks,” said Mackenzie, in dry scorn.
“I ain’t got no kick to make over the loss of my wagon––it’s been many a day since I had one burnt up on me that way. Pass it up, pass up anything I’ve said about it, John. That’s the lad.”
So John passed it up, and unbent to meet the young man who rode with Tim, whom the sheepman presented as Earl Reid, from Omaha, son of Malcolm Reid, an old range partner and friend. The young man had come out to learn the sheep business; Tim had brought him over for Mackenzie to break in. Dad Frazer was coming along with three thousand sheep, due to arrive in about a week. When he got there, the apprentice would split his time between them.
Mackenzie received the apprentice as cordially as he could, but it was not as ardent a welcome as the young man may have expected, owing to the gloom of resentment into which Sullivan’s outbreak had thrown this unlucky herder on the frontier of the range.
Reid was rather a sophisticated looking youth of twenty-two or twenty-three, city broke, city marked. There was a poolroom pallor about this thin face, a poolroom stoop to his thin shoulders, that Mackenzie did not like. But he was frank and ingenuous in his manner, with a ready smile that redeemed his homely face, and a pair of blue eyes that seemed young in their innocence132compared to the world-knowledge that his face betrayed.
“Take the horses down there to the crick and water ’em,” Tim directed his new herder, “and then you’ll ride back with me as far as Joan’s camp and fetch over some grub to hold you two fellers till the wagon comes. Joan, she’ll know what to give you, and I guess you can find your way back here?”
“Surest thing you know,” said Earl, with easy confidence, riding off to water the horses.
“That kid’s no stranger to the range,” Mackenzie said, more to himself than to Tim, as he watched him ride off.
“No, he used to be around with the cowboys on Malcolm’s ranch when he was in the cattle business. He can handle a horse as good as you or me. Malcolm was the man that set me up in the sheep business; I started in with him like you’re startin’ with me, more than thirty years ago. He was the first sheepman on this range, and he had to fight to hold his own, I’m here to say!”
“You’d better send the kid over into peaceful territory,” Mackenzie suggested, crabbedly.
“No, the old man wants him to get a taste of what he went through to make his start––he was tickled to the toes when he heard the way them Hall boys are rarin’ up and you standin’ ’em off of this range of mine. ‘Send him over there with that man,’ he says; ‘that’s the kind of a man I want him to break in under.’ The old feller was tickled clean to his toes.”
“Is he over at the ranch?”
“No, he went back home last night. Come down to133start the kid right, and talk it over with me. It was all a surprise to me, I didn’t know a thing about it, but I couldn’t turn Malcolm down.” Tim winked, looked cunning, nodded in a knowing way. “Kid’s been cuttin’ up throwin’ away too much money; gettin’ into scrapes like a boy in town will, you know. Wild oats and a big crop of ’em. The old man’s staked him out with me for three years, and he ain’t to draw one cent of pay, or have one cent to spend, in that time. If he breaks over, it’s all off between them two. And the kid’s sole heir to nearly half a million.”
Mackenzie turned to look again at the boy, who was coming back with the horses.
“Do you think he’ll stick?” he asked.
“Yes, he promised the old man he would, and if he’s anything like Malcolm, he’ll eat fire before he’ll break his word. Malcolm and me we come to terms in ten words. The kid’s to work three years for me without pay; then I’ll marry him to my Joan.”
Mackenzie felt his blood come up hot, and sink down again, cold; felt his heart kick in one resentful surge, then fall away to weakness as if its cords had been cut. Tim laughed, looking down the draw toward the sheep.
“It’s something like that Jacob and Laban deal you spoke about the other day,” said he. “Curious how things come around that way, ain’t it? There I went ridin’ off, rakin’ up my brains to remember that story, and laughed when it come to me all of a sudden. Jacob skinned them willow sticks, and skinned the old man, too. But I don’t guess Earl would turn a trick like that on me, even if he could.”
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“How about Joan? Does she agree to the terms?” Mackenzie could not forbear the question, even though his throat was dry, his lips cold, his voice husky at the first word.
“She’ll jump at it,” Tim declared, warmly. “She wants to go away from here and see the world, and this will be her chance. I don’t object to her leavin’, either, as long as it don’t cost me anything. You go ahead and stuff her, John; stuff her as full of learnin’ as she’ll hold. It’ll be cheaper for me than sendin’ her off to school and fittin’ her up to be a rich man’s wife, and you can do her just as much good––more, from what she tells me. You go right ahead and stuff her, John.”
“Huh!” said John.
“Earl, he’ll look after your sheep while you’re teachin’ Joan her books. Stuff her, but don’t founder her, John. If any man can fit her up to prance in high society, I’d bet my last dollar you can. You’re a kind of a gentleman yourself, John.”
“Thanks,” said John, grinning a dry grin.
“Yes,” reminiscently, with great satisfaction, “Malcolm made the proposition to me, hit me with it so sudden it nearly took my breath. ‘Marry him to your Joan when you make a man of him,’ he says. I said maybe he wouldn’t want to hitch up with a sheepman’s daughter that was brought up on the range. ‘If he don’t he can go to work and make his own way––I’ll not leave him a dam’ cent!’ says Malcolm. We shook hands on it; he said he’d put it in his will. And that’s cinched so it can’t slip.”
When Tim mounted to leave he looked round the135range again with a drawing of trouble in his face, as if he searched the peaceful landscape for the shadow of wings.
“I ain’t got another sheep-wagon to give you right now, John; I guess you’ll have to make out with a tent till winter,” he said.
“I’d rather have it,” Mackenzie replied.
Tim leaned over, hand to one side of his mouth, speaking in low voice, yet not whispering:
“And remember what I said about that matter, John. Stuff, but don’t founder.”
“Stuff,” said John, but with an inflection that gave the word a different meaning, quite.
136CHAPTER XIIIA FIGHT ALMOST LOST
Dad Frazer was not overly friendly toward the young man from Omaha who had come out to learn the sheep business under the threat of penalties and the promise of high rewards. He growled around about him continually when he and Mackenzie met, which was not very often, owing to their being several miles apart. Tim had stationed Dad and his big band of sheep between Mackenzie and Joan, leaving the schoolmaster to hold the frontier. No matter for old man Reid’s keenness to have his son suffer some of the dangers which he had faced in his day, Tim seemed to be holding the youth back out of harm’s way, taking no risks on losing a good thing for the family.
Reid had been on the range about two weeks, but Mackenzie had not seen a great deal of him, owing to Tim’s plan of keeping him out of the disputed territory, especially at night. That the young man did not care much for the company or instruction of Dad Frazer was plain. Twice he had asked Mackenzie to use his influence with Tim to bring about a change from the old man’s camp to his. In Mackenzie’s silence and severity the young man found something that he could not penetrate, a story that he could not read. Perhaps it was with a view to finding out what school Mackenzie had been seasoned in that Reid bent himself to win his friendship.
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Dad Frazer came over the hills to Mackenzie’s range that afternoon, to stretch his legs, he said, although Mackenzie knew it was to stretch his tongue, caring nothing for the miles that lay between. He had left Reid in charge of his flock, the young man being favored by Tim to the extent of allowing him a horse, the same as he did Joan.
“I’m glad he takes to you,” said Dad. “I don’t like him; he’s got a graveyard in his eyes.”
“I don’t think he ever pulled a gun on anybody in his life, Dad,” Mackenzie returned, in mild amazement.
“I don’t mean that kind of a graveyard; I mean a graveyard where he buried the boy in him long before his time. He’s too sharp for his years; he’s seen too much of the kind of life a young feller’s better off for to hear about from a distance and never touch. I tell you, John, he ain’t no good.”
“He’s an agreeable kind of a chap, anyhow; he’s got a line of talk like a saddle salesman.”
“Yes, and I never did have no use for a talkin’ man. Nothin’ to ’em; they don’t stand the gaff.”
In spite of his friendly defense of young Reid, Mackenzie felt that Dad had read him aright. There was something of subtle knowledge, an edge of guile showing through his easy nature and desire to please, that was like acid on the teeth. Reid had the faculty of making himself agreeable, and he was an apt and willing hand, but back of this ingenuous appearance there seemed to be something elusive and shadowy, a thing which he tried to keep hidden by nimble maneuvers, but which would show at times for all his care.
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Mackenzie did not dislike the youth, but he found it impossible to warm up to him as one man might to another in a place where human companionship is a luxury. When Reid sat with a cigarette in his thin lips––it was a wide mouth, worldly hard––hazy in abstraction and smoke, there came a glaze over the clearness of his eyes, a look of dead harshness, a cast of cunning. In such moments his true nature seemed to express itself unconsciously, and Dad Frazer, simple as he was in many ways, was worldly man enough to penetrate the smoke, and sound the apprentice sheepman to his soul.
Reid seemed to draw a good deal of amusement out of his situation under Tim Sullivan. He was dependent on the flockmaster for his clothing and keep, even tobacco and papers for his cigarettes. If he knew anything about the arrangement between his father and Sullivan in regard to Joan, he did not mention it. That he knew it, Mackenzie fully believed, for Tim Sullivan was not the man to keep the reward sequestered.
Whether Reid looked toward Joan as adequate compensation for three years’ exile in the sheeplands, there was no telling. Perhaps he did not think much of her in comparison with the exotic plants of the atmosphere he had left; more than likely there was a girl in the background somewhere, around whom some of the old man’s anxiety to save the lad revolved. Mackenzie hoped to the deepest cranny of his heart that it was so.
“He seems to get a good deal of humor out of working here for his board and tobacco,” Mackenzie said.
“Yes, he blatters a good deal about it,” said Dad.139“‘I’ll take another biscuit on Tim Sullivan,’ he says, and ‘here goes another smoke on Tim.’ I don’t see where he’s got any call to make a joke out of eatin’ another man’s bread.”
“Maybe he’s never eaten any man’s bread outside of the family before, Dad.”
“I reckon he wouldn’t have to be doin’ it now if he’d ’a’ been decent. Oh well, maybe he ain’t so bad.”
This day Dad was maneuvering around to unload the apprentice on Mackenzie for good. He worked up to it gradually, as if feeling his way with his good foot ahead, careful not to be too sudden and plunge into a hole.
“I don’t like a feller around that talks so much,” Dad complained. “When he’s around a man ain’t got no time to think and plan and lay his projec’s for what he’s a goin’ to do. All I can do to put a word in edgeways once in a while.”
It appeared plain enough that Dad’s sore spot was this very inability to land as many words as he thought he had a right to. That is the complaint of any talkative person. If you are a good listener, with ayesand anonow and then, a talkative man will tell your friends you are the most interesting conversationalist he ever met.
“I don’t mind him,” Mackenzie said, knowing very well that Dad would soon be so hungry for somebody to unload his words upon that he would be talking to the sheep. “Ship him over to me when you’re tired of him; I’ll work some of the wind out of him inside of a week.”
“I’ll send him this evenin’,” said Dad, eager in his relief, brightening like an uncovered coal. “Them dogs140Joan give you’s breakin’ in to the sound of your voice wonderful, ain’t they?”
“They’re getting used to me slowly.”
“Funny about dogs a woman’s been runnin’ sheep with. Mighty unusual they’ll take up with a man after that. I used to be married to a Indian woman up on the Big Wind that was some hummer trainin’ sheep-dogs. That woman could sell ’em for a hundred dollars apiece as fast as she could raise ’em and train ’em up, and them dad-splashed collies they’d purt’ near all come back home after she’d sold ’em. Say, I’ve knowed them dogs to come back a hundred and eighty mile!”
“That must have been a valuable woman to have around a man’s camp. Where is she now, if I’m not too curious?”
“She was a good woman, one of the best women I ever had.” Dad rubbed his chin, eyes reflectively on the ground, stood silent a spell that was pretty long for him. “I hated like snakes to lose that woman––her name was Little Handful Of Rabbit Hair On A Rock. Ye-es. She was a hummer on sheep-dogs, all right. She took a swig too many out of my jug one day and tripped over a stick and tumbled into the hog-scaldin’ tank.”
“What a miserable end!” said Mackenzie, shocked by the old man’s indifferent way of telling it.
“Oh, it didn’t hurt her much,” said Dad. “Scalded one side of her till she peeled off and turned white. I couldn’t stand her after that. You know a man don’t want to be goin’ around with no pinto woman, John.” Dad looked up with a gesture of depreciation, a queer141look of apology in his weather-beaten face. “She was a Crow,” he added, as if that explained much that he had not told.
“Dark, huh?”
“Black; nearly as black as a nigger.”
“Little Handful, and so forth, must have thought you gave her a pretty hard deal, anyhow, Dad.”
“I never called her by her full name,” Dad reflected, passing over the moral question that Mackenzie raised. “I shortened her down to Rabbit. I sure wish I had a couple of them sheep-dogs of her’n to give you in place of them you lost. Joan’s a good little girl, but she can’t train a dog like Rabbit.”
“Rabbit’s still up there on the Big Wind waiting for you, is she?”
“She’ll wait a long time! I’m done with Indians. Joan comin’ over today?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I don’t guess you’ll have her to bother with much longer––her and that Reid boy they’ll be hitchin’ up one of these days from all the signs. He skirmishes off over that way nearly every day. Looks to me like Tim laid it out that way, givin’ him a horse to ride and leavin’ me and you to hoof it. It’d suit Tim, all right; I’ve heard old Reid’s a millionaire.”
“I guess it would,” Mackenzie said, trying to keep his voice from sounding as cold as his heart felt that moment.
“Yes, I think they’ll hitch. Well, I’d like to see Joan land a better man than him. I don’t like a man that can draw a blinder over his eyes like a frog.”
142
Mackenzie smiled at the aptness of Dad’s comparison. It was, indeed, as if Reid interposed a film like a frog when he plunged from one element into another, so to speak; when he left the sheeplands in his thoughts and went back to the haunts and the companions lately known.
“If Joan had a little more meat on her she wouldn’t be a bad looker,” said Dad. “Well, when a man’s young he likes ’em slim, and when he’s old he wants ’em fat. It’d be a calamity if a man was to marry a skinny girl like Joan and she was to stay skinny all his life.”
“I don’t think she’s exactly skinny, Dad.”
“No, I don’t reckon you could count her ribs. But you put fifty pounds more on that girl and see how she’d look!”
“I can’t imagine it,” said Mackenzie, not friendly to the notion at all.
As Dad went back to unburden himself of his unwelcome companion, Mackenzie could not suppress the thought that a good many unworthy notions hatched beneath that dignified white hair. But surely Dad might be excused by a more stringent moralist than the schoolmaster for abandoning poor Rabbit after her complexion had suffered in the hog-scalding vat.
Toward sundown Earl Reid came riding over, his winning smile as easy on his face as he was in the saddle. The days were doing him good, all around, toughening his face, taking the poolroom pastiness out of it, putting a bracer in his back. Mackenzie noted the improvement as readily as it could be seen in some quick-growing plant.
143
Mackenzie was living a very primitive and satisfactory life under a few yards of tent canvas since the loss of his wagon. He stretched it over such bushes as came handy, storing his food beneath it when he slept, save on such nights as threatened showers. Reid applauded this arrangement. He was tired of Dad Frazer’s wagon, and the greasy bunk in it.
“I’ve been wild to stretch out in a blanket with my feet to a little fire,” he said, with a flash of the eagerness belonging to the boyhood buried away too soon, as Dad had remarked. “Dad wouldn’t let me do it––fussed at me three days because I sneaked out on him one night and laid under the wagon.”
“Dad didn’t want a skunk to bite you, I guess. He felt a heavy responsibility on your account.”
“Old snoozer!” said Reid.
Reid was uncommonly handy as a camp-cook, far better in that respect than Mackenzie, who gladly turned the kitchen duties over to him and let him have his way. After supper they sat talking, the lusty moon lifting a wondering face over the hills in genial placidity as if sure, after all its ages, of giving the world a surprise at last.
“Joan told me to bring you word she’d be over in the morning instead of tomorrow afternoon,” said Reid.
“Thanks.”
Reid smoked in reflective silence, his thin face clear in the moonlight.
“Some girl,” said he. “I don’t see why she wants to go to all this trouble to get a little education. That stuff’s all bunk. I wish I had the coin in my jeans right144now the old man spent on me, pourin’ stuff into me that went right on through like smoke through a handkerchief.”
“I don’t think it would be that way with Joan,” Mackenzie said, hoping Reid would drop the discussion there, and not go into the arrangement for the future, which was a matter altogether detestable in the schoolmaster’s thoughts.
Reid did not pursue his speculations on Joan, whether through delicacy or indifference Mackenzie could not tell. He branched off into talk of other things, through which the craving for the life he had left came out in strong expressions of dissatisfaction with the range. He complained against the penance his father had set, looking ahead with consternation to the three years he must spend in those solitudes.
“But I’m goin’ to stick,” he said, an unmistakable determination in his tone. “I’ll show him they’re making as good men now as they did when he was a kid.” He laughed, a raucous, short laugh, an old man’s laugh, which choked in a cigarette cough and made a mockery of mirth. “I’ll toughen up out here and have better wind for the big finish when I sit in on the old man’s money.”
No, Joan was not cast for any important part in young Reid’s future drama, Mackenzie understood. As if his thoughts had penetrated to the young man’s heart, making fatuous any further attempt at concealment of his true sentiments, Reid spoke.
“They’ve sewed me up in a sack with Joan––I guess you know about it?”