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“You got a gun on you,” said Swan, in casual, disinterested tone. “I ain’t got no gun on me, but I’m a better man without no gun than you are with one. I’m goin’ to take my fifteen hundred sheep home with me, and you ain’t man enough to stop me.”
Carlson’s two dogs were sitting close behind him, one of them a gaunt gray beast that seemed almost a purebred wolf. Its jaws were bloody from its late encounter; flecks of blood were on its gray coat. It sat panting and alert, indifferent to Mackenzie’s presence, watching the sheep as if following its own with its savage eyes. Suddenly Carlson spoke an explosive word, clapping his great hands, stamping his foot toward Mackenzie.
Mackenzie fired as the wolf-dog sprang, staggering back from the weight of its lank body hurled against his breast, and fired again as he felt the beast’s vile breath in his face as it snapped close to his throat.
Mackenzie emptied his pistol in quick, but what seemed ineffectual, shots at the other dog as it came leaping at Carlson’s command. In an instant he was involved in a confusion of man and dog, the body of the wolfish collie impeding his feet as he fought.
Carlson and the other dog pressed the attack so quickly that Mackenzie had no time to slip even another cartridge into his weapon. Carlson laughed as he clasped him in his great arms, the dog clinging to Mackenzie’s pistol hand, and in a desperate moment it was done. Mackenzie was lying on his back, the giant sheepman’s knee in his chest.
Carlson did not speak after ordering the dog away. He held Mackenzie a little while, hand on his throat,205knee on his chest, looking with unmoved features down into his eyes, as if he considered whether to make an end of him there or let him go his way in added humiliation and disgrace. Mackenzie lay still under Carlson’s hand, trying to read his intention in his clear, ice-cold, expressionless eyes, watching for his moment to renew the fight which he must push under such hopeless disadvantage.
Swan’s eyes betrayed nothing of his thoughts. They were as calm and untroubled as the sky, which Mackenzie thought, with a poignant sweep of transcendant fear for his life, he never had beheld so placid and beautiful as in that dreadful moment.
Carlson’s huge fingers began to tighten in the grip of death; relax, tighten, each successive clutch growing longer, harder. The joy of his strength, the pleasure in the agony that spoke from his victim’s face, gleamed for a moment in Carlson’s eyes as he bent, gazing; then flickered like a light in the wind, and died.
Mackenzie’s revolver lay not more than four feet from his hand. He gathered his strength for a struggle to writhe from under Carlson’s pressing knee. Carlson, anticipating his intention, reached for the weapon and snatched it, laying hold of it by the barrel.
Mackenzie’s unexpected renewal of the fight surprised Carlson into releasing his strangling hold. He rose to sitting posture, breast to breast with the fighting sheepman, whose great bulk towered above him, free breath in his nostrils, fresh hope in his heart. He fought desperately to come to his feet, Carlson sprawling over him, the pistol lifted high for a blow.
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Mackenzie’s hands were clutching Carlson’s throat, he was on one knee, swaying the Norseman’s body back in the strength of despair, when the heavens seemed to crash above him, the fragments of universal destruction burying him under their weight.
207CHAPTER XIXNOT CUT OUT FOR A SHEEPMAN
Mackenzie returned to conscious state in nausea and pain. Not on a surge, but slow-breaking, like the dawn, his senses came to him, assembling as dispersed birds assemble, with erratic excursions as if distrustful of the place where they desire to alight. Wherever the soul may go in such times of suspended animation, it comes back to its dwelling in trepidation and distrust, and with lingering at the door.
The first connected thought that Mackenzie enjoyed after coming out of his shock was that somebody was smoking near at hand; the next that the sun was in his eyes. But these were indifferent things, drowned in a flood of pain. He put them aside, not to grope after the cause of his discomfort, for that was apart from him entirely, but to lie, throbbing in every nerve, indifferent either to life or death.
Presently his timid life came back entirely, settling down in the old abode with a sigh. Then Mackenzie remembered the poised revolver in Swan Carlson’s hand. He moved, struggling to rise, felt a sweep of sickness, a flood of pain, but came to a sitting posture in the way of a man fighting to life from beneath an avalanche. The sun was directly in his eyes, standing low above the hill. He shifted weakly to relieve its discomfort. Earl Reid was sitting near at hand, a few feet above him on the side of the hill.
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Reid was smoking a cigarette, his hat pushed back, the shadows of his late discontent cleared out of his face. Below them the sheep were grazing. They were all there; Mackenzie had wit enough in him to see that they were all there.
Reid looked at him with a grin that seemed divided between amusement and scorn.
“I don’t believe you’re cut out for a sheepman, Mackenzie,” he said.
“It begins to look like it,” Mackenzie admitted. He was too sick to inquire into the matter of Reid’s recovery of the sheep; the world tipped at the horizon, as it tips when one is sick at sea.
“Your hand’s chewed up some, Mackenzie,” Reid told him. “I think you’d better go to the ranch and have it looked after; you can take my horse.”
Mackenzie was almost indifferent both to the information of his hurt and the offer for its relief. He lifted his right hand to look at it, and in glancing down saw his revolver in the holster at his side. This was of more importance to him for the moment than his injury. Swan Carlson was swinging that revolver to strike him when he saw it last. How did it get back there in his holster? Where was Carlson; what had happened to him? Mackenzie looked at Reid as for an explanation.
“He batted you over the head with your gun––I guess he used your gun, I found it out there by you,” said Reid, still grinning as if he could see the point of humor in it that Mackenzie could not be expected to enjoy.
Mackenzie did not attempt a reply. He looked with a sort of impersonal curiosity at his hand and forearm,209where the dog had bitten him in several places. That had happened a good while ago, he reasoned; the blood had dried, the marks of the dog’s teeth were bruised-looking around the edges.
And the sheep were all there, and Reid was laughing at him in satisfaction of his disgrace. There was no sound of Swan Carlson’s flock, no sight of the sheepman. Reid had come and untangled what Mackenzie had failed to prevent, and was sitting there, unruffled and undisturbed, enjoying already the satisfaction of his added distinction.
Perhaps Reid had saved his life from Carlson’s hands, as he had saved it from Matt Hall’s. His debt to Reid was mounting with mocking swiftness. As if in scorn of his unfitness, Reid had picked up his gun and put it back in its sheath.
What would Joan say about this affair? What would Tim Sullivan’s verdict be? He had not come off even second best, as in the encounter with Matt Hall, but defeated, disgraced. And he would have been robbed in open day, like a baby, if it hadn’t been for Reid’s interference. Mackenzie began to think with Dad Frazer that he was not a lucky man.
Too simple and too easy, too trusting and too slow, as they thought of him in the sheep country. A sort of kindly indictment it was, but more humiliating because it seemed true. No, he was not cut out for a sheepman, indeed, nor for anything but that calm and placid woman’s work in the schoolroom, it seemed.
Mackenzie looked again at his hand. There was no pain in it, but its appearance was sufficient to alarm a210man in a normal state of reasonableness. He had the passing thought that it ought to be attended to, and got up on weaving legs. He might wash it in the creek, he considered, and so take out the rough of whatever infection the dog’s teeth had driven into his flesh, but dismissed the notion at once as altogether foolish. It needed bichloride of mercury, and it was unlikely there was such a thing within a hundred and fifty miles.
As he argued this matter of antiseptics with himself Mackenzie walked away from the spot where Reid remained seated, going aimlessly, quite unconscious of his act. Only when he found himself some distance away he stopped, considering what to do. His thoughts ran in fragments and flashes, broken by the throbbing of his shocked brain, yet he knew that Reid had offered to do something for him which he could not accept.
No, he could not place himself under additional obligation to Reid. Live or die, fail or succeed, Reid should not be called upon again to offer a supporting hand. He could sit there on the hillside and grin about this encounter with Carlson, and grin about the hurt in Mackenzie’s hand and arm, and the blinding pain in his head. Let him grin in his high satisfaction of having turned another favor to Mackenzie’s account; let him grin until his face froze in a grin––he should not have Joan.
Mackenzie went stumbling on again to the tune of that declaration. Reid should not have Joan, he shouldn’t have Joan, shouldn’t have Joan! Blind from pain, sick, dizzy, the earth rising up before him as he walked, Mackenzie went on. He did not look back to211see if Reid came to help him; he would have resented it if he had come, and cursed him and driven him away. For he should not have Joan; not have Joan; Joan, Joan, Joan!
How he found his way to Dad Frazer’s camp Mackenzie never could tell. It was long past dark when he stumbled to the sheep-wagon wherein the old herder and his squaw lay asleep, arriving without alarm of dogs, his own collies at his heels. It was the sharp-eared Indian woman who heard him, and knew by his faltering step that it was somebody in distress. She ran out and caught him as he fell.
212CHAPTER XXA MILLION GALLOPS OFF
Joan was returning to camp, weighed down by a somber cloud. Dad Frazer had carried word to her early that morning of Mackenzie’s condition, the old man divided in his opinion as to whether man or beast had mauled the shepherd and left him in such melancholy plight.
“Both man and beast,” Rabbit had told Joan, having no division of mind in the case at all. And so Joan believed it to be, also, after sitting for hours in the hot sheep-wagon beside the mangled, unconscious schoolmaster, who did not move in pain, nor murmur in delirium, nor drop one word from his clenched, still lips to tell whose hand had inflicted this terrible punishment.
And the range seemed bent on making a secret of it, also. Dad had gone hot-foot on Joan’s horse to seek Earl Reid and learn the truth of it, only to ride in vain over the range where Mackenzie’s flock grazed. Reid was not in camp; the sheep were running unshepherded upon the hills. Now, Joan, heading back to her camp at dusk of the longest, heaviest, darkest day she ever had known, met Reid as she rode away from Dad Frazer’s wagon, and started out of her brooding to hasten forward and question him.
“How did it happen––who did it?” she inquired, riding up breathlessly where Reid lounged on his horse at the top of the hill waiting for her to come to him.
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“Happen? What happen?” said Reid, affecting surprise.
“Mr. Mackenzie––surely you must know something about it––he’s nearly killed!”
“Oh, Mackenzie.” Reid spoke indifferently, tossing away his cigarette, laughing a little as he shaped the shepherd’s name. “Mackenzie had a little trouble with Swan Carlson, but this time he didn’t land his lucky blow.”
“I thought you knew all about it,” Joan said, sweeping him a scornful, accusing look. “I had you sized up about that way!”
“Sure, I know all about it, Joan,” Reid said, but with a gentle sadness in his soft voice that seemed to express his pity for the unlucky man. “I happened to be away when it started, but I got there––well, I got there, anyhow.”
Joan’s eyes were still severe, but a question grew in them as she faced him, looking at him searchingly, as if to read what it was he hid.
“Where have you been all day? Dad’s been looking high and low for you.”
“I guess I was over at Carlson’s when the old snoozer came,” Reid told her, easy and careless, confident and open, in his manner.
“Carlson’s? What business could you–––”
“Didn’t he tell you about it, Joan?”
“Who, Dad?”
“Mackenzie.”
“He hasn’t spoken since he stumbled into Dad’s camp last night. He’s going to die!”
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“Oh, not that bad, Joan?” Reid jerked his horse about with quick hand as he spoke, making as if to start down at once to the camp where the wounded schoolmaster lay. “Why, he walked off yesterday afternoon like he wasn’t hurt much. Unconscious?”
Joan nodded, a feeling in her throat as if she choked on cold tears.
“I didn’t think he got much of a jolt when Swan took his gun away from him and soaked him over the head with it,” said Reid, regretfully.
“You were there, and you let him do it!” Joan felt that she disparaged Mackenzie with the accusation as soon as the hasty words fell from her tongue, but biting the lips would not bring them back.
“He needssomebodyaround with him, but I can’t be right beside him all the time, Joan.”
“Oh, I don’t mean––I didn’t––I guess he’s able to take care of himself if they give him a show. If you saw it, you can tell me how it happened.”
“I’ll ride along with you,” Reid offered; “I can’t do him any good by going down to see him. Anybody gone for a doctor?”
“Rabbit’s the only doctor. I suppose she can do him as much good as anybody––he’ll die, anyhow.”
“He’s not cut out for a sheepman,” said Reid, ruminatively, shaking his head in depreciation.
“I shouldhopenot!” said Joan, expressing in the emphasis, as well as in the look of superior scorn that she gave him, the difference that she felt lay between Mackenzie and a clod who might qualify for a sheepman and no questions asked.
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“I’ll ride on over to camp with you,” Reid proposed again, facing his horse to accompany her.
“No, you mustn’t leave the sheep alone at night––it’s bad enough to do it in the day. What was the trouble between him and Swan––who started it?”
“Some of Swan’s sheep got over with ours––I don’t know how it happened, or whose fault it was. I’d been skirmishin’ around a little, gettin’ the lay of the country mapped out in my mind. Swan and Mackenzie were mixin’ it up when I got there.”
“Carlson set his dogs on him!” Joan’s voice trembled with her high scorn of such unmanly dealing, such unworthy help.
“He must have; one of the dogs was shot, and I noticed Mackenzie’s hand was chewed up a little. They were scuffling to get hold of Mackenzie’s gun when I got there––he’d dropped it, why, you can search me! Swan got it. He hit him once with it before I could––oh well, I guess it don’t make any difference, Mackenzie wouldn’t thank me for it. He’s a surly devil!”
Joan touched his arm, as if to call him from his abstraction, leaning to reach him, her face eager.
“You stopped Swan, you took the gun away from him, didn’t you, Earl?”
“He’s welcome to it––I owed him something.”
Joan drew a deep breath, which seemed to reach her stifling soul and revive it; a softness came into her face, a light of appreciative thankfulness into her eyes. She reined closer to Reid, eager now to hear the rest of the melancholy story.
“You took the gun away from Swan; I saw it in his216scabbard down there. Did you have to––did you have to––do anything to Carlson, Earl?”
Reid laughed, shortly, harshly, a sound so old to come from young lips. He did not meet Joan’s eager eyes, but sat straight, head up, looking off over the darkening hills.
“No, I didn’t do anything to him––more than jam my gun in his neck. He got away with thirty sheep more than belonged to him, though––I found it out when I counted ours. I guess I was over there after them when Dad was lookin’ for me today.”
“You brought them back?” Joan leaned again, her hand on his arm, where it remained a little spell, as she looked her admiration into his face.
“Nothing to it,” said Reid, modestly, laughing again in his grating harsh way of vast experience, and scorn for the things which move the heart.
“It’s a good deal, I think,” said she. “But,” thoughtfully, “I don’t see what made him drop his gun.”
“You can search me,” said Reid, in his careless, unsympathetic way.
“It might have happened to anybody, though, a dog and a man against him.”
“Yes, even a better man.”
“A better man don’t live,” said Joan, with calm decision.
Reid bent his eyes to the pommel of his saddle, and sat so a few moments, in the way of a man who turns something in his thoughts. Then:
“I guess I’ll go on back to the sheep.”
“He may never get well to thank you for what you217did, Earl,” and Joan’s voice threatened tears in its low, earnest tremolo, “but I–––”
“Oh, that’s all right, Joan.” Reid waved gratitude, especially vicarious gratitude, aside, smiling lightly. “He’s not booked to go yet; wait till he’s well and let him do his own talking. Somebody ought to sneak that gun away from him, though, and slip a twenty-two in his scabbard. They can’t hurt him so bad with that when they take it away from him.”
“It might have happened to you!” she reproached.
“Well, it might,” Reid allowed, after some reflection. “Sure, it might,” brightening, looking at her frankly, his ingenuous smile softening the crafty lines of his thin face. “Well, leave him to Rabbit and Dad; they’ll fix him up.”
“If he isn’t better tomorrow I’m going for a doctor, if nobody else will.”
“You’re not goin’ to hang around there all the time, are you, Joan?”
Reid’s face flushed as he spoke, his eyes made small, as if he looked in at a furnace door.
Joan did not answer this, only lifted her face with a quick start, looking at him with brows lifted, widening her great, luminous, tender eyes. Reid stroked her horse’s mane, his stirrup close to her foot, his look downcast, as if ashamed of the jealousy he had betrayed.
“I don’t mind the lessons, and that kind of stuff,” said he, looking up suddenly, “but I don’t want the girl––oh well, you know as well as I do what kind of a deal the old folks have fixed up for you and me, Joan.”
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“Of course. I’m going to marry you to save you from work.”
“I thought it was a raw deal when they sprung it on me, but that was before I saw you, Joan. But it’s all right; I’m for it now.”
“You’re easy, Earl; dad’s workin’ you for three good years without pay. As far as I’m concerned, you’d just as well hit the breeze out of this country right now. Dad can’t deliver the goods.”
“I’m soft, but I’m not that soft, Joan. I could leave here tomorrow; what’s to hold me? And as far as the old man’s cutting me out of his will goes, I could beat it in law, and then have a pile big enough left to break my neck if I was to jump off the top of it. They’re not putting anything over on me, Joan. I’m sticking to this little old range because it suits me to stick. I would go tomorrow if it wasn’t for you.”
Reid added this in a low voice, his words a sigh, doing it well, even convincingly well.
“I’m sorry,” Joan said, moved by his apparent sincerity, “but there’s not a bit of use in your throwing away three years, or even three more months, of your life here, Earl.”
“You’ll like me better when you begin to know me, Joan. I’ve stood off because I didn’t want to interfere with your studies, but maybe now, since you’ve got a vacation, I can come over once in a while and get acquainted.”
“Earl, it wouldn’t be a bit of use.” Joan spoke earnestly, pitying him a little, now that she began to believe him.
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“Why, we’re already engaged,” he said; “they’ve disposed of us like they do princes and princesses.”
“I don’t know how they marry them off, but if that’s the way, it won’t work on the sheep range,” said Joan.
“We’ve been engaged, officially, ever since I struck the range, and I’ve never once, never even––” He hesitated, constrained by bashfulness, it seemed, from his manner of bending his head and plucking at her horse’s mane.
“We’re not even officially engaged,” she denied, coldly, not pitying his bashfulness at all, nor bent to assist him in delivering what lay on the end of his tongue. “You can’t pick up a sheepwoman and marry her off––like some old fool king’s daughter.”
Reid placed his hand over hers where it lay idly on the saddle-horn, the reins loosely held. He leaned closer, his eyes burning, his face near her own, so near that she shrank back, and drew on her hand to come free.
“I don’t see why we need to wait three years to get married, Joan,” he argued, his persuasive voice very soft and tender. “If the old man saw I meant business–––”
“Business!” scorned Joan.
“Sheep business, I mean, Joan,” chidingly, a tincture of injury in his tone.
“Oh, sheep business,” said Joan, leaning far over to look at the knotting of her cinch.
“Sure, to settle down to it here and take it as it comes, the way he got his start, he’d come across with all the money we’d want to take a run out of here once in a while and light things up. We ought to be gettin’220the good out of it while we’ve got an edge on us, Joan.”
Joan swung to the ground, threw a stirrup across the saddle, and began to tighten her cinch. Reid alighted with a word of protest, offering his hand for the work. Joan ignored his proffer, with a little independent, altogether scornful, toss of the head.
“You can find plenty of them ready to take you up,” she said. “What’s the reason you have to stay right here for three years, and then marry me, to make a million dollars? Can’t you go anywhere else?”
“The old man’s picked on this country because he knows your dad, and he settled on you for the girl because you got into his eye, just the way you’ve got into mine, Joan. I was sore enough about it at first to throw the money and all that went with it to the pigs, and blow out of here. But that was before I saw you.”
“Oh!” said Joan, in her pettish, discounting way.
“I mean every word of it, Joan. I can’t talk like––like––some men––my heart gets in the way, I guess, and chokes me off. But I never saw a girl that I ever lost sleep over till I saw you.”
Joan did not look at him as he drew nearer with his words. She pulled the stirrup down, lifted her foot to it, and stood so a second, hand on the pommel to mount. And so she glanced round at him, standing near her shoulder, his face flushed, a brightness in his eyes.
Quicker than thought Reid threw his arm about her shoulders, drawing her to him, his hot cheek against her own, his hot breath on her lips. Surging with indignation of the mean advantage he had taken of her, Joan freed her foot from the stirrup, twisting away from the221impending salute, her hand to Reid’s shoulder in a shove that sent him back staggering.
“I thought you were more of a man than that!” she said.
“I beg your pardon, Joan; it rushed over me––I couldn’t help it.” Reid’s voice shook as he spoke; he stood with downcast eyes, the expression of contrition.
“You’re too fresh to keep!” Joan said, brushing her face savagely with her hand where his cheek had pressed it for a breath.
“I’ll ask you next time,” he promised, looking up between what seemed hope and contrition. But there was a mocking light in his sophisticated face, a greedy sneer in his lustful eyes, which Joan could feel and see, although she could not read to the last shameful depths.
“Don’t try it any more,” she warned, in the cool, even voice of one sure of herself.
“I ought to have a right to kiss my future wife,” he defended, a shadow of a smile on his thin lips.
“There’s not a bit of use to go on harping on that, Earl,” she said, in a way of friendly counsel, the incident already past and trampled under foot, it seemed. “If you want to stay here and work for dad, three years or thirty years, I don’t care, but don’t count on me. I guess if you go straight and prove you deserve it, you’ll not need any girl to help you get the money.”
“It’s got to be you––nobody else, Joan.”
“Then kiss your old million––or whatever it is––good-bye!”
Joan lifted to the saddle as if swept into it by a wave, and drew her reins tight, and galloped away.
222CHAPTER XXITIM SULLIVAN BREAKS A CONTRACT
“And that will be the end of it,” said Tim Sullivan, finality in his tone, his face stern, his manner severe. “I’ve passed my word to old Malcolm that you’ll have his boy, and have him you will.”
“Boy!” said Joan.
“In experience he’s no lad, and I’m glad you’ve discovered it,” said Tim, warming a little, speaking with more softness, not without admiration for her penetration. “He’ll be the better able to look after you, and see they don’t get his money away from him like some simpleton.”
“Oh, they’ll get it, all right.”
Tim had arrived that morning from a near-by camp as Joan was about to set out for Dad Frazer’s. From his way of plunging abruptly into this matter, which he never had discussed with her before, and his sharpness and apparent displeasure with her, Joan knew that he had seen Reid overnight. They were beside the sheep-wagon, to a wheel of which Joan’s horse was tied, all saddled and ready to mount. The sun was already high, for Joan had helped Charley range the flock out for its day’s grazing, and had put all things to rights in the camp, anxious as her mind was over Mackenzie’s state.
“I’ll not have you treat the lad like a beggar come to ask of you, Joan; I’ll not have it at all. Be civil with him; use him kindly when he speaks.”
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“He’s a thousand years older than I am; he knows things that you never heard of.”
“Somebody’s been whisperin’ slanders of him in your ear. He’s a fine lad, able to hold his own among men, take ’em where they’re found. Don’t you heed what the jealous say about the boy, Joan; don’t you let it move you at all.”
“I wouldn’t have him if he brought his million in a wheelbarrow and dumped it at my feet.”
“It’s not a million, as I hear it,” Tim corrected, mildly, even a bit thoughtfully, “not more nor a half.”
“Then he’s only half as desirable,” smiled Joan, the little gleam of humor striking into her gloomy hour like a sudden ray of sun.
“You’d run sheep till you was bent and gray, and the rheumatiz’ got set in your j’ints, me gerrel, before you’d win to the half of half a million. Here it comes to you while you’re young, with the keenness to relish it and the free hand to spend the interest off of it, and sail over the seas and see the world you’re longin’ to know and understand.”
Joan’s hat hung on the saddle-horn, the morning wind was trifling with light breath in her soft, wave-rippled hair. Her brilliant necktie had been put aside for one of narrower span and more sober hue, a blue with white dots. The free ends of it blew round to her shoulder, where they lay a moment before fluttering off to brush her cheek, as if to draw by this slight friction some of the color back into it that this troubled interview had drained away.
She stood with her head high, her chin lifted, determination224in her eyes. Thorned shrubs and stones had left their marks on her strong boots, the little teeth of the range had frayed the hem of her short cloth skirt, but she was as fresh to see as a morning-glory in the sun. Defiance outweighed the old cast of melancholy that clouded her eyes; her lips were fixed in an expression which was denial in itself as she stood looking into the wind, her little brown hands clenched at her sides.
“I want that you should marry him, as I have arranged it with old Malcolm,” said Tim, speaking slowly to give it greater weight. “I have passed my word; let that be the end.”
“I’ve got a right to have a word, too. Nobody else is as much concerned in it as me, Dad. You can’t put a girl up and sell her like a sheep.”
“It’s no sale; it’s yourself that comes into the handlin’ of the money.”
Tim took her up quickly on it, a gleam in his calculative eye, as if he saw a convincing way opening ahead of him.
“I couldn’t do it, Dad, as far as I’d go to please you; I couldn’t––never in this world! There’s something about him––something–––”
“It’ll wear off; ’tis the strangeness of him, but three years will bring him closer; it will wear away.”
“It’ll never wear away, because he isn’t––he isn’tclean!”
“Clean?” Tim repeated, turning in amazement as if to seek a witness to such a preposterous charge. And again: “Clean? He’s as fresh as a daisy, as clean as a lamb.”
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“It’s the way he seems to me,” she insisted, with conviction that no argument would shake. “I don’t know any other name for it––you can see it in his eyes.”
“Three year here will brace him up, Joan; he’ll come to you as fresh as lumber out of the mill.”
“No, all the wind in the world can’t blow it out of him. I can’t do it, I’ll never do it!”
“And me with my word passed to old Malcolm!” Tim seemed to grieve over it, and the strong possibility of its repudiation; his face fell so long, his voice so accusing, so low and sad.
“You’ll not lose any money; you can square it up with him some way, Dad.”
“You’ve been the example of a dutiful child to me,” Tim said, turning to her, spreading his hands, the oil of blarney in his voice. “You’ve took the work of a man off of my hands since you were twelve year old, Joan.”
“Yes, I have,” Joan nodded, a shading of sadness for the lost years of her girlhood in her tone. She did not turn to face him, her head high that way, her chin up, her nose in the wind as if her assurance lay in its warm scents, and her courage came on its caress.
“You’ve been the gerrel that’s gone out in the storm and the bitter blast to save the sheep, and stood by them when their poor souls shook with the fright, and soothed down their panic and saved their lives. You’ve been the gerrel that’s worked the sheep over this range in rain and shine, askin’ me nothing, not a whimper or a complaint out of ye––that’s what you’ve been to me, Joan. It’s been a hard life for a lass, it’s been a hard and a lonesome life.”
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Joan nodded, her head drooping just a little from its proud lift. Tears were on her face; she turned it a bit to hide them from his eyes.
“You mind the time, Joan, four years ago it was the winter past, when you stood a full head shorter than you stand today, when the range was snowed in, and the sheep was unable to break the crust that froze over it, and was huddlin’ in the cañons starving wi’ the hunger that we couldn’t ease? Heh––ye mind that winter, Joan, gerrel?”
Joan nodded again, her chin trembling as it dropped nearer to the fluttering necktie at her warm, round throat. And the tears were coursing hotter, the well of them open, the stone at the mouth of it rolled away, the recollection of those harsh days almost too hard to bear.
“And you mind how you read in the book from the farmer college how a handful of corn a day would save the life of a sheep, and tide it over the time of stress and storm till it could find the grass in under the snow? Ah-h, ye mind how you read it, Joan, and come ridin’ to tell me? And how you took the wagons and the teams and drove that bitter length in wind and snow to old Wellfleet’s place down on the river, and brought corn that saved to me the lives of no less than twenty thousand sheep? It’s not you and me, that’s gone through these things side by side, that forgets them in the fair days, Joan, my little darlin’ gerrel. Them was hard days, and you didn’t desert me and leave me to go alone.”
Joan shook her head, the sob that she had been227smothering breaking from her in a sharp, riving cry. Tim, feeling that he had softened her, perhaps, laid his hand on her shoulder, and felt her body trembling under the emotion that his slow recital of past hardships had stirred.
“It’ll not be that you’ll leave me in a hole now, Joan,” he coaxed, stroking her hair back from her forehead, his touch gentle as his heart could be when interest bent it so.
“I gave you that––all those years that other girls have to themselves, I mean, and all that work that made me coarse and rough and kept me down in ignorance––I gave you out of my youth till the well of my giving has gone dry. I can’t give what you ask today, Dad; I can’t give you that.”
“Now, Joan, take it easy a bit, draw your breath on it, take it easy, gerrel.”
Joan’s chin was up again, the tremor gone out of it, the shudder of sorrow for the lost years stilled in her beautiful, strong body. Her voice was steady when she spoke:
“I’ll go on working, share and share alike with you, like I’m doing now, or no share, no nothing, if you want me to, if you need me to, but I can’t––I can’t!”
“I was a hard master over you, my little Joan,” said Tim, gently, as if torn by the thorn of regret for his past blindness.
“You were, but you didn’t mean to be. I don’t mind it now, I’m still young enough to catch up on what I missed––Iamcatching up on it, every day.”
“But now when it comes in my way to right it, to228make all your life easy to you, Joan, you put your back up like a catamount and tear at the eyes of me like you’d put them out.”
“It wouldn’t be that way, Dad––can’t you see I don’t care for him? If I cared, he wouldn’t have to have any money, and you wouldn’t have to argue with me, to make me marry him.”
“It’s that stubborn you are!” said Tim, his softness freezing over in a breath.
“Let’s not talk about it, Dad,” she pleaded, turning to him, the tears undried on her cheeks, the sorrow of the years he had made slow and heavy for her in her eyes.
“It must be talked about, it must be settled, now and for good, Joan. I have plans for you, I have great plans, Joan.”
“I don’t want to change it now, I’m satisfied with the arrangement we’ve made on the sheep, Dad. Let me go on like I have been, studying my lessons and looking after the sheep with Charley. I’m satisfied the way it is.”
“I’ve planned better things for you, Joan, better from this day forward, and more to your heart. Mackenzie is all well enough for teachin’ a little school of childer, but he’s not deep enough to be over the likes of you, Joan. I’m thinkin’ I’ll send you to Cheyenne to the sisters’ college at the openin’ of the term; very soon now, you’ll be makin’ ready for leavin’ at once.”
“I don’t want to go,” said Joan, coldly.
“There you’d be taught the true speech of a lady, and the twist of the tongue on French, and the nice little229things you’ve missed here among the sheep, Joan darlin’, and that neither me nor your mother nor John Mackenzie––good lad that he is, though mistaken at times, woeful mistaken in his judgment of men––can’t give you, gerrel.”
“No, I’ll stay here and work my way out with the sheep,” said she.
Tim was standing at her side, a bit behind her, and she turned a little more as she denied him, her head so high she might have been listening to the stars. He looked at her with a deep flush coming into his brown face, a frown narrowing his shrewd eyes.
“Ain’t you that stubborn, now!” he said.
“Yes, I am,” said Joan.
“Then,” said Tim, firing up, the ashes of deceit blowing from the fire of his purpose at once, “you’ll take what I offer or leave what you’ve got! I’ll have no more shyin’ and shillyin’ out of you, and me with my word passed to old Malcolm Reid.”
Joan wheeled round, her face white, fright in her eyes.
“You mean the sheep?” she asked.
“I mean the sheep––just that an’ no less. Do as I’ll have you do, and go on to school to be put in polish for the wife of a gentleman, or give up the flock and the interest I allowed you in the increase, and go home and scrape the pots and pans!”
“You’d never do that, Dad––you’d never break your word with me, after all I’ve gone through for you, and take my lambs away from me!”
“I would, just so,” said Tim. But he did not have the courage to look her in the face as he said it, turning230away like a stubborn man who had no cause beneath his feet, but who meant to be stubborn and unjust against it all.
“I don’t believe it!” she said.
“I will so, Joan.”
“Your word to Malcolm Reid means a whole lot to you, but your word to me means nothing!” Joan spoke in bitterness, her voice vibrating with passion.
“It isn’t the same,” he defended weakly.
“No, you can rob your daughter–––”
“Silence! I’ll not have it!” Tim could look at her now, having a reason, as he saw it. There was a solid footing to his pretense at last.
“It’s a cheap way to get a thousand lambs,” said she.
“Then I’ve got ’em cheap!” said Tim, red in his fury. “You’ll flout me and mock me and throw my offers for your good in my face, and speak disrespectful–––”
“I spoke the truth, no word but the–––”
“I’ll have no more out o’ ye! It’s home you go, and it’s there you’ll stay till you can trim your tongue and bend your mind to obey my word!”
“You’ve got no right to take my sheep; you went into a contract with me, you ought to respect it as much as your word to anybody!”
“You have no sheep, you had none. Home you’ll go, this minute, and leave the sheep.”
“I hope they’ll die, every one of them!”
“Silence, ye! Get on that horse and go home, and I’ll be there after you to tend to your case, my lady! I’ll have none of this chargin’ me to thievery out of the mouth of one of my childer––I’ll have none of it!”
231
“Maybe you’ve got a better name for it––you and old man Reid!” Joan scorned, her face still white with the cold, deep anger of her wrong.
“I’ll tame you, or I’ll break your heart!” said Tim, doubly angry because the charge she made struck deep. He glowered at her, mumbling and growling as if considering immediate chastisement.
Joan said no more, but her hand trembled, her limbs were weak under her weight with the collapse of all her hopes, as she untied and mounted her horse. The ruin of her foundations left her in a daze, to which the surging, throbbing of a sense of deep, humiliating, shameful wrong, added the obscuration of senses, the confusion of understanding. She rode to the top of the hill, and there the recollection of Mackenzie came to her like the sharp concern for a treasure left behind.
She reined in after crossing the hilltop, and debated a little while on what course to pursue. But only for a little while. Always she had obeyed her father, under injunctions feeling and unfeeling, just and unjust. He was not watching to see that she obeyed him now, knowing well that she would do as he had commanded.
With bent head, this first trouble and sorrow of her life upon her, and with the full understanding in her heart that all which had passed before this day was nothing but the skimming of light shadows across her way, Joan rode homeward. A mile, and the drooping shoulders stiffened; the bent head lifted; Joan looked about her at the sun making the sheeplands glad. A mile, and the short breath of anger died out of her panting lungs, the long, deep inspiration of restored232balance in its place; the pale shade left her cold cheeks, where the warm blood came again.
Joan, drawing new hope from the thoughts which came winging to her, looked abroad over the sunlit sheeplands, and smiled.