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“I look at it that way, on the sensible side. Good looks is all right in a woman, but that ain’t all a man needs to make him easy in his mind. Well, she did lose the sight of her left eye when she was a girl, but she can see a dollar with the other one further than I can see a wagon wheel.”
“No gentleman would stop at the small trifle of an eye. What else, Dad?”
“Nothing else, only she’s carryin’ a little more meat right now than a woman likes to pack around in hot weather. I don’t mind that; you know, I like mine fat; you can’t get ’em too fat for me.”
“I’ve heard you say so. How much does she weigh?”
“Well, I guess close to three hundred, John. If she was taller, it wouldn’t show so much on her––she can walk under my arm. But it’s surprisin’ how that woman can git around after them sheep!”
Dad added this hopefully, as if bound to append some redeeming trait to all her physical defects.
“How many does she own?”
“About four thousand. Not much of a band, but a lot more than I ever could lay claim to. She’s got a twelve-thousand acre ranch, owns every foot of it, more than half of it under fence. What do you think of that? Under fence! Runs them sheep right inside of that bull-wire fence, John, where no wolf can’t git at ’em. There ain’t no bears down in that part of the country. Safe? Safer’n money in the bank, and no expense of hirin’ a man to run ’em.”
“It looks like you’ve landed on a feather bed, Dad.”
“Ain’t I? What does a man care about a little175hobble, or one eye, or a little chunk of fat, when he can step into a layout like that?”
“Why didn’t you lead her up to the hitching-rack while you were there? Somebody else is likely to pick your plum while your back’s turned.”
“No, I don’t reckon. She’s been on the tree quite a spell; she ain’t the kind you young fellers want, and the old ones is most generally married off or in the soldiers’ home. Well, she’s got a little cross of Indian and Mexican in her, anyway; that kind of keeps ’em away, you know.”
It was no trouble to frame a mental picture of Dad’s inamorata. Black, squat, squint; a forehead a finger deep, a voice that would carry a mile. Mackenzie had seen that cross of Mexican and Indian blood, with a dash of debased white. They were not the kind that attracted men outside their own mixed breed, but he hadn’t a doubt that this one was plenty good enough, and handsome enough, for Dad.
Mackenzie left the old man with this new happiness in his heart, through which a procession of various-hued women had worn a path during the forty years of his taking in marriage one month and taking leave the next. Dad wasn’t nervous over his prospects, but calm and calculative, as became his age. Mackenzie went smiling now and then as he thought of the team the black nondescript and the old fellow would make.
He found Reid sitting on a hilltop with his face in his hands, surly and out of sorts, his revolver and belt on the ground beside him as if he had grown weary of their weight. He gave a short return to Mackenzie’s176unaffected greeting and interested inquiry into the conduct of the sheep and the dogs during his absence.
Reid’s eyes were shot with inflamed veins, as if he had been sitting all night beside a smoky fire. When Mackenzie sat near him the wind bore the pollution of whisky from his breath. Reid made a show of being at his ease, although the veins in his temples were swollen in the stress of what must have been a splitting headache. He rolled a cigarette with nonchalance almost challenging, and smoked in silence, the corners of his wide, salamander mouth drawn down in a peculiar scoffing.
“I suppose that guy told you the whole story,” he said at last, lifting his eyes briefly to Mackenzie’s face.
“The sheriff, you mean?”
“Who else?” impatiently.
“I don’t know whether he told me all or not, but he told me plenty.”
“And you’ve passed it on to Joan by now!”
“No.”
Reid faced around, a flush over his thin cheeks, a scowl in his eyes. He took up his belt; Mackenzie marked how his hands trembled as he buckled it on.
“Well, you keep out of it, you damned pedagogue!” Reid said, the words bursting from him in vehement passion. “This is my game; I’ll play it without any more of your interference. You’ve gone far enough with her––you’ve gone too far! Drop it; let her alone.”
Mackenzie got up. Reid stood facing him, his color gone now, his face gray. Mackenzie held him a moment with stern, accusing eyes. Then:
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“Have you been over there spying on me?”
Reid passed over the question, leaving Mackenzie to form his own conclusions. His face flushed a little at the sting of contempt that Mackenzie put into his words. He fumbled for a match to light his stub of cigarette before he spoke:
“I played into your hands when I let you go over there, and you knew I’d play into them when you proposed it. But that won’t happen twice.”
“I’ll not allow any man to put a deliberately false construction on my motives, Reid,” Mackenzie told him, hotly. “I didn’t propose going over to let Dad off, and you know it. I wanted you to go.”
“You knew I wouldn’t,” Reid returned, with surly word.
“If you’ve been leaving the sheep to go over there and lie on your belly like a snake behind a bush to spy on Joan and me, and I guess you’ve been doing it, all right––you’re welcome to all you’ve found out. There aren’t any secrets between Joan and me to keep from anybody’s eyes or ears.”
Reid jerked his thin mouth in expression of derision.
“She’s green, she’s as soft as cheese. Any man could kiss her––I could have done it fifteen minutes after I saw her the first time.”
If Reid hoped to provoke a quarrel leading up to an excuse for making use of the gun for which his hand seemed to itch, he fell short of his calculations. Mackenzie only laughed, lightly, happily, in the way of a man who knew the world was his.
“You’re a poor loser, Earl,” he said.
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“I’m not the loser yet––I’m only takin’ up my hand to play. There won’t be room on this range for you and me, Mackenzie, unless you step back in your schoolteacher’s place, and lie down like a little lamb.”
“It’s a pretty big range,” Mackenzie said, as if he considered it seriously; “I guess you can shift whenever the notion takes you. You might take a little vacation of about three years back in a certain state concern in Nebraska.”
“Let that drop––keep your hands off of that! You don’t know anything about that little matter; that damned sheriff don’t know anything about it. If Sullivan’s satisfied to have me here and give me his girl, that’s enough for you.”
“You don’t want Joan,” said Mackenzie, speaking slowly, “you only want what’s conditioned on taking her. So you’d just as well make a revision in your plans right now, Reid. You and Sullivan can get together on it and do what you please, but Joan must be left out of your calculations. I realize that I owe you a good deal, but I’m not going to turn Joan over to you to square the debt. You can have my money any day you want it––you can have my life if you ever have to draw on me that far––but you can’t have Joan.”
Mackenzie walked away from Reid at the conclusion of this speech, which was of unprecedented length for him, and of such earnestness that Reid was not likely to forget it soon, no matter for its length. The dogs left Reid to follow him.
That Reid had been fraternizing with Swan Carlson, Mackenzie felt certain, drinking the night out with him179in his camp. Carlson had a notoriety for his addiction to drink, along with his other unsavory traits. With Reid going off in two different directions from him, Mackenzie saw trouble ahead between them growing fast. More than likely one of them would have to leave the range to avoid a clash at no distant day, for Reid was in an ugly mood. Loneliness, liquor, discontent, native meanness, and a desire to add to the fame in the sheep country that the killing of Matt Hall had brought him, would whirl the weak fellow to his destruction at no distant day.
Yet Reid had stood by him like a man in that fight with Matt Hall, when he could have sought safety in withdrawal and left him to his unhappy end. There was something coming to him on that account which a man could not repudiate or ignore. Whatever might rise between them, Mackenzie would owe his life to Reid. Given the opportunity, he stood ready and anxious to square the debt by a like service, and between men a thing like that could not be paid in any other way.
Reid remained a while sitting on the hilltop where Mackenzie had found him, face in his hands, as before. After a time he stretched out and went to sleep, the ardent sun of noonday frying the lees of Swan Carlson’s whisky out of him. Toward three o’clock he roused, got his horse, saddled it, and rode away.
Mackenzie believed he was going to hunt more whisky, and went to the rise of a ridge to see what course he took. But instead of striking for Carlson’s, Reid laid a course for Sullivan’s ranch-house. Going to Tim with180a complaint against him, Mackenzie judged, contempt for his smallness rising in him. Let him go.
Tim Sullivan might give him half his sheep if he liked him well enough, but he could not give him Joan.
181CHAPTER XVIIHERTHA CARLSON
Swan Carlson or his woman was running a band of sheep very close to the border of Tim Sullivan’s lease. All afternoon Mackenzie had heard the plaint of lambs; they had lifted their wavering chorus all during Joan’s lesson, giving her great concern that Carlson designed attempting a trespass on her father’s land.
Joan had come shortly after Reid’s unexplained departure, and had gone back to her flock again uninformed of Reid’s criminal career. Mackenzie felt that he did not need the record of his rival to hold Joan out of his hands. The world had changed around for him amazingly in the past few days. Where the sheeplands had promised little for him but a hard apprenticeship and doubtful rewards a little while ago, they now showered him with unexpected blessings.
He ruminated pleasantly on this sudden coming round the corner into the fields of romance as he went to the top of the hill at sunset to see what Swan Carlson was about. Over in the next valley there spread a handful of sheep, which the shepherd was ranging back to camp. Mackenzie could not make sure at that distance whether the keeper was woman or man.
Reid had not returned when Mackenzie plodded into camp at dusk. His absence was more welcome, in truth, than his company; Mackenzie hoped he would sulk a long time and stay away until he got his course in the182sheep country plainly before his eyes. If he stayed his three years there it would be on account of sheep, and whatever he might win in his father’s good graces by his fidelity. Joan was not to figure thenceforward in any of his schemes.
Three years on the sheep range with no prospect of Joan! That was what Reid had ahead of him now.
“I think I’d take mine in the pen,” Mackenzie said, leaning back to comfort with his pipe. Night came down; the dogs lay at his feet, noses on forepaws. Below him the sheep were still. So, for a long time, submerged in dreams.
One of the dogs lifted its head, its bristles rising, a low growl in its throat. The other rose cautiously, walking away crouching, with high-lifted feet. Mackenzie listened, catching no noise to account for their alarm. A little while, and the sound of Hertha Carlson’s singing rose from the hill behind him, her song the same, the doleful quality of its air unmodified.
Na-a-fer a-lo-o-one, na-a-fer a-lone,He promise na-fer to leafe me,Na-fer to leafe me a-lone!
“Strange how she runs on that,” Mackenzie muttered, listening for her to repeat, as he had heard her the night her singing guided him to her melancholy door. A little nearer now the song sounded, the notes broken as if the singer walked, stumbling at times, so much sadness in it, so much longing, such unutterable hopelessness as to wring the listener’s heart.
Swan was beating her again, neglecting her, subjecting183her to the cruelties of his savage mind; there was no need for the woman to come nearer to tell him that. Only grief for which there was no comfort, despair in which there was no hope, could tune a human note to that eloquent expression of pain. Perhaps she was wandering in the night now for the solace of weariness, pouring out the three lines of her song in what seemed the bitterness of accusation for a promise unfulfilled.
The dogs came back to Mackenzie’s side, where they sat with ears lifted, but with no expression of hostility or alarm in their bearing now. They were only curious, as their master was curious, waiting to see if the wandering singer would come on into camp.
There was no glow of lantern to guide her, and no moon, but she came straight for where Mackenzie sat. A little way off she stopped.
“Hello!” she hailed, as if uncertain of her welcome.
Mackenzie requested her to come on, lighting the lantern which he had ready to hand. Mrs. Carlson hesitated, drawing back a little when she saw his face.
“I thought it was Earl,” she said.
“Earl’s not here tonight. Sit down and rest yourself, Mrs. Carlson. You don’t remember me?”
“I remember. You are the man who cut my chain.”
“I thought you’d forgotten me.”
“No, I do not forget so soon. A long time I wanted to kill you for the blow you gave Swan that night.”
“As long as Swan was good to you,” said he, “of course you would. How do you feel about it now?”
“I only cry now because he did not die. He was different a little while after he got well, but again he184forgets. He beats me; he leaves me alone with the sheep.”
“I knew he was beating you again,” Mackenzie nodded, confirming his speculation of a little while before.
“Sheep!” said she. “Swan thinks only of sheep; he is worse since he bought Hall’s flock. It is more than I can endure!”
Mrs. Carlson was worried and worn, fast losing all she had gained in flesh and color during Swan’s period of kindness when she had thrown herself into his wild ways and ridden the range like a fighting woman at his side. Much of her comeliness remained in her sad face and great, luminous, appealing eyes, for it was the comeliness of melancholy which sorrow and hard usage refined. She would carry her grace with her, and the pale shred of her youthful beauty, down to the last hard day. But it was something that Swan was insensible to; it could not soften his hand toward her, nor bend his wild thoughts to gentleness. Now he had denied her again the little share he had granted her in his wild life, and must break the thing he had made, going his morose way alone.
“I hadn’t heard he’d bought Hall’s sheep,” Mackenzie said. “Is he going to run them on this range?”
“No, he says I shall go there, where the wolves are many and bold, even by daylight, to watch over them. There I would be more alone than here. I cannot go, I cannot go! Let him kill me, but I will not go!”
“He’s got a right to hire a man to run them; he can afford it.”
“His money grows like thistles. Where Swan touches185the earth with the seed of it, money springs. Money is a disease that he spreads when he walks, like the scales that fall from a leper. Money! I pray God night and day that a plague will sweep away his flocks, that a thief will find his hiding place, that a fire will burn the bank that locks in his gold, and make him poor. Poor, he would be kind. A man’s proud heart bends down when he is poor.”
“God help you!” said Mackenzie, pitying her from the well of his tender heart.
“God is deaf; he cannot hear!” she said, bitter, hopeless, yet rebellious against the silence of heaven and earth that she could not penetrate with her lamentations and bring relief.
“No, you shouldn’t let yourself believe any such thing,” he chided, yet with a gentleness that was almost an encouragement.
“This land is a vacuum, out of which sound cannot reach him, then,” she sighed, bending her sad head upon her hands. “I have cried out to him in a sorrow that would move a stone on the mountain-side, but God has not heard. Yes, it must be that this land is a vacuum, such as I read of when I was a girl in school. Maybe––” looking up with eager hopefulness––“if I go out of it a little way, just on the edge of it and pray, God will be able to hear my voice?”
“Here, as well as anywhere,” he said, moved by her strange fancy, by the hunger of her voice and face.
“Then it is because there is a curse on me––the curse of Swan’s money, of his evil ways!” She sprang up, stretching her long arms wildly. “I will pray no more,186no more!” she cried. “I will curse God, I will curse him as Job cursed him, and fling myself from the rocks and die!”
Mackenzie was on his feet beside her, his hand on her shoulder as if he would stay her mad intention.
“No, no!” he said, shocked by the boldness of her declaration. “Your troubles are hard enough to bear––don’t thicken them with talk like this.”
She looked at him blankly, as if she did not comprehend, as though her reason had spent itself in this rebellious outbreak against the unseen forces of her sad destiny.
“Where is your woman?” she asked.
“I haven’t any woman.”
“I thought she was your woman, but if she is not, Swan can have her. Swan can have her, then; I do not care now any more. Swan wants her, he speaks of her in the night. Maybe when he takes her he will set me free.”
Mrs. Carlson sat again near the lantern, curling her legs beneath her with the facility of a dog, due to long usage of them in that manner, Mackenzie believed, when chained to the wall in her lonely house among the trees. Mackenzie stood a little while watching her as she sat, chin in her hands, pensive and sad. Presently he sat near her.
“Where is Swan tonight?” he asked.
“Drinking whisky beside the wagon with Hector Hall. They will not fight. No.”
“No,” he echoed, abstractedly, making a mental picture of Carlson and Hall beside the sheep-wagon, the187light of a lantern on their faces, cards in their fists, a jug of whisky in the middle ground within reach from either hand. It was such diversion as Swan Carlson would enjoy, the night around him as black as the shadows of his own dead soul.
“Earl did not come to me this night,” she said, complaining in sad note. “He promised he would come.”
“Has he been going over there to see you?” Mackenzie asked, resentful of any advantage Reid might be seeking over this half-mad creature.
“He makes love to me when Swan is away,” she said, nodding slowly, looking up with serious eyes. “But it is only false love; there is a lie in his eyes.”
“You’re right about that,” Mackenzie said, letting go a sigh of relief.
“He tries to flatter me to tell him where Swan hides the money he brought from the bank,” she said, slowly, wearily, “but him I do not trust. When I ask him to do what must first be done to make me free, he will not speak, but goes away, pale, pale, like a frightened girl.”
“You’d better tell him to stay away,” Mackenzie counseled, his voice stern and hard.
“But you would not do that,” she continued, heedless of his admonition. She leaned toward him, her great eyes shining in the light, her face eager in its sorrowful comeliness; she put out her hand and touched his arm.
“You are a brave man, you would not turn white and go away into the night like a wolf to hear me speak of that. Hush! hush! No, no––there is no one to hear.”
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She looked round with fearful eyes, crouching closer to the ground, her breath drawn in long labor, her hand tightening on his arm. Mackenzie felt a shudder sweep coldly over him, moved by the tragedy her attitude suggested.
“Hush!” she whispered, hand to her mouth. And again, leaning and peering: “Hush!” She raised her face to him, a great eagerness in her burning eyes. “Kill him, kill Swan Carlson, kind young man, and set me free again! You have no woman? I will be your woman. Kill him, and take me away!”
“You don’t have to kill Swan to get away from him,” he told her, the tragedy dying out of the moment, leaving only pity in its place. “You can go on tonight––you never need to go back.”
Hertha came nearer, scrambling to him with sudden movement on her knees, put her arm about his neck before he could read her intention or repel her, and whispered in his ear:
“I know where Swan hides the money––I can lead you to the place. Kill him, good man, and we will take it and go far away from this unhappy land. I will be your woman, faithful and true.”
“I couldn’t do that,” he said gently, as if to humor her; “I couldn’t leave my sheep.”
“Sheep, sheep!” said she, bitterly. “It is all in the world men think of in this land––sheep! A woman is nothing to them when there are sheep! Swan forgets, sheep make him forget. If he had no sheep, he would be a kind man to me again. Swan forgets, he forgets!”
She bent forward, looking at the lantern as if drawn189by the blaze, her great eyes bright as a deer’s when it stands fascinated by a torchlight a moment before bounding away.
“Swan forgets, Swan forgets!” she murmured, her staring eyes on the light. She rocked herself from side to side, and “Swan forgets, Swan forgets!” she murmured, like the burden of a lullaby.
“Where is your camp?” Mackenzie asked her, thinking he must take her home.
Hertha did not reply. For a long time she sat leaning, staring at the lantern. One of the dogs approached her, bristles raised in fear, creeping with stealthy movement, feet lifted high, stretched its neck to sniff her, fearfully, backed away, and composed itself to rest. But now and again it lifted its head to sniff the scent that came from this strange being, and which it could not analyze for good or ill. Mackenzie marked its troubled perplexity, almost as much at sea in his own reckoning of her as the dog.
“No, I could not show you the money and go away with you leaving Swan living behind,” she said at last, as if she had decided it finally in her mind. “That I have told Earl Reid. Swan would follow me to the edge of the world; he would strangle my neck between his hands and throw me down dead at his feet.”
“He’d have a right to if you did him that kind of a trick,” Mackenzie said.
“Earl Reid comes with promises,” she said, unmindful of Mackenzie; “he sits close by me in the dark, he holds me by the hand. But kiss me I will not permit; that yet belongs to Swan.” She looked up, sweeping Mackenzie190with her appealing eyes. “But if you would kill him, then my lips would be hot for your kiss, brave man––I would bend down and draw your soul into mine through a long, long kiss!”
“Hush!” Mackenzie commanded, sternly. “Such thoughts belong to Swan, as much as the other. Don’t talk that way to me––I don’t want to hear any more of it.”
Hertha sat looking at him, that cast of dull hopelessness in her face again, the light dead in her eyes.
“There are strange noises that I hear in the night,” she said, woefully; “there is a dead child that never drew breath pressed against my heart.”
“You’d better go back to your wagon,” he suggested, getting to his feet.
“There is no wagon, only a canvas spread over the brushes, where I lie like a wolf in a hollow. A beast I am become, among the beasts of the field!”
“Come––I’ll go with you,” he offered, holding out his hand to lift her.
She did not seem to notice him, but sat stroking her face as if to ease a pain out of it, or open the fount of her tears which much weeping must have drained long, long ago.
Mackenzie believed she was going insane, in the slow-preying, brooding way of those who are not strong enough to withstand the cruelties of silence and loneliness on the range.
“Where is your woman?” she asked again, lifting her face suddenly.
“I have no woman,” he told her, gently, in great pity191for her cruel burden under which she was so unmistakably breaking.
“I remember, you told me you had no woman. A man should have a woman; he goes crazy of the lonesomeness on the sheep range without a woman.”
“Will Swan be over tomorrow?” Mackenzie asked, thinking to take her case up with the harsh and savage man and see if he could not be moved to sending her away.
“I do not know,” she returned coldly, her manner changing like a capricious wind. She rose as she spoke, and walked away, disappearing almost at once in the darkness.
Mackenzie stood looking the way she went, listening for the sound of her going, but she passed so surely among the shrubs and over the uneven ground that no noise attended her. It was as though her failing mind had sharpened her with animal caution, or that instinct had come forward in her to take the place of wit, and serve as her protection against dangers which her faculties might no longer safeguard.
Even the dogs seemed to know of her affliction, as wild beasts are believed by some to know and accept on a common plane the demented among men. They knew at once that she was not going to harm the sheep. When she left camp they stretched themselves with contented sighs to their repose.
And that was “the lonesomeness” as they spoke of it there. A dreadful affliction, a corrosive poison that gnawed the heart hollow, for which there was no cure but comradeship or flight. Poor Hertha Carlson was192denied both remedies; she would break in a little while now, and run mad over the hills, her beautiful hair streaming in the wind.
And Reid had it; already it had struck deep into his soul, turning him morose, wickedly vindictive, making him hungry with an unholy ambition to slay. Joan must have suffered from the same disorder. It was not so much a desire in her to see what lay beyond the blue curtain of the hills as a longing for companionship among them.
But Joan would put away her unrest; she had found a cure for the lonesomeness. Her last word to him that day was that she did not want to leave the sheep range now; that she would stay while he remained, and fare as he fared.
Rachel must have suffered from the lonesomeness, ranging her sheep over the Mesopotamian plain; Jacob had it when he felt his heart dissolve in tears at the sight of his kinswoman beside the well of Haran. But Joan was safe from it now; its insidious poison would corrode in her heart no more.
Poor Hertha Carlson, deserving better than fate had given her with sheep-mad Swan! She could not reason without violence any longer, so often she had been subjected to its pain.
“It will be a thousand wonders if she doesn’t kill him herself,” Mackenzie said, sitting down with new thoughts.
The news of Swan’s buying Hall out was important and unexpected. Free to leave the country now, Hall very likely would be coming over to balance accounts.193There was his old score against Mackenzie for his humiliation at the hands of the apprentice sheepherder, which doubtless had grown more bitter day by day; and there was his double account against Reid and Mackenzie for the loss of his sheep-killing brother. Mackenzie hoped that he would go away and let matters stand as they were.
And Swan. It had not been all a jest, then, when he proposed trading his woman for Mackenzie’s. What a wild, irresponsible, sheep-mad man he was! But he hardly would attempt any violence toward Joan, even though he “spoke of her in the night.”
From Carlson, Mackenzie’s thoughts ran out after Reid. Contempt rose in him, and deepened as he thought of the mink-faced youth carrying his deceptive poison into the wild Norseman’s camp. But insane as she was, racked by the lonesomeness to be away from that unkindly land, Hertha Carlson remained woman enough to set a barrier up that Reid, sneak that he was, could not cross.
What a condition she had made, indeed! Nothing would beguile her from it; only its fulfilment would bend her to yield to his importunities. It was a shocking mess that Reid had set for himself to drink some day, for Swan Carlson would come upon them in their hand-holding in his hour, as certainly as doom.
And there was the picture of the red-haired giant of the sheeplands and that flat-chested, sharp-faced youth drinking beside the sheep-wagon in the night. There was Swan, lofty, cold, unbending; there was Reid, the craft, the knowledge of the world’s under places written194on his brow, the deceit that he practiced against his host hidden away in his breast.
Mackenzie sighed, putting it from him like a nightmare that calls a man from his sleep by its false peril, wringing sweat from him in its agony. Let them bind in drink and sever in blood, for all that he cared. It was nothing to him, any way they might combine or clash. Joan was his; that was enough to fill his world.
195CHAPTER XVIIISWAN CARLSON’S DAY
Dad Frazer came over the hills next morning after the dew was gone. Mackenzie saw him from afar, and was interested to note that he was not alone. That is to say, not immediately accompanied by anybody, yet not alone for a country where a quarter of a mile between men is rather close company.
Somebody was coming on after the old shepherd, holding about the same distance behind him in spite of little dashes down slopes that Dad made when for a moment out of sight. Mackenzie’s wonder over this peculiar behavior grew as the old man came near, and it was discovered to the eye that his persistent shadow was a woman.
Dad wasted neither words nor breath on his explanation when he came panting up the slope that brought him to the place where Mackenzie stood above his sheep.
“It’s that dad-burned Rabbit!” he said.
There was something between vexation and respect in Dad’s voice. He turned to look back as he spoke. Rabbit had mounted the hilltop just across the dip, where she stood looking over at her shifty-footed lord, two sheep-dogs at her side.
“How did she locate you?” Mackenzie inquired, not in the least displeased over this outreaching of justice after the fickle old man.
“She’s been trailin’ me four years!” Dad whispered,196his respect for Rabbit’s powers on the scent unmistakable.
“That’s a long time to hold a cold trail. Rabbit must be some on the track!”
“You can’t beat them Indians follerin’ a man if they set their heads to it. Well, it’s all off with the widow-lady at Four Corners now––Rabbit’s got me nailed. You see them sheep-dogs? Them dogs they’d jump me the minute Rabbit winked at ’em––they’d chaw me up like a couple of lions. She’s raised ’em up to do it, dad-burn her! Had my old vest to learn ’em the scent.”
“A man never ought to leave his old vest behind him when he runs away from his wife,” said Mackenzie, soberly. “But it looks to me like a woman with the sticking qualities Rabbit’s got isn’t a bad one to stay married to. How in the world could a reservation squaw find her way around to follow you all this time?”
“She’s educated, dang her; she went to the sisters’ mission. She can read and write a sight better than me. She’s too smart for a squaw, bust her greasy eyes! Yes, and I’ll never dast to lay a hand on her with them dogs around. They’d chaw me up quicker’n a man could hang up his hat.”
Rabbit composed herself after her patient but persistent way, sitting among the bushes with only her head showing, waiting for Dad’s next move.
“You’re married to her regularly, are you, Dad?”
“Priest marriage, dang it all!” said Dad, hopelessly.
“Then itisall off with the one-eyed widow.”
“Yes, and them four thousand sheep, and that range all under fence, dang my melts!”
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“What are you going to do about Rabbit?”
“It ain’t what am I goin’ to do about her, John, but what she’s goin’ to do about me. She’ll never leave me out of her sight a minute as long as I live. I reckon I’ll have to stay right here and run sheep for Tim, and that widow-lady wonderin’ why I don’t show up!”
“You might do worse, Dad.”
“Yes, I reckon I might. Rabbit she’s as good as any man on the range handlin’ sheep, she can draw a man’s pay wherever she goes. I guess I could put her to work, and that’d help some.”
Dad brightened a bit at that prospect, and drew his breath with a new hope. Even with the widow gone from his calculations, the future didn’t promise all loss.
“But I bet you I’ll shoot them two dogs the first time I can draw a bead on ’em!” Dad declared.
“Maybe if you’ll treat Rabbit the right way she’ll sell them. Call her over, Dad; I’d like to get acquainted with her.”
Dad beckoned with his hand, but Rabbit did not stir; waved his hat to emphasize his command; Rabbit remained quiet among the bushes, the top of her black head in plain view.
“She’s afraid we’ve hatched up some kind of a trick between us to work off on her,” said Dad.
“You can’t blame her for being a little distrustful, Dad. But let her go; I’ll meet her at your camp one of these days.”
“Yes, you’ll meet her over there, all right, for she’s goin’ to stick to me till I’m under ground. That’s one time too many I married––just one time too many!”
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“I suppose a man can overdo it; I’ve heard it said.”
“If I hadn’t ’a’ left that blame vest!”
“Yes, that seems to be where you blundered. You’ll know better next time, Dad.”
“Yes, but there never will be no next time,” Dad sighed.
“Have you seen Reid over your way this morning?”
“No, I ain’t seen him. Is he still roamin’ and restless?”
“He left yesterday; I thought he was going to the ranch.”
“Didn’t pass my way. That feller’s off, I tell you, John; he’s one of the kind that can’t stand the lonesomeness. Leave him out here alone two months, and he’d put a bullet in his eye.”
“It seems to me like it’s a land of daftness,” Mackenzie said.
“You’ll find a good many cracked people all over the sheep country––I’m kind o’ cracked myself. I must be, or I never would ’a’ left that vest.”
Dad took off his hat to smooth his sweeping curled locks, as white as shredded asbestos, and full of the same little gleams that mineral shows when a block of it from the mine is held in the sun. His beard was whitening over his face again, like a frost that defied the heat of day, easing its hollows and protuberances, easing some of the weakness that the barber’s razor had laid so pitilessly bare. In a few days more he would appear himself again, and be ready for the sheep-shears in due time.
“I reckon I’ll have to make the best of the place I’m199in, but for a man of puncture, as the feller said, like I used to think I was, I sure did miscombobble it when I married that educated squaw. No woman I ever was married to in my life ever had sense enough to track a man like that woman’s follered me. She sure is a wonder on the scent.”
Patiently Rabbit was sitting among the bushes, waiting the turn of events, not to be fooled again, not to be abandoned, if vigilance could insure her against such distress. Mackenzie’s admiration for the woman grew with Dad’s discomfiture over his plight. There was an added flavor of satisfaction for him in the old man’s blighted career. Wise Rabbit, to have a priest marriage, and wiser still to follow this old dodger of the sheeplands and bring him up with a short halter in the evening of his days.
“I’ll go on back and look after them sheep,” said Dad, with a certain sad inflection of resignation; “there’s nothing else tobedone. I was aimin’ to serve notice on Tim to find another man in my place, but I might as well keep on. Well, I can set in the shade, anyhow, and let Rabbit do the work––her and them blame dogs.”
Dad sighed. It helped a great deal to know that Rabbit could do the work. He looked long toward the spot where his unshaken wife kept her watch on him, but seemed to be looking over her head, perhaps trying to measure all he had lost by this coming between him and the one-eyed widow-lady of Four Corners.
“I wonder if I could git you to write a letter over to that widow and tell her I’m dead?” he asked.
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“I’ll do it if you want me to. But you’re not dead yet, Dad––you may outlive Rabbit and marry the widow at last.”
“I never was no lucky man,” said Dad, smoothing his gleaming hair. “A man that’s married and nailed down to one place is the same as dead; he might as well be in his grave. If I’d ’a’ got that widow-lady I’d ’a’ had the means and the money to go ridin’ around and seein’ the sights from the end of one of them cars with a brass fence around it. But I’m nailed down now, John; I’m cinched.”
Dad was so melancholy over his situation that he went off without more words, a thing unheard of for him. He gave Rabbit a wide fairway as he passed. When he was a respectable distance ahead the squaw rose from her bush and followed, such determination in her silent movements as to make Dad’s hope for future freedom hollow indeed. The old man was cinched at last; Mackenzie was glad that it was so.
The sound of Carlson’s sheep was still near that morning, and coming nearer, as whoever attended them ranged them slowly along. Mackenzie went a little way across the hill in that direction, but could not see the shepherd, although the sheep were spread on the slope just before him. It was a small flock, numbering not above seven hundred. Mackenzie was puzzled why Swan wanted to employ his own or his wife’s time in grazing so small a number, when four times as many could be handled as easily.
This question was to be answered for him very soon, and in a way which he never had imagined. Yet there201was no foreboding of it in the calm noonday as he prepared his dinner in the shade of some welcome willows, the heat glimmering over the peaceful hills.
It was while Mackenzie sat dozing in the fringe of shade such as a hedge would cast at noonday that the snarl of fighting dogs brought him up to a realization of what was going forward among the sheep. His own flock had drifted like a slow cloud to the point of the long ridge, and there Swan Carlson’s band had joined it. The two flocks were mingling now, and on the edge of the confused mass his own dogs and Carlson’s were fighting.
Swan was not in sight; nobody seemed to be looking after the sheep; it appeared as if they had been left to drift as they might to this conjunction with Mackenzie’s flock. Mackenzie believed Mrs. Carlson had abandoned her charge and fled Swan’s cruelty, but he did not excuse himself for his own stupidity in allowing the flocks to come together as he ran to the place where his dogs and Carlson’s fought.
The sheep were becoming more hopelessly mingled through this commotion on their flank. Mackenzie was beating the enraged dogs apart when Swan Carlson came running around the point of the hill.
Swan immediately took part in the mêlée of gnashing, rolling, rearing dogs, laying about among them with impartial hand, quickly subduing them to obedience. He stood looking stonily at Mackenzie, unmoved by anger, unflushed by exertion. In that way he stood silent a little while, his face untroubled by any passion that rolled in his breast.
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“You’re runnin’ your sheep over on my grass––what?” said Swan.
“You’re a mile over my range,” Mackenzie accused.
“You’ve been crowdin’ over on me for a month,” Swan said, “and I didn’t say nothing. But when a man tries to run his sheep over amongst mine and drive ’em off, I take a hand.”
“If anybody’s tryin’ such a game as that, it’s you,” Mackenzie told him. “Get ’em out of here, and keep ’em out.”
“I got fifteen hundred in that band––you’ll have to help me cut ’em out,” said Swan.
“You had about seven hundred,” Mackenzie returned, dispassionately, although it broke on him suddenly what the big flockmaster was trying to put through.
Counting on Mackenzie’s greenness, and perhaps on the simplicity of his nature as they had read it in the sheep country, Swan had prepared this trap days ahead. He had run a small band of the same breed as Sullivan’s sheep––for that matter but one breed was extensively grown on the range––over to the border of Tim’s lease with the intention of mingling them and driving home more than he had brought. Mackenzie never had heard of the trick being worked on a green herder, but he realized now how simply it could be done, opportunity such as this presenting.
But it was one thing to bring the sheep over and another thing to take them away. One thing Mackenzie was sure of, and that was the judgment of his eyes in numbering sheep. That had been Dad Frazer’s first lesson, and the old man had kept him at it until he203could come within a few head among hundreds at a glance.
“I’ll help you cut out as many as you had,” Mackenzie said, running his eyes over the mingled flocks, “they’re all alike, one as good as another, I guess. It looks like you got your stock from this ranch, anyhow, but you’ll not take more than seven hundred this trip.”
“My dogs can cut mine out, they know ’em by the smell,” Swan said. “I had fifteen hundred, and I bet you I’ll take fifteen hundred back.”
The dogs had drawn off, each set behind their respective masters, panting, eyeing each other with hostility, one rising now and then with growls, threatening to open the battle again. The sheep drifted about in confusion, so thoroughly mingled now that it would be past human power to separate them again and apportion each respective head to its rightful owner.
“Seven hundred, at the outside,” Mackenzie said again. “And keep them off of my grass when you get ’em.”
Carlson stood where he had stopped, ten feet or more distant, his arms bare, shirt open on his breast in his way of picturesque freedom. Mackenzie waited for him to proceed in whatever way he had planned, knowing there could be no compromise, no settlement in peace. He would either have to yield entirely and allow Carlson to drive off seven or eight hundred of Sullivan’s sheep, or fight. There didn’t seem to be much question on how it would come out in the latter event, for Carlson was not armed, and Mackenzie’s pistol was that moment under his hand.