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“There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work both ways. But fashions are changing, Dad; they go to the divorce courts now.”
“That costs too much, and it’s too slow. Walk out and leave the door standin’ open after you; that’s always been my way. They keep a lookin’ for you to come back for a month or two; then they marry some other man. Well, all of ’em but Rabbit, I reckon.”
“She was the one that remembered.”
“That woman sure is some on the remember, John. Well, I ought ’a’ had my hand read. A man’s a fool to start anything without havin’ it done.”
Dad nursed his regret in silence, his face dim in the starlight. Mackenzie was off with his own thoughts; they might have been miles apart instead of two yards, the quiet of the sheeplands around them. Then Dad:
“So you’re thinkin’ of Mary, are you, John?”
Mackenzie laughed a little, like an embarrassed lover.
“Well, I’ve got my eye on her,” he said.
“No gamble about Mary,” Dad said, in deep earnestness. “Give her a couple of years to fill out and widen in and you’ll have a girl that’ll do any man’s eyes good to see. I thought for a while you had some notions about Joan, and I’m glad to see you’ve changed your mind. Joan’s too sharp for a trustin’ feller like you. She’d run off with some wool-buyer before you’d been married a year.”
262CHAPTER XXVONE MAN’S JOKE
Mackenzie went across the hills next morning to relieve Reid of his watch over the sheep, feeling almost as simple as Dad and the rest of them believed him to be. He was too easy, he had been too easy all along. If he had beaten Hector Hall into a blue lump that day he sent him home without his guns; if he had pulled his weapon at Swan Carlson’s first appearance when the giant Swede drove his flock around the hill that day, and put a bullet between his eyes, Tim Sullivan and the rest of them would have held him in higher esteem.
Reid would have held him in greater respect for it, also, and it might not have turned out so badly for Joan. He wondered how Reid would receive him, and whether they would part in no greater unfriendliness than at present.
Reid was not with the sheep when Mackenzie arrived where they fed. The flock was widely scattered, as if the shepherd had been gone a long time, the dogs seemingly indifferent to what befell, showing a spirit of insubordination and laziness when Mackenzie set them about their work. Mackenzie spent the morning getting the flock together, noting its diminished numbers with quickly calculating eye.
Reid must have been leaving the sheep pretty much to themselves for the wolves to take that heavy toll.263Strange that Sullivan had not noticed it and put a trustworthy herder in charge. But Sullivan was more than a little afraid to show himself for long on that part of his lease, and perhaps had not taken the time to run his eye over the sheep. It was a matter to be laid before his attention at once. Mackenzie did not want this loss charged against him as another example of his unfitness to become a master over sheep on the profit-sharing plan.
It was past noon when Reid returned, coming riding from Swan Carlson’s range. He came only near enough to Mackenzie to see who it was, galloping on to the wagon. There he unsaddled his horse and turned it to graze, setting about immediately to get his dinner. Mackenzie waited for a summons when the meal was ready, but received none. Presently he saw that Reid had no intention of calling him in, for he was sitting down selfishly alone.
Mackenzie determined there was not going to be any avoidance on his part. If unpleasantness must rise between them Reid would be the one to set it stewing, and it looked from a distance as if this were his intention. Mackenzie went to camp, his coat on his arm.
Reid had finished his dinner when Mackenzie arrived. He was sitting in the shade of some low bushes, his hat on the ground, smoking a cigarette. He looked up at the sound of Mackenzie’s approach, smiling a little, waving his cigarette in greeting.
“Hello, Jacob,” he said.
Mackenzie felt the hot blood rush to his face, but choked down whatever hot words rose with it. But he264could not suppress the indignation, the surprise, that came with the derisive hail. It seemed that the range, vast, silent, selfish, melancholy as it was, could not keep a secret. What did Reid know about any Jacob and Rachel romance? How had he learned of that?
“How’re you makin’ it, Earl?” Mackenzie returned, pleasantly enough. And to himself: “He listened, the scoundrel––sneaked up on us and heard it all!”
“Oh, well enough,” said Reid, coughing huskily.
If well enough, a little more of it would do for him, Mackenzie thought, noting with surprise the change that had come over Reid since they last met. The improvement that had begun in him during his first weeks on the range had not continued. Opposed to it, a decline appeared to have fastened upon him, making his flaccid cheeks thinner, his weary eyes more tired, his slight frame lighter by many pounds. Only his voice was unchanged. That was hearty and quick, resonant of enjoyment in life and a keenness in the pursuits of its pleasures. Reid’s voice was his most valuable possession, Mackenzie knew; it was the vehicle that had carried him into the graces of many transitory friends.
“I thought Tim had sent some old taller-heel over to let me off––I didn’t know it was you,” said Reid, lying with perfect ease.
“Taller-heel enough, I guess,” Mackenzie returned, detached and inattentive as it seemed, his mind fixed on dinner.
“I didn’t think you’d be able to get out so soon from what Dad told me. Been havin’ some trouble with your hand?”
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“It’s all right now.” Mackenzie was making use of it to shake the coffeepot, only to find that Reid had drained it to the grounds.
“If I’d recognized you, Jacob, I’d made a double allowance,” Reid said, lifting the corner of his big, unfeeling mouth in a twitching grin.
“You might cut out that Jacob stuff, wherever you got it,” Mackenzie told him, not much interested in it, apparently.
“Can’t you take a joke, Mackenzie?” Reid made the inquiry in surprised voice, with a well-simulated inflection of injury.
“But I don’t want it rubbed in, Reid.”
Reid grunted, expressive of derision and contempt, smoking on in silence while Mackenzie threw himself together a hasty meal. Frequently Reid coughed, always cupping his hand before his mouth as if to conceal from himself as well as others the portentous harshness of the sound.
“Did Sullivan send you over?” Reid inquired at last.
“He said for me to come when I was able, but he didn’t set any time. I concluded I was all right, and came.”
“Well, you can go back; I don’t need you.”
“That’s for Sullivan to say.”
“On the dead, Mackenzie, I don’t see how it’s going to be comfortable with me and you in camp together.”
“The road’s open, Earl.”
“I wish it was open out of this damned country!” Reid complained. In his voice Mackenzie read the rankling discontent of his soul, wearing itself out there in266the freedom that to him was not free, chafing and longing and fretting his heart away as though the distant hills were the walls of a prison, the far horizon its bars.
“Sullivan wants you over at the ranch,” Mackenzie told him, moved to pitying kindness for him, although he knew that it was wasted and undeserved.
“I’d rather stay over here, I’d rather hear the coyotes howl than that pack of Sullivan kids. That’s one-hell of a family for a man to have to marry into, Mackenzie.”
“I’ve seen men marry into worse,” Mackenzie said.
Reid got up in morose impatience, flinging away his cigarette, went to the wagon, looked in, slammed the little canvas door with its mica window shut with a bang, and turned back.
There seemed little of the carelessness, the easy spirit that had made him so adaptable at first to his surroundings, which Reid had brought with him into the sheeplands left in him now. He was sullen and downcast, consumed by the gnawing desire to be away out of his prison. Mackenzie studied him furtively as he compounded his coffee and set it to boil on the little fire, thinking that it required more fortitude, indeed, to live out a sentence such as Reid faced in the open than behind a lock. Here, the call to be away was always before a man; the leagues of freedom stretched out before his eyes. It required some holding in on a man’s part to restrain his feet from taking the untrammeled way to liberty under such conditions, more than he would have believed Reid capable of, more than he expected him to be equal to much longer.
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Reid came slowly over to where he had left his hat, took it up, and stood looking at it as if he had found some strange plant or unusual flower, turning it and regarding it from all sides. It was such strange behavior that Mackenzie kept his eye on him, believing that the solitude and discontent had strained his mind.
Presently Reid put the hat on his head, came over to Mackenzie’s fire, and squatted near it on his heels, although the sun was broiling hot and the flare of the ardent little blaze was scorching to his face. So he sat, silent as an Indian, looking with fixed eyes at the fire, while Mackenzie fried his bacon and warmed a can of succotash in the pan. When Mackenzie began to eat, Reid drew back from the fire to make another cigarette.
“But will it pay a man,” he said ruminatively, as if turning again a subject long discussed with himself, “to put in three years at this just to get out of work all the rest of his life? That’s all it comes to, even if I can keep the old man’s money from sifting through my hands like dry sand on a windy day. The question is, will it pay a man to take the chance?”
Reid did not turn his eyes toward Mackenzie as he argued thus with himself, nor bring his face about to give his companion a full look into it. He sat staring across the mighty temptation that lay spread, league on league before him, his sharp countenance sharper for the wasting it had borne since Mackenzie saw him last, his chin up, his neck stretched as if he leaped the barriers of his discontent and rode away.
“It’s a long shot, Mackenzie,” he said, turning as he268spoke, his face set in a cast of suffering that brought again to Mackenzie a sweep of pity which he knew to be a tribute undeserved. “I made a joke about selling out to you once, Mackenzie; but it isn’t a thing a man can joke about right along.”
“I’m glad it was only a joke, Earl.”
“Sure it was a joke.”
Reid spoke with much of his old lightness, coming out of his brooding like a man stepping into the sun. He laughed, pulling his hat down on the bridge of his nose in the peculiar way he had of wearing it. A little while he sat; then stretched himself back at ease on his elbow, drooling smoke through his nose in saturnine enjoyment.
“Sullivan will double-cross you in the end, Jack; he’ll not even give you Mary,” Reid said, speaking lazily, neither derision nor banter in his way.
“Maybe,” Mackenzie returned indifferently.
“He’d double-cross me after I’d put in three years runnin’ his damned sheep if it wasn’t for the old man’s money. Tim Sullivan would pick dimes off a red-hot griddle in hell as long as the devil would stand by and heat them. He’s usin’ his girls for bait to draw greenhorns and work their fool heads off on promises. A man that would do that would sell his wife.”
Mackenzie made no comment. He was through his dinner and was filling his pipe, mixing some of Dad Frazer’s highly recommended twist with his own mild leaf to give it a kick.
“He played you into the game with Joan for a bait, and then I got shipped out here and spoiled that,” said Reid. “Now he’s stringin’ you on for Mary. If you’re269as wise a guy as I take you to be, Jack, you’ll cut this dump and strike out in business for yourself. There’s a feller over east of Carlson wants to sell out––you can get him on the run.”
“I couldn’t buy one side of a sheep,” Mackenzie replied, wondering why this sudden streak of friendly chatter.
Mackenzie ground Dad’s twist in his palm, poured a charge of his pale mixture into it, ground them again together under the heel of his fist, Reid looking on with languid eyes, hat down on his nose.
“What did you do with that roll you used to carry around out here?” Reid inquired, watching the compounding of the tobacco.
“It was a mighty little one, Earl,” Mackenzie returned, laughing pleasantly.
“It’s big enough for me––hand it over!”
Reid flipped his gun from the scabbard, his elbow pressed close to his side as he reclined in the lazy, inoffensive pose, holding the weapon down on Mackenzie with a jerk which he must have practiced long to give it the admirable finish and speed.
270CHAPTER XXVIPAYMENT ON ACCOUNT
Mackenzie raised his eyes slowly from his task of blending tobacco, looked for a moment into Reid’s determined face, remembering with a falling heart that he had taken his own revolver off and hung it in the wagon when he came in, to relieve himself of the weight.
“Hurry––hand it out!”
Reid lifted himself slightly, elbow still pressed close to his side, raising his face a foot nearer Mackenzie’s, his eyes drawn small, the corners of his mouth twitching.
Mackenzie’s hands were poised one above the other, as he had suspended his milling operations. As quickly as the hand of a prestidigitator flashes, Mackenzie swept the one that held the tobacco, dashing the powdered mixture into Reid’s eyes.
Reid fired as he sprang to his feet, gasping and choking, momentarily blinded by the fiery tobacco. Mackenzie felt the bullet lift his hair as it passed his temple, and before it was many rods on its way through the canvas top of the wagon he had grappled with Reid and wrenched his gun away.
Reid had no hands for a fight, even if it had been in him to attempt it, being busy with his streaming eyes. He cursed Mackenzie as he sputtered and swabbed.
“Damn it all, Mackenzie, can’t you take a joke?” he said.
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“No, I don’t get you––you’re too funny for me,” Mackenzie returned. “Here––wash your eyes.”
Mackenzie offered the water pail, Reid groping for it like a blind man, more tears streaming down his face than he had spent before in all his life together. He got the rough of it out, cursing the while, protesting it was only a joke. But Mackenzie had read human eyes and human faces long enough to know a joke when he saw it in them, and he had not seen even the shadow of a jest in the twitching mask of Reid’s unfeeling countenance as he leaned on his elbow holding his gun.
“You were right about it a little while ago,” Mackenzie told Reid when he looked up with red, reproachful eyes presently; “this range isn’t big enough for you and me.” Mackenzie jerked his hand toward the saddle and bridle which Reid had lately taken from his horse. “Get to hell out of here!”
Reid went without protest, or word of any kind, wearing his belt and empty scabbard. Mackenzie watched him saddle and ride over the ridge, wondering if he would make a streak of it to Sullivan and tell him what a poor hand his school-teaching herder was at taking a joke. Curious to see whether this was Reid’s intention, Mackenzie followed him to the top of the hill. Reid’s dust was all he could trace him by when he got there, and that rose over toward Swan Carlson’s ranch, whence he had come not more than an hour ago.
Pretty thick business between that precious pair, Mackenzie thought, and of a sort not likely to turn out of much profit to either them or anybody else. Carlson was a plain human brute without any sense of honor,272or any obligation to the amenities of civilized society; Reid was simply an unmoral sharper.
It didn’t make any difference where Reid went, or what he planned; he would have to stay away from that camp. That Mackenzie vowed, meaning it to the last letter. Tim Sullivan would be informed of this latest pleasantry at their first meeting, also, and hear a chapter from Mackenzie’s heart on the matter of Joan.
Joan! If that leper Reid ever came near Joan, or ever blew the pollution of a word to her, he would nail him to the ground with a bullet, no matter that he was in debt to him for his life.
Mackenzie found the rifle that Sullivan had provided Reid for his defense under the bunk in the wagon, with ammunition enough to withstand a siege. Reid evidently had not been using the gun in practice very much, confining his rehearsals to the quick slinging of his pistol, rather, as the cunning of his hand in the attempted robbery that afternoon seemed to prove. Not wanting Reid to have any weapon to his hand in case he came back, Mackenzie buckled on the revolvers, hid the rifle near the wagon, and went back to guard the sheep.
Mackenzie felt himself softening in his judgment of Reid as the day drew toward evening. He feared he had been a little severe with him, taking his gun away and sending him off, surly and vindictive. Perhaps it was only a joke, as Reid had protested, although there had been no glimmer of jest in his eyes when he had slung out his gun.
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Still, the boy was hardly responsible, oppressed by his load of dissatisfaction, harrassed and disturbed by that unbalancing ailment they called the lonesomeness. If he had come at it right, Mackenzie reflected, he could have had a hundred dollars or so, even though in staking him to it he would have been helping a criminal to escape.
He began to hope Reid would come back and try to square it. If he wanted the money to leave the country on then he could have it. Holding him there in the sheep country would not work his reformation, but would breed and store the virus of resentment, making him a truly dangerous man to set free to prey upon society when his term was done.
But Reid never would remain to finish his three years of penance there. Joan had seen it, even before his malady had fastened upon him so deeply. It might be a merciful deed to finance his going, and speed him toward the land of his desire. But how he would live in Mexico would be another matter. Perhaps he would work. At any event, he would be free.
Mackenzie had ranged his flock a considerable distance from the wagon, keeping to the hilltops above the sheep, according to the custom of herders. He was sitting in a gully, his back against the bank, feeling a weariness over him that he blamed mainly to the weight of the revolvers and cartridge belt in his weakened state, when he saw Reid coming back.
Reid broke over the hill beyond the sheep-wagon at a gallop, hatless, riding low, and the sound of shots behind him beat the tune to which he traveled. Mackenzie274got to his feet, his weariness gone on the surge of concern that thrilled him. Hector Hall had come to collect his outstanding account at last.
And Reid was unarmed. Because of this he had been forced to flee before his enemy like a coward, against his nature, to his humiliation, Mackenzie knew. He should not have allowed Reid to leave camp without his gun, he would not have done it if he had reflected a moment on the risk of going unarmed when there was one abroad on the range who sought his life. If Reid should fall, Mackenzie felt he would be an accessory to the crime.
Two men were pursuing Reid. They drew up a moment on the hilltop, then came down the long slope at reckless speed, not wasting any more ammunition at that distance, which was not above two hundred yards, but dividing to cut off Reid’s retreat, draw in on him then, and make an end of it at close range.
Reid halted at the wagon, where he made a hasty search for the rifle without dismounting, hidden for a moment from his pursuers. He was too far away to hear Mackenzie’s shouted directions for finding the gun. On again toward Mackenzie he came, halting a little way along to look back at the men who were maneuvering to cut off any swerving or retreat that he might attempt. Mackenzie beckoned him on, shouting, waving his hat, running forward to his relief.
Mackenzie’s thought was to give Reid his revolver, split the ammunition with him, each of them take a man, and fight it out. But Reid sat straight in the saddle, looking back at the two who came pressing on, seeming to fear them less than he hated the humiliation275of seeking shelter under Mackenzie’s protection. Mackenzie understood his feeling in the matter, and respected Reid for it more than for anything he ever had done.
While Mackenzie was yet a hundred yards from Reid he saw him swing from the saddle and shelter himself behind his horse. Hall and his companion were standing off warily, a good pistol shot from Reid, distrustful of this sudden change in his tactics, apparently believing he had come to the place he had selected to make his defensive stand. A little while they stood waiting for him to fire, then separated, the stranger circling to come behind Mackenzie, Hall moving a little nearer to Reid, who kept his horse before him with the craft of an Indian.
Hall stood a little while, as if waiting for Reid to fire, then rode forward, throwing a stream of lead as he came. Reid’s horse reared, ran a few rods with head thrown wildly high, its master clinging to the bit, dragging over shrub and stone. Suddenly it collapsed forward on its knees, and stretched dead.
Reid flung himself to the ground behind the protection of its carcass, Hall pausing in his assault to reload. The man who had ridden a wide and cautious circuit to get behind Mackenzie now dismounted and began firing across his saddle. Mackenzie turned, a pistol in each hand, indecisive a moment whether to return the fellow’s fire or rush forward and join Reid behind the breastworks of his beast.
The stranger was nearer Mackenzie by many rods than Hall, but still so far away that his shots went wide,276whistling high over Mackenzie’s head, or kicking dirt among the shrubs at either hand. Hall was charging down on Reid again, but with a wariness that held him off a distance of comparative safety.
In the moment that he paused there, considering the best and quickest move to make to lessen Reid’s peril, the thought shot to Mackenzie like a rending of confusing clouds that it was not so much Reid’s peril as his own. These men had come to kill him; their sighting Reid on the way was only an incident. It was his fight, and not Reid’s, for Reid was safe behind his horse, lying along its body close to the ground like a snake.
This understanding of the situation cleared the air tremendously. Where he had seen in confusion, with a sense of mingling and turning but a moment before, Mackenzie now beheld things with the sharpness of self-interest, calculating his situation with a comprehensive appraisement of every yard that lay between him and his enemies. He was steady as a tree, light with a feeling of relief, of justification for his acts. It was as if putting off the thought that he was going into this fight for Earl Reid had taken bonds from his arms, leaving him free to breathe joyously and strike with the keenness of a man who has a wild glory in facing tremendous odds.
All in a moment this clearing of brain and limb came to him, setting him up as if he had passed under an icy torrent and come out refreshed and clear-eyed into the sun. He bent low behind a shrub and rushed down the hillside toward the man who stood reloading his pistol, his hat-crown showing above the saddle.
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Reid was all right back there for a little while, he knew; Hall would hold off a bit, not knowing what he might meet by rushing in with precipitation. This one first, then Hall. It was not Reid’s fight; it was his fight, Reid but an incident in it, as a sheep might run between the combatants and throw its simple life in peril.
The fellow behind the horse, too sure of his safety, too contemptuous of this shepherd schoolmaster whose notorious simplicity had gone abroad in the sheeplands exciting the rough risibilities of men, was careless of whether his target stood still or ran; he did not lift his eyes from the reloading of his gun to see. And in those few precious moments Mackenzie rushed down on him like a wind from the mountain, opening fire with not more than twenty yards between.
Mackenzie’s first shot knocked leather from the saddle-horn. The horse squatted, trembling, snorted its alarm, trampled in panic, lifting a cloud of dust. And into this rising dust Mackenzie sent his lead, not seeing where it struck, quickly emptying one revolver, quickly shifting weapons from hand to hand, no pause in his hot assault.
The stranger cursed his frightened horse, both hands busy with the beast to stay it from plunging away and leaving him exposed to something he had not counted on meeting. Mackenzie pushed on, firing at every step. The horse partly turned, head toward him, partly baring the scoundrel who was that moment flinging his leg over the saddle to seek a coward’s safety. It was a black mare that he rode, a white star in its forehead, and now as it faced about Mackenzie, not thirty feet away, threw278a bullet for the white spot between the creature’s eyes. It reared, and fell, coming down while its rider’s leg still lay across the saddle, his other foot held in the stirrup.
A moment Mackenzie stood, the smoking pistol in his hand, leaning forward like a man who listened into the wind, his broad hat-brim blown back, the smoke of his firing around him. The horse lay still, its rider struggling with one leg pinned under it, the other across the saddle, the spur of that foot tearing the dead creature’s flesh in desperate effort to stir in it the life that no cruelty could awaken.
Leaning so, the wind in his face, the smoke blowing away behind him, Mackenzie loaded his revolvers. Then he ran to the trapped invader of his peace and took away his guns, leaving him imploring mercy and assistance, the dead horse across his leg.
Mackenzie was aware of shooting behind him all this time, but only as one is conscious of something detached and immaterial to the thing he has in hand. Whether Hector Hall was riding down on him in defense of his friend, or whether he was trying to drive Reid from the shelter of his fallen horse, Mackenzie did not know, but from that moment Hall was his business, no matter where he stood.
Putting out of the fight the man who lay pressed beneath his horse had been a necessary preliminary, a colorless detail, a smoothing away of a small annoyance in the road of that hour’s great work. For the end was justified beforehand between him and Hall. It was not a matter of vengeance, but of justice. This man had279once attempted to take away his life by the most diabolical cruelty that human depravity could devise.
This passed through Mackenzie’s thoughts like the heat of a fire that one runs by as he swung round to face Hall. Apparently unconcerned by what had befallen his friend, Hall was circling Reid’s dead horse, holding tenaciously to his intention of clearing the ground before him as he advanced. Reid snaked himself on his elbows ahead of his enemy’s encircling movement, keeping under cover with admirable coolness and craft.
Mackenzie ran forward, throwing up his hand in command to Hall, challenging him as plainly as words to turn his efforts from a defenseless man to one who stood ready to give him battle. Hall drew off a little from Reid’s concealment, distrustful of him even though he must have known him to be unarmed, not caring to put a man behind his back. Still drawing off in that way, he stopped firing to slip more cartridges into his automatic pistol, watching Mackenzie’s rapid advance, throwing a quick eye now and then toward the place where Reid lay out of his sight.
Hall waited in that sharp pose of watchful indecision a moment, then spurred his horse with sudden bound toward Reid. He leaped the carcass of Reid’s animal at a gallop, firing at the man who huddled close against its protection as he passed over. Mackenzie could not see Reid from where he stood, but he felt that his peril was very great, his chances almost hopeless in the face of Hall’s determination to have revenge on his brother’s slayer in defiance of what might come to himself when the thing was done.
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Mackenzie ran a little nearer, and opened fire. Heedless of him, Hall swung his horse back at a gallop, firing at Reid as he advanced. Reid came rolling round the carcass of his horse to place himself in the protection of the other side, so nimble in his movements that Mackenzie drew a breath of marveling relief. If Reid was touched at all by Hall’s vicious rain of lead, it could be only slightly.
Hall’s headlong charge carried him several rods beyond Reid, the horse springing high over the barrier. Again Reid escaped, again he came rolling back to shelter, his body as close to the ground as a worm’s. When Hall pulled up his sliding, stiff-legged horse and turned in the cloud of dust to ride once more upon his defenseless enemy, it was to face Mackenzie, who had run up and posted himself directly in his way.
Reid’s dead horse lay not more than twenty feet behind Mackenzie. Hector Hall leaned glowering at him through the dust perhaps twice that distance ahead. A moment Hall leaned in that way, then came spurring on, holding his fire as if his purpose were to ride Mackenzie down in contempt.
Mackenzie fired, steady against the onrushing charge as a rock in the desert wind. He was thrilled by a calm satisfaction in meeting this man who had contemned and despised him, whose cold eyes spoke insults, whose sneering lips were polluted with the blasphemies of his filthy heart.
When Hall returned the fire he was so close that the flame of his weapon struck hot against Mackenzie’s face. Mackenzie leaped aside to avoid the horse, untouched281save by the spurting flame, emptying his pistol into Hall’s body as he passed. A little way on Hall wheeled the horse and came riding back, but the blindness of death was in his face, his rapid shots fell wild among the shrubs at Mackenzie’s side.
On past Mackenzie the horse galloped, Hall weaving in the saddle, the reins hanging free, his hands trailing at his sides. Mackenzie put his pistol in the scabbard with slow and deliberate hand, feeling that the battle was done, watching Hall as he rode blindly on.
A little way, and the horse, whether through some wild caprice of its own, or some touch of its dying rider, circled back, galloping down the long slope toward the man who had come to help Hall adjust his differences with these contemptible sheepmen. Hall’s hat fell off as his head sank forward; he bent, grappling his horse’s mane. So for a little way he rode, then slipped from the saddle, one foot entangled in the stirrup.
The horse stopped suddenly, as if a weighted rein had been dropped. Mackenzie ran down the hill to disengage Hall’s foot. But his merciful haste was useless; Hall was beyond the torture of dragging at a stirrup.
Mackenzie released the foot with a sad gentleness, composed the dusty body, drew the reins over the horse’s head and left it standing beside its dead master. Hall’s companion in the raid was still struggling under his fallen horse, and from the vigor of his attempts to free himself Mackenzie gathered that he was not much hurt.
A moment’s work set the scoundrel on his feet, where he limped on a whole bone, whole enough to ride on282many a rascally foray again. Mackenzie said nothing to him, only indicated by a movement of the hand what he was to do. Limping painfully, the fellow went to Hall’s horse, lifted his friend’s body across the empty saddle, mounted behind it with a struggle, and rode in humiliation from the field, glad enough to be allowed to go.
Reid was standing beside his dead horse, watching the fellow ride away. So for a little he stood, as if he debated some movement against the man who had sought his life with such hot cruelty but a few minutes past, not turning to see whether Mackenzie came or went. Presently he took his coat from the saddle, slung it over his shoulder, looked after the retreating man again, as if debating whether to follow.
Mackenzie came up, Reid’s pistol in his hand. This he offered, apology in his manner, but no words on his lips. Reid took it, silent and unmoved, shoved it into his scabbard, walked away.
From the manner of his going, Mackenzie knew he was not hurt. It was a comfortable thought for Mackenzie that his interference had at least saved Reid a wound. Doubtless he had saved him more. In that last charge, Hector Hall would have had his life.
A part of his tremendous obligation to Reid was paid, and Reid understood it so. But the knowledge of it seemed to gall him, so deeply, indeed, that it appeared he rather would have died than have Mackenzie succeed in his defense.
Reid stopped where Hector Hall’s hat had fallen. He turned it with his foot, looking down at it, and presently283picked it up. He made as if he would put it on, but did not, and passed on carrying it in his hand.
Mackenzie wondered what his plans might be, and whether he ought to go after him and try to put their differences out of the way. Reid did not stop at the wagon. He continued on to the top of the hill, defiant of the man who rode away with Hall’s body, his pistol again on his thigh. There he stood looking this way and that a little while, as a man looks who is undecided of his road. Then he passed on. When Mackenzie reached the spot where Reid had stood, he was no longer in sight.
Mackenzie thought Reid might be going deliberately to seek the battle from which he had been obliged so lately to flee unarmed. Mackenzie waited on the eminence, listening for the sounds of fight, ready to hasten to Reid’s assistance if he should stand in need of it again. So the last hour of the afternoon passed. Mackenzie turned back to his flock at length, believing Reid had gone on his way to the freedom he had weighed against his inheritance only a few hours before.
It was just as well then as another day, Mackenzie reflected, as he turned the sheep from their grazing. Not that he had meant to drive Reid out of the country when he told him to go, but it was just as well. Soon or late it would have to come to a show-down between them, and one would have been compelled to leave.
But how would Sullivan view this abrupt ending of the half-million-dollar penance, and the loss of three years’ unpaid labor? Not kindly, certainly. It probably would result in the collapse of all Mackenzie’s own284calculations as well, and the blighting of his sheep-wealth dreams.
And that day he had slain a man in defense of Earl Reid’s life, as Reid had killed in defense of his.
From the first hour he set his feet on the trail to the sheep country this culmination of his adventures had been shaping. Little by little it had been building, the aggression pressed upon him, his attitude all along one of defense. Perhaps when trouble is heading for a man, as this was inevitably directed, the best thing to do is rush to meet it with a club in the hand.
That was the way it looked to John Mackenzie that evening. Trouble will put things over on a man who is bent to compromise, every time. Undoubtedly it looked that way. But he had killed a man. It was a heavy thing to carry on his soul.
This depressing shadow thickened over him as the sun drew down to the hills, and he went working his flock slowly to the night’s bedding-ground. The complaint of the lambs, weary from following and frisking the day through, was sadder to him than it ever had fallen on his ears before. It seemed a lament for the pollution of his hands in human blood, moving a regret in his heart that was harder to bear than fear.
Mackenzie sat above the resting sheep as the shadows drew toward him between the hills, a glow as of a distant city where the sun went down an hour past. The rifle was beside him, his pistol in his belt, for regret of past violence would not make the next hour secure. If trouble should lift its head in his path again, he vowed he would kill it before it could dart and strike.
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No, it was not a joke that Reid had pulled on him that afternoon. Reid had meant to rob him, urged on to the deed by his preying discontent and racking desire to be away. Reid was on his way out of the country now, and if they caught him and took him before the judge who had sentenced him to this unique penance, he would have the plea that Mackenzie drove him out, and that he fled to save his life.
That might be sufficient for the judge; certainly it would be enough for Tim Sullivan. Sullivan would bring him back, and Mackenzie would be sent to pick up the trail of his fortunes in another place, with years of waiting between him and Joan, perhaps.
So Mackenzie sat with his moody thoughts, depressed, downhearted, regretting bitterly the necessity that had risen for taking away a fellow-creature’s life. It bore on him heavily now that the heat of his blood had subsided; it stood before him an awful accusation. He had killed a man! But a man who had forfeited his right to live, a man who had attempted to take his life in the past, who had come again that day to hunt him like a coyote on the hills. The law would exculpate him; men would speak loudly of his justification. But it would stand against him in his own conscience all his days. Simple for thinking of it that way, he knew; simple as they held him to be in the sheep country, even down to old Dad Frazer, simplest among men.
He had no desire in his mouth for supper, although he set about preparing it, wanting it over before dark. No need of a blaze or a glow of a coal to guide anybody that might be prowling around to drop a bullet into286him. That surly rascal who bore Hector Hall’s body away might come back to do it, but the man who stood first in his thoughts and caution was Earl Reid, out there somewhere in the closing night with a gun on him and an itch in his hand to use it.
287CHAPTER XXVIIA SUMMONS IN THE NIGHT
Somebody was calling on the hill behind the sheep-wagon. Mackenzie sat up, a chill in his bones, for he had fallen asleep on watch beside the ashes of his supper fire. He listened, the rack of sleep clearing from his brain in a breath.
It was Dad Frazer, and the hour was past the turn of night. Mackenzie answered, the sound of a horse under way immediately following. Dad came riding down the hill with loose shale running ahead of him, in such a hurry that he took the sharp incline straight.
“What’s the matter?” Mackenzie inquired, hurrying out to meet him.
“I don’t know,” said Dad, panting from excitement as if he had run the distance between the camps on foot. “Mary come over on her horse a little while ago and rousted me out. She said somebody just passed her camp, and one of ’em was Joan.”
“Joan? What would she––what does Mary–––?”
“That’s what I said,” Dad told him, sliding to the ground. “I said Joan wouldn’t be trapsin’ around this time of night with nobody, but if she did happen to be she could take care of herself. But Mary said she sounded like she was fussin’ and she thought something must be wrong, and for me to hop her horse and come hell-for-leather and tell you.”
“How many––which way were they going?”
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“Two horses, Mary said, from the sound, but she didn’t hear nobody’s voice but Joan’s. She got Charley up, and they run out and hollered, but she didn’t hear nothing more of Joan. The poor kid’s scared out of her ’leven senses.”
“Which way did they go––did Mary say?”
“Towards Swan Carlson’s ranch, she said.”
Mackenzie swung into the saddle and galloped off, leaving Dad listening to the sound of his going.
“Nutty, like the rest of ’em,” said Dad.
Carlson’s house was not more than eight miles from the range where Mackenzie was running his sheep. He held his course in that direction as he rode break-neck up hill and down. He had little belief that it could have been Joan who passed Mary’s camp, yet he was disturbed by an anxiety that made his throat dry, and a fear that clung to him like garments wet in the rain.
Reid could not have anything to do with it in any event, Joan or somebody else, for Reid was horseless upon the range. But if Joan, he was at entire loss to imagine upon what business she could be riding the country that hour of the night. Joan had no fear of either night or the range. She had cared for her sheep through storm and dark, penetrating all the terrors that night could present, and she knew the range too well to be led astray. It must have been a voice that Mary had heard in a dream.
Mackenzie felt easier for these reflections, but did not check his pace, holding on toward Carlson’s house in as straight a line as he could draw. He recalled curiously, with a prickling of renewed anxiety, that he always289expected to be called to Carlson’s house for the last act in the sheeplands tragedy. Why, he did not know. Perhaps he had not expected it; maybe it was only a psychological lightning-play of the moment, reflecting an unformed emotion. That likely was the way of it, he reasoned. Surely he never could have thought of being called to Carlson’s ranch.
In that fever of contradiction he pushed on, knees gripping his horse in the tensity of his desire to hasten, thinking to hold the animal up from stumbling as an anxious rider in the night will do. Now he believed it could not have been Joan, and felt a momentary ease; now he was convinced that Mary could not have mistaken her sister’s voice, and the sweat of fear for her burst on his forehead and streamed down into his eyes.
From the side that he approached Carlson’s house his way lay through a valley at the end, bringing him up a slight rise as he drew near the trees that stood thickly about the place. Here he dismounted and went on, leading his horse. A little way from the house he hitched his animal among the trees, and went forward in caution, wary of a dog that might be keeping watch beside the door.
There was no moon. The soft glow of a few misty, somnolent stars gave no light among the trees, no light shone from the house. Mackenzie recalled the night he had first approached that door and come suddenly around the corner into the pale beam of Hertha Carlson’s lantern. Now the kitchen door might be shut, and there was no window on that side.
Mackenzie stopped to listen, his senses as keen as a290savage’s under his strain. One who has not approached danger and uncertainty, listening and straining in the night, cannot conceive the exquisite pitch to which human nerves can be attuned. The body then becomes a tower set with the filaments of wireless telegraphy, each of the thousand nerves straining forth to catch the faintest sound, the most shadowy disturbance. Even premonitions become verities; indistinct propositions tangible facts.
In that exalted pitch of nervous sensibility Mackenzie stood listening, fifty feet or less from the kitchen door. No sound, but a sharp scent of cigarette smoke came blowing from the dark house. Mackenzie’s heart seemed to gorge and stop. Earl Reid was there. Perhaps Mary had not heard a voice in a dream.
At the closed door Mackenzie listened. For a little, no sound; then a foot shifted on the floor. Almost immediately someone began walking up and down the room, pushing a chair aside as if to clear the way. Mackenzie remembered the window high in the wall beside the stove and went hastily around the house to it, restraining himself from bursting precipitately into something which might be no concern of his or warrant his interference at all. It seemed so preposterous even to suspect that Joan was there.
Reid was pacing up and down the room, a lantern standing on the floor beside the chair from which he had risen. The place had been readjusted since the ruin that fell over it in Mackenzie’s fight with Swan; the table stood again in the place where he had eaten his supper on it, the broken leg but crudely mended.