The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

  CHAPTER XIX

  NOT CUT OUT FOR A SHEEPMAN

  Mackenzie returned to conscious state in nausea and pain. Not on asurge, but slow-breaking, like the dawn, his senses came to him,assembling as dispersed birds assemble, with erratic excursions as ifdistrustful of the place where they desire to alight. Wherever thesoul may go in such times of suspended animation, it comes back to itsdwelling in trepidation and distrust, and with lingering at the door.

  The first connected thought that Mackenzie enjoyed after coming out ofhis shock was that somebody was smoking near at hand; the next thatthe sun was in his eyes. But these were indifferent things, drowned ina flood of pain. He put them aside, not to grope after the cause ofhis 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 oldabode with a sigh. Then Mackenzie remembered the poised revolver inSwan Carlson's hand. He moved, struggling to rise, felt a sweep ofsickness, a flood of pain, but came to a sitting posture in the way ofa man fighting to life from beneath an avalanche. The sun was directlyin his eyes, standing low above the hill. He shifted weakly to relieveits discomfort. Earl Reid was sitting near at hand, a few feet abovehim on the side of the hill.

  Reid was smoking a cigarette, his hat pushed back, the shadows of hislate discontent cleared out of his face. Below them the sheep weregrazing. They were all there; Mackenzie had wit enough in him to seethat they were all there.

  Reid looked at him with a grin that seemed divided between amusementand 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 toinquire into the matter of Reid's recovery of the sheep; the worldtipped 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'dbetter go to the ranch and have it looked after; you can take myhorse."

  Mackenzie was almost indifferent both to the information of his hurtand 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. Thiswas of more importance to him for the moment than his injury. SwanCarlson 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 hadhappened 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 couldsee the point of humor in it that Mackenzie could not be expected toenjoy.

  Mackenzie did not attempt a reply. He looked with a sort of impersonalcuriosity at his hand and forearm, where the dog had bitten him inseveral places. That had happened a good while ago, he reasoned; theblood had dried, the marks of the dog's teeth were bruised-lookingaround the edges.

  And the sheep were all there, and Reid was laughing at him insatisfaction of his disgrace. There was no sound of Swan Carlson'sflock, no sight of the sheepman. Reid had come and untangled whatMackenzie had failed to prevent, and was sitting there, unruffled andundisturbed, enjoying already the satisfaction of his addeddistinction.

  Perhaps Reid had saved his life from Carlson's hands, as he had savedit from Matt Hall's. His debt to Reid was mounting with mockingswiftness. As if in scorn of his unfitness, Reid had picked up his gunand put it back in its sheath.

  What would Joan say about this affair? What would Tim Sullivan'sverdict be? He had not come off even second best, as in the encounterwith Matt Hall, but defeated, disgraced. And he would have been robbedin 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 ofhim in the sheep country. A sort of kindly indictment it was, but morehumiliating because it seemed true. No, he was not cut out for asheepman, indeed, nor for anything but that calm and placid woman'swork in the schoolroom, it seemed.

  Mackenzie looked again at his hand. There was no pain in it, but itsappearance was sufficient to alarm a man in a normal state ofreasonableness. He had the passing thought that it ought to beattended to, and got up on weaving legs. He might wash it in thecreek, he considered, and so take out the rough of whatever infectionthe dog's teeth had driven into his flesh, but dismissed the notion atonce as altogether foolish. It needed bichloride of mercury, and itwas unlikely there was such a thing within a hundred and fifty miles.

  As he argued this matter of antiseptics with himself Mackenzie walkedaway from the spot where Reid remained seated, going aimlessly, quiteunconscious of his act. Only when he found himself some distance awayhe stopped, considering what to do. His thoughts ran in fragments andflashes, broken by the throbbing of his shocked brain, yet he knewthat Reid had offered to do something for him which he could notaccept.

  No, he could not place himself under additional obligation to Reid.Live or die, fail or succeed, Reid should not be called upon again tooffer a supporting hand. He could sit there on the hillside and grinabout this encounter with Carlson, and grin about the hurt inMackenzie's hand and arm, and the blinding pain in his head. Let himgrin in his high satisfaction of having turned another favor toMackenzie's account; let him grin until his face froze in a grin--heshould 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 haveJoan! Blind from pain, sick, dizzy, the earth rising up before him ashe walked, Mackenzie went on. He did not look back to see if Reidcame to help him; he would have resented it if he had come, and cursedhim 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 theold herder and his squaw lay asleep, arriving without alarm of dogs,his own collies at his heels. It was the sharp-eared Indian woman whoheard him, and knew by his faltering step that it was somebody indistress. She ran out and caught him as he fell.