The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CONCERNING MARY

  "Yes, I've heard tell of sheepmen workin' Swan's dodge on one another,but I never took no stock in it, because I never believed even asheepman was fool enough to let anybody put a thing like that over onhim."

  "A sheepman oughtn't to be," Mackenzie said, in the bitterness ofdefeat.

  "Swan knew you was an easy feller, and green to the ways of themtricky sheepmen," said Dad. "You let him off in that first fight witha little crack on the head when you'd ought to 'a' laid him out forgood, and you let Hector Hall go that time you took his guns away fromhim. Folks in here never could understand that; they say it was like achild playin' with a rattlesnake."

  "It was," Mackenzie agreed.

  "Swan thought he could run them sheep of his over on you and take awayfive or six hundred more than he brought, and I guess he'd 'a' done itif it hadn't been for Reid."

  "It looks that way, Dad. I sure was easy, to fall into his trap theway I did."

  Mackenzie was able to get about again, and was gaining strengthrapidly. He and Dad were in the shade of some willows along the creek,where Mackenzie stretched in the indolent relaxation of convalescence,Dad smoking his miserable old pipe close at hand.

  And miserable is the true word for Dad's pipe, for it was miserableindeed, and miserable the smell that came out of it, going there fullsteam on a hot afternoon of early autumn. Dad always carefully reamedout the first speck of carbon that formed in his pipe, and kept itreamed out with boring blade of his pocket knife. He wanted noinsulation against nicotine, and the strength thereof; he was notsatisfied unless the fire burned into the wood, and drew theinfiltrations of strong juice therefrom. When his charge of tobaccoburned out, and the fire came down to this frying, sizzlingabomination of smells at last, Dad beamed, enjoying it as a sort ofdessert to a delightful repast of strong smoke.

  Dad was enjoying his domestic felicity to the full these days ofMackenzie's convalescence. Rabbit was out with the sheep, being neededno longer to attend the patient, leaving Dad to idle as he pleased.His regret for the one-eyed widow seemed to have passed, leaving noscar behind.

  "Tim don't take no stock in it that Swan planned before to do you outof a lot of your sheep. He was by here this morning while you waswanderin' around somewhere."

  "He was by, was he?"

  "Yeah; he was over to see Reid--he's sent him a new wagon over there.Tim says you and Swan must both 'a' been asleep and let the two bandsstray together, and of course it was human for Swan to want to takeaway more than he brought. Well, it was sheepman, anyhow, if it wasn'thuman."

  "Did Sullivan say that?"

  "No, that's what I say. I know 'em; I know 'em to the bone. Reid knewhow many sheep him and you had, and he stuck out for 'em like a littleman. More to that feller than I ever thought he had in him."

  "Yes," Mackenzie agreed. He lay stretched on his back, squinting atthe calm-weather clouds.

  "Yeah; Tim says both of you fellers must 'a' been asleep."

  "I suppose he'll fire me when he sees me."

  "No, I don't reckon he will. Tim takes it as a kind of a joke, andhe's as proud as all git-out of the way Reid stacked up. If that boyhadn't happened up when he did, Swan he'd 'a' soaked you another onewith that gun of yourn and put you out for good. They say that kidwaltzed Swan around there and made him step like he was standin' on ared-hot stove."

  "Did anybody see him doing it?"

  "No, I don't reckon anybody did. But he must 'a' done it, all right,Swan didn't git a head of sheep that didn't belong to him."

  "It's funny how Reid arrived on the second," Mackenzie said,reflecting over it as a thing he had pondered before.

  "Well, it's natural you'd feel a little jealous of him, John--most anyfeller would. But I don't think he had any hand in it with Swan to runhim in on you, if that's what you're drivin' at."

  "It never crossed my mind," said Mackenzie, but not with his usualregard for the truth.

  "I don't like him, and I never did like him, but you've got to hand itto him for grit and nerve."

  "Has he got over the lonesomeness?"

  "Well, he's got a right to if he ain't."

  "Got a right to? What do you mean?"

  Dad chuckled, put both hands to the back of his head, smoothed hislong, bright hair.

  "I don't reckon you knew when you was teachin' Joan you was goin' toall that trouble for that feller," he said.

  "Sullivan told me him and old man Reid had made an agreementconcerning the young folks," Mackenzie returned, a sickness of dreadover him for what he believed he was about to hear.

  "Oh, Tim told you, did he? Never said nothin' to me about it till thismornin'. He's goin' to send Joan off to the sisters' school down atCheyenne."

  Mackenzie sat up, saying nothing for a good while. He sat looking atthe ground, buried in his thoughts as deep as a grave. Dad turnedcurious eyes upon him, but yet not eyes which probed to the secret ofhis heart or weighed his loss.

  "I guess I didn't--couldn't teach her enough to keep her here,"Mackenzie said.

  "You could teach her a danged sight more than she could remember. Ithink Tim and her had a spat, but I'm only guessin' from what Charleysaid. Reid was at the bottom of it, I'll bet a purty. That feller wasafraid you and Joan might git to holdin' hands out here on the rangeso much together, heads a touchin' over them books."

  Mackenzie heard the old man as the wind. No, he had not taught Joanenough to keep her in the sheeplands; she had not read deeply enoughinto that lesson which he once spoke of as the easiest to learn andthe hardest to forget. Joan's desire for life in the busy places hadoverbalanced her affection for him. Spat or no spat, she would havecome to see him more than once in his desperate struggle against deathif she had cared.

  He could not blame her. There was not much in a man who had made afailure of even sheepherding to bind a maid to him against theallurements of the world that had been beckoning her so long.

  "Tim said he'd be around to see you late this evening or tomorrow.He's went over to see how Mary and Charley're makin' out, keepin' hiseye on 'em like he suspicioned they might kill a lamb once in a whileto go with their canned beans."

  "All right," said Mackenzie, abstractedly.

  Dad looked at him with something like scorn for his inattention tosuch an engrossing subject. Mackenzie was not looking his way; histhoughts seemed to be a thousand leagues from Tim Sullivan's range andthe lambs on it, let them be alive or slaughtered to go with cannedbeans.

  But Joan would come back to the sheeplands, as she said everybody cameback to them who once had lived in their silences and breathed theirwide freedom. She would come back, not lost to him, but regained, herlesson learned, not to go away with that youth who wore the brand ofold sins on his face. So hope came to lift him and assure him, justwhen he felt the somber cloud of the lonesomeness beginning to engulfhis soul.

  "I know Tim don't like it, but me and Rabbit butcher lambs rightalong, and we'll keep on doin' it as long as we run sheep. A man's gotto have something besides the grub he gits out of tin cans. That ain'tno life."

  "You're right, Dad. I'd been in a hole on the side of some hill beforenow if it hadn't been for the broth and lamb stew Rabbit fed me.There's nothing like it."

  "You right they ain't!" said Dad, forgetting Mackenzie's lapse of alittle while before. "I save the hides and turn 'em over to him, andhe ain't got no kick. If I was them children I'd butcher me a lambonce a week, anyhow. But maybe they don't like it--I don't know. I'veknown sheepmen that couldn't go mutton, never tasted it from one yearto another. May be the smell of sheep when you git a lot of 'em in ashearin' pen and let 'em stand around for a day or two."

  But what had they told Joan that she would go away without a word,leaving him in a sickness from which he might never have turned again?Something had been done to alienate her, some crafty libel had beenpoured into her ears. Let that be as it might, Joan would come back,and he would wait in the sheeplands for her, and take her by the
handand clear away her troubled doubts. The comfort of this thought woulddrive the lonesomeness away.

  He would wait. If not in Tim Sullivan's hire, then with a little flockof his own, independent of the lords of sheep. He would rather remainwith Sullivan, having more to prove now of his fitness to become aflockmaster than at the beginning. Sullivan's doubt of him would haveincreased; the scorn which he could not quite cover before would beopen now and expressed. They had no use in the sheeplands for a manwho fought and lost. They would respect him more if he refused tofight at all.

  Dad was still talking, rubbing his fuzzy chin with reflective hand,looking along the hillside to where Rabbit stood watch over thesheep.

  "Tim wanted to buy that big yellow collie from Rabbit," he said."Offered her eighty dollars. Might as well try to buy me from thatwoman!"

  "I expect she'd sell you quicker than she would the collie, Dad."

  "Wish she would sell that dang animal, he never has made friends withme. The other one and me we git along all right, but that feller he'sbeen educated on the scent of that old vest, and he'll be my enemy tomy last day."

  "You're a lucky man to have a wife like Rabbit, anyhow, dog or no dog.It's hard for me to believe she ever took a long swig out of a whiskyjug, Dad."

  "Well, sir, me and Rabbit was disputin' about that a day or so ago.Funny how I seem to 'a' got mixed up on that, but I guess it wasn'tRabbit that used to pull my jug too hard. That must 'a' been a Mexicanwoman I was married to one time down by El Paso."

  "I'll bet money it was the Mexican woman. How did Rabbit get her facescalded?"

  "She tripped and fell in the hog-scaldin' vat like I told you, John."

  Mackenzie looked at him severely, almost ready to take the convalescent'sprerogative and quarrel with his best friend.

  "What's the straight of it, you old hide-bound sinner?"

  Dad changed hands on his chin, fingering his beard with scrapingnoise, eyes downcast as if a little ashamed.

  "I guess it was me that took a snort too many out of the jug that day,John," he confessed.

  "Of course it was. And Rabbit tripped and fell into the tub trying tosave you from it, did she?"

  "Well, John, them fellers said that was about the straight of it."

  "You ought to be hung for running away from her, you old hard-shelledscoundrel!"

  Dad took it in silence, and sat rubbing it into his beard like aliniment. After a while he rose, squinted his eye up at the sun with aquick turn of his head like a chicken.

  "I reckon every man's done something he ought to be hung for," hesaid.

  That ended it. Dad went off to begin supper, there being potatoes tocook. Sullivan had sent a sack of that unusual provender out to campto help Mackenzie get his strength back in a hurry, he said.

  Tim himself put in his appearance at camp a little later in the day,when the scent of lamb stew that Dad had in the kettle was streamingover the hills. Tim could not resist it, for it was seasoned with wildonions and herbs, and between the four of them they left the pot asclean as Jack Spratt's platter, the dogs making a dessert on thebones.

  Dad and Rabbit went away presently to assemble the sheep for thenight, and Tim let his Irish tongue wag as it would. He was in livelyand generous mood, making a joke of the mingling of the flocks whichhad come so dearly to Mackenzie's account. He bore himself like a manwho had gained something, indeed, and that was the interpretation puton it by Mackenzie.

  Tim led up to what he had come to discuss presently, beaming with stewand satisfaction when he spoke of Joan.

  "Of course you understand, John, I don't want you to think it was anyslam on you that I took Joan off the range and made her stop takin'her book lessons from you. That girl got too fresh with me, denyin' myauthority to marry her to the man I've picked."

  Mackenzie nodded, a great warmth of understanding glowing in hisbreast.

  "But I don't want you to feel that it was any reflection on yourability as a teacher, you understand, John; I don't want you to lookat it that way at all."

  "Not at all," Mackenzie echoed, quite sincerely.

  "You could 'a' had her, for all the difference it was to me, if Ihadn't made that deal with Reid. A man's got to stick to his word, youknow, lad, and not have it thwarted by any little bobbin of a girl.I'd as soon you'd have one of my girls as any man I know, John."

  "Thanks."

  "Of course I could see how it might turn out between you and Joan ifshe kept on ridin' over to have lessons from you every day. You can'tblame Earl if he saw it the same way, lad."

  "She isn't his yet," said Mackenzie confidently.

  "Now look here, John"--Sullivan spoke with a certain sharpness, acertain hardness of dictation in his tone, "you'd just as well standout of it and let Earl have her."

  Mackenzie's heart swung so high it seemed to brush the early stars. Itwas certain now that Joan had not gone home without a fight, and thatshe had not remained there throughout his recovery from his woundswithout telling protest. More confidently than before he repeated:

  "She isn't his yet!"

  "She'll never get a sheep from me if she marries any other man--notone lone ewe!"

  "How much do you value her in sheep?" Mackenzie inquired.

  "She'll get half a million dollars or more with Earl. It would take alot of sheep to amount to half a million, John."

  "Yes," said Mackenzie, with the indifference of a man who did not haveany further interest in the case, seeing himself outbid. "That'shigher than I'll ever be able to go. All right; let him have her." Butbeneath his breath he added the condition: "If he can get her."

  "That's the spirit I like to see a man show!" Tim commended. "I don'tblame a man for marryin' into a sheep ranch if he can--I call himsmart--and I'd just as soon you as any man'd marry one of my girls, asI said, John. But you know, lad, a man can't have them that's sealed,as the Mormons say."

  "You're right," Mackenzie agreed, and the more heartily because it wassincere. If he grinned a little to himself, Tim did not note it in thedusk.

  "Now, there's my Mary; she's seventeen; she'll be a woman in threeyears more, and she'll make two of Joan when she fills out. My Marywould make the fine wife for a lad like you, John, and I'll give youfive thousand sheep the day you marry her."

  "All right; the day I marry Mary I'll claim five thousand sheep."

  Mackenzie said it so quickly, so positively, that Tim glowed andbeamed as never before. He slapped the simpleton of a schoolmaster whohad come into the sheeplands to be a great sheepman on the back withhearty hand, believing he had swallowed hook and all.

  "Done! The day you marry Mary you'll have your five thousand sheepalong wi' her! I pass you my word, and it goes."

  They shook hands on it, Mackenzie as solemn as though making acovenant in truth.

  "The day I marry Mary," said he.

  "It'll be three years before she's old enough to take up the weight ofcarryin' babies, and of course you understand you'll have to wait onher, lad. A man can't jump into these things the way he buys ahorse."

  "Oh, sure."

  "You go right on workin' for me like you are," pursued Tim, drunk onhis bargain as he thought it to be, "drawin' your pay like any hand,without favors asked or given, takin' the knocks as they come to you,in weather good and bad. That'll be a better way than goin' in shareson a band next spring like we talked; it'll be better for you, lad;better for you and Mary."

  "All right," Mackenzie assented.

  "I'm thinkin' only of your own interests, you see, lad, the same as ifyou was my son."

  Tim patted Mackenzie's shoulder again, doubtless warm to the bottom ofhis sheep-blind heart over the prospect of a hand to serve him threeyears who would go break-neck and hell-for-leather, not countingconsequences in his blind and simple way, or weather or hardships ofany kind. For there was Mary, and there were five thousand sheep. Asfor Joan, she was out of Tim's reckoning any longer. He had a newJacob on the line, and he was going to play him for all he was worth.


  "All right; I've got a lot to learn yet," Mackenzie agreed.

  "You have, you have that," said Tim with fatherly tenderness, "andyou'll learn it like a book. I always said from the day you come youhad in you the makin' of a sheepman. Some are quick and some are slow,but the longer it takes to learn the harder it sticks. It's been thatway wi' me."

  "That's the rule of the world, they say."

  "It is; it is so. And you can put up a good fight, even though you maynot always hold your own; you'll be the lad to wade through it wi'your head up and the mornin' light on your face. Sure you will, boy.I'll be tellin' Mary."

  "I'd wait a while," Mackenzie said, gently, as a man who was very softin his heart, indeed. "I'd rather we'd grow into it, you know, easy,by gentle stages."

  "Right you are, lad, right you are. Leave young hearts to find theirown way--they can't miss it if there's nobody between them. I'll sayno word to Mary at all, but you have leave to go and see her as oftenas you like, lad, and the sooner you begin the better, to catch herwhile she's young. How's your hand?"

  "Well enough."

  "When you think you're able, I'll put you back with the sheep you had.I'll be takin' Reid over to the ranch to put him in charge of thehospital band."

  "I'm able to handle them now, I think."

  "But take your time, take it easy. Reid gets on with Swan, bein' moreexperienced with men than you, I guess. Well, a schoolteacher don'tmeet men the way other people do; he's shut up with the childer allthe day, and he gets so he measures men by them. That won't do on thesheep range, lad. But I guess you're findin' it out."

  "I'm learning a little, right along."

  "Yes, you've got the makin' of a sheepman in you; I said you had it inyou the first time I put my eyes on your face. Well, I'll be leavin'you now, lad. And remember the bargain about my Mary. You'll be asheepman in your own way the day you marry her. When a man's marryin'a sheep ranch what difference is it to him whether it's a Mary or aJoan?"

  "No difference--when he's marrying a sheep ranch," Mackenziereturned.