The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

  CHAPTER XXVII

  A SUMMONS IN THE NIGHT

  Somebody was calling on the hill behind the sheep-wagon. Mackenzie satup, a chill in his bones, for he had fallen asleep on watch beside theashes of his supper fire. He listened, the rack of sleep clearing fromhis brain in a breath.

  It was Dad Frazer, and the hour was past the turn of night. Mackenzieanswered, the sound of a horse under way immediately following. Dadcame riding down the hill with loose shale running ahead of him, insuch 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 thedistance between the camps on foot. "Mary come over on her horse alittle while ago and rousted me out. She said somebody just passed hercamp, 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 saidJoan wouldn't be trapsin' around this time of night with nobody, butif she did happen to be she could take care of herself. But Mary saidshe sounded like she was fussin' and she thought something must bewrong, and for me to hop her horse and come hell-for-leather and tellyou."

  "How many--which way were they going?"

  "Two horses, Mary said, from the sound, but she didn't hear nobody'svoice 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 ofher '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 Dadlistening 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 whereMackenzie was running his sheep. He held his course in that directionas he rode break-neck up hill and down. He had little belief that itcould have been Joan who passed Mary's camp, yet he was disturbed byan anxiety that made his throat dry, and a fear that clung to him likegarments wet in the rain.

  Reid could not have anything to do with it in any event, Joan orsomebody else, for Reid was horseless upon the range. But if Joan, hewas at entire loss to imagine upon what business she could be ridingthe country that hour of the night. Joan had no fear of either nightor the range. She had cared for her sheep through storm and dark,penetrating all the terrors that night could present, and she knew therange too well to be led astray. It must have been a voice that Maryhad heard in a dream.

  Mackenzie felt easier for these reflections, but did not check hispace, holding on toward Carlson's house in as straight a line as hecould draw. He recalled curiously, with a prickling of renewedanxiety, that he always expected to be called to Carlson's house forthe last act in the sheeplands tragedy. Why, he did not know.Perhaps he had not expected it; maybe it was only a psychologicallightning-play of the moment, reflecting an unformed emotion. Thatlikely was the way of it, he reasoned. Surely he never could havethought of being called to Carlson's ranch.

  In that fever of contradiction he pushed on, knees gripping his horsein the tensity of his desire to hasten, thinking to hold the animal upfrom stumbling as an anxious rider in the night will do. Now hebelieved it could not have been Joan, and felt a momentary ease; nowhe 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 downinto his eyes.

  From the side that he approached Carlson's house his way lay through avalley at the end, bringing him up a slight rise as he drew near thetrees that stood thickly about the place. Here he dismounted and wenton, leading his horse. A little way from the house he hitched hisanimal among the trees, and went forward in caution, wary of a dogthat might be keeping watch beside the door.

  There was no moon. The soft glow of a few misty, somnolent stars gaveno light among the trees, no light shone from the house. Mackenzierecalled the night he had first approached that door and come suddenlyaround the corner into the pale beam of Hertha Carlson's lantern. Nowthe kitchen door might be shut, and there was no window on that side.

  Mackenzie stopped to listen, his senses as keen as a savage's underhis strain. One who has not approached danger and uncertainty,listening and straining in the night, cannot conceive the exquisitepitch to which human nerves can be attuned. The body then becomes atower set with the filaments of wireless telegraphy, each of thethousand nerves straining forth to catch the faintest sound, the mostshadowy disturbance. Even premonitions become verities; indistinctpropositions tangible facts.

  In that exalted pitch of nervous sensibility Mackenzie stoodlistening, fifty feet or less from the kitchen door. No sound, but asharp 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 afoot shifted on the floor. Almost immediately someone began walking upand down the room, pushing a chair aside as if to clear the way.Mackenzie remembered the window high in the wall beside the stove andwent hastily around the house to it, restraining himself from burstingprecipitately into something which might be no concern of his orwarrant his interference at all. It seemed so preposterous even tosuspect that Joan was there.

  Reid was pacing up and down the room, a lantern standing on the floorbeside the chair from which he had risen. The place had beenreadjusted since the ruin that fell over it in Mackenzie's fight withSwan; the table stood again in the place where he had eaten his supperon it, the broken leg but crudely mended.

  Reid seemed to be alone, from what of the interior of the houseMackenzie could see, shifting to bring the door of the inner room toview. It was closed; Joan was not there.

  Mackenzie watched Reid as he paced up and down the kitchen floor.There was a nervousness over him, as of a man who faced a greatuncertainty. He walked with bent head, now turning it sharply as hestood listening, now going on again with hands twitching. He threwdown his cigarette and stamped it, went to the kitchen door, opened itand stood listening.

  A little while Reid stood at the door, head turned, as if he harkenedfor the approach of somebody expected. When he turned from the door heleft it open, rolled a cigarette, crossed to the door of the innerroom, where he stood as if he debated the question of entering. Alittle while in that uncertain, hesitant way; then he struck a matchon the door and turned again to his pacing and smoking.

  Mackenzie almost decided to go to the open door and speak to Reid, andlearn whether he might be of assistance to him in his evident stress.He was ready to forgive much of what had passed between them, blamingit to Reid's chafing against the restraint that was whetting him downto a bone.

  Mackenzie felt now that he had not handled Reid in the right way. Reidwas not of the slow, calculative, lead-balanced type of himself. Hewas a wolf of civilization, to whom these wilds were more galling thanthe bars of a prison. The judge who had agreed to this sentence hadread deeply in the opaque soul of the youth.

  Prison would not have been much of a penance for Reid. There he wouldhave found intrigue, whispering, plottings; a hundred shadowydiversions to keep his perverted mind clear and sharp. Here he metonly the silence of nature, the sternest accuser of a guilty soul.Reid could not bear the accusation of silence. Under it his mind grewirritable with the inflammation of incipient insanity. In a littlewhile it would break. Even now he was breaking; that was plain in hisdisordered eyes.

  Still Mackenzie hesitated to speak to him, watching him as he wentwith increasing frequency to the open door to listen. It was not hisaffair; Joan could not be there. Even if she were there, she must havecome for a purpose good and justifiable, and of her own free will. Butshe was not there, and Reid was waiting for somebody to come. SwanCarlson or his wife, it must be, and what business they had beforethem in this unrighteous hour Mackenzie could not imagine. But plainlyit had nothing to do with Joan.

/>   Mackenzie's thoughts reverted to the night he came to that cabin amongthe trees, guided thither by the plaintive melody of Hertha Carlson'ssong. What a fool he had been to linger on there that night waiting tosee Swan, in the mistaken kindness to the woman the wild fellow hadmade his slave. If he had gone on that night, leaving the still watersof trouble unstirred, he would have walked in peace through hisapprenticeship. Surely his crowding of trouble at Swan Carlson's doorthat night was the beginning of it all.

  There was that door closed now on the inner room; on that night itstood open, the long chain that bound the Swede's wife running throughit from the staple driven into the log. Mackenzie had not noticed thethickness of the door's planks that night, or the crudity of itsconstruction. The handiwork of Swan Carlson was proclaimed from thatdoor; it was rough and strong, like himself, without finish, looselyjoined. Its planks were oak; great nails in them marked the Z of itsbrace.

  Then Mackenzie turned his eyes upon Reid again. Reid went back to theinner door, pushed it, tried it with his foot. It seemed to befastened within. Perhaps there was a reason for its strength; maybeSwan kept his crude treasures locked there in that small stronghold oflogs while he roamed the range after his sheep. Reid did not appeargreatly interested in the door, or what lay behind it. He turned fromit almost at once, drew his chair in front of it, sat down, his righthand toward Mackenzie, the lantern light strong on the lower part ofhis body, his face in shadow from the lantern's top. Mackenziequickened with a new interest, a new speculation, when he saw thatReid's holster hung empty at his belt.

  At once Mackenzie decided to speak to Reid, certain that he had beenthrough some misadventure in which he had suffered loss. He drew awayfrom the window, going around the front part of the house to come tothe kitchen door, thinking it might be wise to know the way the landlay around those premises.

  This part of the house was little larger than the shack of boards thathad been built to it. There was no opening in its solid log walls,neither of window or door save alone the door opening into thekitchen. The place was a vault.

  Somebody was approaching, riding rapidly up the valley. There was morethan one horse, Mackenzie could well make out as he stood at thecorner of the house, listening. He saw Reid's shadow fall in the lightthat spread through the open door, and turned back to keep his watchat the window.

  It was not the moment to offer friendship or sympathy to Reid.Something of Reid's own brewing was coming to a boil there, somebusiness of his own was drawing to a head in that lonely cabin amongthe whispering trees.

  Reid took up the lantern, stood a moment as if indecisive, placed iton the stove. Not satisfied with the way the light of it struck himthere, apparently, he removed it and stood it in a corner. Whoever wascoming, Reid did not want it known at a glance that his scabbard wasempty. Mackenzie pressed a little nearer the window. When a manprepared for a meeting with that caution, he would do to watch.

  Reid went to the open door, where he stood like a host to receive hisguests. The riders were among the trees; coming on more slowly. Nowthey stopped, and Reid turned to light a fresh cigarette. The flash ofthe match showed his face white, hat pulled down on his brows, histhin, long gamester's fingers cupped round the blaze.

  There fell a moment of silence, no sound of word, no movement of horseor foot upon the ground. Insects among the trees were grinding theirscythes for tomorrow's reaping, it seemed, whirring in loud, harshchorus such as one never heard out on the grazing lands.

  Now the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Reid came back intothe room, where he stood drawing a deep breath of smoke like a mandrinking to store against a coming thirst. He dropped the cigarette,set his foot on it, crushed it to sparks on the floor.

  Swan Carlson was in the door, the light dim on his stern, handsomeface. Behind him stood his woman, a white wimple bound on her foreheadlike a nun.