The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Read online

  CHAPTER XV

  ONLY ONE JACOB

  Joan came riding over the next morning from Reid's camp, not havingheard of Mackenzie's shift to oblige Dad Frazer. She was bareheaded,the sun in her warm hair, hat hanging on her saddle-horn.

  "Dad might have come by and told me," she said, flinging to the groundas lightly as a swallow. "It would have saved us half an hour."

  "We'll have to work harder to make it up," Mackenzie told her,thinking how much more a woman she was growing every day.

  Joan was distrait again that day, her eyes fixed often in dreamyspeculation as her teacher explained something that she found hard,against her wonted aptness, to understand. When the rather disjointedlesson came to an end Joan sighed, strapping her books in a way thatseemed to tell that she was weary of them.

  "Do you still think you'll stick to the sheep business, John?" sheasked, not lifting her eyes to his face, all out of her frank andearnest way of questioning.

  "I'm only on probation, you know, Joan; something might happen betweennow and this time next year to change things all around. There's achance, anyhow, that I may not make good."

  "No, nothing will ever happen to change it," said Joan, shaking herhead sadly. "Nothing that ought to happen ever happens here. I don'tknow whether I can stand it to carry out my contract with dad or not.Three years between me and what I'm longing for!"

  "It's not very long when one's young, Joan. Well, I don't know of anyshort cuts to either fame or fortune, or I'd have taken them myself."

  "Yes, but you're free to pick up and go whenever you want to. A mandon't have to have money to strike out and see the world--I don't seewhy a woman should. I could work my way as well as anybody."

  "They're harder masters out there than the range is to you here, Joan.And there's the insolence of mastery, and the obloquy of poverty andsituation that I hope you'll never feel. Wait a little while longerwith the probationers among the sheep."

  "Earl never will stay it out," she said, lifting her eyes for a momentto his. "He's sick of it now--he'd throw everything over if he had themoney to get away."

  "He'd be a very foolish young man, then. But it's like breaking offsmoking, I guess, to quit the things you've grown up with on shortnotice like he had."

  "Maybe in about a year more my interest will amount to enough to letme out," said Joan, pursuing her thought of winning to freedom in theway she had elected. She seemed innocent of any knowledge of thearrangement whereby Earl Reid was working for his reward. Mackenziewondered if it could be so.

  "If dad'll buy me out then," she said, speculatively, doubtfully,carrying on her thought in a disjointed way. "It would be like him toturn me down, though, if I want to quit before my time's up. And hewouldn't let me divide the sheep and sell my share to anybody else."

  No, Joan could not yet know of Tim's arrangement with Earl Reid'sfather. It would be like Tim, indeed, to bargain her off withoutconsidering her in the matter at all. To a man like Tim his sons anddaughters were as much his chattels as his sheep, kind as he was inhis way. The apprenticeship of Joan to the range was proof of that.Somewhere out in that gray loneliness two younger daughters wererunning sheep, with little brothers as protectors and companions,beginning their adventures and lessons in the only school they wereever likely to know.

  Tim made a great virtue of the fact that he had taught all of them toread and write. That much would serve most of them satisfactorily fora few years, but Mackenzie grinned his dry grin to himself when hethought of the noise there would be one day in Tim Sullivan's cotewhen the young pigeons shook out their wings to fly away. It was inthe breed to do that; it looked out of the eyes of every one.

  "I sent and got a Bible from the mail-order house," said Joan, lookingup with lively eyes.

  "Has it come already?"

  "Charley got it yesterday. I found that story about Jacob and Racheland the weak-eyed girl. It's awful short."

  "But it tells a good deal, Joan."

  Joan seemed thinking over how much the short story really told, hereyes far away on the elusive, ever-receding blue curtain that was downbetween her and the world.

  "Yes, it tells a lot," she sighed. "But Jake must not have been verybright. Well, he was a cowman, anyhow; he wasn't running sheep."

  "I think he went into the sheep business afterwards," Mackenzie said,diverted by her original comment on the old tale.

  "Yes, when his girls got big enough to do the work!" The resentment ofher hard years was in Joan's voice, the hardness of unforgiving regretfor all that had been taken from her life.

  Mackenzie felt a sweep of depression engulf him like a leaping wave.Joan was in the humor to profit by any arrangement that would breakher bondage to sheep; Tim Sullivan had been bringing her up,unconsciously, but none the less effectively, to fit into this schemefor marrying her to his old friend's rakish son. When the day came forJoan to know of the arrangement, she would leap toward it as toward anopen door.

  Still, it should not concern him. Once he had believed there was abudding blossom on his hitherto dry branch of romance; if he had beenso ungenerous as to take advantage of Joan's loneliness and urge thepromise to florescence, they might have been riding down out of thesheeplands together that day.

  It would have been a venture, too, he admitted. For contact with theworld of men must prove a woman, even as the hardships of the rangemust prove a man. Perhaps the unlimited variety displayed before hereyes would have made Joan dissatisfied with her plain choice.

  At that moment it came to him that perhaps Joan was to be tested andproved here, even as he was being tested in Tim Sullivan's balance forhis fitness to become a master over sheep. Here were two fair samplesof men out of the world's assorted stock--himself and Reid. One ofthem, deliberate, calm, assured of his way, but with little in hishand; the other a grig that could reel and spin in the night-lights,and flutter to a merry tune.

  With Mackenzie the rewards of life would come to her slowly, but witha sweet savor of full understanding and appreciation as they were won.Many of them most desired might never be attained; many more might betouched and withdrawn in the mockery that fate practices soheartlessly upon men. Reid could convey her at once over the roughsummits which men and women wear their hearts threadbare to attain.With Reid the journey would begin where, with the best hoping, it mustin his own company almost end.

  "It was unlucky for Earl that he killed Matt Hall," said Joan, takingup another thread of thought in her discursive, unfixed humor of thatday.

  "It's unfortunate for any man to have to kill another, I guess. But ithas to be done sometimes."

  "Matt deserved it, all right--he ought have been killed for his meanface long ago--but it's turned Earl's head, haven't you noticed? Hethinks he's got one foot on each side of this range, herdin' everybodybetween his legs."

  "He'll get over it in a little while."

  "He's not got brains enough to hold him down when the high winds beginto blow. If he's a fair sample of what they've got in Omaha, I'llcross it off my map when I begin to travel."

  "Dad says he's got the lonesomeness."

  "More of the cussedness."

  Her words warmed Mackenzie like a precious cordial. At every one ofthem in derogation of Reid his heart jumped, seeming to move him byits tremendous vibration a little nearer to her. He felt that it wastraitorous exultation at the expense of one who had befriended him toa limit beyond which it is hard for a man to go, but he could notdrown the exhilaration of a reborn hope in even the deepest waters ofhis gratitude.

  Somebody ought to tell Joan what they had designed for her in companywith Earl Reid; somebody ought to tell her, but it was not his place.It was strange that she had read the young man's weakness so readily.Mackenzie had noted more than once before in his life that those wholive nearest to nature are the most apt in reading all her works.

  "He'll never stay here through a winter," Joan predicted, withcertainty that admitted no argument. "Give him a touch of twenty-twobelow, and a snow on a
high wind, and send him out to bed down thesheep where it'll blow over them! I can see him right now. You'll doit, all right, and I'll have to, like I have done many a time. Butwe're not like Earl. Earl's got summer blood."

  Mackenzie took her hand, feeling it tremble a little, seeing her facegrow pale. The sun was red on the hill, the sheep were throwing longshadows down the slope as they grazed lazily, some of them standing onknees to crop the lush bunch grass.

  "Yes, Joan, you and I are of different blood," he said. "We are of theblood of the lonesome places, and we'll turn back to them always fromour wandering and seeking contentment among the press of men. He can'thave you--Earl Reid can't have you--ever in this world!"

  So it was out, and from his own mouth, and all his reserve wasnothing, and his silent pledging but as an idle word. Joan was lookingat him with wide and serious eyes.

  "Earl Reid?"

  "Earl Reid," he nodded. "I'd be a coward to give you up to him."

  Joan was not trembling now. She put her free hand over Mackenzie'swhere it gripped her fingers so hard that Earl Reid might have been onthe opposite side of her, trying to rive her away from him by force;she looked up into his eyes and smiled. And there were flecks ofgolden brown in Joan's eyes, like flakes of metal from her rich hair.They seemed to increase, and to sparkle like jewels struck throughplacid water by strong sunbeams as she looked up into his face.

  "I thought dad had made some kind of a deal with him," she said,nodding in her wise way, a truant strand of hair on her calm forehead."They didn't tell me anything, but I knew from the way dad looked atme out of the corners of his eyes that he had a trade of some kind on.Tell me about it, John."

  There was no explanation left to Mackenzie but the degrading truth,and he gave it to her as Tim Sullivan had given it to him.

  "They had their nerve!" said Joan, flushed with resentment.

  "It's all off, as far as it affects you and me," Mackenzie said,fetching his brows together in a frown of denial. "Reid can't haveyou, not even if he comes into two million when the old man dies."

  "No," said Joan softly, her hand stroking his, her eyes downcast, theglow of the new-old dawn upon her cheek; "there's only room for oneJacob on this range."

  "I thought I owed it to Reid, as a matter of honor between men, tostep aside and let him have you, according to the plan. But that was amistake. A man can't pay his debts by robbing his heart that way."

  "I saw something was holding you back, John," said the wise Joan.

  Mackenzie started as if she had thrust him with a needle, felt histelltale blood flare red in his face, but grinned a little as heturned to her, meeting her eye to eye.

  "So, you saw through me, did you, Joan?"

  "When you called me Rachel that day."

  "I nearly told you that time," he sighed.

  "You might have, John," said she, a bit accusingly; "you didn't owehim anything then--that was before he came."

  "I respected you too much to take advantage of your coming to me thatway for your lessons day by day, Joan. I had to fight to keep itback."

  "I tried to pull it out of you," Joan said, as serious as a penitent,although there was a smile breaking on her lips as she turned her faceaway.

  "I'd never want to do anything, or say anything, that would lower yourrespect for me one little degree, Joan," he said, still clinging toher hand as though he feared he had not quite won her, and must holdher fast by his side for the final word.

  "I know you wouldn't, John," said she, her voice shaking a little, andlow beneath her breath.

  "I wouldn't want to--to--go as far as Jacob went that first time hesaw Rachel," said he in desperation, his grip tightening on herfingers, sweat bursting on his brow. "I wouldn't want to--I'd _want_to, all right, but I wouldn't even--even----"

  Joan looked up at him with calm, placid eyes, with pale cheeks, withyearning lips, a flutter in her heart that made her weak. She nodded,anxious to help him to his climax, but not bold, not bolder thanhimself, indeed, and he was shaking like a sick man in the sun.

  "Unless I could make it holy, unless you could understand it so, Iwouldn't even--I wouldn't so much as----" He took her face between hishands, and bent over her, and a glad little sob trembled betweenJoan's lips as she rested her hands on his shoulders for thebenediction of his kiss.

  Joan did not stay to help him bring in the sheep that day, for therewas nothing left for her to wonder over, or stand wistfully by hersaddle waiting to receive. Neither was there any sound of weeping asshe rode up the hill, for the male custom of expressing joy in thatway had gone out of fashion on the sheep ranges of this world longbefore John Mackenzie's day.

  Nothing that he could owe a man could equal what he had gained thathour, Mackenzie thought, standing there with heart as light as thedown of cottonwood. With his great debt paid to Earl Reid, even tothe measure of his own life, he would still leave the world a richman. He had come into the fresh pastures of romance at last.

  Joan waved him good-bye from the hilltop and went on, the understandingof his fortune growing on him as he recalled her eyes in that momentwhen she closed them to his salute upon her lips. She gave up thatfirst kiss that she ever had yielded to any man as though he hadreached down and plucked it out of her heart.

  Let them go on planning for years of labor, let them go on schemingfor inheritances, and piece their broken arrangements together as theymight when they found he had swept Joan out of their squalidcalculations as a rider stoops and lifts a kerchief from the ground.There would be bitterness and protestations, and rifts in his ownbright hopes, as well.

  But if Tim Sullivan would not give her up to him with the good graceof a man, Mackenzie said, smiling and smiling like a daft musician, hewould take her from both of them and ride away with her into thevalleys of the world which she was so hungry in her young heart tobehold.

  He rounded his sheep to their hillside, and made his fire, a song inhis heart, but his lips sealed, for he was a silent man. And at duskthere came riding into his camp a man, whose coat was at his cantle,who was belted with pistols, who roved his eye with cautious look ashe halted and gave the shepherd good evening. Mackenzie invited himdown to the hospitality of the camp, which the stranger accepted withhearty grace.

  "I was lookin' for a young feller by the name of Reid; you're not theman," the stranger said with finality, after one more shrewd look intoMackenzie's face.

  "My name's Mackenzie--Reid's running a band of sheep for the sameoutfit about five miles east of here."

  The stranger said nothing more, being busy at that moment unsaddlinghis horse, which he hobbled and turned to graze. He came over to thefire where Mackenzie was baking biscuits in a tilted pan, and satdown, dusty from his day's ride.

  "I'm the sheriff of this county," he announced, not going into thedetail of his name. Mackenzie nodded his acknowledgment, the sheriffkeeping his hungry eye on the pan. "I took a cut across here fromservin' some subpoenas in a murder case on some fellers up on FarewellCreek," he explained, "to see how that feller Reid's behavin'."

  "I haven't heard any complaint," Mackenzie told him, wondering whythis official interest. The sheriff seemed satisfied with what heheard, and made no further inquiry or explanation until after he hadeaten his supper. As he smoked a cracked cigar which he took from thepocket of his ornate vest, he talked.

  "I didn't know anything about that boy when Sullivan put him in hereon the range," he said, "but the other day I got a letter from thesheriff in Omaha askin' me to keep my eye on him. The news of Reid'skillin' Matt Hall got over to Omaha. You know Reid, he's undersentence of three years in the pen."

  "I didn't know."

  "Yeah. Daddy got him paroled to Sullivan's sheep ranch to serve it.If he breaks over here he goes to the pen. That's the way _he_stands."

  "In that case, he'll more than likely stay it out."

  "He will if he's wise. He's been a kind of a streak of wildness, thesheriff in Omaha said. Sent me his full history, three pages. Marriedsomebody a ye
ar or so ago, but the old man got him out of that bybuyin' off the girl. Then he started out forgin', and pushed it sohard the old man refused to make good any more. But he didn't want tosee the kid go to the pen, and he's here. I got to keep my eye on himto see he don't break over."

  The sheriff stretched out when he had finished his cigar and went tosleep in a blanket provided by his host. He was up with dawn, ready toresume his journey. Mackenzie pressed him to stay for breakfast, buthe said he wanted to make a start before the sun and reach Sullivan'sranch-house.

  "Does Sullivan know how things stand with Reid?" Mackenzie inquired.

  "I reckon he must. If he don't he soon will. Kind of watch thatfeller, will you, and slip me word if he shows any signs of streakin'out of the country."

  "No, I've got my eye full looking after two thousand sheep. That's upto Sullivan, he's responsible for Reid."

  The sheriff turned a sharp look of suspicion on Mackenzie, but saidnothing. He led his horse down to the little stream for water, andcame leading it back, a cast of disfavor in his face.

  "You're a bad bunch up in here," he said, "you and Carlson and Hall.If there's any more killin' and fightin' up this way I'll come in andclean you all out. Where did you say that feller was at?"

  Mackenzie told him again, and he rode off to take a look at Reid,and put what caution into his ear he had a mind to give. Mackenziesaw him blend into the gloom of early morning with a feeling ofself-felicitation on his act of yesterday. He was inspired yesterdaywhen he took Joan under his protection and laid claim to her in hisown right.