The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  EYES IN THE FIRELIGHT

  "They call it the lonesomeness here," said Joan, her voice weary aswith the weight of the day. "People shoot themselves when they get itbad--green sheepherders and farmers that come in here to try to plowup the range."

  "Crazy guys," said Charley, contemptuously, chin in his hands where hestretched full length on his belly beside the embers of the supperfire.

  "Homesick," said Mackenzie, understandingly. "I've heard it's one ofthe worst of all diseases. It defeats armies sometimes, so you can'tblame a lone sheepherder if he loses his mind on account of it."

  "Huh!" said Charley, no sympathy in him for such weakness at all.

  "I guess not," Joan admitted, thoughtfully. "I was brought up here,it's home to me. Maybe I'd get the lonesomeness if I was to go away."

  "You sure would, kid," said Charley, with comfortable finality.

  "But I want to go, just the same," Joan declared, a certain defiancein her tone, as if in defense of a question often disputed betweenherself and Charley.

  "You think you do," said Charley, "but you'd hit the high placescomin' back home. Ain't that right, Mr. Mackenzie?"

  "I think there's something to it," Mackenzie allowed.

  "Maybe I would," Joan yielded, "but as soon as my share in the sheepfigures up enough you'll see me hittin' the breeze for Chicago. I wantto see the picture galleries and libraries."

  "I'd like to go through the mail-order house we get our things from upthere," Charley said. "The catalogue says it covers seventeen acres!"

  Mackenzie was camping with them for the night on his way to DadFrazer's range, according to Tim Sullivan's plan. Long since they hadfinished supper; the sheep were quiet below them on the hillside. Thesilence of the sheeplands, almost oppressive in its weight, lay aroundthem so complete and unbroken that Mackenzie fancied he could hear thestars snap as they sparkled. He smiled to himself at the fancy, faceturned up to the deep serenity of the heavens. Charley blew theembers, stirring them with a brush of sage.

  "The lonesomeness," said Mackenzie, with a curious dwelling on theword; "I never heard it used in that specific sense before."

  "Well, it sure gets a greenhorn," said Joan.

  Charley held the sage-branch to the embers, blowing them until alittle blaze jumped up into the startled dark. The sudden lightrevealed Joan's face where she sat across from Mackenzie, and it wasso pensively sad that it smote his heart like a pain to see.

  Her eyes stood wide open as she had stretched them to roam into thenight after her dreams of freedom beyond the land she knew, and so sheheld them a moment, undazzled by the light of the leaping blaze. Theygleamed like glad waters in a morning sun, and the schoolmaster'sheart was quickened by them, and the pain for her longing soothed outof it. The well of her youth was revealed before him, the fountain ofher soul.

  "I'm goin' to roll in," Charley announced, his branch consumed in theeager breath of the little blaze. "Don't slam your shoes down like youwas drivin' nails when you come in, Joan."

  "It wouldn't bother you much," Joan told him, calmly indifferent tohis great desire for unbroken repose.

  Charley rolled on his back, where he lay a little while in luxuriousinaction, sleep coming over him heavily. Joan shook him, sending himstumbling off to the wagon and his bunk.

  "You could drive a wagon over him and never wake him once he hits thehay," she said.

  "What kind of a man is Dad Frazer?" Mackenzie asked, his mind runningon his business adventure that was to begin on the morrow.

  "Oh, he's a regular old flat-foot," said Joan. "He'll talk your legoff before you've been around him a week, blowin' about what he usedto do down in Oklahoma."

  "Well, a man couldn't get the lonesomeness around him, anyhow."

  "You'll get it, all right, just like I told you; no green hand withall his senses ever escaped it. Maybe you'll have it light, though,"she added, hopefully, as if to hold him up for the ordeal.

  "I hope so. But with you coming over to take lessons, and Dad Frazertalking morning, noon, and night, I'll forget Egypt and its fleshpots,maybe."

  "Egypt? I thought you came from Jasper?"

  "It's only a saying, used in relation to the place you look back towith regret when you're hungry."

  "I'm so ignorant I ought to be shot!" said Joan.

  And Mackenzie sat silently fronting her, the dead fire between, a longtime, thinking of the sparkle of her yearning eyes, smiling in hisgrim way to himself when there was no chance of being seen as he feltagain the flash of them strike deep into his heart. Wise eyes, eyeswhich held a store of wholesome knowledge gleaned from the years inthose silent places where her soul had grown without a shadow tosmirch its purity.

  "There's a difference between wisdom and learning," he said at last,in low and thoughtful voice. "What's it like over where Dad Frazergrazes his sheep?"

  "Close to the range Swan Carlson and the Hall boys use, and you wantto keep away from there."

  "Of course; I wouldn't want to trespass on anybody's territory. Arethey all disagreeable people over that way?"

  "There's nobody there but the Halls and Carlson. You know Swan."

  "He might improve on close acquaintance," Mackenzie speculated.

  "I don't think he's as bad as the Halls, wild and crazy as he is.Hector Hall, especially. But you may get on with them, all right--Idon't want to throw any scare into you before you meet them."

  "Are they out looking for trouble?"

  "I don't know as they are, but they're there to make it if anybodylets a sheep get an inch over the line they claim as theirs. Oh,well, pass 'em up till you have to meet them--maybe they'll treat youwhite, anyway."

  Again a silence stood between them, Mackenzie considering many things,not the least of them being this remarkable girl's life among thesheep and the rough characters of the range, no wonder in him over herimpatience to be away from it. It seemed to him that Tim Sullivanmight well spare her the money for schooling, as well as fend heragainst the dangers and hardships of the range by keeping her at homethese summer days.

  "It looks to me like a hard life for a girl," he said; "no diversions,none of the things that youth generally values and craves. Don't youever have any dances or anything--camp meetings or picnics?"

  "They have dances over at Four Corners sometimes--Hector Hall wantedme to go to one with him about a year ago. He had his nerve to ask me,the little old sheep-thief!"

  "Well, I should think so."

  "He's been doubly sore at us ever since I turned him down. I lookedfor him to come over and shoot up my camp some night for a long time,but I guess he isn't that bad."

  "So much to his credit."

  "But I wish sometimes I'd gone with him. Maybe it would havestraightened things out. You know, when you stay here on the range,Mr. Mackenzie, you're on a level with everybody else, no matter whatyou think of yourself. You can't get out of the place they make foryou in their estimation of you. Hector Hall never will believe I'mtoo good to go to a dance with him. He'll be sore about it all hislife."

  "A man naturally would have regrets, Miss Sullivan. Maybe that's asfar as it goes with Hector Hall, maybe he's only sore at heart for thehonor denied."

  "That don't sound like real talk," said Joan.

  Mackenzie grinned at the rebuke, and the candor and frankness in whichit was administered, thinking that Joan would have a frigid time of itout in the world if she applied such outspoken rules to its flatteriesand mild humbugs.

  "Let's be natural then," he suggested, considering as he spoke thatcandor was Joan's best defense in her position on the range. Here shesat out under the stars with him, miles from the nearest habitation,miles from her father's house, her small protector asleep in thewagon, and thought no more of it than a chaperoned daughter of thecity in an illuminated drawing-room. A girl had to put men in theirplaces and keep them there under such circumstances, and nobody knewbetter how to do it than Joan.

  "I'll try your patience and good hu
mor when you start out to teachme," she told him, "for I'll want to run before I learn to walk."

  "We'll see how it goes in a few days; I've sent for the books."

  "I'll make a good many wild breaks," she said, "and tumble around alot, I know, but there won't be anybody to laugh at me--but you." Shepaused as if considering the figure she would make at the tasks sheawaited with such impatience, then added under her breath, almost ina whisper, as if it was not meant for him to hear: "But you'll neverlaugh at me for being hungry to learn."

  Mackenzie attempted neither comment nor reply to this, feeling that itwas Joan's heart speaking to herself alone. He looked away over thesleeping sheeplands, vast as the sea, and as mysterious under thestarlight, thinking that it would require more than hard lessons andunusual tasks to discourage this girl. She stood at the fountain-edge,leaning with dry lips to drink, her wistful eyes strong to probe themysteries which lay locked in books yet strange to her, but wiser inher years than many a man who had skimmed a college course. There wasa vast difference between knowledge and learning, indeed; it never hadbeen so apparent to him as in the presence of that outspoken girl ofthe sheep range that summer night.

  What would the world do with Joan Sullivan if she ever broke herfetters and went to it? How would it accept her faith and frankness,her high scorn for the deceits upon which it fed? Not kindly, he knew.There would be disillusionment ahead for her, and bitter awakeningfrom long-wrapping dreams. If he could teach her to be content in thewide freedom of that place he would accomplish the greatest servicethat he could bring her in the days of her untroubled youth.Discourage her, said Tim Sullivan. Mackenzie felt that this was nothis job.

  "Maybe Charley's right about it," she said, her voice low, and softwith that inherited gentleness which must have come from TimSullivan's mother, Mackenzie thought. "He's a wise kid, maybe I wouldwant to come back faster than I went away. But I get so tired of itsometimes I walk up and down out here by the wagon half the night, andwear myself out making plans that I may never be able to putthrough."

  "It's just as well," he told her, nodding again in his solemn, weightyfashion; "everybody that amounts to anything has this fever of unrest.Back home we used to stack the wheat to let it sweat and harden.You're going through that. It takes the grossness out of us."

  "Have you gone through it?"

  "Years of it; over the worst of it now, I hope."

  "And you came here. Was that the kind of an ambition you had? Was thatall your dreams brought you?"

  "But I've seen more here than I ever projected in my schemes, MissJoan. I've seen the serenity of the stars in this vastness; I've feltthe wind of freedom on my face." And to himself: "And I have seen thefirelight leap in a maiden's eyes, and I have looked deep into theinspiring fountain of her soul." But there was not the boldness inhim, nor the desire to risk her rebuke again, to bring it to hislips.

  "Do you think you'll like it after you get over the lonesomeness?"

  "Yes, if I take the lonesomeness."

  "You'll take it, all right. But if you ever do work up to be asheepman, and of course you will if you stick to the range longenough, you'll never be able to leave again. Sheep tie a person downlike a houseful of children."

  "Maybe I'd never want to go. I've had my turn at it out there; I'vebeen snubbed and discounted, all but despised, because I had a littlelearning and no money to go with it. I can hide my little learninghere, and nobody seems to care about the money. Yes, I think I'll stayon the range."

  Joan turned her face away, and he knew the yearning was in her eyes asthey strained into the starlit horizon after the things she had neverknown.

  "I don't see what could ever happen that would make me want to stayhere," she said at last. She got up with the sudden nimbleness of adeer, so quickly that Mackenzie though she must be either startled oroffended, but saw in a moment it was only her natural way of moving inthe untrammeled freedom of her lithe, strong limbs.

  "You'll find a soft place on the side of the hill somewhere to sleep,"she said, turning toward the wagon. "I'm going to pile in. Goodnight."

  Mackenzie sat again by the ashes of the little fire after giving hergood night. He felt that he had suffered in her estimation because ofhis lowly ambition to follow her father, and the hundred other obscureheroes of the sheep country, and become a flockmaster, sequestered andsafe among the sage-gray hills.

  Joan expected more of a man who was able to teach school; expectedlofty aims, far-reaching ambitions. But that was because Joan did notknow the world that lifted the lure of its flare beyond the rim of herhorizon. She must taste it to understand, and come back with a bruisedheart to the shelter of her native hills.

  And this lonesomeness of which she had been telling him, this dreadsickness that fell upon a man in those solitudes, and drained away hiscourage and hope--must he experience it, like a disease of adolescencefrom which few escape? He did not believe it. Joan had said she wasimmune to it, having been born in its atmosphere, knowing nothing butsolitude and silence, in which there was no strange nor fearfulthing.

  But she fretted under a discontent that made her miserable, eventhough it did not strain her reason like the lonesomeness. Somethingwas wanting to fill her life. He cast about him, wondering what itcould be, wishing that he might supply it and take away the shadow outof her eyes.

  It was his last thought as he fell asleep in a little swale below thewagon where the grass was tall and soft--that he might find what waslacking to make Joan content with the peace and plenty of thesheeplands, and supply that want.