The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Page 9

  CHAPTER IX

  A TWO-GUN MAN

  "You know, John, if a man's goin' to be a sheepman, John, he's got tokeep awake day and night. He ain't goin' to set gabbin' and let agrizzly come right up under his nose and kill his sheep. It's thedifference between the man that wouldn't do it and the man that wouldthat makes the difference between a master and a man. That's thedifference that stands against Dad Frazer. He'd never work up topartnership in a band of sheep if he lived seven hundred years."

  So Tim Sullivan, a few days after the raid on John Mackenzie's flock.He had come over on hearing of it from Dad Frazer, who had gone totake charge of another band. Tim was out of humor over the loss, smallas it was out of the thousands he numbered in his flocks. He concealedhis feelings as well as he could under a friendly face, but his wordswere hard, the accusation and rebuke in them sharp.

  Mackenzie flared up at the raking-over Tim gave him, and turned hisface away to hold down a hot reply. Only after a struggle he composedhimself to speak.

  "I suppose it was because you saw the same difference in me that youwelched on your agreement to put me in a partner on the increase ofthis flock as soon as Dad taught me how to work the sheep and handlethe dogs," he said. "That's an easy way for a man to slide out fromunder his obligations; it would apply anywhere in life as well as inthe sheep business. I tell you now I don't think it was square."

  "Now, lad, I don't want you to look at it that way, not at all, not atall, lad." Tim was as gentle as oil in his front now, afraid that hewas in the way of losing a good herder whom he had tricked intoworking at a bargain price. "I don't think you understand the lay ofit, if you've got the impression I intended to take you in at thejump-off, John. It's never done; it's never heard of. A man's got toprove himself, like David of old. There's a lot of Goliaths here onthe range he's got to meet and show he's able to handle before any manwould trust him full shares on the increase of two thousand sheep."

  "You didn't talk that way at first," Mackenzie charged, rathersulkily.

  "I took to you when I heard how you laid Swan out in that fight youhad with him, John. That was a recommendation. But it wasn't enough,for it was nothing but a chance lucky blow you got in on him that giveyou the decision. If you'd 'a' missed him, where would you 'a' beenat?"

  "That's got nothing to do with your making a compact and breaking it.You've got no right to come here beefing around about the loss of afew sheep with a breach of contract on your side of the fence. You'veput it up to me now like you should have done in the beginning. Allright; I'll prove myself, like David. But remember there was anotherfellow by the name of Jacob that went in on a livestock deal with aslippery man, and stick to your agreement this time."

  "I don't want you to feel that I'm takin' advantage of you, John; Idon't want you to feel that way."

  "I don't just feel it; I know it. I'll pay you for the seven sheep thegrizzly killed, and take it out of his hide when I catch him."

  This offer mollified Tim, melting him down to smiles. He shook handswith Mackenzie, all the heartiness on his side, refusing the offerwith voluble protestations that he neither expected nor required it.

  "You've got the makin' of a sheepman in you, John; I always thoughtyou had. But----"

  * * * * *

  "You want to be shown. All right; I'm game, even at forty dollars andfound."

  Tim beamed at this declaration, but the fires of his satisfaction hewas crafty enough to hide from even Mackenzie's penetrating eyes.Perhaps the glow was due to a thought that this schoolmaster, who owedhis notoriety in the sheeplands to a lucky blow, would fail, leavinghim far ahead on the deal. He tightened his girths and set his foot inthe stirrup, ready to mount and ride home; paused so, hand on thesaddle-horn, with a queer, half-puzzled, half-suspicious look in hissheep-wise eyes.

  "Wasn't there something else that feller Jacob was workin' for besidesthe interest in the stock?" he asked.

  "Seems to me like there was," Mackenzie returned, carelessly. "Themain thing I remember in the transaction was the stone he set upbetween the old man and himself on the range. 'The Lord watch betweenthee and me,' you know, it had on it. That's a mighty good motto yetfor a sheepherder to front around where his boss can read it. A man'sgot to have somebody to keep an eye on a sheepman when his back'sturned, even today."

  Tim laughed, swung into the saddle, where he sat roving his eyes overthe range, and back to the little band of sheep that seemed only ahandful of dust in the unbounded pastures where they fed. Thehillsides were green in that favored section, greener than anywhereMackenzie had been in the sheeplands, the grass already long for thelack of mouths to feed. Tim's face glowed at the sight.

  "This is the best grazin' this range has ever produced in my day," hesaid, "too much of it here for that little band you're runnin'. I'llsend Dad over with three thousand more this week. You can camptogether--it'll save me a wagon, and he'll be company. How's Joangettin on with the learnin'?"

  "She's eating it up."

  "I was afraid it'd be that way," said Tim, gloomily; "you can'tdiscourage that girl."

  "She's too sincere and capable to be discouraged. I laid down my handlong ago."

  "And it's a pity to ruin a good sheepwoman with learnin'," Tim said,shaking his head with the sadness of it.

  Tim rode away, leaving Mackenzie to his reflections as he watched hisboss' broad back grow smaller from hill to hill. The sheepherdersmiled as he recalled Tim's puzzled inquiry on the other considerationof Jacob's contract with the slippery Laban.

  _What is this thou hast done unto me? Did not I serve with thee forRachel? Wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?_

  "Tim would do it, too," Mackenzie said, nodding his grave head; "he'dwork off the wrong girl on a man as sure as he had two."

  It was queer, the way Tim had thought, at the last minute, of the"something else" Jacob had worked for; queer, the way he had turned,his foot up in the stirrup, that puzzled, suspicious expression in hismild, shrewd face. Even if he should remember on the way home, or getout his Bible on his arrival and look the story up, there would benothing of a parallel between the case of Jacob and that of JohnMackenzie to worry his sheepman's head. For though Jacob served hisseven years for Rachel, which "seemed to him but a few days, for thelove he had to her," he, John Mackenzie, was not serving Tim Sullivanfor Joan.

  "Nothing to that!" said he, but smiling, a dream in his eyes, over thethought of what might have been a parallel case with Jacob's, here inthe sheeplands of the western world.

  Tim was scarcely out of sight when a man came riding over the hillsfrom the opposite direction. Mackenzie sighted him afar off, watchinghim as each hill lifted him to a plainer view. He was a stranger, anda man unsparing of his horse, pushing it uphill and down withunaltered speed. He rode as if the object of his journey lay a longdistance ahead, and his time for reaching it was short.

  Mackenzie wondered if the fellow had stolen the horse, having it morethan half in mind to challenge his passage until he could give anaccount of his haste, when he saw that the rider had no intention ofgoing by without speech. As he mounted the crest of the hill above theflock, he swung straight for the spot where Mackenzie stood.

  The stranger drew up with a short grunt of greeting, turning his gazeover the range as if in search of strayed stock. He was a short, spareman, a frowning cast in his eyes, a face darkly handsome, butunsympathetic as a cougar's. He looked down at Mackenzie presently, asif he had put aside the recognition of his presence as a secondarymatter, a cold insolence in his challenging, sneering eyes.

  "What are you doing over here east of Horsethief?" he inquired,bending his black brows in a frown, his small mustache twitching incatlike threat of a snarl.

  "I'm grazing that little band of sheep you see down yonder," Mackenziereturned, evenly, running his eyes over the fellow's gear.

  This was rather remarkable for a land out of which strife andcontention, murder and sudden death were believed to have passed
longago. The man wore two revolvers, slung about his slender frame on abroad belt looped around for cartridges. These loops were empty, butthe weight of the weapons themselves sagged the belt far down on thewearer's hips. His leather cuffs were garnitured with silver stars inthe Mexican style; he wore a red stone in his black necktie, which wastied with care, the flowing ends of it tucked into the bosom of hisdark-gray flannel shirt.

  "If you're tryin' to be funny, cut it out; I'm not a funny man," hesaid. "I asked you what you're doing over here east of HorsethiefCanyon?"

  "I don't know that it's any of your business where I run my sheep,"Mackenzie told him, resentful of the man's insolence.

  "Tim Sullivan knows this is our winter grazing land, and this grass isin reserve. If he didn't tell you it was because he wanted to run youinto trouble, I guess. You'll have to get them sheep out of here, anddo it right now."

  The stranger left it to Mackenzie's imagination to fix his identity,not bending to reveal his name. Hector Hall, Mackenzie knew him to be,on account of his pistols, on account of the cold meanness of his eyeswhich Dad Frazer had described as holding such a throat-cutting look.But armed as he was, severe and flash-tempered as he seemed, Mackenziewas not in any sort of a flurry to give ground before him. He lookedup at him coolly, felt in his pocket for his pipe, filled it withdeliberation, and smoked.

  "Have you got a lease on this land?" he asked.

  "I carry my papers right here," Hall replied, touching his belt.

  Mackenzie looked about the range as if considering which way to go.Then, turning again to Hall:

  "I don't know any bounds but the horizon when I'm grazing ongovernment land that's as much mine as the next man's. I don't like torefuse a neighbor a request, but my sheep are going to stay righthere."

  Hall leaned over a little, putting out his hand in a warning gesture,drawing his dark brows in a scowl.

  "Your head's swelled, young feller," he said, "on account of thatlucky thump you landed on Swan Carlson. You've got about as muchchance with that man as you have with a grizzly bear, and you've gotless chance with me. You've got till this time tomorrow to be sixmiles west of here with that band of sheep."

  Hall rode off with that word, leaving a pretty good impression that hemeant it, and that it was final. Mackenzie hadn't a doubt that hewould come back to see how well the mandate had been obeyed next day.

  If there was anything to Hall's claim on that territory, by agreementor right of priority which sheepmen were supposed to respect betweenthemselves, Tim Sullivan knew it, Mackenzie reflected. For a monthpast Tim had been sending him eastward every time the wagon was moved,a scheme to widen the distance between him and Joan and make it anobstacle in her road, he believed at the time. Now it began to showanother purpose. Perhaps this was the winter pasture claimed by theHall brothers, and Tim had sent him in where he was afraid to comehimself.

  It seemed a foolish thing to squabble over a piece of grazing landwhere all the world lay out of doors, but Hector Hall's way of comingup to it was unpleasant. It was decidedly offensive, bullying,oppressive. If he should give way before it he'd just as well leavethe range, Mackenzie knew; his force would be spent there, his dayclosed before it had fairly begun. If he designed seriously to remainthere and become a flockmaster, and that he intended to do, with allthe sincerity in him, he'd have to meet Hall's bluff with a strongerone, and stand his ground, whether right or wrong. If wrong, agentleman's adjustment could be made, his honor saved.

  So deciding, he settled that matter, and put it out of his head untilits hour. There was something more pleasant to cogitate--the parallelof Jacob and Laban, Tim Sullivan and himself. It was strange how thecraft of Laban had come down to Tim Sullivan across that mighty flightof time. It would serve Tim the right turn, in truth, if somethingshould come of it between him and Joan. He smiled in anticipatorypleasure at Tim's discomfiture and surprise.

  But that was not in store for him, he sighed. Joan would shake herwings out in a little while, and fly away, leaving him there, a dustysheepman, among the husks of his dream. Still, a man might dream on asunny afternoon. There was no interdiction against it; Hector Hall,with his big guns, could not ride in and order a man off that domain.A shepherd had the ancient privilege of dreams; he might drink himselfdrunk on them, insane on them in the end, as so many of them were saidto do in that land of lonesomeness, where there was scarcely an echoto give a man back his own faint voice in mockery of his solitude.

  Evening, with the sheep homing to the bedding-ground, broughtreflections of a different hue. Since the raid on his flock Mackenziehad given up his bunk in the wagon for a bed under a bush on thehillside nearer the sheep. Night after night he lay with the rifle athis hand, waiting the return of the grisly monster who had spent hisfury on the innocent simpletons in his care.

  Whether it was Swan Carlson, with the strength of his great arms,driven to madness by the blow he had received, or whether it wasanother whom the vast solitudes of that country had unhinged,Mackenzie did not know. But that it was man, he had no doubt.

  Dad Frazer had gone away unconvinced, unshaken in his belief that itwas a grizzly. Tim Sullivan had come over with the same opinion, noword of doubt in his mouth. But Mackenzie knew that when he shouldmeet that wild night-prowler he would face a thing more savage than abear, a thing as terrible to grapple with as the saber-tooth whosebones lay deep under the hills of that vast pasture-land.