The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 37

Conscious of this eminence above those who dwelt in sheep-wagons or log houses by the creek-sides, Tim's girls walked out into their world with a.s.surance. Tim had done that much for them in rearing his mansion on the hilltop, no matter what he had denied them of educational refinements. Joan had gone hungry on this distinction; she had developed the bitterness that comes from the seeds of loneliness. This was lacking in Mary, who was all smiles, pink and white in spite of sheeplands winds and suns. Mary was ready to laugh with anybody or at anybody, and hop a horse for a twenty-mile ride to a dance any night you might name.

Mackenzie made friends with her in fifteen minutes, and had learned at the end of half an hour that friend was all he might ever hope to be even if he had come with any warmer notions in his breast. Mary was engaged to be married. She told him so, as one friend to another, pledging him to secrecy, showing a little ring on a white ribbon about her neck. Her Corydon was a sheepman's son who lived beyond the Sullivan ranch, and could dance like a b.u.t.terfly and sing songs to the banjo in a way to melt the heart of any maid. So Mary said, but in her own way, with blushes, and wide, serious eyes.

Mackenzie liked Mary from the first ingenuous word, and promised to hold her secret and help her to happiness in any way that a man might lift an honorable hand. And he smiled when he recalled Tim Sullivan's word about catching them young. Surely a man had to be stirring early in the day to catch them in the sheeplands. Youth would look out for its own there, as elsewhere. Tim Sullivan was right about it there. He was wiser than he knew.

Mary was dressed as neatly as Joan always dressed for her work with the sheep. And she wore a little black crucifix about her neck on another ribbon which she had no need to conceal. When she touched it she smiled and smiled, and not for the comfort of the little cross, Mackenzie understood, but in tenderness for what lay beneath it, and for the shepherd lad who gave it. There was a beauty in it for him that made the glad day brighter.

This fresh, sprightly generation would redeem the sheeplands, and change the business of growing sheep, he said. The isolation would go out of that life; running sheep would be more like a business than a penance spent in heartache and loneliness. The world could not come there, of course. It had no business there; it should not come. But they would go to it, those young hearts, behold its wonders, read its weaknesses, and return. And there would be no more straining of the heart in lonesomeness such as Joan had borne, and no more discontent to be away.

"I hoped you'd marry Joan," said Mary, with a sympathetic little sigh.

"I don't like Earl Reid."

"Mary?" said Mackenzie. Mary looked up inquiringly. "Can you keep a secret for me, Mary?"

"Try me, John."

"I _am_ going to marry Joan."

"Oh, you've got it all settled? Did Joan wear your ring when she went home?"

"No, she didn't wear my ring, Mary, but she would have worn it if I'd seen her before she was sent away."

"I thought you were at the bottom of it, John," the wise Mary said.

"You know, dad's taken her sheep away from her, and she had a half-interest in at least a thousand head."

"I didn't know that, but it will not make any difference to Joan and me. But why hasn't she been over to see me, Mary?"

"Oh, dad's sore at her because she put her foot down flat when she heard it was fixed for her to marry Earl. She told dad to take his sheep and go to the devil--she was going to go away and work somewhere else. He made her go home and stay there like a rabbit in a box--wouldn't let her have a horse."

"Of course; I might have known it. I wonder if she knows I'm up?"

"She knows, all right. Charley slips word to her."

"Charley's a good fellow, and so are you," Mackenzie said, giving Mary his hand.

"You'll get her, and it's all right," Mary declared, in great confidence. "It'll take more than bread and water to tame Joan."

"Is that all they're giving her?"

"That's dad's idea of punishment--he's put most of us on bread and water one time or another. But mother has ideas of her own what a kid ought to have to eat."

Mary smiled over the recollection, and Mackenzie joined her. Joan would not grow thin with that mother on the job.

They talked over the prospects ahead of Joan and himself in the most comfortable way, leaving nothing unsaid that hope could devise or courage suggest. A long time Mackenzie remained with his little sister, who would have been dear to him for her own sweet sake if she had not been dearer because of her blood-tie to Joan. When he was leaving, he said:

"If anybody gets curious about my coming over to see you, Mary, you might let them think I'm making love to you. It would help both of us."

Mary turned her eyes without moving her head, looking at him across her nose in the arch way she had, and smiled with a deep knowingness.

"Not so bad!" said she.

They let it go at that, understanding each other very well indeed.

Mackenzie returned to Dad's camp thinking that the way to becoming a flockmaster was a checkered one, and filled with more adventures, harsh and gentle, than he ever had believed belonged to his apportionment in life. But he could not blame Tim Sullivan for placing Reid above him in rating on account of the encounters they had shared, or for bending down a bit in his manner, or taking him for a soft one who could be led into long labors on the promise of an uncertain reward.

Truly, he had been only second best all the way through, save for that "lucky blow," as Tim called it, that had laid Swan out in the first battle. Now Swan and he were quits, a blow on each side, n.o.body debtor any more, and Reid was away ahead of anybody who had figured in the violence that Mackenzie had brought into the sheeplands with him as an unwelcome stranger lets in a gust of wind on a winter night.

In spite of all this, the vocation of sheepman never appeared so full of attractive possibilities to Mackenzie as it looked that hour. All his old calculations were revived, his first determination proved to him how deeply it had taken root. He had come into the sheep country to be a flockmaster, and a flockmaster he would be. Because he was fighting his way up to it only confirmed him in the belief that he was following a destined course, and that he should cut a better figure in the end, somehow, than he had made at the beginning.

Tim Sullivan thought him simple; he looked at him with undisguised humor in his eyes, not taking the trouble to turn his back when he laughed. And they had taken Joan away out of his hands, like a gold-piece s.n.a.t.c.hed from a child. But that was more to his credit than his disgrace, for it proved that they feared him more than they scorned him, let them laugh as they might.

But it was time for him to begin putting the credits over on the other side of the book. Mackenzie took it up with Dad Frazer that evening, Rabbit sitting by in her quiet way with a nod and a smile now and then when directly addressed.

"I don't think you're able to go over there and let that feller off,"

Dad objected. "You can't tell about Swan; he may come round lookin'

for more trouble, and you not half the man you was before him and that dog chawed you up that way."

"I think I'll make out, Dad. I'll keep my eyes open this time, anyhow."

"He may not be able to slip up on you any more, but if he crowds a fuss where'll you be at, with that hand hardly able to hold a gun?"

"It will be different this time if he does. I'm going back to the sheep in the morning, Dad. I've got to get busy, and keep busy if I ever make good at this game."

Dad grunted around his pipestem, his charge being burned down to the wood, and the savor too sweet on his tongue to lose even a whiff by giving room for a word in the door of his mouth. Presently the fire fried and blubbered down in the pipe to the last atrocious smell, and there followed the noise of more strong twist-tobacco being milled between the old shepherd's rasping palms. Rabbit toddled off to bed without a word; Dad put a match to his new charge, the light making him blink, discovering his curiously sheared face with its picturesque features strong, its weakness under the shadows.

"What did you think of Mary?" he inquired, free to discuss the ladies, now Rabbit was gone.

"Mary's a little bit of all right, Dad."

"Yes, and not such a little bit, either. Mary's some chunk of a girl; she'll grow up to a woman that suits my eye. You could do worse than set your cap for that little lady, it seems to me, John."

"Any man could. She's got a lively eye, and wise head, too, if I'm not away off."

"She looks soft when you first glance her, but she's as deep as a well. Mary ain't the build of a girl that fools a man and throws him down. Now, you take Joan, a kind of a high-headed touch-me-not, with that gingerbread hair and them eyes that don't ever seem to be in fifty-five mile of you when you're talkin' to her. I tell you, the man that marries her's got trouble up his sleeve. He'll wake up some morning and find her gone off with some other man."

"What makes you think that, Dad?"

"Not satisfied with what she's got, always lookin' off over the hill like a breachy cow calculatin' on how much better the grazin'd be if she could hop the fence and go tearin' off over there. Joan ain't the kind that settles down to nuss babies and make a man a home. Mary is.

That's the difference between them two girls."

"Maybe you're right about it, Dad--I expect you are. You ought to know women if any man does."

"Well, neither one of 'em ain't a woman in the full meanin' of the word," Dad reflected, "but they've got the marks on 'em of what they'll turn out to be. The man that marries Mary he'll play safe; the feller that gits Joan takes on a gamble. If she ever does marry Reid he'll not keep her seven months. Shucks! I married a red-headed woman one time back in Oklahomey, and that blame woman run off with a horse-doctor inside of three months. I never did hear tell of that fool woman any more."

"I don't agree with you on the way you've got Joan sized up, no difference if your wife did run off with a horse-doctor. Her hair ain't red, anyway."

"Might as well be. You ain't so much of a hand at readin' people, anyhow, John; before you marry you ought to see a fortune-teller and have your hand read. You got away off on Reid, holdin' up for him agin' my judgment when he first come here on the range--don't you remember?"

"I didn't want to pa.s.s judgment on him in advance; that was all, Dad."