The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

by Ogden, George W

  “Will you?” Joan asked, hope clearing the shadows from her face again.

  “But we might be too far apart for lessons very often,” he suggested.

  “Not more than ten or twelve miles. I could ride that every day.”

  “It’s a bargain then, if I get on,” said he.

  “It’s a bargain,” nodded Joan, giving him her hand to bind it, with great earnestness in her eyes.

  * * *

  CHAPTER V

  TIM SULLIVAN

  “Yes, they call us flockmasters in the reports of the Wool Growers’ Association, and in the papers and magazines, but we’re nothing but sheepmen, and that’s all you can make out of us.”

  Tim Sullivan spoke without humor when he made this correction in the name of his calling, sitting with his back to a haycock, eating his dinner in the sun. Mackenzie accepted the correction with a nod of understanding, sparing his words.

  “So you want to be a flockmaster?” said Tim. “Well, there’s worse callin’s a man, especially a young man, could take up. What put it in your head to tramp off up here to see me? Couldn’t some of them sheepmen down at Jasper use you?”

  “I wanted to get into the heart of the sheep country for one thing, and several of my friends recommended you as the best sheepman on the range, for another. I want to learn under a master, if I learn at all.”

  “Right,” Tim nodded, “right and sound. Do you think you’ve got the stuff in you to make a sheepman out of?”

  “It will have to be a pretty hard school if I can’t stick it through.”

  “Summers are all right,” said Tim, reflectively, nodding away at the distant hills, “and falls are all right, but you take it winter and early spring, and it tries the mettle in a man. Blizzards and starvation, and losses through pile-ups and stampedes, wolves and what not, make a man think sometimes he’ll never go through it any more. Then spring comes, with the cold wind, and slush up to your ankles, and you out day and night lookin’ after the ewes and lambs. Lambin’ time is the hard time, and it’s the time when a man makes it or loses, accordin’ to what’s in him to face hardship and work.”

  “I’ve heard about it; I know what I’m asking to go up against, Mr. Sullivan.”

  “You want to buy in, or take a band on shares?”

  “I’d rather take a band on shares. If I put what little money I’ve got into it I’ll go it alone.”

  “That’s right; it’s safer to let the other man take the risk. It ain’t fair to us sheepmen, but we have to do it to get men. Well, when we hit on a good man, it pays better than hirin’ poor ones at fifty dollars a month and found. I’ve had old snoozers workin’ for me that the coyotes eat the boots off of while they was asleep. You look kind of slim and light to tackle a job on the range.”

  Mackenzie made no defense of his weight, advancing no further argument in behalf of his petition for a job. Sullivan measured him over with his appraising eyes, saying nothing about the bruises he bore, although Mackenzie knew he was burning with curiosity to go into the matter of how and when he received them.

  Sullivan was a man of calm benignity of face, a placid certainty of his power and place in the world; a rugged man, broad-handed, slow. His pleasure was in the distinction of his wealth, and not in any use that he made of it for his own comfort or the advancement of those under his hand. Even so, he was of a type superior to the general run of flockmasters such as Mackenzie had met.

  “I’ll give you a job helpin’ me on this hay for a few days, and kind of try you out,” Tim agreed at last. “I don’t want to discourage you at the start, but I don’t believe you got the mettle in you to make a flockmaster, if you want to call it that, out of.”

  “All right; I’ll help you on the hay. Before I start in though, I’d like to borrow a saddle-horse from you to take a ride down the creek to Swan Carlson’s place. I wouldn’t be long.”

  “Carlson’s place? Do you know Swan Carlson?”

  Mackenzie told in few words how much he knew of Carlson, and his reason for desiring to visit him. Tim’s wonder was too large to contain at hearing this news. He got up, his eyes staring in plain incredulity, his mouth open a bit between surprise and censure, it seemed. But he said nothing for a little while; only stood and looked Mackenzie over again, with more careful scrutiny than before.

  “I’ll go down with you,” he announced, turning abruptly away to get the horses.

  It was evident to Mackenzie that Sullivan was bewildered between doubt and suspicion as they rode toward Carlson’s ranch, which the sheepman said was about seven miles away. But he betrayed nothing of his thoughts in words, riding in silence mainly, looking at the ground like a man who had troubles on his mind.

  The silence of abandonment was over Carlson’s house as they rode up. A few chickens retreated from the yard to the cover of the barn in the haste of panic, their going being the only sound of life about the place. The door through which Mackenzie had left was shut; he approached it without hesitation––Tim Sullivan lingering back as if in doubt of their reception––and knocked. No answer. Mackenzie tried the door, finding it unlocked; pushed it open, entered.

  Sullivan stood outside, one mighty hand on the jamb, his body to one side under protection of the house, his head put cautiously and curiously round to see, leaving a fairway for Swan Carlson should he rise from a dark corner, shake himself like an old grizzly, and charge.

  “Is he there?” Tim asked, his voice a strained whisper.

  Mackenzie did not reply. He stood in the middle of the room where his combat with Swan had taken place, among the debris of broken dishes, wrecked table, fallen stovepipe and tinware, looking about him with grim interest. There was nobody in the other room, but the blood from Swan’s hurt trailed across the floor as if he had been helped to the bed. Tim took his courage in both hands and came just inside the door.

  “Man! Look at the blood!” he said.

  “There’s nobody here,” Mackenzie told him, turning to go.

  “She’s took him to the doctor,” said Tim.

  “Where is that?”

  “There’s a kind of a one over on the Sweetwater, sixty miles from here, but there’s no good one this side of Jasper.”

  “He’ll die on the way,” Mackenzie said conclusively.

  “No such luck,” said Tim. “Look! There’s the chain he tied that woman of his up with.”

  “We’d better go back and get at that hay,” Mackenzie said. “There’s nothing I can do for Carlson.”

  “There’s the table leg you hit him with!” Tim picked it up, plucking off the red hairs which clung to it, looking at Mackenzie with startled eyes. Mackenzie mounted his horse.

  “You’d better shut the door,” he called back as he rode away.

  Tim caught up with him half a mile on the way back to the hay-field. The sheepman seemed to have outrun his words. A long time he rode beside Mackenzie in silence, turning a furtive eye upon him across his long nose now and then. At last it burst from him:

  “You done it!” he said, with the astonished pleasure of a man assured against his doubts.

  Mackenzie checked his horse, looking at Tim in perplexed inquiry.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “You laid him out––Swan Carlson––you done it! Man!”

  “Oh, you’re still talking about that,” Mackenzie said, a bit vexed.

  “It would be worth thousands to the rest of us sheepmen on this range if he never comes back.”

  “Why didn’t some of you handle him long ago? A man of your build ought to be able to put a dent in Carlson.”

  “I’ll fight any man that stands on two feet,” said Tim, with such sincerity that it could not have been taken for a boast, “you can ask about me far and near, but I draw the line at the devil. I’ve stood up with four men against me, with meat cleavers and butcher knives in their hands, when I used to work as a sheep butcher back in the packin’ house in Chicago, and I’ve come through with my l
ife. But them was friends of mine,” he sighed; “a man knew how they lived. Swan Carlson’s got a wolf’s blood in his veins. He ain’t a human man.”

  “And this man is worth three hundred thousand dollars!” thought Mackenzie. And he knew, also, that the greatest treasure that the flockmaster could count was one not so greatly appreciated as a thousand sheep––that brave, ambitious little rebel, Joan.

  “Maybe you’ve got the makin’ of a sheepman in you,” Tim said, thoughtfully, as they came in sight of the hay. “I’ve got an old man I could put you under till the dogs got used to you and you learnt their ways and found out something among the thousand things a man’s got to know if he intends to make a success of runnin’ sheep. Old Dad Frazer could put you onto the tricks of the trade quicker than any man I know. Maybe you have got the makin’ of a sheepman in you. I’ll have to think it over.”

  Tim took the four days they were at the hay to think about it. At the end of that time, with the hay in stack and the mowing-machine loaded into the wagon for the rough journey to the ranch, Tim unburdened his mind.

  “I’ve decided to try you out, John,” he announced, but shaking his head as he spoke, as if he doubted the wisdom of the venture. “I’ll leave you here with Dad Frazer––he’s over on Horsethief, about six miles across from Joan’s range––and let him break you in. You understand, you don’t go in on shares till you’re able to handle at least two thousand head.”

  “I agree on that.”

  “And then there’s another little point.” Tim shifted his feet, jerked up his trousers, rubbed his chin in a truly Irish way. “That girl of mine, Joan, she’s got it in her head she wants to be a lady, and go to college and put on agonies. No use in it, as I tell her. No girl that’s got money needs any of the education stuff. I got on without it, and I made my money without it. Joan she wants you to give her some lessons. She made me promise I wouldn’t take you on unless you’d agree to that as part of our conditions and contract.”

  Mackenzie had no need to put on a face of thinking it over seriously; he was entirely sincere in the silence he held while he revolved it in his mind. He doubted whether more learning would bring to Joan the contentment which she lacked in her present state. It might only open the door to a greater longing, or it might disillusion her when her feet had left these wild, free hills, and set a pang in her heart like a flame for the things which knowledge closes the door against the return for evermore.

  “I’ll tell you how to handle her to be rid of her soon,” said Tim, winking craftily, seeing how the wind stood. “Discourage her, tell her she ain’t got the mind for books and Latin and mathematics. All the mathematics she needs is enough to count her sheep and figure her clip. Tell her to put books out of her head and stick to the range, marry some good sheepman if one turns up to her taste, or pass them all up if she likes. But tell her to stick to sheep, whatever she does. She can be the sheep queen of this country in fifteen years; she’s as handy with ’em now as I am, and I tell you, John, that’s something that’s hard for me to say, even of my own girl. But she is; she’s as good a sheepman right now as I am or ever will be. But you don’t need to tell her that.”

  “I don’t believe she’ll take it, but it’s the soundest advice I could give her,” Mackenzie said.

  “Work up to it gradual, lad; it can’t be done in a day. Make the lessons hard, pile the Latin on heavy. Lord, I remember it, back in the old country, old Father MacGuire layin’ it on the lads under his thumb. Devil a word of it sticks to me now, not even the word for sheep. I tried to remember some of it when they sent me up to the legislature in Cheyenne; I wanted to knock ’em over. But it had all leaked out. Discourage her, man; discourage her.”

  “Yes, that might be the greatest kindness I could do her in the end,” Mackenzie said.

  “I’ll drop you off over there; you can stay in camp tonight with Charley and Joan. Tomorrow I’ll come back and take you out to Dad Frazer’s camp, and you can begin your schoolin’ for the makin’ of a master. But begin early to discourage her, John; begin at her early, lad.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER VI

  EYES IN THE FIRELIGHT

  “They call it the lonesomeness here,” said Joan, her voice weary as with the weight of the day. “People shoot themselves when they get it bad––green sheepherders and farmers that come in here to try to plow up the range.”

  “Crazy guys,” said Charley, contemptuously, chin in his hands where he stretched full length on his belly beside the embers of the supper fire.

  “Homesick,” said Mackenzie, understandingly. “I’ve heard it’s one of the worst of all diseases. It defeats armies sometimes, so you can’t blame 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 defiance in her tone, as if in defense of a question often disputed between herself and Charley.

  “You think you do,” said Charley, “but you’d hit the high places comin’ 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 sheep figures up enough you’ll see me hittin’ the breeze for Chicago. I want to see the picture galleries and libraries.”

  “I’d like to go through the mail-order house we get our things from up there,” Charley said. “The catalogue says it covers seventeen acres!”

  Mackenzie was camping with them for the night on his way to Dad Frazer’s range, according to Tim Sullivan’s plan. Long since they had finished supper; the sheep were quiet below them on the hillside. The silence of the sheeplands, almost oppressive in its weight, lay around them so complete and unbroken that Mackenzie fancied he could hear the stars snap as they sparkled. He smiled to himself at the fancy, face turned up to the deep serenity of the heavens. Charley blew the embers, stirring them with a brush of sage.

  “The lonesomeness,” said Mackenzie, with a curious dwelling on the word; “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 a little blaze jumped up into the startled dark. The sudden light revealed Joan’s face where she sat across from Mackenzie, and it was so 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 the night after her dreams of freedom beyond the land she knew, and so she held them a moment, undazzled by the light of the leaping blaze. They gleamed like glad waters in a morning sun, and the schoolmaster’s heart was quickened by them, and the pain for her longing soothed out of it. The well of her youth was revealed before him, the fountain of her soul.

  “I’m goin’ to roll in,” Charley announced, his branch consumed in the eager breath of the little blaze. “Don’t slam your shoes down like you was drivin’ nails when you come in, Joan.”

  “It wouldn’t bother you much,” Joan told him, calmly indifferent to his great desire for unbroken repose.

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

  “You could drive a wagon over him and never wake him once he hits the hay,” she said.

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

  “Oh, he’s a regular old flat-foot,” said Joan. “He’ll talk your leg off before you’ve been around him a week, blowin’ about what he used to do down in Oklahoma.”

&
nbsp; “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 with all 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 Frazer talking 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 to with 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 long time, thinking of the sparkle of her yearning eyes, smiling in his grim way to himself when there was no chance of being seen as he felt again the flash of them strike deep into his heart. Wise eyes, eyes which held a store of wholesome knowledge gleaned from the years in those silent places where her soul had grown without a shadow to smirch 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 Frazer grazes his sheep?”

  “Close to the range Swan Carlson and the Hall boys use, and you want to keep away from there.”

  “Of course; I wouldn’t want to trespass on anybody’s territory. Are they 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––I don’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 anybody lets 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 you white, anyway.”