The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

by Ogden, George W

  “I suppose that guy told you the whole story,” he said at last, lifting his eyes briefly to Mackenzie’s face.

  “The sheriff, you mean?”

  “Who else?” impatiently.

  “I don’t know whether he told me all or not, but he told me plenty.”

  “And you’ve passed it on to Joan by now!”

  “No.”

  Reid faced around, a flush over his thin cheeks, a scowl in his eyes. He took up his belt; Mackenzie marked how his hands trembled as he buckled it on.

  “Well, you keep out of it, you damned pedagogue!” Reid said, the words bursting from him in vehement passion. “This is my game; I’ll play it without any more of your interference. You’ve gone far enough with her––you’ve gone too far! Drop it; let her alone.”

  Mackenzie got up. Reid stood facing him, his color gone now, his face gray. Mackenzie held him a moment with stern, accusing eyes. Then:

  “Have you been over there spying on me?”

  Reid passed over the question, leaving Mackenzie to form his own conclusions. His face flushed a little at the sting of contempt that Mackenzie put into his words. He fumbled for a match to light his stub of cigarette before he spoke:

  “I played into your hands when I let you go over there, and you knew I’d play into them when you proposed it. But that won’t happen twice.”

  “I’ll not allow any man to put a deliberately false construction on my motives, Reid,” Mackenzie told him, hotly. “I didn’t propose going over to let Dad off, and you know it. I wanted you to go.”

  “You knew I wouldn’t,” Reid returned, with surly word.

  “If you’ve been leaving the sheep to go over there and lie on your belly like a snake behind a bush to spy on Joan and me, and I guess you’ve been doing it, all right––you’re welcome to all you’ve found out. There aren’t any secrets between Joan and me to keep from anybody’s eyes or ears.”

  Reid jerked his thin mouth in expression of derision.

  “She’s green, she’s as soft as cheese. Any man could kiss her––I could have done it fifteen minutes after I saw her the first time.”

  If Reid hoped to provoke a quarrel leading up to an excuse for making use of the gun for which his hand seemed to itch, he fell short of his calculations. Mackenzie only laughed, lightly, happily, in the way of a man who knew the world was his.

  “You’re a poor loser, Earl,” he said.

  “I’m not the loser yet––I’m only takin’ up my hand to play. There won’t be room on this range for you and me, Mackenzie, unless you step back in your schoolteacher’s place, and lie down like a little lamb.”

  “It’s a pretty big range,” Mackenzie said, as if he considered it seriously; “I guess you can shift whenever the notion takes you. You might take a little vacation of about three years back in a certain state concern in Nebraska.”

  “Let that drop––keep your hands off of that! You don’t know anything about that little matter; that damned sheriff don’t know anything about it. If Sullivan’s satisfied to have me here and give me his girl, that’s enough for you.”

  “You don’t want Joan,” said Mackenzie, speaking slowly, “you only want what’s conditioned on taking her. So you’d just as well make a revision in your plans right now, Reid. You and Sullivan can get together on it and do what you please, but Joan must be left out of your calculations. I realize that I owe you a good deal, but I’m not going to turn Joan over to you to square the debt. You can have my money any day you want it––you can have my life if you ever have to draw on me that far––but you can’t have Joan.”

  Mackenzie walked away from Reid at the conclusion of this speech, which was of unprecedented length for him, and of such earnestness that Reid was not likely to forget it soon, no matter for its length. The dogs left Reid to follow him.

  That Reid had been fraternizing with Swan Carlson, Mackenzie felt certain, drinking the night out with him in his camp. Carlson had a notoriety for his addiction to drink, along with his other unsavory traits. With Reid going off in two different directions from him, Mackenzie saw trouble ahead between them growing fast. More than likely one of them would have to leave the range to avoid a clash at no distant day, for Reid was in an ugly mood. Loneliness, liquor, discontent, native meanness, and a desire to add to the fame in the sheep country that the killing of Matt Hall had brought him, would whirl the weak fellow to his destruction at no distant day.

  Yet Reid had stood by him like a man in that fight with Matt Hall, when he could have sought safety in withdrawal and left him to his unhappy end. There was something coming to him on that account which a man could not repudiate or ignore. Whatever might rise between them, Mackenzie would owe his life to Reid. Given the opportunity, he stood ready and anxious to square the debt by a like service, and between men a thing like that could not be paid in any other way.

  Reid remained a while sitting on the hilltop where Mackenzie had found him, face in his hands, as before. After a time he stretched out and went to sleep, the ardent sun of noonday frying the lees of Swan Carlson’s whisky out of him. Toward three o’clock he roused, got his horse, saddled it, and rode away.

  Mackenzie believed he was going to hunt more whisky, and went to the rise of a ridge to see what course he took. But instead of striking for Carlson’s, Reid laid a course for Sullivan’s ranch-house. Going to Tim with a complaint against him, Mackenzie judged, contempt for his smallness rising in him. Let him go.

  Tim Sullivan might give him half his sheep if he liked him well enough, but he could not give him Joan.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XVII

  HERTHA CARLSON

  Swan Carlson or his woman was running a band of sheep very close to the border of Tim Sullivan’s lease. All afternoon Mackenzie had heard the plaint of lambs; they had lifted their wavering chorus all during Joan’s lesson, giving her great concern that Carlson designed attempting a trespass on her father’s land.

  Joan had come shortly after Reid’s unexplained departure, and had gone back to her flock again uninformed of Reid’s criminal career. Mackenzie felt that he did not need the record of his rival to hold Joan out of his hands. The world had changed around for him amazingly in the past few days. Where the sheeplands had promised little for him but a hard apprenticeship and doubtful rewards a little while ago, they now showered him with unexpected blessings.

  He ruminated pleasantly on this sudden coming round the corner into the fields of romance as he went to the top of the hill at sunset to see what Swan Carlson was about. Over in the next valley there spread a handful of sheep, which the shepherd was ranging back to camp. Mackenzie could not make sure at that distance whether the keeper was woman or man.

  Reid had not returned when Mackenzie plodded into camp at dusk. His absence was more welcome, in truth, than his company; Mackenzie hoped he would sulk a long time and stay away until he got his course in the sheep country plainly before his eyes. If he stayed his three years there it would be on account of sheep, and whatever he might win in his father’s good graces by his fidelity. Joan was not to figure thenceforward in any of his schemes.

  Three years on the sheep range with no prospect of Joan! That was what Reid had ahead of him now.

  “I think I’d take mine in the pen,” Mackenzie said, leaning back to comfort with his pipe. Night came down; the dogs lay at his feet, noses on forepaws. Below him the sheep were still. So, for a long time, submerged in dreams.

  One of the dogs lifted its head, its bristles rising, a low growl in its throat. The other rose cautiously, walking away crouching, with high-lifted feet. Mackenzie listened, catching no noise to account for their alarm. A little while, and the sound of Hertha Carlson’s singing rose from the hill behind him, her song the same, the doleful quality of its air unmodified.

  Na-a-fer a-lo-o-one, na-a-fer a-lone,

  He promise na-fer to leafe me,

  Na-fer to leafe me a-lone!

  “Strange how she runs on th
at,” Mackenzie muttered, listening for her to repeat, as he had heard her the night her singing guided him to her melancholy door. A little nearer now the song sounded, the notes broken as if the singer walked, stumbling at times, so much sadness in it, so much longing, such unutterable hopelessness as to wring the listener’s heart.

  Swan was beating her again, neglecting her, subjecting her to the cruelties of his savage mind; there was no need for the woman to come nearer to tell him that. Only grief for which there was no comfort, despair in which there was no hope, could tune a human note to that eloquent expression of pain. Perhaps she was wandering in the night now for the solace of weariness, pouring out the three lines of her song in what seemed the bitterness of accusation for a promise unfulfilled.

  The dogs came back to Mackenzie’s side, where they sat with ears lifted, but with no expression of hostility or alarm in their bearing now. They were only curious, as their master was curious, waiting to see if the wandering singer would come on into camp.

  There was no glow of lantern to guide her, and no moon, but she came straight for where Mackenzie sat. A little way off she stopped.

  “Hello!” she hailed, as if uncertain of her welcome.

  Mackenzie requested her to come on, lighting the lantern which he had ready to hand. Mrs. Carlson hesitated, drawing back a little when she saw his face.

  “I thought it was Earl,” she said.

  “Earl’s not here tonight. Sit down and rest yourself, Mrs. Carlson. You don’t remember me?”

  “I remember. You are the man who cut my chain.”

  “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

  “No, I do not forget so soon. A long time I wanted to kill you for the blow you gave Swan that night.”

  “As long as Swan was good to you,” said he, “of course you would. How do you feel about it now?”

  “I only cry now because he did not die. He was different a little while after he got well, but again he forgets. He beats me; he leaves me alone with the sheep.”

  “I knew he was beating you again,” Mackenzie nodded, confirming his speculation of a little while before.

  “Sheep!” said she. “Swan thinks only of sheep; he is worse since he bought Hall’s flock. It is more than I can endure!”

  Mrs. Carlson was worried and worn, fast losing all she had gained in flesh and color during Swan’s period of kindness when she had thrown herself into his wild ways and ridden the range like a fighting woman at his side. Much of her comeliness remained in her sad face and great, luminous, appealing eyes, for it was the comeliness of melancholy which sorrow and hard usage refined. She would carry her grace with her, and the pale shred of her youthful beauty, down to the last hard day. But it was something that Swan was insensible to; it could not soften his hand toward her, nor bend his wild thoughts to gentleness. Now he had denied her again the little share he had granted her in his wild life, and must break the thing he had made, going his morose way alone.

  “I hadn’t heard he’d bought Hall’s sheep,” Mackenzie said. “Is he going to run them on this range?”

  “No, he says I shall go there, where the wolves are many and bold, even by daylight, to watch over them. There I would be more alone than here. I cannot go, I cannot go! Let him kill me, but I will not go!”

  “He’s got a right to hire a man to run them; he can afford it.”

  “His money grows like thistles. Where Swan touches the earth with the seed of it, money springs. Money is a disease that he spreads when he walks, like the scales that fall from a leper. Money! I pray God night and day that a plague will sweep away his flocks, that a thief will find his hiding place, that a fire will burn the bank that locks in his gold, and make him poor. Poor, he would be kind. A man’s proud heart bends down when he is poor.”

  “God help you!” said Mackenzie, pitying her from the well of his tender heart.

  “God is deaf; he cannot hear!” she said, bitter, hopeless, yet rebellious against the silence of heaven and earth that she could not penetrate with her lamentations and bring relief.

  “No, you shouldn’t let yourself believe any such thing,” he chided, yet with a gentleness that was almost an encouragement.

  “This land is a vacuum, out of which sound cannot reach him, then,” she sighed, bending her sad head upon her hands. “I have cried out to him in a sorrow that would move a stone on the mountain-side, but God has not heard. Yes, it must be that this land is a vacuum, such as I read of when I was a girl in school. Maybe––” looking up with eager hopefulness––“if I go out of it a little way, just on the edge of it and pray, God will be able to hear my voice?”

  “Here, as well as anywhere,” he said, moved by her strange fancy, by the hunger of her voice and face.

  “Then it is because there is a curse on me––the curse of Swan’s money, of his evil ways!” She sprang up, stretching her long arms wildly. “I will pray no more, no more!” she cried. “I will curse God, I will curse him as Job cursed him, and fling myself from the rocks and die!”

  Mackenzie was on his feet beside her, his hand on her shoulder as if he would stay her mad intention.

  “No, no!” he said, shocked by the boldness of her declaration. “Your troubles are hard enough to bear––don’t thicken them with talk like this.”

  She looked at him blankly, as if she did not comprehend, as though her reason had spent itself in this rebellious outbreak against the unseen forces of her sad destiny.

  “Where is your woman?” she asked.

  “I haven’t any woman.”

  “I thought she was your woman, but if she is not, Swan can have her. Swan can have her, then; I do not care now any more. Swan wants her, he speaks of her in the night. Maybe when he takes her he will set me free.”

  Mrs. Carlson sat again near the lantern, curling her legs beneath her with the facility of a dog, due to long usage of them in that manner, Mackenzie believed, when chained to the wall in her lonely house among the trees. Mackenzie stood a little while watching her as she sat, chin in her hands, pensive and sad. Presently he sat near her.

  “Where is Swan tonight?” he asked.

  “Drinking whisky beside the wagon with Hector Hall. They will not fight. No.”

  “No,” he echoed, abstractedly, making a mental picture of Carlson and Hall beside the sheep-wagon, the light of a lantern on their faces, cards in their fists, a jug of whisky in the middle ground within reach from either hand. It was such diversion as Swan Carlson would enjoy, the night around him as black as the shadows of his own dead soul.

  “Earl did not come to me this night,” she said, complaining in sad note. “He promised he would come.”

  “Has he been going over there to see you?” Mackenzie asked, resentful of any advantage Reid might be seeking over this half-mad creature.

  “He makes love to me when Swan is away,” she said, nodding slowly, looking up with serious eyes. “But it is only false love; there is a lie in his eyes.”

  “You’re right about that,” Mackenzie said, letting go a sigh of relief.

  “He tries to flatter me to tell him where Swan hides the money he brought from the bank,” she said, slowly, wearily, “but him I do not trust. When I ask him to do what must first be done to make me free, he will not speak, but goes away, pale, pale, like a frightened girl.”

  “You’d better tell him to stay away,” Mackenzie counseled, his voice stern and hard.

  “But you would not do that,” she continued, heedless of his admonition. She leaned toward him, her great eyes shining in the light, her face eager in its sorrowful comeliness; she put out her hand and touched his arm.

  “You are a brave man, you would not turn white and go away into the night like a wolf to hear me speak of that. Hush! hush! No, no––there is no one to hear.”

  She looked round with fearful eyes, crouching closer to the ground, her breath drawn in long labor, her hand tightening on his arm. Mackenzie felt a shudder sweep coldly over him, moved by the tragedy her
attitude suggested.

  “Hush!” she whispered, hand to her mouth. And again, leaning and peering: “Hush!” She raised her face to him, a great eagerness in her burning eyes. “Kill him, kill Swan Carlson, kind young man, and set me free again! You have no woman? I will be your woman. Kill him, and take me away!”

  “You don’t have to kill Swan to get away from him,” he told her, the tragedy dying out of the moment, leaving only pity in its place. “You can go on tonight––you never need to go back.”

  Hertha came nearer, scrambling to him with sudden movement on her knees, put her arm about his neck before he could read her intention or repel her, and whispered in his ear:

  “I know where Swan hides the money––I can lead you to the place. Kill him, good man, and we will take it and go far away from this unhappy land. I will be your woman, faithful and true.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” he said gently, as if to humor her; “I couldn’t leave my sheep.”

  “Sheep, sheep!” said she, bitterly. “It is all in the world men think of in this land––sheep! A woman is nothing to them when there are sheep! Swan forgets, sheep make him forget. If he had no sheep, he would be a kind man to me again. Swan forgets, he forgets!”

  She bent forward, looking at the lantern as if drawn by the blaze, her great eyes bright as a deer’s when it stands fascinated by a torchlight a moment before bounding away.

  “Swan forgets, Swan forgets!” she murmured, her staring eyes on the light. She rocked herself from side to side, and “Swan forgets, Swan forgets!” she murmured, like the burden of a lullaby.

  “Where is your camp?” Mackenzie asked her, thinking he must take her home.

  Hertha did not reply. For a long time she sat leaning, staring at the lantern. One of the dogs approached her, bristles raised in fear, creeping with stealthy movement, feet lifted high, stretched its neck to sniff her, fearfully, backed away, and composed itself to rest. But now and again it lifted its head to sniff the scent that came from this strange being, and which it could not analyze for good or ill. Mackenzie marked its troubled perplexity, almost as much at sea in his own reckoning of her as the dog.