The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 14

"I guess that's right," Joan said, still wandering in her gaze.

Below them the flock was spread, the dogs on its flanks. Mackenzie pointed to the sun.

"We'll have to get to work; you'll be starting back in an hour."

But there was no work in Joan that day, nothing but troubled speculation on what form Hector Hall's revenge would take, and when the stealthy blow of his resentment would fall. Try as he would, Mackenzie could not fasten her mind upon the books. She would begin with a brave resolution, only to wander away, the book closed presently upon her thumb, her eyes searching the hazy hills where trouble lay out of sight. At last she gave it up, with a little catching sob, tears in her honest eyes.

"They'll kill you--I know they will!" she said.

"I don't think they will," he returned, abstractedly, "but even if they do, Rachel, there's n.o.body to grieve."

"Rachel? My name isn't Rachel," said Joan, a little hurt. For it was not in flippancy or banter that he had called her out of her name; his eyes were not within a hundred leagues of that place, his heart away with them, it seemed, when he spoke.

He turned to her, a color of embarra.s.sment in his brown face.

"I was thinking of another story, Joan."

"Of another girl," she said, perhaps a trifle resentfully. At least Mackenzie thought he read a resentful note in the quick rejoinder, a resentful flash of color in her cheek.

"Yes, but a mighty old girl, Joan," he confessed, smiling with a feeling of lightness around his heart.

"Somebody you used to know?" face turned away, voice light in a careless, artificial note.

"She was a sheepman's daughter," he said.

"Did you know her down at Jasper?"

"No, I never knew her at all, Rach--Joan. That was a long, long time ago."

Joan brightened at this news. She ceased denying him her face, even smiled a little, seeming to forget Hector Hall and his pending vengeance.

"Well, what about her?" she asked.

He told her which Rachel he had in mind, but Joan only shook her head and looked troubled.

"I never read the Bible; we haven't even got one."

He told her the story, beginning with Jacob's setting out, and his coming to the well with the great stone at its mouth which the maidens could not roll away.

"So Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Rachel's sheep," he said, pausing with that much of it, looking off down the draw between the hills in a mind-wandering way. Joan touched his arm, impatient with such disjointed narrative.

"What did he do then?"

"Why, he kissed her."

"I think he was kind of fresh," said Joan. But she laughed a little, blushing rosily, a bright light in her eyes. "Tell me the rest of it, John."

Mackenzie went on with the ancient pastoral tale of love. Joan was indignant when she heard how Laban gave Jacob the weak-eyed girl for a wife in place of his beloved Rachel, for whom he had worked the seven years.

"Jake must have been a bright one!" said she. "How could the old man put one over on him like that?"

"You'll have to read the story," said Mackenzie. "It's sundown; don't you think you'd better be going back to camp, Joan?"

But Joan was in no haste to leave. She walked with him as he worked the sheep to their bedding-ground, her bridle-rein over her arm. She could get back to camp before dark, she said; Charley would not be worried.

Joan could not have said as much for herself. Her eyes were pools of trouble, her face was anxious and strained. She went silently beside Mackenzie while the dogs worked the sheep along with more than human patience, almost human intelligence. Frequently she looked into his face with a plea dumbly eloquent, but did not again put her fear for him into words. Only when she stood beside her horse near the sheep-wagon, ready to mount and leave him to his solitary supper, she spoke of Hector Hall's revolvers, which Mackenzie had unstrapped and put aside.

"What are you going to do with them, John?"

She had fallen into the use of that familiar address only that day, moved by the tenderness of the old tale he had told her, perhaps; drawn nearer to him by the discovery of a gentle sentiment in him which she had not known before. He heard it with a warm uplifting of the heart, all without reason, he knew, for it was the range way to be familiar on a shorter acquaintance than theirs.

"I'm going to give them back to him," he said. "I've been carrying them around ever since he left them in the hope he'd get ashamed of himself and come for them."

Joan started at the sound of galloping hoofs, which rose suddenly out of complete silence as the riders mounted the crest behind them.

"I guess he's coming for them now," she said.

There were two riders coming down the slope toward them at a pace altogether reckless. Mackenzie saw at a glance that neither of them was Hector Hall, but one a woman, her loose garments flapping as she rode.

"It's Swan Carlson and his wife!" he said, unable to cover his amazement at the sight.

"What do you suppose they're doing over here?" Joan drew a little nearer as she spoke, her horse shifting to keep by her side.

"No telling. Look how that woman rides!"

There was enough in her wild bearing to excite admiration and wonder, even in one who had not seen her under conditions which promised little of such development. She came on at Swan's side, leaning forward a little, as light and sure in the saddle as any cowboy on the range. They bore down toward the sheep-wagon as if they had no intention of halting, jerking their horses up in Indian fashion a few feet from where Mackenzie and Joan stood. The animals slid on stiff legs, hoofs plowing the soft ground, raising a cloud of dust which dimmed the riders momentarily.

Neither of the abrupt visitors spoke. They sat silently staring, not a rod between them and the two on foot, the woman as unfriendly of face as the man. And Swan Carlson had not improved in this feature since Mackenzie parted from him in violence a few weeks before. His red hair was shorter now, his drooping mustache longer, the points of it reaching two inches below his chin. He was gaunt of cheek, hollow of eyes, like a man who had gone hungry or suffered a sorrow that ate away his heart.

His wife had improved somewhat in outward appearance. Her face had filled, the pathetic uncertainty had gone from her eyes. She was not uncomely as she sat astride her good bay horse, her divided skirt of corduroy wide on its flanks, a man's gray shirt laced over her bosom, the collar open, showing the fairness of her neck. Her abundant hair was braided, and wound closely about her head like a cap. Freedom had made a strange alteration in her. It seemed, indeed, as if Swan Carlson had breathed into her the breath of his own wild soul, making her over according to the desire of his heart.

Mackenzie stepped out in invitation for Swan to state the occasion of his boisterous visit, and stood waiting in silence while the two strange creatures continued to stare. Swan lifted his hand in a manner of salutation, no change either of friendship or animosity in his lean, strong face.

"You got a woman, huh? Well, how'll you trade?"

Swan glanced from his wife to Joan as he spoke. If there was any recollection in him of the hard usage he had received at Mackenzie's hands, it did not seem to be bitter.

"Ride on," said Mackenzie.

Mrs. Carlson urged her horse with sudden start close to where Joan stood, leaned far over her saddle and peered into the girl's face.

Joan, affronted by the savage impertinence, met her eyes defiantly, not giving an inch before the unexpected charge.

In that pose of defiant challenge Swan Carlson's woman peered into the face of the girl whose freshness and beauty had drawn the wild banter from her man's bold lips. Then, a sudden sweep of pa.s.sion in her face, she lifted her rawhide quirt and struck Joan a bitter blow across the shoulder and neck. Mackenzie sprang between them, but Mrs. Carlson, her defiance pa.s.sed in that one blow, did not follow it up. Swan opened wide his great mouth and pealed out his roaring laughter, not a line of mirth softening in his face, not a gleam of it in his eyes. It was a sound without a note to express human warmth, or human satisfaction.

Joan flamed up like a match in oil. She dropped her bridle-reins, springing back a quick step, turning her eyes about for some weapon by which she might retaliate. Hector Hall's pistols hung on the end-gate of the sheep-wagon not more than twenty feet away. It seemed that Joan covered the distance in a bound, s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the guns and fired.

Her own horse stood between her and the wild range woman, which perhaps accounted for her miss. Mackenzie was holding her wrist before she could shoot again.

Swan let out another roar of heartless laughter, and together with his woman galloped down the hill. Ahead of them the sheep were a.s.sembled, packed close in their huddling way of seeking comfort and courage in numbers, just beginning to compose themselves for the night. Straight into the flock Swan Carlson and his woman rode, trampling such as could not rise and leap aside, crushing such lambs as were not nimble enough or wise enough to run.