The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 27

"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 a.n.a.lyze for good or ill.

Mackenzie marked its troubled perplexity, almost as much at sea in his own reckoning of her as the dog.

"No, I could not show you the money and go away with you leaving Swan living behind," she said at last, as if she had decided it finally in her mind. "That I have told Earl Reid. Swan would follow me to the edge of the world; he would strangle my neck between his hands and throw me down dead at his feet."

"He'd have a right to if you did him that kind of a trick," Mackenzie said.

"Earl Reid comes with promises," she said, unmindful of Mackenzie; "he sits close by me in the dark, he holds me by the hand. But kiss me I will not permit; that yet belongs to Swan." She looked up, sweeping Mackenzie with her appealing eyes. "But if you would kill him, then my lips would be hot for your kiss, brave man--I would bend down and draw your soul into mine through a long, long kiss!"

"Hush!" Mackenzie commanded, sternly. "Such thoughts belong to Swan, as much as the other. Don't talk that way to me--I don't want to hear any more of it."

Hertha sat looking at him, that cast of dull hopelessness in her face again, the light dead in her eyes.

"There are strange noises that I hear in the night," she said, woefully; "there is a dead child that never drew breath pressed against my heart."

"You'd better go back to your wagon," he suggested, getting to his feet.

"There is no wagon, only a canvas spread over the brushes, where I lie like a wolf in a hollow. A beast I am become, among the beasts of the field!"

"Come--I'll go with you," he offered, holding out his hand to lift her.

She did not seem to notice him, but sat stroking her face as if to ease a pain out of it, or open the fount of her tears which much weeping must have drained long, long ago.

Mackenzie believed she was going insane, in the slow-preying, brooding way of those who are not strong enough to withstand the cruelties of silence and loneliness on the range.

"Where is your woman?" she asked again, lifting her face suddenly.

"I have no woman," he told her, gently, in great pity for her cruel burden under which she was so unmistakably breaking.

"I remember, you told me you had no woman. A man should have a woman; he goes crazy of the lonesomeness on the sheep range without a woman."

"Will Swan be over tomorrow?" Mackenzie asked, thinking to take her case up with the harsh and savage man and see if he could not be moved to sending her away.

"I do not know," she returned coldly, her manner changing like a capricious wind. She rose as she spoke, and walked away, disappearing almost at once in the darkness.

Mackenzie stood looking the way she went, listening for the sound of her going, but she pa.s.sed so surely among the shrubs and over the uneven ground that no noise attended her. It was as though her failing mind had sharpened her with animal caution, or that instinct had come forward in her to take the place of wit, and serve as her protection against dangers which her faculties might no longer safeguard.

Even the dogs seemed to know of her affliction, as wild beasts are believed by some to know and accept on a common plane the demented among men. They knew at once that she was not going to harm the sheep.

When she left camp they stretched themselves with contented sighs to their repose.

And that was "the lonesomeness" as they spoke of it there. A dreadful affliction, a corrosive poison that gnawed the heart hollow, for which there was no cure but comradeship or flight. Poor Hertha Carlson was denied both remedies; she would break in a little while now, and run mad over the hills, her beautiful hair streaming in the wind.

And Reid had it; already it had struck deep into his soul, turning him morose, wickedly vindictive, making him hungry with an unholy ambition to slay. Joan must have suffered from the same disorder. It was not so much a desire in her to see what lay beyond the blue curtain of the hills as a longing for companionship among them.

But Joan would put away her unrest; she had found a cure for the lonesomeness. Her last word to him that day was that she did not want to leave the sheep range now; that she would stay while he remained, and fare as he fared.

Rachel must have suffered from the lonesomeness, ranging her sheep over the Mesopotamian plain; Jacob had it when he felt his heart dissolve in tears at the sight of his kinswoman beside the well of Haran. But Joan was safe from it now; its insidious poison would corrode in her heart no more.

Poor Hertha Carlson, deserving better than fate had given her with sheep-mad Swan! She could not reason without violence any longer, so often she had been subjected to its pain.

"It will be a thousand wonders if she doesn't kill him herself,"

Mackenzie said, sitting down with new thoughts.

The news of Swan's buying Hall out was important and unexpected. Free to leave the country now, Hall very likely would be coming over to balance accounts. There was his old score against Mackenzie for his humiliation at the hands of the apprentice sheepherder, which doubtless had grown more bitter day by day; and there was his double account against Reid and Mackenzie for the loss of his sheep-killing brother. Mackenzie hoped that he would go away and let matters stand as they were.

And Swan. It had not been all a jest, then, when he proposed trading his woman for Mackenzie's. What a wild, irresponsible, sheep-mad man he was! But he hardly would attempt any violence toward Joan, even though he "spoke of her in the night."

From Carlson, Mackenzie's thoughts ran out after Reid. Contempt rose in him, and deepened as he thought of the mink-faced youth carrying his deceptive poison into the wild Norseman's camp. But insane as she was, racked by the lonesomeness to be away from that unkindly land, Hertha Carlson remained woman enough to set a barrier up that Reid, sneak that he was, could not cross.

What a condition she had made, indeed! Nothing would beguile her from it; only its fulfilment would bend her to yield to his importunities.

It was a shocking mess that Reid had set for himself to drink some day, for Swan Carlson would come upon them in their hand-holding in his hour, as certainly as doom.

And there was the picture of the red-haired giant of the sheeplands and that flat-chested, sharp-faced youth drinking beside the sheep-wagon in the night. There was Swan, lofty, cold, unbending; there was Reid, the craft, the knowledge of the world's under places written on his brow, the deceit that he practiced against his host hidden away in his breast.

Mackenzie sighed, putting it from him like a nightmare that calls a man from his sleep by its false peril, wringing sweat from him in its agony. Let them bind in drink and sever in blood, for all that he cared. It was nothing to him, any way they might combine or clash.

Joan was his; that was enough to fill his world.

CHAPTER XVIII

SWAN CARLSON'S DAY

Dad Frazer came over the hills next morning after the dew was gone.

Mackenzie saw him from afar, and was interested to note that he was not alone. That is to say, not immediately accompanied by anybody, yet not alone for a country where a quarter of a mile between men is rather close company.

Somebody was coming on after the old shepherd, holding about the same distance behind him in spite of little dashes down slopes that Dad made when for a moment out of sight. Mackenzie's wonder over this peculiar behavior grew as the old man came near, and it was discovered to the eye that his persistent shadow was a woman.

Dad wasted neither words nor breath on his explanation when he came panting up the slope that brought him to the place where Mackenzie stood above his sheep.