The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 36

Mackenzie nodded, a great warmth of understanding glowing in his breast.

"But I don't want you to feel that it was any reflection on your ability as a teacher, you understand, John; I don't want you to look at it that way at all."

"Not at all," Mackenzie echoed, quite sincerely.

"You could 'a' had her, for all the difference it was to me, if I hadn't made that deal with Reid. A man's got to stick to his word, you know, lad, and not have it thwarted by any little bobbin of a girl.

I'd as soon you'd have one of my girls as any man I know, John."

"Thanks."

"Of course I could see how it might turn out between you and Joan if she kept on ridin' over to have lessons from you every day. You can't blame Earl if he saw it the same way, lad."

"She isn't his yet," said Mackenzie confidently.

"Now look here, John"--Sullivan spoke with a certain sharpness, a certain hardness of dictation in his tone, "you'd just as well stand out of it and let Earl have her."

Mackenzie's heart swung so high it seemed to brush the early stars. It was certain now that Joan had not gone home without a fight, and that she had not remained there throughout his recovery from his wounds without telling protest. More confidently than before he repeated:

"She isn't his yet!"

"She'll never get a sheep from me if she marries any other man--not one lone ewe!"

"How much do you value her in sheep?" Mackenzie inquired.

"She'll get half a million dollars or more with Earl. It would take a lot of sheep to amount to half a million, John."

"Yes," said Mackenzie, with the indifference of a man who did not have any further interest in the case, seeing himself outbid. "That's higher than I'll ever be able to go. All right; let him have her." But beneath his breath he added the condition: "If he can get her."

"That's the spirit I like to see a man show!" Tim commended. "I don't blame a man for marryin' into a sheep ranch if he can--I call him smart--and I'd just as soon you as any man'd marry one of my girls, as I said, John. But you know, lad, a man can't have them that's sealed, as the Mormons say."

"You're right," Mackenzie agreed, and the more heartily because it was sincere. If he grinned a little to himself, Tim did not note it in the dusk.

"Now, there's my Mary; she's seventeen; she'll be a woman in three years more, and she'll make two of Joan when she fills out. My Mary would make the fine wife for a lad like you, John, and I'll give you five thousand sheep the day you marry her."

"All right; the day I marry Mary I'll claim five thousand sheep."

Mackenzie said it so quickly, so positively, that Tim glowed and beamed as never before. He slapped the simpleton of a schoolmaster who had come into the sheeplands to be a great sheepman on the back with hearty hand, believing he had swallowed hook and all.

"Done! The day you marry Mary you'll have your five thousand sheep along wi' her! I pa.s.s you my word, and it goes."

They shook hands on it, Mackenzie as solemn as though making a covenant in truth.

"The day I marry Mary," said he.

"It'll be three years before she's old enough to take up the weight of carryin' babies, and of course you understand you'll have to wait on her, lad. A man can't jump into these things the way he buys a horse."

"Oh, sure."

"You go right on workin' for me like you are," pursued Tim, drunk on his bargain as he thought it to be, "drawin' your pay like any hand, without favors asked or given, takin' the knocks as they come to you, in weather good and bad. That'll be a better way than goin' in shares on a band next spring like we talked; it'll be better for you, lad; better for you and Mary."

"All right," Mackenzie a.s.sented.

"I'm thinkin' only of your own interests, you see, lad, the same as if you was my son."

Tim patted Mackenzie's shoulder again, doubtless warm to the bottom of his sheep-blind heart over the prospect of a hand to serve him three years who would go break-neck and h.e.l.l-for-leather, not counting consequences in his blind and simple way, or weather or hardships of any kind. For there was Mary, and there were five thousand sheep. As for Joan, she was out of Tim's reckoning any longer. He had a new Jacob on the line, and he was going to play him for all he was worth.

"All right; I've got a lot to learn yet," Mackenzie agreed.

"You have, you have that," said Tim with fatherly tenderness, "and you'll learn it like a book. I always said from the day you come you had in you the makin' of a sheepman. Some are quick and some are slow, but the longer it takes to learn the harder it sticks. It's been that way wi' me."

"That's the rule of the world, they say."

"It is; it is so. And you can put up a good fight, even though you may not always hold your own; you'll be the lad to wade through it wi'

your head up and the mornin' light on your face. Sure you will, boy.

I'll be tellin' Mary."

"I'd wait a while," Mackenzie said, gently, as a man who was very soft in his heart, indeed. "I'd rather we'd grow into it, you know, easy, by gentle stages."

"Right you are, lad, right you are. Leave young hearts to find their own way--they can't miss it if there's n.o.body between them. I'll say no word to Mary at all, but you have leave to go and see her as often as you like, lad, and the sooner you begin the better, to catch her while she's young. How's your hand?"

"Well enough."

"When you think you're able, I'll put you back with the sheep you had.

I'll be takin' Reid over to the ranch to put him in charge of the hospital band."

"I'm able to handle them now, I think."

"But take your time, take it easy. Reid gets on with Swan, bein' more experienced with men than you, I guess. Well, a schoolteacher don't meet men the way other people do; he's shut up with the childer all the day, and he gets so he measures men by them. That won't do on the sheep range, lad. But I guess you're findin' it out."

"I'm learning a little, right along."

"Yes, you've got the makin' of a sheepman in you; I said you had it in you the first time I put my eyes on your face. Well, I'll be leavin'

you now, lad. And remember the bargain about my Mary. You'll be a sheepman in your own way the day you marry her. When a man's marryin'

a sheep ranch what difference is it to him whether it's a Mary or a Joan?"

"No difference--when he's marrying a sheep ranch," Mackenzie returned.

CHAPTER XXIV

MORE ABOUT MARY

Mackenzie took Tim at his word two days after their interview, and went visiting Mary. He made the journey across to her range more to try his legs than to satisfy his curiosity concerning the subst.i.tute for Joan so cunningly offered by Tim in his Laban-like way. He was pleased to find that his legs bore him with almost their accustomed vigor, and surprised to see the hills beginning to show the yellow blooms of autumn. His hurts in that last encounter with Swan Carlson and his dogs had bound him in camp for three weeks.

Mary was a smiling, talkative, fair-haired girl, bearing the foundation of a generous woman. She had none of the shyness about her that might be expected in a la.s.s whose world had been the sheep range, and this Mackenzie put down to the fact of her superior social position, as fixed by the size of Tim Sullivan's house.