The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 44

"Well, there's the road out of this country," Mackenzie said, seeing he would not speak. "This is the last trick you'll ever try to throw here on me or anybody else. I suppose you came here on one of Carlson's horses; go and get it, and when you start, head south."

Mackenzie felt the leg of his trousers wet from the blood of his wound, and began to have some concern lest an artery had been cut. But this he put off investigating until he heard Reid ride out to the dim road in front of Carlson's cabin, and go his way out of the sheeplands to whatever destiny lay ahead.

Then Mackenzie looked himself over, to find that it was not a serious wound. He bound up the hurt with his handkerchief, and turned his face away from that tragic spot among the cottonwoods, their leaves moving with a murmur as of falling rain in the cool morning wind.

CHAPTER XXIX

SHEEPMAN--AND MORE

"So I just took his gun away from him and slapped him and sent him on," said Joan.

"I thought that must have been the way of it," Mackenzie said, sighing as if his last trouble had left him.

"When he tried to make me believe I wasn't within seven miles of Dad Frazer's camp I got my suspicions up. The idea of that little town rat trying to mix me up on my range! Well, I was a little off on my estimate of where the wagons were, but that was because they'd been moved so many times while I was over home."

"I figured it that way, Joan."

"But what do you suppose he was tryin' to pull off on me, John, bringing me out here on the pretense you'd been all shot up in the fight with Hector Hall and wanted me?"

"I don't know, Joan," Mackenzie said, lying like the "kind of a gentleman" he was.

"I thought maybe the little fool wanted to make me marry him so he could get some money out of dad."

"Maybe that was it, Joan; I pa.s.s it up."

"Dad Frazer says Earl was crazy from the lonesomeness and killing Matt Hall."

"I think he must have been, Joan. It's over--let's forget it if we can."

"Yes, you haven't done a thing but fight since you struck this range,"

Joan sighed.

Mackenzie was lying up in Rabbit's hospital again, undergoing treatment for the bullet wound in his thigh. He had arrived at Dad Frazer's camp at sunrise, weak from the drain of his hurt, to find Joan waiting for him on the rise of the hill. She hurried him into Rabbit's hands, leaving explanations until later. They had come to the end of them now.

But Mackenzie made the reservation of Reid's atrocious, insane scheme in bringing Joan from home on the pretext that the schoolmaster had fallen wounded to death in the fight with Hector Hall, and lay calling for her with his wasting breath. Mackenzie knew that it was better for her faith in mankind for all her future years, and for the peace of her soul, that she should never know.

"My dad was here a little while ago--he's gone over to put a man in to take care of your sheep, but he'll be along back here this evening. He wants to talk some business with you, he said."

"Well, we're ready for him, Joan," Mackenzie said. And the look that pa.s.sed between them, and the smile that lighted their lips, told that their business had been talked and disposed of already, let Tim Sullivan propose what he might.

"I'll leave it to you, John," said Joan, blushing a little, her eyes downcast in modesty, but smiling and smiling like a growing summer day.

Tim Sullivan arrived toward evening, entering the sheep-wagon softly, his loud tongue low in awe for this fighting man.

"How are you, John? How are you, lad?" he whispered, coming on his toes to the cot, his face as expressive of respect as if he had come into the presence of the dead.

Mackenzie grinned over this great mark of respect in the flockmaster of Poison Creek.

"I'm all right," he said.

Tim sat on an upended box, leaning forward, hat between his knees, mouth open a bit, looking at Mackenzie as if he had come face to face with a miracle.

"You're not hurted much, lad?" he inquired, lifting his voice a little, the wonder of it gradually pa.s.sing away.

"Not much. I'll be around again in nine or ten days, Rabbit says."

"You will," said Tim, eloquently decisive, as though his heart emptied itself of a great responsibility, "you will that, and as good as a new man!"

"She's better than any doctor I ever saw."

"She is that!" said Tim, "and cheaper, too."

His voice grew a little louder, coming thus to familiar ground in the discussion of values and costs. But the awe of this man who went fighting his way was still big in the flockmaster's eyes. He sat leaning, elbows on thighs, mouth still open, as respectfully awed as if he had just come out of a church. Then, after a little while, looking around for Joan:

"What was he up to, John? What was he tryin' to do with my girl?"

Mackenzie told him, in few words and plain, pledging him to keep the truth of it from Joan all his days. Tim's face grew pale through the deep brown of sun and wind. He put his hand to his throat, unb.u.t.toning his collar with trembling fingers.

"But she was too smart for him!" he said. "I've brought her up a match for any of them town fellers--they can't put anything like that over on my little Joan. And you didn't know but she was there, locked in and bound hand and foot, lad? And you fought old Swan and laid him cold at last, hand to hand, man to man! Lord! And you done it for my little Joan!"

"Let's forget it," Mackenzie said, uncomfortable under the praise.

"It's easy said, lad, but not so easy done. A man remembers a thing the like of that with grat.i.tude to his last hour. And we thought you an easy-goin' man, that could be put on and wasn't able to hold your own," said Tim, confessing more in his momentary softness than he would have done on reflection.

"We thought you was only a schoolteacher, wrapped up in rhymes and birds!"

"Just a plain simpleton that would eat out of anybody's hand,"

Mackenzie grinned.

"Not a simpleton, lad; not a simpleton. But maybe soft in your ways of dealin' with other men, lettin' 'em go when you ought to knocked 'em cold, the way you let Hall go the day you took his guns off of him.

But we couldn't see deep in you, lad; you're no simpleton, lad--no simpleton at all."

Tim spoke in soothing conciliation, as if he worked to salve over the old hurts of injustice, or as if he dealt with the mishap of a child to whom words were more comforting than balm. He was coming back to his regular sheepman form, crafty, conciliatory; never advancing one foot without feeling ahead with the other. But the new respect that had come over him for Mackenzie could not be put wholly aside, even though Tim might have the disposition to do it. Tim's voice was still small in his mouth, his manner softened by awe.

"You've shown the mettle of a sheepman," Tim said, "and more. There'll be peace and quiet on this range now."

"I brought nothing but trouble to it. You had peace and quiet before I came."

"Trouble was here, lad, but we dodged it. There wasn't a man of us had the courage to face it and put it down like you've done it. Carlson and them Halls robbed me year in and year out, and stole the range I paid rent on from under my feet. Swan stole sheep from me all the time that boy was runnin' them next him there--I miss about three hundred from the flock today."

"Reid sold them to him, but didn't get his money. He complained about it to Swan last night."

"He'd do it," nodded Tim; "his father before him done it. It runs in the blood of them Reids to steal. I'll have them three hundred sheep back out of Swan's widow tomorrow."