The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 6

"You're afraid I haven't got it in me to learn--you don't want to waste time on me!" Joan spoke with a sad bitterness, as one who saw another illusion fading before her eyes.

"Not that," he hastened to a.s.sure her, putting out his hand as if to add the comfort of his touch to the salve of his words. "I'm only afraid your father wouldn't have anything to do with me if you were to approach him with any such proposal. From what I've heard of him he's a man who likes a fellow to do his own talking."

"I don't think he'd refuse me."

"It's hard for a stranger to do that. Your father----"

"You'll not do it, you mean?"

"I think I'd rather get a job from your father on my own face than on any kind of an arrangement or condition, Miss Sullivan. But I pa.s.s you my word that you'll be welcome to anything and all I'm able to teach you if I become a pupil in the sheep business on this range. Provided, of course, that I'm in reaching distance."

"Will you?" Joan asked, hope clearing the shadows from her face again.

"But we might be too far apart for lessons very often," he suggested.

"Not more than ten or twelve miles. I could ride that every day."

"It's a bargain then, if I get on," said he.

"It's a bargain," nodded Joan, giving him her hand to bind it, with great earnestness in her eyes.

CHAPTER V

TIM SULLIVAN

"Yes, they call us flockmasters in the reports of the Wool Growers'

a.s.sociation, and in the papers and magazines, but we're nothing but sheepmen, and that's all you can make out of us."

Tim Sullivan spoke without humor when he made this correction in the name of his calling, sitting with his back to a hayc.o.c.k, eating his dinner in the sun. Mackenzie accepted the correction with a nod of understanding, sparing his words.

"So you want to be a flockmaster?" said Tim. "Well, there's worse callin's a man, especially a young man, could take up. What put it in your head to tramp off up here to see me? Couldn't some of them sheepmen down at Jasper use you?"

"I wanted to get into the heart of the sheep country for one thing, and several of my friends recommended you as the best sheepman on the range, for another. I want to learn under a master, if I learn at all."

"Right," Tim nodded, "right and sound. Do you think you've got the stuff in you to make a sheepman out of?"

"It will have to be a pretty hard school if I can't stick it through."

"Summers are all right," said Tim, reflectively, nodding away at the distant hills, "and falls are all right, but you take it winter and early spring, and it tries the mettle in a man. Blizzards and starvation, and losses through pile-ups and stampedes, wolves and what not, make a man think sometimes he'll never go through it any more.

Then spring comes, with the cold wind, and slush up to your ankles, and you out day and night lookin' after the ewes and lambs. Lambin'

time is the hard time, and it's the time when a man makes it or loses, accordin' to what's in him to face hardship and work."

"I've heard about it; I know what I'm asking to go up against, Mr.

Sullivan."

"You want to buy in, or take a band on shares?"

"I'd rather take a band on shares. If I put what little money I've got into it I'll go it alone."

"That's right; it's safer to let the other man take the risk. It ain't fair to us sheepmen, but we have to do it to get men. Well, when we hit on a good man, it pays better than hirin' poor ones at fifty dollars a month and found. I've had old snoozers workin' for me that the coyotes eat the boots off of while they was asleep. You look kind of slim and light to tackle a job on the range."

Mackenzie made no defense of his weight, advancing no further argument in behalf of his pet.i.tion for a job. Sullivan measured him over with his appraising eyes, saying nothing about the bruises he bore, although Mackenzie knew he was burning with curiosity to go into the matter of how and when he received them.

Sullivan was a man of calm benignity of face, a placid certainty of his power and place in the world; a rugged man, broad-handed, slow.

His pleasure was in the distinction of his wealth, and not in any use that he made of it for his own comfort or the advancement of those under his hand. Even so, he was of a type superior to the general run of flockmasters such as Mackenzie had met.

"I'll give you a job helpin' me on this hay for a few days, and kind of try you out," Tim agreed at last. "I don't want to discourage you at the start, but I don't believe you got the mettle in you to make a flockmaster, if you want to call it that, out of."

"All right; I'll help you on the hay. Before I start in though, I'd like to borrow a saddle-horse from you to take a ride down the creek to Swan Carlson's place. I wouldn't be long."

"Carlson's place? Do you know Swan Carlson?"

Mackenzie told in few words how much he knew of Carlson, and his reason for desiring to visit him. Tim's wonder was too large to contain at hearing this news. He got up, his eyes staring in plain incredulity, his mouth open a bit between surprise and censure, it seemed. But he said nothing for a little while; only stood and looked Mackenzie over again, with more careful scrutiny than before.

"I'll go down with you," he announced, turning abruptly away to get the horses.

It was evident to Mackenzie that Sullivan was bewildered between doubt and suspicion as they rode toward Carlson's ranch, which the sheepman said was about seven miles away. But he betrayed nothing of his thoughts in words, riding in silence mainly, looking at the ground like a man who had troubles on his mind.

The silence of abandonment was over Carlson's house as they rode up. A few chickens retreated from the yard to the cover of the barn in the haste of panic, their going being the only sound of life about the place. The door through which Mackenzie had left was shut; he approached it without hesitation--Tim Sullivan lingering back as if in doubt of their reception--and knocked. No answer. Mackenzie tried the door, finding it unlocked; pushed it open, entered.

Sullivan stood outside, one mighty hand on the jamb, his body to one side under protection of the house, his head put cautiously and curiously round to see, leaving a fairway for Swan Carlson should he rise from a dark corner, shake himself like an old grizzly, and charge.

"Is he there?" Tim asked, his voice a strained whisper.

Mackenzie did not reply. He stood in the middle of the room where his combat with Swan had taken place, among the debris of broken dishes, wrecked table, fallen stovepipe and tinware, looking about him with grim interest. There was n.o.body in the other room, but the blood from Swan's hurt trailed across the floor as if he had been helped to the bed. Tim took his courage in both hands and came just inside the door.

"Man! Look at the blood!" he said.

"There's n.o.body here," Mackenzie told him, turning to go.

"She's took him to the doctor," said Tim.

"Where is that?"

"There's a kind of a one over on the Sweet.w.a.ter, sixty miles from here, but there's no good one this side of Jasper."

"He'll die on the way," Mackenzie said conclusively.

"No such luck," said Tim. "Look! There's the chain he tied that woman of his up with."

"We'd better go back and get at that hay," Mackenzie said. "There's nothing I can do for Carlson."

"There's the table leg you hit him with!" Tim picked it up, plucking off the red hairs which clung to it, looking at Mackenzie with startled eyes. Mackenzie mounted his horse.