The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 9

But she fretted under a discontent that made her miserable, even though it did not strain her reason like the lonesomeness. Something was wanting to fill her life. He cast about him, wondering what it could be, wishing that he might supply it and take away the shadow out of her eyes.

It was his last thought as he fell asleep in a little swale below the wagon where the gra.s.s was tall and soft--that he might find what was lacking to make Joan content with the peace and plenty of the sheeplands, and supply that want.

CHAPTER VII

THE EASIEST LESSON

"Why do they always begin the conjugations on _love_?"

There was no perplexity in Joan's eyes as she asked the question; rather, a dreamy and far-away look, the open book face-downward on the ground beside her.

"Because it's a good example of the first termination, I suppose,"

Mackenzie replied, his eyes measuring off the leagues with her own, as if they together sought the door that opened out of that gray land into romance that quiet summer afternoon.

"It was that way in the Spanish grammar," said Joan, shaking her head, unconvinced by the reason he advanced. "There are plenty of words in the first termination that are just as short. Why? You're the teacher; you ought to know."

She said it banteringly, as if she dared him to give the reason. His eyes came back from their distant groping, meeting hers with gentle boldness. So for a little while he looked silently into her appealing eyes, then turned away.

"Maybe, Joan, because it is the easiest lesson to learn and the hardest to forget," he said.

Joan bent her gaze upon the ground, a flush tinting her brown face, plucking at the gra.s.s with aimless fingers.

"Anyway, we've pa.s.sed it," said she.

"No, it recurs all through the book; it's something that can't be left out of it, any more than it can be left out of life. Well, it doesn't need to trouble you and me."

"No; we could use some other word," said Joan, turning her face away.

"But mean the same, Joan. I had an old maid English teacher when I was a boy who made us conjugate _to like_ instead of the more intimate and tender word. Poor old soul! I hope it saved her feelings and eased her regrets."

"Maybe she'd had a romance," said Joan.

"I hope so; there's at least one romance coming to every woman in this world. If she misses it she's being cheated."

Mackenzie took up the Latin grammar, marking off her next lesson, and piling it on with unsparing hand, too. Yet not in accord with Tim Sullivan's advice; solely because his pupil was one of extraordinary capacity. There was no such thing as discouraging Joan; she absorbed learning and retained it, as the sandstone absorbs oil under the pressure of the earth, holding it without wasting a drop until the day it gladdens man in his exploration.

So with Joan. She was storing learning in the undefiled reservoir of her mind, to be found like unexpected jewels by some hand in after time. As she followed the sheep she carried her books; at night, long after Charley had gone to sleep, she sat with them by the lantern light in the sheep-wagon. Unspoiled by the diversions and distractions which divide the mind of the city student, she acquired and held a month's tasks in a week. The thirsty traveler in the desert places had come to the oasis of her dreams.

Daily Joan rode to the sheep-camp where Mackenzie was learning the business of running sheep under Dad Frazer. There were no holidays in the term Joan had set for herself, no unbending, no relaxation from her books. Perhaps she did not expect her teacher to remain there in the sheeplands, shut away from the life that he had breathed so long and put aside for what seemed to her an unaccountable whim.

"You'll be reading Caesar by winter," Mackenzie told her as she prepared to ride back to her camp. "You'll have to take it slower then; we can't have lessons every day."

"Why not?" She was standing beside her horse, hat in hand, her rich hair lifting in the wind from her wise, placid brow. Her books she had strapped to the saddle-horn; there was a yellow slicker at the cantle.

"You'll be at home, I'll be out here with the sheep. I expect about once a week will be as often as we can make it then."

"I'll be out here on the range," she said, shaking her determined head, "a sheepman's got to stick with his flock through all kinds of weather. If I run home for the winter I'll have to hire a herder, and that would eat my profits up; I'd never get away from here."

"Maybe by the time you've got enough money to carry out your plans, Joan, you'll not want to leave."

"You've got to have education to be able to enjoy money. Some of the sheepmen in this country--yes, most of them--would be better men if they were poor. Wealth is nothing to them but a dim consciousness of a new power. It makes them arrogant and unbearable. Did you ever see Matt Hall?"

"I still have that pleasure in reserve. But I think you'll find it's refinement, rather than learning, that a person needs to enjoy wealth.

That comes more from within than without."

"The curtain's down between me and everything I want," Joan said, a wistful note of loneliness in her low, soft voice. "I'm going to ride away some day and push it aside, and see what it's been keeping from me all the years of my longing. Then, maybe, when I'm satisfied I'll come back and make money. I've got sense enough to see it's here to be made if a person's got the sheep to start with and the range to run them on."

"Yes, you'll have to go," said he, in what seemed sad thoughtfulness, "to learn it all; I can't teach you the things your heart desires most to know. Well, there are bitter waters and sweet waters, Joan; we've got to drink them both."

"It's the same way here," she said, "only we've got sense enough to know the alkali holes before we drink out of them."

"But people are not that wise the world over, Joan."

Joan stood in silent thought, her far-reaching gaze on the dim curtain of haze which hung between her and the world of men's activities, strivings, and lamentations.

"If I had the money I'd go as soon--as soon as I knew a little more,"

she said. "But I've got to stick; I made that bargain with dad--he'd never give me the money, but he'll buy me out when I've got enough to stake me."

"Your father was over this morning."

"Yes, I know."

"He thinks _my_ education's advanced far enough to trust me with a band of sheep. I'm going to have charge of the flock I've been running here with Dad Frazer."

"I heard about it."

"And you don't congratulate me on becoming a paid sheepherder, my first step on the way to flockmaster!"

"I don't know that you're to be congratulated," she returned, facing him seriously. "All there is to success here is brute strength and endurance against storms and winter weather--it don't take any brains.

Out there where you've been and I'm going, there must be something bigger and better for a man, it seems to me. But maybe men get tired of it--I don't know."

"You'll understand it better when you go there, Joan."

"Yes, I'll understand a lot of things that are locked up to me now.

Well, I don't want to go as much all the time now as I did--only in spells sometimes. If you stay here and teach me, maybe I'll get over it for good."

Joan laughed nervously, half of it forced, her face averted.

"If I could teach you enough to keep you here, Joan, I'd think it was the biggest thing I'd ever done."

"I don't want to know any more if it means giving up," she said.

"It looks like giving up to you, Joan, but I've only started," he corrected her, in gentle spirit.

"I oughtn't talk that way to you," she said, turning to him contritely, her earnest eyes lifted to his, "it's none of my business what you do. If you hadn't come here I'd never have heard of--of _amare_, maybe."