The Land of Strong Men Part 3

The pony was blown and gasping as they rode up to the ranch and Angus leaped from his back. Rennie's hand fell on his shoulder.

"Kid," he said earnestly, "you want to brace up and keep braced. If it's a show-down for your daddy he'll like to know you're takin' it like a man. Then there's Jean and Turkey. This here happens to everybody, and while it's tough it's a part of the game. And just one more thing: If you find out who done the shootin', let me know!"

The boy nodded, because he could not trust himself to speak, and ran into the house. It was hushed in the twilight. Already it seemed to hold a little of the strange stillness which comes with the departure of a familiar presence. As the boy paused, from a corner came a little, sniffling sob, and in the semi-darkness he saw his young brother, Torquil, curled miserably upon a skin-covered couch. Paying no attention to him he crossed the living room and as he did so his sister Jean entered. In some mysterious way she seemed years older than the girl-child who had come running after him in the gray mists of that morning. Dry-eyed, slender, quiet-moving, like the shadow of a girl in the gloom, she led him back and closed the door. He obeyed her touch without question, without a trace of his superiority of the morning. In face of sickness and death, like most of his s.e.x he felt helpless, impotent. He put his long arm around his sister and suddenly she clung to him, her slender body shaking.

"He's not--dead--Jean?"

"Not--not yet, Angus. Dr. Wilkes is with him now. He says he won't live long. He didn't want to tell me, but I made him."

She told him all she knew. Adam Mackay had ridden away by himself that morning, no one knew whither. In the afternoon he had come home swaying in his saddle, shot through the body. Then young Turkey has climbed into the blood-soaked saddle and ridden for the doctor. As to how he had met with his hurt Adam Mackay had said no word.

The inner door opened to admit a burly, thick-bodied man with reddish hair sprinkled with gray and grizzled, bushy eyebrows. This was Dr.

Wilkes. He nodded to Angus.

"You're in time. Your father wants you. Go to him, and call me if anything happens."

"He's going to--going to--"

The boy was unable to complete the sentence. The doctor put his arm over his shoulder for a moment in a kindly, elder-brotherly touch.

"I'm afraid so, my boy. In fact, I know so. Keep a stiff upper lip, old man. He'll like that."

Adam Mackay stared at his eldest son hungrily from the pillows. Above his great black beard his face was gray. He was a great frame of a man, long, lean and sinewy. The likeness of father and son was marked. He held out his hand feebly and the boy took it and choked. Then Adam Mackay spoke in a little whisper so unlike his usual deep voice that the boy was startled, and because it was near the end with him his words carried the sharp twist and hiss of the Gaelic which was the tongue of his youth; for though Adam Mackay had never seen Scotland, he had been born in a settlement which, fifty years before, was more Gaelic than the Highlands themselves.

"It cannot be helped, son, and it is little I care for myself. When you come to face death, many years from now, please the G.o.d, you'll find it no' sic' a fearful thing. But it is you and the children that worries me now, Angus."

"Never mind us, father," the boy said. "I can look after Jean and Turkey."

The stricken giant smiled at him with a quiet pride of which the recollection years after warmed the boy's heart.

"I had hoped for twenty years of life yet, by which time you would have been settled, with children of your own. Eh, well, the young birds must fledge and fly alone, and your wings are well sprouted, Angus-lad. You have in you the makings of a man, though yet headstrong and dour by nature. And now listen, son, for my time is short: I look to you to take the place I can no longer fill. You are the Mackay, the head of the family. Remember that, and cease before your time to be a boy."

"I will, father," the boy promised.

"There is little or no money, worse luck," the man went on. "All I have had I have put into land and timber, and the fire burnt the timber: But in time the land will make you rich, though not yet awhile, maybe. But till it does, the ranch will give you a living. Sell nothing now--not an acre. Promise me, boy!"

"I promise, father," the boy replied.

"A promise to a dying father is an oath," the man went on. "But no Mackay of our Mackays ever broke his word pa.s.sed for good or ill.

Remember that, too. I have made a will, and all I have is left to you as the eldest son. That has ever been our custom. When the time comes, and they are older, deal generously with your sister and brother. That is our custom, too. Of this will, the man Braden is named as executor. I had intended--but it is too late now. He is a man of business and has the name of an upright man. But if you need advice, son, go to Judge Riley, drunkard and all as he is. But for that he should have been in Braden's place. That is all, I think. I feel more content now." And he closed his eyes with a sigh.

"I will remember, father," the boy said. "But who did this? Who shot you?"

The eyes opened and searched his deeply for many seconds.

"Why do you want to know?"

"I ought to know," the boy replied.

"You want to know," his father said, "so that if the law should fail, you would take the old law of the old days into your young hands. Is that it, my son?"

"Yes," the boy admitted, "that is it. And why for no, father?"

For a moment the graying face of the dying man lighted with a swift gleam of pride and satisfaction. Then he lifted his great hand feebly.

"You have bred true, lad. Ever were the Mackays good haters, bitter of heart and heavy of hand. So I have been all my days, and no man did me wrong that I did not repay it. But listen, son o' mine: Lying here with my man's strength gone from me and the shadows on my soul I see more clearly, as clearly as old Murdoch McGillivray, who is dead, and as you know had the gift while he lived. And I tell you now that hate and revenge are the things worth least in life; and, moreover, that the things worth most in life and much more in death, are love, and work well done, and a heart clean of bitterness. And so I will tell you nothing at all."

"Please, father!" the boy pleaded, for as his father had said he had bred true.

"No and no, I tell you, no!" Adam Mackay refused. "No killing will bring me back. I will not lay a feud upon you. Blood and blood, and yet more blood I have seen come of such things. I know you, Angus, bone o' my bone and flesh o' my flesh as I know my own youth, and of the knowledge in that one thing I will not trust you. I die, and that is the end of it, for me and for all of me. Your duty is to the living. And now call you Jean and Torquil, that I may bid them farewell. And take you my blessing such as it is; for I feel the darkness closing upon me."

An hour later Adam Mackay was dead. And that day was the last of Angus Mackay's careless boyhood.

CHAPTER III

ANGUS a.s.sERTS HIMSELF

Though the death of Adam Mackay made a great local sensation, its cause remained unexplained. Apparently he had been unarmed, and so it seemed plain murder. But on the other hand his strange silence was puzzling. He had been on good terms with most of his neighbors, or at least not on very bad terms with anybody, save a couple of Indians whom he had caught stealing and handled roughly. But these Indians had a perfectly good alibi. There was no clew, no starting point. n.o.body knew even which way Mackay had ridden on the day of his death. And so after a while it was cla.s.sed with those mysteries which may be solved by time, by not otherwise.

Meanwhile, young Angus took up the burden of his responsibilities. So far as he knew he had no near relatives, and search of his father's papers confirmed this. He was rather relieved than otherwise. He found his father's will, and struggling with its verbiage, set it aside to await the return of the executor Isaac J. Braden, who was absent on a business trip.

Braden was known to Angus by sight and by reputation. He lived in Mowbray, the nearest town, which was some sixteen miles from the ranch, where he was the big frog in its little puddle. He had a good many irons in the fire. He ran a sort of private banking-loan-insurance business, dealt in real estate, owned an interest in a store, dabbled in local politics and was prominent in church matters. He was considered a very able and trustworthy man. But young Angus, though he had very misty notions of the functions of an executor, had a very clear and definite conviction that it was up to him to run the ranch and look after his sister and brother. That was his personal job. And so he took stock of the situation.

Adam Mackay had owned in all a block of nearly two thousand acres. Of this about three hundred was cultivated or in pasture. The whole block was good, very level, with ample water for irrigation. On the range was nearly a hundred head of cattle. There were horses in plenty--a couple of work team, a team of drivers, and each young Mackay had a saddle pony. The buildings were good, and the wagons, sleighs, tools and machinery in excellent condition. The ranch was a going concern, apparently in good shape. None the less it was a hard proposition for a youngster to handle. It was like putting a cabin boy on the bridge to navigate the ship.

Having been brought up on a ranch, he knew quite well how most work should be done, and he had acquired by absorption rather than by conscious thought a good deal of theory. But Adam Mackay had himself done rather more than half the work. He had had but one steady hired man, Gus Gustafson, a huge Scandinavian who was a splendid worker when told what to do, but who had no head whatever. As Angus could not do the work his father had done he had to obtain additional help, and so he made a proposition to Dave Rennie.

Rennie was not much of a farmer, but he came to the ranch temporarily at first out of his friendship for Angus, and remained.

On a certain Sat.u.r.day afternoon Angus and Dave Rennie, engaged in hanging a new gate, saw a two-seated rig with three men approaching.

Rennie peered at them.

"There's Braden," he said. "I heard he'd got back."

"And that's Nick Garland driving," Angus observed. "Who's the other fellow?"

"Stranger to me. Garland, huh! I never had much use for that sport."

Garland was a young man whose business, so far as he had any, was dealing in cattle. Uncharitable persons said that he dealt more poker.

He was a good-looking chap, after a fashion, who affected cowboy garb, rode a good horse, was locally known and considered himself a devil among the girls, and generally tried to live up to the reputation of a dead-game sport.

The third man, whom neither Angus nor Dave recognized, was a nondescript, sandy individual with drooping shoulders, a drooping nose above a drooping moustache which but partially concealed a drooping mouth. On the whole, both Garland and this stranger seemed uncongenial companions for Mr. Braden.

That celebrity grunted as he climbed down. He was a fleshy man of middle age, clean shaven, carefully dressed, with small, somewhat fishy eyes.