The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 22

"If I had a thousand dollars I'd dust it for Mexico tomorrow," said Reid. He turned to Mackenzie, pus.h.i.+ng his hat back from his forehead, letting the sun on his savagely knotted face. "I haven't got money to send a telegram, not even a special delivery letter! Look at me! A millionaire's son and sole heir, up against a proposition like this for three years!"

Mackenzie let him sweat it out, offering neither water for his thirst nor wood for his fire. Reid sat in surly silence, running his thumb along his cartridge belt.

"A man's friends forget him out here," he complained; "he's the same to them as dead."

"It's the way everywhere when a man wants to borrow money," Mackenzie told him, not without the shade of a sneer.

"I've let them have enough in my time that they could afford to come across with what I asked for!"

"I think you'd better stick to the sheep business with Tim,"

Mackenzie advised, not unkindly, ashamed of his momentary weakness and scorn. "A man's prospects don't look very good back home when a bunch of parasites and grafters won't come over with a little loan."

"They can go to the devil! I can live without them."

"And get fat on it, kid. Three years here will be little more to you than as many days, if you get--interested."

Reid exclaimed impatiently, dismissing such a.s.surance with a testy gesture.

"How much will you give me for my chances?" he asked.

"n.o.body else can play your hand, kid."

"On the square, Mackenzie. Will you give me a thousand dollars?"

"I'm not sole heir to any millionaire," Mackenzie reminded him, taking the proposal in the jesting spirit that he supposed it was given.

"On the dead, Mackenzie--I mean it. Will you give me a thousand dollars for my place in the sheep game, girl and all? If you will, I'll hit the breeze tonight for Mexico and kick it all over to you, win or lose."

"If I could buy you out for a dime we couldn't trade," Mackenzie told him, a coldness in tone and manner that was more than a reproof.

"Joan ought to be worth that much to you!" Reid sneered.

Mackenzie got up, walked a few steps away, turned back presently, his temper in hand.

"It's not a question open to discussion between gentlemen," he said.

Reid blinked up at him, an odd leer on his sophisticated face, saying no more. He made a pack on his saddle of the camp outfit, and started off along the ridge, leaving Mackenzie to follow as he pleased. A mile or more along Reid pitched upon a suitable camping place. He had himself established long before Mackenzie came to where he sat smoking amid his gloomy, impatient thoughts.

"I'm not going over to relieve that old skunk," Reid announced, "not without orders from Sullivan. If he gets off you'll have to relieve him yourself. I don't want that Hall guy to get it into his nut that I'm runnin' away from him."

"All right, Earl," said Mackenzie, good-naturedly, "I'll go."

"You'll be half an hour nearer Joan's camp--she'll have that much longer to stay," said Reid, his mean leer creeping into his wide, thin lips again.

Mackenzie turned slowly to look him squarely in the eyes. He stood so a few seconds, Reid coloring in hot resentment of the silent rebuke.

"I've heard enough of that to last me the rest of your three years,"

Mackenzie said, something as hard as stones in a cus.h.i.+on under his calm voice.

Reid jerked his hip in his peculiar twisting movement to s.h.i.+ft his pistol belt, turned, and walked away.

If it was the lonesomeness, Mackenzie thought, it was taking a mighty peculiar turn in that fellow. He was more like a cub that was beginning to find itself, and bristle and snarl and turn to bite the hand that had fended it through its helpless stage. Perhaps it would pa.s.s in a little while, or perhaps it would get worse on him. In the latter case there would be no living on the range with Reid, for on the range Mackenzie believed Reid was destined to remain. He had been trying to borrow money to get away, with what view in his dissatisfied head Mackenzie could not guess. He hadn't got it; he wouldn't get it.

Those who had fattened on him in his prosperity were strangers to him in his time of penance and disgrace.

Mackenzie put off his start to Dad's camp until dusk, knowing the old man would prefer to take the road at night, after his mysterious way.

He probably would hoof it over to Sullivan's and borrow a buckboard to make a figure in before the widow-lady upon whom he had anch.o.r.ed his variable heart.

Reid was bringing in the sheep when Mackenzie left, too far away for a word. Mackenzie thought of going down to him, for he disliked to part with anything like a shadow between them, feeling that he owed Reid a great debt indeed. More than that, he liked the kid, for there seemed to be a streak of good in him that all his ugly moods could not cover.

But he went his way over the hills toward Dad's camp, the thought persisting in him that he would, indeed, be thirty minutes nearer Joan. And it was a thought that made his heart jump and a gladness burn in his eyes, and his feet move onward with a swift eagerness.

But only as a teacher with a lively interest in his pupil, he said; only that, and nothing more. On a hilltop a little way beyond his camp he stopped suddenly, his breath held to listen. Over the calm, far-carrying silence of the early night there came the sound of a woman singing, and this was the manner of her song:

_Na-a-fer a-lo-o-one, na-a-fer a-lone.

He promise na-fer to leafe me, Na-fer to leafe me a-lone!_

CHAPTER XV

ONLY ONE JACOB

Joan came riding over the next morning from Reid's camp, not having heard of Mackenzie's s.h.i.+ft to oblige Dad Frazer. She was bareheaded, the sun in her warm hair, hat hanging on her saddle-horn.

"Dad might have come by and told me," she said, flinging to the ground as lightly as a swallow. "It would have saved us half an hour."

"We'll have to work harder to make it up," Mackenzie told her, thinking how much more a woman she was growing every day.

Joan was distrait again that day, her eyes fixed often in dreamy speculation as her teacher explained something that she found hard, against her wonted aptness, to understand. When the rather disjointed lesson came to an end Joan sighed, strapping her books in a way that seemed to tell that she was weary of them.

"Do you still think you'll stick to the sheep business, John?" she asked, not lifting her eyes to his face, all out of her frank and earnest way of questioning.

"I'm only on probation, you know, Joan; something might happen between now and this time next year to change things all around. There's a chance, anyhow, that I may not make good."

"No, nothing will ever happen to change it," said Joan, shaking her head sadly. "Nothing that ought to happen ever happens here. I don't know whether I can stand it to carry out my contract with dad or not.

Three years between me and what I'm longing for!"

"It's not very long when one's young, Joan. Well, I don't know of any short cuts to either fame or fortune, or I'd have taken them myself."

"Yes, but you're free to pick up and go whenever you want to. A man don't have to have money to strike out and see the world--I don't see why a woman should. I could work my way as well as anybody."

"They're harder masters out there than the range is to you here, Joan.

And there's the insolence of mastery, and the obloquy of poverty and situation that I hope you'll never feel. Wait a little while longer with the probationers among the sheep."

"Earl never will stay it out," she said, lifting her eyes for a moment to his. "He's sick of it now--he'd throw everything over if he had the money to get away."

"He'd be a very foolish young man, then. But it's like breaking off smoking, I guess, to quit the things you've grown up with on short notice like he had."