The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 26

"I think I'd take mine in the pen," Mackenzie said, leaning back to comfort with his pipe. Night came down; the dogs lay at his feet, noses on forepaws. Below him the sheep were still. So, for a long time, submerged in dreams.

One of the dogs lifted its head, its bristles rising, a low growl in its throat. The other rose cautiously, walking away crouching, with high-lifted feet. Mackenzie listened, catching no noise to account for their alarm. A little while, and the sound of Hertha Carlson's singing rose from the hill behind him, her song the same, the doleful quality of its air unmodified.

_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!_

"Strange how she runs on that," Mackenzie muttered, listening for her to repeat, as he had heard her the night her singing guided him to her melancholy door. A little nearer now the song sounded, the notes broken as if the singer walked, stumbling at times, so much sadness in it, so much longing, such unutterable hopelessness as to wring the listener's heart.

Swan was beating her again, neglecting her, subjecting her to the cruelties of his savage mind; there was no need for the woman to come nearer to tell him that. Only grief for which there was no comfort, despair in which there was no hope, could tune a human note to that eloquent expression of pain. Perhaps she was wandering in the night now for the solace of weariness, pouring out the three lines of her song in what seemed the bitterness of accusation for a promise unfulfilled.

The dogs came back to Mackenzie's side, where they sat with ears lifted, but with no expression of hostility or alarm in their bearing now. They were only curious, as their master was curious, waiting to see if the wandering singer would come on into camp.

There was no glow of lantern to guide her, and no moon, but she came straight for where Mackenzie sat. A little way off she stopped.

"h.e.l.lo!" she hailed, as if uncertain of her welcome.

Mackenzie requested her to come on, lighting the lantern which he had ready to hand. Mrs. Carlson hesitated, drawing back a little when she saw his face.

"I thought it was Earl," she said.

"Earl's not here tonight. Sit down and rest yourself, Mrs. Carlson.

You don't remember me?"

"I remember. You are the man who cut my chain."

"I thought you'd forgotten me."

"No, I do not forget so soon. A long time I wanted to kill you for the blow you gave Swan that night."

"As long as Swan was good to you," said he, "of course you would. How do you feel about it now?"

"I only cry now because he did not die. He was different a little while after he got well, but again he forgets. He beats me; he leaves me alone with the sheep."

"I knew he was beating you again," Mackenzie nodded, confirming his speculation of a little while before.

"Sheep!" said she. "Swan thinks only of sheep; he is worse since he bought Hall's flock. It is more than I can endure!"

Mrs. Carlson was worried and worn, fast losing all she had gained in flesh and color during Swan's period of kindness when she had thrown herself into his wild ways and ridden the range like a fighting woman at his side. Much of her comeliness remained in her sad face and great, luminous, appealing eyes, for it was the comeliness of melancholy which sorrow and hard usage refined. She would carry her grace with her, and the pale shred of her youthful beauty, down to the last hard day. But it was something that Swan was insensible to; it could not soften his hand toward her, nor bend his wild thoughts to gentleness. Now he had denied her again the little share he had granted her in his wild life, and must break the thing he had made, going his morose way alone.

"I hadn't heard he'd bought Hall's sheep," Mackenzie said. "Is he going to run them on this range?"

"No, he says I shall go there, where the wolves are many and bold, even by daylight, to watch over them. There I would be more alone than here. I cannot go, I cannot go! Let him kill me, but I will not go!"

"He's got a right to hire a man to run them; he can afford it."

"His money grows like thistles. Where Swan touches the earth with the seed of it, money springs. Money is a disease that he spreads when he walks, like the scales that fall from a leper. Money! I pray G.o.d night and day that a plague will sweep away his flocks, that a thief will find his hiding place, that a fire will burn the bank that locks in his gold, and make him poor. Poor, he would be kind. A man's proud heart bends down when he is poor."

"G.o.d help you!" said Mackenzie, pitying her from the well of his tender heart.

"G.o.d is deaf; he cannot hear!" she said, bitter, hopeless, yet rebellious against the silence of heaven and earth that she could not penetrate with her lamentations and bring relief.

"No, you shouldn't let yourself believe any such thing," he chided, yet with a gentleness that was almost an encouragement.

"This land is a vacuum, out of which sound cannot reach him, then,"

she sighed, bending her sad head upon her hands. "I have cried out to him in a sorrow that would move a stone on the mountain-side, but G.o.d has not heard. Yes, it must be that this land is a vacuum, such as I read of when I was a girl in school. Maybe--" looking up with eager hopefulness--"if I go out of it a little way, just on the edge of it and pray, G.o.d will be able to hear my voice?"

"Here, as well as anywhere," he said, moved by her strange fancy, by the hunger of her voice and face.

"Then it is because there is a curse on me--the curse of Swan's money, of his evil ways!" She sprang up, stretching her long arms wildly. "I will pray no more, no more!" she cried. "I will curse G.o.d, I will curse him as Job cursed him, and fling myself from the rocks and die!"

Mackenzie was on his feet beside her, his hand on her shoulder as if he would stay her mad intention.

"No, no!" he said, shocked by the boldness of her declaration. "Your troubles are hard enough to bear--don't thicken them with talk like this."

She looked at him blankly, as if she did not comprehend, as though her reason had spent itself in this rebellious outbreak against the unseen forces of her sad destiny.

"Where is your woman?" she asked.

"I haven't any woman."

"I thought she was your woman, but if she is not, Swan can have her.

Swan can have her, then; I do not care now any more. Swan wants her, he speaks of her in the night. Maybe when he takes her he will set me free."

Mrs. Carlson sat again near the lantern, curling her legs beneath her with the facility of a dog, due to long usage of them in that manner, Mackenzie believed, when chained to the wall in her lonely house among the trees. Mackenzie stood a little while watching her as she sat, chin in her hands, pensive and sad. Presently he sat near her.

"Where is Swan tonight?" he asked.

"Drinking whisky beside the wagon with Hector Hall. They will not fight. No."

"No," he echoed, abstractedly, making a mental picture of Carlson and Hall beside the sheep-wagon, the light of a lantern on their faces, cards in their fists, a jug of whisky in the middle ground within reach from either hand. It was such diversion as Swan Carlson would enjoy, the night around him as black as the shadows of his own dead soul.

"Earl did not come to me this night," she said, complaining in sad note. "He promised he would come."

"Has he been going over there to see you?" Mackenzie asked, resentful of any advantage Reid might be seeking over this half-mad creature.

"He makes love to me when Swan is away," she said, nodding slowly, looking up with serious eyes. "But it is only false love; there is a lie in his eyes."

"You're right about that," Mackenzie said, letting go a sigh of relief.

"He tries to flatter me to tell him where Swan hides the money he brought from the bank," she said, slowly, wearily, "but him I do not trust. When I ask him to do what must first be done to make me free, he will not speak, but goes away, pale, pale, like a frightened girl."

"You'd better tell him to stay away," Mackenzie counseled, his voice stern and hard.

"But you would not do that," she continued, heedless of his admonition. She leaned toward him, her great eyes s.h.i.+ning in the light, her face eager in its sorrowful comeliness; she put out her hand and touched his arm.

"You are a brave man, you would not turn white and go away into the night like a wolf to hear me speak of that. Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ No, no--there is no one to hear."

She looked round with fearful eyes, crouching closer to the ground, her breath drawn in long labor, her hand tightening on his arm.

Mackenzie felt a shudder sweep coldly over him, moved by the tragedy her att.i.tude suggested.