The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 29

Swan immediately took part in the melee of gnas.h.i.+ng, rolling, rearing dogs, laying about among them with impartial hand, quickly subduing them to obedience. He stood looking stonily at Mackenzie, unmoved by anger, unflushed by exertion. In that way he stood silent a little while, his face untroubled by any pa.s.sion that rolled in his breast.

"You're runnin' your sheep over on my gra.s.s--what?" said Swan.

"You're a mile over my range," Mackenzie accused.

"You've been crowdin' over on me for a month," Swan said, "and I didn't say nothing. But when a man tries to run his sheep over amongst mine and drive 'em off, I take a hand."

"If anybody's tryin' such a game as that, it's you," Mackenzie told him. "Get 'em out of here, and keep 'em out."

"I got fifteen hundred in that band--you'll have to help me cut 'em out," said Swan.

"You had about seven hundred," Mackenzie returned, dispa.s.sionately, although it broke on him suddenly what the big flockmaster was trying to put through.

Counting on Mackenzie's greenness, and perhaps on the simplicity of his nature as they had read it in the sheep country, Swan had prepared this trap days ahead. He had run a small band of the same breed as Sullivan's sheep--for that matter but one breed was extensively grown on the range--over to the border of Tim's lease with the intention of mingling them and driving home more than he had brought. Mackenzie never had heard of the trick being worked on a green herder, but he realized now how simply it could be done, opportunity such as this presenting.

But it was one thing to bring the sheep over and another thing to take them away. One thing Mackenzie was sure of, and that was the judgment of his eyes in numbering sheep. That had been Dad Frazer's first lesson, and the old man had kept him at it until he could come within a few head among hundreds at a glance.

"I'll help you cut out as many as you had," Mackenzie said, running his eyes over the mingled flocks, "they're all alike, one as good as another, I guess. It looks like you got your stock from this ranch, anyhow, but you'll not take more than seven hundred this trip."

"My dogs can cut mine out, they know 'em by the smell," Swan said. "I had fifteen hundred, and I bet you I'll take fifteen hundred back."

The dogs had drawn off, each set behind their respective masters, panting, eyeing each other with hostility, one rising now and then with growls, threatening to open the battle again. The sheep drifted about in confusion, so thoroughly mingled now that it would be past human power to separate them again and apportion each respective head to its rightful owner.

"Seven hundred, at the outside," Mackenzie said again. "And keep them off of my gra.s.s when you get 'em."

Carlson stood where he had stopped, ten feet or more distant, his arms bare, s.h.i.+rt open on his breast in his way of picturesque freedom.

Mackenzie waited for him to proceed in whatever way he had planned, knowing there could be no compromise, no settlement in peace. He would either have to yield entirely and allow Carlson to drive off seven or eight hundred of Sullivan's sheep, or fight. There didn't seem to be much question on how it would come out in the latter event, for Carlson was not armed, and Mackenzie's pistol was that moment under his hand.

"You got a gun on you," said Swan, in casual, disinterested tone. "I ain't got no gun on me, but I'm a better man without no gun than you are with one. I'm goin' to take my fifteen hundred sheep home with me, and you ain't man enough to stop me."

Carlson's two dogs were sitting close behind him, one of them a gaunt gray beast that seemed almost a purebred wolf. Its jaws were b.l.o.o.d.y from its late encounter; flecks of blood were on its gray coat. It sat panting and alert, indifferent to Mackenzie's presence, watching the sheep as if following its own with its savage eyes. Suddenly Carlson spoke an explosive word, clapping his great hands, stamping his foot toward Mackenzie.

Mackenzie fired as the wolf-dog sprang, staggering back from the weight of its lank body hurled against his breast, and fired again as he felt the beast's vile breath in his face as it snapped close to his throat.

Mackenzie emptied his pistol in quick, but what seemed ineffectual, shots at the other dog as it came leaping at Carlson's command. In an instant he was involved in a confusion of man and dog, the body of the wolfish collie impeding his feet as he fought.

Carlson and the other dog pressed the attack so quickly that Mackenzie had no time to slip even another cartridge into his weapon. Carlson laughed as he clasped him in his great arms, the dog clinging to Mackenzie's pistol hand, and in a desperate moment it was done.

Mackenzie was lying on his back, the giant sheepman's knee in his chest.

Carlson did not speak after ordering the dog away. He held Mackenzie a little while, hand on his throat, knee on his chest, looking with unmoved features down into his eyes, as if he considered whether to make an end of him there or let him go his way in added humiliation and disgrace. Mackenzie lay still under Carlson's hand, trying to read his intention in his clear, ice-cold, expressionless eyes, watching for his moment to renew the fight which he must push under such hopeless disadvantage.

Swan's eyes betrayed nothing of his thoughts. They were as calm and untroubled as the sky, which Mackenzie thought, with a poignant sweep of transcendant fear for his life, he never had beheld so placid and beautiful as in that dreadful moment.

Carlson's huge fingers began to tighten in the grip of death; relax, tighten, each successive clutch growing longer, harder. The joy of his strength, the pleasure in the agony that spoke from his victim's face, gleamed for a moment in Carlson's eyes as he bent, gazing; then flickered like a light in the wind, and died.

Mackenzie's revolver lay not more than four feet from his hand. He gathered his strength for a struggle to writhe from under Carlson's pressing knee. Carlson, antic.i.p.ating his intention, reached for the weapon and s.n.a.t.c.hed it, laying hold of it by the barrel.

Mackenzie's unexpected renewal of the fight surprised Carlson into releasing his strangling hold. He rose to sitting posture, breast to breast with the fighting sheepman, whose great bulk towered above him, free breath in his nostrils, fresh hope in his heart. He fought desperately to come to his feet, Carlson sprawling over him, the pistol lifted high for a blow.

Mackenzie's hands were clutching Carlson's throat, he was on one knee, swaying the Norseman's body back in the strength of despair, when the heavens seemed to crash above him, the fragments of universal destruction burying him under their weight.

CHAPTER XIX

NOT CUT OUT FOR A SHEEPMAN

Mackenzie returned to conscious state in nausea and pain. Not on a surge, but slow-breaking, like the dawn, his senses came to him, a.s.sembling as dispersed birds a.s.semble, with erratic excursions as if distrustful of the place where they desire to alight. Wherever the soul may go in such times of suspended animation, it comes back to its dwelling in trepidation and distrust, and with lingering at the door.

The first connected thought that Mackenzie enjoyed after coming out of his shock was that somebody was smoking near at hand; the next that the sun was in his eyes. But these were indifferent things, drowned in a flood of pain. He put them aside, not to grope after the cause of his discomfort, for that was apart from him entirely, but to lie, throbbing in every nerve, indifferent either to life or death.

Presently his timid life came back entirely, settling down in the old abode with a sigh. Then Mackenzie remembered the poised revolver in Swan Carlson's hand. He moved, struggling to rise, felt a sweep of sickness, a flood of pain, but came to a sitting posture in the way of a man fighting to life from beneath an avalanche. The sun was directly in his eyes, standing low above the hill. He s.h.i.+fted weakly to relieve its discomfort. Earl Reid was sitting near at hand, a few feet above him on the side of the hill.

Reid was smoking a cigarette, his hat pushed back, the shadows of his late discontent cleared out of his face. Below them the sheep were grazing. They were all there; Mackenzie had wit enough in him to see that they were all there.

Reid looked at him with a grin that seemed divided between amus.e.m.e.nt and scorn.

"I don't believe you're cut out for a sheepman, Mackenzie," he said.

"It begins to look like it," Mackenzie admitted. He was too sick to inquire into the matter of Reid's recovery of the sheep; the world tipped at the horizon, as it tips when one is sick at sea.

"Your hand's chewed up some, Mackenzie," Reid told him. "I think you'd better go to the ranch and have it looked after; you can take my horse."

Mackenzie was almost indifferent both to the information of his hurt and the offer for its relief. He lifted his right hand to look at it, and in glancing down saw his revolver in the holster at his side. This was of more importance to him for the moment than his injury. Swan Carlson was swinging that revolver to strike him when he saw it last.

How did it get back there in his holster? Where was Carlson; what had happened to him? Mackenzie looked at Reid as for an explanation.

"He batted you over the head with your gun--I guess he used your gun, I found it out there by you," said Reid, still grinning as if he could see the point of humor in it that Mackenzie could not be expected to enjoy.

Mackenzie did not attempt a reply. He looked with a sort of impersonal curiosity at his hand and forearm, where the dog had bitten him in several places. That had happened a good while ago, he reasoned; the blood had dried, the marks of the dog's teeth were bruised-looking around the edges.

And the sheep were all there, and Reid was laughing at him in satisfaction of his disgrace. There was no sound of Swan Carlson's flock, no sight of the sheepman. Reid had come and untangled what Mackenzie had failed to prevent, and was sitting there, unruffled and undisturbed, enjoying already the satisfaction of his added distinction.

Perhaps Reid had saved his life from Carlson's hands, as he had saved it from Matt Hall's. His debt to Reid was mounting with mocking swiftness. As if in scorn of his unfitness, Reid had picked up his gun and put it back in its sheath.

What would Joan say about this affair? What would Tim Sullivan's verdict be? He had not come off even second best, as in the encounter with Matt Hall, but defeated, disgraced. And he would have been robbed in open day, like a baby, if it hadn't been for Reid's interference.

Mackenzie began to think with Dad Frazer that he was not a lucky man.

Too simple and too easy, too trusting and too slow, as they thought of him in the sheep country. A sort of kindly indictment it was, but more humiliating because it seemed true. No, he was not cut out for a sheepman, indeed, nor for anything but that calm and placid woman's work in the schoolroom, it seemed.

Mackenzie looked again at his hand. There was no pain in it, but its appearance was sufficient to alarm a man in a normal state of reasonableness. He had the pa.s.sing thought that it ought to be attended to, and got up on weaving legs. He might wash it in the creek, he considered, and so take out the rough of whatever infection the dog's teeth had driven into his flesh, but dismissed the notion at once as altogether foolish. It needed b.i.+.c.hloride of mercury, and it was unlikely there was such a thing within a hundred and fifty miles.

As he argued this matter of antiseptics with himself Mackenzie walked away from the spot where Reid remained seated, going aimlessly, quite unconscious of his act. Only when he found himself some distance away he stopped, considering what to do. His thoughts ran in fragments and flashes, broken by the throbbing of his shocked brain, yet he knew that Reid had offered to do something for him which he could not accept.

No, he could not place himself under additional obligation to Reid.

Live or die, fail or succeed, Reid should not be called upon again to offer a supporting hand. He could sit there on the hillside and grin about this encounter with Carlson, and grin about the hurt in Mackenzie's hand and arm, and the blinding pain in his head. Let him grin in his high satisfaction of having turned another favor to Mackenzie's account; let him grin until his face froze in a grin--he should not have Joan.

Mackenzie went stumbling on again to the tune of that declaration.