KEEPER OF THE FLOCK
John Mackenzie, late schoolmaster of Jasper, marched on through the
cool of the night, regretting that he had meddled in the domestic
arrangements of Swan Carlson, the Swede. The outcome of his attempted
kindness to the oppressed woman had not been felicitous. Indeed, he
was troubled greatly by the fear that he had killed Swan Carlson, and
that grave consequences might rise out of this first adventure that
ever fell in his way.
Perhaps adventure was not such a thing to be sought as he had
imagined, he reflected; hand to his swollen throat. There was an ache
in his crushed windpipe, a dryness in his mouth, a taste of blood on
his tongue. That had been a close go for him, there on the floor under
Swan Carlson's great knee; a few seconds longer, and his first
adventure would have been his last.
Yet there was a vast satisfaction in knowing what was in him. Here he
had stood foot to foot with the strong man of the sheeplands, the
strangler, the fierce, half-insane terror of peaceful men, and had
come off the victor. He had fought this man in his own house, where a
man will fight valiantly, even though a coward on the road, and had
left him senseless on the floor. It was something for a schoolteacher,
counted a mild and childlike man.
It had been many a year since Mackenzie had mixed in a fight, and the
best that had gone before was nothing more than a harmless spat
compared to this. The marvel of it was how he had developed this
quality of defense in inactivity. There must have been some
psychological undercurrent carrying strength and skill to him through
all the years of his romantic imaginings; the spirits of old heroes of
that land must have lent him their counsel and might in that desperate
battle with the Norse flockmaster.
Adventure was not dead out of the land, it seemed, although this was a
rather sordid and ignoble brand. It had descended to base levels among
base men who lived with sheep and thought only of sheep-riches.
Violence among such men as Swan Carlson was merely violence, with none
of the picturesque embellishments of the olden days when men slung
pistols with a challenge and a hail, in those swift battles where
skill was all, bestial strength nothing.
Mackenzie hoped to find Tim Sullivan different from the general run of
sheep-rich men. There must be some of the spice of romance in a man
who had the wide reputation of Tim Sullivan, and who was the hero of
so many tales of success.
It was Mackenzie's hope that this encounter with the wild sheepman
might turn out to his profit with Tim Sullivan. He always had believed
that he should win fortune fighting if it ever fell to his portion at
all. This brush with Swan Carlson confirmed his old belief. If there
was any good luck for him in the sheep country, it would come to him
through a fight,
Mackenzie considered these things as he marched on away from Swan
Carlson's homestead, thinking the safe plan would be to put several
miles between himself and that place before lying down to rest. At
dawn Swan would be out after him with a gun, more than likely.
Mackenzie had nothing of the sort in his slender equipment. Imagine a
man going into the sheep country carrying a gun! The gun days of the
West were done; he had seen only one cowboy wearing one in his four
years at Jasper.
Past midnight Mackenzie came to a little valley where somebody had
been cutting hay. The late-risen moon discovered the little mounds of
hay thick around him, the aroma of the curing herbage was blowing to
him an invitation to stop and sleep. Let Swan Carlson come when he
might, that was the place prepared for the traveler's repose.
Romance or no romance, riches or poverty, he was through with a
woman's work, he told himself. Once there had been ideals ahead of him
in educational work, but the contempt of men had dispelled them. If he
could not find his beginning in the sheep country, he would turn
elsewhere. A man who had it in him to fight giants wasn't cut out for
teaching school.
Mackenzie sat with his back to a haycock thinking in this vein. The
sound of running water was near; he went to the creek and bathed his
throat, easing its burning with a deep swig. Back again to the hay,
still building new victories, and nobler ones, on the foundation of
this triumph over Swan Carlson, the red giant who choked men to death
in the snow.
Morning discovered no habitation in reach of the eye. That little
field of mown hay stood alone among the gray hills, unfenced,
unfended, secure in its isolation, a little patch of something in the
wilderness that looked like home. Mackenzie must have put many miles
behind him since leaving Carlson's door. Looking back, he could follow
the course of the creek where it snaked through the hills, dark green
of willow and cottonwood fresh among the hemming slopes of sage, but
no trace of Carlson's trees could he see.
Mackenzie had no flour to mix a wad of dough, and but a heel of a
bacon side to furnish a breakfast. It was so unpromising in his
present hungry state that he determined to tramp on a few miles in the
hope of lifting Tim Sullivan's ranch-house on the prominent hilltop
where, he had been told, it stood.
Two or three miles beyond the hay-field Mackenzie came suddenly upon a
sheep-camp. The wagon stood on a green hillside, a pleasant valley
below it where the grass was abundant and sweet. The camp evidently
had been stationed in that place but a little while, for a large band
of sheep grazed just below it, no bedding-ground being worn bare in
the unusual verdure. Altogether, it was the greenest and most
promising place Mackenzie had met in his journey, gladdening at once
to the imagination and the eye.
The shepherd sat on the hillside, his dogs beside him, a little smoke
ascending straight in the calm, early sunshine from his dying fire.
The collies scented the stranger while he stood on the hilltop,
several hundred yards above the camp, rising to question his presence
bristling backs. The shepherd rose to inquire into the alarm,
springing up with amazing agility, such sudden and wild concern in his
manner as provoked the traveler's smile.
Mackenzie saw that he was a boy of fifteen or thereabout, dressed in
overalls much too large for him, the bottoms turned up almost to his
knees. Hot as the morning was beginning, the lad had on a duck coat
with sheepskin collar, but in the excitement of beholding a visitor
approaching his camp so early in the day, he took off his hat,
standing so a moment. Then he cut out a streak for the wagon, a few
rods distant, throwing back a half-frightened look as he disappeared
around its side.
This was a very commodious wagon, familiar to Mackenzie from having
seen many like it drawn up for repairs at the blacksmith shops in
Jasper. Its heavy canvas top was stretched tightly over bows, made to
withstand wind and rough weather, a stovepipe projecting through it,
fended about with a broad tin, and a canvas door, with a little window
in it, a commodious step letting down to the ground. Its tongue was
cut short, to admit coupling it close behind the camp-mover's wagon,
and it was a snug and comfortable home on wheels.
The dogs came slowly to meet Mackenzie as he approached, backs still
bristling, countenances unpromising. The boy had disappeared into the
wagon; Mackenzie wondered if he had gone to fetch his gun.
But no. Instead of a gun, came a girl, neither timidity nor fear in
her bearing, and close behind her came the boy, hat still in his hand,
his long, straight hair down about his ears. Mackenzie had stopped a
hundred yards or so distant, not confident of a friendly reception
from the dogs. The girl waved her hand in invitation for him to come
on, and stood waiting at the wagon end.
She was as neatly dressed as the lad beside her was uncouth in his
man-size overalls, her short corduroy skirt belted about with a broad
leather clasped with a gleaming silver buckle, the tops of her tall
laced boots lost beneath its hem. Her gray flannel waist was laced at
the bosom like a cowboy's shirt, adorned at the collar with a flaming
scarlet necktie done in a bow as broad as a band. Her brown sombrero
was tilted, perhaps unintentionally, a little to one side of her
rather pert and independently carried head.
At a word from her the dogs left the way unopposed, and as greetings
passed between the sheepgirl and the stranger the wise creatures stood
beside her, eyeing the visitor over with suspicious mien. Mackenzie
told his name and his business, making inquiry in the same breath for
Tim Sullivan's ranch.
"Do you know Mr. Sullivan?" she asked. And as she lifted her eyes
Mackenzie saw that they were as blue as asters on an October morning,
and that her hair was a warm reddish-brown, and that her face was
refreshingly pure in its outline, strong and haughty and brown, and
subtly sweet as the elusive perfume of a wild rose of the hills.
"No, I don't know Mr. Sullivan; I've never even seen him. I've heard a
lot about him down at Jasper--I was the schoolteacher there."
"Oh, you're up here on your vacation?" said she, a light of quick
interest in her eyes, an unmistakable friendliness in her voice. It
was as if he had presented a letter from somebody well and favorably
known.
"No, I've come up here to see about learning the sheep business."
"Sheep business?" said she, looking at him with surprised eyes. "Sheep
business?" this time with a shading of disgust. "Well, if I had sense
enough to teach school I'd never want to see another sheep!"
Mackenzie smiled at her impetuous outburst in which she revealed in a
word the discontent of her heart.
"Of course you know Mr. Sullivan?"
"He's my father," she returned. "This is my brother Charley; there are
eight more of us at home."
Charley grinned, his shyness still over him, but his alarm quieted,
and gave Mackenzie his hand.
"The ranch is about thirteen or fifteen miles on up the creek from
here," she said, "You haven't had your breakfast, have you?"
"No; I just about finished my grub yesterday."
"I didn't see any grease around your gills," said the girl, in quite a
matter-of-fact way, no flippancy in her manner. "Charley, stir up the
fire, will you? I can't offer you much, Mr. Mackenzie, but you're
welcome to what there is. How about a can of beans?"
"You've hit me right where I live, Miss Sullivan."
The collies came warily up, stiff-legged, with backs still ruffled,
and sniffed Mackenzie over. They seemed to find him harmless, turning
from him presently to go and lie beside Charley, their faces toward
the flock, alert ears lifted, white breasts gleaming in the sun like
the linen of fastidious gentlemen.
"Do you want me to get any water, Joan?" Charley inquired.
Joan answered from inside the wagon that no water was needed, there
was coffee enough in the pot. She handed the smoke-blackened vessel
out to Mackenzie as she spoke, telling him to go and put it on the
fire.
Joan turned the beans into the pan after cooking the bacon, and sent
Charley to the wagon for a loaf of bread.
"We don't have to bake bread in this camp, that's one blessing," she
said. "Mother keeps us supplied. Some of these sheepherders never
taste anything but their cold-water biscuits for years at a time."
"It must get kind of tiresome," Mackenzie reflected, thinking of his
own efforts at bread-making on the road.
"It's too heavy to carry around in the craw," said Joan.
Charley watched Mackenzie curiously as he ate, whispering once to his
sister, who flushed, turned her eyes a moment on her visitor, and then
seemed to rebuke the lad for passing confidences in such impolite way.
Mackenzie guessed that his discolored neck and bruised face had been
the subject of the boy's conjectures, but he did not feel pride enough
in his late encounter to speak of it even in explanation. Charley
opened the way to it at last when Joan took the breakfast things back
to the wagon.
"Have you been in a fight?" the boy inquired.
"Not much of a one," Mackenzie told him, rather wishing that the
particulars might be reserved.
"Your neck's black like somebody'd been chokin' you, and your face is
bunged up some, too. Who done it?"
"Do you know Swan Carlson?" Mackenzie inquired, turning slowly to the
boy.
"Swan Carlson?" Charley's face grew pale at the name; his eyes started
in round amazement. "You couldn't never 'a' got away from Swan; he
choked two fellers to death, one in each hand. No man in this country
could whip one side of Swan."
"Well, I got away from him, anyhow," said Mackenzie, in a manner that
even the boy understood to be the end of the discussion.
But Charley was not going to have it so. He jumped up and ran to meet
Joan as she came from the wagon.
"Mr. Mackenzie had a fight with Swan Carlson--that's what's the matter
with his neck!" he said. There was unbounded admiration in the boy's
voice, and exultation as if the distinction were his own. Here before
his eyes was a man who had come to grips with Swan Carlson, and had
escaped from his strangling hands to eat his breakfast with as much
unconcern as if he had no more than been kicked by a mule.
Joan came on a little quicker, excitement reflected in her lively
eyes. Mackenzie was filling his pipe, which had gone through the
fight in his pocket in miraculous safety--for which he was duly
grateful--ashamed of his bruises, now that the talk of them had
brought them to Joan's notice again.
"I hope you killed him," she said, coming near, looking down on
Mackenzie with full commendation; "he keeps his crazy wife chained up
like a dog!"
"I don't think he's dead, but I'd like to know for sure," Mackenzie
returned, his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground.
"Nobody will ever say a word to you if you did kill him," Joan
assured. "They'd all know he started it--he fusses with everybody."
She sat on the ground near him, Charley posting himself a little in
front, where he could admire and wonder over the might of a man who
could break Swan Carlson's hold upon his throat and leave his house
alive. Before them the long valley widened as it reached away, the
sheep a dusty brown splotch in it, spread at their grazing, the sound
of the lambs' wailing rising clear in the pastoral silence.
"I stopped at Carlson's house after dark last night," Mackenzie
explained, seeing that such explanation must be made, "and turned his
wife loose. Carlson resented it when he came home. He said I'd have to
fight him. But you're wrong when you believe what Carlson says about
that woman; she isn't crazy, and never was."
That seemed to be all the story, from the way he hastened it, and
turned away from the vital point of interest. Joan touched his arm as
he sat smoking, his speculative gaze on the sheep, his brows drawn as
if in troubled thought.
"What did you do when he said you had to fight him?" she inquired, her
breath coming fast, her cheeks glowing.
Mackenzie laughed shortly. "Why, I tried to get away," he said.
"Why didn't you, before he got his hands on you?" Charley wanted to
know.
"Charley!" said Joan.
"Carlson locked the door before I could get out." Mackenzie nodded to
the boy, very gravely, as one man to another. Charley laughed.
"You didn't tear up no boards off the floor tryin' to git away!" said
he.
Joan smiled; that seemed to express her opinion of it, also. She
admired the schoolmaster's modest reluctance when he gave them a bare
outline of what followed, shuddering when he laughed over Mrs.
Carlson's defense of her husband with the ax.
"Gee!" said Charley, "I hope dad'll give you a job."
"But how did you get out of there?" Joan asked.
"I took an unfair advantage of Swan and hit him with a table leg."
"Gee! dad's _got_ to give you a job," said Charley; "I'll make him."
"I'll hold you to that, Charley," Mackenzie laughed.
In the boy's eyes Mackenzie was already a hero, greater than any man
that had come into the sheeplands in his day. Sheep people are not
fighting folks. They never have been since the world's beginning; they
never will be to the world's end. There is something in the peaceful
business of attending sheep, some appeal in their meekness and
passivity, that seems to tincture and curb the savage spirit that
dwells in the breast of man. Swan Carlson was one of the notorious
exceptions in that country. Even the cattlemen were afraid of him.
Joan advised against Mackenzie's expressed intention of returning to
Carlson's house to find out how badly he was hurt. It would be a
blessing to the country, she said, if it should turn out that Carlson
was killed. But Mackenzie had an uneasy feeling that it would be a
blessing he could not share. He was troubled over the thing, now that
the excitement of the fight had cooled out of him, thinking of the
blow he had given Carlson with that heavy piece of oak.
Perhaps the fellow was not dead, but hurt so badly that he would die
without surgical aid. It was the part of duty and humanity to go back
and see. He resolved to do this, keeping the resolution to himself.
Joan told him much of the sheep business, and much about the art of
running a big band over that sparse range, in which this green valley
lay like an oasis, a gladdening sight seldom to be met with among
those sulky hills. She said she hoped her father would find a place
for him, for the summer, at least.
"But I wouldn't like to see you shut yourself up in this country like
the rest of us are," she said, gazing off over the hills with wistful
eyes. "A man that knows enough to teach school oughtn't fool away his
time on sheep."
She was working toward her own emancipation, she told him, running
that band of two thousand sheep on shares for her father, just the
same as an ordinary herdsman. In three years she hoped her increase,
and share of the clip, would be worth ten thousand dollars, and then
she would sell out and go away.
"What would you want to leave a good business like this for?" he
asked, rather astonished at her cool calculation upon what she
believed to be freedom. "There's nothing out in what people call the
world that you could turn your hand to that would make you a third of
the money."
"I want to go away and get some education," she said.
"But you are educated, Miss Sullivan."
She turned a slow, reproachful look upon him, a shadow of sadness over
her wholesome young face.
"I'm nearly nineteen; I don't know as much as a girl of twelve," she
said.
"I've never met any of those precocious twelve-year-olds," he told
her, shaking his head gravely. "You know a great deal more than you're
conscious of, I think, Miss Sullivan. We don't get the best of it out
of books."
"I'm a prisoner here," she said, stretching her arms as if she
displayed her bonds, "as much of a prisoner in my way as Swan
Carlson's wife was in hers. You cut her chain; nobody ever has come to
cut mine."
"Your knight will come riding over the hill some evening. One comes
into every woman's life, sooner or later, I think."
"Mostly in imagination," said Joan. And her way of saying it, so wise
and superior, as if she spoke of some toy which she had outgrown,
brought a smile again to her visitor's grave face.
Charley was not interested in his sister's bondage, or in the coming
of a champion to set her free. He went off to send the dogs after an
adventurous bunch of sheep that was straying from the main flock. Joan
sighed as she looked after him, putting a strand of hair away behind
her ear. Presently she brightened, turning to Mackenzie with
quickening eyes.
"I'll make a bargain with you, Mr. Mackenzie, if you're in earnest
about learning the sheep business," she said.
"All right; let's hear it."
"Dad's coming over here today to finish cutting hay. I'll make a deal
with him for you to get a band of sheep to run on shares if you'll
agree to teach me enough to get into college--if I've got brains
enough to learn."
"The doubt would be on the side of the teacher, not the pupil, Miss
Sullivan. Maybe your father wouldn't like the arrangement, anyway."
"He'll like it, all right. What do you say?"
"I don't think it would be very much to my advantage to take charge of
a band of sheep under conditions that might look as if I needed
somebody to plug for me. Your father might think of me as an
incompetent and good-for-nothing person."
"You're afraid I haven't got it in me to learn--you don't want to
waste time on me!" Joan spoke with a sad bitterness, as one who saw
another illusion fading before her eyes.
"Not that," he hastened to assure her, putting out his hand as if to
add the comfort of his touch to the salve of his words. "I'm only
afraid your father wouldn't have anything to do with me if you were to
approach him with any such proposal. From what I've heard of him he's
a man who likes a fellow to do his own talking."
"I don't think he'd refuse me."
"It's hard for a stranger to do that. Your father----"
* * * * *
"You'll not do it, you mean?"
"I think I'd rather get a job from your father on my own face than on
any kind of an arrangement or condition, Miss Sullivan. But I pass you
my word that you'll be welcome to anything and all I'm able to teach
you if I become a pupil in the sheep business on this range. Provided,
of course, that I'm in reaching distance."
"Will you?" Joan asked, hope clearing the shadows from her face
again.
"But we might be too far apart for lessons very often," he suggested.
"Not more than ten or twelve miles. I could ride that every day."
"It's a bargain then, if I get on," said he.
"It's a bargain," nodded Joan, giving him her hand to bind it, with
great earnestness in her eyes.