TIM SULLIVAN
"Yes, they call us flockmasters in the reports of the Wool Growers'
Association, and in the papers and magazines, but we're nothing but
sheepmen, and that's all you can make out of us."
Tim Sullivan spoke without humor when he made this correction in the
name of his calling, sitting with his back to a haycock, eating his
dinner in the sun. Mackenzie accepted the correction with a nod of
understanding, sparing his words.
"So you want to be a flockmaster?" said Tim. "Well, there's worse
callin's a man, especially a young man, could take up. What put it in
your head to tramp off up here to see me? Couldn't some of them
sheepmen down at Jasper use you?"
"I wanted to get into the heart of the sheep country for one thing,
and several of my friends recommended you as the best sheepman on the
range, for another. I want to learn under a master, if I learn at
all."
"Right," Tim nodded, "right and sound. Do you think you've got the
stuff in you to make a sheepman out of?"
"It will have to be a pretty hard school if I can't stick it
through."
"Summers are all right," said Tim, reflectively, nodding away at the
distant hills, "and falls are all right, but you take it winter and
early spring, and it tries the mettle in a man. Blizzards and
starvation, and losses through pile-ups and stampedes, wolves and what
not, make a man think sometimes he'll never go through it any more.
Then spring comes, with the cold wind, and slush up to your ankles,
and you out day and night lookin' after the ewes and lambs. Lambin'
time is the hard time, and it's the time when a man makes it or loses,
accordin' to what's in him to face hardship and work."
"I've heard about it; I know what I'm asking to go up against, Mr.
Sullivan."
"You want to buy in, or take a band on shares?"
"I'd rather take a band on shares. If I put what little money I've got
into it I'll go it alone."
"That's right; it's safer to let the other man take the risk. It ain't
fair to us sheepmen, but we have to do it to get men. Well, when we
hit on a good man, it pays better than hirin' poor ones at fifty
dollars a month and found. I've had old snoozers workin' for me that
the coyotes eat the boots off of while they was asleep. You look kind
of slim and light to tackle a job on the range."
Mackenzie made no defense of his weight, advancing no further argument
in behalf of his petition for a job. Sullivan measured him over with
his appraising eyes, saying nothing about the bruises he bore,
although Mackenzie knew he was burning with curiosity to go into the
matter of how and when he received them.
Sullivan was a man of calm benignity of face, a placid certainty of
his power and place in the world; a rugged man, broad-handed, slow.
His pleasure was in the distinction of his wealth, and not in any use
that he made of it for his own comfort or the advancement of those
under his hand. Even so, he was of a type superior to the general run
of flockmasters such as Mackenzie had met.
"I'll give you a job helpin' me on this hay for a few days, and kind
of try you out," Tim agreed at last. "I don't want to discourage you
at the start, but I don't believe you got the mettle in you to make a
flockmaster, if you want to call it that, out of."
"All right; I'll help you on the hay. Before I start in though, I'd
like to borrow a saddle-horse from you to take a ride down the creek
to Swan Carlson's place. I wouldn't be long."
"Carlson's place? Do you know Swan Carlson?"
Mackenzie told in few words how much he knew of Carlson, and his
reason for desiring to visit him. Tim's wonder was too large to
contain at hearing this news. He got up, his eyes staring in plain
incredulity, his mouth open a bit between surprise and censure, it
seemed. But he said nothing for a little while; only stood and looked
Mackenzie over again, with more careful scrutiny than before.
"I'll go down with you," he announced, turning abruptly away to get
the horses.
It was evident to Mackenzie that Sullivan was bewildered between doubt
and suspicion as they rode toward Carlson's ranch, which the sheepman
said was about seven miles away. But he betrayed nothing of his
thoughts in words, riding in silence mainly, looking at the ground
like a man who had troubles on his mind.
The silence of abandonment was over Carlson's house as they rode up. A
few chickens retreated from the yard to the cover of the barn in the
haste of panic, their going being the only sound of life about the
place. The door through which Mackenzie had left was shut; he
approached it without hesitation--Tim Sullivan lingering back as if in
doubt of their reception--and knocked. No answer. Mackenzie tried the
door, finding it unlocked; pushed it open, entered.
Sullivan stood outside, one mighty hand on the jamb, his body to one
side under protection of the house, his head put cautiously and
curiously round to see, leaving a fairway for Swan Carlson should he
rise from a dark corner, shake himself like an old grizzly, and
charge.
"Is he there?" Tim asked, his voice a strained whisper.
Mackenzie did not reply. He stood in the middle of the room where his
combat with Swan had taken place, among the debris of broken dishes,
wrecked table, fallen stovepipe and tinware, looking about him with
grim interest. There was nobody in the other room, but the blood from
Swan's hurt trailed across the floor as if he had been helped to the
bed. Tim took his courage in both hands and came just inside the
door.
"Man! Look at the blood!" he said.
"There's nobody here," Mackenzie told him, turning to go.
"She's took him to the doctor," said Tim.
"Where is that?"
"There's a kind of a one over on the Sweetwater, sixty miles from
here, but there's no good one this side of Jasper."
"He'll die on the way," Mackenzie said conclusively.
"No such luck," said Tim. "Look! There's the chain he tied that woman
of his up with."
"We'd better go back and get at that hay," Mackenzie said. "There's
nothing I can do for Carlson."
"There's the table leg you hit him with!" Tim picked it up, plucking
off the red hairs which clung to it, looking at Mackenzie with
startled eyes. Mackenzie mounted his horse.
"You'd better shut the door," he called back as he rode away.
Tim caught up with him half a mile on the way back to the hay-field.
The sheepman seemed to have outrun his words. A long time he rode
beside Mackenzie in silence, turning a furtive eye upon him across his
long nose now and then. At last it burst from him:
"You done it!" he said, with the astonished pleasure of a man assured
against his doubts.
Mackenzie checked his horse, looking at Tim in perplexed inquiry.
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
"You laid him out--Swan Carlson--you done it! Man!"
"Oh, you're still talking about that," Mackenzie said, a bit vexed.
"It would be worth thousands to the rest of us sheepmen on this range
if he never comes back."
"Why didn't some of you handle him long ago? A man of your build ought
to be able to put a dent in Carlson."
"I'll fight any man that stands on two feet," said Tim, with such
sincerity that it could not have been taken for a boast, "you can ask
about me far and near, but I draw the line at the devil. I've stood up
with four men against me, with meat cleavers and butcher knives in
their hands, when I used to work as a sheep butcher back in the
packin' house in Chicago, and I've come through with my life. But them
was friends of mine," he sighed; "a man knew how they lived. Swan
Carlson's got a wolf's blood in his veins. He ain't a human man."
"And this man is worth three hundred thousand dollars!" thought
Mackenzie. And he knew, also, that the greatest treasure that the
flockmaster could count was one not so greatly appreciated as a
thousand sheep--that brave, ambitious little rebel, Joan.
"Maybe you've got the makin' of a sheepman in you," Tim said,
thoughtfully, as they came in sight of the hay. "I've got an old man I
could put you under till the dogs got used to you and you learnt their
ways and found out something among the thousand things a man's got to
know if he intends to make a success of runnin' sheep. Old Dad Frazer
could put you onto the tricks of the trade quicker than any man I
know. Maybe you _have_ got the makin' of a sheepman in you. I'll have
to think it over."
Tim took the four days they were at the hay to think about it. At the
end of that time, with the hay in stack and the mowing-machine loaded
into the wagon for the rough journey to the ranch, Tim unburdened his
mind.
"I've decided to try you out, John," he announced, but shaking his
head as he spoke, as if he doubted the wisdom of the venture. "I'll
leave you here with Dad Frazer--he's over on Horsethief, about six
miles across from Joan's range--and let him break you in. You
understand, you don't go in on shares till you're able to handle at
least two thousand head."
"I agree on that."
"And then there's another little point." Tim shifted his feet, jerked
up his trousers, rubbed his chin in a truly Irish way. "That girl of
mine, Joan, she's got it in her head she wants to be a lady, and go to
college and put on agonies. No use in it, as I tell her. No girl
that's got money needs any of the education stuff. I got on without
it, and I made my money without it. Joan she wants you to give her
some lessons. She made me promise I wouldn't take you on unless you'd
agree to that as part of our conditions and contract."
Mackenzie had no need to put on a face of thinking it over seriously;
he was entirely sincere in the silence he held while he revolved it in
his mind. He doubted whether more learning would bring to Joan the
contentment which she lacked in her present state. It might only open
the door to a greater longing, or it might disillusion her when her
feet had left these wild, free hills, and set a pang in her heart like
a flame for the things which knowledge closes the door against the
return for evermore.
"I'll tell you how to handle her to be rid of her soon," said Tim,
winking craftily, seeing how the wind stood. "Discourage her, tell her
she ain't got the mind for books and Latin and mathematics. All the
mathematics she needs is enough to count her sheep and figure her
clip. Tell her to put books out of her head and stick to the range,
marry some good sheepman if one turns up to her taste, or pass them
all up if she likes. But tell her to stick to sheep, whatever she
does. She can be the sheep queen of this country in fifteen years;
she's as handy with 'em now as I am, and I tell you, John, that's
something that's hard for me to say, even of my own girl. But she is;
she's as good a sheepman right now as I am or ever will be. But you
don't need to tell her that."
"I don't believe she'll take it, but it's the soundest advice I could
give her," Mackenzie said.
"Work up to it gradual, lad; it can't be done in a day. Make the
lessons hard, pile the Latin on heavy. Lord, I remember it, back in
the old country, old Father MacGuire layin' it on the lads under his
thumb. Devil a word of it sticks to me now, not even the word for
sheep. I tried to remember some of it when they sent me up to the
legislature in Cheyenne; I wanted to knock 'em over. But it had all
leaked out. Discourage her, man; discourage her."
"Yes, that might be the greatest kindness I could do her in the end,"
Mackenzie said.
"I'll drop you off over there; you can stay in camp tonight with
Charley and Joan. Tomorrow I'll come back and take you out to Dad
Frazer's camp, and you can begin your schoolin' for the makin' of a
master. But begin early to discourage her, John; begin at her early,
lad."