HECTOR HALL SETS A BEACON
Mackenzie sat a long time on his hill that night, his ear turned
to the wind, smoking his pipe and thinking the situation over
while listening for the first sound of commotion among the sheep.
He had pledged himself to Tim and Joan that he would not quit
the sheep country without proving that he had in him the mettle
of a flockmaster. Hector Hall had been given to understand the
same thing. In fact, Mackenzie thought, it looked as if he had
been running with his eyes shut, making boastful pledges.
He might have to hedge on some of them, or put them through at a cost
far beyond the profit. It came that way to a boaster of his intentions
sometimes, especially so when a man spoke too quickly and assumed too
much. Here he was standing face to a fight that did not appear to
promise much more glory in the winning than in the running away.
There had been peace in that part of the sheep country a long time;
Mackenzie had come to Jasper, even, long after the feuds between the
flockmasters and cattlemen had worn themselves out save for an
outbreak of little consequence in the far places now and then. But the
peace of this place had been a coward's peace, paid for in money and
humiliation. A thing like that was not to be expected of Tim Sullivan,
although from a business reasoning he doubtless was right about it.
It was Mackenzie's work now to clean up the camp of the Hall brothers,
along with Swan Carlson, and put an end to their bullying and edging
over on Tim Sullivan's range, or take up his pack and trudge out of
the sheep country as he had come. By staying there and fighting for
Tim Sullivan's interests he might arrive in time at a dusty
consequence, his fame, measured in thousands of sheep, reaching even
to Jasper and Cheyenne, and perhaps to the stock-yards commission
offices in Omaha and Chicago.
"John Mackenzie, worth twenty thousand, or fifty thousand sheep."
That would be the way they would know him; that would be the measure
of his fame. By what sacrifice, through what adventure, how much
striving and hard living he might come to the fame of twenty thousand
sheep, no man would know or care. There in the dusty silences of that
gray-green land he would bury the man and the soul that reached upward
in him with pleasant ambitions, to become a creature over sheep. Just
a step higher than the sheep themselves, wind-buffeted, cold-cursed,
seared and blistered and hardened like a callous through which the
urging call of a man's duty among men could pierce no more.
But it had its compensations, on the other hand. There must be a vast
satisfaction in looking back over the small triumphs won against
tremendous forces, the successful contest with wild winter storm,
ravaging disease, night-prowling beasts. Nature was the big force
arrayed against a flockmaster, and it was unkind and menacing seven
months out of the year. That must be the secret of a flockmaster's
satisfaction with himself and his lot, Mackenzie thought; he could
count himself a fit companion for the old gods, if he knew anything
about them, after his victory over every wild force that could be bent
against him among those unsheltered hills.
The Hall brothers were a small pest to be stamped out and forgotten in
the prosperity of multiplying flocks. As for Swan Carlson, poor
savage, there might be some way of reaching him without further
violence between them. Wild and unfeeling as he seemed, there must be
a sense of justice in him, reading him by his stern, immobile face.
As he sat and weighed the argument for and against the sheep business,
the calling of flockmaster began to take on the color of romantic
attraction which had not been apparent to him before. In his way,
every flockmaster was a hero, inflexible against the unreckoned forces
which rose continually to discourage him. This was true, as he long
had realized, of a man who plants in the soil, risking the large part
of his capital of labor year by year. But the sheepman's risks were
greater, his courage immensely superior, to that of the tiller of the
soil. One storm might take his flock down to the last head, leaving
him nothing to start on again but his courage and his hope.
It appeared to Mackenzie to be the calling of a proper man. A
flockmaster need not be a slave to the range, as most of them were. He
might sit in his office, as a few of them did, and do the thing like a
gentleman. There were possibilities of dignity in it heretofore
overlooked; Joan would think better of it if she could see it done
that way. Surely, it was a business that called for a fight to build
and a fight to hold, but it was the calling of a proper man.
Mackenzie was immensely cheered by his reasoning the sheep business
into the romantic and heroic class. Here were allurements of which he
had not dreamed, to be equaled only by the calling of the sea, and not
by any other pursuit on land at all. A man who appreciated the subtle
shadings of life could draw a great deal of enjoyment and self-pride
out of the business of flockmaster. It was one of the most ancient
pursuits of man. Abraham was a flockmaster; maybe Adam.
But for all of the new comfort he had found in the calling he had
adopted, Mackenzie was plagued by a restless, broken sleep when he
composed himself among the hillside shrubs above the sheep. A vague
sense of something impending held him from rest. It was present over
his senses like a veil of drifting smoke through his shallow sleep.
Twice he moved his bed, with the caution of some haunted beast; many
times he started in his sleep, clutching like a falling man, to sit up
alert and instantly awake.
There was something in the very tension of the night-silence that
warned him to be on the watch. It was not until long after midnight
that he relaxed his straining, uneasy vigil, and stretched himself to
unvexed sleep. He could steal an hour or two from the sheep in the
early morning, he told himself, as he felt the sweet restfulness of
slumber sweeping over him; the helpless creatures would remain on the
bedding-ground long after sunrise if he did not wake, waiting for him
to come and set them about the great business of their lives. They
hadn't sense enough to range out and feed themselves without the
direction of man's guiding hand.
Mackenzie had dipped but a little way into his refreshing rest when
the alarmed barking of his dogs woke him with such sudden wrench that
it ached. He sat up, senses drenched in sleep for a struggling moment,
groping for his rifle. The dogs went charging up the slope toward the
wagon, the canvas top of which he could see indistinctly on the
hillside through the dark.
As Mackenzie came to his feet, fully awake and on edge, the dogs
mouthed their cries as if they closed in on the disturber of the night
at close quarters. Mackenzie heard blows, a yelp from a disabled dog,
and retreat toward him of those that remained unhurt. He fired a shot,
aiming high, running toward the wagon.
Again the dogs charged, two of them, only, out of the three, and again
there was the sound of thick, rapid blows. One dog came back to its
master, pressing against his legs for courage. Mackenzie shouted,
hoping to draw the intruder into revealing himself, not wanting the
blood of even a rascal such as the night-prowler on his hands through
a chance shot into the dark. There was no answer, no sound from the
deep blackness that pressed like troubled waters close to the ground.
The dog clung near to Mackenzie's side, his growling deep in his
throat. Mackenzie could feel the beast tremble as it pressed against
him, and bent to caress it and give it confidence. At his reassuring
touch the beast bounded forward to the charge again, only to come
yelping back, and continue on down the hill toward the flock.
Mackenzie fired again, dodging quickly behind a clump of bushes after
the flash of his gun. As he crouched there, peering and straining
ahead into the dark, strong hands laid hold of him, and tore his rifle
away from him and flung him to the ground. One came running from the
wagon, low words passed between the man who held Mackenzie pinned to
the ground, knees astride him, his hands doubled back against his chin
in a grip that was like fetters. This one who arrived in haste groped
around until he found Mackenzie's rifle.
"Let him up," he said.
Mackenzie stood, his captor twisting his arms behind him with such
silent ease that it was ominous of what might be expected should the
sheepherder set up a struggle to break free.
"Bud, I've come over after my guns," said Hector Hall, speaking close
to Mackenzie's ear.
"They're up at the wagon," Mackenzie told him, with rather an injured
air. "You didn't need to make all this trouble about it; I was keeping
them for you."
"Go on up and get 'em," Hall commanded, prodding Mackenzie in the ribs
with the barrel of his own gun.
The one who held Mackenzie said nothing, but walked behind him, rather
shoved him ahead, hands twisted in painful rigidity behind his back,
pushing him along as if his weight amounted to no more than a child's.
At the wagon Hall fell in beside Mackenzie, the barrel of a gun again
at his side.
"Let him go," he said. And to Mackenzie: "Don't try to throw any
tricks on me, bud, but waltz around and get me them guns."
"They're hanging on the end of the coupling-pole; get them yourself,"
Mackenzie returned, resentful of this treatment, humiliated to such
depths by this disgrace that had overtaken him that he cared little
for the moment whether he should live or die.
Hall spoke a low, mumbled, unintelligible word to the one who stood
behind Mackenzie, and another gun pressed coldly against the back of
the apprentice sheepman's neck. Hall went to the end of the wagon,
found his pistols, struck a match to inspect them. In the light of the
expiring match at his feet Mackenzie could see the ex-cattleman
buckling on the guns.
"Bud, you've been actin' kind of rash around here," Hall said, in
insolent satisfaction with the turn of events. "You had your lucky day
with me, like you had with Swan Carlson, but I gave you a sneak's
chance to leave the country while the goin' was good. If you ever
leave it now the wind'll blow you out. Back him up to that wagon
wheel!"
Mackenzie was at the end of his tractable yielding to commands, seeing
dimly what lay before him. He lashed out in fury at the man who
pressed the weapon to his neck, twisting round in a sweep of passion
that made the night seem to burst in a rain of fire, careless of what
immediate danger he ran. The fellow fired as Mackenzie swung round,
the flash of the flame hot on his neck.
"Don't shoot him, you fool!" Hector Hall interposed, his voice a growl
between his teeth.
Mackenzie's quick blows seemed to fall impotently on the body of the
man who now grappled with him, face to face, Hector Hall throwing
himself into the tangle from the rear. Mackenzie, seeing his assault
shaping for a speedy end in his own defeat, now attempted to break
away and seek shelter in the dark among the bushes. He wrenched free
for a moment, ducked, ran, only to come down in a few yards with
Hector Hall on his back like a catamount.
Fighting every inch of the way, Mackenzie was dragged back to the
wagon, where his captors backed him against one of the hind wheels and
bound him, his arms outstretched across the spokes in the manner of a
man crucified.
They had used Mackenzie illy in that fight to get him back to the
wagon; his face was bleeding, a blow in the mouth had puffed his lips.
His hat was gone, his shirt torn open on his bosom, but a wild rage
throbbed in him which lifted him above the thought of consequences as
he strained at the ropes which held his arms.
They left his feet free, as if to mock him with half liberty in the
ordeal they had set for him to face. One mounted the front wagon wheel
near Mackenzie, and the light of slow-coming dawn on the sky beyond
him showed his hand uplifted as if he sprinkled something over the
wagon sheet. The smell of kerosene spread through the still air; a
match crackled on the wagon tire. A flash, a sudden springing of
flame, a roar, and the canvas was enveloped in fire.
Mackenzie leaned against his bonds, straining away from the sudden
heat, the fast-running fire eating the canvas from the bows, the bunk
within, and all the furnishings and supplies, on fire. There seemed to
be no wind, a merciful circumstance, for a whip of the high-striving
flames would have wrapped him, stifling out his life in a moment.
Hall and the other man, who had striven with Mackenzie in such
powerful silence, had drawn away from the fire beyond his sight to
enjoy the thing they had done. Mackenzie, turning his fearful gaze
over his shoulder, calculated his life in seconds. The fire was at his
back, his hair was crinkling in the heat of it, a little moving breath
of wind to fill the sudden vacuum drew a tongue of blaze with sharp
threat against his cheek.
In a moment the oil-drenched canvas would be gone, the flaming
contents of the wagon, the woodwork of box and running gears left to
burn more slowly, and his flesh and bones must mingle ashes with the
ashes, to be blown on the wind, as Hector Hall had so grimly
prophesied. What a pitiful, poor, useless ending of all his
calculations and plans!
A shot at the top of the hill behind the wagon, a rush of galloping
hoofs; another shot, and another. Below him Hall and his comrade rode
away, floundering in haste through the sleeping flock, the one poor
dog left out of Mackenzie's three tearing after them, venting his
impotent defiance in sharp yelps of the chase.
Joan. Mackenzie knew it was Joan before she came riding into the
firelight, throwing herself from the horse before it stopped. Through
the pain of his despair--above the rebellious resentment of the thing
that fate had played upon him this bitter gray morning; above the
anguish of his hopeless moment, the poignant striving of his tortured
soul to meet the end with resolution and calm defiance worthy a
man--he had expected Joan.
Why, based on what reason, he could not have told, then nor in the
years that came afterward. But always the thought of Joan coming to
him like the wings of light out of the east.
And so Joan had come, as he strained on his bound arms to draw his
face a few inches farther from the fire, as he stifled in the smoke
and heavy gases of the burning oil; Joan had come, and her hand was
cool on his forehead, her voice was tender in his ear, and she was
leading him into the blessed free air, the east widening in a bar of
light like a waking eye.
Joan was panting, the knife that had cut his bonds still open in her
hand. They stood face to face, a little space between them, her great
eyes pouring their terrified sympathy into his soul. Neither spoke, a
daze over them, a numbness on their tongues, the dull shock of death's
close passing bewildering and deep.
Mackenzie breathed deeply, his brain clearing out of its racing whirl,
and became conscious of Joan's hand grasping his. Behind them the
ammunition in the burning wagon began to explode, and Joan, shuddering
as with cold, covered her white face with her hands and sobbed aloud.
Mackenzie touched her shoulder.
"Joan! O Joan, Joan!" he said.
Joan, shivering, her shoulders lifted as if to fend against a winter
blast, only cried the harder into her hands. He stood with hand
touching her shoulder lightly, the quiver of her body shaking him to
the heart. But no matter how inviting the opening, a man could not
speak what rose in his heart to say, standing as he stood, a debtor in
such measure. To say what he would have said to Joan, he must stand
clear and towering in manliness, no taint of humiliation on his soul.
Mackenzie groaned in spirit, and his words were a groan, as he said
again:
"Joan! O Joan, Joan!"
"I knew they'd come tonight--I couldn't sleep."
"Thank God for your wakefulness!" said he.
She was passing out of the reefs of terror, calming as a wind falls at
sunset. Mackenzie pressed her arm, drawing her away a little.
"That ammunition--we'd better----"
"Yes," said Joan, and went with him a little farther down the slope.
Mackenzie put his hand to his face where the flames had licked it, and
to the back of his head where his scorched hair broke crisply under
his palm. Joan looked at him, the aging stamp of waking and worry in
her face, exclaiming pityingly when she saw his hurts.
"It served me right; I stumbled into their hands like a blind kitten!"
he said, not sparing himself of scorn.
"It's a cattleman's trick; many an older hand than you has gone that
way," she said.
"But if I'd have waked and watched like you, Joan, they wouldn't have
got me. I started to watch, but I didn't keep it up like you. When I
should have been awake, I was sleeping like a sluggard."
"The cowards!" said Joan.
"I let one of them sneak up behind me, after they'd clubbed two of the
dogs to death, and grab me and get my gun! Great God! I deserve to be
burned!"
"Hush!" she chided, fearfully. "Hush!"
"One of them was Hector Hall--he came after his guns. If I'd been a
man, the shadow of a man, I'd made him swallow them the day I
took--the time he left them here."
"Matt was with him," said Joan. "You couldn't do anything; no man
could do anything, against Matt Hall."
"They handled me like a baby," said he, bitterly, "and I, and I,
wanting to be a sheepman! No wonder they think I'm a soft and simple
fool up here, that goes on the reputation of a lucky blow!"
"There's a man on a horse," said Joan. "He's coming this way."
The rider broke down the hillside as she spoke, riding near the
wreckage of the burning wagon, where he halted a moment, the strong
light of the fire on his face: Swan Carlson, hatless, his hair
streaming, his great mustache pendant beside his stony mouth. He came
on toward them at once. Joan laid her hand on her revolver.
"You got a fire here," said Swan, stopping near them, leaning
curiously toward them as if he peered at them through smoke.
"Yes," Mackenzie returned.
"I seen it from over there," said Swan. "I come over to see if you
needed any help."
"Thank you, not now. It's gone; nothing can be done."
"I smelt coal oil," said Swan, throwing back his head, sniffing the
air like a buck. "Who done it?"
"Some of your neighbors," said Mackenzie.
"I knowed they would," Swan nodded. "Them fellers don't fight like me
and you, they don't stand up like a man. When I seen you take that
feller by the leg that day and upset him off of his horse and grab his
guns off of him, I knowed he'd burn you out."
Joan, forgetting her fear and dislike of Swan Carlson in her interest
of what he revealed, drew a little nearer to him.
"Were you around here that day, Swan?" she asked.
"Yes, I saw him upset that feller, little bird," Swan said, leaning
again from his saddle, his long neck stretched to peer into her face.
"He's a good man, but he ain't as good a man as me."
Swan was barefooted, just as he had leaped from his bunk in the
sheep-wagon to ride to the fire. There was a wild, high pride in his
cold, handsome face as he sat up in the saddle as if to show Joan his
mighty bulk, and he stretched out his long arms like an eagle on its
crag flexing its pinions in the morning sun.
"Did he--did Hector Hall sling a gun on Mr. Mackenzie that time?" she
asked, pressing forward eagerly.
"Never mind, Joan--let that go," said Mackenzie, putting his arm
before her to stay her, speaking hastily, as if to warn her back from
a danger.
"He didn't have time to sling a gun on him," said Swan, great
satisfaction in his voice as he recalled the scene. "Your man he's
like a cat when he jumps for a feller, but he ain't got the muscle in
his back like me."
"There's nobody in this country like you, Swan," said Joan, pleased
with him, friendly toward him, for his praise of the one he boldly
called her man.
"No, I can roll 'em all," Swan said, as gravely as if he would be hung
on the testimony. "You ought to have me for your man; then you'd have
somebody no feller on this range would burn out."
"You've got a wife, Swan," Joan said, with gentle reproof, but putting
the proposal from her as if she considered it a jest.
"I'm tired of that one," Swan confessed, frankly. Then to Mackenzie:
"I'll fight you for her." He swung half way out of the saddle, as if
to come to the ground and start the contest on the moment, hung there,
looking Mackenzie in the face, the light of morning revealing the
marks of his recent battle. "Not now, you've had a fight already,"
said Swan, settling back into the saddle. "But when you brace up, then
I'll fight you for her. What?"
"Any time," Mackenzie told him, speaking easily, as if humoring the
whim of some irresponsible person.
With a sudden start of his horse Swan rode close to Joan, Mackenzie
throwing himself between them, catching the bridle, hurling the animal
back. Swan did not take notice of the interference, only leaned far
over, stretching his long neck, his great mustaches like the tusks of
an old walrus, and strained a long look into Joan's face. Then he
whirled his horse and galloped away, not turning a glance behind.
Joan watched him go, saying nothing for a little while. Then:
"I think he's joking," she said.
"I suppose he is," Mackenzie agreed, although he had many doubts.
They turned to look at the wagon again, the popping of ammunition
having ceased. The woodwork was all on fire; soon it would be reduced
to bolts and tires. Joan's spirits seemed to have risen with the
broadening of day, in spite of Swan Carlson's visit and his bold jest,
if jest he meant it to be. She laughed as she looked at the sheep,
huddled below them in attitude of helpless fright.
"Poor little fools!" she said. "Well, I must go back to Charley. Don't
tell dad I was over here, please, John. He wouldn't like it if he knew
I'd butted in this way--he's scared to death of the Halls."
"I don't see how I'm to keep him from knowing it," Mackenzie said,
"and I don't see why he shouldn't know. He'd have been out a cheap
herder if it hadn't been for you."
"No, you mustn't tell him, you mustn't let anybody know I was here,
John," she said, lifting her eyes to his in an appeal far stronger
than words. "It wouldn't do for dad--for anybody--to know I was here.
You don't need to say anything about them tying--doing--_that_."
Joan shuddered again in that chilling, horrified way, turning from him
to hide what he believed he had read in her words and face before.
It was not because she feared to have her father know she had come
riding to his rescue in the last hours of her troubled night; not
because she feared his censure or his anger, or wanted to conceal her
deed for reasons of modesty from anyone. Only to spare him the
humiliation of having his failure known, Mackenzie understood. That
was her purpose, and her sole purpose, in seeking his pledge to
secrecy.
It would hurt him to have it go abroad that he had allowed them to
sneak into his camp, seize him, disarm him, bind him, and set the fire
that was to make ashes of him for the winds to blow away. It would do
for him with Tim Sullivan entirely if that should become known, with
the additional humiliation of being saved from this shameful death by
a woman. No matter how immeasurable his own gratitude, no matter how
wide his own pride in her for what she had done, the sheep country
never would be able to see it with his eyes. It would be another
smirch for him, and such a deep one as to obscure him and his chances
there forever.
Joan knew it. In her generosity, her interest for his future, she
wanted her part in it to remain unknown.
"You must promise me, John," she said. "I'll never come to take
another lesson unless you promise me."
"I promise you, God bless you, Joan!" said he.