MORE ABOUT MARY
Mackenzie took Tim at his word two days after their interview, and
went visiting Mary. He made the journey across to her range more to
try his legs than to satisfy his curiosity concerning the substitute
for Joan so cunningly offered by Tim in his Laban-like way. He was
pleased to find that his legs bore him with almost their accustomed
vigor, and surprised to see the hills beginning to show the yellow
blooms of autumn. His hurts in that last encounter with Swan Carlson
and his dogs had bound him in camp for three weeks.
Mary was a smiling, talkative, fair-haired girl, bearing the
foundation of a generous woman. She had none of the shyness about her
that might be expected in a lass whose world had been the sheep range,
and this Mackenzie put down to the fact of her superior social
position, as fixed by the size of Tim Sullivan's house.
Conscious of this eminence above those who dwelt in sheep-wagons or
log houses by the creek-sides, Tim's girls walked out into their world
with assurance. Tim had done that much for them in rearing his mansion
on the hilltop, no matter what he had denied them of educational
refinements. Joan had gone hungry on this distinction; she had
developed the bitterness that comes from the seeds of loneliness. This
was lacking in Mary, who was all smiles, pink and white in spite of
sheeplands winds and suns. Mary was ready to laugh with anybody or at
anybody, and hop a horse for a twenty-mile ride to a dance any night
you might name.
Mackenzie made friends with her in fifteen minutes, and had learned at
the end of half an hour that friend was all he might ever hope to be
even if he had come with any warmer notions in his breast. Mary was
engaged to be married. She told him so, as one friend to another,
pledging him to secrecy, showing a little ring on a white ribbon about
her neck. Her Corydon was a sheepman's son who lived beyond the
Sullivan ranch, and could dance like a butterfly and sing songs to the
banjo in a way to melt the heart of any maid. So Mary said, but in her
own way, with blushes, and wide, serious eyes.
Mackenzie liked Mary from the first ingenuous word, and promised to
hold her secret and help her to happiness in any way that a man might
lift an honorable hand. And he smiled when he recalled Tim Sullivan's
word about catching them young. Surely a man had to be stirring early
in the day to catch them in the sheeplands. Youth would look out for
its own there, as elsewhere. Tim Sullivan was right about it there. He
was wiser than he knew.
Mary was dressed as neatly as Joan always dressed for her work with
the sheep. And she wore a little black crucifix about her neck on
another ribbon which she had no need to conceal. When she touched it
she smiled and smiled, and not for the comfort of the little cross,
Mackenzie understood, but in tenderness for what lay beneath it, and
for the shepherd lad who gave it. There was a beauty in it for him
that made the glad day brighter.
This fresh, sprightly generation would redeem the sheeplands, and
change the business of growing sheep, he said. The isolation would go
out of that life; running sheep would be more like a business than a
penance spent in heartache and loneliness. The world could not come
there, of course. It had no business there; it should not come. But
they would go to it, those young hearts, behold its wonders, read its
weaknesses, and return. And there would be no more straining of the
heart in lonesomeness such as Joan had borne, and no more discontent
to be away.
"I hoped you'd marry Joan," said Mary, with a sympathetic little sigh.
"I don't like Earl Reid."
"Mary?" said Mackenzie. Mary looked up inquiringly. "Can you keep a
secret for me, Mary?"
"Try me, John."
"I _am_ going to marry Joan."
"Oh, you've got it all settled? Did Joan wear your ring when she went
home?"
"No, she didn't wear my ring, Mary, but she would have worn it if I'd
seen her before she was sent away."
"I thought you were at the bottom of it, John," the wise Mary said.
"You know, dad's taken her sheep away from her, and she had a
half-interest in at least a thousand head."
"I didn't know that, but it will not make any difference to Joan and
me. But why hasn't she been over to see me, Mary?"
"Oh, dad's sore at her because she put her foot down flat when she
heard it was fixed for her to marry Earl. She told dad to take his
sheep and go to the devil--she was going to go away and work somewhere
else. He made her go home and stay there like a rabbit in a
box--wouldn't let her have a horse."
"Of course; I might have known it. I wonder if she knows I'm up?"
"She knows, all right. Charley slips word to her."
"Charley's a good fellow, and so are you," Mackenzie said, giving Mary
his hand.
"You'll get her, and it's all right," Mary declared, in great
confidence. "It'll take more than bread and water to tame Joan."
"Is that all they're giving her?"
"That's dad's idea of punishment--he's put most of us on bread and
water one time or another. But mother has ideas of her own what a kid
ought to have to eat."
Mary smiled over the recollection, and Mackenzie joined her. Joan
would not grow thin with that mother on the job.
They talked over the prospects ahead of Joan and himself in the most
comfortable way, leaving nothing unsaid that hope could devise or
courage suggest. A long time Mackenzie remained with his little
sister, who would have been dear to him for her own sweet sake if she
had not been dearer because of her blood-tie to Joan. When he was
leaving, he said:
"If anybody gets curious about my coming over to see you, Mary, you
might let them think I'm making love to you. It would help both of
us."
Mary turned her eyes without moving her head, looking at him across
her nose in the arch way she had, and smiled with a deep knowingness.
"Not so bad!" said she.
They let it go at that, understanding each other very well indeed.
Mackenzie returned to Dad's camp thinking that the way to becoming a
flockmaster was a checkered one, and filled with more adventures,
harsh and gentle, than he ever had believed belonged to his
apportionment in life. But he could not blame Tim Sullivan for placing
Reid above him in rating on account of the encounters they had shared,
or for bending down a bit in his manner, or taking him for a soft one
who could be led into long labors on the promise of an uncertain
reward.
Truly, he had been only second best all the way through, save for that
"lucky blow," as Tim called it, that had laid Swan out in the first
battle. Now Swan and he were quits, a blow on each side, nobody debtor
any more, and Reid was away ahead of anybody who had figured in the
violence that Mackenzie had brought into the sheeplands with him as an
unwelcome stranger lets in a gust of wind on a winter night.
In spite of all this, the vocation of sheepman never appeared so full
of attractive possibilities to Mackenzie as it looked that hour. All
his old calculations were revived, his first determination proved to
him how deeply it had taken root. He had come into the sheep country
to be a flockmaster, and a flockmaster he would be. Because he was
fighting his way up to it only confirmed him in the belief that he was
following a destined course, and that he should cut a better figure
in the end, somehow, than he had made at the beginning.
Tim Sullivan thought him simple; he looked at him with undisguised
humor in his eyes, not taking the trouble to turn his back when he
laughed. And they had taken Joan away out of his hands, like a
gold-piece snatched from a child. But that was more to his credit than
his disgrace, for it proved that they feared him more than they
scorned him, let them laugh as they might.
But it was time for him to begin putting the credits over on the other
side of the book. Mackenzie took it up with Dad Frazer that evening,
Rabbit sitting by in her quiet way with a nod and a smile now and then
when directly addressed.
"I don't think you're able to go over there and let that feller off,"
Dad objected. "You can't tell about Swan; he may come round lookin'
for more trouble, and you not half the man you was before him and that
dog chawed you up that way."
"I think I'll make out, Dad. I'll keep my eyes open this time,
anyhow."
"He may not be able to slip up on you any more, but if he crowds a
fuss where'll you be at, with that hand hardly able to hold a gun?"
"It will be different this time if he does. I'm going back to the
sheep in the morning, Dad. I've got to get busy, and keep busy if I
ever make good at this game."
Dad grunted around his pipestem, his charge being burned down to the
wood, and the savor too sweet on his tongue to lose even a whiff by
giving room for a word in the door of his mouth. Presently the fire
fried and blubbered down in the pipe to the last atrocious smell, and
there followed the noise of more strong twist-tobacco being milled
between the old shepherd's rasping palms. Rabbit toddled off to bed
without a word; Dad put a match to his new charge, the light making
him blink, discovering his curiously sheared face with its picturesque
features strong, its weakness under the shadows.
"What did you think of Mary?" he inquired, free to discuss the ladies,
now Rabbit was gone.
"Mary's a little bit of all right, Dad."
"Yes, and not such a little bit, either. Mary's some chunk of a girl;
she'll grow up to a woman that suits my eye. You could do worse than
set your cap for that little lady, it seems to me, John."
"Any man could. She's got a lively eye, and wise head, too, if I'm not
away off."
"She looks soft when you first glance her, but she's as deep as a
well. Mary ain't the build of a girl that fools a man and throws him
down. Now, you take Joan, a kind of a high-headed touch-me-not, with
that gingerbread hair and them eyes that don't ever seem to be in
fifty-five mile of you when you're talkin' to her. I tell you, the man
that marries her's got trouble up his sleeve. He'll wake up some
morning and find her gone off with some other man."
"What makes you think that, Dad?"
"Not satisfied with what she's got, always lookin' off over the hill
like a breachy cow calculatin' on how much better the grazin'd be if
she could hop the fence and go tearin' off over there. Joan ain't the
kind that settles down to nuss babies and make a man a home. Mary is.
That's the difference between them two girls."
"Maybe you're right about it, Dad--I expect you are. You ought to know
women if any man does."
"Well, neither one of 'em ain't a woman in the full meanin' of the
word," Dad reflected, "but they've got the marks on 'em of what
they'll turn out to be. The man that marries Mary he'll play safe; the
feller that gits Joan takes on a gamble. If she ever does marry Reid
he'll not keep her seven months. Shucks! I married a red-headed woman
one time back in Oklahomey, and that blame woman run off with a
horse-doctor inside of three months. I never did hear tell of that
fool woman any more."
"I don't agree with you on the way you've got Joan sized up, no
difference if your wife did run off with a horse-doctor. Her hair
ain't red, anyway."
"Might as well be. You ain't so much of a hand at readin' people,
anyhow, John; before you marry you ought to see a fortune-teller and
have your hand read. You got away off on Reid, holdin' up for him
agin' my judgment when he first come here on the range--don't you
remember?"
"I didn't want to pass judgment on him in advance; that was all,
Dad."
"Course, you couldn't be expected to know men and women like us
fellers that's batted around among 'em all our lives, and you shut up
with a houseful of kids teachin' 'em cipherin' and spellin'. I never
did see a schoolteacher in my life, man or woman, that you couldn't
take on the blind side and beat out of their teeth, not meanin' any
disrespect to you or any of 'em, John."
"Oh, sure not. I understand what you mean."
"I mean you're too trustful, too easy to take folks at their word.
You're kids in your head-works, and you always will be. I advise you
strong, John, to have somebody read your hand."
"Even before marrying Mary?"
"We-el-l, you _might_ be safe in marryin' Mary. If I'd 'a' had my hand
read last spring before I come up here to this range I bet I'd 'a'
missed the trap I stumbled into. I'd 'a' been warned to look out for a
dark woman, like I was warned once before, and I bet you a dime I'd
'a' _looked_ out, too! Oh, well, it's too late now. I guess I was
fated."
"Everybody's fated; we're all branded."
"I've heard it said, and I'm beginnin' to believe it. Well, I don't
know as I'd 'a' been any better off if I'd 'a' got that widow-lady.
Rabbit ain't so bad. She can take care of me when I git old, and maybe
she'll treat me better'n a stranger would."
"Don't you have any doubt about it in the world. It was a lucky day
for you when Rabbit found you and saved you from the Four Corners
widow."
"Yes, I expect that woman she'd 'a' worked me purty hard--she had a
drivin' eye. But a feller's got one consolation in a case where his
woman ribs him a little too hard; the road's always open for him to
leave, and a woman's nearly always as glad to see a man go as he is to
git away."
"There's no reason why it shouldn't work both ways. But fashions are
changing, Dad; they go to the divorce courts now."
"That costs too much, and it's too slow. Walk out and leave the door
standin' open after you; that's always been my way. They keep a
lookin' for you to come back for a month or two; then they marry some
other man. Well, all of 'em but Rabbit, I reckon."
"She was the one that remembered."
"That woman sure is some on the remember, John. Well, I ought 'a' had
my hand read. A man's a fool to start anything without havin' it
done."
Dad nursed his regret in silence, his face dim in the starlight.
Mackenzie was off with his own thoughts; they might have been miles
apart instead of two yards, the quiet of the sheeplands around them.
Then Dad:
"So you're thinkin' of Mary, are you, John?"
Mackenzie laughed a little, like an embarrassed lover.
"Well, I've got my eye on her," he said.
"No gamble about Mary," Dad said, in deep earnestness. "Give her a
couple of years to fill out and widen in and you'll have a girl
that'll do any man's eyes good to see. I thought for a while you had
some notions about Joan, and I'm glad to see you've changed your mind.
Joan's too sharp for a trustin' feller like you. She'd run off with
some wool-buyer before you'd been married a year."