ONE MAN'S JOKE
Mackenzie went across the hills next morning to relieve Reid of his
watch over the sheep, feeling almost as simple as Dad and the rest of
them believed him to be. He was too easy, he had been too easy all
along. If he had beaten Hector Hall into a blue lump that day he sent
him home without his guns; if he had pulled his weapon at Swan
Carlson's first appearance when the giant Swede drove his flock around
the hill that day, and put a bullet between his eyes, Tim Sullivan and
the rest of them would have held him in higher esteem.
Reid would have held him in greater respect for it, also, and it might
not have turned out so badly for Joan. He wondered how Reid would
receive him, and whether they would part in no greater unfriendliness
than at present.
Reid was not with the sheep when Mackenzie arrived where they fed. The
flock was widely scattered, as if the shepherd had been gone a long
time, the dogs seemingly indifferent to what befell, showing a spirit
of insubordination and laziness when Mackenzie set them about their
work. Mackenzie spent the morning getting the flock together, noting
its diminished numbers with quickly calculating eye.
Reid must have been leaving the sheep pretty much to themselves for
the wolves to take that heavy toll. Strange that Sullivan had not
noticed it and put a trustworthy herder in charge. But Sullivan was
more than a little afraid to show himself for long on that part of his
lease, and perhaps had not taken the time to run his eye over the
sheep. It was a matter to be laid before his attention at once.
Mackenzie did not want this loss charged against him as another
example of his unfitness to become a master over sheep on the
profit-sharing plan.
It was past noon when Reid returned, coming riding from Swan Carlson's
range. He came only near enough to Mackenzie to see who it was,
galloping on to the wagon. There he unsaddled his horse and turned it
to graze, setting about immediately to get his dinner. Mackenzie
waited for a summons when the meal was ready, but received none.
Presently he saw that Reid had no intention of calling him in, for he
was sitting down selfishly alone.
Mackenzie determined there was not going to be any avoidance on his
part. If unpleasantness must rise between them Reid would be the one
to set it stewing, and it looked from a distance as if this were his
intention. Mackenzie went to camp, his coat on his arm.
Reid had finished his dinner when Mackenzie arrived. He was sitting in
the shade of some low bushes, his hat on the ground, smoking a
cigarette. He looked up at the sound of Mackenzie's approach, smiling
a little, waving his cigarette in greeting.
"Hello, Jacob," he said.
Mackenzie felt the hot blood rush to his face, but choked down
whatever hot words rose with it. But he could not suppress the
indignation, the surprise, that came with the derisive hail. It seemed
that the range, vast, silent, selfish, melancholy as it was, could not
keep a secret. What did Reid know about any Jacob and Rachel romance?
How had he learned of that?
"How're you makin' it, Earl?" Mackenzie returned, pleasantly enough.
And to himself: "He listened, the scoundrel--sneaked up on us and
heard it all!"
"Oh, well enough," said Reid, coughing huskily.
If well enough, a little more of it would do for him, Mackenzie
thought, noting with surprise the change that had come over Reid since
they last met. The improvement that had begun in him during his first
weeks on the range had not continued. Opposed to it, a decline
appeared to have fastened upon him, making his flaccid cheeks thinner,
his weary eyes more tired, his slight frame lighter by many pounds.
Only his voice was unchanged. That was hearty and quick, resonant of
enjoyment in life and a keenness in the pursuits of its pleasures.
Reid's voice was his most valuable possession, Mackenzie knew; it was
the vehicle that had carried him into the graces of many transitory
friends.
"I thought Tim had sent some old taller-heel over to let me off--I
didn't know it was you," said Reid, lying with perfect ease.
"Taller-heel enough, I guess," Mackenzie returned, detached and
inattentive as it seemed, his mind fixed on dinner.
"I didn't think you'd be able to get out so soon from what Dad told
me. Been havin' some trouble with your hand?"
"It's all right now." Mackenzie was making use of it to shake the
coffeepot, only to find that Reid had drained it to the grounds.
"If I'd recognized you, Jacob, I'd made a double allowance," Reid
said, lifting the corner of his big, unfeeling mouth in a twitching
grin.
"You might cut out that Jacob stuff, wherever you got it," Mackenzie
told him, not much interested in it, apparently.
"Can't you take a joke, Mackenzie?" Reid made the inquiry in surprised
voice, with a well-simulated inflection of injury.
"But I don't want it rubbed in, Reid."
Reid grunted, expressive of derision and contempt, smoking on in
silence while Mackenzie threw himself together a hasty meal.
Frequently Reid coughed, always cupping his hand before his mouth as
if to conceal from himself as well as others the portentous harshness
of the sound.
"Did Sullivan send you over?" Reid inquired at last.
"He said for me to come when I was able, but he didn't set any time. I
concluded I was all right, and came."
"Well, you can go back; I don't need you."
"That's for Sullivan to say."
"On the dead, Mackenzie, I don't see how it's going to be comfortable
with me and you in camp together."
"The road's open, Earl."
"I wish it was open out of this damned country!" Reid complained. In
his voice Mackenzie read the rankling discontent of his soul, wearing
itself out there in the freedom that to him was not free, chafing and
longing and fretting his heart away as though the distant hills were
the walls of a prison, the far horizon its bars.
"Sullivan wants you over at the ranch," Mackenzie told him, moved to
pitying kindness for him, although he knew that it was wasted and
undeserved.
"I'd rather stay over here, I'd rather hear the coyotes howl than that
pack of Sullivan kids. That's one-hell of a family for a man to have
to marry into, Mackenzie."
"I've seen men marry into worse," Mackenzie said.
Reid got up in morose impatience, flinging away his cigarette, went to
the wagon, looked in, slammed the little canvas door with its mica
window shut with a bang, and turned back.
There seemed little of the carelessness, the easy spirit that had made
him so adaptable at first to his surroundings, which Reid had brought
with him into the sheeplands left in him now. He was sullen and
downcast, consumed by the gnawing desire to be away out of his prison.
Mackenzie studied him furtively as he compounded his coffee and set it
to boil on the little fire, thinking that it required more fortitude,
indeed, to live out a sentence such as Reid faced in the open than
behind a lock. Here, the call to be away was always before a man; the
leagues of freedom stretched out before his eyes. It required some
holding in on a man's part to restrain his feet from taking the
untrammeled way to liberty under such conditions, more than he would
have believed Reid capable of, more than he expected him to be equal
to much longer.
Reid came slowly over to where he had left his hat, took it up, and
stood looking at it as if he had found some strange plant or unusual
flower, turning it and regarding it from all sides. It was such
strange behavior that Mackenzie kept his eye on him, believing that
the solitude and discontent had strained his mind.
Presently Reid put the hat on his head, came over to Mackenzie's fire,
and squatted near it on his heels, although the sun was broiling hot
and the flare of the ardent little blaze was scorching to his face. So
he sat, silent as an Indian, looking with fixed eyes at the fire,
while Mackenzie fried his bacon and warmed a can of succotash in the
pan. When Mackenzie began to eat, Reid drew back from the fire to make
another cigarette.
"But will it pay a man," he said ruminatively, as if turning again a
subject long discussed with himself, "to put in three years at this
just to get out of work all the rest of his life? That's all it comes
to, even if I can keep the old man's money from sifting through my
hands like dry sand on a windy day. The question is, will it pay a man
to take the chance?"
Reid did not turn his eyes toward Mackenzie as he argued thus with
himself, nor bring his face about to give his companion a full look
into it. He sat staring across the mighty temptation that lay spread,
league on league before him, his sharp countenance sharper for the
wasting it had borne since Mackenzie saw him last, his chin up, his
neck stretched as if he leaped the barriers of his discontent and rode
away.
"It's a long shot, Mackenzie," he said, turning as he spoke, his face
set in a cast of suffering that brought again to Mackenzie a sweep of
pity which he knew to be a tribute undeserved. "I made a joke about
selling out to you once, Mackenzie; but it isn't a thing a man can
joke about right along."
"I'm glad it was only a joke, Earl."
"Sure it was a joke."
Reid spoke with much of his old lightness, coming out of his brooding
like a man stepping into the sun. He laughed, pulling his hat down on
the bridge of his nose in the peculiar way he had of wearing it. A
little while he sat; then stretched himself back at ease on his elbow,
drooling smoke through his nose in saturnine enjoyment.
"Sullivan will double-cross you in the end, Jack; he'll not even give
you Mary," Reid said, speaking lazily, neither derision nor banter in
his way.
"Maybe," Mackenzie returned indifferently.
"He'd double-cross me after I'd put in three years runnin' his damned
sheep if it wasn't for the old man's money. Tim Sullivan would pick
dimes off a red-hot griddle in hell as long as the devil would stand
by and heat them. He's usin' his girls for bait to draw greenhorns and
work their fool heads off on promises. A man that would do that would
sell his wife."
Mackenzie made no comment. He was through his dinner and was filling
his pipe, mixing some of Dad Frazer's highly recommended twist with
his own mild leaf to give it a kick.
"He played you into the game with Joan for a bait, and then I got
shipped out here and spoiled that," said Reid. "Now he's stringin' you
on for Mary. If you're as wise a guy as I take you to be, Jack,
you'll cut this dump and strike out in business for yourself. There's
a feller over east of Carlson wants to sell out--you can get him on
the run."
"I couldn't buy one side of a sheep," Mackenzie replied, wondering why
this sudden streak of friendly chatter.
Mackenzie ground Dad's twist in his palm, poured a charge of his pale
mixture into it, ground them again together under the heel of his
fist, Reid looking on with languid eyes, hat down on his nose.
"What did you do with that roll you used to carry around out here?"
Reid inquired, watching the compounding of the tobacco.
"It was a mighty little one, Earl," Mackenzie returned, laughing
pleasantly.
_"It's big enough for me--hand it over!"_
Reid flipped his gun from the scabbard, his elbow pressed close to his
side as he reclined in the lazy, inoffensive pose, holding the weapon
down on Mackenzie with a jerk which he must have practiced long to
give it the admirable finish and speed.