The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 32

CHAPTER XXI

TIM SULLIVAN BREAKS A CONTRACT

"And that will be the end of it," said Tim Sullivan, finality in his tone, his face stern, his manner severe. "I've pa.s.sed my word to old Malcolm that you'll have his boy, and have him you will."

"Boy!" said Joan.

"In experience he's no lad, and I'm glad you've discovered it," said Tim, warming a little, speaking with more softness, not without admiration for her penetration. "He'll be the better able to look after you, and see they don't get his money away from him like some simpleton."

"Oh, they'll get it, all right."

Tim had arrived that morning from a near-by camp as Joan was about to set out for Dad Frazer's. From his way of plunging abruptly into this matter, which he never had discussed with her before, and his sharpness and apparent displeasure with her, Joan knew that he had seen Reid overnight. They were beside the sheep-wagon, to a wheel of which Joan's horse was tied, all saddled and ready to mount. The sun was already high, for Joan had helped Charley range the flock out for its day's grazing, and had put all things to rights in the camp, anxious as her mind was over Mackenzie's state.

"I'll not have you treat the lad like a beggar come to ask of you, Joan; I'll not have it at all. Be civil with him; use him kindly when he speaks."

"He's a thousand years older than I am; he knows things that you never heard of."

"Somebody's been whisperin' slanders of him in your ear. He's a fine lad, able to hold his own among men, take 'em where they're found.

Don't you heed what the jealous say about the boy, Joan; don't you let it move you at all."

"I wouldn't have him if he brought his million in a wheelbarrow and dumped it at my feet."

"It's not a million, as I hear it," Tim corrected, mildly, even a bit thoughtfully, "not more nor a half."

"Then he's only half as desirable," smiled Joan, the little gleam of humor striking into her gloomy hour like a sudden ray of sun.

"You'd run sheep till you was bent and gray, and the rheumatiz'

got set in your j'ints, me gerrel, before you'd win to the half of half a million. Here it comes to you while you're young, with the keenness to relish it and the free hand to spend the interest off of it, and sail over the seas and see the world you're longin' to know and understand."

Joan's hat hung on the saddle-horn, the morning wind was trifling with light breath in her soft, wave-rippled hair. Her brilliant necktie had been put aside for one of narrower span and more sober hue, a blue with white dots. The free ends of it blew round to her shoulder, where they lay a moment before fluttering off to brush her cheek, as if to draw by this slight friction some of the color back into it that this troubled interview had drained away.

She stood with her head high, her chin lifted, determination in her eyes. Thorned shrubs and stones had left their marks on her strong boots, the little teeth of the range had frayed the hem of her short cloth skirt, but she was as fresh to see as a morning-glory in the sun. Defiance outweighed the old cast of melancholy that clouded her eyes; her lips were fixed in an expression which was denial in itself as she stood looking into the wind, her little brown hands clenched at her sides.

"I want that you should marry him, as I have arranged it with old Malcolm," said Tim, speaking slowly to give it greater weight. "I have pa.s.sed my word; let that be the end."

"I've got a right to have a word, too. n.o.body else is as much concerned in it as me, Dad. You can't put a girl up and sell her like a sheep."

"It's no sale; it's yourself that comes into the handlin' of the money."

Tim took her up quickly on it, a gleam in his calculative eye, as if he saw a convincing way opening ahead of him.

"I couldn't do it, Dad, as far as I'd go to please you; I couldn't--never in this world! There's something about him--something----"

"It'll wear off; 'tis the strangeness of him, but three years will bring him closer; it will wear away."

"It'll never wear away, because he isn't--he isn't _clean_!"

"Clean?" Tim repeated, turning in amazement as if to seek a witness to such a preposterous charge. And again: "Clean? He's as fresh as a daisy, as clean as a lamb."

"It's the way he seems to me," she insisted, with conviction that no argument would shake. "I don't know any other name for it--you can see it in his eyes."

"Three year here will brace him up, Joan; he'll come to you as fresh as lumber out of the mill."

"No, all the wind in the world can't blow it out of him. I can't do it, I'll never do it!"

"And me with my word pa.s.sed to old Malcolm!" Tim seemed to grieve over it, and the strong possibility of its repudiation; his face fell so long, his voice so accusing, so low and sad.

"You'll not lose any money; you can square it up with him some way, Dad."

"You've been the example of a dutiful child to me," Tim said, turning to her, spreading his hands, the oil of blarney in his voice. "You've took the work of a man off of my hands since you were twelve year old, Joan."

"Yes, I have," Joan nodded, a shading of sadness for the lost years of her girlhood in her tone. She did not turn to face him, her head high that way, her chin up, her nose in the wind as if her a.s.surance lay in its warm scents, and her courage came on its caress.

"You've been the gerrel that's gone out in the storm and the bitter blast to save the sheep, and stood by them when their poor souls shook with the fright, and soothed down their panic and saved their lives.

You've been the gerrel that's worked the sheep over this range in rain and s.h.i.+ne, askin' me nothing, not a whimper or a complaint out of ye--that's what you've been to me, Joan. It's been a hard life for a la.s.s, it's been a hard and a lonesome life."

Joan nodded, her head drooping just a little from its proud lift.

Tears were on her face; she turned it a bit to hide them from his eyes.

"You mind the time, Joan, four years ago it was the winter past, when you stood a full head shorter than you stand today, when the range was snowed in, and the sheep was unable to break the crust that froze over it, and was huddlin' in the canons starving wi' the hunger that we couldn't ease? Heh--ye mind that winter, Joan, gerrel?"

Joan nodded again, her chin trembling as it dropped nearer to the fluttering necktie at her warm, round throat. And the tears were coursing hotter, the well of them open, the stone at the mouth of it rolled away, the recollection of those harsh days almost too hard to bear.

"And you mind how you read in the book from the farmer college how a handful of corn a day would save the life of a sheep, and tide it over the time of stress and storm till it could find the gra.s.s in under the snow? Ah-h, ye mind how you read it, Joan, and come ridin' to tell me?

And how you took the wagons and the teams and drove that bitter length in wind and snow to old Wellfleet's place down on the river, and brought corn that saved to me the lives of no less than twenty thousand sheep? It's not you and me, that's gone through these things side by side, that forgets them in the fair days, Joan, my little darlin' gerrel. Them was hard days, and you didn't desert me and leave me to go alone."

Joan shook her head, the sob that she had been smothering breaking from her in a sharp, riving cry. Tim, feeling that he had softened her, perhaps, laid his hand on her shoulder, and felt her body trembling under the emotion that his slow recital of past hards.h.i.+ps had stirred.

"It'll not be that you'll leave me in a hole now, Joan," he coaxed, stroking her hair back from her forehead, his touch gentle as his heart could be when interest bent it so.

"I gave you that--all those years that other girls have to themselves, I mean, and all that work that made me coa.r.s.e and rough and kept me down in ignorance--I gave you out of my youth till the well of my giving has gone dry. I can't give what you ask today, Dad; I can't give you that."

"Now, Joan, take it easy a bit, draw your breath on it, take it easy, gerrel."

Joan's chin was up again, the tremor gone out of it, the shudder of sorrow for the lost years stilled in her beautiful, strong body. Her voice was steady when she spoke:

"I'll go on working, share and share alike with you, like I'm doing now, or no share, no nothing, if you want me to, if you need me to, but I can't--I can't!"

"I was a hard master over you, my little Joan," said Tim, gently, as if torn by the thorn of regret for his past blindness.

"You were, but you didn't mean to be. I don't mind it now, I'm still young enough to catch up on what I missed--I _am_ catching up on it, every day."

"But now when it comes in my way to right it, to make all your life easy to you, Joan, you put your back up like a catamount and tear at the eyes of me like you'd put them out."