The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 39

"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 d.a.m.ned 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-h.e.l.l 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 fort.i.tude, 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 d.a.m.ned sheep if it wasn't for the old man's money. Tim Sullivan would pick dimes off a red-hot griddle in h.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+pped 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.

CHAPTER XXVI

PAYMENT ON ACCOUNT

Mackenzie raised his eyes slowly from his task of blending tobacco, looked for a moment into Reid's determined face, remembering with a falling heart that he had taken his own revolver off and hung it in the wagon when he came in, to relieve himself of the weight.

"Hurry--hand it out!"

Reid lifted himself slightly, elbow still pressed close to his side, raising his face a foot nearer Mackenzie's, his eyes drawn small, the corners of his mouth twitching.

Mackenzie's hands were poised one above the other, as he had suspended his milling operations. As quickly as the hand of a prestidigitator flashes, Mackenzie swept the one that held the tobacco, das.h.i.+ng the powdered mixture into Reid's eyes.

Reid fired as he sprang to his feet, gasping and choking, momentarily blinded by the fiery tobacco. Mackenzie felt the bullet lift his hair as it pa.s.sed his temple, and before it was many rods on its way through the canvas top of the wagon he had grappled with Reid and wrenched his gun away.

Reid had no hands for a fight, even if it had been in him to attempt it, being busy with his streaming eyes. He cursed Mackenzie as he sputtered and swabbed.

"d.a.m.n it all, Mackenzie, can't you take a joke?" he said.

"No, I don't get you--you're too funny for me," Mackenzie returned.

"Here--wash your eyes."

Mackenzie offered the water pail, Reid groping for it like a blind man, more tears streaming down his face than he had spent before in all his life together. He got the rough of it out, cursing the while, protesting it was only a joke. But Mackenzie had read human eyes and human faces long enough to know a joke when he saw it in them, and he had not seen even the shadow of a jest in the twitching mask of Reid's unfeeling countenance as he leaned on his elbow holding his gun.

"You were right about it a little while ago," Mackenzie told Reid when he looked up with red, reproachful eyes presently; "this range isn't big enough for you and me." Mackenzie jerked his hand toward the saddle and bridle which Reid had lately taken from his horse. "Get to h.e.l.l out of here!"

Reid went without protest, or word of any kind, wearing his belt and empty scabbard. Mackenzie watched him saddle and ride over the ridge, wondering if he would make a streak of it to Sullivan and tell him what a poor hand his school-teaching herder was at taking a joke.

Curious to see whether this was Reid's intention, Mackenzie followed him to the top of the hill. Reid's dust was all he could trace him by when he got there, and that rose over toward Swan Carlson's ranch, whence he had come not more than an hour ago.

Pretty thick business between that precious pair, Mackenzie thought, and of a sort not likely to turn out of much profit to either them or anybody else. Carlson was a plain human brute without any sense of honor, or any obligation to the amenities of civilized society; Reid was simply an unmoral sharper.

It didn't make any difference where Reid went, or what he planned; he would have to stay away from that camp. That Mackenzie vowed, meaning it to the last letter. Tim Sullivan would be informed of this latest pleasantry at their first meeting, also, and hear a chapter from Mackenzie's heart on the matter of Joan.