The Flockmaster of Poison Creek by George Washington Ogden

Author:George Washington Ogden [Ogden, George Washington]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Wild West, Sheep Country, Fiction
Publisher: BiblioLife
Published: 2010-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

“Dad says he’s got the lonesomeness.”

“More of the cussedness.”

Her words warmed Mackenzie like a precious cordial. At every one of them in derogation of Reid his heart jumped, seeming to move him by its tremendous vibration a little nearer to her. He felt that it was traitorous exultation at the expense of one who had befriended him to a limit beyond which it is hard for a man to go, but he could not drown the exhilaration of a reborn hope in even the deepest waters of his gratitude.

Somebody ought to tell Joan what they had designed for her in company with Earl Reid; somebody ought to tell her, but it was not his place. It was strange that she had read the young man’s weakness so readily. Mackenzie had noted more than once before in his life that those who live nearest to nature are the most apt in reading all her works.

“He’ll never stay here through a winter,” Joan predicted, with certainty that admitted no argument. “Give him a touch of twenty-two below, and a snow on a high wind, and send him out to bed down the sheep where it’ll blow over them! I can see him right now. You’ll do it, all right, and I’ll have to, like I have done many a time. But we’re not like Earl. Earl’s got summer blood.”

Mackenzie took her hand, feeling it tremble a little, seeing her face grow pale. The sun was red on the hill, the sheep were throwing long shadows down the slope as they grazed lazily, some of them standing on knees to crop the lush bunch grass.

“Yes, Joan, you and I are of different blood,” he said. “We are of the blood of the lonesome places, and we’ll turn back to them always from our wandering and seeking contentment among the press of men. He can’t have you––Earl Reid can’t have you––ever in this world!”

So it was out, and from his own mouth, and all his reserve was nothing, and his silent pledging but as an idle word. Joan was looking at him with wide and serious eyes.

“Earl Reid?”

“Earl Reid,” he nodded. “I’d be a coward to give you up to him.”

Joan was not trembling now. She put her free hand over Mackenzie’s where it gripped her fingers so hard that Earl Reid might have been on the opposite side of her, trying to rive her away from him by force; she looked up into his eyes and smiled. And there were flecks of golden brown in Joan’s eyes, like flakes of metal from her rich hair. They seemed to increase, and to sparkle like jewels struck through placid water by strong sunbeams as she looked up into his face.

“I thought dad had made some kind of a deal with him,” she said, nodding in her wise way, a truant strand of hair on her calm forehead. “They didn’t tell me anything, but I knew from the way dad looked at me out of the corners of his eyes that he had a trade of some kind on.

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