Part 7 (2/2)
EYES IN THE FIRELIGHT
”They call it the lonesomeness here,” said Joan, her voice weary as with the weight of the day. ”People shoot themselves when they get it bad--green sheepherders and farmers that come in here to try to plow up the range.”
”Crazy guys,” said Charley, contemptuously, chin in his hands where he stretched full length on his belly beside the embers of the supper fire.
”Homesick,” said Mackenzie, understandingly. ”I've heard it's one of the worst of all diseases. It defeats armies sometimes, so you can't blame a lone sheepherder if he loses his mind on account of it.”
”Huh!” said Charley, no sympathy in him for such weakness at all.
”I guess not,” Joan admitted, thoughtfully. ”I was brought up here, it's home to me. Maybe I'd get the lonesomeness if I was to go away.”
”You sure would, kid,” said Charley, with comfortable finality.
”But I want to go, just the same,” Joan declared, a certain defiance in her tone, as if in defense of a question often disputed between herself and Charley.
”You think you do,” said Charley, ”but you'd hit the high places comin' back home. Ain't that right, Mr. Mackenzie?”
”I think there's something to it,” Mackenzie allowed.
”Maybe I would,” Joan yielded, ”but as soon as my share in the sheep figures up enough you'll see me hittin' the breeze for Chicago. I want to see the picture galleries and libraries.”
”I'd like to go through the mail-order house we get our things from up there,” Charley said. ”The catalogue says it covers seventeen acres!”
Mackenzie was camping with them for the night on his way to Dad Frazer's range, according to Tim Sullivan's plan. Long since they had finished supper; the sheep were quiet below them on the hillside. The silence of the sheeplands, almost oppressive in its weight, lay around them so complete and unbroken that Mackenzie fancied he could hear the stars snap as they sparkled. He smiled to himself at the fancy, face turned up to the deep serenity of the heavens. Charley blew the embers, stirring them with a brush of sage.
”The lonesomeness,” said Mackenzie, with a curious dwelling on the word; ”I never heard it used in that specific sense before.”
”Well, it sure gets a greenhorn,” said Joan.
Charley held the sage-branch to the embers, blowing them until a little blaze jumped up into the startled dark. The sudden light revealed Joan's face where she sat across from Mackenzie, and it was so pensively sad that it smote his heart like a pain to see.
Her eyes stood wide open as she had stretched them to roam into the night after her dreams of freedom beyond the land she knew, and so she held them a moment, undazzled by the light of the leaping blaze. They gleamed like glad waters in a morning sun, and the schoolmaster's heart was quickened by them, and the pain for her longing soothed out of it. The well of her youth was revealed before him, the fountain of her soul.
”I'm goin' to roll in,” Charley announced, his branch consumed in the eager breath of the little blaze. ”Don't slam your shoes down like you was drivin' nails when you come in, Joan.”
”It wouldn't bother you much,” Joan told him, calmly indifferent to his great desire for unbroken repose.
Charley rolled on his back, where he lay a little while in luxurious inaction, sleep coming over him heavily. Joan shook him, sending him stumbling off to the wagon and his bunk.
”You could drive a wagon over him and never wake him once he hits the hay,” she said.
”What kind of a man is Dad Frazer?” Mackenzie asked, his mind running on his business adventure that was to begin on the morrow.
”Oh, he's a regular old flat-foot,” said Joan. ”He'll talk your leg off before you've been around him a week, blowin' about what he used to do down in Oklahoma.”
”Well, a man couldn't get the lonesomeness around him, anyhow.”
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