Part 12 (1/2)

When the horse started, the dogs returned to the flock, too wise to waste energy in a vain pursuit. At a word from Mackenzie they began collecting the shuddering sheep. Dad Frazer came bobbing down the hill with the lantern, breathing loud in his excitement.

”Lord!” said he, when he saw the havoc his light revealed; ”a regular old murderin' stock-killer. And I didn't think there was any grizzly in forty miles.”

Mackenzie took the lantern, sweeping its light over the mangled bodies of several sheep, torn limb from limb, scattered about as if they had been the center of an explosion.

”A murderin' old stock-killer!” said Dad, panting, out of breath.

Mackenzie held up the light, looking the old man in the face.

”A grizzly don't hop a horse and lope off, and I never met one yet that wore boots,” said he. He swung the light near the ground again, pointing to the trampled footprints among the mangled carca.s.ses.

”It was a man!” said Dad, in terrified amazement. ”Tore 'em apart like they was rabbits!” He looked up, his weathered face white, his eyes staring. ”It takes--it takes--Lord! Do you know how much muscle it takes to tear a sheep up that a-way?”

Mackenzie did not reply. He stood, turning a b.l.o.o.d.y heap of wool and torn flesh with his foot, stunned by this unexampled excess of human ferocity.

Dad recovered from his amazement presently, bent and studied the trampled ground.

”I ain't so sure,” he said. ”Them looks like man's tracks, but a grizzly's got a foot like a n.i.g.g.e.r, and one of them big fellers makes a noise like a lopin' horse when he tears off through the bresh. I tell you, John, no human man that ever lived could take a live sheep and tear it up that a-way!”

”All right, then; it was a bear,” Mackenzie said, not disposed to argue the matter, for argument would not change what he knew to be a fact, nor yet convince Dad Frazer against his reason and experience.

But Mackenzie knew that they were the footprints of a man, and that the noise of the creature running away from camp was the noise of a galloping horse.

CHAPTER IX

A TWO-GUN MAN

”You know, John, if a man's goin' to be a sheepman, John, he's got to keep awake day and night. He ain't goin' to set gabbin' and let a grizzly come right up under his nose and kill his sheep. It's the difference between the man that wouldn't do it and the man that would that makes the difference between a master and a man. That's the difference that stands against Dad Frazer. He'd never work up to partners.h.i.+p in a band of sheep if he lived seven hundred years.”

So Tim Sullivan, a few days after the raid on John Mackenzie's flock.

He had come over on hearing of it from Dad Frazer, who had gone to take charge of another band. Tim was out of humor over the loss, small as it was out of the thousands he numbered in his flocks. He concealed his feelings as well as he could under a friendly face, but his words were hard, the accusation and rebuke in them sharp.

Mackenzie flared up at the raking-over Tim gave him, and turned his face away to hold down a hot reply. Only after a struggle he composed himself to speak.

”I suppose it was because you saw the same difference in me that you welched on your agreement to put me in a partner on the increase of this flock as soon as Dad taught me how to work the sheep and handle the dogs,” he said. ”That's an easy way for a man to slide out from under his obligations; it would apply anywhere in life as well as in the sheep business. I tell you now I don't think it was square.”

”Now, lad, I don't want you to look at it that way, not at all, not at all, lad.” Tim was as gentle as oil in his front now, afraid that he was in the way of losing a good herder whom he had tricked into working at a bargain price. ”I don't think you understand the lay of it, if you've got the impression I intended to take you in at the jump-off, John. It's never done; it's never heard of. A man's got to prove himself, like David of old. There's a lot of Goliaths here on the range he's got to meet and show he's able to handle before any man would trust him full shares on the increase of two thousand sheep.”

”You didn't talk that way at first,” Mackenzie charged, rather sulkily.

”I took to you when I heard how you laid Swan out in that fight you had with him, John. That was a recommendation. But it wasn't enough, for it was nothing but a chance lucky blow you got in on him that give you the decision. If you'd 'a' missed him, where would you 'a' been at?”

”That's got nothing to do with your making a compact and breaking it.

You've got no right to come here beefing around about the loss of a few sheep with a breach of contract on your side of the fence. You've put it up to me now like you should have done in the beginning. All right; I'll prove myself, like David. But remember there was another fellow by the name of Jacob that went in on a livestock deal with a slippery man, and stick to your agreement this time.”

”I don't want you to feel that I'm takin' advantage of you, John; I don't want you to feel that way.”