Part 33 (2/2)
”It's a cheap way to get a thousand lambs,” said she.
”Then I've got 'em cheap!” said Tim, red in his fury. ”You'll flout me and mock me and throw my offers for your good in my face, and speak disrespectful----”
”I spoke the truth, no word but the----”
”I'll have no more out o' ye! It's home you go, and it's there you'll stay till you can trim your tongue and bend your mind to obey my word!”
”You've got no right to take my sheep; you went into a contract with me, you ought to respect it as much as your word to anybody!”
”You have no sheep, you had none. Home you'll go, this minute, and leave the sheep.”
”I hope they'll die, every one of them!”
”Silence, ye! Get on that horse and go home, and I'll be there after you to tend to your case, my lady! I'll have none of this chargin' me to thievery out of the mouth of one of my childer--I'll have none of it!”
”Maybe you've got a better name for it--you and old man Reid!” Joan scorned, her face still white with the cold, deep anger of her wrong.
”I'll tame you, or I'll break your heart!” said Tim, doubly angry because the charge she made struck deep. He glowered at her, mumbling and growling as if considering immediate chastis.e.m.e.nt.
Joan said no more, but her hand trembled, her limbs were weak under her weight with the collapse of all her hopes, as she untied and mounted her horse. The ruin of her foundations left her in a daze, to which the surging, throbbing of a sense of deep, humiliating, shameful wrong, added the obscuration of senses, the confusion of understanding. She rode to the top of the hill, and there the recollection of Mackenzie came to her like the sharp concern for a treasure left behind.
She reined in after crossing the hilltop, and debated a little while on what course to pursue. But only for a little while. Always she had obeyed her father, under injunctions feeling and unfeeling, just and unjust. He was not watching to see that she obeyed him now, knowing well that she would do as he had commanded.
With bent head, this first trouble and sorrow of her life upon her, and with the full understanding in her heart that all which had pa.s.sed before this day was nothing but the skimming of light shadows across her way, Joan rode homeward. A mile, and the drooping shoulders stiffened; the bent head lifted; Joan looked about her at the sun making the sheeplands glad. A mile, and the short breath of anger died out of her panting lungs, the long, deep inspiration of restored balance in its place; the pale shade left her cold cheeks, where the warm blood came again.
Joan, drawing new hope from the thoughts which came winging to her, looked abroad over the sunlit sheeplands, and smiled.
CHAPTER XXII
PHANTOMS OF FEVER
”That was ten or twelve days ago,” Dad explained, when Mackenzie found himself blinking understandingly at the sunlight through the open end of the sheep-wagon one morning. ”You was chawed and beat up till you was hangin' together by threads.”
Mackenzie was as weak as a young mouse. He closed his eyes and lay thinking back over those days of delirium through which a gleam of understanding fell only once in a while. Dad evidently believed that he was well now, from his manner and speech, although Mackenzie knew that if his life depended on rising and walking from the wagon he would not be able to redeem it at the price.
”I seem to remember a woman around me a good deal,” he said, not trusting himself to look at Dad. ”It wasn't--was it----?”
Mackenzie felt his face flush, and cursed his weakness, but he could not p.r.o.nounce the name that filled his heart.
”Yes, it was Rabbit,” said Dad, catching him up without the slightest understanding of his stammering. ”She's been stickin' to you night and day. I tell you, John, them Indians can't be beat doctorin' a man up when he's been chawed up by a animal.”
”I want to thank her,” Mackenzie said, feeling his heart swing very low indeed.
”You won't see much of her now since you've come to your head, I reckon she'll be pa.s.sin' you over to me to look after. She's shy that way. Yes, sir, any time I git bit up by man or beast, or shot up or knifed, I'll take Rabbit ahead of any doctor you can find. Them Indians they know the secrets of it. I wouldn't be afraid to stand and let a rattlesnake bite me till it fainted if Rabbit was around. She can cure it.”
But Mackenzie knew from the odor of his bandages that Rabbit was not depending on her Indian knowledge in his case, or not entirely so.
<script>