Part 39 (1/2)

”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.”