HERTHA CARLSON

Swan Carlson or his woman was running a band of sheep very close to the border of Tim Sullivan’s lease. All afternoon Mackenzie had heard the plaint of lambs; they had lifted their wavering chorus all during Joan’s lesson, giving her great concern that Carlson designed attempting a trespass on her father’s land.

Joan had come shortly after Reid’s unexplained departure, and had gone back to her flock again uninformed of Reid’s criminal career. Mackenzie felt that he did not need the record of his rival to hold Joan out of his hands. The world had changed around for him amazingly in the past few days. Where the sheeplands had promised little for him but a hard apprenticeship and doubtful rewards a little while ago, they now showered him with unexpected blessings.

He ruminated pleasantly on this sudden coming round the corner into the fields of romance as he went to the top of the hill at sunset to see what Swan Carlson was about. Over in the next valley there spread a handful of sheep, which the shepherd was ranging back to camp. Mackenzie could not make sure at that distance whether the keeper was woman or man.

Reid had not returned when Mackenzie plodded into camp at dusk. His absence was more welcome, in truth, than his company; Mackenzie hoped he would sulk a long time and stay away until he got his course in the sheep country plainly before his eyes. If he stayed his three years there it would be on account of sheep, and whatever he might win in his father’s good graces by his fidelity. Joan was not to figure thenceforward in any of his schemes.

Three years on the sheep range with no prospect of Joan! That was what Reid had ahead of him now.

“I think I’d take mine in the pen,” Mackenzie said, leaning back to comfort with his pipe. Night came down; the dogs lay at his feet, noses on forepaws. Below him the sheep were still. So, for a long time, submerged in dreams.

One of the dogs lifted its head, its bristles rising, a low growl in its throat. The other rose cautiously, walking away crouching, with high-lifted feet. Mackenzie listened, catching no noise to account for their alarm. A little while, and the sound of Hertha Carlson’s singing rose from the hill behind him, her song the same, the doleful quality of its air unmodified.

Na-a-fer a-lo-o-one, na-a-fer a-lone,
He promise na-fer to leafe me,
Na-fer to leafe me a-lone!

“Strange how she runs on that,” Mackenzie muttered, listening for her to repeat, as he had heard her the night her singing guided him to her melancholy door. A little nearer now the song sounded, the notes broken as if the singer walked, stumbling at times, so much sadness in it, so much longing, such unutterable hopelessness as to wring the listener’s heart.

Swan was beating her again, neglecting her, subjecting her to the cruelties of his savage mind; there was no need for the woman to come nearer to tell him that. Only grief for which there was no comfort, despair in which there was no hope, could tune a human note to that eloquent expression of pain. Perhaps she was wandering in the night now for the solace of weariness, pouring out the three lines of her song in what seemed the bitterness of accusation for a promise unfulfilled.

The dogs came back to Mackenzie’s side, where they sat with ears lifted, but with no expression of hostility or alarm in their bearing now. They were only curious, as their master was curious, waiting to see if the wandering singer would come on into camp.

There was no glow of lantern to guide her, and no moon, but she came straight for where Mackenzie sat. A little way off she stopped.

“Hello!” she hailed, as if uncertain of her welcome.

Mackenzie requested her to come on, lighting the lantern which he had ready to hand. Mrs. Carlson hesitated, drawing back a little when she saw his face.

“I thought it was Earl,” she said.

“Earl’s not here tonight. Sit down and rest yourself, Mrs. Carlson. You don’t remember me?”

“I remember. You are the man who cut my chain.”

“I thought you’d forgotten me.”

“No, I do not forget so soon. A long time I wanted to kill you for the blow you gave Swan that night.”

“As long as Swan was good to you,” said he, “of course you would. How do you feel about it now?”

“I only cry now because he did not die. He was different a little while after he got well, but again he forgets. He beats me; he leaves me alone with the sheep.”

“I knew he was beating you again,” Mackenzie nodded, confirming his speculation of a little while before.

“Sheep!” said she. “Swan thinks only of sheep; he is worse since he bought Hall’s flock. It is more than I can endure!”

Mrs. Carlson was worried and worn, fast losing all she had gained in flesh and color during Swan’s period of kindness when she had thrown herself into his wild ways and ridden the range like a fighting woman at his side. Much of her comeliness remained in her sad face and great, luminous, appealing eyes, for it was the comeliness of melancholy which sorrow and hard usage refined. She would carry her grace with her, and the pale shred of her youthful beauty, down to the last hard day. But it was something that Swan was insensible to; it could not soften his hand toward her, nor bend his wild thoughts to gentleness. Now he had denied her again the little share he had granted her in his wild life, and must break the thing he had made, going his morose way alone.

“I hadn’t heard he’d bought Hall’s sheep,” Mackenzie said. “Is he going to run them on this range?”

“No, he says I shall go there, where the wolves are many and bold, even by daylight, to watch over them. There I would be more alone than here. I cannot go, I cannot go! Let him kill me, but I will not go!”

“He’s got a right to hire a man to run them; he can afford it.”

“His money grows like thistles. Where Swan touches the earth with the seed of it, money springs. Money is a disease that he spreads when he walks, like the scales that fall from a leper. Money! I pray God night and day that a plague will sweep away his flocks, that a thief will find his hiding place, that a fire will burn the bank that locks in his gold, and make him poor. Poor, he would be kind. A man’s proud heart bends down when he is poor.”

“God help you!” said Mackenzie, pitying her from the well of his tender heart.

“God is deaf; he cannot hear!” she said, bitter, hopeless, yet rebellious against the silence of heaven and earth that she could not penetrate with her lamentations and bring relief.

“No, you shouldn’t let yourself believe any such thing,” he chided, yet with a gentleness that was almost an encouragement.

“This land is a vacuum, out of which sound cannot reach him, then,” she sighed, bending her sad head upon her hands. “I have cried out to him in a sorrow that would move a stone on the mountain-side, but God has not heard. Yes, it must be that this land is a vacuum, such as I read of when I was a girl in school. Maybe ” looking up with eager hopefulness “if I go out of it a little way, just on the edge of it and pray, God will be able to hear my voice?”

“Here, as well as anywhere,” he said, moved by her strange fancy, by the hunger of her voice and face.

“Then it is because there is a curse on me the curse of Swan’s money, of his evil ways!” She sprang up, stretching her long arms wildly. “I will pray no more, no more!” she cried. “I will curse God, I will curse him as Job cursed him, and fling myself from the rocks and die!”

Mackenzie was on his feet beside her, his hand on her shoulder as if he would stay her mad intention.

“No, no!” he said, shocked by the boldness of her declaration. “Your troubles are hard enough to bear don’t thicken them with talk like this.”

She looked at him blankly, as if she did not comprehend, as though her reason had spent itself in this rebellious outbreak against the unseen forces of her sad destiny.

“Where is your woman?” she asked.

“I haven’t any woman.”

“I thought she was your woman, but if she is not, Swan can have her. Swan can have her, then; I do not care now any more. Swan wants her, he speaks of her in the night. Maybe when he takes her he will set me free.”

Mrs. Carlson sat again near the lantern, curling her legs beneath her with the facility of a dog, due to long usage of them in that manner, Mackenzie believed, when chained to the wall in her lonely house among the trees. Mackenzie stood a little while watching her as she sat, chin in her hands, pensive and sad. Presently he sat near her.

“Where is Swan tonight?” he asked.

“Drinking whisky beside the wagon with Hector Hall. They will not fight. No.”

“No,” he echoed, abstractedly, making a mental picture of Carlson and Hall beside the sheep-wagon, the light of a lantern on their faces, cards in their fists, a jug of whisky in the middle ground within reach from either hand. It was such diversion as Swan Carlson would enjoy, the night around him as black as the shadows of his own dead soul.

“Earl did not come to me this night,” she said, complaining in sad note. “He promised he would come.”

“Has he been going over there to see you?” Mackenzie asked, resentful of any advantage Reid might be seeking over this half-mad creature.

“He makes love to me when Swan is away,” she said, nodding slowly, looking up with serious eyes. “But it is only false love; there is a lie in his eyes.”

“You’re right about that,” Mackenzie said, letting go a sigh of relief.

“He tries to flatter me to tell him where Swan hides the money he brought from the bank,” she said, slowly, wearily, “but him I do not trust. When I ask him to do what must first be done to make me free, he will not speak, but goes away, pale, pale, like a frightened girl.”

“You’d better tell him to stay away,” Mackenzie counseled, his voice stern and hard.

“But you would not do that,” she continued, heedless of his admonition. She leaned toward him, her great eyes shining in the light, her face eager in its sorrowful comeliness; she put out her hand and touched his arm.

“You are a brave man, you would not turn white and go away into the night like a wolf to hear me speak of that. Hush! hush! No, no there is no one to hear.”

She looked round with fearful eyes, crouching closer to the ground, her breath drawn in long labor, her hand tightening on his arm. Mackenzie felt a shudder sweep coldly over him, moved by the tragedy her attitude suggested.

“Hush!” she whispered, hand to her mouth. And again, leaning and peering: “Hush!” She raised her face to him, a great eagerness in her burning eyes. “Kill him, kill Swan Carlson, kind young man, and set me free again! You have no woman? I will be your woman. Kill him, and take me away!”

“You don’t have to kill Swan to get away from him,” he told her, the tragedy dying out of the moment, leaving only pity in its place. “You can go on tonight you never need to go back.”

Hertha came nearer, scrambling to him with sudden movement on her knees, put her arm about his neck before he could read her intention or repel her, and whispered in his ear:

“I know where Swan hides the money I can lead you to the place. Kill him, good man, and we will take it and go far away from this unhappy land. I will be your woman, faithful and true.”

“I couldn’t do that,” he said gently, as if to humor her; “I couldn’t leave my sheep.”

“Sheep, sheep!” said she, bitterly. “It is all in the world men think of in this land sheep! A woman is nothing to them when there are sheep! Swan forgets, sheep make him forget. If he had no sheep, he would be a kind man to me again. Swan forgets, he forgets!”

She bent forward, looking at the lantern as if drawn by the blaze, her great eyes bright as a deer’s when it stands fascinated by a torchlight a moment before bounding away.

“Swan forgets, Swan forgets!” she murmured, her staring eyes on the light. She rocked herself from side to side, and “Swan forgets, Swan forgets!” she murmured, like the burden of a lullaby.

“Where is your camp?” Mackenzie asked her, thinking he must take her home.

Hertha did not reply. For a long time she sat leaning, staring at the lantern. One of the dogs approached her, bristles raised in fear, creeping with stealthy movement, feet lifted high, stretched its neck to sniff her, fearfully, backed away, and composed itself to rest. But now and again it lifted its head to sniff the scent that came from this strange being, and which it could not analyze for good or ill. Mackenzie marked its troubled perplexity, almost as much at sea in his own reckoning of her as the dog.

“No, I could not show you the money and go away with you leaving Swan living behind,” she said at last, as if she had decided it finally in her mind. “That I have told Earl Reid. Swan would follow me to the edge of the world; he would strangle my neck between his hands and throw me down dead at his feet.”

“He’d have a right to if you did him that kind of a trick,” Mackenzie said.

“Earl Reid comes with promises,” she said, unmindful of Mackenzie; “he sits close by me in the dark, he holds me by the hand. But kiss me I will not permit; that yet belongs to Swan.” She looked up, sweeping Mackenzie with her appealing eyes. “But if you would kill him, then my lips would be hot for your kiss, brave man I would bend down and draw your soul into mine through a long, long kiss!”

“Hush!” Mackenzie commanded, sternly. “Such thoughts belong to Swan, as much as the other. Don’t talk that way to me I don’t want to hear any more of it.”

Hertha sat looking at him, that cast of dull hopelessness in her face again, the light dead in her eyes.

“There are strange noises that I hear in the night,” she said, woefully; “there is a dead child that never drew breath pressed against my heart.”

“You’d better go back to your wagon,” he suggested, getting to his feet.

“There is no wagon, only a canvas spread over the brushes, where I lie like a wolf in a hollow. A beast I am become, among the beasts of the field!”

“Come I’ll go with you,” he offered, holding out his hand to lift her.

She did not seem to notice him, but sat stroking her face as if to ease a pain out of it, or open the fount of her tears which much weeping must have drained long, long ago.

Mackenzie believed she was going insane, in the slow-preying, brooding way of those who are not strong enough to withstand the cruelties of silence and loneliness on the range.

“Where is your woman?” she asked again, lifting her face suddenly.

“I have no woman,” he told her, gently, in great pity for her cruel burden under which she was so unmistakably breaking.

“I remember, you told me you had no woman. A man should have a woman; he goes crazy of the lonesomeness on the sheep range without a woman.”

“Will Swan be over tomorrow?” Mackenzie asked, thinking to take her case up with the harsh and savage man and see if he could not be moved to sending her away.

“I do not know,” she returned coldly, her manner changing like a capricious wind. She rose as she spoke, and walked away, disappearing almost at once in the darkness.

Mackenzie stood looking the way she went, listening for the sound of her going, but she passed so surely among the shrubs and over the uneven ground that no noise attended her. It was as though her failing mind had sharpened her with animal caution, or that instinct had come forward in her to take the place of wit, and serve as her protection against dangers which her faculties might no longer safeguard.

Even the dogs seemed to know of her affliction, as wild beasts are believed by some to know and accept on a common plane the demented among men. They knew at once that she was not going to harm the sheep. When she left camp they stretched themselves with contented sighs to their repose.

And that was “the lonesomeness” as they spoke of it there. A dreadful affliction, a corrosive poison that gnawed the heart hollow, for which there was no cure but comradeship or flight. Poor Hertha Carlson was denied both remedies; she would break in a little while now, and run mad over the hills, her beautiful hair streaming in the wind.

And Reid had it; already it had struck deep into his soul, turning him morose, wickedly vindictive, making him hungry with an unholy ambition to slay. Joan must have suffered from the same disorder. It was not so much a desire in her to see what lay beyond the blue curtain of the hills as a longing for companionship among them.

But Joan would put away her unrest; she had found a cure for the lonesomeness. Her last word to him that day was that she did not want to leave the sheep range now; that she would stay while he remained, and fare as he fared.

Rachel must have suffered from the lonesomeness, ranging her sheep over the Mesopotamian plain; Jacob had it when he felt his heart dissolve in tears at the sight of his kinswoman beside the well of Haran. But Joan was safe from it now; its insidious poison would corrode in her heart no more.

Poor Hertha Carlson, deserving better than fate had given her with sheep-mad Swan! She could not reason without violence any longer, so often she had been subjected to its pain.

“It will be a thousand wonders if she doesn’t kill him herself,” Mackenzie said, sitting down with new thoughts.

The news of Swan’s buying Hall out was important and unexpected. Free to leave the country now, Hall very likely would be coming over to balance accounts. There was his old score against Mackenzie for his humiliation at the hands of the apprentice sheepherder, which doubtless had grown more bitter day by day; and there was his double account against Reid and Mackenzie for the loss of his sheep-killing brother. Mackenzie hoped that he would go away and let matters stand as they were.

And Swan. It had not been all a jest, then, when he proposed trading his woman for Mackenzie’s. What a wild, irresponsible, sheep-mad man he was! But he hardly would attempt any violence toward Joan, even though he “spoke of her in the night.”

From Carlson, Mackenzie’s thoughts ran out after Reid. Contempt rose in him, and deepened as he thought of the mink-faced youth carrying his deceptive poison into the wild Norseman’s camp. But insane as she was, racked by the lonesomeness to be away from that unkindly land, Hertha Carlson remained woman enough to set a barrier up that Reid, sneak that he was, could not cross.

What a condition she had made, indeed! Nothing would beguile her from it; only its fulfilment would bend her to yield to his importunities. It was a shocking mess that Reid had set for himself to drink some day, for Swan Carlson would come upon them in their hand-holding in his hour, as certainly as doom.

And there was the picture of the red-haired giant of the sheeplands and that flat-chested, sharp-faced youth drinking beside the sheep-wagon in the night. There was Swan, lofty, cold, unbending; there was Reid, the craft, the knowledge of the world’s under places written on his brow, the deceit that he practiced against his host hidden away in his breast.

Mackenzie sighed, putting it from him like a nightmare that calls a man from his sleep by its false peril, wringing sweat from him in its agony. Let them bind in drink and sever in blood, for all that he cared. It was nothing to him, any way they might combine or clash. Joan was his; that was enough to fill his world.