“Two horses, Mary said, from the sound, but she didn’t hear nobody’s voice but Joan’s. She got Charley up, and they run out and hollered, but she didn’t hear nothing more of Joan. The poor kid’s scared out of her ’leven senses.”
“Which way did they go––did Mary say?”
“Towards Swan Carlson’s ranch, she said.”
Mackenzie swung into the saddle and galloped off, leaving Dad listening to the sound of his going.
“Nutty, like the rest of ’em,” said Dad.
Carlson’s house was not more than eight miles from the range where Mackenzie was running his sheep. He held his course in that direction as he rode break-neck up hill and down. He had little belief that it could have been Joan who passed Mary’s camp, yet he was disturbed by an anxiety that made his throat dry, and a fear that clung to him like garments wet in the rain.
Reid could not have anything to do with it in any event, Joan or somebody else, for Reid was horseless upon the range. But if Joan, he was at entire loss to imagine upon what business she could be riding the country that hour of the night. Joan had no fear of either night or the range. She had cared for her sheep through storm and dark, penetrating all the terrors that night could present, and she knew the range too well to be led astray. It must have been a voice that Mary had heard in a dream.
Mackenzie felt easier for these reflections, but did not check his pace, holding on toward Carlson’s house in as straight a line as he could draw. He recalled curiously, with a prickling of renewed anxiety, that he always 289 expected to be called to Carlson’s house for the last act in the sheeplands tragedy. Why, he did not know. Perhaps he had not expected it; maybe it was only a psychological lightning-play of the moment, reflecting an unformed emotion. That likely was the way of it, he reasoned. Surely he never could have thought of being called to Carlson’s ranch.
In that fever of contradiction he pushed on, knees gripping his horse in the tensity of his desire to hasten, thinking to hold the animal up from stumbling as an anxious rider in the night will do. Now he believed it could not have been Joan, and felt a momentary ease; now he was convinced that Mary could not have mistaken her sister’s voice, and the sweat of fear for her burst on his forehead and streamed down into his eyes.
From the side that he approached Carlson’s house his way lay through a valley at the end, bringing him up a slight rise as he drew near the trees that stood thickly about the place. Here he dismounted and went on, leading his horse. A little way from the house he hitched his animal among the trees, and went forward in caution, wary of a dog that might be keeping watch beside the door.