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.



CHAPTER XVIII

SWAN CARLSON'S DAY

Dad Frazer came over the hills next morning after the dew was gone. Mackenzie saw him from afar, and was interested to note that he was not alone. That is to say, not immediately accompanied by anybody, yet not alone for a country where a quarter of a mile between men is rather close company.

Somebody was coming on after the old shepherd, holding about the same distance behind him in spite of little dashes down slopes that Dad made when for a moment out of sight. Mackenzie's wonder over this peculiar behavior grew as the old man came near, and it was discovered to the eye that his persistent shadow was a woman.

Dad wasted neither words nor breath on his explanation when he came panting up the slope that brought him to the place where Mackenzie stood above his sheep.

"It's that dad-burned Rabbit!" he said.

There was something between vexation and respect in Dad's voice. He turned to look back as he spoke. Rabbit had mounted the hilltop just across the dip, where she stood looking over at her shifty-footed lord, two sheep-dogs at her side.

"How did she locate you?" Mackenzie inquired, not in the least displeased over this outreaching of justice after the fickle old man.

"She's been trailin' me four years!" Dad whispered, his respect for Rabbit's powers on the scent unmistakable.

"That's a long time to hold a cold trail. Rabbit must be some on the track!"

"You can't beat them Indians follerin' a man if they set their heads to it. Well, it's all off with the widow-lady at Four Corners now—Rabbit's got me nailed. You see them sheep-dogs? Them dogs they'd jump me the minute Rabbit winked at 'em—they'd chaw me up like a couple of lions. She's raised 'em up to do it, dad-burn her! Had my old vest to learn 'em the scent."

"A man never ought to leave his old vest behind him when he runs away from his wife," said Mackenzie, soberly. "But it looks to me like a woman with the sticking qualities Rabbit's got isn't a bad one to stay married to. How in the world could a reservation squaw find her way around to follow you all this time?"

"She's educated, dang her; she went to the sisters' mission. She can read and write a sight better than me. She's too smart for a squaw, bust her greasy eyes! Yes, and I'll never dast to lay a hand on her with them dogs around. They'd chaw me up quicker'n a man could hang up his hat."

Rabbit composed herself after her patient but persistent way, sitting among the bushes with only her head showing, waiting for Dad's next move.

"You're married to her regularly, are you, Dad?"

"Priest marriage, dang it all!" said Dad, hopelessly.

"Then it is all off with the one-eyed widow."

"Yes, and them four thousand sheep, and that range all under fence, dang my melts!"

"What are you going to do about Rabbit?"

"It ain't what am I goin' to do about her, John, but what she's goin' to do about me. She'll never leave me out of her sight a minute as long as I live. I reckon I'll have to stay right here and run sheep for Tim, and that widow-lady wonderin' why I don't show up!"

"You might do worse, Dad."

"Yes, I reckon I might. Rabbit she's as good as any man on the range handlin' sheep, she can draw a man's pay wherever she goes. I guess I could put her to work, and that'd help some."

Dad brightened a bit at that prospect, and drew his breath with a new hope. Even with the widow gone from his calculations, the future didn't promise all loss.

"But I bet you I'll shoot them two dogs the first time I can draw a bead on 'em!" Dad declared.

"Maybe if you'll treat Rabbit the right way she'll sell them. Call her over, Dad; I'd like to get acquainted with her."

Dad beckoned with his hand, but Rabbit did not stir; waved his hat to emphasize his command; Rabbit remained quiet among the bushes, the top of her black head in plain view.

"She's afraid we've hatched up some kind of a trick between us to work off on her," said Dad.

"You can't blame her for being a little distrustful, Dad. But let her go; I'll meet her at your camp one of these days."

"Yes, you'll meet her over there, all right, for she's goin' to stick to me till I'm under ground. That's one time too many I married—just one time too many!"

"I suppose a man can overdo it; I've heard it said."

"If I hadn't 'a' left that blame vest!"

"Yes, that seems to be where you blundered. You'll know better next time, Dad."

"Yes, but there never will be no next time," Dad sighed.

"Have you seen Reid over your way this morning?"

"No, I ain't seen him. Is he still roamin' and restless?"

"He left yesterday; I thought he was going to the ranch."

"Didn't pass my way. That feller's off, I tell you, John; he's one of the kind that can't stand the lonesomeness. Leave him out here alone two months, and he'd put a bullet in his eye."

"It seems to me like it's a land of daftness," Mackenzie said.

"You'll find a good many cracked people all over the sheep country—I'm kind o' cracked myself. I must be, or I never would 'a' left that vest."

Dad took off his hat to smooth his sweeping curled locks, as white as shredded asbestos, and full of the same little gleams that mineral shows when a block of it from the mine is held in the sun. His beard was whitening over his face again, like a frost that defied the heat of day, easing its hollows and protuberances, easing some of the weakness that the barber's razor had laid so pitilessly bare. In a few days more he would appear himself again, and be ready for the sheep-shears in due time.

"I reckon I'll have to make the best of the place I'm in, but for a man of puncture, as the feller said, like I used to think I was, I sure did miscombobble it when I married that educated squaw. No woman I ever was married to in my life ever had sense enough to track a man like that woman's follered me. She sure is a wonder on the scent."

Patiently Rabbit was sitting among the bushes, waiting the turn of events, not to be fooled again, not to be abandoned, if vigilance could insure her against such distress. Mackenzie's admiration for the woman grew with Dad's discomfiture over his plight. There was an added flavor of satisfaction for him in the old man's blighted career. Wise Rabbit, to have a priest marriage, and wiser still to follow this old dodger of the sheeplands and bring him up with a short halter in the evening of his days.

"I'll go on back and look after them sheep," said Dad, with a certain sad inflection of resignation; "there's nothing else to be done. I was aimin' to serve notice on Tim to find another man in my place, but I might as well keep on. Well, I can set in the shade, anyhow, and let Rabbit do the work—her and them blame dogs."

Dad sighed. It helped a great deal to know that Rabbit could do the work. He looked long toward the spot where his unshaken wife kept her watch on him, but seemed to be looking over her head, perhaps trying to measure all he had lost by this coming between him and the one-eyed widow-lady of Four Corners.

"I wonder if I could git you to write a letter over to that widow and tell her I'm dead?" he asked.

"I'll do it if you want me to. But you're not dead yet, Dad—you may outlive Rabbit and marry the widow at last."

"I never was no lucky man," said Dad, smoothing his gleaming hair. "A man that's married and nailed down to one place is the same as dead; he might as well be in his grave. If I'd 'a' got that widow-lady I'd 'a' had the means and the money to go ridin' around and seein' the sights from the end of one of them cars with a brass fence around it. But I'm nailed down now, John; I'm cinched."

Dad was so melancholy over his situation that he went off without more words, a thing unheard of for him. He gave Rabbit a wide fairway as he passed. When he was a respectable distance ahead the squaw rose from her bush and followed, such determination in her silent movements as to make Dad's hope for future freedom hollow indeed. The old man was cinched at last; Mackenzie was glad that it was so.

The sound of Carlson's sheep was still near that morning, and coming nearer, as whoever attended them ranged them slowly along. Mackenzie went a little way across the hill in that direction, but could not see the shepherd, although the sheep were spread on the slope just before him. It was a small flock, numbering not above seven hundred. Mackenzie was puzzled why Swan wanted to employ his own or his wife's time in grazing so small a number, when four times as many could be handled as easily.

This question was to be answered for him very soon, and in a way which he never had imagined. Yet there was no foreboding of it in the calm noonday as he prepared his dinner in the shade of some welcome willows, the heat glimmering over the peaceful hills.

It was while Mackenzie sat dozing in the fringe of shade such as a hedge would cast at noonday that the snarl of fighting dogs brought him up to a realization of what was going forward among the sheep. His own flock had drifted like a slow cloud to the point of the long ridge, and there Swan Carlson's band had joined it. The two flocks were mingling now, and on the edge of the confused mass his own dogs and Carlson's were fighting.

Swan was not in sight; nobody seemed to be looking after the sheep; it appeared as if they had been left to drift as they might to this conjunction with Mackenzie's flock. Mackenzie believed Mrs. Carlson had abandoned her charge and fled Swan's cruelty, but he did not excuse himself for his own stupidity in allowing the flocks to come together as he ran to the place where his dogs and Carlson's fought.

The sheep were becoming more hopelessly mingled through this commotion on their flank. Mackenzie was beating the enraged dogs apart when Swan Carlson came running around the point of the hill.

Swan immediately took part in the melee of gnashing, rolling, rearing dogs, laying about among them with impartial hand, quickly subduing them to obedience. He stood looking stonily at Mackenzie, unmoved by anger, unflushed by exertion. In that way he stood silent a little while, his face untroubled by any passion that rolled in his breast.

"You're runnin' your sheep over on my grass—what?" said Swan.

"You're a mile over my range," Mackenzie accused.

"You've been crowdin' over on me for a month," Swan said, "and I didn't say nothing. But when a man tries to run his sheep over amongst mine and drive 'em off, I take a hand."

"If anybody's tryin' such a game as that, it's you," Mackenzie told him. "Get 'em out of here, and keep 'em out."

"I got fifteen hundred in that band—you'll have to help me cut 'em out," said Swan.

"You had about seven hundred," Mackenzie returned, dispassionately, although it broke on him suddenly what the big flockmaster was trying to put through.

Counting on Mackenzie's greenness, and perhaps on the simplicity of his nature as they had read it in the sheep country, Swan had prepared this trap days ahead. He had run a small band of the same breed as Sullivan's sheep—for that matter but one breed was extensively grown on the range—over to the border of Tim's lease with the intention of mingling them and driving home more than he had brought. Mackenzie never had heard of the trick being worked on a green herder, but he realized now how simply it could be done, opportunity such as this presenting.

But it was one thing to bring the sheep over and another thing to take them away. One thing Mackenzie was sure of, and that was the judgment of his eyes in numbering sheep. That had been Dad Frazer's first lesson, and the old man had kept him at it until he could come within a few head among hundreds at a glance.

"I'll help you cut out as many as you had," Mackenzie said, running his eyes over the mingled flocks, "they're all alike, one as good as another, I guess. It looks like you got your stock from this ranch, anyhow, but you'll not take more than seven hundred this trip."

"My dogs can cut mine out, they know 'em by the smell," Swan said. "I had fifteen hundred, and I bet you I'll take fifteen hundred back."

The dogs had drawn off, each set behind their respective masters, panting, eyeing each other with hostility, one rising now and then with growls, threatening to open the battle again. The sheep drifted about in confusion, so thoroughly mingled now that it would be past human power to separate them again and apportion each respective head to its rightful owner.

"Seven hundred, at the outside," Mackenzie said again. "And keep them off of my grass when you get 'em."

Carlson stood where he had stopped, ten feet or more distant, his arms bare, shirt open on his breast in his way of picturesque freedom. Mackenzie waited for him to proceed in whatever way he had planned, knowing there could be no compromise, no settlement in peace. He would either have to yield entirely and allow Carlson to drive off seven or eight hundred of Sullivan's sheep, or fight. There didn't seem to be much question on how it would come out in the latter event, for Carlson was not armed, and Mackenzie's pistol was that moment under his hand.

"You got a gun on you," said Swan, in casual, disinterested tone. "I ain't got no gun on me, but I'm a better man without no gun than you are with one. I'm goin' to take my fifteen hundred sheep home with me, and you ain't man enough to stop me."

Carlson's two dogs were sitting close behind him, one of them a gaunt gray beast that seemed almost a purebred wolf. Its jaws were bloody from its late encounter; flecks of blood were on its gray coat. It sat panting and alert, indifferent to Mackenzie's presence, watching the sheep as if following its own with its savage eyes. Suddenly Carlson spoke an explosive word, clapping his great hands, stamping his foot toward Mackenzie.

Mackenzie fired as the wolf-dog sprang, staggering back from the weight of its lank body hurled against his breast, and fired again as he felt the beast's vile breath in his face as it snapped close to his throat.

Mackenzie emptied his pistol in quick, but what seemed ineffectual, shots at the other dog as it came leaping at Carlson's command. In an instant he was involved in a confusion of man and dog, the body of the wolfish collie impeding his feet as he fought.

Carlson and the other dog pressed the attack so quickly that Mackenzie had no time to slip even another cartridge into his weapon. Carlson laughed as he clasped him in his great arms, the dog clinging to Mackenzie's pistol hand, and in a desperate moment it was done. Mackenzie was lying on his back, the giant sheepman's knee in his chest.

Carlson did not speak after ordering the dog away. He held Mackenzie a little while, hand on his throat, knee on his chest, looking with unmoved features down into his eyes, as if he considered whether to make an end of him there or let him go his way in added humiliation and disgrace. Mackenzie lay still under Carlson's hand, trying to read his intention in his clear, ice-cold, expressionless eyes, watching for his moment to renew the fight which he must push under such hopeless disadvantage.

Swan's eyes betrayed nothing of his thoughts. They were as calm and untroubled as the sky, which Mackenzie thought, with a poignant sweep of transcendant fear for his life, he never had beheld so placid and beautiful as in that dreadful moment.

Carlson's huge fingers began to tighten in the grip of death; relax, tighten, each successive clutch growing longer, harder. The joy of his strength, the pleasure in the agony that spoke from his victim's face, gleamed for a moment in Carlson's eyes as he bent, gazing; then flickered like a light in the wind, and died.

Mackenzie's revolver lay not more than four feet from his hand. He gathered his strength for a struggle to writhe from under Carlson's pressing knee. Carlson, anticipating his intention, reached for the weapon and snatched it, laying hold of it by the barrel.

Mackenzie's unexpected renewal of the fight surprised Carlson into releasing his strangling hold. He rose to sitting posture, breast to breast with the fighting sheepman, whose great bulk towered above him, free breath in his nostrils, fresh hope in his heart. He fought desperately to come to his feet, Carlson sprawling over him, the pistol lifted high for a blow.

Mackenzie's hands were clutching Carlson's throat, he was on one knee, swaying the Norseman's body back in the strength of despair, when the heavens seemed to crash above him, the fragments of universal destruction burying him under their weight.



CHAPTER XIX

NOT CUT OUT FOR A SHEEPMAN

Mackenzie returned to conscious state in nausea and pain. Not on a surge, but slow-breaking, like the dawn, his senses came to him, assembling as dispersed birds assemble, with erratic excursions as if distrustful of the place where they desire to alight. Wherever the soul may go in such times of suspended animation, it comes back to its dwelling in trepidation and distrust, and with lingering at the door.

The first connected thought that Mackenzie enjoyed after coming out of his shock was that somebody was smoking near at hand; the next that the sun was in his eyes. But these were indifferent things, drowned in a flood of pain. He put them aside, not to grope after the cause of his discomfort, for that was apart from him entirely, but to lie, throbbing in every nerve, indifferent either to life or death.

Presently his timid life came back entirely, settling down in the old abode with a sigh. Then Mackenzie remembered the poised revolver in Swan Carlson's hand. He moved, struggling to rise, felt a sweep of sickness, a flood of pain, but came to a sitting posture in the way of a man fighting to life from beneath an avalanche. The sun was directly in his eyes, standing low above the hill. He shifted weakly to relieve its discomfort. Earl Reid was sitting near at hand, a few feet above him on the side of the hill.

Reid was smoking a cigarette, his hat pushed back, the shadows of his late discontent cleared out of his face. Below them the sheep were grazing. They were all there; Mackenzie had wit enough in him to see that they were all there.

Reid looked at him with a grin that seemed divided between amusement and scorn.

"I don't believe you're cut out for a sheepman, Mackenzie," he said.

"It begins to look like it," Mackenzie admitted. He was too sick to inquire into the matter of Reid's recovery of the sheep; the world tipped at the horizon, as it tips when one is sick at sea.

"Your hand's chewed up some, Mackenzie," Reid told him. "I think you'd better go to the ranch and have it looked after; you can take my horse."

Mackenzie was almost indifferent both to the information of his hurt and the offer for its relief. He lifted his right hand to look at it, and in glancing down saw his revolver in the holster at his side. This was of more importance to him for the moment than his injury. Swan Carlson was swinging that revolver to strike him when he saw it last. How did it get back there in his holster? Where was Carlson; what had happened to him? Mackenzie looked at Reid as for an explanation.

"He batted you over the head with your gun—I guess he used your gun, I found it out there by you," said Reid, still grinning as if he could see the point of humor in it that Mackenzie could not be expected to enjoy.

Mackenzie did not attempt a reply. He looked with a sort of impersonal curiosity at his hand and forearm, where the dog had bitten him in several places. That had happened a good while ago, he reasoned; the blood had dried, the marks of the dog's teeth were bruised-looking around the edges.

And the sheep were all there, and Reid was laughing at him in satisfaction of his disgrace. There was no sound of Swan Carlson's flock, no sight of the sheepman. Reid had come and untangled what Mackenzie had failed to prevent, and was sitting there, unruffled and undisturbed, enjoying already the satisfaction of his added distinction.

Perhaps Reid had saved his life from Carlson's hands, as he had saved it from Matt Hall's. His debt to Reid was mounting with mocking swiftness. As if in scorn of his unfitness, Reid had picked up his gun and put it back in its sheath.

What would Joan say about this affair? What would Tim Sullivan's verdict be? He had not come off even second best, as in the encounter with Matt Hall, but defeated, disgraced. And he would have been robbed in open day, like a baby, if it hadn't been for Reid's interference. Mackenzie began to think with Dad Frazer that he was not a lucky man.

Too simple and too easy, too trusting and too slow, as they thought of him in the sheep country. A sort of kindly indictment it was, but more humiliating because it seemed true. No, he was not cut out for a sheepman, indeed, nor for anything but that calm and placid woman's work in the schoolroom, it seemed.

Mackenzie looked again at his hand. There was no pain in it, but its appearance was sufficient to alarm a man in a normal state of reasonableness. He had the passing thought that it ought to be attended to, and got up on weaving legs. He might wash it in the creek, he considered, and so take out the rough of whatever infection the dog's teeth had driven into his flesh, but dismissed the notion at once as altogether foolish. It needed bichloride of mercury, and it was unlikely there was such a thing within a hundred and fifty miles.

As he argued this matter of antiseptics with himself Mackenzie walked away from the spot where Reid remained seated, going aimlessly, quite unconscious of his act. Only when he found himself some distance away he stopped, considering what to do. His thoughts ran in fragments and flashes, broken by the throbbing of his shocked brain, yet he knew that Reid had offered to do something for him which he could not accept.

No, he could not place himself under additional obligation to Reid. Live or die, fail or succeed, Reid should not be called upon again to offer a supporting hand. He could sit there on the hillside and grin about this encounter with Carlson, and grin about the hurt in Mackenzie's hand and arm, and the blinding pain in his head. Let him grin in his high satisfaction of having turned another favor to Mackenzie's account; let him grin until his face froze in a grin—he should not have Joan.

Mackenzie went stumbling on again to the tune of that declaration. Reid should not have Joan, he shouldn't have Joan, shouldn't have Joan! Blind from pain, sick, dizzy, the earth rising up before him as he walked, Mackenzie went on. He did not look back to see if Reid came to help him; he would have resented it if he had come, and cursed him and driven him away. For he should not have Joan; not have Joan; Joan, Joan, Joan!

How he found his way to Dad Frazer's camp Mackenzie never could tell. It was long past dark when he stumbled to the sheep-wagon wherein the old herder and his squaw lay asleep, arriving without alarm of dogs, his own collies at his heels. It was the sharp-eared Indian woman who heard him, and knew by his faltering step that it was somebody in distress. She ran out and caught him as he fell.



CHAPTER XX

A MILLION GALLOPS OFF

Joan was returning to camp, weighed down by a somber cloud. Dad Frazer had carried word to her early that morning of Mackenzie's condition, the old man divided in his opinion as to whether man or beast had mauled the shepherd and left him in such melancholy plight.

"Both man and beast," Rabbit had told Joan, having no division of mind in the case at all. And so Joan believed it to be, also, after sitting for hours in the hot sheep-wagon beside the mangled, unconscious schoolmaster, who did not move in pain, nor murmur in delirium, nor drop one word from his clenched, still lips to tell whose hand had inflicted this terrible punishment.

And the range seemed bent on making a secret of it, also. Dad had gone hot-foot on Joan's horse to seek Earl Reid and learn the truth of it, only to ride in vain over the range where Mackenzie's flock grazed. Reid was not in camp; the sheep were running unshepherded upon the hills. Now, Joan, heading back to her camp at dusk of the longest, heaviest, darkest day she ever had known, met Reid as she rode away from Dad Frazer's wagon, and started out of her brooding to hasten forward and question him.

"How did it happen—who did it?" she inquired, riding up breathlessly where Reid lounged on his horse at the top of the hill waiting for her to come to him.

"Happen? What happen?" said Reid, affecting surprise.

"Mr. Mackenzie—surely you must know something about it—he's nearly killed!"

"Oh, Mackenzie." Reid spoke indifferently, tossing away his cigarette, laughing a little as he shaped the shepherd's name. "Mackenzie had a little trouble with Swan Carlson, but this time he didn't land his lucky blow."

"I thought you knew all about it," Joan said, sweeping him a scornful, accusing look. "I had you sized up about that way!"

"Sure, I know all about it, Joan," Reid said, but with a gentle sadness in his soft voice that seemed to express his pity for the unlucky man. "I happened to be away when it started, but I got there—well, I got there, anyhow."

Joan's eyes were still severe, but a question grew in them as she faced him, looking at him searchingly, as if to read what it was he hid.

"Where have you been all day? Dad's been looking high and low for you."

"I guess I was over at Carlson's when the old snoozer came," Reid told her, easy and careless, confident and open, in his manner.

"Carlson's? What business could you——"

"Didn't he tell you about it, Joan?"

"Who, Dad?"

"Mackenzie."

"He hasn't spoken since he stumbled into Dad's camp last night. He's going to die!"

"Oh, not that bad, Joan?" Reid jerked his horse about with quick hand as he spoke, making as if to start down at once to the camp where the wounded schoolmaster lay. "Why, he walked off yesterday afternoon like he wasn't hurt much. Unconscious?"

Joan nodded, a feeling in her throat as if she choked on cold tears.

"I didn't think he got much of a jolt when Swan took his gun away from him and soaked him over the head with it," said Reid, regretfully.

"You were there, and you let him do it!" Joan felt that she disparaged Mackenzie with the accusation as soon as the hasty words fell from her tongue, but biting the lips would not bring them back.

"He needs somebody around with him, but I can't be right beside him all the time, Joan."

"Oh, I don't mean—I didn't—I guess he's able to take care of himself if they give him a show. If you saw it, you can tell me how it happened."

"I'll ride along with you," Reid offered; "I can't do him any good by going down to see him. Anybody gone for a doctor?"

"Rabbit's the only doctor. I suppose she can do him as much good as anybody—he'll die, anyhow."

"He's not cut out for a sheepman," said Reid, ruminatively, shaking his head in depreciation.

"I should hope not!" said Joan, expressing in the emphasis, as well as in the look of superior scorn that she gave him, the difference that she felt lay between Mackenzie and a clod who might qualify for a sheepman and no questions asked.

"I'll ride on over to camp with you," Reid proposed again, facing his horse to accompany her.

"No, you mustn't leave the sheep alone at night—it's bad enough to do it in the day. What was the trouble between him and Swan—who started it?"

"Some of Swan's sheep got over with ours—I don't know how it happened, or whose fault it was. I'd been skirmishin' around a little, gettin' the lay of the country mapped out in my mind. Swan and Mackenzie were mixin' it up when I got there."

"Carlson set his dogs on him!" Joan's voice trembled with her high scorn of such unmanly dealing, such unworthy help.

"He must have; one of the dogs was shot, and I noticed Mackenzie's hand was chewed up a little. They were scuffling to get hold of Mackenzie's gun when I got there—he'd dropped it, why, you can search me! Swan got it. He hit him once with it before I could—oh well, I guess it don't make any difference, Mackenzie wouldn't thank me for it. He's a surly devil!"

Joan touched his arm, as if to call him from his abstraction, leaning to reach him, her face eager.

"You stopped Swan, you took the gun away from him, didn't you, Earl?"

"He's welcome to it—I owed him something."

Joan drew a deep breath, which seemed to reach her stifling soul and revive it; a softness came into her face, a light of appreciative thankfulness into her eyes. She reined closer to Reid, eager now to hear the rest of the melancholy story.

"You took the gun away from Swan; I saw it in his scabbard down there. Did you have to—did you have to—do anything to Carlson, Earl?"

Reid laughed, shortly, harshly, a sound so old to come from young lips. He did not meet Joan's eager eyes, but sat straight, head up, looking off over the darkening hills.

"No, I didn't do anything to him—more than jam my gun in his neck. He got away with thirty sheep more than belonged to him, though—I found it out when I counted ours. I guess I was over there after them when Dad was lookin' for me today."

"You brought them back?" Joan leaned again, her hand on his arm, where it remained a little spell, as she looked her admiration into his face.

"Nothing to it," said Reid, modestly, laughing again in his grating harsh way of vast experience, and scorn for the things which move the heart.

"It's a good deal, I think," said she. "But," thoughtfully, "I don't see what made him drop his gun."

"You can search me," said Reid, in his careless, unsympathetic way.

"It might have happened to anybody, though, a dog and a man against him."

"Yes, even a better man."

"A better man don't live," said Joan, with calm decision.

Reid bent his eyes to the pommel of his saddle, and sat so a few moments, in the way of a man who turns something in his thoughts. Then:

"I guess I'll go on back to the sheep."

"He may never get well to thank you for what you did, Earl," and Joan's voice threatened tears in its low, earnest tremolo, "but I——"

"Oh, that's all right, Joan." Reid waved gratitude, especially vicarious gratitude, aside, smiling lightly. "He's not booked to go yet; wait till he's well and let him do his own talking. Somebody ought to sneak that gun away from him, though, and slip a twenty-two in his scabbard. They can't hurt him so bad with that when they take it away from him."

"It might have happened to you!" she reproached.

"Well, it might," Reid allowed, after some reflection. "Sure, it might," brightening, looking at her frankly, his ingenuous smile softening the crafty lines of his thin face. "Well, leave him to Rabbit and Dad; they'll fix him up."

"If he isn't better tomorrow I'm going for a doctor, if nobody else will."

"You're not goin' to hang around there all the time, are you, Joan?"

Reid's face flushed as he spoke, his eyes made small, as if he looked in at a furnace door.

Joan did not answer this, only lifted her face with a quick start, looking at him with brows lifted, widening her great, luminous, tender eyes. Reid stroked her horse's mane, his stirrup close to her foot, his look downcast, as if ashamed of the jealousy he had betrayed.

"I don't mind the lessons, and that kind of stuff," said he, looking up suddenly, "but I don't want the girl—oh well, you know as well as I do what kind of a deal the old folks have fixed up for you and me, Joan."

"Of course. I'm going to marry you to save you from work."

"I thought it was a raw deal when they sprung it on me, but that was before I saw you, Joan. But it's all right; I'm for it now."

"You're easy, Earl; dad's workin' you for three good years without pay. As far as I'm concerned, you'd just as well hit the breeze out of this country right now. Dad can't deliver the goods."

"I'm soft, but I'm not that soft, Joan. I could leave here tomorrow; what's to hold me? And as far as the old man's cutting me out of his will goes, I could beat it in law, and then have a pile big enough left to break my neck if I was to jump off the top of it. They're not putting anything over on me, Joan. I'm sticking to this little old range because it suits me to stick. I would go tomorrow if it wasn't for you."

Reid added this in a low voice, his words a sigh, doing it well, even convincingly well.

"I'm sorry," Joan said, moved by his apparent sincerity, "but there's not a bit of use in your throwing away three years, or even three more months, of your life here, Earl."

"You'll like me better when you begin to know me, Joan. I've stood off because I didn't want to interfere with your studies, but maybe now, since you've got a vacation, I can come over once in a while and get acquainted."

"Earl, it wouldn't be a bit of use." Joan spoke earnestly, pitying him a little, now that she began to believe him.

"Why, we're already engaged," he said; "they've disposed of us like they do princes and princesses."

"I don't know how they marry them off, but if that's the way, it won't work on the sheep range," said Joan.

"We've been engaged, officially, ever since I struck the range, and I've never once, never even—" He hesitated, constrained by bashfulness, it seemed, from his manner of bending his head and plucking at her horse's mane.

"We're not even officially engaged," she denied, coldly, not pitying his bashfulness at all, nor bent to assist him in delivering what lay on the end of his tongue. "You can't pick up a sheepwoman and marry her off—like some old fool king's daughter."

Reid placed his hand over hers where it lay idly on the saddle-horn, the reins loosely held. He leaned closer, his eyes burning, his face near her own, so near that she shrank back, and drew on her hand to come free.

"I don't see why we need to wait three years to get married, Joan," he argued, his persuasive voice very soft and tender. "If the old man saw I meant business——"

"Business!" scorned Joan.

"Sheep business, I mean, Joan," chidingly, a tincture of injury in his tone.

"Oh, sheep business," said Joan, leaning far over to look at the knotting of her cinch.

"Sure, to settle down to it here and take it as it comes, the way he got his start, he'd come across with all the money we'd want to take a run out of here once in a while and light things up. We ought to be gettin' the good out of it while we've got an edge on us, Joan."

Joan swung to the ground, threw a stirrup across the saddle, and began to tighten her cinch. Reid alighted with a word of protest, offering his hand for the work. Joan ignored his proffer, with a little independent, altogether scornful, toss of the head.

"You can find plenty of them ready to take you up," she said. "What's the reason you have to stay right here for three years, and then marry me, to make a million dollars? Can't you go anywhere else?"

"The old man's picked on this country because he knows your dad, and he settled on you for the girl because you got into his eye, just the way you've got into mine, Joan. I was sore enough about it at first to throw the money and all that went with it to the pigs, and blow out of here. But that was before I saw you."

"Oh!" said Joan, in her pettish, discounting way.

"I mean every word of it, Joan. I can't talk like—like—some men—my heart gets in the way, I guess, and chokes me off. But I never saw a girl that I ever lost sleep over till I saw you."

Joan did not look at him as he drew nearer with his words. She pulled the stirrup down, lifted her foot to it, and stood so a second, hand on the pommel to mount. And so she glanced round at him, standing near her shoulder, his face flushed, a brightness in his eyes.

Quicker than thought Reid threw his arm about her shoulders, drawing her to him, his hot cheek against her own, his hot breath on her lips. Surging with indignation of the mean advantage he had taken of her, Joan freed her foot from the stirrup, twisting away from the impending salute, her hand to Reid's shoulder in a shove that sent him back staggering.

"I thought you were more of a man than that!" she said.

"I beg your pardon, Joan; it rushed over me—I couldn't help it." Reid's voice shook as he spoke; he stood with downcast eyes, the expression of contrition.

"You're too fresh to keep!" Joan said, brushing her face savagely with her hand where his cheek had pressed it for a breath.

"I'll ask you next time," he promised, looking up between what seemed hope and contrition. But there was a mocking light in his sophisticated face, a greedy sneer in his lustful eyes, which Joan could feel and see, although she could not read to the last shameful depths.

"Don't try it any more," she warned, in the cool, even voice of one sure of herself.

"I ought to have a right to kiss my future wife," he defended, a shadow of a smile on his thin lips.

"There's not a bit of use to go on harping on that, Earl," she said, in a way of friendly counsel, the incident already past and trampled under foot, it seemed. "If you want to stay here and work for dad, three years or thirty years, I don't care, but don't count on me. I guess if you go straight and prove you deserve it, you'll not need any girl to help you get the money."

"It's got to be you—nobody else, Joan."

"Then kiss your old million—or whatever it is—good-bye!"

Joan lifted to the saddle as if swept into it by a wave, and drew her reins tight, and galloped away.



CHAPTER XXI

TIM SULLIVAN BREAKS A CONTRACT

"And that will be the end of it," said Tim Sullivan, finality in his tone, his face stern, his manner severe. "I've passed my word to old Malcolm that you'll have his boy, and have him you will."

"Boy!" said Joan.

"In experience he's no lad, and I'm glad you've discovered it," said Tim, warming a little, speaking with more softness, not without admiration for her penetration. "He'll be the better able to look after you, and see they don't get his money away from him like some simpleton."

"Oh, they'll get it, all right."

Tim had arrived that morning from a near-by camp as Joan was about to set out for Dad Frazer's. From his way of plunging abruptly into this matter, which he never had discussed with her before, and his sharpness and apparent displeasure with her, Joan knew that he had seen Reid overnight. They were beside the sheep-wagon, to a wheel of which Joan's horse was tied, all saddled and ready to mount. The sun was already high, for Joan had helped Charley range the flock out for its day's grazing, and had put all things to rights in the camp, anxious as her mind was over Mackenzie's state.

"I'll not have you treat the lad like a beggar come to ask of you, Joan; I'll not have it at all. Be civil with him; use him kindly when he speaks."

"He's a thousand years older than I am; he knows things that you never heard of."

"Somebody's been whisperin' slanders of him in your ear. He's a fine lad, able to hold his own among men, take 'em where they're found. Don't you heed what the jealous say about the boy, Joan; don't you let it move you at all."

"I wouldn't have him if he brought his million in a wheelbarrow and dumped it at my feet."

"It's not a million, as I hear it," Tim corrected, mildly, even a bit thoughtfully, "not more nor a half."

"Then he's only half as desirable," smiled Joan, the little gleam of humor striking into her gloomy hour like a sudden ray of sun.

"You'd run sheep till you was bent and gray, and the rheumatiz' got set in your j'ints, me gerrel, before you'd win to the half of half a million. Here it comes to you while you're young, with the keenness to relish it and the free hand to spend the interest off of it, and sail over the seas and see the world you're longin' to know and understand."

Joan's hat hung on the saddle-horn, the morning wind was trifling with light breath in her soft, wave-rippled hair. Her brilliant necktie had been put aside for one of narrower span and more sober hue, a blue with white dots. The free ends of it blew round to her shoulder, where they lay a moment before fluttering off to brush her cheek, as if to draw by this slight friction some of the color back into it that this troubled interview had drained away.

She stood with her head high, her chin lifted, determination in her eyes. Thorned shrubs and stones had left their marks on her strong boots, the little teeth of the range had frayed the hem of her short cloth skirt, but she was as fresh to see as a morning-glory in the sun. Defiance outweighed the old cast of melancholy that clouded her eyes; her lips were fixed in an expression which was denial in itself as she stood looking into the wind, her little brown hands clenched at her sides.

"I want that you should marry him, as I have arranged it with old Malcolm," said Tim, speaking slowly to give it greater weight. "I have passed my word; let that be the end."

"I've got a right to have a word, too. Nobody else is as much concerned in it as me, Dad. You can't put a girl up and sell her like a sheep."

"It's no sale; it's yourself that comes into the handlin' of the money."

Tim took her up quickly on it, a gleam in his calculative eye, as if he saw a convincing way opening ahead of him.

"I couldn't do it, Dad, as far as I'd go to please you; I couldn't—never in this world! There's something about him—something——"

"It'll wear off; 'tis the strangeness of him, but three years will bring him closer; it will wear away."

"It'll never wear away, because he isn't—he isn't clean!"

"Clean?" Tim repeated, turning in amazement as if to seek a witness to such a preposterous charge. And again: "Clean? He's as fresh as a daisy, as clean as a lamb."

"It's the way he seems to me," she insisted, with conviction that no argument would shake. "I don't know any other name for it—you can see it in his eyes."

"Three year here will brace him up, Joan; he'll come to you as fresh as lumber out of the mill."

"No, all the wind in the world can't blow it out of him. I can't do it, I'll never do it!"

"And me with my word passed to old Malcolm!" Tim seemed to grieve over it, and the strong possibility of its repudiation; his face fell so long, his voice so accusing, so low and sad.

"You'll not lose any money; you can square it up with him some way, Dad."

"You've been the example of a dutiful child to me," Tim said, turning to her, spreading his hands, the oil of blarney in his voice. "You've took the work of a man off of my hands since you were twelve year old, Joan."

"Yes, I have," Joan nodded, a shading of sadness for the lost years of her girlhood in her tone. She did not turn to face him, her head high that way, her chin up, her nose in the wind as if her assurance lay in its warm scents, and her courage came on its caress.

"You've been the gerrel that's gone out in the storm and the bitter blast to save the sheep, and stood by them when their poor souls shook with the fright, and soothed down their panic and saved their lives. You've been the gerrel that's worked the sheep over this range in rain and shine, askin' me nothing, not a whimper or a complaint out of ye—that's what you've been to me, Joan. It's been a hard life for a lass, it's been a hard and a lonesome life."

Joan nodded, her head drooping just a little from its proud lift. Tears were on her face; she turned it a bit to hide them from his eyes.

"You mind the time, Joan, four years ago it was the winter past, when you stood a full head shorter than you stand today, when the range was snowed in, and the sheep was unable to break the crust that froze over it, and was huddlin' in the canyons starving wi' the hunger that we couldn't ease? Heh—ye mind that winter, Joan, gerrel?"

Joan nodded again, her chin trembling as it dropped nearer to the fluttering necktie at her warm, round throat. And the tears were coursing hotter, the well of them open, the stone at the mouth of it rolled away, the recollection of those harsh days almost too hard to bear.

"And you mind how you read in the book from the farmer college how a handful of corn a day would save the life of a sheep, and tide it over the time of stress and storm till it could find the grass in under the snow? Ah-h, ye mind how you read it, Joan, and come ridin' to tell me? And how you took the wagons and the teams and drove that bitter length in wind and snow to old Wellfleet's place down on the river, and brought corn that saved to me the lives of no less than twenty thousand sheep? It's not you and me, that's gone through these things side by side, that forgets them in the fair days, Joan, my little darlin' gerrel. Them was hard days, and you didn't desert me and leave me to go alone."

Joan shook her head, the sob that she had been smothering breaking from her in a sharp, riving cry. Tim, feeling that he had softened her, perhaps, laid his hand on her shoulder, and felt her body trembling under the emotion that his slow recital of past hardships had stirred.

"It'll not be that you'll leave me in a hole now, Joan," he coaxed, stroking her hair back from her forehead, his touch gentle as his heart could be when interest bent it so.

"I gave you that—all those years that other girls have to themselves, I mean, and all that work that made me coarse and rough and kept me down in ignorance—I gave you out of my youth till the well of my giving has gone dry. I can't give what you ask today, Dad; I can't give you that."

"Now, Joan, take it easy a bit, draw your breath on it, take it easy, gerrel."

Joan's chin was up again, the tremor gone out of it, the shudder of sorrow for the lost years stilled in her beautiful, strong body. Her voice was steady when she spoke:

"I'll go on working, share and share alike with you, like I'm doing now, or no share, no nothing, if you want me to, if you need me to, but I can't—I can't!"

"I was a hard master over you, my little Joan," said Tim, gently, as if torn by the thorn of regret for his past blindness.

"You were, but you didn't mean to be. I don't mind it now, I'm still young enough to catch up on what I missed—I am catching up on it, every day."

"But now when it comes in my way to right it, to make all your life easy to you, Joan, you put your back up like a catamount and tear at the eyes of me like you'd put them out."

"It wouldn't be that way, Dad—can't you see I don't care for him? If I cared, he wouldn't have to have any money, and you wouldn't have to argue with me, to make me marry him."

"It's that stubborn you are!" said Tim, his softness freezing over in a breath.

"Let's not talk about it, Dad," she pleaded, turning to him, the tears undried on her cheeks, the sorrow of the years he had made slow and heavy for her in her eyes.

"It must be talked about, it must be settled, now and for good, Joan. I have plans for you, I have great plans, Joan."

"I don't want to change it now, I'm satisfied with the arrangement we've made on the sheep, Dad. Let me go on like I have been, studying my lessons and looking after the sheep with Charley. I'm satisfied the way it is."

"I've planned better things for you, Joan, better from this day forward, and more to your heart. Mackenzie is all well enough for teachin' a little school of childer, but he's not deep enough to be over the likes of you, Joan. I'm thinkin' I'll send you to Cheyenne to the sisters' college at the openin' of the term; very soon now, you'll be makin' ready for leavin' at once."

"I don't want to go," said Joan, coldly.

"There you'd be taught the true speech of a lady, and the twist of the tongue on French, and the nice little things you've missed here among the sheep, Joan darlin', and that neither me nor your mother nor John Mackenzie—good lad that he is, though mistaken at times, woeful mistaken in his judgment of men—can't give you, gerrel."

"No, I'll stay here and work my way out with the sheep," said she.

Tim was standing at her side, a bit behind her, and she turned a little more as she denied him, her head so high she might have been listening to the stars. He looked at her with a deep flush coming into his brown face, a frown narrowing his shrewd eyes.

"Ain't you that stubborn, now!" he said.

"Yes, I am," said Joan.

"Then," said Tim, firing up, the ashes of deceit blowing from the fire of his purpose at once, "you'll take what I offer or leave what you've got! I'll have no more shyin' and shillyin' out of you, and me with my word passed to old Malcolm Reid."

Joan wheeled round, her face white, fright in her eyes.

"You mean the sheep?" she asked.

"I mean the sheep—just that an' no less. Do as I'll have you do, and go on to school to be put in polish for the wife of a gentleman, or give up the flock and the interest I allowed you in the increase, and go home and scrape the pots and pans!"

"You'd never do that, Dad—you'd never break your word with me, after all I've gone through for you, and take my lambs away from me!"

"I would, just so," said Tim. But he did not have the courage to look her in the face as he said it, turning away like a stubborn man who had no cause beneath his feet, but who meant to be stubborn and unjust against it all.

"I don't believe it!" she said.

"I will so, Joan."

"Your word to Malcolm Reid means a whole lot to you, but your word to me means nothing!" Joan spoke in bitterness, her voice vibrating with passion.

"It isn't the same," he defended weakly.

"No, you can rob your daughter——"

"Silence! I'll not have it!" Tim could look at her now, having a reason, as he saw it. There was a solid footing to his pretense at last.

"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 chastisement.

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 passed 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 pronounce 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 passin' 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. There was the odor of carbolic acid, and he was conscious all along that his head had been shaved around the wound in approved surgical fashion. He reasoned that Rabbit went about prepared with the emergency remedies of civilization, and put it down to her schooling at the Catholic sisters' hands.

"Was there anybody—did anybody else come around?" Mackenzie inquired.

"Tim's been by a couple of times. Oh, well—Joan."

"Oh, Joan," said Mackenzie, trying to make it sound as if he had no concern in Joan at all. But his voice trembled, and life came bounding up in him again with glad, wild spring.

"She was over the day after you got hurt, but she ain't been back," said Dad, with such indifference that he must have taken it for granted that Mackenzie held no tenderness for her, indeed. "I met Charley yesterday; he told me Joan was over home. Mary's out here with him—she's the next one to Joan, you know."

Mackenzie's day clouded; his sickness fell over him again, taking the faint new savor out of life. Joan was indifferent; she did not care. Then hope came on its white wings to excuse her.

"Is she sick?" he inquired.

"Who—Mary?"

"Joan. Is she all right?"

"Well, if I was married to her I'd give up hopes of ever bein' left a widower. That girl's as healthy as a burro—yes, and she'll outlive one, I'll bet money, and I've heard of 'em livin' eighty years down in Mexico."

Dad did not appear to be cognizant of Mackenzie's weakness. According to the old man's pathology a man was safe when he regained his head out of the delirium of fever. All he needed then was cheering up, and Dad did not know of any better way of doing that than by talking. So he let himself go, and Mackenzie shut his eyes to the hum of the old fellow's voice, the sound beating on his ears like wind against closed doors.

Suddenly Dad's chatter ceased. The silence was as welcome as the falling of a gale to a man at sea in an open boat. Mackenzie heard Dad leaving the wagon in cautious haste, and opened his eyes to see. Rabbit was beside him with a bowl of savory-smelling broth, which she administered to him with such gentle deftness that Mackenzie could not help believing Dad had libeled her in his story of the accident that had left its mark upon her face.

Rabbit would not permit her patient to talk, denying him with uplifted finger and shake of head when he attempted it. She did not say a word during her visit, although her manner was only gentle, neither timid nor shy.

Rabbit was a short woman, turning somewhat to weight, a little gray in her black hair, but rather due to trouble than age, Mackenzie believed. Her skin was dark, her face bright and intelligent, but stamped with the meekness which is the heritage of women of her race. The burn had left her marked as Dad had said, the scar much lighter than the original skin, but it was not such a serious disfigurement that a man would be justified in leaving her for it as Dad had done.

When Rabbit went out she drew a mosquito netting over the opening in the back of the wagon. Mackenzie was certain that Dad had libeled her after that. There was not a fly in the wagon to pester him, and he knew that the opening in the front end had been similarly screened, although he could not turn to see. Grateful to Rabbit, with the almost tearful tenderness that a sick man feels for those who have ministered kindly to his pain, Mackenzie lay with his thoughts that first day of consciousness after his tempestuous season of delirium.

They were not pleasant thoughts for a man whose blood was not yet cool. As they surged and hammered in his brain his fever flashed again, burning in his eyes like a desert wind. Something had happened to alienate Joan.

That was the burden of it as the sun mounted with his fever, heating the enclosed wagon until it was an oven. Something had happened to alienate Joan. He did not believe her weak enough, fickle enough, to yield to the allurements of Reid's prospects. They must have slandered him and driven her away with lies. Reid must have slandered him; there was the stamp of slander in his wide, thin mouth.

It would be many days, it might be weeks, before he could go abroad on the range again to set right whatever wrong had been done him. Then it would be too late. Surely Joan could not take his blunder into Carlson's trap in the light of an unpardonable weakness; she was not so sheep-blind as that. Something had been done outside any act of his own to turn her face and her sympathies away.

Consumed in impatience to be up, anxiety for the delay, Mackenzie lay the throbbing day through like a disabled engine spending its vain power upon a broken shaft. Kind Rabbit came frequently to give him drink, to bathe his forehead, to place a cool cloth over his burning eyes. But Dad did not come again. How much better for his peace if the garrulous old rascal had not come at all!

And then with the thought of Joan there came mingling the vexing wonder of the train of violence that had attended him into the sheeplands. He had come there to be a master over flocks, not expecting to encounter any unfriendly force save the stern face of nature. He had begun to muddle and meddle at the outset; he had continued to muddle, if not meddle, to the very end.

For this would be the end. No sheepman would countenance a herder who could not take care of his flock in summer weather on a bountiful range. His day was done in that part of the country so far as his plans of becoming a sharing herdsman went. Earl Reid, a thin, anemic lad fresh from city life, had come in and made much more a figure of a man.

So his fever boiled under the fuel of his humiliating thoughts. The wagon was a bake-oven, but there was no sweat in him to cool his parching skin. He begged Rabbit to let him go and lie under the wagon, where the wind could blow over him, but she shook her head in denial and pressed him down on the bunk. Then she gave him a drink that had the bitterness of opium in it, and he threw down his worrying snarl of thoughts, and slept.



CHAPTER XXIII

CONCERNING MARY

"Yes, I've heard tell of sheepmen workin' Swan's dodge on one another, but I never took no stock in it, because I never believed even a sheepman was fool enough to let anybody put a thing like that over on him."

"A sheepman oughtn't to be," Mackenzie said, in the bitterness of defeat.

"Swan knew you was an easy feller, and green to the ways of them tricky sheepmen," said Dad. "You let him off in that first fight with a little crack on the head when you'd ought to 'a' laid him out for good, and you let Hector Hall go that time you took his guns away from him. Folks in here never could understand that; they say it was like a child playin' with a rattlesnake."

"It was," Mackenzie agreed.

"Swan thought he could run them sheep of his over on you and take away five or six hundred more than he brought, and I guess he'd 'a' done it if it hadn't been for Reid."

"It looks that way, Dad. I sure was easy, to fall into his trap the way I did."

Mackenzie was able to get about again, and was gaining strength rapidly. He and Dad were in the shade of some willows along the creek, where Mackenzie stretched in the indolent relaxation of convalescence, Dad smoking his miserable old pipe close at hand.

And miserable is the true word for Dad's pipe, for it was miserable indeed, and miserable the smell that came out of it, going there full steam on a hot afternoon of early autumn. Dad always carefully reamed out the first speck of carbon that formed in his pipe, and kept it reamed out with boring blade of his pocket knife. He wanted no insulation against nicotine, and the strength thereof; he was not satisfied unless the fire burned into the wood, and drew the infiltrations of strong juice therefrom. When his charge of tobacco burned out, and the fire came down to this frying, sizzling abomination of smells at last, Dad beamed, enjoying it as a sort of dessert to a delightful repast of strong smoke.

Dad was enjoying his domestic felicity to the full these days of Mackenzie's convalescence. Rabbit was out with the sheep, being needed no longer to attend the patient, leaving Dad to idle as he pleased. His regret for the one-eyed widow seemed to have passed, leaving no scar behind.

"Tim don't take no stock in it that Swan planned before to do you out of a lot of your sheep. He was by here this morning while you was wanderin' around somewhere."

"He was by, was he?"

"Yeah; he was over to see Reid—he's sent him a new wagon over there. Tim says you and Swan must both 'a' been asleep and let the two bands stray together, and of course it was human for Swan to want to take away more than he brought. Well, it was sheepman, anyhow, if it wasn't human."

"Did Sullivan say that?"

"No, that's what I say. I know 'em; I know 'em to the bone. Reid knew how many sheep him and you had, and he stuck out for 'em like a little man. More to that feller than I ever thought he had in him."

"Yes," Mackenzie agreed. He lay stretched on his back, squinting at the calm-weather clouds.

"Yeah; Tim says both of you fellers must 'a' been asleep."

"I suppose he'll fire me when he sees me."

"No, I don't reckon he will. Tim takes it as a kind of a joke, and he's as proud as all git-out of the way Reid stacked up. If that boy hadn't happened up when he did, Swan he'd 'a' soaked you another one with that gun of yourn and put you out for good. They say that kid waltzed Swan around there and made him step like he was standin' on a red-hot stove."

"Did anybody see him doing it?"

"No, I don't reckon anybody did. But he must 'a' done it, all right, Swan didn't git a head of sheep that didn't belong to him."

"It's funny how Reid arrived on the second," Mackenzie said, reflecting over it as a thing he had pondered before.

"Well, it's natural you'd feel a little jealous of him, John—most any feller would. But I don't think he had any hand in it with Swan to run him in on you, if that's what you're drivin' at."

"It never crossed my mind," said Mackenzie, but not with his usual regard for the truth.

"I don't like him, and I never did like him, but you've got to hand it to him for grit and nerve."

"Has he got over the lonesomeness?"

"Well, he's got a right to if he ain't."

"Got a right to? What do you mean?"

Dad chuckled, put both hands to the back of his head, smoothed his long, bright hair.

"I don't reckon you knew when you was teachin' Joan you was goin' to all that trouble for that feller," he said.

"Sullivan told me him and old man Reid had made an agreement concerning the young folks," Mackenzie returned, a sickness of dread over him for what he believed he was about to hear.

"Oh, Tim told you, did he? Never said nothin' to me about it till this mornin'. He's goin' to send Joan off to the sisters' school down at Cheyenne."

Mackenzie sat up, saying nothing for a good while. He sat looking at the ground, buried in his thoughts as deep as a grave. Dad turned curious eyes upon him, but yet not eyes which probed to the secret of his heart or weighed his loss.

"I guess I didn't—couldn't teach her enough to keep her here," Mackenzie said.

"You could teach her a danged sight more than she could remember. I think Tim and her had a spat, but I'm only guessin' from what Charley said. Reid was at the bottom of it, I'll bet a purty. That feller was afraid you and Joan might git to holdin' hands out here on the range so much together, heads a touchin' over them books."

Mackenzie heard the old man as the wind. No, he had not taught Joan enough to keep her in the sheeplands; she had not read deeply enough into that lesson which he once spoke of as the easiest to learn and the hardest to forget. Joan's desire for life in the busy places had overbalanced her affection for him. Spat or no spat, she would have come to see him more than once in his desperate struggle against death if she had cared.

He could not blame her. There was not much in a man who had made a failure of even sheepherding to bind a maid to him against the allurements of the world that had been beckoning her so long.

"Tim said he'd be around to see you late this evening or tomorrow. He's went over to see how Mary and Charley're makin' out, keepin' his eye on 'em like he suspicioned they might kill a lamb once in a while to go with their canned beans."

"All right," said Mackenzie, abstractedly.

Dad looked at him with something like scorn for his inattention to such an engrossing subject. Mackenzie was not looking his way; his thoughts seemed to be a thousand leagues from Tim Sullivan's range and the lambs on it, let them be alive or slaughtered to go with canned beans.

But Joan would come back to the sheeplands, as she said everybody came back to them who once had lived in their silences and breathed their wide freedom. She would come back, not lost to him, but regained, her lesson learned, not to go away with that youth who wore the brand of old sins on his face. So hope came to lift him and assure him, just when he felt the somber cloud of the lonesomeness beginning to engulf his soul.

"I know Tim don't like it, but me and Rabbit butcher lambs right along, and we'll keep on doin' it as long as we run sheep. A man's got to have something besides the grub he gits out of tin cans. That ain't no life."

"You're right, Dad. I'd been in a hole on the side of some hill before now if it hadn't been for the broth and lamb stew Rabbit fed me. There's nothing like it."

"You right they ain't!" said Dad, forgetting Mackenzie's lapse of a little while before. "I save the hides and turn 'em over to him, and he ain't got no kick. If I was them children I'd butcher me a lamb once a week, anyhow. But maybe they don't like it—I don't know. I've known sheepmen that couldn't go mutton, never tasted it from one year to another. May be the smell of sheep when you git a lot of 'em in a shearin' pen and let 'em stand around for a day or two."

But what had they told Joan that she would go away without a word, leaving him in a sickness from which he might never have turned again? Something had been done to alienate her, some crafty libel had been poured into her ears. Let that be as it might, Joan would come back, and he would wait in the sheeplands for her, and take her by the hand and clear away her troubled doubts. The comfort of this thought would drive the lonesomeness away.

He would wait. If not in Tim Sullivan's hire, then with a little flock of his own, independent of the lords of sheep. He would rather remain with Sullivan, having more to prove now of his fitness to become a flockmaster than at the beginning. Sullivan's doubt of him would have increased; the scorn which he could not quite cover before would be open now and expressed. They had no use in the sheeplands for a man who fought and lost. They would respect him more if he refused to fight at all.

Dad was still talking, rubbing his fuzzy chin with reflective hand, looking along the hillside to where Rabbit stood watch over the sheep.

"Tim wanted to buy that big yellow collie from Rabbit," he said. "Offered her eighty dollars. Might as well try to buy me from that woman!"

"I expect she'd sell you quicker than she would the collie, Dad."

"Wish she would sell that dang animal, he never has made friends with me. The other one and me we git along all right, but that feller he's been educated on the scent of that old vest, and he'll be my enemy to my last day."

"You're a lucky man to have a wife like Rabbit, anyhow, dog or no dog. It's hard for me to believe she ever took a long swig out of a whisky jug, Dad."

"Well, sir, me and Rabbit was disputin' about that a day or so ago. Funny how I seem to 'a' got mixed up on that, but I guess it wasn't Rabbit that used to pull my jug too hard. That must 'a' been a Mexican woman I was married to one time down by El Paso."

"I'll bet money it was the Mexican woman. How did Rabbit get her face scalded?"

"She tripped and fell in the hog-scaldin' vat like I told you, John."

Mackenzie looked at him severely, almost ready to take the convalescent's prerogative and quarrel with his best friend.

"What's the straight of it, you old hide-bound sinner?"

Dad changed hands on his chin, fingering his beard with scraping noise, eyes downcast as if a little ashamed.

"I guess it was me that took a snort too many out of the jug that day, John," he confessed.

"Of course it was. And Rabbit tripped and fell into the tub trying to save you from it, did she?"

"Well, John, them fellers said that was about the straight of it."

"You ought to be hung for running away from her, you old hard-shelled scoundrel!"

Dad took it in silence, and sat rubbing it into his beard like a liniment. After a while he rose, squinted his eye up at the sun with a quick turn of his head like a chicken.

"I reckon every man's done something he ought to be hung for," he said.

That ended it. Dad went off to begin supper, there being potatoes to cook. Sullivan had sent a sack of that unusual provender out to camp to help Mackenzie get his strength back in a hurry, he said.

Tim himself put in his appearance at camp a little later in the day, when the scent of lamb stew that Dad had in the kettle was streaming over the hills. Tim could not resist it, for it was seasoned with wild onions and herbs, and between the four of them they left the pot as clean as Jack Spratt's platter, the dogs making a dessert on the bones.

Dad and Rabbit went away presently to assemble the sheep for the night, and Tim let his Irish tongue wag as it would. He was in lively and generous mood, making a joke of the mingling of the flocks which had come so dearly to Mackenzie's account. He bore himself like a man who had gained something, indeed, and that was the interpretation put on it by Mackenzie.

Tim led up to what he had come to discuss presently, beaming with stew and satisfaction when he spoke of Joan.

"Of course you understand, John, I don't want you to think it was any slam on you that I took Joan off the range and made her stop takin' her book lessons from you. That girl got too fresh with me, denyin' my authority to marry her to the man I've picked."

Mackenzie nodded, a great warmth of understanding glowing in his breast.

"But I don't want you to feel that it was any reflection on your ability as a teacher, you understand, John; I don't want you to look at it that way at all."

"Not at all," Mackenzie echoed, quite sincerely.

"You could 'a' had her, for all the difference it was to me, if I hadn't made that deal with Reid. A man's got to stick to his word, you know, lad, and not have it thwarted by any little bobbin of a girl. I'd as soon you'd have one of my girls as any man I know, John."

"Thanks."

"Of course I could see how it might turn out between you and Joan if she kept on ridin' over to have lessons from you every day. You can't blame Earl if he saw it the same way, lad."

"She isn't his yet," said Mackenzie confidently.

"Now look here, John"—Sullivan spoke with a certain sharpness, a certain hardness of dictation in his tone, "you'd just as well stand out of it and let Earl have her."

Mackenzie's heart swung so high it seemed to brush the early stars. It was certain now that Joan had not gone home without a fight, and that she had not remained there throughout his recovery from his wounds without telling protest. More confidently than before he repeated:

"She isn't his yet!"

"She'll never get a sheep from me if she marries any other man—not one lone ewe!"

"How much do you value her in sheep?" Mackenzie inquired.

"She'll get half a million dollars or more with Earl. It would take a lot of sheep to amount to half a million, John."

"Yes," said Mackenzie, with the indifference of a man who did not have any further interest in the case, seeing himself outbid. "That's higher than I'll ever be able to go. All right; let him have her." But beneath his breath he added the condition: "If he can get her."

"That's the spirit I like to see a man show!" Tim commended. "I don't blame a man for marryin' into a sheep ranch if he can—I call him smart—and I'd just as soon you as any man'd marry one of my girls, as I said, John. But you know, lad, a man can't have them that's sealed, as the Mormons say."

"You're right," Mackenzie agreed, and the more heartily because it was sincere. If he grinned a little to himself, Tim did not note it in the dusk.

"Now, there's my Mary; she's seventeen; she'll be a woman in three years more, and she'll make two of Joan when she fills out. My Mary would make the fine wife for a lad like you, John, and I'll give you five thousand sheep the day you marry her."

"All right; the day I marry Mary I'll claim five thousand sheep."

Mackenzie said it so quickly, so positively, that Tim glowed and beamed as never before. He slapped the simpleton of a schoolmaster who had come into the sheeplands to be a great sheepman on the back with hearty hand, believing he had swallowed hook and all.

"Done! The day you marry Mary you'll have your five thousand sheep along wi' her! I pass you my word, and it goes."

They shook hands on it, Mackenzie as solemn as though making a covenant in truth.

"The day I marry Mary," said he.

"It'll be three years before she's old enough to take up the weight of carryin' babies, and of course you understand you'll have to wait on her, lad. A man can't jump into these things the way he buys a horse."

"Oh, sure."

"You go right on workin' for me like you are," pursued Tim, drunk on his bargain as he thought it to be, "drawin' your pay like any hand, without favors asked or given, takin' the knocks as they come to you, in weather good and bad. That'll be a better way than goin' in shares on a band next spring like we talked; it'll be better for you, lad; better for you and Mary."

"All right," Mackenzie assented.

"I'm thinkin' only of your own interests, you see, lad, the same as if you was my son."

Tim patted Mackenzie's shoulder again, doubtless warm to the bottom of his sheep-blind heart over the prospect of a hand to serve him three years who would go break-neck and hell-for-leather, not counting consequences in his blind and simple way, or weather or hardships of any kind. For there was Mary, and there were five thousand sheep. As for Joan, she was out of Tim's reckoning any longer. He had a new Jacob on the line, and he was going to play him for all he was worth.

"All right; I've got a lot to learn yet," Mackenzie agreed.

"You have, you have that," said Tim with fatherly tenderness, "and you'll learn it like a book. I always said from the day you come you had in you the makin' of a sheepman. Some are quick and some are slow, but the longer it takes to learn the harder it sticks. It's been that way wi' me."

"That's the rule of the world, they say."

"It is; it is so. And you can put up a good fight, even though you may not always hold your own; you'll be the lad to wade through it wi' your head up and the mornin' light on your face. Sure you will, boy. I'll be tellin' Mary."

"I'd wait a while," Mackenzie said, gently, as a man who was very soft in his heart, indeed. "I'd rather we'd grow into it, you know, easy, by gentle stages."

"Right you are, lad, right you are. Leave young hearts to find their own way—they can't miss it if there's nobody between them. I'll say no word to Mary at all, but you have leave to go and see her as often as you like, lad, and the sooner you begin the better, to catch her while she's young. How's your hand?"

"Well enough."

"When you think you're able, I'll put you back with the sheep you had. I'll be takin' Reid over to the ranch to put him in charge of the hospital band."

"I'm able to handle them now, I think."

"But take your time, take it easy. Reid gets on with Swan, bein' more experienced with men than you, I guess. Well, a schoolteacher don't meet men the way other people do; he's shut up with the childer all the day, and he gets so he measures men by them. That won't do on the sheep range, lad. But I guess you're findin' it out."

"I'm learning a little, right along."

"Yes, you've got the makin' of a sheepman in you; I said you had it in you the first time I put my eyes on your face. Well, I'll be leavin' you now, lad. And remember the bargain about my Mary. You'll be a sheepman in your own way the day you marry her. When a man's marryin' a sheep ranch what difference is it to him whether it's a Mary or a Joan?"

"No difference—when he's marrying a sheep ranch," Mackenzie returned.



CHAPTER XXIV

MORE ABOUT MARY

Mackenzie took Tim at his word two days after their interview, and went visiting Mary. He made the journey across to her range more to try his legs than to satisfy his curiosity concerning the substitute for Joan so cunningly offered by Tim in his Laban-like way. He was pleased to find that his legs bore him with almost their accustomed vigor, and surprised to see the hills beginning to show the yellow blooms of autumn. His hurts in that last encounter with Swan Carlson and his dogs had bound him in camp for three weeks.

Mary was a smiling, talkative, fair-haired girl, bearing the foundation of a generous woman. She had none of the shyness about her that might be expected in a lass whose world had been the sheep range, and this Mackenzie put down to the fact of her superior social position, as fixed by the size of Tim Sullivan's house.

Conscious of this eminence above those who dwelt in sheep-wagons or log houses by the creek-sides, Tim's girls walked out into their world with assurance. Tim had done that much for them in rearing his mansion on the hilltop, no matter what he had denied them of educational refinements. Joan had gone hungry on this distinction; she had developed the bitterness that comes from the seeds of loneliness. This was lacking in Mary, who was all smiles, pink and white in spite of sheeplands winds and suns. Mary was ready to laugh with anybody or at anybody, and hop a horse for a twenty-mile ride to a dance any night you might name.

Mackenzie made friends with her in fifteen minutes, and had learned at the end of half an hour that friend was all he might ever hope to be even if he had come with any warmer notions in his breast. Mary was engaged to be married. She told him so, as one friend to another, pledging him to secrecy, showing a little ring on a white ribbon about her neck. Her Corydon was a sheepman's son who lived beyond the Sullivan ranch, and could dance like a butterfly and sing songs to the banjo in a way to melt the heart of any maid. So Mary said, but in her own way, with blushes, and wide, serious eyes.

Mackenzie liked Mary from the first ingenuous word, and promised to hold her secret and help her to happiness in any way that a man might lift an honorable hand. And he smiled when he recalled Tim Sullivan's word about catching them young. Surely a man had to be stirring early in the day to catch them in the sheeplands. Youth would look out for its own there, as elsewhere. Tim Sullivan was right about it there. He was wiser than he knew.

Mary was dressed as neatly as Joan always dressed for her work with the sheep. And she wore a little black crucifix about her neck on another ribbon which she had no need to conceal. When she touched it she smiled and smiled, and not for the comfort of the little cross, Mackenzie understood, but in tenderness for what lay beneath it, and for the shepherd lad who gave it. There was a beauty in it for him that made the glad day brighter.

This fresh, sprightly generation would redeem the sheeplands, and change the business of growing sheep, he said. The isolation would go out of that life; running sheep would be more like a business than a penance spent in heartache and loneliness. The world could not come there, of course. It had no business there; it should not come. But they would go to it, those young hearts, behold its wonders, read its weaknesses, and return. And there would be no more straining of the heart in lonesomeness such as Joan had borne, and no more discontent to be away.

"I hoped you'd marry Joan," said Mary, with a sympathetic little sigh. "I don't like Earl Reid."

"Mary?" said Mackenzie. Mary looked up inquiringly. "Can you keep a secret for me, Mary?"

"Try me, John."

"I am going to marry Joan."

"Oh, you've got it all settled? Did Joan wear your ring when she went home?"

"No, she didn't wear my ring, Mary, but she would have worn it if I'd seen her before she was sent away."

"I thought you were at the bottom of it, John," the wise Mary said. "You know, dad's taken her sheep away from her, and she had a half-interest in at least a thousand head."

"I didn't know that, but it will not make any difference to Joan and me. But why hasn't she been over to see me, Mary?"

"Oh, dad's sore at her because she put her foot down flat when she heard it was fixed for her to marry Earl. She told dad to take his sheep and go to the devil—she was going to go away and work somewhere else. He made her go home and stay there like a rabbit in a box—wouldn't let her have a horse."

"Of course; I might have known it. I wonder if she knows I'm up?"

"She knows, all right. Charley slips word to her."

"Charley's a good fellow, and so are you," Mackenzie said, giving Mary his hand.

"You'll get her, and it's all right," Mary declared, in great confidence. "It'll take more than bread and water to tame Joan."

"Is that all they're giving her?"

"That's dad's idea of punishment—he's put most of us on bread and water one time or another. But mother has ideas of her own what a kid ought to have to eat."

Mary smiled over the recollection, and Mackenzie joined her. Joan would not grow thin with that mother on the job.

They talked over the prospects ahead of Joan and himself in the most comfortable way, leaving nothing unsaid that hope could devise or courage suggest. A long time Mackenzie remained with his little sister, who would have been dear to him for her own sweet sake if she had not been dearer because of her blood-tie to Joan. When he was leaving, he said: