o know?" face turned away, voice light in a
careless, artificial note.

"She was a sheepman's daughter," he said.

"Did you know her down at Jasper?"

"No, I never knew her at all, Rach--Joan. That was a long, long time
ago."

Joan brightened at this news. She ceased denying him her face, even
smiled a little, seeming to forget Hector Hall and his pending
vengeance.

"Well, what about her?" she asked.

He told her which Rachel he had in mind, but Joan only shook her head
and looked troubled.

"I never read the Bible; we haven't even got one."

He told her the story, beginning with Jacob's setting out, and his
coming to the well with the great stone at its mouth which the maidens
could not roll away.

"So Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Rachel's sheep," he said,
pausing with that much of it, looking off down the draw between the
hills in a mind-wandering way. Joan touched his arm, impatient with
such disjointed narrative.

"What did he do then?"

"Why, he kissed her."

"I think he was kind of fresh," said Joan. But she laughed a little,
blushing rosily, a bright light in her eyes. "Tell me the rest of it,
John."

Mackenzie went on with the ancient pastoral tale of love. Joan was
indignant when she heard how Laban gave Jacob the weak-eyed girl for a
wife in place of his beloved Rachel, for whom he had worked the seven
years.

"Jake must have been a bright one!" said she. "How could the old man
put one over on him like that?"

"You'll have to read the story," said Mackenzie. "It's sundown; don't
you think you'd better be going back to camp, Joan?"

But Joan was in no haste to leave. She walked with him as he worked
the sheep to their bedding-ground, her bridle-rein over her arm. She
could get back to camp before dark, she said; Charley would not be
worried.

Joan could not have said as much for herself. Her eyes were pools of
trouble, her face was anxious and strained. She went silently beside
Mackenzie while the dogs worked the sheep along with more than human
patience, almost human intelligence. Frequently she looked into his
face with a plea dumbly eloquent, but did not again put her fear for
him into words. Only when she stood beside her horse near the
sheep-wagon, ready to mount and leave him to his solitary supper, she
spoke of Hector Hall's revolvers, which Mackenzie had unstrapped and
put aside.

"What are you going to do with them, John?"

She had fallen into the use of that fa