ave said to Joan, he must stand
clear and towering in manliness, no taint of humiliation on his soul.

Mackenzie groaned in spirit, and his words were a groan, as he said
again:

"Joan! O Joan, Joan!"

"I knew they'd come tonight--I couldn't sleep."

"Thank God for your wakefulness!" said he.

She was passing out of the reefs of terror, calming as a wind falls at
sunset. Mackenzie pressed her arm, drawing her away a little.

"That ammunition--we'd better----"

"Yes," said Joan, and went with him a little farther down the slope.

Mackenzie put his hand to his face where the flames had licked it, and
to the back of his head where his scorched hair broke crisply under
his palm. Joan looked at him, the aging stamp of waking and worry in
her face, exclaiming pityingly when she saw his hurts.

"It served me right; I stumbled into their hands like a blind kitten!"
he said, not sparing himself of scorn.

"It's a cattleman's trick; many an older hand than you has gone that
way," she said.

"But if I'd have waked and watched like you, Joan, they wouldn't have
got me. I started to watch, but I didn't keep it up like you. When I
should have been awake, I was sleeping like a sluggard."

"The cowards!" said Joan.

"I let one of them sneak up behind me, after they'd clubbed two of the
dogs to death, and grab me and get my gun! Great God! I deserve to be
burned!"

"Hush!" she chided, fearfully. "Hush!"

"One of them was Hector Hall--he came after his guns. If I'd been a
man, the shadow of a man, I'd made him swallow them the day I
took--the time he left them here."

"Matt was with him," said Joan. "You couldn't do anything; no man
could do anything, against Matt Hall."

"They handled me like a baby," said he, bitterly, "and I, and I,
wanting to be a sheepman! No wonder they think I'm a soft and simple
fool up here, that goes on the reputation of a lucky blow!"

"There's a man on a horse," said Joan. "He's coming this way."

The rider broke down the hillside as she spoke, riding near the
wreckage of the burning wagon, where he halted a moment, the strong
light of the fire on his face: Swan Carlson, hatless, his hair
streaming, his great mustache pendant beside his stony mouth. He came
on toward them at once. Joan laid her hand on her revolver.

"You got a fire here," said Swan, stopping near them, leaning
curiously toward them as if he peered at them through smoke.

"Yes," Mackenzie returned.

"I seen it fro