way. Pass it up, pass up
anything I've said about it, John. That's the lad."

So John passed it up, and unbent to meet the young man who rode with
Tim, whom the sheepman presented as Earl Reid, from Omaha, son of
Malcolm Reid, an old range partner and friend. The young man had come
out to learn the sheep business; Tim had brought him over for
Mackenzie to break in. Dad Frazer was coming along with three thousand
sheep, due to arrive in about a week. When he got there, the
apprentice would split his time between them.

Mackenzie received the apprentice as cordially as he could, but it was
not as ardent a welcome as the young man may have expected, owing to
the gloom of resentment into which Sullivan's outbreak had thrown this
unlucky herder on the frontier of the range.

Reid was rather a sophisticated looking youth of twenty-two or
twenty-three, city broke, city marked. There was a poolroom pallor
about this thin face, a poolroom stoop to his thin shoulders, that
Mackenzie did not like. But he was frank and ingenuous in his
manner, with a ready smile that redeemed his homely face, and a pair
of blue eyes that seemed young in their innocence compared to the
world-knowledge that his face betrayed.

"Take the horses down there to the crick and water 'em," Tim directed
his new herder, "and then you'll ride back with me as far as Joan's
camp and fetch over some grub to hold you two fellers till the wagon
comes. Joan, she'll know what to give you, and I guess you can find
your way back here?"

"Surest thing you know," said Earl, with easy confidence, riding off
to water the horses.

"That kid's no stranger to the range," Mackenzie said, more to himself
than to Tim, as he watched him ride off.

"No, he used to be around with the cowboys on Malcolm's ranch when he
was in the cattle business. He can handle a horse as good as you or
me. Malcolm was the man that set me up in the sheep business; I
started in with him like you're startin' with me, more than thirty
years ago. He was the first sheepman on this range, and he had to
fight to hold his own, I'm here to say!"

"You'd better send the kid over into peaceful territory," Mackenzie
suggested, crabbedly.

"No, the old man wants him to get a taste of what he went through to
make his start--he was tickled to the toes when he heard the way them
Hall boys are rarin' up and you standin' 'em off of this range of
mine. 'Send him over there with that man,' he says; 'that's