'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