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