at sea in an open boat. Mackenzie heard Dad
leaving the wagon in cautious haste, and opened his eyes to see.
Rabbit was beside him with a bowl of savory-smelling broth, which she
administered to him with such gentle deftness that Mackenzie could not
help believing Dad had libeled her in his story of the accident that
had left its mark upon her face.

Rabbit would not permit her patient to talk, denying him with uplifted
finger and shake of head when he attempted it. She did not say a word
during her visit, although her manner was only gentle, neither timid
nor shy.

Rabbit was a short woman, turning somewhat to weight, a little gray in
her black hair, but rather due to trouble than age, Mackenzie
believed. Her skin was dark, her face bright and intelligent, but
stamped with the meekness which is the heritage of women of her race.
The burn had left her marked as Dad had said, the scar much lighter
than the original skin, but it was not such a serious disfigurement
that a man would be justified in leaving her for it as Dad had done.

When Rabbit went out she drew a mosquito netting over the opening in
the back of the wagon. Mackenzie was certain that Dad had libeled her
after that. There was not a fly in the wagon to pester him, and he
knew that the opening in the front end had been similarly screened,
although he could not turn to see. Grateful to Rabbit, with the almost
tearful tenderness that a sick man feels for those who have ministered
kindly to his pain, Mackenzie lay with his thoughts that first day of
consciousness after his tempestuous season of delirium.

They were not pleasant thoughts for a man whose blood was not yet
cool. As they surged and hammered in his brain his fever flashed
again, burning in his eyes like a desert wind. Something had happened
to alienate Joan.

That was the burden of it as the sun mounted with his fever, heating
the enclosed wagon until it was an oven. Something had happened to
alienate Joan. He did not believe her weak enough, fickle enough, to
yield to the allurements of Reid's prospects. They must have
slandered him and driven her away with lies. Reid must have slandered
him; there was the stamp of slander in his wide, thin mouth.

It would be many days, it might be weeks, before he could go abroad on
the range again to set right whatever wrong had been done him. Then it
would be too late. Surely Joan could not take his blunder into
Carlson's trap in the light of an unpardo