f a joke, and
he's as proud as all git-out of the way Reid stacked up. If that boy
hadn't happened up when he did, Swan he'd 'a' soaked you another one
with that gun of yourn and put you out for good. They say that kid
waltzed Swan around there and made him step like he was standin' on a
red-hot stove."

"Did anybody see him doing it?"

"No, I don't reckon anybody did. But he must 'a' done it, all right,
Swan didn't git a head of sheep that didn't belong to him."

"It's funny how Reid arrived on the second," Mackenzie said,
reflecting over it as a thing he had pondered before.

"Well, it's natural you'd feel a little jealous of him, John--most any
feller would. But I don't think he had any hand in it with Swan to run
him in on you, if that's what you're drivin' at."

"It never crossed my mind," said Mackenzie, but not with his usual
regard for the truth.

"I don't like him, and I never did like him, but you've got to hand it
to him for grit and nerve."

"Has he got over the lonesomeness?"

"Well, he's got a right to if he ain't."

"Got a right to? What do you mean?"

Dad chuckled, put both hands to the back of his head, smoothed his
long, bright hair.

"I don't reckon you knew when you was teachin' Joan you was goin' to
all that trouble for that feller," he said.

"Sullivan told me him and old man Reid had made an agreement
concerning the young folks," Mackenzie returned, a sickness of dread
over him for what he believed he was about to hear.

"Oh, Tim told you, did he? Never said nothin' to me about it till this
mornin'. He's goin' to send Joan off to the sisters' school down at
Cheyenne."

Mackenzie sat up, saying nothing for a good while. He sat looking at
the ground, buried in his thoughts as deep as a grave. Dad turned
curious eyes upon him, but yet not eyes which probed to the secret of
his heart or weighed his loss.

"I guess I didn't--couldn't teach her enough to keep her here,"
Mackenzie said.

"You could teach her a danged sight more than she could remember. I
think Tim and her had a spat, but I'm only guessin' from what Charley
said. Reid was at the bottom of it, I'll bet a purty. That feller was
afraid you and Joan might git to holdin' hands out here on the range
so much together, heads a touchin' over them books."

Mackenzie heard the old man as the wind. No, he had not taught Joan
enough to keep her in the sheeplands; she had not read deeply enough
into that lesson which he once spo