been done to alienate her, some crafty libel had been
poured into her ears. Let that be as it might, Joan would come back,
and he would wait in the sheeplands for her, and take her by the hand
and clear away her troubled doubts. The comfort of this thought would
drive the lonesomeness away.

He would wait. If not in Tim Sullivan's hire, then with a little flock
of his own, independent of the lords of sheep. He would rather remain
with Sullivan, having more to prove now of his fitness to become a
flockmaster than at the beginning. Sullivan's doubt of him would have
increased; the scorn which he could not quite cover before would be
open now and expressed. They had no use in the sheeplands for a man
who fought and lost. They would respect him more if he refused to
fight at all.

Dad was still talking, rubbing his fuzzy chin with reflective hand,
looking along the hillside to where Rabbit stood watch over the
sheep.

"Tim wanted to buy that big yellow collie from Rabbit," he said.
"Offered her eighty dollars. Might as well try to buy me from that
woman!"

"I expect she'd sell you quicker than she would the collie, Dad."

"Wish she would sell that dang animal, he never has made friends with
me. The other one and me we git along all right, but that feller he's
been educated on the scent of that old vest, and he'll be my enemy to
my last day."

"You're a lucky man to have a wife like Rabbit, anyhow, dog or no dog.
It's hard for me to believe she ever took a long swig out of a whisky
jug, Dad."

"Well, sir, me and Rabbit was disputin' about that a day or so ago.
Funny how I seem to 'a' got mixed up on that, but I guess it wasn't
Rabbit that used to pull my jug too hard. That must 'a' been a Mexican
woman I was married to one time down by El Paso."

"I'll bet money it was the Mexican woman. How did Rabbit get her face
scalded?"

"She tripped and fell in the hog-scaldin' vat like I told you, John."

Mackenzie looked at him severely, almost ready to take the convalescent's
prerogative and quarrel with his best friend.

"What's the straight of it, you old hide-bound sinner?"

Dad changed hands on his chin, fingering his beard with scraping
noise, eyes downcast as if a little ashamed.

"I guess it was me that took a snort too many out of the jug that day,
John," he confessed.

"Of course it was. And Rabbit tripped and fell into the tub trying to
save you from it, did she?"

"Well, John, them fellers said that