r's repose.

Romance or no romance, riches or poverty, he was through with a
woman's work, he told himself. Once there had been ideals ahead of him
in educational work, but the contempt of men had dispelled them. If he
could not find his beginning in the sheep country, he would turn
elsewhere. A man who had it in him to fight giants wasn't cut out for
teaching school.

Mackenzie sat with his back to a haycock thinking in this vein. The
sound of running water was near; he went to the creek and bathed his
throat, easing its burning with a deep swig. Back again to the hay,
still building new victories, and nobler ones, on the foundation of
this triumph over Swan Carlson, the red giant who choked men to death
in the snow.

Morning discovered no habitation in reach of the eye. That little
field of mown hay stood alone among the gray hills, unfenced,
unfended, secure in its isolation, a little patch of something in the
wilderness that looked like home. Mackenzie must have put many miles
behind him since leaving Carlson's door. Looking back, he could follow
the course of the creek where it snaked through the hills, dark green
of willow and cottonwood fresh among the hemming slopes of sage, but
no trace of Carlson's trees could he see.

Mackenzie had no flour to mix a wad of dough, and but a heel of a
bacon side to furnish a breakfast. It was so unpromising in his
present hungry state that he determined to tramp on a few miles in the
hope of lifting Tim Sullivan's ranch-house on the prominent hilltop
where, he had been told, it stood.

Two or three miles beyond the hay-field Mackenzie came suddenly upon a
sheep-camp. The wagon stood on a green hillside, a pleasant valley
below it where the grass was abundant and sweet. The camp evidently
had been stationed in that place but a little while, for a large band
of sheep grazed just below it, no bedding-ground being worn bare in
the unusual verdure. Altogether, it was the greenest and most
promising place Mackenzie had met in his journey, gladdening at once
to the imagination and the eye.

The shepherd sat on the hillside, his dogs beside him, a little smoke
ascending straight in the calm, early sunshine from his dying fire.
The collies scented the stranger while he stood on the hilltop,
several hundred yards above the camp, rising to question his presence
bristling backs. The shepherd rose to inquire into the alarm,
springing up with amazing agility, such sudden and wild con