Part 8 (1/2)
”You'll get it, all right, just like I told you; no green hand with all his senses ever escaped it. Maybe you'll have it light, though,”
she added, hopefully, as if to hold him up for the ordeal.
”I hope so. But with you coming over to take lessons, and Dad Frazer talking morning, noon, and night, I'll forget Egypt and its fleshpots, maybe.”
”Egypt? I thought you came from Jasper?”
”It's only a saying, used in relation to the place you look back to with regret when you're hungry.”
”I'm so ignorant I ought to be shot!” said Joan.
And Mackenzie sat silently fronting her, the dead fire between, a long time, thinking of the sparkle of her yearning eyes, smiling in his grim way to himself when there was no chance of being seen as he felt again the flash of them strike deep into his heart. Wise eyes, eyes which held a store of wholesome knowledge gleaned from the years in those silent places where her soul had grown without a shadow to smirch its purity.
”There's a difference between wisdom and learning,” he said at last, in low and thoughtful voice. ”What's it like over where Dad Frazer grazes his sheep?”
”Close to the range Swan Carlson and the Hall boys use, and you want to keep away from there.”
”Of course; I wouldn't want to trespa.s.s on anybody's territory. Are they all disagreeable people over that way?”
”There's n.o.body there but the Halls and Carlson. You know Swan.”
”He might improve on close acquaintance,” Mackenzie speculated.
”I don't think he's as bad as the Halls, wild and crazy as he is.
Hector Hall, especially. But you may get on with them, all right--I don't want to throw any scare into you before you meet them.”
”Are they out looking for trouble?”
”I don't know as they are, but they're there to make it if anybody lets a sheep get an inch over the line they claim as theirs. Oh, well, pa.s.s 'em up till you have to meet them--maybe they'll treat you white, anyway.”
Again a silence stood between them, Mackenzie considering many things, not the least of them being this remarkable girl's life among the sheep and the rough characters of the range, no wonder in him over her impatience to be away from it. It seemed to him that Tim Sullivan might well spare her the money for schooling, as well as fend her against the dangers and hards.h.i.+ps of the range by keeping her at home these summer days.
”It looks to me like a hard life for a girl,” he said; ”no diversions, none of the things that youth generally values and craves. Don't you ever have any dances or anything--camp meetings or picnics?”
”They have dances over at Four Corners sometimes--Hector Hall wanted me to go to one with him about a year ago. He had his nerve to ask me, the little old sheep-thief!”
”Well, I should think so.”
”He's been doubly sore at us ever since I turned him down. I looked for him to come over and shoot up my camp some night for a long time, but I guess he isn't that bad.”
”So much to his credit.”
”But I wish sometimes I'd gone with him. Maybe it would have straightened things out. You know, when you stay here on the range, Mr. Mackenzie, you're on a level with everybody else, no matter what you think of yourself. You can't get out of the place they make for you in their estimation of you. Hector Hall never will believe I'm too good to go to a dance with him. He'll be sore about it all his life.”
”A man naturally would have regrets, Miss Sullivan. Maybe that's as far as it goes with Hector Hall, maybe he's only sore at heart for the honor denied.”
”That don't sound like real talk,” said Joan.
Mackenzie grinned at the rebuke, and the candor and frankness in which it was administered, thinking that Joan would have a frigid time of it out in the world if she applied such outspoken rules to its flatteries and mild humbugs.
”Let's be natural then,” he suggested, considering as he spoke that candor was Joan's best defense in her position on the range. Here she sat out under the stars with him, miles from the nearest habitation, miles from her father's house, her small protector asleep in the wagon, and thought no more of it than a chaperoned daughter of the city in an illuminated drawing-room. A girl had to put men in their places and keep them there under such circ.u.mstances, and n.o.body knew better how to do it than Joan.