Part 10 (1/2)

Joan bent her head, a flush over her brown cheeks, a smile of mischief at the corners of her mouth. Mackenzie laughed, but strained and unnaturally, his own tough face burning with a hot tide of mounting blood.

”Somebody else would have taught you--you'd have conjugated it in another language, maybe,” he said.

”Yes, you say it's the easiest lesson to learn,” she nodded, soberly now. ”Have you taught it to many--many--girls?”

”According to the book, Joan,” he returned; ”only that way.”

Joan drew a deep breath, and looked away over the hills, and smiled.

But she said no more, after the way of one who has relieved the mind on a doubted point.

”I expect I'll be getting a taste of the lonesomeness here of nights pretty soon,” Mackenzie said, feeling himself in an awkward, yet not unpleasant situation with this frank girl's rather impertinent question still burning in his heart. ”Dad's going to leave me to take charge of another flock.”

”I'll try to keep you so busy you'll not have it very bad,” she said.

”Yes, and you'll pump your fount of knowledge dry in a hurry if you don't slow down a little,” he returned. ”At the pace you've set you'll have to import a professor to take you along, unless one strays in from somewhere.”

”I don't take up with strays,” said Joan, rather loftily.

”I think Dad's getting restless,” Mackenzie said, hastening to cover his mistake.

”He goes away every so often,” Joan explained, ”to see his Mexican wife down around El Paso somewhere.”

”Oh, that explains it. He didn't mention her to me.”

”He will, all right. He'll cut out to see her in a little while, more than likely, but he'll come drifting back with the shearers in the spring like he always does. It seems to me like everybody comes back to the sheep country that's ever lived in it a while. I wonder if I'd want to come back, too?”

It was a speculation upon which Mackenzie did not feel called to make comment. Time alone would prove to Joan where her heart lay anch.o.r.ed, as it proves to all who go wandering in its own bitter way at last.

”I don't seem to want to go away as long as I'm learning something,”

Joan confessed, a little ashamed of the admission, it appeared, from her manner of refusing to lift her head.

Mackenzie felt a great uplifting in his heart, as a song cheers it when it comes gladly at the close of a day of perplexity and doubt and toil. He reached out his hand as if to touch her and tell her how this dawning of his hope made him glad, but withdrew it, dropping it at his side as she looked up, a lively color in her cheeks.

”As long as you'll stay and teach me, there isn't any particular use for me to leave, is there?” she inquired.

”If staying here would keep you, Joan, I'd never leave,” he told her, his voice so grave and earnest that it trembled a little on the low notes.

Joan drew her breath again with that long inspiration which was like a satisfied sigh.

”Well, I must go,” she said.

But she did not move, and Mackenzie, drawing nearer, put out his hand in his way of silent appeal again.

”Not that I don't want you to know what there is out there,” he said, ”but because I'd save you the disappointment, the disillusionment, and the heartache that too often go with the knowledge of the world. You'd be better for it if you never knew, living here undefiled like a spring that comes out of the rocks into the sun.”

”Well, I must go,” said Joan, sighing with repletion again, but taking no step toward her waiting horse.