Part 14 (1/2)

”I guess that's right,” Joan said, still wandering in her gaze.

Below them the flock was spread, the dogs on its flanks. Mackenzie pointed to the sun.

”We'll have to get to work; you'll be starting back in an hour.”

But there was no work in Joan that day, nothing but troubled speculation on what form Hector Hall's revenge would take, and when the stealthy blow of his resentment would fall. Try as he would, Mackenzie could not fasten her mind upon the books. She would begin with a brave resolution, only to wander away, the book closed presently upon her thumb, her eyes searching the hazy hills where trouble lay out of sight. At last she gave it up, with a little catching sob, tears in her honest eyes.

”They'll kill you--I know they will!” she said.

”I don't think they will,” he returned, abstractedly, ”but even if they do, Rachel, there's n.o.body to grieve.”

”Rachel? My name isn't Rachel,” said Joan, a little hurt. For it was not in flippancy or banter that he had called her out of her name; his eyes were not within a hundred leagues of that place, his heart away with them, it seemed, when he spoke.

He turned to her, a color of embarra.s.sment in his brown face.

”I was thinking of another story, Joan.”

”Of another girl,” she said, perhaps a trifle resentfully. At least Mackenzie thought he read a resentful note in the quick rejoinder, a resentful flash of color in her cheek.

”Yes, but a mighty old girl, Joan,” he confessed, smiling with a feeling of lightness around his heart.

”Somebody you used to know?” face turned away, voice light in a careless, artificial note.

”She was a sheepman's daughter,” he said.

”Did you know her down at Jasper?”

”No, I never knew her at all, Rach--Joan. That was a long, long time ago.”

Joan brightened at this news. She ceased denying him her face, even smiled a little, seeming to forget Hector Hall and his pending vengeance.

”Well, what about her?” she asked.

He told her which Rachel he had in mind, but Joan only shook her head and looked troubled.

”I never read the Bible; we haven't even got one.”

He told her the story, beginning with Jacob's setting out, and his coming to the well with the great stone at its mouth which the maidens could not roll away.

”So Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Rachel's sheep,” he said, pausing with that much of it, looking off down the draw between the hills in a mind-wandering way. Joan touched his arm, impatient with such disjointed narrative.

”What did he do then?”

”Why, he kissed her.”

”I think he was kind of fresh,” said Joan. But she laughed a little, blus.h.i.+ng rosily, a bright light in her eyes. ”Tell me the rest of it, John.”

Mackenzie went on with the ancient pastoral tale of love. Joan was indignant when she heard how Laban gave Jacob the weak-eyed girl for a wife in place of his beloved Rachel, for whom he had worked the seven years.

”Jake must have been a bright one!” said she. ”How could the old man put one over on him like that?”