Part 20 (1/2)

”Rabbit's still up there on the Big Wind waiting for you, is she?”

”She'll wait a long time! I'm done with Indians. Joan comin' over today?”

”Tomorrow.”

”I don't guess you'll have her to bother with much longer--her and that Reid boy they'll be hitchin' up one of these days from all the signs. He skirmishes off over that way nearly every day. Looks to me like Tim laid it out that way, givin' him a horse to ride and leavin'

me and you to hoof it. It'd suit Tim, all right; I've heard old Reid's a millionaire.”

”I guess it would,” Mackenzie said, trying to keep his voice from sounding as cold as his heart felt that moment.

”Yes, I think they'll hitch. Well, I'd like to see Joan land a better man than him. I don't like a man that can draw a blinder over his eyes like a frog.”

Mackenzie smiled at the aptness of Dad's comparison. It was, indeed, as if Reid interposed a film like a frog when he plunged from one element into another, so to speak; when he left the sheeplands in his thoughts and went back to the haunts and the companions lately known.

”If Joan had a little more meat on her she wouldn't be a bad looker,”

said Dad. ”Well, when a man's young he likes 'em slim, and when he's old he wants 'em fat. It'd be a calamity if a man was to marry a skinny girl like Joan and she was to stay skinny all his life.”

”I don't think she's exactly skinny, Dad.”

”No, I don't reckon you could count her ribs. But you put fifty pounds more on that girl and see how she'd look!”

”I can't imagine it,” said Mackenzie, not friendly to the notion at all.

As Dad went back to unburden himself of his unwelcome companion, Mackenzie could not suppress the thought that a good many unworthy notions hatched beneath that dignified white hair. But surely Dad might be excused by a more stringent moralist than the schoolmaster for abandoning poor Rabbit after her complexion had suffered in the hog-scalding vat.

Toward sundown Earl Reid came riding over, his winning smile as easy on his face as he was in the saddle. The days were doing him good, all around, toughening his face, taking the poolroom pastiness out of it, putting a bracer in his back. Mackenzie noted the improvement as readily as it could be seen in some quick-growing plant.

Mackenzie was living a very primitive and satisfactory life under a few yards of tent canvas since the loss of his wagon. He stretched it over such bushes as came handy, storing his food beneath it when he slept, save on such nights as threatened showers. Reid applauded this arrangement. He was tired of Dad Frazer's wagon, and the greasy bunk in it.

”I've been wild to stretch out in a blanket with my feet to a little fire,” he said, with a flash of the eagerness belonging to the boyhood buried away too soon, as Dad had remarked. ”Dad wouldn't let me do it--fussed at me three days because I sneaked out on him one night and laid under the wagon.”

”Dad didn't want a skunk to bite you, I guess. He felt a heavy responsibility on your account.”

”Old snoozer!” said Reid.

Reid was uncommonly handy as a camp-cook, far better in that respect than Mackenzie, who gladly turned the kitchen duties over to him and let him have his way. After supper they sat talking, the l.u.s.ty moon lifting a wondering face over the hills in genial placidity as if sure, after all its ages, of giving the world a surprise at last.

”Joan told me to bring you word she'd be over in the morning instead of tomorrow afternoon,” said Reid.

”Thanks.”

Reid smoked in reflective silence, his thin face clear in the moonlight.

”Some girl,” said he. ”I don't see why she wants to go to all this trouble to get a little education. That stuff's all bunk. I wish I had the coin in my jeans right now the old man spent on me, pourin'

stuff into me that went right on through like smoke through a handkerchief.”

”I don't think it would be that way with Joan,” Mackenzie said, hoping Reid would drop the discussion there, and not go into the arrangement for the future, which was a matter altogether detestable in the schoolmaster's thoughts.

Reid did not pursue his speculations on Joan, whether through delicacy or indifference Mackenzie could not tell. He branched off into talk of other things, through which the craving for the life he had left came out in strong expressions of dissatisfaction with the range. He complained against the penance his father had set, looking ahead with consternation to the three years he must spend in those solitudes.