Part 24 (1/2)

”I tried to pull it out of you,” Joan said, as serious as a penitent, although there was a smile breaking on her lips as she turned her face away.

”I'd never want to do anything, or say anything, that would lower your respect for me one little degree, Joan,” he said, still clinging to her hand as though he feared he had not quite won her, and must hold her fast by his side for the final word.

”I know you wouldn't, John,” said she, her voice shaking a little, and low beneath her breath.

”I wouldn't want to--to--go as far as Jacob went that first time he saw Rachel,” said he in desperation, his grip tightening on her fingers, sweat bursting on his brow. ”I wouldn't want to--I'd _want_ to, all right, but I wouldn't even--even----”

Joan looked up at him with calm, placid eyes, with pale cheeks, with yearning lips, a flutter in her heart that made her weak. She nodded, anxious to help him to his climax, but not bold, not bolder than himself, indeed, and he was shaking like a sick man in the sun.

”Unless I could make it holy, unless you could understand it so, I wouldn't even--I wouldn't so much as----” He took her face between his hands, and bent over her, and a glad little sob trembled between Joan's lips as she rested her hands on his shoulders for the benediction of his kiss.

Joan did not stay to help him bring in the sheep that day, for there was nothing left for her to wonder over, or stand wistfully by her saddle waiting to receive. Neither was there any sound of weeping as she rode up the hill, for the male custom of expressing joy in that way had gone out of fas.h.i.+on on the sheep ranges of this world long before John Mackenzie's day.

Nothing that he could owe a man could equal what he had gained that hour, Mackenzie thought, standing there with heart as light as the down of cottonwood. With his great debt paid to Earl Reid, even to the measure of his own life, he would still leave the world a rich man. He had come into the fresh pastures of romance at last.

Joan waved him good-bye from the hilltop and went on, the understanding of his fortune growing on him as he recalled her eyes in that moment when she closed them to his salute upon her lips. She gave up that first kiss that she ever had yielded to any man as though he had reached down and plucked it out of her heart.

Let them go on planning for years of labor, let them go on scheming for inheritances, and piece their broken arrangements together as they might when they found he had swept Joan out of their squalid calculations as a rider stoops and lifts a kerchief from the ground.

There would be bitterness and protestations, and rifts in his own bright hopes, as well.

But if Tim Sullivan would not give her up to him with the good grace of a man, Mackenzie said, smiling and smiling like a daft musician, he would take her from both of them and ride away with her into the valleys of the world which she was so hungry in her young heart to behold.

He rounded his sheep to their hillside, and made his fire, a song in his heart, but his lips sealed, for he was a silent man. And at dusk there came riding into his camp a man, whose coat was at his cantle, who was belted with pistols, who roved his eye with cautious look as he halted and gave the shepherd good evening. Mackenzie invited him down to the hospitality of the camp, which the stranger accepted with hearty grace.

”I was lookin' for a young feller by the name of Reid; you're not the man,” the stranger said with finality, after one more shrewd look into Mackenzie's face.

”My name's Mackenzie--Reid's running a band of sheep for the same outfit about five miles east of here.”

The stranger said nothing more, being busy at that moment unsaddling his horse, which he hobbled and turned to graze. He came over to the fire where Mackenzie was baking biscuits in a tilted pan, and sat down, dusty from his day's ride.

”I'm the sheriff of this county,” he announced, not going into the detail of his name. Mackenzie nodded his acknowledgment, the sheriff keeping his hungry eye on the pan. ”I took a cut across here from servin' some subpoenas in a murder case on some fellers up on Farewell Creek,” he explained, ”to see how that feller Reid's behavin'.”

”I haven't heard any complaint,” Mackenzie told him, wondering why this official interest. The sheriff seemed satisfied with what he heard, and made no further inquiry or explanation until after he had eaten his supper. As he smoked a cracked cigar which he took from the pocket of his ornate vest, he talked.

”I didn't know anything about that boy when Sullivan put him in here on the range,” he said, ”but the other day I got a letter from the sheriff in Omaha askin' me to keep my eye on him. The news of Reid's killin' Matt Hall got over to Omaha. You know Reid, he's under sentence of three years in the pen.”

”I didn't know.”

”Yeah. Daddy got him paroled to Sullivan's sheep ranch to serve it.

If he breaks over here he goes to the pen. That's the way _he_ stands.”

”In that case, he'll more than likely stay it out.”

”He will if he's wise. He's been a kind of a streak of wildness, the sheriff in Omaha said. Sent me his full history, three pages. Married somebody a year or so ago, but the old man got him out of that by buyin' off the girl. Then he started out forgin', and pushed it so hard the old man refused to make good any more. But he didn't want to see the kid go to the pen, and he's here. I got to keep my eye on him to see he don't break over.”

The sheriff stretched out when he had finished his cigar and went to sleep in a blanket provided by his host. He was up with dawn, ready to resume his journey. Mackenzie pressed him to stay for breakfast, but he said he wanted to make a start before the sun and reach Sullivan's ranch-house.

”Does Sullivan know how things stand with Reid?” Mackenzie inquired.