Part 31 (1/2)

”It might have happened to anybody, though, a dog and a man against him.”

”Yes, even a better man.”

”A better man don't live,” said Joan, with calm decision.

Reid bent his eyes to the pommel of his saddle, and sat so a few moments, in the way of a man who turns something in his thoughts.

Then:

”I guess I'll go on back to the sheep.”

”He may never get well to thank you for what you did, Earl,” and Joan's voice threatened tears in its low, earnest tremolo, ”but I----”

”Oh, that's all right, Joan.” Reid waved grat.i.tude, especially vicarious grat.i.tude, aside, smiling lightly. ”He's not booked to go yet; wait till he's well and let him do his own talking. Somebody ought to sneak that gun away from him, though, and slip a twenty-two in his scabbard. They can't hurt him so bad with that when they take it away from him.”

”It might have happened to you!” she reproached.

”Well, it might,” Reid allowed, after some reflection. ”Sure, it might,” brightening, looking at her frankly, his ingenuous smile softening the crafty lines of his thin face. ”Well, leave him to Rabbit and Dad; they'll fix him up.”

”If he isn't better tomorrow I'm going for a doctor, if n.o.body else will.”

”You're not goin' to hang around there all the time, are you, Joan?”

Reid's face flushed as he spoke, his eyes made small, as if he looked in at a furnace door.

Joan did not answer this, only lifted her face with a quick start, looking at him with brows lifted, widening her great, luminous, tender eyes. Reid stroked her horse's mane, his stirrup close to her foot, his look downcast, as if ashamed of the jealousy he had betrayed.

”I don't mind the lessons, and that kind of stuff,” said he, looking up suddenly, ”but I don't want the girl--oh well, you know as well as I do what kind of a deal the old folks have fixed up for you and me, Joan.”

”Of course. I'm going to marry you to save you from work.”

”I thought it was a raw deal when they sprung it on me, but that was before I saw you, Joan. But it's all right; I'm for it now.”

”You're easy, Earl; dad's workin' you for three good years without pay. As far as I'm concerned, you'd just as well hit the breeze out of this country right now. Dad can't deliver the goods.”

”I'm soft, but I'm not that soft, Joan. I could leave here tomorrow; what's to hold me? And as far as the old man's cutting me out of his will goes, I could beat it in law, and then have a pile big enough left to break my neck if I was to jump off the top of it. They're not putting anything over on me, Joan. I'm sticking to this little old range because it suits me to stick. I would go tomorrow if it wasn't for you.”

Reid added this in a low voice, his words a sigh, doing it well, even convincingly well.

”I'm sorry,” Joan said, moved by his apparent sincerity, ”but there's not a bit of use in your throwing away three years, or even three more months, of your life here, Earl.”

”You'll like me better when you begin to know me, Joan. I've stood off because I didn't want to interfere with your studies, but maybe now, since you've got a vacation, I can come over once in a while and get acquainted.”

”Earl, it wouldn't be a bit of use.” Joan spoke earnestly, pitying him a little, now that she began to believe him.

”Why, we're already engaged,” he said; ”they've disposed of us like they do princes and princesses.”

”I don't know how they marry them off, but if that's the way, it won't work on the sheep range,” said Joan.

”We've been engaged, officially, ever since I struck the range, and I've never once, never even--” He hesitated, constrained by bashfulness, it seemed, from his manner of bending his head and plucking at her horse's mane.

”We're not even officially engaged,” she denied, coldly, not pitying his bashfulness at all, nor bent to a.s.sist him in delivering what lay on the end of his tongue. ”You can't pick up a sheepwoman and marry her off--like some old fool king's daughter.”