"Is it his?"

"No, it belongs to us; we've got a lease on it from the government,
and pay rent for it every year. Swan Carlson and the Hall boys have
bluffed us out of it for the past three summers and run their sheep
over here in the winter-time. I always wanted to fight for it, but dad
let them have it for the sake of peace. I guess it was the best way,
after all."

"As long as I was right, my last worry is gone, Joan. You're not on
the contested territory, are you?"

"No; they lay claim as far as Horsethief Canyon, but they'd just as
well claim all our lease--they've got just as much right to it."

"That ends the matter, then--as far as I'm concerned."

"I wonder what kind of an excuse Hector made when he went home without
his guns!" she speculated, looking off over the hills in the direction
of the Hall brothers' ranch.

"Maybe he's not accountable to anybody, and doesn't have to explain."

"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 nobody 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 embarrassment 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 t