nzie's silence
and severity the young man found something that he could not
penetrate, a story that he could not read. Perhaps it was with a view
to finding out what school Mackenzie had been seasoned in that Reid
bent himself to win his friendship.

Dad Frazer came over the hills to Mackenzie's range that afternoon, to
stretch his legs, he said, although Mackenzie knew it was to stretch
his tongue, caring nothing for the miles that lay between. He had left
Reid in charge of his flock, the young man being favored by Tim to the
extent of allowing him a horse, the same as he did Joan.

"I'm glad he takes to you," said Dad. "I don't like him; he's got a
graveyard in his eyes."

"I don't think he ever pulled a gun on anybody in his life, Dad,"
Mackenzie returned, in mild amazement.

"I don't mean that kind of a graveyard; I mean a graveyard where he
buried the boy in him long before his time. He's too sharp for his
years; he's seen too much of the kind of life a young feller's better
off for to hear about from a distance and never touch. I tell you,
John, he ain't no good."

"He's an agreeable kind of a chap, anyhow; he's got a line of talk
like a saddle salesman."

"Yes, and I never did have no use for a talkin' man. Nothin' to 'em;
they don't stand the gaff."

In spite of his friendly defense of young Reid, Mackenzie felt that
Dad had read him aright. There was something of subtle knowledge, an
edge of guile showing through his easy nature and desire to please,
that was like acid on the teeth. Reid had the faculty of making
himself agreeable, and he was an apt and willing hand, but back of
this ingenuous appearance there seemed to be something elusive and
shadowy, a thing which he tried to keep hidden by nimble maneuvers,
but which would show at times for all his care.

Mackenzie did not dislike the youth, but he found it impossible to
warm up to him as one man might to another in a place where human
companionship is a luxury. When Reid sat with a cigarette in his thin
lips--it was a wide mouth, worldly hard--hazy in abstraction and
smoke, there came a glaze over the clearness of his eyes, a look of
dead harshness, a cast of cunning. In such moments his true nature
seemed to express itself unconsciously, and Dad Frazer, simple as he
was in many ways, was worldly man enough to penetrate the smoke, and
sound the apprentice sheepman to his soul.

Reid seemed to draw a good deal of amusement out of his situation