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