at me three days because I sneaked out on him one night and
laid under the wagon."

"Dad didn't want a skunk to bite you, I guess. He felt a heavy
responsibility on your account."

"Old snoozer!" said Reid.

Reid was uncommonly handy as a camp-cook, far better in that respect
than Mackenzie, who gladly turned the kitchen duties over to him and
let him have his way. After supper they sat talking, the lusty moon
lifting a wondering face over the hills in genial placidity as if
sure, after all its ages, of giving the world a surprise at last.

"Joan told me to bring you word she'd be over in the morning instead
of tomorrow afternoon," said Reid.

"Thanks."

Reid smoked in reflective silence, his thin face clear in the
moonlight.

"Some girl," said he. "I don't see why she wants to go to all this
trouble to get a little education. That stuff's all bunk. I wish I had
the coin in my jeans right now the old man spent on me, pourin'
stuff into me that went right on through like smoke through a
handkerchief."

"I don't think it would be that way with Joan," Mackenzie said, hoping
Reid would drop the discussion there, and not go into the arrangement
for the future, which was a matter altogether detestable in the
schoolmaster's thoughts.

Reid did not pursue his speculations on Joan, whether through delicacy
or indifference Mackenzie could not tell. He branched off into talk of
other things, through which the craving for the life he had left came
out in strong expressions of dissatisfaction with the range. He
complained against the penance his father had set, looking ahead with
consternation to the three years he must spend in those solitudes.

"But I'm goin' to stick," he said, an unmistakable determination in
his tone. "I'll show him they're making as good men now as they did
when he was a kid." He laughed, a raucous, short laugh, an old man's
laugh, which choked in a cigarette cough and made a mockery of mirth.
"I'll toughen up out here and have better wind for the big finish when
I sit in on the old man's money."

No, Joan was not cast for any important part in young Reid's future
drama, Mackenzie understood. As if his thoughts had penetrated to the
young man's heart, making fatuous any further attempt at concealment
of his true sentiments, Reid spoke.

"They've sewed me up in a sack with Joan--I guess you know about it?"

"Tim was telling me."

"A guy could do worse."

With this comforting reflection Reid