n might as well marry a sheep ranch as work on one, I
reckon."

"It's a shorter cut, anyhow. When do you want Reid?"

"I was aimin' to rack out this evenin', John."

"I'll send him over this afternoon. I don't know where he is, but
he'll be back for dinner."

Dad went away well satisfied and full of cheer, Mackenzie marveling
over his marital complexities as he watched him go. Together with
Rabbit, and the Mexican woman down El Paso way whom John had
mentioned, but of whom Dad never had spoken, and no telling how many
more scattered around the country, Dad seemed to be laying the
groundwork for a lively roundup one of his days. He said he'd been
marrying women off and on for forty years. His easy plan seemed to be
just to take one that pleased his capricious temper wherever he found
her, without regard to former obligations.

Mackenzie grinned. He did not believe any man was so obscure as to be
able to escape many wives. Dad seemed to be a dry-land sailor, with a
wife in every town he ever had made in his life. Mackenzie understood
about Mexican marriages. If they were priest marriages, they were
counted good; if they were merely justice of the peace ones they were
subject to wide and elastic infringement on both sides. Probably
Indian marriages were similar. Surely Dad was old enough to know what
he was about.

Reid came to camp at noontime, and prepared dinner in his quick and
handy way. Mackenzie did not take up the question of his acting as
relief for Dad while the old scout went off to push his arrangements
for marrying a sheep ranch, seeing that Reid was depressed and
down-spirited and in no pleasant mood.

They were almost independent of the camp-mover, owing to their light
equipment, which they could carry with them from day to day as the
sheep ranged. Supplies were all they needed from the wagon, which came
around to them twice a week. After dinner Reid began packing up for
the daily move, moody and silent, cigarette dangling on his lip.

"It's a one-hell of a life!" said he, looking up from the last knot in
the rope about the bundle of tent.

"Have you soured on it already, Earl?"

Reid sat on the bundle of tent, a cloud on his face, hat drawn almost
to the bridge of his nose, scowling out over the sheep range as if he
would curse it to a greater barrenness.

"Three years of this, and what'll I be? Hell! I can't even find that
other Hall."

"Have you been out looking for him?"

"That big Swed