e taken them myself."

"Yes, but you're free to pick up and go whenever you want to. A man
don't have to have money to strike out and see the world--I don't see
why a woman should. I could work my way as well as anybody."

"They're harder masters out there than the range is to you here, Joan.
And there's the insolence of mastery, and the obloquy of poverty and
situation that I hope you'll never feel. Wait a little while longer
with the probationers among the sheep."

"Earl never will stay it out," she said, lifting her eyes for a moment
to his. "He's sick of it now--he'd throw everything over if he had the
money to get away."

"He'd be a very foolish young man, then. But it's like breaking off
smoking, I guess, to quit the things you've grown up with on short
notice like he had."

"Maybe in about a year more my interest will amount to enough to let
me out," said Joan, pursuing her thought of winning to freedom in the
way she had elected. She seemed innocent of any knowledge of the
arrangement whereby Earl Reid was working for his reward. Mackenzie
wondered if it could be so.

"If dad'll buy me out then," she said, speculatively, doubtfully,
carrying on her thought in a disjointed way. "It would be like him to
turn me down, though, if I want to quit before my time's up. And he
wouldn't let me divide the sheep and sell my share to anybody else."

No, Joan could not yet know of Tim's arrangement with Earl Reid's
father. It would be like Tim, indeed, to bargain her off without
considering her in the matter at all. To a man like Tim his sons and
daughters were as much his chattels as his sheep, kind as he was in
his way. The apprenticeship of Joan to the range was proof of that.
Somewhere out in that gray loneliness two younger daughters were
running sheep, with little brothers as protectors and companions,
beginning their adventures and lessons in the only school they were
ever likely to know.

Tim made a great virtue of the fact that he had taught all of them to
read and write. That much would serve most of them satisfactorily for
a few years, but Mackenzie grinned his dry grin to himself when he
thought of the noise there would be one day in Tim Sullivan's cote
when the young pigeons shook out their wings to fly away. It was in
the breed to do that; it looked out of the eyes of every one.

"I sent and got a Bible from the mail-order house," said Joan, looking
up with lively eyes.

"Has it come already?"

"C