any man as though he had
reached down and plucked it out of her heart.

Let them go on planning for years of labor, let them go on scheming
for inheritances, and piece their broken arrangements together as they
might when they found he had swept Joan out of their squalid
calculations as a rider stoops and lifts a kerchief from the ground.
There would be bitterness and protestations, and rifts in his own
bright hopes, as well.

But if Tim Sullivan would not give her up to him with the good grace
of a man, Mackenzie said, smiling and smiling like a daft musician, he
would take her from both of them and ride away with her into the
valleys of the world which she was so hungry in her young heart to
behold.

He rounded his sheep to their hillside, and made his fire, a song in
his heart, but his lips sealed, for he was a silent man. And at dusk
there came riding into his camp a man, whose coat was at his cantle,
who was belted with pistols, who roved his eye with cautious look as
he halted and gave the shepherd good evening. Mackenzie invited him
down to the hospitality of the camp, which the stranger accepted with
hearty grace.

"I was lookin' for a young feller by the name of Reid; you're not the
man," the stranger said with finality, after one more shrewd look into
Mackenzie's face.

"My name's Mackenzie--Reid's running a band of sheep for the same
outfit about five miles east of here."

The stranger said nothing more, being busy at that moment unsaddling
his horse, which he hobbled and turned to graze. He came over to the
fire where Mackenzie was baking biscuits in a tilted pan, and sat
down, dusty from his day's ride.

"I'm the sheriff of this county," he announced, not going into the
detail of his name. Mackenzie nodded his acknowledgment, the sheriff
keeping his hungry eye on the pan. "I took a cut across here from
servin' some subpoenas in a murder case on some fellers up on Farewell
Creek," he explained, "to see how that feller Reid's behavin'."

"I haven't heard any complaint," Mackenzie told him, wondering why
this official interest. The sheriff seemed satisfied with what he
heard, and made no further inquiry or explanation until after he had
eaten his supper. As he smoked a cracked cigar which he took from the
pocket of his ornate vest, he talked.

"I didn't know anything about that boy when Sullivan put him in here
on the range," he said, "but the other day I got a letter from the
sheriff in Omaha ask