w-preying, brooding
way of those who are not strong enough to withstand the cruelties of
silence and loneliness on the range.

"Where is your woman?" she asked again, lifting her face suddenly.

"I have no woman," he told her, gently, in great pity for her cruel
burden under which she was so unmistakably breaking.

"I remember, you told me you had no woman. A man should have a woman;
he goes crazy of the lonesomeness on the sheep range without a
woman."

"Will Swan be over tomorrow?" Mackenzie asked, thinking to take her
case up with the harsh and savage man and see if he could not be moved
to sending her away.

"I do not know," she returned coldly, her manner changing like a
capricious wind. She rose as she spoke, and walked away, disappearing
almost at once in the darkness.

Mackenzie stood looking the way she went, listening for the sound of
her going, but she passed so surely among the shrubs and over the
uneven ground that no noise attended her. It was as though her failing
mind had sharpened her with animal caution, or that instinct had come
forward in her to take the place of wit, and serve as her protection
against dangers which her faculties might no longer safeguard.

Even the dogs seemed to know of her affliction, as wild beasts are
believed by some to know and accept on a common plane the demented
among men. They knew at once that she was not going to harm the sheep.
When she left camp they stretched themselves with contented sighs to
their repose.

And that was "the lonesomeness" as they spoke of it there. A dreadful
affliction, a corrosive poison that gnawed the heart hollow, for which
there was no cure but comradeship or flight. Poor Hertha Carlson was
denied both remedies; she would break in a little while now, and run
mad over the hills, her beautiful hair streaming in the wind.

And Reid had it; already it had struck deep into his soul, turning him
morose, wickedly vindictive, making him hungry with an unholy ambition
to slay. Joan must have suffered from the same disorder. It was not so
much a desire in her to see what lay beyond the blue curtain of the
hills as a longing for companionship among them.

But Joan would put away her unrest; she had found a cure for the
lonesomeness. Her last word to him that day was that she did not want
to leave the sheep range now; that she would stay while he remained,
and fare as he fared.

Rachel must have suffered from the lonesomeness, ranging her sh