eeplands around them.
Then Dad:

"So you're thinkin' of Mary, are you, John?"

Mackenzie laughed a little, like an embarrassed lover.

"Well, I've got my eye on her," he said.

"No gamble about Mary," Dad said, in deep earnestness. "Give her a
couple of years to fill out and widen in and you'll have a girl
that'll do any man's eyes good to see. I thought for a while you had
some notions about Joan, and I'm glad to see you've changed your mind.
Joan's too sharp for a trustin' feller like you. She'd run off with
some wool-buyer before you'd been married a year."

CHAPTER XXV

ONE MAN'S JOKE

Mackenzie went across the hills next morning to relieve Reid of his
watch over the sheep, feeling almost as simple as Dad and the rest of
them believed him to be. He was too easy, he had been too easy all
along. If he had beaten Hector Hall into a blue lump that day he sent
him home without his guns; if he had pulled his weapon at Swan
Carlson's first appearance when the giant Swede drove his flock around
the hill that day, and put a bullet between his eyes, Tim Sullivan and
the rest of them would have held him in higher esteem.

Reid would have held him in greater respect for it, also, and it might
not have turned out so badly for Joan. He wondered how Reid would
receive him, and whether they would part in no greater unfriendliness
than at present.

Reid was not with the sheep when Mackenzie arrived where they fed. The
flock was widely scattered, as if the shepherd had been gone a long
time, the dogs seemingly indifferent to what befell, showing a spirit
of insubordination and laziness when Mackenzie set them about their
work. Mackenzie spent the morning getting the flock together, noting
its diminished numbers with quickly calculating eye.

Reid must have been leaving the sheep pretty much to themselves for
the wolves to take that heavy toll. Strange that Sullivan had not
noticed it and put a trustworthy herder in charge. But Sullivan was
more than a little afraid to show himself for long on that part of his
lease, and perhaps had not taken the time to run his eye over the
sheep. It was a matter to be laid before his attention at once.
Mackenzie did not want this loss charged against him as another
example of his unfitness to become a master over sheep on the
profit-sharing plan.

It was past noon when Reid returned, coming riding from Swan Carlson's
range. He came only near enough to Mackenzie to see who it w