been cut. But
this he put off investigating until he heard Reid ride out to the dim
road in front of Carlson's cabin, and go his way out of the sheeplands
to whatever destiny lay ahead.

Then Mackenzie looked himself over, to find that it was not a serious
wound. He bound up the hurt with his handkerchief, and turned his face
away from that tragic spot among the cottonwoods, their leaves moving
with a murmur as of falling rain in the cool morning wind.

CHAPTER XXIX

SHEEPMAN--AND MORE

"So I just took his gun away from him and slapped him and sent him
on," said Joan.

"I thought that must have been the way of it," Mackenzie said, sighing
as if his last trouble had left him.

"When he tried to make me believe I wasn't within seven miles of Dad
Frazer's camp I got my suspicions up. The idea of that little town rat
trying to mix me up on my range! Well, I was a little off on my
estimate of where the wagons were, but that was because they'd been
moved so many times while I was over home."

"I figured it that way, Joan."

"But what do you suppose he was tryin' to pull off on me, John,
bringing me out here on the pretense you'd been all shot up in the
fight with Hector Hall and wanted me?"

"I don't know, Joan," Mackenzie said, lying like the "kind of a
gentleman" he was.

"I thought maybe the little fool wanted to make me marry him so he
could get some money out of dad."

"Maybe that was it, Joan; I pass it up."

"Dad Frazer says Earl was crazy from the lonesomeness and killing Matt
Hall."

"I think he must have been, Joan. It's over--let's forget it if we
can."

"Yes, you haven't done a thing but fight since you struck this range,"
Joan sighed.

Mackenzie was lying up in Rabbit's hospital again, undergoing
treatment for the bullet wound in his thigh. He had arrived at Dad
Frazer's camp at sunrise, weak from the drain of his hurt, to find
Joan waiting for him on the rise of the hill. She hurried him into
Rabbit's hands, leaving explanations until later. They had come to the
end of them now.

But Mackenzie made the reservation of Reid's atrocious, insane scheme
in bringing Joan from home on the pretext that the schoolmaster had
fallen wounded to death in the fight with Hector Hall, and lay calling
for her with his wasting breath. Mackenzie knew that it was better for
her faith in mankind for all her future years, and for the peace of
her soul, that she should never know.

"My dad was here a