Mackenzie was living a very primitive and satisfactory life under a few yards of tent canvas since the loss of his wagon. He stretched it over such bushes as came handy, storing his food beneath it when he slept, save on such nights as threatened showers. Reid applauded this arrangement. He was tired of Dad Frazer’s wagon, and the greasy bunk in it.
“I’ve been wild to stretch out in a blanket with my feet to a little fire,” he said, with a flash of the eagerness belonging to the boyhood buried away too soon, as Dad had remarked. “Dad wouldn’t let me do it––fussed at me three days because I sneaked out on him one night and laid under the wagon.”
“Dad didn’t want a skunk to bite you, I guess. He felt a heavy responsibility on your account.”
“Old snoozer!” said Reid.
Reid was uncommonly handy as a camp-cook, far better in that respect than Mackenzie, who gladly turned the kitchen duties over to him and let him have his way. After supper they sat talking, the lusty moon lifting a wondering face over the hills in genial placidity as if sure, after all its ages, of giving the world a surprise at last.
“Joan told me to bring you word she’d be over in the morning instead of tomorrow afternoon,” said Reid.
“Thanks.”
Reid smoked in reflective silence, his thin face clear in the moonlight.
“Some girl,” said he. “I don’t see why she wants to go to all this trouble to get a little education. That stuff’s all bunk. I wish I had the coin in my jeans right 144 now the old man spent on me, pourin’ stuff into me that went right on through like smoke through a handkerchief.”
“I don’t think it would be that way with Joan,” Mackenzie said, hoping Reid would drop the discussion there, and not go into the arrangement for the future, which was a matter altogether detestable in the schoolmaster’s thoughts.