Reid did not pursue his speculations on Joan, whether through delicacy or indifference Mackenzie could not tell. He branched off into talk of other things, through which the craving for the life he had left came out in strong expressions of dissatisfaction with the range. He complained against the penance his father had set, looking ahead with consternation to the three years he must spend in those solitudes.
“But I’m goin’ to stick,” he said, an unmistakable determination in his tone. “I’ll show him they’re making as good men now as they did when he was a kid.” He laughed, a raucous, short laugh, an old man’s laugh, which choked in a cigarette cough and made a mockery of mirth. “I’ll toughen up out here and have better wind for the big finish when I sit in on the old man’s money.”
No, Joan was not cast for any important part in young Reid’s future drama, Mackenzie understood. As if his thoughts had penetrated to the young man’s heart, making fatuous any further attempt at concealment of his true sentiments, Reid spoke.
“They’ve sewed me up in a sack with Joan––I guess you know about it?”
“Tim was telling me.”
“A guy could do worse.”
With this comforting reflection Reid stretched himself on his blanket and went to sleep. Mackenzie was not slow in following his example, for it had been a hard day with the sheep, with much leg work on account of the new dogs showing a wolfish shyness of their new master most exasperating at times. Mackenzie’s last thought was that Reid would take a great deal of labor off his legs by using the horse in attending the sheep.
A scream woke Mackenzie. He heaved up out of his sleep with confusion clouding his senses for the moment, the thought that he was on water, and the cry was that of one who drowned, persistent above his struggling reason. It was a choking cry, the utterance of a desperate soul who sees life fleeing while he lifts his voice in the last appeal. And between him and his companion Mackenzie saw the bulk of a giant-shouldered man, who bent with arm outstretched toward him, whose hand came in contact with his throat as he rose upright with the stare of confusion in his eyes.
Mackenzie broke through this film of his numbing sleep, reaching for the rifle that he had laid near his hand. It was gone, and across the two yards intervening he saw young Reid writhing in the grip of the monster who was strangling out his life.