“I thought dad had made some kind of a deal with him,” she said, nodding in her wise way, a truant strand of hair on her calm forehead. “They didn’t tell me anything, but I knew from the way dad looked at me out of the corners of his eyes that he had a trade of some kind on. Tell me about it, John.”
There was no explanation left to Mackenzie but the degrading truth, and he gave it to her as Tim Sullivan had given it to him.
“They had their nerve!” said Joan, flushed with resentment.
“It’s all off, as far as it affects you and me,” Mackenzie said, fetching his brows together in a frown of denial. “Reid can’t have you, not even if he comes into two million when the old man dies.”
“No,” said Joan softly, her hand stroking his, her eyes downcast, the glow of the new-old dawn upon her cheek; “there’s only room for one Jacob on this range.”
“I thought I owed it to Reid, as a matter of honor between men, to step aside and let him have you, according to the plan. But that was a mistake. A man can’t pay his debts by robbing his heart that way.”
“I saw something was holding you back, John,” said the wise Joan.
Mackenzie started as if she had thrust him with a needle, felt his telltale blood flare red in his face, but grinned a little as he turned to her, meeting her eye to eye.
“So, you saw through me, did you, Joan?”