“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 little while ago––he’s gone over to put a man in to take care of your sheep, but he’ll be along back here this evening. He wants to talk some business with you, he said.”
“Well, we’re ready for him, Joan,” Mackenzie said. And the look that passed between them, and the smile that lighted their lips, told that their business had been talked and disposed of already, let Tim Sullivan propose what he might.