“Work up to it gradual, lad; it can’t be done in a day. Make the lessons hard, pile the Latin on heavy. Lord, I remember it, back in the old country, old Father MacGuire layin’ it on the lads under his thumb. Devil a word of it sticks to me now, not even the word for sheep. I tried to remember some of it when they sent me up to the legislature in Cheyenne; I wanted to knock ’em over. But it had all leaked out. Discourage her, man; discourage her.”
“Yes, that might be the greatest kindness I could do her in the end,” Mackenzie said.
“I’ll drop you off over there; you can stay in camp tonight with Charley and Joan. Tomorrow I’ll come back and take you out to Dad Frazer’s camp, and you can begin your schoolin’ for the makin’ of a master. But begin early to discourage her, John; begin at her early, lad.”
CHAPTER VI
EYES IN THE FIRELIGHT
“They call it the lonesomeness here,” said Joan, her voice weary as with the weight of the day. “People shoot themselves when they get it bad––green sheepherders and farmers that come in here to try to plow up the range.”
“Crazy guys,” said Charley, contemptuously, chin in his hands where he stretched full length on his belly beside the embers of the supper fire.
“Homesick,” said Mackenzie, understandingly. “I’ve heard it’s one of the worst of all diseases. It defeats armies sometimes, so you can’t blame a lone sheepherder if he loses his mind on account of it.”