“Huh!” said Charley, no sympathy in him for such weakness at all.
“I guess not,” Joan admitted, thoughtfully. “I was brought up here, it’s home to me. Maybe I’d get the lonesomeness if I was to go away.”
“You sure would, kid,” said Charley, with comfortable finality.
“But I want to go, just the same,” Joan declared, a certain defiance in her tone, as if in defense of a question often disputed between herself and Charley.
“You think you do,” said Charley, “but you’d hit the high places comin’ back home. Ain’t that right, Mr. Mackenzie?”
“I think there’s something to it,” Mackenzie allowed.
“Maybe I would,” Joan yielded, “but as soon as my share in the sheep figures up enough you’ll see me hittin’ the breeze for Chicago. I want to see the picture galleries and libraries.”
“I’d like to go through the mail-order house we get our things from up there,” Charley said. “The catalogue says it covers seventeen acres!”
Mackenzie was camping with them for the night on his way to Dad Frazer’s range, according to Tim Sullivan’s plan. Long since they had finished supper; the sheep were quiet below them on the hillside. The silence of the sheeplands, almost oppressive in its weight, lay around them so complete and unbroken that Mackenzie fancied he could hear the stars snap as they sparkled. He smiled to himself at the fancy, face turned up to the deep serenity of the heavens. Charley blew the embers, stirring them with a brush of sage.