“He goes away every so often,” Joan explained, “to see his Mexican wife down around El Paso somewhere.”
“Oh, that explains it. He didn’t mention her to me.”
“He will, all right. He’ll cut out to see her in a little while, more than likely, but he’ll come drifting back with the shearers in the spring like he always does. It seems to me like everybody comes back to the sheep country that’s ever lived in it a while. I wonder if I’d want to come back, too?”
It was a speculation upon which Mackenzie did not feel called to make comment. Time alone would prove to Joan where her heart lay anchored, as it proves to all who go wandering in its own bitter way at last.
“I don’t seem to want to go away as long as I’m learning something,” Joan confessed, a little ashamed of the admission, it appeared, from her manner of refusing to lift her head.
Mackenzie felt a great uplifting in his heart, as a song cheers it when it comes gladly at the close of a day of perplexity and doubt and toil. He reached out his hand as if to touch her and tell her how this dawning of his hope made him glad, but withdrew it, dropping it at his side as she looked up, a lively color in her cheeks.
“As long as you’ll stay and teach me, there isn’t any particular use for me to leave, is there?” she inquired.
“If staying here would keep you, Joan, I’d never leave,” he told her, his voice so grave and earnest that it trembled a little on the low notes.
Joan drew her breath again with that long inspiration which was like a satisfied sigh.