“Maybe he’s not accountable to anybody, and doesn’t have to explain.”
“I guess that’s right,” Joan said, still wandering in her gaze.
Below them the flock was spread, the dogs on its flanks. Mackenzie pointed to the sun.
“We’ll have to get to work; you’ll be starting back in an hour.”
But there was no work in Joan that day, nothing but troubled speculation on what form Hector Hall’s revenge would take, and when the stealthy blow of his resentment would fall. Try as he would, Mackenzie could not fasten her mind upon the books. She would begin with a brave resolution, only to wander away, the book closed presently upon her thumb, her eyes searching the hazy hills where trouble lay out of sight. At last she gave it up, with a little catching sob, tears in her honest eyes.
“They’ll kill you––I know they will!” she said.
“I don’t think they will,” he returned, abstractedly, “but even if they do, Rachel, there’s nobody to grieve.”
“Rachel? My name isn’t Rachel,” said Joan, a little hurt. For it was not in flippancy or banter that he had called her out of her name; his eyes were not within a hundred leagues of that place, his heart away with them, it seemed, when he spoke.
He turned to her, a color of embarrassment in his brown face.