“I don’t see how I’m to keep him from knowing it,” Mackenzie said, “and I don’t see why he shouldn’t know. He’d have been out a cheap herder if it hadn’t been for you.”
“No, you mustn’t tell him, you mustn’t let anybody know I was here, John,” she said, lifting her eyes to his in an appeal far stronger than words. “It wouldn’t do for dad––for anybody––to know I was here. You don’t need to say anything about them tying––doing––that.”
Joan shuddered again in that chilling, horrified way, turning from him to hide what he believed he had read in her words and face before.
It was not because she feared to have her father know she had come riding to his rescue in the last hours of 126 her troubled night; not because she feared his censure or his anger, or wanted to conceal her deed for reasons of modesty from anyone. Only to spare him the humiliation of having his failure known, Mackenzie understood. That was her purpose, and her sole purpose, in seeking his pledge to secrecy.
It would hurt him to have it go abroad that he had allowed them to sneak into his camp, seize him, disarm him, bind him, and set the fire that was to make ashes of him for the winds to blow away. It would do for him with Tim Sullivan entirely if that should become known, with the additional humiliation of being saved from this shameful death by a woman. No matter how immeasurable his own gratitude, no matter how wide his own pride in her for what she had done, the sheep country never would be able to see it with his eyes. It would be another smirch for him, and such a deep one as to obscure him and his chances there forever.
Joan knew it. In her generosity, her interest for his future, she wanted her part in it to remain unknown.
“You must promise me, John,” she said. “I’ll never come to take another lesson unless you promise me.”
“I promise you, God bless you, Joan!” said he.