"But what do you suppose he was tryin' to pull off on me, John, bringing me out here on the pretense you'd been all shot up in the fight with Hector Hall and wanted me?" "I don't know, Joan," Mackenzie said, lying like the "kind of a gentleman" he was. "I thought maybe the little fool wanted to make me marry him so he could get some money out of dad." "Maybe that was it, Joan; I pass it up." "Dad Frazer says Earl was crazy from the lonesomeness and killing Matt Hall." "I think he must have been, Joan. It's over--let's forget it if we can." "Yes, you haven't done a thing but fight since you struck this range," Joan sighed. Mackenzie was lying up in Rabbit's hospital again, undergoing treatment for the bullet wound in his thigh. He had arrived at Dad Frazer's camp at sunrise, weak from the drain of his hurt, to find Joan waiting for him on the rise of the hill. She hurried him into Rabbit's hands, leaving explanations until later. They had come to the end of them now. But Mackenzie made the reservation of Reid's atrocious, insane scheme in bringing Joan from home on the pretext that the schoolmaster had fallen wounded to death in the fight with Hector Hall, and lay calling for her with his wasting breath. Mackenzie knew that it was better for her faith in mankind for all her future years, and for the peace of her soul, that she should never know. "My dad was here a little while ago--he's gone over to put a man in to take care of your sheep, but he'll be along back here this evening. He wants to talk some business with you, he said." "Well, we're ready for him, Joan," Mackenzie said. And the look that passed between them, and the smile that lighted their lips, told that their business had been talked and disposed of already, let Tim Sullivan propose what he might. "I'll leave it to you, John," said Joan, blushing a little, her eyes downcast in modesty, but smiling and smiling like a growing summer day. Tim Sullivan arrived toward evening, entering the sheep-wagon softly, his loud tongue low in awe for this fighting man. "How are you, John? How are you, lad?" he whispered, coming on his toes to the cot, his face as expressive of respect as if he had come into the presence of the dead. Mackenzie grinned over this great mark of respect in the flockmaster of Poison Creek. "I'm all right," he said. Tim sat on an upended box, leaning forward, hat between his knees, mouth open a bit, looking at Mackenzie as if he had come face to face with a miracle. "You're not hurted much, lad?" he inquired, lifting his voice a little, the wonder of it gradually passing away. "Not much. I'll be around again in nine or ten days, Rabbit says." "You will," said Tim, eloquently decisive, as though his heart emptied itself of a great responsibility, "you will that, and as good as a new man!" "She's better than any doctor I ever saw." "She is that!" said Tim, "and cheaper, too."