Dad Frazer had gone away unconvinced, unshaken in his belief that it was a grizzly. Tim Sullivan had come over with the same opinion, no word of doubt in his mouth. But Mackenzie knew that when he should meet that wild night-prowler he would face a thing more savage than a bear, a thing as terrible to grapple with as the saber-tooth whose bones lay deep under the hills of that vast pasture-land. CHAPTER X WILD RIDERS OF THE RANGE Joan missed her lessons for three days running, a lapse so unusual as to cause Mackenzie the liveliest concern. He feared that the mad creature who spent his fury tearing sheep limb from limb might have visited her camp, and that she had fallen into his bloody hands. A matter of eight or nine miles lay between their camps; Mackenzie had no horse to cover it. More than once he was on the point of leaving the sheep to shift for themselves and striking out on foot; many times he walked a mile or more in that direction, to mount the highest hill he could discover, and stand long, sweeping the blue distance with troubled eyes. Yet in the end he could not go. Whatever was wrong, he could not set right at that late hour, he reasoned; to leave the sheep would be to throw open the gates of their defense to dangers always ready to descend upon them. The sheep were in his care; Joan was not. That was what Tim Sullivan would say, in his hard way of holding a man to his bargain and his task. Joan came late in the afternoon, rising the nearest hilltop with a suddenness quite startling, waving a cheerful greeting as if to assure him from a distance that all was well. She stood looking at him in amazement when she flipped to the ground like a bird, her face growing white, her eyes big. "Well, what in the world! Where did you get those guns?" she said. "A fellow left them here the other day." "A fellow?" coming nearer, looking sharply at the belt. "That's Hector Hall's belt--I've seen him wearing it! There his initials are, worked out in silver tacks! Where did you get it?" "Mr. Hall left it here. What kept you, Joan? I've been worried about you." "Hector Hall _left_ it here? With both of his guns?" "Yes, he left the guns with it. What was the matter, Joan?" Joan looked him up and down, her face a study between admiration and fear. "Left his guns! Well, what did you do with _him_?" "I suppose he went home, Joan. Did anything happen over your way to keep you?" "Charley was sick," she said, shortly, abstractedly, drowned in her wonder of the thing he told with his native reluctance when questioned on his own exploits. "Did you have a fight with Hector?" "Is he all right now?" "Charley's all right; he ate too many wild gooseberries. Did you have a fight with Hector Hall, Mr. Mackenzie?"