If it was the lonesomeness, Mackenzie thought, it was taking a mighty peculiar turn in that fellow. He was more like a cub that was beginning to find itself, and bristle and snarl and turn to bite the hand that had fended it through its helpless stage. Perhaps it would pass in a little while, or perhaps it would get worse on him. In the latter case there would be no living on the range with Reid, for on the range Mackenzie believed Reid was destined to remain. He had been trying to borrow money to get away, with what view in his dissatisfied head Mackenzie could not guess. He hadn't got it; he wouldn't get it. Those who had fattened on him in his prosperity were strangers to him in his time of penance and disgrace. Mackenzie put off his start to Dad's camp until dusk, knowing the old man would prefer to take the road at night, after his mysterious way. He probably would hoof it over to Sullivan's and borrow a buckboard to make a figure in before the widow-lady upon whom he had anchored his variable heart. Reid was bringing in the sheep when Mackenzie left, too far away for a word. Mackenzie thought of going down to him, for he disliked to part with anything like a shadow between them, feeling that he owed Reid a great debt indeed. More than that, he liked the kid, for there seemed to be a streak of good in him that all his ugly moods could not cover. But he went his way over the hills toward Dad's camp, the thought persisting in him that he would, indeed, be thirty minutes nearer Joan. And it was a thought that made his heart jump and a gladness burn in his eyes, and his feet move onward with a swift eagerness. But only as a teacher with a lively interest in his pupil, he said; only that, and nothing more. On a hilltop a little way beyond his camp he stopped suddenly, his breath held to listen. Over the calm, far-carrying silence of the early night there came the sound of a woman singing, and this was the manner of her song: _Na-a-fer a-lo-o-one, na-a-fer a-lone. He promise na-fer to leafe me, Na-fer to leafe me a-lone!_ CHAPTER XV ONLY ONE JACOB Joan came riding over the next morning from Reid's camp, not having heard of Mackenzie's shift to oblige Dad Frazer. She was bareheaded, the sun in her warm hair, hat hanging on her saddle-horn. "Dad might have come by and told me," she said, flinging to the ground as lightly as a swallow. "It would have saved us half an hour." "We'll have to work harder to make it up," Mackenzie told her, thinking how much more a woman she was growing every day. Joan was distrait again that day, her eyes fixed often in dreamy speculation as her teacher explained something that she found hard, against her wonted aptness, to understand. When the rather disjointed lesson came to an end Joan sighed, strapping her books in a way that seemed to tell that she was weary of them.