"Do you still think you'll stick to the sheep business, John?" she asked, not lifting her eyes to his face, all out of her frank and earnest way of questioning. "I'm only on probation, you know, Joan; something might happen between now and this time next year to change things all around. There's a chance, anyhow, that I may not make good." "No, nothing will ever happen to change it," said Joan, shaking her head sadly. "Nothing that ought to happen ever happens here. I don't know whether I can stand it to carry out my contract with dad or not. Three years between me and what I'm longing for!" "It's not very long when one's young, Joan. Well, I don't know of any short cuts to either fame or fortune, or I'd have taken them myself." "Yes, but you're free to pick up and go whenever you want to. A man don't have to have money to strike out and see the world--I don't see why a woman should. I could work my way as well as anybody." "They're harder masters out there than the range is to you here, Joan. And there's the insolence of mastery, and the obloquy of poverty and situation that I hope you'll never feel. Wait a little while longer with the probationers among the sheep." "Earl never will stay it out," she said, lifting her eyes for a moment to his. "He's sick of it now--he'd throw everything over if he had the money to get away." "He'd be a very foolish young man, then. But it's like breaking off smoking, I guess, to quit the things you've grown up with on short notice like he had." "Maybe in about a year more my interest will amount to enough to let me out," said Joan, pursuing her thought of winning to freedom in the way she had elected. She seemed innocent of any knowledge of the arrangement whereby Earl Reid was working for his reward. Mackenzie wondered if it could be so. "If dad'll buy me out then," she said, speculatively, doubtfully, carrying on her thought in a disjointed way. "It would be like him to turn me down, though, if I want to quit before my time's up. And he wouldn't let me divide the sheep and sell my share to anybody else." No, Joan could not yet know of Tim's arrangement with Earl Reid's father. It would be like Tim, indeed, to bargain her off without considering her in the matter at all. To a man like Tim his sons and daughters were as much his chattels as his sheep, kind as he was in his way. The apprenticeship of Joan to the range was proof of that. Somewhere out in that gray loneliness two younger daughters were running sheep, with little brothers as protectors and companions, beginning their adventures and lessons in the only school they were ever likely to know.