So it was out, and from his own mouth, and all his reserve was nothing, and his silent pledging but as an idle word. Joan was looking at him with wide and serious eyes. "Earl Reid?" "Earl Reid," he nodded. "I'd be a coward to give you up to him." Joan was not trembling now. She put her free hand over Mackenzie's where it gripped her fingers so hard that Earl Reid might have been on the opposite side of her, trying to rive her away from him by force; she looked up into his eyes and smiled. And there were flecks of golden brown in Joan's eyes, like flakes of metal from her rich hair. They seemed to increase, and to sparkle like jewels struck through placid water by strong sunbeams as she looked up into his face. "I thought dad had made some kind of a deal with him," she said, nodding in her wise way, a truant strand of hair on her calm forehead. "They didn't tell me anything, but I knew from the way dad looked at me out of the corners of his eyes that he had a trade of some kind on. Tell me about it, John." There was no explanation left to Mackenzie but the degrading truth, and he gave it to her as Tim Sullivan had given it to him. "They had their nerve!" said Joan, flushed with resentment. "It's all off, as far as it affects you and me," Mackenzie said, fetching his brows together in a frown of denial. "Reid can't have you, not even if he comes into two million when the old man dies." "No," said Joan softly, her hand stroking his, her eyes downcast, the glow of the new-old dawn upon her cheek; "there's only room for one Jacob on this range." "I thought I owed it to Reid, as a matter of honor between men, to step aside and let him have you, according to the plan. But that was a mistake. A man can't pay his debts by robbing his heart that way." "I saw something was holding you back, John," said the wise Joan. Mackenzie started as if she had thrust him with a needle, felt his telltale blood flare red in his face, but grinned a little as he turned to her, meeting her eye to eye. "So, you saw through me, did you, Joan?" "When you called me Rachel that day." "I nearly told you that time," he sighed. "You might have, John," said she, a bit accusingly; "you didn't owe him anything then--that was before he came." "I respected you too much to take advantage of your coming to me that way for your lessons day by day, Joan. I had to fight to keep it back." "I tried to pull it out of you," Joan said, as serious as a penitent, although there was a smile breaking on her lips as she turned her face away. "I'd never want to do anything, or say anything, that would lower your respect for me one little degree, Joan," he said, still clinging to her hand as though he feared he had not quite won her, and must hold her fast by his side for the final word. "I know you wouldn't, John," said she, her voice shaking a little, and low beneath her breath.