“Why do they always begin the conjugations on love?”

There was no perplexity in Joan’s eyes as she asked the question; rather, a dreamy and far-away look, the open book face-downward on the ground beside her.

“Because it’s a good example of the first termination, I suppose,” Mackenzie replied, his eyes measuring off the leagues with her own, as if they together sought the door that opened out of that gray land into romance that quiet summer afternoon.

“It was that way in the Spanish grammar,” said Joan, shaking her head, unconvinced by the reason he advanced. “There are plenty of words in the first termination that are just as short. Why? You’re the teacher; you ought to know.”

She said it banteringly, as if she dared him to give the reason. His eyes came back from their distant groping, meeting hers with gentle boldness. So for a little while he looked silently into her appealing eyes, then turned away.

“Maybe, Joan, because it is the easiest lesson to learn and the hardest to forget,” he said.

Joan bent her gaze upon the ground, a flush tinting her brown face, plucking at the grass with aimless fingers.

“Anyway, we’ve passed it,” said she.

“No, it recurs all through the book; it’s something that can’t be left out of it, any more than it can be left out of life. Well, it doesn’t need to trouble you and me.”

“No; we could use some other word,” said Joan, turning her face away.

“But mean the same, Joan. I had an old maid English teacher when I was a boy who made us conjugate to like instead of the more intimate and tender word. Poor old soul! I hope it saved her feelings and eased her regrets.”

“Maybe she’d had a romance,” said Joan.

“I hope so; there’s at least one romance coming to every woman in this world. If she misses it she’s being cheated.”

Mackenzie took up the Latin grammar, marking off her next lesson, and piling it on with unsparing hand, too. Yet not in accord with Tim Sullivan’s advice; solely because his pupil was one of extraordinary capacity. There was no such thing as discouraging Joan; she absorbed learning and retained it, as the sandstone absorbs oil under the pressure of the earth, holding it without wasting a drop until the day it gladdens man in his exploration.

So with Joan. She was storing learning in the undefiled reservoir of her mind, to be found like unexpected jewels by some hand in after time. As she followed the sheep she carried her books; at night, long after Charley had gone to sleep, she sat with them by the lantern light in the sheep-wagon. Unspoiled by the diversions and distractions which divide the mind of the city student, 69 she acquired and held a month’s tasks in a week. The thirsty traveler in the desert places had come to the oasis of her dreams.

Daily Joan rode to the sheep-camp where Mackenzie was learning the business of running sheep under Dad Frazer. There were no holidays in the term Joan had set for herself, no unbending, no relaxation from her books. Perhaps she did not expect her teacher to remain there in the sheeplands, shut away from the life that he had breathed so long and put aside for what seemed to her an unaccountable whim.

“You’ll be reading Caesar by winter,” Mackenzie told her as she prepared to ride back to her camp. “You’ll have to take it slower then; we can’t have lessons every day.”

“Why not?” She was standing beside her horse, hat in hand, her rich hair lifting in the wind from her wise, placid brow. Her books she had strapped to the saddle-horn; there was a yellow slicker at the cantle.

“You’ll be at home, I’ll be out here with the sheep. I expect about once a week will be as often as we can make it then.”

“I’ll be out here on the range,” she said, shaking her determined head, “a sheepman’s got to stick with his flock through all kinds of weather. If I run home for the winter I’ll have to hire a herder, and that would eat my profits up; I’d never get away from here.”

“Maybe by the time you’ve got enough money to carry out your plans, Joan, you’ll not want to leave.”

“You’ve got to have education to be able to enjoy money. Some of the sheepmen in this country––yes, 70 most of them––would be better men if they were poor. Wealth is nothing to them but a dim consciousness of a new power. It makes them arrogant and unbearable. Did you ever see Matt Hall?”

“I still have that pleasure in reserve. But I think you’ll find it’s refinement, rather than learning, that a person needs to enjoy wealth. That comes more from within than without.”

“The curtain’s down between me and everything I want,” Joan said, a wistful note of loneliness in her low, soft voice. “I’m going to ride away some day and push it aside, and see what it’s been keeping from me all the years of my longing. Then, maybe, when I’m satisfied I’ll come back and make money. I’ve got sense enough to see it’s here to be made if a person’s got the sheep to start with and the range to run them on.”

“Yes, you’ll have to go,” said he, in what seemed sad thoughtfulness, “to learn it all; I can’t teach you the things your heart desires most to know. Well, there are bitter waters and sweet waters, Joan; we’ve got to drink them both.”

“It’s the same way here,” she said, “only we’ve got sense enough to know the alkali holes before we drink out of them.”

“But people are not that wise the world over, Joan.”

Joan stood in silent thought, her far-reaching gaze on the dim curtain of haze which hung between her and the world of men’s activities, strivings, and lamentations.

“If I had the money I’d go as soon––as soon as I knew a little more,” she said. “But I’ve got to stick; I made that bargain with dad––he’d never give me the 71 money, but he’ll buy me out when I’ve got enough to stake me.”

“Your father was over this morning.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He thinks my education’s advanced far enough to trust me with a band of sheep. I’m going to have charge of the flock I’ve been running here with Dad Frazer.”

“I heard about it.”

“And you don’t congratulate me on becoming a paid sheepherder, my first step on the way to flockmaster!”

“I don’t know that you’re to be congratulated,” she returned, facing him seriously. “All there is to success here is brute strength and endurance against storms and winter weather––it don’t take any brains. Out there where you’ve been and I’m going, there must be something bigger and better for a man, it seems to me. But maybe men get tired of it––I don’t know.”

“You’ll understand it better when you go there, Joan.”

“Yes, I’ll understand a lot of things that are locked up to me now. Well, I don’t want to go as much all the time now as I did––only in spells sometimes. If you stay here and teach me, maybe I’ll get over it for good.”

Joan laughed nervously, half of it forced, her face averted.

“If I could teach you enough to keep you here, Joan, I’d think it was the biggest thing I’d ever done.”

“I don’t want to know any more if it means giving up,” she said.

“It looks like giving up to you, Joan, but I’ve only started,” he corrected her, in gentle spirit.

“I oughtn’t talk that way to you,” she said, turning 72 to him contritely, her earnest eyes lifted to his, “it’s none of my business what you do. If you hadn’t come here I’d never have heard of––of amare, maybe.”

Joan bent her head, a flush over her brown cheeks, a smile of mischief at the corners of her mouth. Mackenzie laughed, but strained and unnaturally, his own tough face burning with a hot tide of mounting blood.

“Somebody else would have taught you––you’d have conjugated it in another language, maybe,” he said.

“Yes, you say it’s the easiest lesson to learn,” she nodded, soberly now. “Have you taught it to many––many––girls?”

“According to the book, Joan,” he returned; “only that way.”

Joan drew a deep breath, and looked away over the hills, and smiled. But she said no more, after the way of one who has relieved the mind on a doubted point.

“I expect I’ll be getting a taste of the lonesomeness here of nights pretty soon,” Mackenzie said, feeling himself in an awkward, yet not unpleasant situation with this frank girl’s rather impertinent question still burning in his heart. “Dad’s going to leave me to take charge of another flock.”

“I’ll try to keep you so busy you’ll not have it very bad,” she said.

“Yes, and you’ll pump your fount of knowledge dry in a hurry if you don’t slow down a little,” he returned. “At the pace you’ve set you’ll have to import a professor to take you along, unless one strays in from somewhere.”

“I don’t take up with strays,” said Joan, rather loftily.

“I think Dad’s getting restless,” Mackenzie said, hastening to cover his mistake.

“He goes away every so often,” Joan explained, “to see his Mexican wife down around El Paso somewhere.”

“Oh, that explains it. He didn’t mention her to me.”

“He will, all right. He’ll cut out to see her in a little while, more than likely, but he’ll come drifting back with the shearers in the spring like he always does. It seems to me like everybody comes back to the sheep country that’s ever lived in it a while. I wonder if I’d want to come back, too?”

It was a speculation upon which Mackenzie did not feel called to make comment. Time alone would prove to Joan where her heart lay anchored, as it proves to all who go wandering in its own bitter way at last.

“I don’t seem to want to go away as long as I’m learning something,” Joan confessed, a little ashamed of the admission, it appeared, from her manner of refusing to lift her head.

Mackenzie felt a great uplifting in his heart, as a song cheers it when it comes gladly at the close of a day of perplexity and doubt and toil. He reached out his hand as if to touch her and tell her how this dawning of his hope made him glad, but withdrew it, dropping it at his side as she looked up, a lively color in her cheeks.

“As long as you’ll stay and teach me, there isn’t any particular use for me to leave, is there?” she inquired.

“If staying here would keep you, Joan, I’d never leave,” he told her, his voice so grave and earnest that it trembled a little on the low notes.

Joan drew her breath again with that long inspiration which was like a satisfied sigh.

“Well, I must go,” she said.

But she did not move, and Mackenzie, drawing nearer, put out his hand in his way of silent appeal again.

“Not that I don’t want you to know what there is out there,” he said, “but because I’d save you the disappointment, the disillusionment, and the heartache that too often go with the knowledge of the world. You’d be better for it if you never knew, living here undefiled like a spring that comes out of the rocks into the sun.”

“Well, I must go,” said Joan, sighing with repletion again, but taking no step toward her waiting horse.

Although it was a moment which seemed full of things to be said, neither had words for it, but stood silently while the day went out in glory around them. Dad Frazer was bringing his murmuring flock home to the bedding-ground on the hillside below the wagon; the wind was low as a lover’s breath, lifting Joan’s russet hair from her pure, placid brow.

And she must go at last, with a word of parting from the saddle, and her hand held out to him in a new tenderness as if going home were a thing to be remembered. And as Mackenzie took it there rose in his memory the lines:

Joan rode away against the sun, which was red upon the hill, and stood for a little moment sharply against the fiery sky to wave him a farewell.

“So easily learned, Joan; so hard to forget,” said Mackenzie, speaking as if he sent his voice after her, a whisper on the wind, although she was half a mile away. A moment more, and the hill stood empty between them. Mackenzie turned to prepare supper for the coming of Dad Frazer, who would complain against books and the nonsense contained in them if the food was not on the board when he came up the hill.