Dad Frazer came over the hills next morning after the dew was gone. Mackenzie saw him from afar, and was interested to note that he was not alone. That is to say, not immediately accompanied by anybody, yet not alone for a country where a quarter of a mile between men is rather close company.

Somebody was coming on after the old shepherd, holding about the same distance behind him in spite of little dashes down slopes that Dad made when for a moment out of sight. Mackenzie’s wonder over this peculiar behavior grew as the old man came near, and it was discovered to the eye that his persistent shadow was a woman.

Dad wasted neither words nor breath on his explanation when he came panting up the slope that brought him to the place where Mackenzie stood above his sheep.

“It’s that dad-burned Rabbit!” he said.

There was something between vexation and respect in Dad’s voice. He turned to look back as he spoke. Rabbit had mounted the hilltop just across the dip, where she stood looking over at her shifty-footed lord, two sheep-dogs at her side.

“How did she locate you?” Mackenzie inquired, not in the least displeased over this outreaching of justice after the fickle old man.

“She’s been trailin’ me four years!” Dad whispered, 196 his respect for Rabbit’s powers on the scent unmistakable.

“That’s a long time to hold a cold trail. Rabbit must be some on the track!”

“You can’t beat them Indians follerin’ a man if they set their heads to it. Well, it’s all off with the widow-lady at Four Corners now––Rabbit’s got me nailed. You see them sheep-dogs? Them dogs they’d jump me the minute Rabbit winked at ’em––they’d chaw me up like a couple of lions. She’s raised ’em up to do it, dad-burn her! Had my old vest to learn ’em the scent.”

“A man never ought to leave his old vest behind him when he runs away from his wife,” said Mackenzie, soberly. “But it looks to me like a woman with the sticking qualities Rabbit’s got isn’t a bad one to stay married to. How in the world could a reservation squaw find her way around to follow you all this time?”

“She’s educated, dang her; she went to the sisters’ mission. She can read and write a sight better than me. She’s too smart for a squaw, bust her greasy eyes! Yes, and I’ll never dast to lay a hand on her with them dogs around. They’d chaw me up quicker’n a man could hang up his hat.”

Rabbit composed herself after her patient but persistent way, sitting among the bushes with only her head showing, waiting for Dad’s next move.

“You’re married to her regularly, are you, Dad?”

“Priest marriage, dang it all!” said Dad, hopelessly.

“Then it is all off with the one-eyed widow.”

“Yes, and them four thousand sheep, and that range all under fence, dang my melts!”

“What are you going to do about Rabbit?”

“It ain’t what am I goin’ to do about her, John, but what she’s goin’ to do about me. She’ll never leave me out of her sight a minute as long as I live. I reckon I’ll have to stay right here and run sheep for Tim, and that widow-lady wonderin’ why I don’t show up!”

“You might do worse, Dad.”

“Yes, I reckon I might. Rabbit she’s as good as any man on the range handlin’ sheep, she can draw a man’s pay wherever she goes. I guess I could put her to work, and that’d help some.”

Dad brightened a bit at that prospect, and drew his breath with a new hope. Even with the widow gone from his calculations, the future didn’t promise all loss.

“But I bet you I’ll shoot them two dogs the first time I can draw a bead on ’em!” Dad declared.

“Maybe if you’ll treat Rabbit the right way she’ll sell them. Call her over, Dad; I’d like to get acquainted with her.”

Dad beckoned with his hand, but Rabbit did not stir; waved his hat to emphasize his command; Rabbit remained quiet among the bushes, the top of her black head in plain view.

“She’s afraid we’ve hatched up some kind of a trick between us to work off on her,” said Dad.

“You can’t blame her for being a little distrustful, Dad. But let her go; I’ll meet her at your camp one of these days.”

“Yes, you’ll meet her over there, all right, for she’s goin’ to stick to me till I’m under ground. That’s one time too many I married––just one time too many!”

“I suppose a man can overdo it; I’ve heard it said.”

“If I hadn’t ’a’ left that blame vest!”

“Yes, that seems to be where you blundered. You’ll know better next time, Dad.”

“Yes, but there never will be no next time,” Dad sighed.

“Have you seen Reid over your way this morning?”

“No, I ain’t seen him. Is he still roamin’ and restless?”

“He left yesterday; I thought he was going to the ranch.”

“Didn’t pass my way. That feller’s off, I tell you, John; he’s one of the kind that can’t stand the lonesomeness. Leave him out here alone two months, and he’d put a bullet in his eye.”

“It seems to me like it’s a land of daftness,” Mackenzie said.

“You’ll find a good many cracked people all over the sheep country––I’m kind o’ cracked myself. I must be, or I never would ’a’ left that vest.”

Dad took off his hat to smooth his sweeping curled locks, as white as shredded asbestos, and full of the same little gleams that mineral shows when a block of it from the mine is held in the sun. His beard was whitening over his face again, like a frost that defied the heat of day, easing its hollows and protuberances, easing some of the weakness that the barber’s razor had laid so pitilessly bare. In a few days more he would appear himself again, and be ready for the sheep-shears in due time.

“I reckon I’ll have to make the best of the place I’m 199 in, but for a man of puncture, as the feller said, like I used to think I was, I sure did miscombobble it when I married that educated squaw. No woman I ever was married to in my life ever had sense enough to track a man like that woman’s follered me. She sure is a wonder on the scent.”

Patiently Rabbit was sitting among the bushes, waiting the turn of events, not to be fooled again, not to be abandoned, if vigilance could insure her against such distress. Mackenzie’s admiration for the woman grew with Dad’s discomfiture over his plight. There was an added flavor of satisfaction for him in the old man’s blighted career. Wise Rabbit, to have a priest marriage, and wiser still to follow this old dodger of the sheeplands and bring him up with a short halter in the evening of his days.

“I’ll go on back and look after them sheep,” said Dad, with a certain sad inflection of resignation; “there’s nothing else to be done. I was aimin’ to serve notice on Tim to find another man in my place, but I might as well keep on. Well, I can set in the shade, anyhow, and let Rabbit do the work––her and them blame dogs.”

Dad sighed. It helped a great deal to know that Rabbit could do the work. He looked long toward the spot where his unshaken wife kept her watch on him, but seemed to be looking over her head, perhaps trying to measure all he had lost by this coming between him and the one-eyed widow-lady of Four Corners.

“I wonder if I could git you to write a letter over to that widow and tell her I’m dead?” he asked.

“I’ll do it if you want me to. But you’re not dead yet, Dad––you may outlive Rabbit and marry the widow at last.”

“I never was no lucky man,” said Dad, smoothing his gleaming hair. “A man that’s married and nailed down to one place is the same as dead; he might as well be in his grave. If I’d ’a’ got that widow-lady I’d ’a’ had the means and the money to go ridin’ around and seein’ the sights from the end of one of them cars with a brass fence around it. But I’m nailed down now, John; I’m cinched.”

Dad was so melancholy over his situation that he went off without more words, a thing unheard of for him. He gave Rabbit a wide fairway as he passed. When he was a respectable distance ahead the squaw rose from her bush and followed, such determination in her silent movements as to make Dad’s hope for future freedom hollow indeed. The old man was cinched at last; Mackenzie was glad that it was so.

The sound of Carlson’s sheep was still near that morning, and coming nearer, as whoever attended them ranged them slowly along. Mackenzie went a little way across the hill in that direction, but could not see the shepherd, although the sheep were spread on the slope just before him. It was a small flock, numbering not above seven hundred. Mackenzie was puzzled why Swan wanted to employ his own or his wife’s time in grazing so small a number, when four times as many could be handled as easily.

This question was to be answered for him very soon, and in a way which he never had imagined. Yet there 201 was no foreboding of it in the calm noonday as he prepared his dinner in the shade of some welcome willows, the heat glimmering over the peaceful hills.

It was while Mackenzie sat dozing in the fringe of shade such as a hedge would cast at noonday that the snarl of fighting dogs brought him up to a realization of what was going forward among the sheep. His own flock had drifted like a slow cloud to the point of the long ridge, and there Swan Carlson’s band had joined it. The two flocks were mingling now, and on the edge of the confused mass his own dogs and Carlson’s were fighting.

Swan was not in sight; nobody seemed to be looking after the sheep; it appeared as if they had been left to drift as they might to this conjunction with Mackenzie’s flock. Mackenzie believed Mrs. Carlson had abandoned her charge and fled Swan’s cruelty, but he did not excuse himself for his own stupidity in allowing the flocks to come together as he ran to the place where his dogs and Carlson’s fought.

The sheep were becoming more hopelessly mingled through this commotion on their flank. Mackenzie was beating the enraged dogs apart when Swan Carlson came running around the point of the hill.

Swan immediately took part in the mÊlÉe of gnashing, rolling, rearing dogs, laying about among them with impartial hand, quickly subduing them to obedience. He stood looking stonily at Mackenzie, unmoved by anger, unflushed by exertion. In that way he stood silent a little while, his face untroubled by any passion that rolled in his breast.

“You’re runnin’ your sheep over on my grass––what?” said Swan.

“You’re a mile over my range,” Mackenzie accused.

“You’ve been crowdin’ over on me for a month,” Swan said, “and I didn’t say nothing. But when a man tries to run his sheep over amongst mine and drive ’em off, I take a hand.”

“If anybody’s tryin’ such a game as that, it’s you,” Mackenzie told him. “Get ’em out of here, and keep ’em out.”

“I got fifteen hundred in that band––you’ll have to help me cut ’em out,” said Swan.

“You had about seven hundred,” Mackenzie returned, dispassionately, although it broke on him suddenly what the big flockmaster was trying to put through.

Counting on Mackenzie’s greenness, and perhaps on the simplicity of his nature as they had read it in the sheep country, Swan had prepared this trap days ahead. He had run a small band of the same breed as Sullivan’s sheep––for that matter but one breed was extensively grown on the range––over to the border of Tim’s lease with the intention of mingling them and driving home more than he had brought. Mackenzie never had heard of the trick being worked on a green herder, but he realized now how simply it could be done, opportunity such as this presenting.

But it was one thing to bring the sheep over and another thing to take them away. One thing Mackenzie was sure of, and that was the judgment of his eyes in numbering sheep. That had been Dad Frazer’s first lesson, and the old man had kept him at it until he 203 could come within a few head among hundreds at a glance.

“I’ll help you cut out as many as you had,” Mackenzie said, running his eyes over the mingled flocks, “they’re all alike, one as good as another, I guess. It looks like you got your stock from this ranch, anyhow, but you’ll not take more than seven hundred this trip.”

“My dogs can cut mine out, they know ’em by the smell,” Swan said. “I had fifteen hundred, and I bet you I’ll take fifteen hundred back.”

The dogs had drawn off, each set behind their respective masters, panting, eyeing each other with hostility, one rising now and then with growls, threatening to open the battle again. The sheep drifted about in confusion, so thoroughly mingled now that it would be past human power to separate them again and apportion each respective head to its rightful owner.

“Seven hundred, at the outside,” Mackenzie said again. “And keep them off of my grass when you get ’em.”

Carlson stood where he had stopped, ten feet or more distant, his arms bare, shirt open on his breast in his way of picturesque freedom. Mackenzie waited for him to proceed in whatever way he had planned, knowing there could be no compromise, no settlement in peace. He would either have to yield entirely and allow Carlson to drive off seven or eight hundred of Sullivan’s sheep, or fight. There didn’t seem to be much question on how it would come out in the latter event, for Carlson was not armed, and Mackenzie’s pistol was that moment under his hand.

“You got a gun on you,” said Swan, in casual, disinterested tone. “I ain’t got no gun on me, but I’m a better man without no gun than you are with one. I’m goin’ to take my fifteen hundred sheep home with me, and you ain’t man enough to stop me.”

Carlson’s two dogs were sitting close behind him, one of them a gaunt gray beast that seemed almost a purebred wolf. Its jaws were bloody from its late encounter; flecks of blood were on its gray coat. It sat panting and alert, indifferent to Mackenzie’s presence, watching the sheep as if following its own with its savage eyes. Suddenly Carlson spoke an explosive word, clapping his great hands, stamping his foot toward Mackenzie.

Mackenzie fired as the wolf-dog sprang, staggering back from the weight of its lank body hurled against his breast, and fired again as he felt the beast’s vile breath in his face as it snapped close to his throat.

Mackenzie emptied his pistol in quick, but what seemed ineffectual, shots at the other dog as it came leaping at Carlson’s command. In an instant he was involved in a confusion of man and dog, the body of the wolfish collie impeding his feet as he fought.

Carlson and the other dog pressed the attack so quickly that Mackenzie had no time to slip even another cartridge into his weapon. Carlson laughed as he clasped him in his great arms, the dog clinging to Mackenzie’s pistol hand, and in a desperate moment it was done. Mackenzie was lying on his back, the giant sheepman’s knee in his chest.

Carlson did not speak after ordering the dog away. He held Mackenzie a little while, hand on his throat, 205 knee on his chest, looking with unmoved features down into his eyes, as if he considered whether to make an end of him there or let him go his way in added humiliation and disgrace. Mackenzie lay still under Carlson’s hand, trying to read his intention in his clear, ice-cold, expressionless eyes, watching for his moment to renew the fight which he must push under such hopeless disadvantage.

Swan’s eyes betrayed nothing of his thoughts. They were as calm and untroubled as the sky, which Mackenzie thought, with a poignant sweep of transcendant fear for his life, he never had beheld so placid and beautiful as in that dreadful moment.

Carlson’s huge fingers began to tighten in the grip of death; relax, tighten, each successive clutch growing longer, harder. The joy of his strength, the pleasure in the agony that spoke from his victim’s face, gleamed for a moment in Carlson’s eyes as he bent, gazing; then flickered like a light in the wind, and died.

Mackenzie’s revolver lay not more than four feet from his hand. He gathered his strength for a struggle to writhe from under Carlson’s pressing knee. Carlson, anticipating his intention, reached for the weapon and snatched it, laying hold of it by the barrel.

Mackenzie’s unexpected renewal of the fight surprised Carlson into releasing his strangling hold. He rose to sitting posture, breast to breast with the fighting sheepman, whose great bulk towered above him, free breath in his nostrils, fresh hope in his heart. He fought desperately to come to his feet, Carlson sprawling over him, the pistol lifted high for a blow.

Mackenzie’s hands were clutching Carlson’s throat, he was on one knee, swaying the Norseman’s body back in the strength of despair, when the heavens seemed to crash above him, the fragments of universal destruction burying him under their weight.