Still Mackenzie hesitated to speak to him, watching him as he went with increasing frequency to the open door to listen. It was not his affair; Joan could not be there. Even if she were there, she must have come for a purpose good and justifiable, and of her own free will. But she was not there, and Reid was waiting for somebody to come. Swan Carlson or his wife, it must be, and what business they had before them in this unrighteous hour Mackenzie could not imagine. But plainly it had nothing to do with Joan.
Mackenzie’s thoughts reverted to the night he came to that cabin among the trees, guided thither by the plaintive melody of Hertha Carlson’s song. What a fool he had been to linger on there that night waiting to see Swan, in the mistaken kindness to the woman the wild fellow had made his slave. If he had gone on that night, leaving the still waters of trouble unstirred, he would have walked in peace through his apprenticeship. Surely his crowding of trouble at Swan Carlson’s door that night was the beginning of it all.
There was that door closed now on the inner room; on that night it stood open, the long chain that bound the Swede’s wife running through it from the staple driven into the log. Mackenzie had not noticed the thickness of the door’s planks that night, or the crudity of its construction. The handiwork of Swan Carlson was proclaimed from that door; it was rough and strong, like himself, without finish, loosely joined. Its planks were oak; great nails in them marked the Z of its brace.
Then Mackenzie turned his eyes upon Reid again. Reid went back to the inner door, pushed it, tried it with his foot. It seemed to be fastened within. Perhaps there was a reason for its strength; maybe Swan kept his crude treasures locked there in that small stronghold of logs while he roamed the range after his sheep. Reid did not appear greatly interested in the door, or what lay behind it. He turned from it almost at once, drew his chair in front of it, sat down, his right hand toward Mackenzie, the lantern light strong on the lower part of his body, his face in shadow from the lantern’s top. Mackenzie quickened with a new interest, a new speculation, when he saw that Reid’s holster hung empty at his belt.
At once Mackenzie decided to speak to Reid, certain that he had been through some misadventure in which he had suffered loss. He drew away from the window, going around the front part of the house to come to the kitchen door, thinking it might be wise to know the way the land lay around those premises.
This part of the house was little larger than the shack of boards that had been built to it. There was no opening in its solid log walls, neither of window or door save alone the door opening into the kitchen. The place was a vault.
Somebody was approaching, riding rapidly up the valley. There was more than one horse, Mackenzie could well make out as he stood at the corner of the house, listening. He saw Reid’s shadow fall in the light that spread through the open door, and turned back to keep his watch at the window.
It was not the moment to offer friendship or sympathy to Reid. Something of Reid’s own brewing was coming to a boil there, some business of his own was drawing to a head in that lonely cabin among the whispering trees.
Reid took up the lantern, stood a moment as if indecisive, placed it on the stove. Not satisfied with the way the light of it struck him there, apparently, he removed it and stood it in a corner. Whoever was coming, Reid did not want it known at a glance that his scabbard was empty. Mackenzie pressed a little nearer the window. When a man prepared for a meeting with that caution, he would do to watch.
Reid went to the open door, where he stood like a host to receive his guests. The riders were among the trees; coming on more slowly. Now they stopped, and Reid turned to light a fresh cigarette. The flash of the match showed his face white, hat pulled down on his brows, his thin, long gamester’s fingers cupped round the blaze.
There fell a moment of silence, no sound of word, no movement of horse or foot upon the ground. Insects among the trees were grinding their scythes for tomorrow’s reaping, it seemed, whirring in loud, harsh chorus such as one never heard out on the grazing lands.
Now the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Reid came back into the room, where he stood drawing a deep breath of smoke like a man drinking to store against a coming thirst. He dropped the cigarette, set his foot on it, crushed it to sparks on the floor.
Swan Carlson was in the door, the light dim on his stern, handsome face. Behind him stood his woman, a white wimple bound on her forehead like a nun.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVIII
SWAN CARLSON LAUGHS
“So, you are here?” said Swan, standing in the door, looking about him as if he had entered an unfamiliar place.
“Didn’t you look for me?” Reid returned. He stood between Carlson and the closed inner door, foot on a rung of the chair in which he lately had sat, his attitude careless, easy.
“A man never knows,” Carlson replied, coming into the room.
Hertha Carlson lingered just outside the door, as if repelled by the recollection of old sufferings there. Swan reached out, grasped her wrist, drew her roughly inside, pointed to a chair. The woman sat down, her eyes distended in fright, her feet drawn close to the chair as if to hide them from the galling chain that she had dragged so many weary months across the floor of her lonely prison.
Swan pulled a chair to the table and sat down, elbows on the board, facing Reid, a question in his attitude, his face, to which he at once gave words:
“Where’s your woman?”
“Where’s the money?” Reid countered, putting out his hand. “You threw me down after I delivered you three hundred sheep––you didn’t come across with a cent––on the plea that one thief couldn’t collect from another. All right, Swan; we’ll forget the sheep deal, but this is another matter. Put your money in my hand; then we’ll talk.”
“Is she in there?” Swan pointed to the door behind Reid, half rising from his chair.
Reid put his hand to his empty holster, his body turned from Carlson to conceal his want of a weapon. Carlson jerked his head in high disdain, resumed his chair, his great hand spread on the table.
Mackenzie stepped back from the window, leveling his pistol at Reid’s head. Joan was the subject of this infamous barter.
A moment Mackenzie’s finger stiffened to send a bullet into Reid’s brain, for he considered only that such depravity was its own warrant of death. But Reid was unarmed, and there was something in his attitude that seemed to disclose that it was a bluff. Joan was not there.
Joan was not there. She would not remain silent and unresisting, shut in a room while a cold-blooded scoundrel bargained to deliver her for a price like a ewe out of his flock. Reid was playing to even the deceit Carlson had put over on him in dealing for the stolen sheep. It was a bluff. Joan was not there.
Mackenzie let down the weapon. It was not the moment for interference; he would allow the evidence to accumulate before passing sentence and executing it with summary hand.
“Come across with the money before we go any further,” said Reid, firm in his manner, defiantly confident in his bearing. “I’ve got to get out of this country before morning.”
“I wouldn’t give five hundred dollars for her,” Swan declared. “How do I know she’d stay with me? She might run off tomorrow if I didn’t have a chain on her.”
Reid said nothing. He backed a little nearer the door as if he had it in mind to call the negotiations off. Swan looked at him with chin thrust forward, neck extended.
“She ain’t here––you’re a liar!” he charged.
“All right; there’s a pair of us, then.”
“I’ve brought my woman––” Swan stretched out his hand to call attention to her where she cowered in her chair––“fixed up to meet you like a bride. Woman for woman, I say; that’s enough for any man.”
“I don’t want your woman, Carlson.”
“You tried to steal her from me; you was lovin’ her over on the range.”
“What do you care? You don’t want her.”
“Sur
e I don’t,” Swan agreed heartily; “if I did I’d ’a’ choked your neck over there that night. Woman for woman, or no trade.”
“That’s not our bargain, Carlson.”
Reid spoke sharply, but with a dry quaver in his voice that betrayed the panic that was coming over him on account of this threatened miscarriage of his plans. Mackenzie was convinced by Reid’s manner that Swan had read him right. Joan was not there.
The thought that Joan would accompany Reid in the night to Swan Carlson’s house on any pretext he could devise in his crafty mind was absurd. It was all a bluff, Reid playing on Swan’s credulity to induce him to hand over the money, when he would make a dash for the door and ride away.
Mackenzie stood close to the window, pistol lifted, thinking it all out between Reid’s last word and Carlson’s next, for the mind can build a castle while the heart is pausing between throbs.
“My woman for yours, that’s a fair trade,” said Swan. “I don’t want to put no money in a wild colt that maybe I couldn’t break. Open the door and bring her to me, and take my woman and go.”
“Nothing doin’,” said Reid, regaining his nonchalance, or at any rate control of his shaking voice.
“You’re a liar, you ain’t got no woman here.”
“She’s in there, all right––come across with the money and take her.”
“How do I know you’ve got any right to make a trade? Have you got the papers to show she’s yours?”
“I’ve got all the papers you’ll ever need.”
“You ain’t got no papers––she’s as much mine as she is yours. Open the door!”
Carlson got up, towering above Reid in his great height. He took off his hat and flung it on the table, stood a little while bending forward in his peculiar loose droop with arms swinging full length at his sides. Reid backed away from him, standing with shoulders against the door as if to deny him passage, hand thrown to his empty holster.
“You ain’t got no gun!” Swan said, triumphantly. “I seen the minute I come in the door you didn’t have no gun. I wouldn’t fight a feller like you––you couldn’t stand up to me like that other feller done here in this house one night.”
Swan looked round the room, the memory of that battle like a light upon his stony face. He stood in silence, turning his head slowly, as if he found a pleasure in the stages of the past battle as recalled to him by the different locations in the place.
“You wanted me to kill that feller so he couldn’t take your woman away from you, didn’t you?” Swan said, contemptuously. “Over there that day me and you made that joke on him runnin’ my sheep over into his. But he didn’t take that joke––what? He stood up to me and fought me like an old bear, and he’d ’a’ whipped me another time if it hadn’t been for them dogs helpin’ me. You bet your hat he would! Yes, and then you come up, and you said to me: ‘Soak him another one!’ And I looked at you, with red in my eyes. ‘Soak him, put him out for good this time!’ you says. And I looked at you another time, my eye as red as blood.
“‘No,’ I says, ‘damn your skin, I’ll not soak him when he’s down, and you’ll not do it, and no man ain’t a goin’ to do it! He’s the only man on this range that can stand up to me,’ I told you, ‘and I’m goin’ to save him to fight!’ That’s what I said to you. Well, he’ll come after me when I take his woman away from him––he’ll come after me so hard he’ll make the ground shake like a train––and he’ll fight me for her, a fight that men will remember! We’ll roar like the wind, him and me, when we stand up and fight for his woman that I took away from him this night.”
Reid drew away from him, seeming to contract upon himself against the door, and whether Swan read it Mackenzie could not tell, but he could see from the window the sickness of fear spread over Reid’s pale face.
“You ain’t got no gun on you,” Swan mocked, taking joy from that moment. “Hell! my old woman can lick you, and I’m goin’ to make her do it. Then I’ll take that feller’s woman away from you and kick you to hell out of here!”
Swan turned to Hertha, who had left her chair on his first threatening move toward Reid. She had advanced a little way into the room, a wild fury in her face against the man who had bargained to bring another woman between her and her fierce, harsh-handed lord. Swan took her by the arm, his hand at her back as if to give her courage.
“Go on––lick him––choke him the way I showed you how to choke a man!”
Swan clapped his hands, stamping his foot sharply, as he had clapped and stamped to urge on the dog against Mackenzie that day they fought on the range. And like a dog that has strained on a leash the woman leaped, flinging herself upon Reid with a wild, high-shrilling cry.
Reid tried to guard his face against her fury, attempted to grapple her arms and hold her. She broke away, clawing his face, screaming her maniacal cry. In a moment they were a whirling tangle of arms, wild-flying hair, swaying bodies bent in fierce attack and desperate defense. The furious creature had Reid by the throat in the grip Swan had taught her, strangling out his life.
Reid clung to her wrists, struggling to tear her hands from his throat, thrashing wildly about before the closed door, his head striking it now as the woman flung him, now his shoulders as she bent him to force him to the floor.
Swan stood by, leaning forward in a pose of deep interest, deep satisfaction, savage enjoyment, his loose-hanging arms at his sides, his long mustaches down beside his mouth. He said nothing to encourage his woman in her mad combat, only seemed waiting the issue, ready to lay his hand to finishing it in the event that she should fail.
The fighting woman, still screaming above the din of their trampling feet, struggled to lift her knee to Reid’s chest. Mackenzie turned from the window to interfere, not caring to see Reid go that way, no matter what sins lay upon his young soul. As he came running to the door, he saw Reid struggle to his feet, tear the mad woman’s hands away, and strike her a sharp blow in the face.
There must have been surprising power in that slender arm, or else its strength was multiplied by the frenzy of the strangling man, for the woman dropped as if she had been struck with an ax. Swan Carlson, standing there like a great oaf, opened his immense mouth and laughed.
Reid staggered against the wall, hands at his throat, blood streaming from his nostrils, bubbling from his lips as he breathed with wide-gasping mouth. He stood so a little while, then collapsed with sudden failing, no strength in him to ease the fall.
Carlson turned to face Mackenzie, his icy mirth spent.
“It’s you?” he said. “Well, by God, it’s a man, anyhow!”
Carlson offered his hand as if in friendship. Mackenzie backed away, watchful of him, hand to his pistol.
“Who’s in that room, Carlson?” he asked.
“Maybe nobody,” Swan replied. “We’ll fight to see who opens the door––what?”
There was an eager gleam in Carlson’s face as he made this proposal, standing between Mackenzie and the closed door, his arm stretched out as if to bar the schoolmaster’s nearer approach. He bent toward Mackenzie, no hostility in his manner or expression, but rather more like a man who had made a friendly suggestion, the answer to which he waited in pleasurable anticipation.
Mackenzie looked at him coldly, measuring his great strength, weighing his magnificent body down to the last unit of its power. Carlson’s shirt was open at his throat, his laced boots came to his knees over his baggy corduroy trousers, his long red hair hung over his temples and ears.
“No, there’s been fighting enough,” Mackenzie said, thinking that Joan must be bound and gagged if in that room. Surely she would have spoken otherwise at the sound of his voice.
Hertha Carlson rose to her hands and knees, where she remained a spell like a creeping child, almost at Mackenzie’s feet. Reid lay where he had sunk down, pitched forward in front of the closed door.
“I’ll open it, then,” said Swan in the same glowing eagerness. “It’ll be a game––whatever I find
I’ll keep!”
“Don’t touch it!” Mackenzie warned, drawing a little nearer, his weapon half out of the scabbard.
Mrs. Carlson rose between them, tall, disheveled, dress torn open at her bosom. She seemed dazed and oblivious to what was passing, stood a moment, hands pressed to her face as one racked by an agony of pain, went to the door, and out. Carlson stood staring after her a breath, his bold chin lifted high, a look of surprise passing like a light over his eyes.
“What I find will be mine,” Carlson said, almost happily. “Come on––we’ll fight like a couple of men!”
Carlson thrust his hand into the bosom of his shirt as he spoke, and drew out a revolver with a long sweep of his mighty arm, throwing his body with the movement as if he rocked with a wild, mad joy. Mackenzie fired as Carlson lifted the weapon to throw it down for a shot. Carlson’s pistol fell from his shattered hand.
Swan stood a moment, that flickering light of surprise flashing in his eyes again. Then he threw back his head and shouted in the mad joy of his wild heart, his great mouth stretched wide, his great mustaches moving in his breath. Shouting still, as his Viking forebears shouted in the joy of battle, the roar of his great voice going far into the night, Swan rushed upon Mackenzie like a wounded bear.
Mackenzie gave back before him, leaping aside, firing. Checked a moment, more by the flash of the discharge in his eyes than by the bullet, it seemed, Swan roared a wilder note and pressed the charge. His immense, lunging body was dim before Mackenzie through the smoke, his uninjured hand groping like a man feeling for a door in a burning house.
Swan fell with the mad challenge on his tongue, and cried his defiance still as he writhed a moment on his back, turning his face to the open door and the peace of the night at last, to die. To die in greater heroism than he had lived, and to lie there in his might and wasted magnificence of body, one hand over the threshold dabbling in the dark.
The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Page 24