Part 3 (1/2)

Mackenzie nodded, pipe raised toward his lips. ”Well, you come to the right country. You ever had any work around a ranch?”

”No.”

”No, I didn't think you had; you look too soft. How much can you lift?”

”What's that got to do with sheep?” Mackenzie inquired, frowning in his habitual manner of showing displeasure with frivolous and trifling things.

”I can shoulder a steel rail off of the railroad that weighs seven hundred and fifty pounds,” said Swan. ”You couldn't lift one end.”

”Maybe I couldn't,” Mackenzie allowed, pretending to gaze out after his drifting smoke, but watching the sheepman, as he mopped the last of the eggs up with a piece of bread, with a furtive turning of his eye. He was considering how to approach the matter which he had remained there to take up with this great, boasting, savage man, and how he could make him understand that it was any of society's business whether he chained his wife or let her go free, fed her or starved her, caressed her, or knocked her down.

Swan pushed back from the table, wringing the coffee from his mustache.

”Did you cut that chain?” he asked.

”Yes, I cut it. You've got no right to keep your wife, or anybody else, chained up. You could be put in jail for it; it's against the law.”

”A man's got a right to do what he pleases with his own woman; she's his property, the same as a horse.”

”Not exactly the same as a horse, either. But you could be put in jail for beating your horse. I've waited here to tell you about this, in a friendly way, and warn you to treat this woman right. Maybe you didn't know you were breaking the law, but I'm telling you it's so.”

Swan stood, his head within six inches of the ceiling. His wife must have read an intention of violence in his face, although Mackenzie could mark no change in his features, always as immobile as bronze.

She sprang to her feet, her bosom agitated, arms lifted, shoulders raised, as if to shrink from the force of a blow. She made no effort to reach the ax behind the door; the thought of it had gone, apparently, out of her mind.

Swan stood within four feet of her, but he gave her no attention.

”When a man comes to my house and monkeys with my woman, him and me we've got to have a fight,” he said.

CHAPTER III

THE FIGHT

Mackenzie got up, keeping the table between them. He looked at the door, calculating whether he could make a spring for the ax before Carlson could grapple him. Carlson read in the glance an intention to retreat, made a quick stride to the door, closed it sharply, locked it, put the key in his pocket. He stood a moment looking Mackenzie over, as if surprised by the length he unfolded when on his feet, but with no change of anger or resentment in his stony face.

”You didn't need to lock the door, Carlson; I wasn't going to run away--I didn't wait here to see you for that.”

Mackenzie stood in careless, lounging pose, hand on the back of his chair, pipe between his fingers, a rather humorous look in his eyes as he measured Carlson up and down.

”Come out here in the middle and fight me if you ain't afraid!” Swan challenged, derision in his voice.

”I'll fight you, all right, after I tell you what I waited here to say. You're a coward, Swan Carlson, you're a sheepman with a sheep's heart. I turned your woman loose, and you're going to let her stay loose. Let that sink into your head.”

Carlson was standing a few feet in front of Mackenzie, leaning forward, his shoulders swelling and falling as if he flexed his muscles for a spring. His arms he held swinging in front of him full length, like a runner waiting for the start, in a posture at once unpromising and uncouth. Behind him his wife shuddered against the wall.

”Swan, Swan! O-o-oh, Swan, Swan!” she said, crying it softly as if she chided him for a great hurt.

Swan turned partly toward her, striking backward with his open hand.

His great knuckles struck her across the eyes, a cruel, heavy blow that would have felled a man. She staggered back a pace, then sank limply forward on her knees, her hands outreaching on the floor, her hair falling wildly, her posture that of a suppliant at a barbarian conqueror's feet.