Part 17 (1/2)
”Thank G.o.d for your wakefulness!” said he.
She was pa.s.sing out of the reefs of terror, calming as a wind falls at sunset. Mackenzie pressed her arm, drawing her away a little.
”That ammunition--we'd better----”
”Yes,” said Joan, and went with him a little farther down the slope.
Mackenzie put his hand to his face where the flames had licked it, and to the back of his head where his scorched hair broke crisply under his palm. Joan looked at him, the aging stamp of waking and worry in her face, exclaiming pityingly when she saw his hurts.
”It served me right; I stumbled into their hands like a blind kitten!”
he said, not sparing himself of scorn.
”It's a cattleman's trick; many an older hand than you has gone that way,” she said.
”But if I'd have waked and watched like you, Joan, they wouldn't have got me. I started to watch, but I didn't keep it up like you. When I should have been awake, I was sleeping like a sluggard.”
”The cowards!” said Joan.
”I let one of them sneak up behind me, after they'd clubbed two of the dogs to death, and grab me and get my gun! Great G.o.d! I deserve to be burned!”
”Hus.h.!.+” she chided, fearfully. ”Hus.h.!.+”
”One of them was Hector Hall--he came after his guns. If I'd been a man, the shadow of a man, I'd made him swallow them the day I took--the time he left them here.”
”Matt was with him,” said Joan. ”You couldn't do anything; no man could do anything, against Matt Hall.”
”They handled me like a baby,” said he, bitterly, ”and I, and I, wanting to be a sheepman! No wonder they think I'm a soft and simple fool up here, that goes on the reputation of a lucky blow!”
”There's a man on a horse,” said Joan. ”He's coming this way.”
The rider broke down the hillside as she spoke, riding near the wreckage of the burning wagon, where he halted a moment, the strong light of the fire on his face: Swan Carlson, hatless, his hair streaming, his great mustache pendant beside his stony mouth. He came on toward them at once. Joan laid her hand on her revolver.
”You got a fire here,” said Swan, stopping near them, leaning curiously toward them as if he peered at them through smoke.
”Yes,” Mackenzie returned.
”I seen it from over there,” said Swan. ”I come over to see if you needed any help.”
”Thank you, not now. It's gone; nothing can be done.”
”I smelt coal oil,” said Swan, throwing back his head, sniffing the air like a buck. ”Who done it?”
”Some of your neighbors,” said Mackenzie.
”I knowed they would,” Swan nodded. ”Them fellers don't fight like me and you, they don't stand up like a man. When I seen you take that feller by the leg that day and upset him off of his horse and grab his guns off of him, I knowed he'd burn you out.”
Joan, forgetting her fear and dislike of Swan Carlson in her interest of what he revealed, drew a little nearer to him.
”Were you around here that day, Swan?” she asked.
”Yes, I saw him upset that feller, little bird,” Swan said, leaning again from his saddle, his long neck stretched to peer into her face.