Part 20 (2/2)

”But I'm goin' to stick,” he said, an unmistakable determination in his tone. ”I'll show him they're making as good men now as they did when he was a kid.” He laughed, a raucous, short laugh, an old man's laugh, which choked in a cigarette cough and made a mockery of mirth.

”I'll toughen up out here and have better wind for the big finish when I sit in on the old man's money.”

No, Joan was not cast for any important part in young Reid's future drama, Mackenzie understood. As if his thoughts had penetrated to the young man's heart, making fatuous any further attempt at concealment of his true sentiments, Reid spoke.

”They've sewed me up in a sack with Joan--I guess you know about it?”

”Tim was telling me.”

”A guy could do worse.”

With this comforting reflection Reid stretched himself on his blanket and went to sleep. Mackenzie was not slow in following his example, for it had been a hard day with the sheep, with much leg work on account of the new dogs showing a wolfish shyness of their new master most exasperating at times. Mackenzie's last thought was that Reid would take a great deal of labor off his legs by using the horse in attending the sheep.

A scream woke Mackenzie. He heaved up out of his sleep with confusion clouding his senses for the moment, the thought that he was on water, and the cry was that of one who drowned, persistent above his struggling reason. It was a choking cry, the utterance of a desperate soul who sees life fleeing while he lifts his voice in the last appeal. And between him and his companion Mackenzie saw the bulk of a giant-shouldered man, who bent with arm outstretched toward him, whose hand came in contact with his throat as he rose upright with the stare of confusion in his eyes.

Mackenzie broke through this film of his numbing sleep, reaching for the rifle that he had laid near his hand. It was gone, and across the two yards intervening he saw young Reid writhing in the grip of the monster who was strangling out his life.

Mackenzie wrenched free from the great hand that closed about his throat, tearing the mighty arm away with the strength of both his own.

A moment, and he was involved in the most desperate struggle that he had ever faced in his life.

This interference gave Reid a new gulp of life. The three combatants were on their feet now, not a word spoken, not a sound but the dull impact of blows and the hard breathings of the two who fought this monster of the sheeplands for their lives. Swan Carlson, Mackenzie believed him to be, indulging his insane desire for strangling out the lives of men. He had approached so stealthily, with such wild cunning, that the dogs had given no alarm, and had taken the gun to insure against miscarriage or interruption in his horrible menu of death.

A brief tangle of locked arms, swaying bodies, ribs all but crushed in the embrace of those b.e.s.t.i.a.l arms, and Mackenzie was conscious that he was fighting the battle alone. In the wild swirl of it he could not see whether Reid had fallen or torn free. A little while, now in the pressure of those hairy, bare arms, now free for one gasping breath, fighting as man never fought in the sheeplands before that hour, and Mackenzie felt himself s.n.a.t.c.hed up bodily and thrown down from uplifted arms with a force that must have ended all for him then but for the interposition of a sage-clump that broke the fall.

Instantly the silent monster was upon him. Mackenzie met him hand to hand, fighting the best fight that was in him, chilled with the belief that it was his last. But he could not come up from his knees, and in this position his a.s.sailant bent over him, one hand on his forehead, the other at the back of his neck, a knee against his breast.

Mackenzie tore at the great, stiff arms with his last desperate might, perhaps staying a little the pressure that in a moment more must snap his spine. As the a.s.sa.s.sin tightened this terrible grip Mackenzie's face was lifted toward the sky. Overhead was the moon, clear-edged, bright, in the dusk of the immensities beyond; behind the monster, who paused that breath as in design to fill his victim's last moment with a hope that he soon would mock, Mackenzie saw young Reid.

The youth was close upon the midnight strangler, stooping low. As the terrible pressure on forehead and neck cracked his spine like a breaking icicle, Mackenzie believed he shouted, putting into his voice all that he felt of desperate need of help. And he saw young Reid strike, and felt the breaking wrench of the cruel hands relax, and fell down upon the ground like a dead man and knew no more.

Reid was there with the lantern, putting water on Mackenzie's head when he again broke through the mists and followed the thread of his soul back to his body. Reid was encouraging him to be steady, and to take it easy, a.s.suring him that he never saw a man put up such a fight as the schoolmaster had all but lost.

Mackenzie sat up presently, with throbbing head, a feeling of bulging in his eyeb.a.l.l.s, his neck stiff from the wrenching it had received.

The great body of the man whom he had fought lay stretched in the moonlight, face to the ground. The camp butcher knife was sticking in his back. Mackenzie got to his feet, a dizziness over him, but a sense of his obligation as clear as it ever was in any man.

”I owe you one for that; I'll not forget it in a hurry,” he said, giving Reid his hand.

”No, we're even on it,” Reid returned. ”He'd 'a' broke my neck in another second if you hadn't made that tackle. Who is he, do you know?”

”Turn him over,” Mackenzie said.

Reid withdrew the knife, sticking it into the ground with as little concern as if he had taken it from a butcher's block, and heaved the fellow over on his back. The moonlight revealed his dusty features clearly, but Mackenzie brought the lantern to make it doubly sure.

”He's not the man I thought he was,” said he. ”I think this fellow's name is Matt Hall. He's the sheep-killer you've heard about.

Look--he's all over blood--there's wool on his s.h.i.+rt.”

”Matt Hall, huh?” said Reid. He wiped the butcher knife on the dead sheep-killer's s.h.i.+rt, making a little whistling, reflective sound through his teeth. ”I'll have to scour that knife before we cut bacon with it in the morning,” he said.

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