Part 43 (1/2)

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 pa.s.sage, 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, 'd.a.m.n 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. ”h.e.l.l! 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 h.e.l.l 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, thras.h.i.+ng 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d, it's a man, anyhow!”

Carlson offered his hand as if in friends.h.i.+p. Mackenzie backed away, watchful of him, hand to his pistol.

”Who's in that room, Carlson?” he asked.

”Maybe n.o.body,” 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 antic.i.p.ation.

Mackenzie looked at him coldly, measuring his great strength, weighing his magnificent body down to the last unit of its power. Carlson's s.h.i.+rt 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!”