The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 43

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!"

"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 pa.s.sing, 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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.

Mackenzie took the lantern from the corner where Reid had set it in his studious play for the advantage that did not come to his hand, and turned back to the closed door. Reid lay as he had fallen, Carlson's revolver by his side. Mackenzie stepped over him and tried the door.

It was unlocked, fastened only by the iron thumb-latch.

A moment Mackenzie stood, lifting the lantern to light the small room to its corners, then went in, peering and exploring into every shadow.

"Great G.o.d! She wasn't here at all! And I've killed a man for that!"

he said.

He turned to the open door, stifled by remorse for what he had done, although he had done it in a fight that had been pushed upon him, as all his fights in the sheeplands had been pushed. He might have taken Swan at his manly offer to fight hand-to-hand to see who should open the door; or he might have allowed him to open it, and saved all violence between them.

And this was the end of Earl Reid's bluff to Carlson that he would deliver Joan to him there, bargained for and sold after the wild and lawless reasoning of the Norse flockmaster. And Swan had drawn his weapon with a glad light in his face, and stood up to him like a man.

"Throw it down here, Mackenzie--you can't get by with it this time!"

Mackenzie looked up from his daze of remorseful panic, slowly, amazedly, not fully realizing that it was a human voice he heard, to see Reid where he had scrambled to his knees, Carlson's gun in one hand, the other thrown out to support his unsteady body.

"You can have it, Earl," Mackenzie said, with the relief in his voice of a man who has heard good tidings.

"Hurry!" said Reid, in voice strained and dry.

"My gun's empty; you can have it too. I'm through," Mackenzie said.

As he spoke, Mackenzie jerked the lantern sharply, putting it out.

Reid fired. Mackenzie felt the shot strike his thigh like the flip of a switch when one rides through a thicket. He threw himself upon Reid, and held his arm while the desperate youth fired his remaining shots into the wall.

Mackenzie shook Reid until he dropped the empty revolver, then took him by the neck and pushed him to the open door. And there the morning was spreading, showing the trees outlined against the east.

"Come out here and we'll talk it over, Reid." Mackenzie said.

Reid had nothing to say. He was sullen, uncontrite. Mackenzie waited a little while for him to speak, holding him harshly by the collar.