SWAN CARLSON LAUGHS
"So, you are here?" said Swan, standing in the door, looking about him
as if he had entered an unfamiliar place.
"Didn't you look for me?" Reid returned. He stood between Carlson and
the closed inner door, foot on a rung of the chair in which he lately
had sat, his attitude careless, easy.
"A man never knows," Carlson replied, coming into the room.
Hertha Carlson lingered just outside the door, as if repelled by the
recollection of old sufferings there. Swan reached out, grasped her
wrist, drew her roughly inside, pointed to a chair. The woman sat
down, her eyes distended in fright, her feet drawn close to the chair
as if to hide them from the galling chain that she had dragged so many
weary months across the floor of her lonely prison.
Swan pulled a chair to the table and sat down, elbows on the board,
facing Reid, a question in his attitude, his face, to which he at once
gave words:
"Where's your woman?"
"Where's the money?" Reid countered, putting out his hand. "You threw
me down after I delivered you three hundred sheep--you didn't come
across with a cent--on the plea that one thief couldn't collect from
another. All right, Swan; we'll forget the sheep deal, but this is
another matter. Put your money in my hand; then we'll talk."
"Is she in there?" Swan pointed to the door behind Reid, half rising
from his chair.
Reid put his hand to his empty holster, his body turned from Carlson
to conceal his want of a weapon. Carlson jerked his head in high
disdain, resumed his chair, his great hand spread on the table.
Mackenzie stepped back from the window, leveling his pistol at Reid's
head. Joan was the subject of this infamous barter.
A moment Mackenzie's finger stiffened to send a bullet into Reid's
brain, for he considered only that such depravity was its own warrant
of death. But Reid was unarmed, and there was something in his
attitude that seemed to disclose that it was a bluff. Joan was not
there.
Joan was not there. She would not remain silent and unresisting, shut
in a room while a cold-blooded scoundrel bargained to deliver her for
a price like a ewe out of his flock. Reid was playing to even the
deceit Carlson had put over on him in dealing for the stolen sheep. It
was a bluff. Joan was not there.
Mackenzie let down the weapon. It was not the moment for interference;
he would allow the evidence to accumulate before passing sentence and
executing it with summary hand.
"Come across with the money before we go any further," said Reid, firm
in his manner, defiantly confident in his bearing. "I've got to get
out of this country before morning."
"I wouldn't give five hundred dollars for her," Swan declared. "How do
I know she'd stay with me? She might run off tomorrow if I didn't have
a chain on her."
Reid said nothing. He backed a little nearer the door as if he had it
in mind to call the negotiations off. Swan looked at him with chin
thrust forward, neck extended.
"She ain't here--you're a liar!" he charged.
"All right; there's a pair of us, then."
"I've brought my woman--" Swan stretched out his hand to call
attention to her where she cowered in her chair--"fixed up to meet you
like a bride. Woman for woman, I say; that's enough for any man."
"I don't want your woman, Carlson."
"You tried to steal her from me; you was lovin' her over on the
range."
"What do you care? You don't want her."
"Sure I don't," Swan agreed heartily; "if I did I'd 'a' choked your
neck over there that night. Woman for woman, or no trade."
"That's not our bargain, Carlson."
Reid spoke sharply, but with a dry quaver in his voice that betrayed
the panic that was coming over him on account of this threatened
miscarriage of his plans. Mackenzie was convinced by Reid's manner
that Swan had read him right. Joan was not there.
The thought that Joan would accompany Reid in the night to Swan
Carlson's house on any pretext he could devise in his crafty mind was
absurd. It was all a bluff, Reid playing on Swan's credulity to induce
him to hand over the money, when he would make a dash for the door and
ride away.
Mackenzie stood close to the window, pistol lifted, thinking it all
out between Reid's last word and Carlson's next, for the mind can
build a castle while the heart is pausing between throbs.
"My woman for yours, that's a fair trade," said Swan. "I don't want to
put no money in a wild colt that maybe I couldn't break. Open the door
and bring her to me, and take my woman and go."
"Nothing doin'," said Reid, regaining his nonchalance, or at any rate
control of his shaking voice.
"You're a liar, you ain't got no woman here."
"She's in there, all right--come across with the money and take her."
"How do I know you've got any right to make a trade? Have you got the
papers to show she's yours?"
"I've got all the papers you'll ever need."
"You ain't got no papers--she's as much mine as she is yours. Open the
door!"
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 passage, 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, 'damn 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. "Hell! 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
hell 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, thrashing 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 finishing 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 God, it's a man, anyhow!"
Carlson offered his hand as if in friendship. Mackenzie backed away,
watchful of him, hand to his pistol.
"Who's in that room, Carlson?" he asked.
"Maybe nobody," 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 anticipation.
Mackenzie looked at him coldly, measuring his great strength, weighing
his magnificent body down to the last unit of its power. Carlson's
shirt 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 passing, 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 passing 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 shirt 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 flashing 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 God! 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.
"Well, there's the road out of this country," Mackenzie said, seeing
he would not speak. "This is the last trick you'll ever try to throw
here on me or anybody else. I suppose you came here on one of
Carlson's horses; go and get it, and when you start, head south."
Mackenzie felt the leg of his trousers wet from the blood of his
wound, and began to have some concern lest an artery had been cut. But
this he put off investigating until he heard Reid ride out to the dim
road in front of Carlson's cabin, and go his way out of the sheeplands
to whatever destiny lay ahead.
Then Mackenzie looked himself over, to find that it was not a serious
wound. He bound up the hurt with his handkerchief, and turned his face
away from that tragic spot among the cottonwoods, their leaves moving
with a murmur as of falling rain in the cool morning wind.