The Flockmaster of Poison Creek. George W. Ogden

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СКАЧАТЬ of his ears in a savage fashion admirably suited to his grave, harsh, handsome face. He devoured his food noisily, bending low over his plate.

      “You want to learn the sheep business, huh?” said he, throwing up his eyes in quick challenge, pausing a moment in his champing and clatter. Mackenzie nodded, pipe raised toward his lips. “Well, you come to the right country. You ever had any work around a ranch?”

      “No.”

      “No, I didn’t think you had; you look too soft. How much can you lift?”

      “What’s that got to do with sheep?” Mackenzie inquired, frowning in his habitual manner of showing displeasure with frivolous and trifling things.

      “I can shoulder a steel rail off of the railroad that weighs seven hundred and fifty pounds,” said Swan. “You couldn’t lift one end.”

      “Maybe I couldn’t,” Mackenzie allowed, pretending to gaze out after his drifting smoke, but watching the sheepman, as he mopped the last of the eggs up with a piece of bread, with a furtive turning of his eye. He was considering how to approach the matter which he had remained there to take up with this great, boasting, savage man, and how he could make him understand that it was any of society’s business whether he chained his wife or let her go free, fed her or starved her, caressed her, or knocked her down.

      Swan pushed back from the table, wringing the coffee from his mustache.

      “Did you cut that chain?” he asked.

      “Yes, I cut it. You’ve got no right to keep your 26 wife, or anybody else, chained up. You could be put in jail for it; it’s against the law.”

      “A man’s got a right to do what he pleases with his own woman; she’s his property, the same as a horse.”

      “Not exactly the same as a horse, either. But you could be put in jail for beating your horse. I’ve waited here to tell you about this, in a friendly way, and warn you to treat this woman right. Maybe you didn’t know you were breaking the law, but I’m telling you it’s so.”

      Swan stood, his head within six inches of the ceiling. His wife must have read an intention of violence in his face, although Mackenzie could mark no change in his features, always as immobile as bronze. She sprang to her feet, her bosom agitated, arms lifted, shoulders raised, as if to shrink from the force of a blow. She made no effort to reach the ax behind the door; the thought of it had gone, apparently, out of her mind.

      Swan stood within four feet of her, but he gave her no attention.

      “When a man comes to my house and monkeys with my woman, him and me we’ve got to have a fight,” he said.

      27

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

THE FIGHT

       Table of Contents

      Mackenzie got up, keeping the table between them. He looked at the door, calculating whether he could make a spring for the ax before Carlson could grapple him. Carlson read in the glance an intention to retreat, made a quick stride to the door, closed it sharply, locked it, put the key in his pocket. He stood a moment looking Mackenzie over, as if surprised by the length he unfolded when on his feet, but with no change of anger or resentment in his stony face.

      “You didn’t need to lock the door, Carlson; I wasn’t going to run away––I didn’t wait here to see you for that.”

      Mackenzie stood in careless, lounging pose, hand on the back of his chair, pipe between his fingers, a rather humorous look in his eyes as he measured Carlson up and down.

      “Come out here in the middle and fight me if you ain’t afraid!” Swan challenged, derision in his voice.

      “I’ll fight you, all right, after I tell you what I waited here to say. You’re a coward, Swan Carlson, you’re a sheepman with a sheep’s heart. I turned your woman loose, and you’re going to let her stay loose. Let that sink into your head.”

      Carlson was standing a few feet in front of Mackenzie, leaning forward, his shoulders swelling and falling as if he flexed his muscles for a spring. His arms he 28 held swinging in front of him full length, like a runner waiting for the start, in a posture at once unpromising and uncouth. Behind him his wife shuddered against the wall.

      “Swan, Swan! O-o-oh, Swan, Swan!” she said, crying it softly as if she chided him for a great hurt.

      Swan turned partly toward her, striking backward with his open hand. His great knuckles struck her across the eyes, a cruel, heavy blow that would have felled a man. She staggered back a pace, then sank limply forward on her knees, her hands outreaching on the floor, her hair falling wildly, her posture that of a suppliant at a barbarian conqueror’s feet.

      Mackenzie snatched the heavy platter from the table and brought Carlson a smashing blow across the head. Carlson stood weaving on his legs a moment as the fragments of the dish clattered around him, swaying like a tree that waits the last blow of the ax to determine which way it will fall. Mackenzie threw the fragment that remained in his hand into Carlson’s face, laying open a long gash in his cheek. As the hot blood gushed down over his jaw Carlson steadied himself on his swaying legs and laughed.

      Mrs. Carlson lifted her face out of the shadows of the floor at the sound. Mackenzie glanced at her, the red mark of Swan’s harsh blow across her brows, as he flew at Swan like a desert whirlwind, landing heavily on his great neck before he could lift a guard. The blow staggered Carlson over upon his wife, and together they collapsed against the wall, where Carlson stood a breath, his hand thrown out to save him from a fall. Then he 29 shook his haughty, handsome, barbarian head, and laughed again, a loud laugh, deep and strong.

      There was no note of merriment in that sound, no inflection of satisfaction or joy. It came out of his wide-extended jaws with a roar, no facial softening with it, no blending of the features in the transformation of a smile. Mrs. Carlson struggled to her knees at the sound of it, lifting her moaning cry again at the sight of his gushing blood. Swan charged his adversary with bent head, the floor trembling under his heavy feet, his great hands lifted to seize and crush.

      Mackenzie backed away, upsetting the table between them, barring for a moment Swan’s mad onrush. In the anger-blind movements of the man he could read his intention, which was not to strike foot to foot, knee to knee, but to grapple and smother, as he had smothered the sheepherders in the snow. Across the overturned table Mackenzie landed another blow, sprang around the barrier out of the pocket of corner into which Carlson was bent on forcing him, hoping by nimble foot work to play on the flockmaster for a knockout.

      Swan threw a chair as Mackenzie circled out of his reach with nimble feet, knocking down the stovepipe, dislodging a shower of tinware from the shelves behind. Carlson had him by the shoulder now, but a deft turn, a sharp blow, and Mackenzie was free, racing over the cluttered floor in wild uproar, bending, side-stepping, in a strained and terrific race. Carlson picked up the table, swung it overhead until it struck the ceiling, threw it with all his mighty strength to crush the man who had evaded him with such clever speed. A leg caught Mackenzie 30 a glancing blow on the head, dazing СКАЧАТЬ