The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 42

Mackenzie's thoughts reverted to the night he came to that cabin among the trees, guided thither by the plaintive melody of Hertha Carlson's song. What a fool he had been to linger on there that night waiting to see Swan, in the mistaken kindness to the woman the wild fellow had made his slave. If he had gone on that night, leaving the still waters of trouble unstirred, he would have walked in peace through his apprentices.h.i.+p. Surely his crowding of trouble at Swan Carlson's door that night was the beginning of it all.

There was that door closed now on the inner room; on that night it stood open, the long chain that bound the Swede's wife running through it from the staple driven into the log. Mackenzie had not noticed the thickness of the door's planks that night, or the crudity of its construction. The handiwork of Swan Carlson was proclaimed from that door; it was rough and strong, like himself, without finish, loosely joined. Its planks were oak; great nails in them marked the Z of its brace.

Then Mackenzie turned his eyes upon Reid again. Reid went back to the inner door, pushed it, tried it with his foot. It seemed to be fastened within. Perhaps there was a reason for its strength; maybe Swan kept his crude treasures locked there in that small stronghold of logs while he roamed the range after his sheep. Reid did not appear greatly interested in the door, or what lay behind it. He turned from it almost at once, drew his chair in front of it, sat down, his right hand toward Mackenzie, the lantern light strong on the lower part of his body, his face in shadow from the lantern's top. Mackenzie quickened with a new interest, a new speculation, when he saw that Reid's holster hung empty at his belt.

At once Mackenzie decided to speak to Reid, certain that he had been through some misadventure in which he had suffered loss. He drew away from the window, going around the front part of the house to come to the kitchen door, thinking it might be wise to know the way the land lay around those premises.

This part of the house was little larger than the shack of boards that had been built to it. There was no opening in its solid log walls, neither of window or door save alone the door opening into the kitchen. The place was a vault.

Somebody was approaching, riding rapidly up the valley. There was more than one horse, Mackenzie could well make out as he stood at the corner of the house, listening. He saw Reid's shadow fall in the light that spread through the open door, and turned back to keep his watch at the window.

It was not the moment to offer friends.h.i.+p or sympathy to Reid.

Something of Reid's own brewing was coming to a boil there, some business of his own was drawing to a head in that lonely cabin among the whispering trees.

Reid took up the lantern, stood a moment as if indecisive, placed it on the stove. Not satisfied with the way the light of it struck him there, apparently, he removed it and stood it in a corner. Whoever was coming, Reid did not want it known at a glance that his scabbard was empty. Mackenzie pressed a little nearer the window. When a man prepared for a meeting with that caution, he would do to watch.

Reid went to the open door, where he stood like a host to receive his guests. The riders were among the trees; coming on more slowly. Now they stopped, and Reid turned to light a fresh cigarette. The flash of the match showed his face white, hat pulled down on his brows, his thin, long gamester's fingers cupped round the blaze.

There fell a moment of silence, no sound of word, no movement of horse or foot upon the ground. Insects among the trees were grinding their scythes for tomorrow's reaping, it seemed, whirring in loud, harsh chorus such as one never heard out on the grazing lands.

Now the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Reid came back into the room, where he stood drawing a deep breath of smoke like a man drinking to store against a coming thirst. He dropped the cigarette, set his foot on it, crushed it to sparks on the floor.

Swan Carlson was in the door, the light dim on his stern, handsome face. Behind him stood his woman, a white wimple bound on her forehead like a nun.

CHAPTER XXVIII

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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude, 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 att.i.tude 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 acc.u.mulate before pa.s.sing 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!"