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It was a matter to be laid before his attention at once. Mackenzie did not want this loss charged against him as another example of his unfitness to become a master over sheep on the profit-sharing plan. It was past noon when Reid returned, coming riding from Swan Carlson's range. He came only near enough to Mackenzie to see who it was, galloping on to the wagon.
There was no moon. The soft glow of a few misty, somnolent stars gave no light among the trees, no light shone from the house. Mackenzie recalled the night he had first approached that door and come suddenly around the corner into the pale beam of Hertha Carlson's lantern. Now the kitchen door might be shut, and there was no window on that side.
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 apprenticeship. Surely his crowding of trouble at Swan Carlson's door that night was the beginning of it all.
"I don't want to discourage you at the start, but I don't believe you got the mettle in you to make a flockmaster, if you want to call it that, out of." "All right; I'll help you on the hay. Before I start in though, I'd like to borrow a saddle-horse from you to take a ride down the creek to Swan Carlson's place. I wouldn't be long." "Carlson's place? Do you know Swan Carlson?"
Looking back, he could follow the course of the creek where it snaked through the hills, dark green of willow and cottonwood fresh among the hemming slopes of sage, but no trace of Carlson's trees could he see. Mackenzie had no flour to mix a wad of dough, and but a heel of a bacon side to furnish a breakfast.
"I'll go down with you," he announced, turning abruptly away to get the horses. It was evident to Mackenzie that Sullivan was bewildered between doubt and suspicion as they rode toward Carlson's ranch, which the sheepman said was about seven miles away. But he betrayed nothing of his thoughts in words, riding in silence mainly, looking at the ground like a man who had troubles on his mind.
He fought desperately to come to his feet, Carlson sprawling over him, the pistol lifted high for a blow. Mackenzie's hands were clutching Carlson's throat, he was on one knee, swaying the Norseman's body back in the strength of despair, when the heavens seemed to crash above him, the fragments of universal destruction burying him under their weight.
He put them aside, not to grope after the cause of his discomfort, for that was apart from him entirely, but to lie, throbbing in every nerve, indifferent either to life or death. Presently his timid life came back entirely, settling down in the old abode with a sigh. Then Mackenzie remembered the poised revolver in Swan Carlson's hand.
There was no sound of Swan Carlson's flock, no sight of the sheepman. Reid had come and untangled what Mackenzie had failed to prevent, and was sitting there, unruffled and undisturbed, enjoying already the satisfaction of his added distinction. Perhaps Reid had saved his life from Carlson's hands, as he had saved it from Matt Hall's. His debt to Reid was mounting with mocking swiftness.
In that pose of defiant challenge Swan Carlson's woman peered into the face of the girl whose freshness and beauty had drawn the wild banter from her man's bold lips. Then, a sudden sweep of passion in her face, she lifted her rawhide quirt and struck Joan a bitter blow across the shoulder and neck. Mackenzie sprang between them, but Mrs.
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