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"I am to take orders," he muttered. Stan laughed. The softhearted Swen had been planted on him. They were supposed to get chummy while the tall mechanic listened and picked up anything of value which might be said. "What am I supposed to call you?" Stan asked. "Hans," the mechanic said shortly. "Well, Hans, we'll have a try at assembling this thing," Stan said.
Swen Brodie was the biggest man who had ever come to the mountains, men said, unless that honour went to one of the Seven who more than a half-century ago had perished with Gus Ingle. And even so Brodie kept the honour in his own blood, boasting that Ingle's giant companion, the worst of a bad lot, was his own father's father.
Now it had a couple of crazy windows cut crookedly into its sides and a stovepipe thrust up, also crookedly, through the shake roof, and was known as the McQuarry place. Here one might count on finding Swen Brodie at such times as he favoured Coloma with his hulking presence; here foregathered his hangers-on.
She had seen men hurrying; dog-sleds harnessed; packs of provisions; men on snow-shoes. She had seen them coming toward her across the miles. Some one else was coming, too. It was big Swen Brodie, his face horrible. There was a rabble at his back. It was a race between these men and those other men.
If Swen Brodie were sure enough of what he was about to rid himself of Andy Parker, what would he not do with old Honeycutt? "I ought to go back," was what King said over and over to himself as he rode steadily on after Gloria.
There stood old Honeycutt, tremblingly upheld upon his sawed-off broom-handle. Beyond him, facing the door, was Swen Brodie, his immense body towering over Honeycutt's spindling one, his bestial face hideous in its contortions as at once he gloated and threatened.
But if the fellow was able to shift for himself, it suited King well enough. He had business of his own and no desire to step to one side or another to deal with Swen Brodie or Andy Parker, or with any man who trailed his luck with such as these. But now Parker called to him, and in an altered voice, a whine running through the words. "Hold on, King. I'm hung up here for the night, anyhow.
Far below her, down in the gorge, she saw something moving! And that something, ploughing laboriously through depths and drifts of loose fluffy snow, was a man. Now her thoughts raced again. It was King. He was coming back to her.... No; it was not King; it was Swen Brodie! She began to tremble violently.
They hang out in the old McQuarry shack, cheek by jowl with Honeycutt. I saw them, thick as flies, while I was there last week. Brodie, it seems, has even been cooking the old man's meals for him." "There you are!" burst out King. "What more do you want? Imagine Swen Brodie turning over his hand for anybody on earth if there isn't something in it all for Swen Brodie.
She did not know if any vital organ lay in that narrow span or if any major artery had been severed or if the rifle-ball had merely glanced along the ribs and been deflected by them; she only knew that he had lost much blood, that it must have gushed freely while he strove with Swen Brodie, and that now it must be stopped utterly.
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