stretched himself on his blanket
and went to sleep. Mackenzie was not slow in following his example,
for it had been a hard day with the sheep, with much leg work on
account of the new dogs showing a wolfish shyness of their new master
most exasperating at times. Mackenzie's last thought was that Reid
would take a great deal of labor off his legs by using the horse in
attending the sheep.

A scream woke Mackenzie. He heaved up out of his sleep with confusion
clouding his senses for the moment, the thought that he was on water,
and the cry was that of one who drowned, persistent above his
struggling reason. It was a choking cry, the utterance of a desperate
soul who sees life fleeing while he lifts his voice in the last
appeal. And between him and his companion Mackenzie saw the bulk of a
giant-shouldered man, who bent with arm outstretched toward him, whose
hand came in contact with his throat as he rose upright with the stare
of confusion in his eyes.

Mackenzie broke through this film of his numbing sleep, reaching for
the rifle that he had laid near his hand. It was gone, and across the
two yards intervening he saw young Reid writhing in the grip of the
monster who was strangling out his life.

Mackenzie wrenched free from the great hand that closed about his
throat, tearing the mighty arm away with the strength of both his own.
A moment, and he was involved in the most desperate struggle that he
had ever faced in his life.

This interference gave Reid a new gulp of life. The three combatants
were on their feet now, not a word spoken, not a sound but the dull
impact of blows and the hard breathings of the two who fought this
monster of the sheeplands for their lives. Swan Carlson, Mackenzie
believed him to be, indulging his insane desire for strangling out the
lives of men. He had approached so stealthily, with such wild cunning,
that the dogs had given no alarm, and had taken the gun to insure
against miscarriage or interruption in his horrible menu of death.

A brief tangle of locked arms, swaying bodies, ribs all but crushed in
the embrace of those bestial arms, and Mackenzie was conscious that he
was fighting the battle alone. In the wild swirl of it he could not
see whether Reid had fallen or torn free. A little while, now in the
pressure of those hairy, bare arms, now free for one gasping breath,
fighting as man never fought in the sheeplands before that hour, and
Mackenzie felt himself snatched up bodil