l hand, and in a desperate moment it was done.
Mackenzie was lying on his back, the giant sheepman's knee in his
chest.

Carlson did not speak after ordering the dog away. He held Mackenzie a
little while, hand on his throat, knee on his chest, looking with
unmoved features down into his eyes, as if he considered whether to
make an end of him there or let him go his way in added humiliation
and disgrace. Mackenzie lay still under Carlson's hand, trying to read
his intention in his clear, ice-cold, expressionless eyes, watching
for his moment to renew the fight which he must push under such
hopeless disadvantage.

Swan's eyes betrayed nothing of his thoughts. They were as calm and
untroubled as the sky, which Mackenzie thought, with a poignant sweep
of transcendant fear for his life, he never had beheld so placid and
beautiful as in that dreadful moment.

Carlson's huge fingers began to tighten in the grip of death; relax,
tighten, each successive clutch growing longer, harder. The joy of his
strength, the pleasure in the agony that spoke from his victim's face,
gleamed for a moment in Carlson's eyes as he bent, gazing; then
flickered like a light in the wind, and died.

Mackenzie's revolver lay not more than four feet from his hand. He
gathered his strength for a struggle to writhe from under Carlson's
pressing knee. Carlson, anticipating his intention, reached for the
weapon and snatched it, laying hold of it by the barrel.

Mackenzie's unexpected renewal of the fight surprised Carlson into
releasing his strangling hold. He rose to sitting posture, breast to
breast with the fighting sheepman, whose great bulk towered above him,
free breath in his nostrils, fresh hope in his heart. 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.

CHAPTER XIX

NOT CUT OUT FOR A SHEEPMAN

Mackenzie returned to conscious state in nausea and pain. Not on a
surge, but slow-breaking, like the dawn, his senses came to him,
assembling as dispersed birds assemble, with erratic excursions as if
distrustful of the place where they desire to alight. Wherever the
soul may go in such times of suspended animation, it comes back to