"

"No, but I will kill him if you don't open the door!"

Mackenzie stood by Carlson as he spoke, feeling his body with his
foot. He bent over Carlson, exploring for his heart, fearing that he
had killed him, indeed. His first efforts to locate a pulse were not
assuring, but a feeble throbbing at last announced that the great
ruffian's admirable machinery was stunned, not broken.

"Open the door; he'll be all right in a little while," Mackenzie
said.

Mrs. Carlson was moaning in a sorrow as genuine as if the fallen man
had been the kindest husband that fate could have sent her, and not
the heartless beast that he was. She found the key and threw the door
open, letting in a cool, sweet breath of the night. Under it Carlson
would soon revive, Mackenzie believed. He had no desire to linger and
witness the restoration.

Mackenzie had a bruised and heavy feeling about him as he shouldered
his pack and hurried from that inhospitable door. He knew that Swan
Carlson was not dead, and would not die from that blow. Why the
feeling persisted as he struck off up the creek through the dew-wet
grass he could not tell, but it was strong upon him that Swan Carlson
would come into his way again, to make trouble for him on a future
day.

CHAPTER IV

KEEPER OF THE FLOCK

John Mackenzie, late schoolmaster of Jasper, marched on through the
cool of the night, regretting that he had meddled in the domestic
arrangements of Swan Carlson, the Swede. The outcome of his attempted
kindness to the oppressed woman had not been felicitous. Indeed, he
was troubled greatly by the fear that he had killed Swan Carlson, and
that grave consequences might rise out of this first adventure that
ever fell in his way.

Perhaps adventure was not such a thing to be sought as he had
imagined, he reflected; hand to his swollen throat. There was an ache
in his crushed windpipe, a dryness in his mouth, a taste of blood on
his tongue. That had been a close go for him, there on the floor under
Swan Carlson's great knee; a few seconds longer, and his first
adventure would have been his last.

Yet there was a vast satisfaction in knowing what was in him. Here he
had stood foot to foot with the strong man of the sheeplands, the
strangler, the fierce, half-insane terror of peaceful men, and had
come off the victor. He had fought this man in his own house, where a
man will fight valiantly, even though a coward on the road, and had
left him senseless on