Carlson stood where he had stopped, ten feet or more distant, his arms bare, shirt open on his breast in his way of picturesque freedom. Mackenzie waited for him to proceed in whatever way he had planned, knowing there could be no compromise, no settlement in peace. He would either have to yield entirely and allow Carlson to drive off seven or eight hundred of Sullivan's sheep, or fight. There didn't seem to be much question on how it would come out in the latter event, for Carlson was not armed, and Mackenzie's pistol was that moment under his hand. "You got a gun on you," said Swan, in casual, disinterested tone. "I ain't got no gun on me, but I'm a better man without no gun than you are with one. I'm goin' to take my fifteen hundred sheep home with me, and you ain't man enough to stop me." Carlson's two dogs were sitting close behind him, one of them a gaunt gray beast that seemed almost a purebred wolf. Its jaws were bloody from its late encounter; flecks of blood were on its gray coat. It sat panting and alert, indifferent to Mackenzie's presence, watching the sheep as if following its own with its savage eyes. Suddenly Carlson spoke an explosive word, clapping his great hands, stamping his foot toward Mackenzie. Mackenzie fired as the wolf-dog sprang, staggering back from the weight of its lank body hurled against his breast, and fired again as he felt the beast's vile breath in his face as it snapped close to his throat. Mackenzie emptied his pistol in quick, but what seemed ineffectual, shots at the other dog as it came leaping at Carlson's command. In an instant he was involved in a confusion of man and dog, the body of the wolfish collie impeding his feet as he fought. Carlson and the other dog pressed the attack so quickly that Mackenzie had no time to slip even another cartridge into his weapon. Carlson laughed as he clasped him in his great arms, the dog clinging to Mackenzie's pistol 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.