"What do you care? You don't want her." "Sure I don't," Swan agreed heartily; "if I did I'd 'a' choked your neck over there that night. Woman for woman, or no trade." "That's not our bargain, Carlson." Reid spoke sharply, but with a dry quaver in his voice that betrayed the panic that was coming over him on account of this threatened miscarriage of his plans. Mackenzie was convinced by Reid's manner that Swan had read him right. Joan was not there. The thought that Joan would accompany Reid in the night to Swan Carlson's house on any pretext he could devise in his crafty mind was absurd. It was all a bluff, Reid playing on Swan's credulity to induce him to hand over the money, when he would make a dash for the door and ride away. Mackenzie stood close to the window, pistol lifted, thinking it all out between Reid's last word and Carlson's next, for the mind can build a castle while the heart is pausing between throbs. "My woman for yours, that's a fair trade," said Swan. "I don't want to put no money in a wild colt that maybe I couldn't break. Open the door and bring her to me, and take my woman and go." "Nothing doin'," said Reid, regaining his nonchalance, or at any rate control of his shaking voice. "You're a liar, you ain't got no woman here." "She's in there, all right--come across with the money and take her." "How do I know you've got any right to make a trade? Have you got the papers to show she's yours?" "I've got all the papers you'll ever need." "You ain't got no papers--she's as much mine as she is yours. Open the door!" Carlson got up, towering above Reid in his great height. He took off his hat and flung it on the table, stood a little while bending forward in his peculiar loose droop with arms swinging full length at his sides. Reid backed away from him, standing with shoulders against the door as if to deny him passage, hand thrown to his empty holster. "You ain't got no gun!" Swan said, triumphantly. "I seen the minute I come in the door you didn't have no gun. I wouldn't fight a feller like you--you couldn't stand up to me like that other feller done here in this house one night." Swan looked round the room, the memory of that battle like a light upon his stony face. He stood in silence, turning his head slowly, as if he found a pleasure in the stages of the past battle as recalled to him by the different locations in the place.