And this was the end of Earl Reid's bluff to Carlson that he would deliver Joan to him there, bargained for and sold after the wild and lawless reasoning of the Norse flockmaster. And Swan had drawn his weapon with a glad light in his face, and stood up to him like a man. "Throw it down here, Mackenzie--you can't get by with it this time!" Mackenzie looked up from his daze of remorseful panic, slowly, amazedly, not fully realizing that it was a human voice he heard, to see Reid where he had scrambled to his knees, Carlson's gun in one hand, the other thrown out to support his unsteady body. "You can have it, Earl," Mackenzie said, with the relief in his voice of a man who has heard good tidings. "Hurry!" said Reid, in voice strained and dry. "My gun's empty; you can have it too. I'm through," Mackenzie said. As he spoke, Mackenzie jerked the lantern sharply, putting it out. Reid fired. Mackenzie felt the shot strike his thigh like the flip of a switch when one rides through a thicket. He threw himself upon Reid, and held his arm while the desperate youth fired his remaining shots into the wall. Mackenzie shook Reid until he dropped the empty revolver, then took him by the neck and pushed him to the open door. And there the morning was spreading, showing the trees outlined against the east. "Come out here and we'll talk it over, Reid." Mackenzie said. Reid had nothing to say. He was sullen, uncontrite. Mackenzie waited a little while for him to speak, holding him harshly by the collar. "Well, there's the road out of this country," Mackenzie said, seeing he would not speak. "This is the last trick you'll ever try to throw here on me or anybody else. I suppose you came here on one of Carlson's horses; go and get it, and when you start, head south." Mackenzie felt the leg of his trousers wet from the blood of his wound, and began to have some concern lest an artery had been cut. But this he put off investigating until he heard Reid ride out to the dim road in front of Carlson's cabin, and go his way out of the sheeplands to whatever destiny lay ahead. Then Mackenzie looked himself over, to find that it was not a serious wound. He bound up the hurt with his handkerchief, and turned his face away from that tragic spot among the cottonwoods, their leaves moving with a murmur as of falling rain in the cool morning wind. CHAPTER XXIX SHEEPMAN--AND MORE "So I just took his gun away from him and slapped him and sent him on," said Joan. "I thought that must have been the way of it," Mackenzie said, sighing as if his last trouble had left him. "When he tried to make me believe I wasn't within seven miles of Dad Frazer's camp I got my suspicions up. The idea of that little town rat trying to mix me up on my range! Well, I was a little off on my estimate of where the wagons were, but that was because they'd been moved so many times while I was over home." "I figured it that way, Joan."