“He is coming; in a little while he will be at the door. There is time yet for you to leave.”
“I want to have a word with your man; I’ll wait.”
Mrs. Carlson got up, keeping the ax in hand, moved her chair to the other side of the door, where she stationed herself in such position as Swan must see her first when he looked within. She disposed the ax to conceal it entirely beneath her long apron, her hand under the garment grasping the helve.
“For your own sake, not his, I ask you not to strike him,” Mackenzie pleaded, in all the earnestness he could command.
“I have given you the hour of my vengeance,” she replied. “But if he curses me, if he lifts his hand!”
Mackenzie was more than a little uneasy on the probable 22 outcome of his meeting with the tempestuous Swan. He got out his pipe and lit it, considering the situation with fast-running thoughts. Still, a man could not go on and leave that beaten, enslaved woman to the mercies of her tyrant; Swan Carlson must be given to understand that he would be held to answer to the law for his future behavior toward her.
“If I were you I’d put the ax behind the door and get his supper ready,” said he.
Mrs. Carlson got up at the suggestion, with such readiness that surprised Mackenzie, put the ax back of the open door, stood a moment winding up her fallen hair.
“Yes, he is my man,” she said.
Swan was turning his horse into the barn; Mackenzie could hear him talking to the animal, not unkindly. Mrs. Carlson put fresh fuel in the stove, making a rattling of the lids which must have sounded cheerful to the ears of a hungry man. As she began breaking eggs into a bowl she took up her song again, with an unconscious air of detachment from it, as one unwittingly follows the habit that has been for years the accompaniment to a task.