Swan had said no word since his first inquiry. Mackenzie had ventured nothing more. Mrs. Carlson sat down in the chair that she had placed near the door before Swan’s arrival, only that she moved it a little to bring her hand within reach of the hidden ax.
Swan had brushed his long, dark-red hair back from his broad, deep forehead, bringing it down across the 25 tips of his ears in a savage fashion admirably suited to his grave, harsh, handsome face. He devoured his food noisily, bending low over his plate.
“You want to learn the sheep business, huh?” said he, throwing up his eyes in quick challenge, pausing a moment in his champing and clatter. Mackenzie nodded, pipe raised toward his lips. “Well, you come to the right country. You ever had any work around a ranch?”
“No.”
“No, I didn’t think you had; you look too soft. How much can you lift?”
“What’s that got to do with sheep?” Mackenzie inquired, frowning in his habitual manner of showing displeasure with frivolous and trifling things.
“I can shoulder a steel rail off of the railroad that weighs seven hundred and fifty pounds,” said Swan. “You couldn’t lift one end.”
“Maybe I couldn’t,” Mackenzie allowed, pretending to gaze out after his drifting smoke, but watching the sheepman, as he mopped the last of the eggs up with a piece of bread, with a furtive turning of his eye. He was considering how to approach the matter which he had remained there to take up with this great, boasting, savage man, and how he could make him understand that it was any of society’s business whether he chained his wife or let her go free, fed her or starved her, caressed her, or knocked her down.
Swan pushed back from the table, wringing the coffee from his mustache.
“Did you cut that chain?” he asked.