CHAPTER XXIII
CONCERNING MARY
“Yes, I’ve heard tell of sheepmen workin’ Swan’s dodge on one another, but I never took no stock in it, because I never believed even a sheepman was fool enough to let anybody put a thing like that over on him.”
“A sheepman oughtn’t to be,” Mackenzie said, in the bitterness of defeat.
“Swan knew you was an easy feller, and green to the ways of them tricky sheepmen,” said Dad. “You let him off in that first fight with a little crack on the head when you’d ought to ’a’ laid him out for good, and you let Hector Hall go that time you took his guns away from him. Folks in here never could understand that; they say it was like a child playin’ with a rattlesnake.”
“It was,” Mackenzie agreed.
“Swan thought he could run them sheep of his over on you and take away five or six hundred more than he brought, and I guess he’d ’a’ done it if it hadn’t been for Reid.”
“It looks that way, Dad. I sure was easy, to fall into his trap the way I did.”
Mackenzie was able to get about again, and was gaining strength rapidly. He and Dad were in the shade of some willows along the creek, where Mackenzie stretched in the indolent relaxation of convalescence, Dad smoking his miserable old pipe close at hand.