“I don’t want your woman, Carlson.”
“You tried to steal her from me; you was lovin’ her over on the range.”
“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.”