“Nothing doin’,” said Reid, regaining his nonchalance, or at any rate control of his shaking voice.
“You’re a liar, you ain’t got no woman here.”
“She’s in there, all right––come across with the money and take her.”
“How do I know you’ve got any right to make a trade? Have you got the papers to show she’s yours?”
“I’ve got all the papers you’ll ever need.”
“You ain’t got no papers––she’s as much mine as she is yours. Open the door!”
Carlson got up, towering above Reid in his great height. He took off his hat and flung it on the table, stood a little while bending forward in his peculiar loose droop with arms swinging full length at his sides. Reid backed away from him, standing with shoulders against the door as if to deny him passage, hand thrown to his empty holster.
“You ain’t got no gun!” Swan said, triumphantly. “I seen the minute I come in the door you didn’t have no gun. I wouldn’t fight a feller like you––you couldn’t stand up to me like that other feller done here in this house one night.”
Swan looked round the room, the memory of that 300 battle like a light upon his stony face. He stood in silence, turning his head slowly, as if he found a pleasure in the stages of the past battle as recalled to him by the different locations in the place.
“You wanted me to kill that feller so he couldn’t take your woman away from you, didn’t you?” Swan said, contemptuously. “Over there that day me and you made that joke on him runnin’ my sheep over into his. But he didn’t take that joke––what? He stood up to me and fought me like an old bear, and he’d ’a’ whipped me another time if it hadn’t been for them dogs helpin’ me. You bet your hat he would! Yes, and then you come up, and you said to me: ‘Soak him another one!’ And I looked at you, with red in my eyes. ‘Soak him, put him out for good this time!’ you says. And I looked at you another time, my eye as red as blood.