“Carlson locked the door before I could get out.” Mackenzie nodded to the boy, very gravely, as one man to another. Charley laughed.
“You didn’t tear up no boards off the floor tryin’ to git away!” said he.
Joan smiled; that seemed to express her opinion of it, also. She admired the schoolmaster’s modest reluctance when he gave them a bare outline of what followed, shuddering when he laughed over Mrs. Carlson’s defense of her husband with the ax.
“Gee!” said Charley, “I hope dad’ll give you a job.”
“But how did you get out of there?” Joan asked.
“I took an unfair advantage of Swan and hit him with a table leg.”
“Gee! dad’s got to give you a job,” said Charley; “I’ll make him.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Charley,” Mackenzie laughed.
In the boy’s eyes Mackenzie was already a hero, greater than any man that had come into the sheeplands in his day. Sheep people are not fighting folks. They never have been since the world’s beginning; they never will be to the world’s end. There is something in the peaceful business of attending sheep, some appeal in their meekness and passivity, that seems to tincture and curb the savage spirit that dwells in the breast of man. Swan Carlson was one of the notorious exceptions in that country. Even the cattlemen were afraid of him.
Joan advised against Mackenzie’s expressed intention of returning to Carlson’s house to find out how badly 45 he was hurt. It would be a blessing to the country, she said, if it should turn out that Carlson was killed. But Mackenzie had an uneasy feeling that it would be a blessing he could not share. He was troubled over the thing, now that the excitement of the fight had cooled out of him, thinking of the blow he had given Carlson with that heavy piece of oak.