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 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.

"Yes, I cut it. You've got no right to keep your wife, or anybody
else, chained up. You could be put in jail for it; it's against the
law."

"A man's got a right to do what he pleases with his own woman; she's
his property, the same as a horse."

"Not exactly the same as a horse, either. But you could be put in jail
for beating your horse. I've waited here to tell you about this, in a
friendly way, and warn you to treat this woman right. Maybe you didn't
know you were breaking the law, but I'm telling you it's so."

Swan stood, his head within six inches of the ceiling. His wife must
have read an intention of violence in his face, although Mackenzie
could mark no change in his features, always as immobile as bronze.
She sprang to her feet, her bosom agitated, arms lifted, shoulders
raised, as if to shrink from the force of a