Thursday the Eleventh
The trek is over. And it was not one of triumph. For we find ourselves, sometimes, in deeper water than we imagine. Then we have to choke and gasp for a while before we can get our breath back.
Peter, in the first place, didn’t appear with the prairie-schooner. He left that to come later in the day, with Whinnie and Struthers. He appeared quite early Monday morning, with fire in his eye, and with a demand to see the master of the house. Heaven knows what he had heard, or how he had heard it. But the two men were having it hot and heavy when I felt it was about time for me to step into the room. To be quite frank, I had not expected any such outburst from Duncan. I knew his feelings were not involved, and where you have a vacuum it is impossible, of course, to have an explosion. I interpreted his resentment as a show of opposition to save his face. But I was wrong. And I was wrong about Peter. That mild-eyed man is no plaster saint. He can fight, if he’s goaded into it, and fight like a bulldog. 368 He was saying a few plain truths to Duncan, when I stepped into the room, a few plain truths which took the color out of the Dour Man’s face and made him shake with anger.
“For two cents,” Duncan was rather childishly shouting at him, “I’d fill you full of lead!”
“Try it!” said Peter, who wasn’t any too steady himself. “Try it, and you’d at least end up with doing something in the open!”
Duncan studied him, like a prize-fighter studying his waiting opponent.
“You’re a cheap actor,” he finally announced. “This sort of thing isn’t settled that way, and you know it.”
“And it’s not going to be settled the way you intended,” announced Peter Ketley.
“What do you know about my intentions?” demanded Duncan.