“You wait and I'll show you,” was Kent's unvaried reply.
At last he pushed open a door and led his victim into the darkness of a small, windowless building. “It's in here—back against the wall, there,” he said, pulling Manley after him. By feeling, and by a good sense of location, he arrived at a rough bunk built against the farther wall, with a blanket or two upon it.
“There you are,” he announced grimly. “You'll have a sweet time getting anything to drink here, old boy. When you're sober enough to face your wife and have some show of squaring yourself with her, I'll come and let you out.” He had pushed Manley down upon the bunk, and had reached the door before the other could get up and come at him. He pulled the door shut with a slam, slipped a padlock into the staple, and snapped it just before Manley lurched heavily against it. He was cursing as well as he could—was Manley, and he began kicking like an unruly child shut into a closet.
“Aw, let up,” Kent advised him, through a crack in the wall. “Want to know where you are? Well, you're in Hawley's ice house; you know it's a fine place for drunks to sober up in; it's awful popular for that purpose. Aw, you can't do any business kicking—that's been tried lots of times. This is sure well built, for an ice house. No, I can't let you out. Couldn't possibly, you know. I haven't got the key—old lady Hawley has got it, and she's gone to bed hours ago. You go to sleep and forget about it. I'll talk to you in the morning. Good night, and pleasant dreams!”
The last thing Kent heard as he walked away was Manley's profane promise to cut Kent's heart out very early the next day.
“The darned fool,” Kent commented, as he stopped in the first patch of lamplight to roll a cigarette. “He ain't got another friend in town that'd go to the trouble I've gone to for him. He'll realize it, too, when all that whisky quits stewing inside him.”
CHAPTER XII. A LESSON IN FORGIVENESS
“Well, old-timer, how you coming? You sure do sleep sound—this is the third time I've come to tell you breakfast is ready and then some. You'll get the bottom of the coffeepot, for fair, if you don't hustle.” Kent left the door of the ice house wide open behind him, so that the warmth of mid-morning swept in to do battle with the chill and damp of wet sawdust and buried ice.
Manley rolled over so that he faced his visitor, and his reply was abusive in the extreme. Kent waited, with an air of impersonal interest, until he was done and had turned his face away as though the subject was quite exhausted.