Penny's jaw was firm. "I won't do anything until I talk to Uncle Bryant."
Sawtell nodded slowly. "All right then, we'll have to bring Jeb down here." He called curt orders up the stairs, and in a moment Jeb, struggling between Lonergan and Lombard, was practically carried down the stairs. His eyes were wide and staring, and his lean face white with terror.
"Do what they want," he cried to the girl. "No matter what it is, you sign it like what I done. If yuh don't they'll brand me with a poker."
"Take him to the fireplace," ordered Sawtell, "put some ropes around him, then come back for Vince. This girl will do what Bryant says, or she'll see slow murder, with a lot of pain."
"No, no," cried Vince, "not me!"
As if by magic a gun appeared in Sawtell's hand.
"You," he said, "as well as Jeb."
Penny watched the wide-eyed Jeb and the cringing, wincing Vince being dragged, howling, to the fireplace, where Lombard and Lonergan tossed ropes about them. The two were jerked off their feet and stretched on the floor, and more ropes looped about their ankles made them helpless. Sawtell, gun still in hand, watched the procedure, unmoved and expressionless. Lonergan's black eyes reflected the leaping flames when he faced Sawtell. His black mustache, so carefully brushed and tapered, seemed to twitch with his eagerness to make the next move.
Sawtell nodded, and the former gambler grabbed the poker in lean fingers and shoved it deep among the red-hot coals. Stark terror from their souls showed in the eyes of the captured men. Vince drooled supplications for mercy, begging Penny to sign Bryant's agreement and save him from the torture of the heated iron. Jeb wailed conglomerate quotations, misquoted, from the Scriptures.