“What are you going to say?” Louise cried. “I won’t go. Tom! I won’t have you quarrel.”
“Better go, as your brother says. We’re not going to quarrel,” Lockwood advised cheerfully.
She hesitated, looking wildly from one to the other, then she pushed her horse past the car and fled up the road. Several times she glanced fearfully back, and then vanished over the bridge.
“What is it, Tom?” Lockwood asked amicably.
“I’ve got just this to say,” Power growled. “You ain’t no gentleman, and ef I ketch you comin’ round my sister again I’ll kill you.”
“What’s the matter? What has Hanna been saying about me?” Lockwood questioned, still pleasantly.
“What makes you think he’s been sayin’ anythin’? Well, he has. I reckon you know what it is. Hanna says he knowed you the first time he seen you here, but he didn’t want to make no trouble, and he didn’t say nothing. He says you was arrested over in Mississippi for swindlin’, and you’d have been jailed ef you hadn’t got away.”
“That’s a damned lie,” Lockwood returned.
“’Course you’d say that. I dunno whether you’re lyin’ or not yourself.”
Tom suddenly produced a pearl-handled revolver and rested it across the steering wheel. It was not exactly a threat, but the lie had been as good as passed.