“All right, then,” resumes Borlasse; “we understand one another. But it won’t do to stay palaverin hyar any longer. Let’s go up to my bedroom. We’ll be safe there; and I’ve got a bottle of whisky, the best stuff for a nightcap. Over that we can talk things straight, without any one havin’ the chance to set them crooked. Come along!”
Darke, without protest, accepts the invitation. He dares not do otherwise. It sounds more like a command. The man extending it has now full control over him; can deliver him to justice—have him dragged to a jail.
Chapter Thirty Four.
“Will you be one of us?”
Once inside his sleeping apartment, Borlasse shuts the door, points out a chair to his invited guest, and plants himself upon another. With the promised bottle of whisky between them, he resumes speech.
“I’ve asked you, Quantrell, to be one o’ us. I’ve done it for your own good, as you ought to know without my tellin’ ye. Well; you asked me in return what that means?”
“Yes, I did,” rejoins Darke, speaking without purpose.
“It means, then,” continues Borlasse, taking a gulp out of his glass, “that me, an’ the others you’ve been drinking with, air as good a set of fellows as ever lived. That we’re a cheerful party, you’ve seen for yourself. What’s passed this night ain’t nowheres to the merry times we spend upon the prairies out in Texas—for it’s in Texas we live.”