"Do you hear it?" Pee-wee whispered. "It's a bitter struggle."
The first sound that I noticed was a sound as if a chair was falling over. Then I heard a man's voice say, "I'll choke you till you tell me. Are you ready to speak?" Then another voice said, "Never!"
Pee-wee said, "Shh, what did I tell you?"
We were all pretty interested by that time. Pretty soon a kind of a high, squeaky voice said, "Do you think I'm afraid of you—you big——" Then it seemed as if the voice was just kind of choked off, because there were stifled cries, sort of, and all the while a gruff voice saying, "Are you ready to take that back? This is your last chance—I'll teach you——" And all the while that other voice kept crying and yelling, and it seemed just as if the person must be struggling.
"It's a child," Westy said, all excited.
"He's strangling it to death," Pee-wee whispered, so scared and excited, that his voice was hoarse. And just then we could hear a long kind of a gurgle and a man's voice saying, "I'll teach you! I'll teach you!" And then the two voices seemed to be mixed up together.
"Wait here," Pee-wee said, and off he started, pell-mell for the tent where there was a light inside.
In ten seconds he was back with a couple of men, and shouting, "In that shack! In that shack! A man is murdering somebody in that shack! Hurry up!"
By that time we were all pretty scared, I guess. The two men vaulted up on to the platform and pushed the door open and we stood outside looking up over the edge of the platform. All of a sudden Westy said, "What—do—you—know——"
That was all he could say. He just vaulted up himself with the rest of us after him. And there we all stood in the doorway, only Pee-wee pushed his way inside.