“What I’ve got to tell you can be told in my shack. You best come right on.”
“Take your darned hand off me!” cried Will, angrily. “You’ll tell me here, or I get back to my game.” He tried to twist himself free. But Peter’s hand tightened its hold.
“You’re quitting that saloon for to-night, Will,” he said quietly.
The other laughed, but he had a curiously uncomfortable feeling under his anger. Suddenly he put more exertion into his efforts to release himself, and his fury rose in proportion.
“Darn your soul, let me go!” he cried.
But Peter suddenly seized his wrist with his other hand, and it closed on it like a vice.
“Don’t drive me to force,” he warned. “That saloon is closed to you to-night. Do you understand? I’ve got to say things that’ll likely change your way of thinking. Don’t be a fool; come on up to my shack.”
There was something so full of calm strength, so full of conviction in Peter’s tone that it was not without its effect. That guilty thought rose again in Will’s mind, and it weakened his power of resistance. His rage was no less, but now there was something else with it, an undermining fear, and in a moment he ceased to struggle.
“All right,” he said, and moved forward at the other’s side.