“What else could he do? They ain't the sort o' men you'd want to argue with.”
“There is something in that. But why did he try to lock us in here?”
“I dunno.”
“Oh, you don't.”
“No, but—I 'll tell you. Pa's rattled.”
“I shouldn't wonder.”
“He come up to my room just after he'd been out here with you, and says if I ever said a word about it, it would land the whole family in state's prison. That ain't so, is it?”
“Well, I'm not prepared to say.”
The cigar was out again. “Oh, say, now, it wasn't his fault. He didn't do nothing but what they made him do.”
“Of course, the fact that he helped them under compulsion might be considered in a court of law, but I'm not prepared to say that it mightn't go hard with you all. I 'll do what I can to get you out of it, but it's a bad scrape. What direction is Hewittson from here?”