“A saphead—just a plain, everyday saphead,” said Markham. “Down on the ice, Peters, and off with those skates! Pronto is the word! There’s no time to lose!”
Markham had dropped the skis, and stripped a glove from his right hand. The bare hand was in the pocket of his leather coat. Suddenly, as the two stood facing each other, the hand emerged from the pocket with a short, ugly-looking bulldog revolver. Markham leveled the weapon, and the moonlight glinted frostily on the barrel.
Again Peters caught his breath. He was dazed, bewildered. To be threatened in that manner by one whom he had believed to be a friend—or, if not a friend, at least a fellow employee of Uncle Silas Goddard, with interests in common—was a decided shock.
“You crazy, Porter?” demanded Peters, when he could find his tongue.
“Hardly,” was the reply, with a husky, ill-omened laugh, “it will be a long time before you reach Roscommon, my laddybuck. Take off those skates, I tell you! I mean business, Peters!”
There was that in Markham’s words and manner which left no doubt of the fact that he meant business. Peters was wild with indignation and anger, but he was also helpless.
“What’ll Reece Bailey say to this, when I tell him?” he asked, dropping to the ice and working at the skate straps.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” was the response. “Throw the skates over here when you get ’em off. You had to butt into this deal with the fool suggestion of getting word to the sheriff, now, blame you, take your medicine!”
“You’re bound to win,” grunted Peters, “if you have to do it with a gun! You ain’t square, Markham. I may be a good deal of a saphead, but I found, when it was too late, that one of my skis and one of my skate straps had been tampered with at Devil’s Lake. You did that!”
“Why didn’t you tell Hesther about it?” jeered Markham; “or the judges of the contests? Didn’t you have nerve enough to put up a holler?” Peters gave the skates a shove across the ice.