“I won’t do it!” he cried with a sudden burst of rage.
“Then you’ll stay here while I go up and tell them where you are.”
He didn’t like that idea, either, and whined: “Don’t be so mean, Clint. I don’t want to go up to the house this way. What will folks think?”
“‘What will folks think?’” I repeated in amazement. “I s’pose that’s the first thing you’d worried about if you’d cut me with that knife.”
He said no more, but he gave me a threatening look which, had I been of a nervous temperament, might have kept me awake nights. When I drew the tender alongside he stepped in without further urging and sat down in the stern. I rowed ashore. Fortunately for the tender feelings of my cousin there wasn’t a soul in sight when we landed. I fastened the boat, and then, with the oars on my shoulder and the slack of the codline in my hand, start him up the shell road.
“Let me go, Clint,” he begged again.
“Not for Joe!”
“Then you’ll be sorry the longest day you live,” he cried, his ugly face suddenly convulsed.
And he was right; but I did not believe it at the time.