"Who are you fellows?" he demanded.
"Shut your damned trap and get t' hell in there!" shrieked the bartender, pushing Frank into the back of the car, so that he fell with his head on the cushion.
The insane man scrambled in, and the car was off.
"We told you to get out of town. We gave you your chance. By God, you'll learn something now, you God damned atheist—and probably a damn' socialist or I. W. W. too!" the seeming bartender said. "See this gun?" He stuck it into Frank's side, most painfully. "We may decide to let you live if you keep your mouth shut and do what we tell you to—and again we may not. You're going to have a nice ride with us! Just think what fun you're going to have when we get you in the country—alone—where it's nice and dark and quiet!"
He placidly lifted his hands and gouged Frank's cheek with his strong fingernails.
"I won't stand it!" screamed Frank.
He rose, struggling. He felt the gaunt fanatic's fingers—just two fingers, demon-strong—close on his neck, dig in with pain that made him sick. He felt the bartender's fist smashing his jaw. As he slumped down, limp against the forward seat, half-fainting, he heard the bartender chuckle:
"That'll give the blank, blank, blank of a blank some idea of the fun we'll have watching him squirm bimeby!"
The gaunt one snapped, "The boss said not to cuss."
"Cuss, hell! I don't pretend to be any tin angel. I've done a lot of tough things. But, by God, when a fellow pretending to be a minister comes sneaking around trying to make fun of the Christian religion—the only chance us poor devils have got to become decent again—then, by God, it's time to show we've got some guts and appreciation!"
The pseudo-bartender spoke with the smugly joyous tones of any crusader given a chance to be fiendish for a moral reason, and placidly raising his leg, he brought his heel down on Frank's instep.
When the cloud of pain had cleared from his head, Frank sat rigid. . . . What would Bess and the kids do if these men killed him? . . . Would they beat him much before he died?
The car left the highway, followed a country road and ran along a lane, through what seemed to Frank to be a cornfield. It stopped by a large tree.
