"There ain't no use of holdin' out anything on you," he said.

His lips straightened and his eyes bored into the little man's.

There was a light in his own that made the little man stiffen.

And Sanderson's voice was cold and earnest.
"I'm puttin' you wise to why I've not told her," he went on.

"But if you ever open your yap far enough to whisper a word of it to her I'm wringin' your neck, _pronto_! That goes!" He told Owen the story from the beginning--about the Drifter, his letter to the elder Bransford, how he had killed the two men who had murdered Will Bransford, and how, on the impulse of the moment, he had impersonated Mary's brother.
"What are you figuring to do now ?" questioned the little man when Sanderson finished.
"I'm tellin' her right now," declared Sanderson.