It was like a bad dream. With his usual forthright directness he spoke out.
“What is it you want of me—all of you? This meeting never came about by chance.”
Blatch shook his head. “Yo’ mighty right it didn’t,” he said. “Me an’ the boys has a word to speak with you, and when we ketch you walkin’ on our land in the middle o’ the night—with whatever intentions—we think the time has come for talkin’.”
“Andy! Jeff! Is that you?” Creed, the rash, called over his shoulder to the two behind him.
An inarticulate growl answered, and then a boyish voice began,
“Yo’ mighty free with folks’ names, you Creed Bonbright. Me and my brother both told you what we thought o’ you when you come to the jail. I told you then you’d be run out of the Turkey Tracks ef you tried to come up here. We don’t want no spies.”
“Spies!” echoed Creed with a rising note of anger in his voice. “Who said I was a spy? What should I be spying on?”
“Yo’ friend Mr. Dan Haley might ’a’ said you was a spy,” suggested Andy’s higher pitched tones. “As for what you’d be a-spyin’ on you know best. We’re all mighty peaceable, law-abidin’ folks in the Turkey Tracks. I don’t know of nothin’ that we’re apt to break the law about ’less’n it would be beatin’ up and runnin’ out a spy that——”
The childish bravado of this speech evidently displeased Blatch, who wanted the thing done and over with. His heavier, grating tones broke in,
“They’s jest one thing to be said to you, Creed Bonbright. You’ve got to get out of the Turkey Tracks—and get quick. Air ye goin’?”