"No, I hain't. They wouldn't have any writin' on it. They said it wouldn't be best."
"Well, that's good sense. It wouldn't." Bill got up and put more wood in the stove, for a raw wind was blowing up from the desert. "Well, what do you expect me to do about it?" He turned on Al so abruptly that Al dodged, expecting a blow perhaps.
"Wal, I dunno—onless it might mebby be worth somethin' to yuh, t' know about the frame-up." Cupidity flared for a moment in Al's eyes. "Yo're a rich man, Mr. Dale," he whined. "I ain't got a dime to my name."
Bill replaced the lid on the stove, scraped pieces of bark from the surface with the poker and sat down again, eyeing Al contemptuously.
"Yes, I'm a rich man—according to your standard. Did you ever hear of crooks making a man rich, Al? Doesn't that strike you as kind of funny—a crook doing that?"
"Wal, I dunno's it does, Mr. Dale—not if they was gittin' five dollars, say, whilst you was gittin' one."
Bill laughed contemptuously.
"If they were all that generous, they'd be pretty apt to pay you enough to keep your mouth shut, anyway. Or give some one a few dollars to bump you off. There are thin spots in your yarn, Al. I'm afraid it isn't worth much."
"Wall, they paid me some," Al retorted with a craven kind of acrimony. "An' they don't b'lieve in killin'. They say that's crewd an' danger'us."
"They'll pay you more," Bill snapped, "if they're afraid of your tongue. You're a cheap skate, Al—an awful cheap skate. If you'll take my advice, you'll get out of town—to-night. The world's full of places besides Parowan. Take him out, Tommy; and dump him somewhere outside the city limits. And if you want to bring any more like him into camp, give them a good scrubbing first. I'll have to clean house after him. Get!"