"Oh, well, they never had anything on you."
"They didn't have anything on Dutch neither--but in the frame-up I didn't know but they'd put a sinker on me, too. What made me sore was having that Flanagan rap against me--why, great God! a job like that--that some fink, some gay cat done after he'd got scared!" Jackson could not find the words to express his disgust, his sense of injury, the stain, as it were, on his professional reputation.
"It was that they put Dutch away on."
"Sure, I know that, Dan, and everybody knows that. It was just like a mob of hoosiers after you with pitchforks; like that time old Dillon and Mason and me gave 'em battle in the jungle in Illinois. Well, that's the way these people was. They was howlin' around that court-house and that pogey--God! to think of it! To think of a fellow's getting a lump like that handed to him--all for croakin' a copper!" Curly shook his head a moment in his inability to understand this situation, and he held his hands out in appeal to Gibbs, and said in his high, shrill voice, emphasizing certain words:
"What in hell do you make of it, Dan?"
"What's the use wasting time over that?" Gibbs asked. "That's all over, ain't it? Then cut it out. Course,"--it seemed, however, that Gibbs had some final comment of his own to make--"you might say the kid ought to've had a medal for croaking a gendie. I wisht when he pushed his barker he'd wiped out a few more bulls. He was a good shot."
Gibbs said this with an air of closing the discussion, and of having paid his tribute to Archie.
"Well, Dan," Curly began, "you'll have to put me on the nut until I can get to work. I haven't even got pad money. I gave my bit to Jane; she says graft's on the fritz. She twisted a super, but it was an old canister--has she been in to-day?"
Gibbs shook his head gloomily.
"She didn't expect 'em to turn me out to-day." Curly mused in a moment's silence. "Ain't she the limit? One day she was goin' to bash that sister of poor Dutch, the next she's doubled with her, holdin' her up. She had me scared when she landed in; I was 'fraid she'd tip off the lay somehow--course"--he hastened to do her justice--"I knew she wouldn't throw me down, but the main bull-- What's wrong, Dan?" Curly, seeing that Gibbs was not interested, stopped suddenly.