“Which we didn’t have any at all,” hastily put in Mat.
“So you two fine chaps takes water?” contemptuously cried Dan. “You throws up a chance to make a good thing? Why, it was a snap! We could ’a’ stopped the train, gone through her, and then hiked it for Mexico hot foot, and the Old Boy hisself wouldn’t ’a’ ketched us.”
“Mebbe not,” admitted one of the other men. “But we opines it would ’a’ been a whole lot bad for us if the holding up had been expected. Look here, Dan, we thinks it right and proper to put this thing off some. We thinks mebbe in a week or so we is in fer it.”
“Oh, that’s how you figgers. Why didn’t you let me know about it any? That’s what I’d like ter have yer explain. You leaves me a-waiting and a-watching fer yer while you bunks down yere all ca’m and serene-like. That’s what sores me to the limit.”
“We thinks,” said Mat, “if we goes to meet you, mebbe we is seen, and that makes more suspicions. We thinks the best thing to do is to lay low. We’re right sorry that we couldn’t keep the app’intment, but it happens that way, and there is nothing else fer it.”
“Well, it is evident ter me that you two are squealers. You both lack nerve, and I quits you cold. The whole business is off, understand that.”
“Well, if you gits hot and quits us that way, we can’t help it,” said Dillon.
“Well, I does quit. What I wants is my blanket I leaves in yar. I takes that an’ gits out, and you two goes to blazes for all of me.”
Evidently Dan started for the back room at this moment, and the listening boy prepared to spring away from the door. At the same time Dick was seized by a sudden determination to attempt a dash for freedom the moment the door was opened. He knew he might not succeed, but there was a slim chance of it, and he decided to take that chance. Both the ruffians on guard, however, were startled when Dan proposed getting his blanket from the back room. Quickly Dillon interposed.
“Hold on, Dan!” he cried. “Never mind that blanket. We fixes that all right with you. Yere is mine. You take that.”