"Don't you call me a sucker! Don't you say I'm a peacher!" Hank rose to his feet and faced Bill menacingly.
For a moment Jamie thought the men were going to fight, but Bill remained seated and his manner suddenly changed. Jamie thought he acted as though he were afraid.
"See here, Hank," Bill's voice was modified and conciliatory. "I ain't callin' you a sucker, and I ain't sayin' you'll peach. What's the use of us fellers fightin' about it? We're in this together and we're pardners. We've got to hang together. What's the use of us fallin' out?"
"I'm willin' to hang together but I won't be called a sucker or peacher by anybody, and I ain't goin' to stand for any croakin' neither while I've got a gun! Hear me?"
"What we goin' to do about this here kid then? We can't let him go. He'll up and run back and blab. He's heard too much about our business. We don't want to go huntin' trouble, do we? Well, we'll be huntin' trouble if we let him go. He knows too much and he knows all about who we be too."
"What does he know, now? He don't know anything except what you've gone and blabbed yourself. We just caught him tryin' to swipe our cache. The stuff is our'n. 'Tain't his'n. Our stuff is our'n, ain't it? What can he blab about? That's what I want to know!"
"He'll go and tell folks we've got this here swag from the ship, and it'll go to the boss. That's what he knows, and that's what he'll blab."
"Well, what we've got is our'n. He can't prove we've got that there swag, and we'll hide it where the boss can't find it. He hain't seen any swag around, has he? He can't say he has neither, and he won't. He just thought maybe we had that there fox skin. What's that got to do with us? We don't care what he thinks, and what he thinks won't hurt us as I knows of. What we've got and what we ain't got don't make any difference to these fellers. What they don't know won't hurt 'em. It ain't theirs, and nobody better go meddlin' in what I has and does. Let that there kid go now, Bill, and get him off'n our hands."
"You just leave him to me, Hank. I ain't goin' to let him go and blab, I say, and get both of us in a hole. I've got some say, hain't I, Hank?"
"Well, don't do any croakin' when I'm around to see, that's all I've got to say. He's your'n to do the way you want to with. I won't have any finger in it. It's your job, it ain't mine."