"That's right," blustered George. "I heard him tell the recorder. And you'd better move off, yourselves, or we'll have you put off!"
Pine Knot Ike squirted a prodigious stream of filthy tobacco juice.
"Waal, now, the books don't show," he asserted. "We're hyar, with our improvements, workin' a claim that looked to be abandoned, an' I reckon that'll count. We take our water off an' what's your prospect wuth to you, anyhow?"
"He's a big bully," whispered George.
"We want to sell, though," reminded Terry. Ike seemed to be giving them the opportunity. So—"It's worth more than nothing, just the same," he replied. "That's our cabin and our sluice and our ground. You needn't think you can come over and jump things this way. We've got plenty of friends right in this gulch, and down at Denver, too."
"Reckon that sort o' talk doesn't amount to much. Possession air nine points o' the law, young feller," sneered Ike. "I air a man o' peace, but when anybody says 'fight,' I can riz on my hind legs as quick as ary b'ar."
"You won't amount to much, either," accused Terry, with sudden thought, "after I tell people how you got that Injun head and how you shot your own barrel full of holes, and how you skedaddled out of that tent in Auraria and how Harry made you dance at Manhattan last summer!"
Pine Knot Ike stared and glared and ruminated.
"Mebbe you know somethin' an' mebbe you don't," he admitted. "But I air a man o' peace an' so air my pardners. To save hard feelin's, an' argufyin', how'll you sell what you call your rights in this hyar property, dust paid down on the spot?"
"We'll sell for a hundred dollars," offered Terry.