Well, he hauled off and hit me. He hit me in the jaw, and then he said what I wouldn't let anybody say about my getting religion, and I fought him. Then we stopped fighting and I was still shaking, but not so bad.
“Yah! Little sissy boy got religion!” he said. “Little sissy boy went and got religion 'cause he's stuck on Mamie Little!”
Well, that did make me mad! I lit into him, and we had another good fight, and pretty soon he said, “'Nuff!” and I stopped. So I started to tell him what I'd do to him if he ever said that again. I was crying, I guess.
“That's all right,” he said; “I just said it on purpose. I just said it to make you fight. You ain't shaking now.” And I wasn't. I'd got so mad I forgot to shake. So, as Swatty had just said what he said on purpose, I didn't care. So I stopped crying.
“Now you've got some sense,” Swatty said. “Don't you get that way again. We don't want to get hung, do we?”
I hadn't thought of that. Of course they would hang us if they found out we'd killed the man in the shanty boat, and it made us pretty sober. I guess I began to cry again.
“Oh, shut up!” Swatty said. “If you're going to blubber all the time, and not try to help, I wish I'd killed that man all by myself. You shut up and try to help me think what to do, or I'll go and tell everybody you killed him.”
“You won't do it!” I said.
“Yes, I will,” he said back. “And I'll prove it on you. You didn't look at that man and I did, and I know what kind of a man he is.”
“What kind of a man is he?” I asked.