“He's a tough kind,” Swatty said. “And if you don't shut up your bawling I'll say you and him got into an argument about religion, and you shot him because he wouldn't come and join in with you and get it. And folks will believe that, because you've just got it, and there ain't any other reason why any of us should kill him. I haven't got religion, have I?”
“Well,” I said, for I saw Swatty could do like he said, “what are we going to do, anyway?”
“We've got to keep from getting arrested and put into jail and hung,” Swatty said. “I don't know how, but we've got to. We've got to be careful, and not let anybody know we shot that man. If they find it out they'll hang us sure.”
“We didn't mean to shoot him,” I said. “We had a right to shoot outside the city limits.”
“We didn't have a right to shoot anybody,” said Swatty. “We had a right to see if there was anybody in the shanty boat before we shot at it. We'll all three be hung if they find out we did it.”
Well, I had an idea just then, but I didn't say it to Swatty. I didn't really think it, it just come. I knew as soon as I thought it that I wouldn't be so mean, and I knew Swatty wouldn't either. But it would have been easy enough for me and Swatty to say Bony did it. We was two to one. Maybe I would have said it if I hadn't got religion. But it made me feel better for a while to think that I'd thought it and hadn't said it. So the next thing I thought was that it would be mighty noble and true and religious if I'd go to the mayor or somebody and just say: “I killed a man up there at the old shanty boat on the river, but nobody is to blame but me. Swatty ain't and Bony ain't, so go ahead and hang me. I did it, and it was my target rifle.” But I thought that if I was going to be hung I'd not feel as lonesome if Swatty and Bony got hung too. Anyway, Swatty started to talk, and I forgot it.
“If Bony hadn't gone off with the skiff,” he said, “we'd be all right. We'd get in the skiff and row out to the middle of the river and lay flat in it, and nobody would see us. We could float down the river as far as we wanted to and hide in a cane-brake or somewhere. Or maybe, we'd row up the Missouri and hide in the Rocky Mountains. If they got after us we could turn bandits or something.”
“You could,” I said, “but I couldn't.”
“I forgot you'd got religion,” he said. “You'd have to start a ranch. But we can't do that, because Bony went off with the skiff.”
What we decided was that nobody would be apt to find the dead man that day. Maybe they'd never find him. Unless somebody like us happened to go into the old shanty boat he might never get found, and then, the next spring, when the Mississippi had her spring flood, or that same fall, if the water got high enough, we could come up and float the old shanty boat out of the mud and take her out in the river and sink her. We talked over a lot of things, and the more we talked the more it didn't seem so bad. It looked as if we had a chance not to get hung, after all.