“Now I’ve got this yere ’Rora mine,” Bob shouted excitedly, “and I’m goin’ to keep it, don’t you forget that! An’ wot’s more, my friend Mr. Stevens is agoin’ to jump that claim you’re holdin’ now, ’n’ that cabin. That cabin belonged to my friend Pickens, ’n’ he told me, before he went away, that if I wanted it I could have it, and I can prove it.”
“Now,” Bob kept on, “you young roosters ’d better give up and crawl out. We’ll give you a chance to get away and take your blankets and things if you’ll quit peaceable-like and git out. We don’t want no trouble, nor nobody hurted.”
“Then why did you put a ball into our doorpost?” interrupted his listener.
“Scotty did that. I told him’t wa’n’t on the squar, an’ ’twas kinder haxidental anyhow. If you’ll quit shootin’ at us we wont shoot at you,—an’ I wouldn’t nohow.”
“We haven’t fired a shot.”
“You’re jist ready to all the time,” Bob persisted, “so’s we gentlemen can’t work our property for fear of you.”
“You ‘gentlemen’! Your ‘property’!” repeated Lennox, with infinite scorn.
“Yes, ours. And, as I was sayin’, we’ll go to town and get help, if we arn’t enough alone, and we’ll bounce you out o’ that cabin which we want for ourselves, and you may thank your stars if you yet out with whole skins. The hull filin’ of ye must pack up and scoot ’fore sundown.”
“That’s rather sudden,” Len pleaded; “can’t you give us till to-morrow morning? It looks like it was going to rain to-night.”
“Well, we don’t want to be rough on young chaps like you, though you’re too cheeky for these parts,” Bob conceded, thinking he had frightened the lad; “and we wont crowd ye to-night. But, by this, that and the other! if you don’t skip out early to-morrow you’ll hear from us, you bet!”