At the end of the little silence the raucous voice began again.
“Ye’ll not keep it long—not any longer than it’ll take the sheriff to get in here fr’m Natrolia.”
“Huh!” Larry snorted. “The sheriff hasn’t got anything to do with us!”
“Yuh’ll see when he gets here. Ye’re jumpin’ our mine.”
“Nothing doing,” said Larry. “I don’t know where you are, but wherever it is, you can stay there and talk foolishness all night if you want to. It won’t get you anywhere, though.”
Another silence, and then:
“Listen: ye’re nothin’ but a bunch o’ kids, and ye don’t know what ye’re up ag’inst. You don’t want to make this a fight for blood, because if ye do, there’s only the one way it can end. Ye’re in there, and if we give the word, yuh’ll never come out alive.”
It was here that Dick, who seldom consented to be a permanent listener in any conversation, chipped in.
“Lots of good it’ll do you to kill us off!” he snapped back. “You talk as if there wouldn’t be any hereafter to this thing! James Brock gave this mine to my Uncle Billy Starbuck, and you know it because you listened in that morning in Brewster and heard Uncle Billy telling us about it. Suppose you do turn in and murder us: how long do you think it would be before half of Brewster’d be over here looking for you three fellows with a rope?”