“Don’t you get up,” he warned Andy. “If you do, I’ll knock you down again.”
“Big Injun, aren’t you!” flared out Andy, provoked and indignant—“especially where you’ve got a fellow whipsawed?”
“Betcher life,” sneered Gus maliciously. “Things worked to a charm. Got a hint from some airship fellows that you was somewhere around these diggings. Watched out for you and caught you just right, hey?”
The speaker sat down among the weeds in front of Andy. The latter noticed that his face was grimed and his hands stained with dirt. His clothes were wrinkled and disordered as if he had been sleeping in them. From what he observed, Andy decided that the son of the Princeville garage owner and his companion were on a tramp. They looked like runaways, and did not appear to be at all prosperous.
“Say,” blurted out Gus, digging down into the ice cream, as if he was hungry, “you might better have turned up that two hundred dollars for dad.”
“Why had I?” demanded Andy.
“It would have saved you a good deal of trouble. It’s a stroke of luck, running across you just as we’d spent our last dime. How will you like to go back to Princeville and face the music?”
“What music?”
“Oh, yes, you don’t know! Haven’t read the papers, I suppose? Didn’t know you was wanted?”
“Who wants me?”