“Sighted nothin’ but a tank, and her nearly hull down.”
“Well, if you’d been here a few hours earlier, you’d have smelt the old Juan as well as sightin’ her.”
“Was he here on business?”
“He was,—he was after that wreck Pap told him of. You just told me he’s been after me since last fall spyin’ on me. I know it, and I’m pretty sick of the business. B’sides, he’s as good to help in it as anyone else; so I’ve made a contrac’ with him.”
“Sufferin’ Moses!—a contrac’ with Cark!” Cleary stood for a moment as though absorbing this news, then he laughed, the funniest laugh Ratcliffe had ever heard,—it was like the whinny of a pony. He saw Jude’s head at the cabin hatch, and the head suddenly duck and vanish, as though her body had been doubled up.
“A contrac’ with Cark!”
“Well, what are you laughin’ at?”
“Nothin’. May I ask what terms?”
“We go shares.”
“In the pickin’s?”