“Why didn’t he take you up?” It was Wart Ware who finally asked this question.
“Me?” faltered Sammy. “Why I—I don’t know.” But there was a telltale twitch of his lips.
“Didn’t he say why?” demanded Colly Craighead. “It’s funny he’s goin’ to put ever’body else in the lockup but you.”
Sammy only eyed his questioners and tried to turn the inquiry with a question about the lost models.
“I’ll tell you why he let you off,” volunteered Connie as he approached the recent fugitive. “You lied to him.”
“Don’t you call me no liar,” exclaimed Sammy boldly. “An’ I didn’t peach. He ast me who was over here an’ I told him I was no telltale. I wouldn’t give him not a single name. Not even a Goosetowner.”
“You’d ’a’ better not,” remarked Art significantly.
“I didn’t say you peached,” went on Connie unmoved by Sammy’s speech. “I said you lied. I’ll tell you what you told Old Chris; you told him they was a lot of bad boys over here fightin’ an’ ’at you run away so’s you wouldn’t get mixed up with ’em.”
This explanation was so plausible that it did not require Sammy’s sudden panic to convict him. There was a roar of indignation and the gang massed around the accused. Driven to bay Sammy turned on his denouncer. But that was hopeless. There was one other recourse.