“And so you have,” I replied. “I am not Mark Coleman, and Tom Mason knows it very well. My name is Joe.”
“No, I reckon not,” returned Barney, with a most provoking laugh. “Tommy has knowed you fur years an’ years, an’ so have we; an’ you can’t pull the wool over our eyes in no sich way as that ar’!”
“You don’t know me any better than I know myself, do you? If Mark had been in my place, you never would have captured him.”
“Wouldn’t? Why not?”
“Because he would have been too smart for you. He would have whipped you and Jake and Jim so badly that your mothers wouldn’t know you.”
“Wal, now, we’d ’a kept the skeeters off’n him while he was a-doin’ it,” said Jake, who was angry in an instant at the imputation I had cast upon his prowess. “But you can jest hush up that sass, ’cause we ain’t a-goin’ to stand it from you.”
“No, we hain’t,” chimed in Barney. “We’re a-goin’ to pay you fur it now, an’ while we are about it, we’ll settle with you fur all the other mean things you have done.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“Every one of us is goin’ to give you ten good licks with this yere,” replied Barney, flourishing his riding-whip in the air. “Untie his hands an’ pull off his jacket!”
Seventy blows with a rawhide! Wasn’t that a pleasing prospect? How would you have felt if you had been in my place? Would you have taken the whipping quietly?