"Them pop-guns was big enough an' ugly enough to kill them two dogs of mine, an' I ain't got no call to face sich we'pons," retorted Matt, who, as you know, always took care to look out for number one. "An' here we've been hidin' around in the bresh fur most a week, fearin' the officers, when we might as well come hum to onct. That's another thing that makes me mad. I do wish I could get my two hands onto them boys fur a little while, an' you fellers here to help me. I'd larrup 'em so't they wouldn't ever come nigh here agin, I bet you."
"I don't know whether you would or not," replied Daily. "I kinder liked 'em, and as long as they ain't officers—"
"That's so," interrupted Matt. "But they're jest the chaps to put the constables onto your trail an' mine. That's their best holt. Didn't you say that if you was in my place you wouldn't rest easy till everybody who had had a hand in mistreatin' you had been burned outen house an' home? Well, them are three of 'em."
"Now why didn't you say so?" demanded the chief of the Buster band.
"If we'd only knowed that, we'd a kept 'em for you," added Spence's voice. "Wouldn't we, Dave? Now that I come to think of it, the youngsters never told us who they was or where they come from, and we didn't think to ask them."
"They'd a lied to you if you had," said Matt, and the boys judged by the sound of crunching gravel that he was pacing back and forth across the road like some caged wild animal. "That's the kind of fellers they be; an' now I'll tell you what's a fact: If you don't help me ketch them fellers an' hold 'em so't they can't get away till we get ready to let 'em, this country of your'n will be thick with officers afore two weeks more has gone by. That's the way it was down to Injun Lake."
"And this is what we get by taking you in and feeding you when you was nigh about dead, is it?" exclaimed Daily, in angry tones. "I bet you that the next tramp who comes this way will be kicked out before he has time to tell his story. You've brought some of our boys into trouble by talking them big notions of your'n into their heads, and telling how easy it was to smash a train and get thousands of dollars outen the pocket of the folks—Ugh! I can't bear to think of what fools we made of ourselves by listening to you. Now you clear yourself, before we make an end of you for good."
"I come here 'cause I had to go somewhere, didn't I?" said Matt, in tones that were fully as angry and fierce as Daily's. "I'm sorry enough I done it, for you're not the men I took you for. You're willin' to stand here with your hands in your pockets an' let them rich folks tell you what an' when you shall eat."
"No, we ain't," roared Daily. "We're free Amerikin citizens, and we don't allow nobody to tell us what we shall do."
"Well, then, what makes you talk to me that-a-way?" cried Matt. "I come here to help, an' I've told you of more ways to bother the folks who want to make laws for you than you would have thought of in ten years' time. As fur puttin' that rock on the track, nobody suspicions who done it, an' we laid around in the bresh so't the officers, if any happened to be here, shouldn't see us comin' from t'wards the railroad. I'm free to say that I didn't want to go down to the track alone an' face the we'pon that Sheldon boy had in his hand (I knowed him dark as it was), but I offered to go if any one would go with me; an' they wouldn't. Ask 'em if it ain't so."