“No rough house, pardner!” exclaimed the houseboat man who held the gun. “No rough house here, because, you see, we’ve got a claim on this boy ourselves. He just destroyed a net worth a hundred dollars!”
“A hundred dollars!” snarled the whiskey boat man. “Do you know what he did to us?” he went on. “He stole this motor boat and sunk our steamer with it. He’s cost us more than twenty thousand dollars!”
Alex stood silent in the face of all these accusations. He had recognized the two men from the barge as men he had seen on the whiskey boat, and he knew that they would do their best to make him trouble. For a moment it seemed to him that the fate of the Rambler was sealed.
“What do you say to all this, boy?” asked the man with the gun.
Alex sat down dejectedly on the gunwale.
“I guess I’ll let you fellows fight it out between you,” he said.
“I can’t see as there’s anything to fight out!” one of the men from the whiskey boat shouted.
“This is our boat and we’re going to take it away! As for this boy, we’ll place him in the custody of the first United States marshal we come to!”
Once more the rusty barrel of the old shotgun in the hands of the houseboat man was hoisted to a threatening position.
“Don’t you forget,” the man said viciously, “that this boat busted our net. We don’t care whose boat it is, we’re going to hold it until we get paid for our property!”