Tom was silent.
Stayford looked at him defiantly, and continued, "I told you before, Tom, not to run down the Catholics, and if you do so again you've got to take back your words, or whip Walter Stayford!"
"Darn my buttons!" interposed Jerry. "Here you is fighting again. I'll club both of you until you feel like wild cats under a dead-fall if you keep on fighting. I reckon we'll turn the boys loose, and——"
"Be ruined, robbed, sent to jail!" interrupted Tom.
"If you want to lose every cent you has, Tom, and be hauled off to Louisville and hung, just kill them boys! Just kill them, and you'll have every man in the country on the trail, like so many hounds, and they'll follow us up till we're caught!"
"Yes," chimed in Stayford, "and you'll have these holes full of ghosts."
"And if you'd bury them a thousand miles deep, they'd be found. They'd come up to the top to tell on us somehow, darn if they wouldn't," said Jerry.
"But boys can't keep secrets!" argued Tom.
"I reckon they can, if we do it this here way. Let 'em know that we are on to 'em, and if ever they says one word about this here cave, we'll burn their father's houses, and play thunder in general. I reckon that'll fetch 'em."
"Well, Jerry," said Tom, "it would be pretty hard to kill two boys for such a small thing. I don't like your plans, but you have been as sly as a red fox since we started in the business, and if you haven't lost your senses, I know you will run things all right."