“I tell you, you are turning down a good lay when you duck out on this Breed—”
“Oh, hell!” snapped Pratt with all kinds of coarse scorn in his tone. “About all this re-locating business amounts to is that you’ll either be bored in the back or boarded in jail! I’ve been studying the game, Dragg.” He grew confidential. “That’s why I ran down here to this hog-wallow. Ike and I came. These lines here are run by guess and by gad! There’s no clear title back of the land. We figured we would jump in.”
“You’d have the law behind you,” insisted Dragg. “Sure! And all the citizens who own guns, too! The trouble is, Dragg, they all know they’re skating on thin ice. They are looking for something to drop. And so as to be ready for trouble when it comes they have gone to work and got just as mad as they can stick so that they can put a claim-jumper where he belongs in a hurry. None of it for me, Dragg.”
The other muttered.
“I tell you, Dragg,” insisted Mr. Pratt, “I’d hate to be the man to put my name on to a re-location stake in this place! Law to back you—yes! But I have been testing out their temper! It’s dangerous.”
“But mobs don’t do up men any longer in this part of the country.”
“Perhaps I stated it a little strong, Dragg. But a fellow who tries to put anything over on this town, with the people here in their present temper, will get slammed into the pen—and there’s no knowing when they’ll let him out!”
And if that wasn’t a straight tip from Mr. Pratt to a poor young chap in desperate need of good counsel and help in a ticklish matter, then I’m no guesser.
“So it’s back up the line for me—where I can buy a cocktail and get the smell of this tarred paper out of my clothes!”
But Mr. Pratt’s tip was such a helpful one that, providing Judge Kingsley had had a drop of sporting blood in him, I would have posted a little bet that Mr. Pratt would stay on with us for a while. I could see that the judge had made up his mind already that we had lost our Mr. Pratt.