"If you don't wish to accept our gift, you need not do so, Spike," said Tom. "We shan't lay it up against you if—"
"It ain't that!" exploded the lumberjack.
"Then what is it, old man?" questioned Hippy.
Spike, rising awkwardly, swallowed hard several times and essayed to speak.
"Talk, if you feel like it. It will do you good," urged Tom kindly.
"It's 'cause I ain't fit ter touch it, that's why," blurted Spike. "Yer wants me t' talk. I'll talk. I ain't fit 'cause I ain't fit, that's all. I'm a thief, and I'm a skallerwag, and I served a term in Joliet prison. I ain't never had nuthin' but kicks and cuffs and dodgin' perlice afore I got inter this outfit. First off, I thought it was soft here—that ye folks was easy, but somehow it warn't. There was somethin' else in the kind o' treatment yer give me that I couldn't git through my haid."
The hair of Spike's head was now a bristling flame of red.
"You're excited. Hook your canthook on the other side and stop the log from rolling before it mashes you flat," advised Hippy.
"I got ter talk now, and then I'll quit and git out fer good. I took money fer ter do ye an inj'ry. I took it from that houn' Ainsworth. I was to tell him 'bout things that was goin' on here and—"
A low, rumbling, menacing growl, at first coming, it seemed, from the very boots of the lumberjacks, startled the Overland Riders. The growl suddenly burst into an angry roar. Acting upon a common impulse, every jack in the room sprang to his feet and made a savage rush for the red-headed Spike.