"'Awkins--that's as good a nyme as another," said Benito, essaying the cockney speech. "And what ye daon't know won't 'urt you, my friend." He threw down a silver piece, took the bottle and glass with him and sat down at a table near the corner. Hard by he had glimpsed the familiar broad back of McTurpin.
At first the half-whispered converse of the trio at the adjoining table was incomprehensible to his ears, but after a time he caught words, phrases, sentences.
First the word "squatters" reached him, several times repeated; then, "at Rincon." Finally, "the best lots in the city can be held."
After that for a time he lost the thread of the talk. An argument arose, and, in its course, McTurpin's voice was raised incautiously.
"Who's to stop us?" he contended, passionately. "The old alcalde grants aren't worth the paper they're written on. Haven't squatters dispossessed the Spaniards all over California? Didn't they take the San Antonio ranch in Oakland, defend it with cannon, and put old Peralta in jail for bothering them with his claims of ownership?" He laughed. "It's a rare joke, this land business. If we squat on the Rincon, who'll dispossess us? Answer me that."
"But it's government ground. It's leased to Ted Shillaber," one objected.
"To the devil with Shillaber," McTurpin answered. "He won't know we're going to squat till we've put up our houses. And when he comes we'll quote him squatter law. He can buy us off if he likes. It'll cost him uncommon high. He can fight us in the courts and we'll show him squatter justice. We've our friends in the courts, let me tell you."
"Aye, mayhap," returned a lanky, red-haired sailor, "but there's them o' us, like you and me and Andy, yonder, what isn't hankerin' for courts."
McTurpin leaned forward, and his voice diminished so that Benito could scarcely hear his words. "Don't be afraid," he said. "I've got my men selected for the Rincon business, a full dozen of 'em ... all with clean records, mind ye. Nothing against them." He pounded the table with his fist by way of emphasis. "And when we've done old Shillaber, we'll come in closer. We'll claim lots that are worth fifty thou--" He paused. His tone sank even lower, so that some of his sentence was lost.
It was at this juncture that Benito sneezed. He had felt the approach of that betraying reflex for some minutes, but had stifled it. Those who have tried this under similar circumstances know the futility of such attempts; know the accumulated fury of sound with which at length bursts forth the startling, terrible and irrepressible