“If you ain’t sights!” Harper cackled upon seeing them. He slapped his thigh in glee. “You look like a couple o’ stupid mud turtles!”
“Fool!” rasped Sweeper Joe. “Don’t you have sense enough to figure what will happen if that girl gets away from us?”
“You ain’t goin’ back to no job at the Gandiss factory. Nor Clayton neither!”
“It’s a lot more serious than that!” Joe snapped. He guided the boat alongside Harper’s craft. “Why do you think I took that job in the first place, and spent better than two years studyin’ the Gandiss factory layout? I lined up the employes we could get to go along with us, got everything organized—and now this gal has to bust up the show just as the profits begin to roll in!”
“Better pipe down,” Harper warned curtly. “She can hear you, and so can everyone else on the river.”
“What’s the difference?” Joe argued in disgust. “We’re through. I’m gettin’ out of this town tonight!”
“Me with you,” added Clark Clayton. “Ever since Gandiss put detectives on the job, I figured the game was gettin’ too dangerous.”
Now it was Claude Harper who lost his temper. “Hold on,” he said warningly. “It’s all right for you guys to blow town, but what about me and the wife?”
“You can do what you please,” Joe retorted.
“We got your brass cached in our basement. If the cops should find it there, we’d take the rap.”