"You got into bad company, youngster," said Ham, surveying Pee-wee's rakish cap and lawless looking sweater. "You ought to be thankful you got a chance to get rid of that sort o' company. You're kinder young, I reckon, ain't you? Gosh, I calculate you ain't more'n four foot high. Kinder young to be mixed up in stealings."
"You're the one that's mixed up," Pee-wee shouted, "and anyway size doesn't count. You can--you can steal things if you're--you're only a foot high--if you want to and--"
"How about all this, Peter?" asked his friend confidentially.
"I'll tell you," Pee-wee shouted; "I had a lot of adventures, I know two men that have, shh, they have dead ones to their credit! I circum--what d'you call it--vented them, and that man that just ran away, he was a traitor, but I can--"
"Can you keep still a second? One look at you is enough," said Ham Sanders.
"I've--I've got--three scout suits," Pee-wee began.
"Like enough you stole 'em," said Ham. "You're one of them runners for crooks, that's what you are. I know the kind; they have you to climb in the windows for 'em and all that. Now you keep still a minute if you know what's best for you."
In a brief and threatened few moments of silence Peter told in a whisper how he had seen the signal and read it and stopped the car, and of the flight of the head thief, as he called him. Between these two excited youngsters Ham hardly knew what to believe. He certainly did not believe in talking lights appearing over graveyards. Nor did he credit Pee-wee's vehement and choppy account of bandits with seventy pistols.
"Whar are these here dead ones?" he asked, rather confused. "Over yonder in the graveyard?"
"How do I know where they are?" Pee-wee shouted. "Do you know what blackjacks are?"