"He's off again!" Tom growled. "Me lay down MY life for a squawking parrot! He'll repeat that pet word for the rest of time if I don't wring his neck."
"Mebbe so you lak hear 'bout some other feller's trouble," 'Poleon broke in, diplomatically.
"Wal, ma soeur she's come to you for help, queeck."
Both old men became instantly alert. "You in trouble?" Tom demanded of the girl. "Who's been hurting you, I'd like to know?"
Jerry, too, leaned forward, and into his widening eyes came a stormy look. "Sure! Has one of them crawlin' worms got fresh with you, Letty? Say—!" He reached up and removed his six-shooter from its nail over his bed.
Rouletta set them upon the right track. Swiftly but earnestly she recited the nature and the circumstances of the misfortune that had overtaken Pierce Phillips, and of the fruitless efforts his friends were making in his behalf. She concluded by asking her hearers to go his bail.
"Why, sure!" Linton exclaimed, with manifest relief. "That's easy. I'll go it, if they'll take me."
"There you are, hoggin' the curtain, as usual," Jerry protested. "I'll go his bail myself. I got him in trouble at Sheep Camp. I owe him—"
"I've known the boy longer than you have. Besides, I'm a family man; I know the anguish of a parent's heart—"
"Lay off that 'family' stuff," howled Mr. Quirk. "You know it riles me. I could of had as much of a family as you had if I'd wanted to. You'd think it give you some sort of privilege. Why, ever since we set up with Letty you've assumed a fatherly air even to her, and you act like I was a plumb outsider. You remind me of a hen—settin' on every loose door-knob you find."