"Allus. He made me learn to ride, and rope, and shoot, from—ever since I was weaned. When I got old enough he learned me scouting, cooking, packing a hawss, tending wounds, hunting—all sorts of things. I been well educated shore enough, more than most boys."
"It's all beastly rot calling him good—McCalmont good!"
"A hawss or a dawg, or a lil' child will run from a bad man, but they love my father. Oh, but you don't know how good he is!"
"Well, let it go at that. You wanted to be a robber?"
"Shorely, yes, but he never would let me. It ain't true what that sign-paper says up in the city yonder, that I robbed a train. I wasn't there at all. You see, father picked up on the home trail with a starving man, and helped him. That mean, or'nary cuss went and told Joe Beef, the sheriff, that I was in the gang which held up the train. That's why I'm due to be hunted and roped, or shot at by any citizen who wants two thousand dollars. Of co'se, it's nacheral there should be a bounty offered on wolf haids, but I'd like to have a nice wolf-time before I'm killed. I never had a chance to get my teeth in, 'cept only once. Yes, we stole six hundred head of cattle from the Navajos, and you should just have seen the eager way they put out after us. They was plenty enthoosiastic, and they came mighty near collecting our wigs."
"It makes me sick to think of you with a gang of thieves."
"Father says that the worst crimes is cowardice, meanness, and cheating. The next worse things is banks, railroad companies, lawyers; and that young Ryan—'specially Ryan—he says that us robbers is angels compared with trash like that."
"That's no excuse."
"Father says that robbery is a sign that the law is rotten, and a proof that the Government's too pore and weak to cast a proper shadow. He allows we're a curse to the country, and it serves the people right."
"It's bad—you know it's bad!"