"Take off your grappling-hooks, Matt," puffed Ferral, squirming to get out from under Matt's hands. "Dowse me if I've taken that crimp's full measure, yet. The nerve of him, breezing right up here with my money in his clothes!"
"Steady!" said Matt, closing down harder on Ferral and easily holding him. "This has gone far enough."
"I should say it had," spoke up Sercomb, showing a flash of temper. "Pretty way for my friends to be treated! I won't stand for it."
"When you've got thieves for friends, Sercomb," cried Ferral, "you're liable to have to stand for a good deal!"
"Hand him one for that, Joe!" urged one of the newcomers. "That's the first time I ever heard a thing like that batted up to Joe Mings, and him not raising so much as a finger against the man that said it."
"We've got to think of Ralph, Harry," said Joe Mings. "This row makes it uncomfortable for him."
"Especially since the chap that's making such a holy show of himself is my own cousin," remarked Sercomb, with bitter reproach.
"The more shame to you," flared Ferral, "to let the hound that robbed your own cousin come here like he's done, and take his part. Keep your offing, Joe Mings," he added, to the thief, "or I'll tie you into a granny's knot and heave you clean over your devil-wagon! Where's that money? I need it, and I'm going to have it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," answered Mings. "You must be dippy! Why, I never saw you before until you rushed out and tried to climb my neck."
"You two-tongued swab! Do you mean to stand up there and say you didn't meet me in Lamy, tell me you were a Canadian in distress, and ask me to go to your boarding-house with you and square a bill with your landlady? And will you say you didn't land on me with a pair of knuckle-dusters in a dark street and run off with my roll?"