“If I had a good deputy-sheriff—” Blue expressed his thoughts in words.
“Take Hagen with you, Jake.”
“Like ——!” exploded Hagen. “No sir! I ain’t——”
“Since when did you break away from us?” queried Spot meaningly.
“Oh, awright. I ain’t breakin’ away from nobody, Spot; but when you monkey with them two jaspers there’s a hoo-doo on the job, I tell you. If you lemme try agin’ with the long-range stuff——”
“And miss again,” sneered Easton. “All the good that’s done is to make old Skelton more careful.”
“We ain’t had much luck, tha’s a fact,” said Jake Blue sadly. “Mebbe we went at it all wrong.”
“You can’t expect a fortune to come along and roost in your lap, can you?” asked Easton sneeringly. “We’ll get these two punchers into jail and then we’ll settle with old man Skelton.”
“If we’d only tried to buy the —— place at first,” argued Blue.
“Well, we didn’t!”