“Come along and take a walk. I got something to tell you.”
“Can’t you tell it here?”
“I ain’t going to, anyhow. Come along. I ain’t got smallpox.”
Reluctantly Davis fell in beside him. “All right. Cut it short. I’ve got to see a man.”
“He’ll have to wait.” Curly could not help chuckling to himself at the evident embarrassment of the other. The impish impulse to “devil” him had its way. “You’re a man of experience, Slats. Ever hold up a train?”
The foreman showed plainly his disgust at this foolishness. “Haven’t you sense enough ever to be serious, Curly? You’re not a kid any more. In age you’re a grown man. But how do you act? Talk like that don’t do you any good. You’re in trouble good and deep. Folks have got their eyes on you. Now is the time to show them you have quit all that hell raising you have been so busy at.”
“He sure is going good this mo’ning,” Curly drawled confidentially to the scenery. “You would never guess, would you, that him and me had raised that crop in couples?”
“That’s all right, too. I’m no sky pilot. But I know when to quit. Seemingly you don’t. I hear you’ve been up at Stone’s horse ranch. I want to tell you that won’t do you any good if it gets out.”
“Never was satisfied till I had rounded up all the trouble in sight. That’s why I mentioned this train robbery. Some of my friends are aiming to hold up one shortly. If you’d like to get in I’ll say a good word for you.”
Davis threw at him a look that drenched like ice water. “I expect you and me are traveling different trails these days, Curly. You don’t mean it of course, but the point is I’m not going to joke with you along that line. Understand?”