"What do you want?" inquired Molly, regarding Tweezy much as she would have regarded a poisonous reptile.
"I want to see yore mother," snuffled Tweezy, applying his sleeve to his nose. He had in the mixup smote his swell fork with the organ in question and it had begun to bleed.
"Why?"
"I want to pay her money to go away quietly," said Tweezy, switching from his sleeve to his handkerchief. "I—"
"Here she is," interrupted Molly. "Tell her."
"How do, ma'am," said Luke to the wet-eyed widow. "I guess it ain't necessary for me to go through a lot of explanations with you. You know what's what, and you know we'll take possession just as soon as the sheriff serves the eviction papers on you."
At this Racey Dawson made a noise in his throat. Molly laid cool fingers on his wrist.
"Steady, boy, steady," she whispered under her breath.
Despite the seriousness of the moment Racey's heart skipped a beat and the pleasantest shiver in the world ran about his body. "Boy!" she had called him. "Boy." Her hand was actually touching his own. He—
"I don't want to be hard on you, Mis' Dale," resumed Luke, after an apprehensive glance at Racey Dawson. "I don't like to be hard on anybody that's sittin' into a run of hard luck, but business is business, ma'am. You know that. And after all I'm—we're only asking for what we're by rights entitled to. We got title to this place fair and square, and—"