"C'mon, Racey, come alive," urged Swing Tunstall, making a great business of shaking awake his drunken friend. "You don't wanna stay here no longer. I know a fine place where you can sleep it off."
Ten minutes later Racey and Swing were sitting comfortably on a pile of hay in Tom Kane's new stable. Racey pulled off his boots, flopped down on the hay, and clasped his hands behind his head. He wiggled his toes luxuriously and laughed.
"Gawd," said he. "Think o' that old skinflint buying nearly two bottles of whiskey! Bet that'll lay heavy on his mind for as much as a month. What you lookin' at me like that for?"
"Yeah, I'd ask if I was you. I shore would. What was yore bright idea of tellin' Luke Tweezy we were gonna ride for Jack Harpe so's to watch him?"
"So he'd know it."
"So he'd know it! So he'd know it! The man sits there and says 'so he'd know it'! And you call me a thickskull! Which yore head has got mine snowed under thataway. Can't you see, you droolin' fool, that now they'll know as much as we do?"
"No, oh, no," Racey denied with a superior smile. "Not never a-tall. I ain't saying they mightn't know as much as you do by yoreself. But not while you got the benefit of my brains they won't know as much as we do. 'Tain't possibil."
"And what did you bite me for?" pursued Swing, disregarding the slur. "Hell's bells, if you'd bit Luke I wouldn't have a word to say, but why pick on me?"
"Well, you bumped my head so hard I saw sparks, so we're even. Say, stop squallin' about yore hand! I didn't bite you half as hard as I might have. Not half. You can still use the hand all right, can't you? Yeah. Well, then, you ain't got anything to cry about, not a thing."
"Talk sense, will you? You got us into a fine mess, you have. A fi-ine mess."