"G'wan, spill your yarn about it," said Shorty. "We don't care whether it's true or not."
Buck was inclined to be offended. "Say, you all never heard me tell nothin' but th' truth," he snorted.
"Sure, we didn't," said Jim. "Leastways, your yarns is told about places so far away that we has t' take 'em as true, not knowin' any one to call on for t' verify 'em."
"Well, if they're made up, you c'n make up just as good ones yourselves," said Buck, and he lapsed into silence.
"Your tale interests me strangely," said Bill. "Get to it. You started fine."
"He didn't start at all," Jim said.
"That's what Bill means," explained Shorty.
"Aw, let him tell th' story," said Charlie Bassett. "You fellers that ain't liars yourselves is all jealous."
Whitey would have thought that the tale was to go untold had he not known that every story of Buck's met with this sort of reception, and that nothing short of an earthquake could keep him from talking.
"Well, just to show you fellers you can't queer me, I will tell about this here lynchin'," Buck declared, after a pause.