asked him:
“Will you call up the Old Man and ask him to send somebody up to relieve me while I get a bite of food? I haven’t chewed since breakfast.”
“Swell chance!” Tommy said. “Everybody’s busy. Hasn’t been an op in all day. I don’t see why you fellas don’t carry a hunk or two of chocolate in your pockets to—”
“You’ve been reading about Arctic explorers,” I accused him. “If a man’s starving he’ll eat anything, but when he’s just ordinarily hungry he doesn’t want to clutter up his stomach with a lot of candy. Scout around and see if you can pick me up a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of milk.”
He scowled at me, and then his fourteen-year-old face grew cunning.
“I tell you what,” he suggested. “You tell me what this fella looks like, and which building he’s in, and I’ll watch while you go get a decent meal. Huh? Steak, and French fried potatoes, and pie, and coffee.”
Tommy has dreams of being left on the job in some such circumstance, of having everything break for him while he’s there, and of rounding up regiments of desperadoes all by himself. I don’t think he’d muff a good chance at that, and I’d be willing to give him a whack at it. But the Old Man would scalp me if he knew I turned a child loose among a lot of thugs.
So I shook my head.
“This guy wears four guns and carries an ax, Tommy. He’d eat you up.”
“Aw, applesauce! You ops are all the time trying to make out nobody else could do your work. These crooks can’t be such tough mugs—or they wouldn’t let you catch ’em!”