“I’d like to! And I orter, too⁠—a mean skunk!”

The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, “Oh, please don’t, Bill; I hain’t ever goin’ to tell.”

And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say:

“ ’Deed you ain’t ! You never said no truer thing ’n that, you bet you.” And once he said: “Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn’t got the best of him and tied him he’d a killed us both. And what for ? Jist for noth’n. Jist because we stood on our rights ⁠—that’s what for. But I lay you ain’t a-goin’ to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put up that pistol, Bill.”