“Let’s go in and buy a few bottles of beer for the girls, kid, just by the way of no harm.”

“No, don’t drag that kid in there⁠—and here’s something else, listen,” said this plain, blunt woman to Smiler. “I guess that kid is all right or he wouldn’t be with you. If I’m grabbed with this junk I’ll rot in jail before I put the finger on you, and if either of you gets grabbed (she was looking at me), and thinks he can get a light jolt by turning me in, he’s wrong. I’ll throw it in the river, and he can rot in jail.”