Long-distance is my best suit, and I've waited a while to show up certain chaps in this town who think they are just the thing.

Don't worry about me, Morgan; Nick Lang generally gets there when he throws his hat into the ring." At that the other two laughed uproariously, as though they thought the joke too good for anything.

Possibly they took Nick's reference to "those who also ran" to mean Hugh Morgan particularly; and in their minds they could see him desperately trying to break his bonds; or climb up out of the deep pit into which he had gone crashing when the covered mattress, formed of slender twigs and dead leaves, had given way under his weight.
Hugh and Thad walked on, the latter fairly boiling with illy-suppressed anger.
"That fellow always gives me a pain, Hugh," he was saying, as they increased the distance separating them from the still merry trio in the rear.

"He is really the meanest boy you could find in all the towns of this country.

But fellows like him sometimes catch a Tartar; so, perhaps, it might happen in this case," and Thad, who evidently had something on his mind, would not commit himself further, as they walked on in company..