"What good will it do for you to run now?
I'm not going to harm you." Joe stopped, and stood hesitating in indecision, watching the intruder with that sneaking, sidewise look.
"Come on, Joe; let's have a little talk about this business," the Cross-Triangle man said in a matter-of-fact tone, as he seated himself on a large, flat-topped stone near the little fire.

"You know you can't get away, so you might as well." "I ain't tellin' nothin' to nobody," said Joe sullenly, as he came slowly toward the Dean's cowboy.
"No ?" said Patches.
"No, I ain't," asserted the Tailholt Mountain man stoutly.

"That there calf is a Four-Bar-M calf, all right." "I see it is," returned the Cross-Triangle rider calmly.

"But I'll just wait until Nick gets back, and ask him what it was before he worked over the iron." Joe, excited and confused by the cool nerve of this man, fell readily into the verbal trap.
"You better go now, an' not wait to ask Nick no fool questions like that.

If he finds you here talkin' with me when he gets back, hell'll be a-poppin' fer sure.