Take it from me, bo, when you trade with Abe Smith you want a cop along." Johnny fingered the linen, his face gone sober.

"I told him to send the best he had in stock," he said.
"Well, maybe he done it, at that," the hobo conceded.

"His stock's rotten, that's all." "I was looking the bunch over so I could shoot it back to him if it wasn't all right," Johnny explained with dignity.

"They sure can't work off any punk stuff on me, not if I know it." The hobo flipped his cigarette stub into the sand and stared out across the depressing huddle of adobe huts and raw, double-roofed shacks that comprised Agua Dulce.

His pale eyes blinked at the glare, his mouth drooped sourly at the corners.
"Believe me, bo, if you're stranded in _this_ hole with a busted plane, yuh better not take on any contract of arguing with Abe Smith.