I'm just tellin' yuh the boss don't approve of no celebrations like we had yest'day.

I got up early an' hauled that burro outa sight 'fore he seen it.

That's how much a friend I be, an' it wouldn't hurt yuh none to show a little gratitude!" "Gratitude, hell! A lot I got in life t' be grateful for!" Casey slumped down on the nearest bench, laid his injured hand carefully on the table and leaned his aching head on the other while he discoursed bitterly on the subject of his wrongs.
His muddled memory fumbled back to his grievance against traffic cops, distorting and magnifying the injustice he had received at their hands.
He had once had a home, a wife and a fortune, he declared, and what had happened?
Laws and cops had driven him out, had robbed him of his home and his family and sent him out in the hills like a damned kiotey, hopin' he'd starve to death.

And where, he asked defiantly, was the gratitude in that?
He told Joe ramblingly but more or less truthfully how he had been betrayed and deserted by a man he had befriended; one Barney Oakes, upon whom Casey would like to lay his hands for a minute.
"What I done to the burro ain't nothin' t' what I'd do t' that hound uh hell!" he declared, pounding the table with his good fist.
Homeless, friendless; but Joe was his friend, and Paw and Hank were his friends--and besides them there was in all the world not one friend of Casey Ryan's.

They were good friends and good fellows, even if they did put too much hoot in their hootch.