Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/372

 didn't I?" said Matt, in tones that were fully as angry and fierce as Daily's. "I'm sorry enough I done it, for you're not the men I took you for. You're willin' to stand here with your hands in your pockets an' let them rich folks tell you what an' when you shall eat."

"No, we ain't," roared Daily. "We're free Amerikin citizens, and we don't allow nobody to tell us what we shall do."

"Well, then, what makes you talk to me that-a-way?" cried Matt. "I come here to help, an' I've told you of more ways to bother the folks who want to make laws for you than you would have thought of in ten years' time. As fur puttin' that rock on the track, nobody suspicions who done it, an' we laid around in the bresh so't the officers, if any happened to be here, shouldn't see us comin' from t'wards the railroad. I'm free to say that I didn't want to go down to the track alone an' face the we'pon that Sheldon boy had in his hand (I knowed him dark as it was), but I offered to go if any one would go with me; an' they wouldn't. Ask 'em if it ain't so."