"Diddly games!" cried Hooch. "What do you mean, Bill Harrison! What do you accuse me of!"

"I accuse you of arranging for us to have no likker at all for four long months of springtime, till I had to hang three Reds for breaking into military stores, and even my soldiers ran out!"

"Me! I brought this load here as fast as I could!"

Harrison just smiled.

Hooch kept his look of pained outrage—it was one of his best expressions, and besides it was even partly true. If even one of the other whisky traders had half a head on him, he'd have found a way downriver despite Hooch's efforts. It wasn't Hooch's fault if he just happened to be the sneakiest, most malicious, lowdown, competent skunk in a business that wasn't none too clean and none too bright to start with.

Hooch's look of injured innocence lasted longer than Harrison's smile, which was about what Hooch figured would happen.

"Look here, Hooch," said Harrison.

"Maybe you better start calling me Mr. Ulysses Palmer," said Hooch. "Only my friends call me Hooch."

But Harrison did not take the bait. He did not start to make protests of his undying friendship. "Look here, Mr. Palmer," said Harrison, "you know and I know that this hasn't got a thing to do with friendship. You want to be rich, and I want to be governor of a real state. I need your likker to be governor, and you need my protection to be rich. But this time you pushed too far. You understand me? You can have a monopoly for all I care, but if I don't get a steady supply of whisky from you, I'll get it from someone else."

"Now Governor Harrison, I can understand you might've started fretting along in there sometime, and I can make it right with you. What if you had six kegs of the best whisky all on your own—"

But Harrison wasn't in the mood to be bribed, either. "What you forget, Mr. Palmer, is that I can have all this whisky, if I want it."