“No,” said the captain, “I don’t. I believe Jefferson is going to buy out the Spaniards or drive them home, and that the country will belong to us clear to the sea.”
“Hm,” said the old man. “Well, son, if there’s goin’ to be any such doings down to New Orleans, I’d be terrible sorry for Jimmy to miss it. I reckon I couldn’t very well leave Maria. I expect I’m pretty tolerable old for a trip like what you say it is to go down the river, even when everything is fav’rable. I’d mebby do best to cossett what’s left of my scalp and not run the risk of losing it to a strange Indian when I could just as easy lose it to one nearer home. I don’t reckon Maria would consent to my going, but I’d set a right smart store on one of our family havin’ a hand in them doin’s down to New Orleans, and I reckon them rivermen at Natchez won’t corrupt Jim any more than the roustabouts around Marietta shipyard. I just reckon you’ll have to take him along, son.”
There was no resentment whatever in the old man’s tone. He made no defense of Jimmy, although Jimmy was his idolized grandson, and Jimmy’s father had been taken captive by the Indians before Jimmy was a year old—which was sixteen years ago—and nothing had ever been heard of him. But Uncle Amasa had lived as a pioneer among pioneers, where every man had to stand by himself, for himself, and for those whom his presence protected. He made no defense of Jimmy.
There was an uncomfortably long pause. They were near enough to the little shipyard at the mouth of the creek, so that they stopped to finish their discussion before they joined the men who were working. Little old Uncle Amasa stood shrunken like a withered bush on which a workman had hung his coat and cap. Captain Royce faced him, young and alert and vigorous, sure of his judgment, but reluctant to oppose the old man whom the entire settlement loved.
“Uncle Amasa,” he said at length, smiling at the shrewd light-gray eyes that looked into his, “you’ve always been too hasty.”
“Aye,” admitted the old pioneer, “and if I’d been a trifle hastier, I’d ’a’ saved my whole scalp instead of only half of it. It’s a grand thing to be hasty, son, when you’re dealing with savages.”
“You were hasty when you bought the still without considering how it would affect the settlement here,” continued the captain, gravely. “Until this year, good Master Hempstead and his like had to go clear to Marietta to indulge their little foibles. You want me to tell you why you are so anxious to have Jimmy go with me on this trip? It’s because you see you were too hasty, and you want to separate him as far as possible from that new still. But I’m afraid that you can’t do that so long as I am taking the twenty barrels of brandy and whisky along in the cargo. I’ll take the cargo, or I’ll take Jimmy. I can’t take both even for all the things you’ve done for me and mine, and for the help you’ve been in building the ark here. As long as I’m captain, and the whole settlement has appointed me to represent them in disposing of their year’s harvest and work, I owe my first duty to the safety of the cargo and the lives I’m taking along with me. The Marietta hands will have no right in the boat, and I can handle them if Jimmy isn’t along to stir up insubordination.”
“He’ll be along,” said Uncle Amasa, cheerily. “If there are to be doin’s at New Orleans, I’d like for him to see them and have them to tell to his children when he grows old. Life is pretty much all in the way you see it, and I’ve seen a heap, and I want that Jimmy should. The only comfort I’ve ever had in these long years since his pa disappeared is been in thinking of the strange secrets he must have got to know. I reckon if James was to come back from captivity alive, I’d be so curious to hear about his experiences that I’d clean forget to rejoice at having him home again.”
The young captain looked at Uncle Amasa. Queer characters were the rule rather than the exception among the settlers who had willingly turned their backs on civilization and safety, but in all his experience he knew of no other pioneer whose foolhardiness could be inspired by sheer curiosity.
“Do you mean to say, Uncle Amasa, that since you can’t go yourself the chance of your grandson seeing new things makes you insist upon my taking him, even if his presence jeopardizes the welfare and success of the whole expedition?”