“Is he going on the flatboat with that friend of your’n?”
“No, Marion thinks he’s too old,” said Jimmy. “Besides, he has to stay and take care of Ma.”
“Your friend seems to be full of prejudices,” said the stranger, thoughtfully. “Now, here’s what I’ve got to say. You can take it or leave it, and welcome. You’ve done me a turn that I’ll not forget. No, I ain’t thankin’ ye. But if you want to look atter me a spell, till I’m on my legs again, I’ll do this. I’ll take you down the river till we meet up with my party and then we’ll join your pappy. Mebby about that time your friends’ boat will be getting down the stream, and ye’ll have the satisfaction of hailing them from Cincinnati, or one of the settlements along the way. I’m a stranger to ye, but you’ll have the liberty of making up your mind without any pesterin’ from me. Ye’re free to follow the dictates of your own heart. It’s but a small return for a man to make, whose been saved from what ye saved me from; and, besides, on the roads two’s safer than one.”
The man with the broken leg had done some quick thinking. He had his own reasons for wishing to get down the river. With Jimmy to help and wait on him, he would be able to start much sooner than alone. And once among his friends, some convenient disposal of Jimmy would soon offer itself. He might even turn him over to his father. When the stranger said he knew James Claiborne, he spoke the entire and absolute truth.
“I’d like to see my father, if it’s true,” said Jimmy, slowly. “I’d go a good ways, and so would Uncle Amasa. I wish I could get word to him.”
“And leave me to shift for myself the time it would take ye to go and come?”
“I forgot,” said Jimmy, bent over the steaming hominy.
“The thing to do,” said the stranger, “is this: If Uncle Amasa don’t get out here before we’re ready to leave, write him a message on the wall that you’ve gone to find your pappy; then he’ll understand.”
A smile flitted over the man’s face, the first that had shone on it. It was the smile that a revengeful and unscrupulous man might wear as he wiped out an old and bitter score.
“I might do that,” said Jimmy, who had not seen the smile. “That’s a good idea. But most likely he’ll come.”