“Well,” said Shadwell at length, returning the look with one of languid tolerance, “you’re most as talkative as your pa. What’s the matter?”
“Nothin’,” said Jimmy.
“Old Mack’s petering out,” observed Shadwell. “Fussed like an old granny about our getting off. You’d think we were goin’ to New Orleans. Wanted to have Lewis come along, at the last minute, and leave them short-handed.”
Jimmy pulled away at the oars. “Good thing, too, if we could have him,” he said. “You just wait till it comes to pullin’ back; you’ll think so, too.”
Lincoln lay back in the stern and waved off the mosquitoes. A little later in the day the breeze would come up and blow them away for a time, but now they swam in the sunlight like singing clouds.
“Dod rot ’em,” said Lincoln.
They shot out into the river and the current took Jimmy’s work away from him.
Only two boats were floating down, but from the crews of these they received much disconcerting news.
The climax of the long grievance had come. The Spaniards could no longer arbitrarily keep the gate of the world closed to the frontiersmen. For the West an outlet was necessary at New Orleans. The flatboats must unload there and deposit their goods pending reshipment in sea-going vessels. Ten years before, when the Spaniards had denied this privilege, the West had talked of war, and a treaty had been made which gave the Americans the right to unload their goods. The term of the treaty had expired and the Spaniards had withdrawn this right of deposit. All was again chaos, rendered more formidable by the great increase in the river traffic. What with their market closed and the talk of a French invasion, it was no wonder that the rivermen were ready and anxious to fight.
As they neared Natchez they received more news. Bonaparte, with a navy behind him, was coming to colonize the Mississippi Valley as a “Grand French Empire of the West.” Meanwhile, the arksmen who ventured below Point Coupé—“the Line of West Florida”—as it was called, would probably be stopped by a Spanish battery, recently planted there by the governor.