"I reckon you soldiers'll get a chance ter sashay out an' show what's in ye now," said the trader with a grin, as though he found the idea highly humorous.
"What does ye mean?" demanded the boy, resting on his grounded rifle and fixing the other with steady, incurious eyes. "Hes the Falkinses busted the truce?"
The trader laughed.
"Wuss then thet. This country's a-goin' ter declare war on Spain." He made the announcement with the superior air of one in touch with large and distant affairs.
"Who's Spain?" Newt Spooner put the question gravely and with no sense of betraying untoward ignorance. In the log school-house years ago he might have been told the answer to that question, but such matters had since then escaped his attention.
"Spain," enlightened the trader, whose geographical ideas had also until recently been vague, "is a country in ther other world—you has to go acrost the ocean ter git thar."
"Who lives thar?" inquired the lad.
"Hit's a country of outlanders."
Newt stood for a moment gazing across the dreary wastes of broken ridges.
"Well," he said calmly, "I reckon we kin go over thar an' lick 'em, ef need be."