When Rogers heard the news he nodded sagely. “I reckoned so all along,” he asserted. “I reckoned she’d gone back to those Injun friends of hers. But I kinder hated to say so. Most Injun-bred youngsters does when they gets an excuse. Maybe that there letter gave her a jolt and——”
Jack sat up. “Williams is down the Maumee,” he gritted. “If I find him——”
“Of course! Of course! But of course he’d lie. An’ maybe there’s an easier way. It’ll take a week or two for you to get well enough to start. Whyn’t you let me go to Piqua and find Peter Bondie an’——”
“Will you?” Jack was growing more and more excited. “When can you start?”
“Right away. I——”
“All right. Go! Go! Find Peter and tell him all that has happened. Ask him if he can give me any help, any clue, however small. He had friends near Fort Malden. He got news from these. Find out who they are. They may know something. Find out what it was that Williams read aloud—what it was that made my little comrade leave me. And”—Jack hesitated and flushed painfully—“see Colonel Johnson and find out whether he has heard anything of Miss Estelle, my cousin whom I came here to seek. Good God! When I think how I have failed——” The boy’s voice died away.
Rogers looked at him queerly. “I been a-thinkin’ about that gal,” he said. “I got an idea that——”
Jack interrupted. Jack had gotten used to interrupting Rogers, having found that that was the only way to get a word in when the old man held the floor. “Hurry back,” he said. “No! Hold on! I won’t wait for you to come back here. Cut across the Black Swamp and join me at Fort Defiance or wherever General Winchester and the army may be. I’ll go there and wait for you.”
The old hunter got up. “I sure will,” he assented, with alacrity. “I’ll start right away. I reckon, though, I’ll get more from Madame Fantine than I will from Peter.”
Jack’s excitement lessened. A quizzical light came into his eyes. Rogers’s liking for Fantine was no secret to him. “Maybe you will,” he conceded. “Fantine is very kind hearted. It’s a great pity”—meditatively—“that she talks so much.”