A faint color tinged the old hunter’s leathery cheeks. “Who? Her?” he mumbled. “She—she—Well? What in thunder do you expect a woman to do? Ain’t a woman got a tongue? Why shouldn’t she use it. What I hate is to hear men talking so much. Anybody that cooks like Madame Fantine sure has got a right to talk. But, all right. Laugh if you want to. I’ll be right off and I’ll join you as quick as the Lord’ll let me.” Allowing no chance for reply the old man hastened nimbly from the room.
After Rogers had gone the days passed slowly, while Jack gathered strength and made ready to be gone. His horses had vanished—commandeered for the use of the army—and no others were to be had. Winter, however, was at hand and he set himself to follow the custom of the country and to learn to use both skates and snowshoes.
Cato had learned also, at first with many protests, but later with mounting delight. “Lord, Mars’ Jack,” he said, one day. “I sutinly do wish Mandy could see me on these yere things. I lay she’d cook me the bestest dinner I ever seed.”
Jack nodded. “I reckon she would, Cato!” he agreed. “But you want to be mighty careful. We’re going a good many miles on the ice and if you fell and hit your head——”
“My head!” Cato looked bewildered. “Lord, Mars’ Jack, if dat Injun couldn’t hurt my head with that axe of his’n, how you figger out I gwine to hurt it on the ice?”
Jack grinned. “Of course you wouldn’t hurt your head,” he agreed. “But the ice isn’t more than a foot thick and if you hit it with your head you’d probably knock a hole in it and we’d both go through and be drowned.”
As Jack’s skill in skating grew, his impatience to be gone increased, the more so as the seat of war, after centering for a time at Fort Defiance (where a new fort, Fort Winchester, had been built to defend the frontier against the hordes of savages that hung along the frontier), had begun to move down the river. When Jack heard that General Winchester in command had boasted that he would take Fort Malden in thirty days he refused to delay longer.
When he started out January had come. Snow wrapped the earth and loaded the branches of the trees, clinging even to the sides of the mighty trunks that soared skyward. The road down the Maumee, well-travelled as it was, was hidden beneath drifts. Only the river itself was bare, swept clear by the icy wind.
Down it Jack and Cato sped, their skates ringing on the steel-cased coils of the winding pathway. For four days they travelled, passing Fort Defiance and Fort Deposit, and coming at last to the mouth of the river. A few hours more upon the ice along the shores of the lake brought them to the American camp at Frenchtown on the Raisin River.
Here Rogers was waiting them at the outposts. “I reckoned you’d be along soon,” he said, “an’ I been watching. I’ve got news that you’d ought to know quick. First place, Williams is here! No! I ain’t seen him, but he’s here. He’s on outpost duty an’ you can see him tonight if you want to. But I reckon you ain’t got time to fool with the skunk now. I’ve got bigger news. I didn’t see Madame Fantine; she’d gone to Cincinnati to get some goods to restock their store that was burned. But I saw Peter. Neither of ’em knew that Miss Bob had left you. Peter didn’t know nothin’ about the letter. But he knew something else. And I saw Colonel Johnson and he knew something else, too. Who you reckon Miss Bob really is?”