Jack shook his head abstractedly. “I’m sure I don’t know, Cato,” he said. “Where are you?”
“You ain’ nowhar, that’s what you is. Dar was Colonel Jackson’s gal Sue. Mumumph! Couldn’t dat gal make de beatenest waffles! An’ didn’t she make ’em foh me for most fo’ months till I done ax her to marry me! An’ didn’t she stop makin’ ’em right spang off? An’ didn’t she keep on stoppin’ till I tuk up with Sophy? An’ then didn’t she begin again? Yes, suh; it’s jes’ like I’m tellin’ you. Jes’ as long as a woman thinks she’s got you, you ain’t nobody; and the minute she thinks some other gal’s got you, then you’s everything. Talk to me about love! Gals don’t know what love is. All they wants is to spite the other gals.”
“Well! How did you make out, Cato. Did you fix on Sue or Sophy?”
“Now, Marse Jack, you know I ain’t a-goin’ to throw myself away on none of them black nigger gals. I’se too light complected to do that, suh. Besides, Sue and Sophy done disappointed me. They pointedly did, suh. Jes’ as I was a-makin’ up my mind to marry Mandy—Mandy is dat yaller gal of Major Habersham’s; I done met her when you was co’ting Miss Sally—Sue and Sophy got together and went to Massa Telfair and tole him about it and Massa Telfair say I done got to marry one of them two inside a week, an’ if you hadn’t done start off so sudden I reckon’s I’d a been married and done foh befo’ now, suh. Massa Telfair’s plumb sot in his ways, suh.”
Jack was tired of the talk. “Oh! Well! I reckon Mandy’ll be waiting for you when you get back,” he answered, idly.
Cato smiled broadly. “Ain’t dat de trufe?” he chuckled, delightedly. “I ain’t ax Mandy yit, but she ’spec’s me to. I tell you, Marse Jack, you got to keep ’em guessin’, yes, you is, suh. Jes’ as long as you does you got ’em.”
Cato rung the changes on his tale with infinite variations. Jack heard about Sue and Sophonia and Mandy from Alabama to Ohio, from the Tallapoosa to the Miami. It was only when he reached Dayton that the loves of his henchman were pushed into the background by more urgent affairs.
Dayton was alive with the war fever. Governor Hull, of Michigan, who had been appointed a brigadier general, had started north from there nearly a month before with thirty-five hundred volunteers and regulars and was now one hundred miles to the north, cutting his way laboriously through the vast forest of the Black Swamp. At last reports he had reached Blanchard River, and had built a fort which he called Fort Findlay. So far as Ohio knew war had not yet been declared, but news that it had been was expected daily. The whole state awaited it in apprehension, not from fear of the British, but from terror of their ruthless red allies.
Not a man or woman in all Ohio but knew what Indian warfare meant. Not one but could remember the silent midnight attack on the sleeping farmhouse, the blazing rooftree, the stark, gashed forms that had once been men and women and little children, the wiping out of the labor of years in a single hour.
Every sight and sound of forest and of prairie mimicked the clash. The hammering of the woodpecker was the pattering of bullets, the thump of the beaver was the thud of the tomahawk, the scream of the fishhawk the shriek of dying women, the scolding of the chipmunks in the long grass the chatter of the squaws around the torture post, the red reflection of the setting sun the gleam of blazing rooftrees.