“Debatin’? Well! I just reckon they are debatin’. Lord sakes, stranger, don’t it make you sick and tired to hear a lot of full grown men a-talkin’ and a-talkin’ like a pack of women. Just say what you got to say and stop; that’s my motto. And here’s Congress a-talkin’ and a-talkin’ and a-wastin’ time while the Injuns are fillin’ up with fire-water and sharpenin’ their tomahawks and the country’s going to the devil. Strike first, and talk afterwards, say I. But then I never was much of one to talk. I guess livin’ in the woods makes you kinder silent, and——”
“What’s the news from the north?” Hopeless of a pause in the old man’s garrulity Jack broke in.
The old man accepted the interruption with entire good humor if not with pleasure, and straightway started on a new discourse. “Bad, bad, mighty bad, stranger,” he declared. “That red devil, Tecumseh, has been a-traveling about the country but he’s back now and the Injuns are getting ready to play thunder with everybody. Colonel Johnson says you ought to treat ’em kind and honeyswoggle ’em all the time, but that ain’t my way, and it ain’t the way of nobody that knows Injuns. How far north is you aimin’ to go, stranger?”
“To Wapakoneta, I think.”
“Then I reckon you’ll have to see Colonel Johnson. What did you say your name was? Mine’s Rogers—Tom Rogers.”
Jack grinned. “I didn’t say,” he answered. “But it’s Jack Telfair.”
“Telfair! Telfair! Seems to me I kinder remember hearin’ of somebody of that name. But it’s mighty long ago. Let’s see, now, I wonder could it ha’ been that fellow that we whipped for stealin’—Pshaw, no, that was a fellow named Helden. He was——”
“Where’ll I find Colonel Johnson,” demanded Jack, in despair.
“Well, now, that’s mighty hard to tell. Colonel Johnson sloshes round a whole lot. Maybe you’ll find him at John Manning’s mill up at the bend here or maybe you’ll have to go to his place at Upper Piqua or maybe you’ll have to go further. I reckon you didn’t stop at Stanton as you come along, did you? Colonel Johnson’s mighty thick with Levy Martin down there, and he’s liable to be at his house, or at Peter Felix’s store.”
Jack shook his head. “No, I didn’t come by Stanton.”