“Hicks,” the trapper cut him short, “don’t pretend to me that you don’t know. You know as well as I do that a storm is brewing here and that the Indians may break into murder and war almost any day. It would not have surprised me if they had broken out before the Fanny Harris had reached La Crosse.”
“All the same,” retorted Hicks, trying to straighten his lank and stooped body, “you and yours will let those boys alone in the future.”
Barker felt this was a threat. “Good,” he replied. “If that’s your trump card, I’ll play mine. Hicks, if any harm comes to those lads, I’ll hunt you down and make you pay for it. Remember that! Your duty is to take those lads home to Vicksburg and you can come back with a load of rum, if you want to. We’re through. Good morning.”
The two men stood facing each other a moment. A whirling gust blew off the old gray hat of Hicks, and he hurriedly caught it and put it on again. Then, without a word, he turned and with a slouching gait started to go back.
Something about Hicks had startled Barker. For a moment he stood thinking. Had he not seen this man years ago? Then he leaned against an old gnarly bur-oak. Hicks turned as if he would come back, but when he saw the trapper watching him, he changed his mind.
“No, Hicks,” the trapper thought, “your game won’t work on me. You can’t plug me in the back and bury me in the brush in the ravine.”
But where had he met this man before? He lit his pipe and thought. Now it flashed upon him. Ten years ago, when he had been trapping and hunting wild turkeys in the valley of the Wabash, in Indiana, he had met a man he had never forgotten. The man was under arrest for murder and the sheriff stopped over night with him in Barker’s cabin. The next day he broke away and had never been heard from. He had black hair then, dark eyes, and a small red scar stood out sharply on his white forehead.
“That man was Hicks!” the trapper exclaimed. “I never forgot that scar.”
“Why has he brought those boys into the Indian Country?” Barker asked himself. “How could any parents trust their boys to a man of his kind?” But Hicks could be very pleasant, and he was a good talker. He had made many friends among both Whites and Indians. He seemed to have some money and was a liberal spender. Nevertheless, after turning over in his mind all he knew about Hicks, Barker could not make up his mind why Hicks and the boys were here and why Hicks so absolutely neglected the boys he had evidently promised to look after.
A week later Barker met the boys at a slough, where both he and the lads sometimes went for a mess of wild ducks and the trapper decided to see what he could find out about Cousin Hicks. The boys being asked, told freely what they knew.