This was not the last time he led the talk in the direction of Government claims, and in the course of his marketings and droppings into various stores and young lawyers’ offices, he gathered a good deal of information. Claims upon the Government had not been so far exploited in those days as they were a little later, and knowledge of such business and its processes was not as easily obtainable by unbusiness-like persons.
One morning, as he stood at the street corner nearest the Claim Agent’s office, a little man came out of the place, and by chance stopped to cool himself for a few moments under the shade of the very maple tree Uncle Matt had chosen.
He was a very small man, wearing very large pantaloons, and he had a little countenance whose expression was a curious combination of rustic vacancy and incongruous slyness. He was evidently from the country, and Uncle Matt’s respectable, in fact, rather aristocratic air, apparently attracted his attention.
“’Scuse me, sah,” said Matt, “’scuse me addressin’ of you, but dem ar Claim Agents——?”
“Hev ye got a claim?” said the little man in words that were slow, but with an air that was sharp. “I mean, has anyone ye work fur got one?”
“Well, sah,” answered Matt, “I ain’t sartain, but——”
“Ye’d better make sartain,” said the little man. “Bein’ es the thing’s started the way it hes, anyone es might hev a claim an’ lets it lie, is a derned fool. I come from over the mountain. My name’s Stamps, and I’ve got one.”
Uncle Matt regarded him with interest—not exactly with respect, but with interest.
Stamps took off his battered broad-brimmed hat, wiped his moist forehead and expectorated, leaning against the tree.
“Thar’s people in this town as is derned fools,” he remarked, sententiously. “Thar’s people in most every town in the Union as is derned fools. Most everybody’s got a claim to suthin’, if they’d only got the common horse sense ter look it up. Why, look at that yoke o’ oxen o’ mine—the finest yoke o’ steers in Hamlin County. Would hev took fust ticket at any Agricultural Fair in the United States. I ain’t goin’ to sacceryfist them steers to no Stars an’ Stripes as ever floated. The Guv’ment’s got to pay me the wuth of ’em down to the last cent.”