"An' one of 'em's wearin' Shawnee moccasins," chuckled Boone. "Well, afore ye git desp'rit, go see Red Hugh. Now, you git up to the tavern an' wait till I come. I'm a-goin' to see Kitty Grigg."
"Kitty Grigg?" Norton's mind went back swiftly to the girl he had glimpsed on the previous day. "Who is she, Colonel?"
"Well, Ol' Abel Grigg 'lows she's his daughter," returned the other slowly. "'Fraid Abel ain't much account, though. He was with me back in the Blue Lick massacree, and cert'nly fit good, but went bad later. I've knowed Kathleen sence afore I went to Missouri, and if she's Abel's daughter, then, by gum, I'll sculp myself!"
"Grigg lives at Louisville, then?"
"No—he's a hunter, mostly. Has a farm back o' town a piece. Well, see ye later! What tavern ye goin' to?"
"The 'Steuben Arms', just beyond Doctor Gault's residence."
Boone nodded, and rode off along a forest trail leading to the south, while Norton pursued his course into town.
Who had fired that shot? He thought of Duval's threat, but Duval was no woodsman, and the assassin was, as his method of escape testified. It seemed much more likely that, as Boone had said, some hint of his mission had leaked out.
How that could have been, Norton knew not. He had breathed no word of it to any man from leaving New Orleans until reaching the Taylor farm, nor had he discussed either piracy in general or Blacknose in particular. He had kept his ears open along the frontier but had learned nothing; no one had ever seen Blacknose, no one so much as knew whether there were a Blacknose or not. The name was a rumour, a border myth—and only in Louisville was it backed up by reality, reflected Norton.
He had not been sent on any false trail, that was certain. Neither the up-river farmers and merchants nor those of New Orleans could give him any definite information; yet both they and Norton knew well that in this year of grace, 1810, when settlements and cabins were scattered all along the Ohio and Mississippi, flatboat after flatboat could not vanish into thin air with their crews.