“Wear blue coat. Heap tall and heavy.”
“Hear that, boys?” asked Brown. “I’m a great hand to hope fer the best, but who do you reckon that feller was?”
“Pat Fagan,” Tom replied instantly.
“An you, Ben? You ain’t a bad one at guessin’.”
“Pat Fagan, and it isn’t any guesswork either. It was the big rascal, sure as shooting.”
“I reckon that means,” reasoned the borderer, “that Pat’s a goin’ to become a white renegade. An’ he’ll be a powerful bad one, depend on that. Wouldn’t s’prise me, not at all, if he gits as black a name on the frontier as Simon Girty, the turrible white renegade who was the terror o’ the Kaintuck country, some forty years gone by. Folks still shudder down that way when they hear the name o’ Girty. No deviltry was too fierce er cruel fer him.”
Talk then turned to other matters, and, after another half-hour, both Bright Star and Brown took their leave. It seemed, however, that Bill was scarcely out of the room, when he was back once more, to summon the boys.
“Messenger jest in at the fort!” he related, trying to keep a calm voice. “His horse’s all in a lather. The sojurs say he’s come from down-state, with a dispatch from Gov’ner Reynolds.”
“S’pose it’s Injun business, Bill?” conjectured Ben.
“Wouldn’t s’prise me a whit. You know how I been lookin’ fer thin’s to explode any day now.”