“Whoopee, that’s good!” cried Pete, jumping up and cracking his heels together three times before he lit. “I’m comin’ on; but don’t git over near me, ez I’m fust cousin ter the cholera, an’ close related ter the smallpox on my father’s side.”
There followed a few moments of quick question and answer, and it was learned that Perkins was the advance scout for a large force of volunteer militia that followed a mile behind.
“We be more’n a thousand strong,” declared the voluble scout, letting fly a torrent of tobacco juice, “all hossmen, ’cept ’bout tew hunderd foot sojurs.”
“Who is in command?” asked Clark.
“Brigadier-Gen’ral Sam Whiteside, the best dad-blamed Injun fighter on the frontier. An’ in jest a half-hour yew kin confab with him person’ly. The men has marched twenty mile terday, over muddy roads. But ol’ Sam set his sights fer Dixon’s Ferry, this mornin’ when we busted kemp, an’ I’ll be durned ef we didn’t make it.”
CHAPTER 11
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The Lodge of Black Hawk
THAT same evening, in an Indian lodge on the banks of Sycamore Creek, a small stream flowing into the Rock River about thirty-five miles north of Dixon’s Ferry, an important conference was taking place.