The words fired Kingdom’s pride. He was usually a cool, thoughtful lad; and though he showed no resentment or injured self-esteem in his tones, now, he answered instantly:
“No, he must be mistaken. We not only did not say that, but we are leaving to-day to go on to the cabin we built on the Cuyahoga river.”
“We have corn and other crops to harvest, if there is anything left of them. We had quite a farm, you know, when we left there last spring,” put in John Jerome jocularly.
The landlord’s face grew serious and he began telling of the Indian disturbances all along the border; but Kingdom adroitly turned the conversation in such a way that he was able without seeming over-curious, to inquire about the well dressed stranger who had sat at table with them the night before and had been so disturbed by mention of the name of Ichabod Nesbit.
“By vum, partner, you’ve stumped me,” the man replied. “That fellow came along here on horseback day before yesterday, engaged his keep, carried his saddle bags to a little room I let him have, as though they was both full of gold—he watched them that close—and this morning he paid his reckoning, got on his horse and away he went, saddle bags and all. Tall Todd couldn’t get anything out of him, so I knew ’twan’t any use my tryin’, though he did tell me what he didn’t tell Todd, and that was, that his name was Theodore Hatch and that he was a surveyor. But bless you! I don’t believe that. I think he’s a British spy, that’s what I think!”
“Pretty dangerous for him to be around here, if he is,” said young Jerome, bristling up as though he would personally assault the gentleman the next time they met.
“The woods are full of British from Detroit,” the landlord went on. “Talk about the war being over, what are the pestiferous Red-coats always setting the Indians against our settlers so, for? We will have to set about licking them out of their boots again, the way they are behaving! But what most of all makes me think this Mr. Theodore Hatch is a Britisher is that he rode off down the river right toward bad Injun country alone. He wouldn’t dare do it, if he wasn’t a Britisher and friendly with the Redskins. And what did he have in them saddle bags, do you suppose? He had gold for the Mingoes and the Delawares and the Wyandots and every red mother’s son of the savages, he had. Now that’s what I think!”
The two boys did not mention the stranger’s agitation of the night before, but they could not understand how a British spy could have any interest in Ichabod Nesbit, and as they talked the subject over by themselves, they concluded that on that point the landlord was probably mistaken.
It was true, nevertheless, that then and for many years afterward there were agents of the British government going among the Indians, rousing them to deeds of violence against the American settlers. British soldiers helped in the defeat of General St. Clair by the Indians that very fall of 1791,—only a month later than that day when Kingdom and Jerome, some time after their talk with the landlord, said goodbye to him and to Tall Todd and others they knew, and set forth again upon their journey on into the western wilds.
Todd was still loud in his declarations that it was nothing less than murder to permit the boys to continue into the wilderness, but their determination overbalanced all his objections and, though cautioning them repeatedly, other men really admired their pluck, as they watched the two friends drive slowly away.