"Well, anyhow, I'll tell you if old Pap Price ever gets as far as the Kansas line with his ragamuffin army, we'll give him a reception that he won't forget soon."
Al and Wallace began to listen, for this sounded interesting.
"You Kansas Militia fellows are too much scattered," returned the civilian. "Why doesn't General Curtis get you concentrated down here by the border somewhere? I tell you, old Pap will be here before you know it. Why, he's already to Jefferson City, according to the latest despatches, cleaning up everything before him and coming this way like a jack rabbit. What is there between here and his front to stop his twenty-five or thirty thousand men? Nothing! Nothing to make him even hesitate."
"There will be something to make him hesitate, though," insisted the Kansas militiaman, stoutly. "Curtis is concentrating, and we'll be sent across the State line to meet and stop Price somewhere around Lexington. You watch!"
"Would you go across the line?" queried the other.
"Certainly I would."
"Well, then, you're an exception," returned the civilian. "I'll bet you two bits that if the Kansas militia is ordered across the State line, nine-tenths of them will refuse to go. They're too afraid they'll be kept away over election and too afraid they'll have to give up a little shred of their sacred 'State Rights' to the National Government."
"Oh, well, some of the boys feel that way, of course," replied the militiaman, defensively, "but not all, by any means."
Al's curiosity had reached the breaking-point.