"You be he. What Ah wants t' know is what—jest what's yer game up here? As Ah've said, you-all, and the wimmen, has done me a favor an' no man kin say Jed Thompson ever fergits a favor. But it kain't last. You-all got ter git out. What Ah ain't goin' t' do now, an' what some other folks might do, is two different things. Ah tell ye it ain't safe fer ye t' stay up here in these hills at all."
"Listen to me, Thompson. I don't know who this man is that looks like me, but I have every reason to believe that my name is Wingate. The record in the family Bible at home says I am, and what I read in that book I believe. You're wrong, Buddy. I am Wingate. I was a lieutenant in the flying corps during the war with Germany. These young women were over there too, as nurses, ambulance drivers and in other wartime occupations. When we returned to the United States, we decided to take a vacation in the saddle each season until we tired of it. The first season we rode over the Apache Trail in Arizona. Last year we crossed the Great American Desert in the west. This season we decided to come up here and combine business with pleasure."
Thompson's under jaw, Hippy observed, was sagging a little.
"An uncle, among other things, left me some mountain property on White River Ridge. I have never seen it, but I am now on my way to look it over and see if it is worth anything. That is the business to which I referred, and is the only business I have in the Kentucky mountains. Are you satisfied?"
"If Ah ain't, Ah'll give you-all warnin' that somebody'll shoot ye till you-all's daid!" warned Jed Thompson.
"That is a game two can play at. I have played at it myself," chuckled Lieutenant Wingate. "You have given me a timely warning, and I'll return the compliment, old dear."
"What's that ye say?"
"I have not said it; I am about to say it. Listen, Jed! Bat Spurgeon's gang has planned to come over here on the twenty-third and shoot up you and your crowd until you-all are 'daid,'" was Hippy Wingate's solemn warning. "Put that in your pipe and smoke it."