“Oh, I reckon that's all right,” the other said, stroking his round, smooth-shaven face with a dogged sweep of his brawny hand. “That's all right, Pole.”
“Well, my family knowed yore family long through the war,” Abe. “My daddy was with yourn at the front, an' our mothers swapped sugar an' coffee in them hard times, an', Abe, I'm here to tell you I sorter hate to see an unsuspectin' neighbor like you walk blind into serious trouble, great big trouble, Abe—trouble of the sort that would make a man's wife an' childern lie awake many and many a night.”
“What the hell you mean?” Johnson asked, picking up his ears.
“Why, it's this here devilment that's brewin' betwixt Dan an' Carson Dwight.”
“Well, what's that got to do with me?” Johnson asked, in surly surprise.
“Well, it's jest this, Abe,” Pole leaned back till his feet rose from the ground, and he twisted his neck as his eyes followed the three men who, with their heads close together, had moved a little farther away. “Maybe you don't know it, Abe, but I used to be in the government revenue service, and in one way and another that's neither here nor there I sometimes drop onto underground information, an' I want to give you a valuable tip. I want to start you to thinkin'. You'll admit, I reckon, that if them two men meet to-night thar will be apt to be blood shed.”
Johnson stared over the camp-fire sullenly. “If Carson Dwight hain't had the sense to git out o' town thar will be, an' plenty of it,” he said, with a dry chuckle.