“Not down yet. Dry up, Pole; I was making a calculation, and you knocked it hell west and crooked.”
“Well, I reckon that kin wait. I've got a note fer you.” Pole was taking it from his coat-pocket.
“Miss Cynthia?” Floyd asked, eagerly.
“Not by a long shot,” said Pole. “I reckon maybe you'll wish it was.” He threw the missive on the desk, and went on in quite a portentous tone. “I come by Jeff Wade's house, Nelson, on my way back from the mill. He was inside with his wife and childern, an' as I was passin' one of the little boys run out to the fence and called me in to whar he was. He's a devil of a fellow! He's expectin' his wife to be confined, an' I saw he was try'in' to keep her in the dark. What you reckon he said?”
“How do I know?” The young merchant, with a serious expression of face, had tom open the envelope, but had not yet unfolded the sheet of cheap, blue-lined writing-paper.
“Why, he jest set thar in his chair before the fire, an' as he handed the note up to me he sorter looked knowin' an' said, said he: 'Pole, I'm owin' Mayhew & Floyd a little balance on my account, an' they seem uneasy. I wish you'd take this letter to young Floyd. He's always stood to me, sorter, an' I believe he'll git old Mayhew to wait on me a little while.”
“Did he say that, Pole?” Floyd had opened the note, but was looking straight into Baker's eyes.
“Yes, he said them very words, Nelson, although he knowed I was on hand that day when he paid off his bill in full. I couldn't chip in thar before his wife, an' the Lord knows I couldn't tell him I had an idea what was in the note, so I rid on as fast as I could. I had a turn o' meal under me, an' I tuck it off an' hid it in the thicket t'other side o' Duncan's big spring. I wasn't goin' to carry a secret war-message a-straddle o' two bushels o' meal warm from the mill-rocks. An' I'd bet my hat that sheet o' paper hain't no flag o' truce.”
Floyd read the note. There was scarcely a change in the expression of his face or a flicker of his eyelashes as he folded it with steady fingers and held it in his hand.
“Yes, he says he has got the whole story, Pole,” Floyd said. “He gives me fair warning as a man of honor to arm myself. He will be here at twelve o'clock to the minute.”