To the best of his ability Winkle drew a word-picture of Endicott. Blaze listened with interest, his face showing that he recognized the portrait.
"Now yer comin' to su'thin' I can talk on. No, he ain't none o' Martin's men, an' don't b'long in these regions. He war jist passin' through, in company with three or four more, an' see'd Martin's niece. Knowed her of old, he did. He's a dead idol, he ses, which I suppose are about same's a dead beat, an' from the looks o' the man, I should specify war a very true hit. Killed the gal onc't afore, but she's come to life ag'in, an', as the other chap ses, ain't likely to forgit it. Ef—"
"Man, man!" exclaimed Winkle, excitedly. "How came you to know this? The same story, the same story! To travel fifteen hundred miles, and the first man I pick up can tell me the same story! I tell you," continued he, fiercely, leaping up and shaking his clenched fist in the direction of Back Load Trace, "I tell you he's my man!"
"Ef you'd go a leetle slower it mout facillate peddlin' operations. Sit down yere like a reasonable white man that ain't anxious to hev his h'ar cut fur nothin', an' I'll tell yer, nigh as I kin, the facts in the case."
This common-sense address recalled Winkle to himself, and he resumed his sitting position, but his eye still blazed and his frame shook with suppressed emotion.
"Tell me where you heard this then, or how you came to know so much of a story I certainly should not have expected to hear in this region."
"Simple as coon-trappin'. When I fust struck yer camp I'll honest allow I mout hev been indooced to hev run off yer hoss-flesh."
After this rather queer exordium Blaze paused as if expecting an outburst; but Winkle was beginning to understand his man and remained silent.
"Yas, that's an onmitigated fact. Soon es I slung inter the rights o' things I felt a speshal call to see they warn't run off. So, while you an' the dark war snoozin' I hed one eye open. I felt somethin' war abroad, an' went out a-scoutin'. Nigh whar you come so nigh puttin' my light out, under the shadder o' the trees, in fact whar you found me, I heerd two men a-talkin'; one on em was 'your man'; t'other a gospil chap, that talked es though he'd bucked cl'ar frum under the Big Book an' tuk to travelin' on his shape."
"What were they talking of, and how came they to speak of that which you have just mentioned?"