"I suppose I could arrange all that by letter or telegraph, couldn't I?" was the answer he made, as he produced his note book and took from it the dispatch he had received from Dick Graham's father, and one of the letters of introduction that had been given to him by Captain Howard. These he passed over to the suspicious wood-cutter, rightly believing that the latter could not read a word of them. "You will see that that telegram reads, 'Price will accept,'" continued Rodney. "I belong to a company of Rangers that was raised down the river, and at my captain's request I telegraphed to Price inquiring if he would take us and let us operate on our own hook, and he said he would. Read it for yourself. What are you afraid of?" "Nothing much." "You see," explained Jeff, who during this conversation had sat with his elbows resting on his knees and his eyes fastened upon the floor, "things is getting sorter ticklish down here in this neck of the woods already. Nobody don't know who he can trust." "Don't you believe what the _Able's_ captain said about me?" inquired Rodney, who had little dreamed that he would become an object of suspicion almost as soon as he set his foot on Missouri soil. "He told me you were true blue." "And so we are, when we know the feller we're talking to." said the man who was sitting in front of him, and whom he afterward heard addressed as Nels. "Now I want you to answer me a few questions: where did you board the _Mollie Able?_" Rodney, who was not at all used to this sort of thing, began to grow red in the face, but fortunately he did not hesitate an instant. "I got on at Baton Rouge," he said. "Is that place this side of Cairo?" "No; it is the other side." "Did you stop at Cairo on your way up?" "The _Able_ was there perhaps half an hour." "Then I can see through some of it as plain as daylight," exclaimed Nels, straightening up on his nail keg and shaking his hand at Jeff. "He was at Cairo long enough to change his clothes, swap hosses and have his whiskers shaved off; but why he should have the cap'n of the _Able_ set him ashore here at this landing, beats my time. Don't it your'n?" There were signs of excitement in the cabin, and Rodney felt the cold chills creeping over him. The wood-cutters were wofully ignorant, quite as open to reason as so many wooden men would have been, and if they suspected him of trying to play some trick upon them, Rodney could not imagine how he should go to work to set them right. He glanced at their scowling faces and told himself that he would not have been in greater danger if he had been a prisoner in the hands of the Yankees. "I should like to know what you mean by this foolishness?" exclaimed Rodney, growing excited in his turn. "Mebbe you'll find that there aint no great foolishness about it before we've got through with you," answered Nels; and Rodney noticed that one of the wood-cutters moved his seat so as to get between him and the door.