Rogers was entirely willing to be diverted. He did not care what he talked about so long as he talked. “I ain’t got any news of her,” he declared. “She’s plumb disappeared. She ain’t nowhere about Wapakoneta; that’s certain. I reckon she’s gone north, and if you ask me I reckon she’s gone with that big cuss in the red coat. He’s the sort that takes the eyes of the girls. You were right in ’s’posing that he didn’t go north as soon as Colonel Johnson thought he did. He didn’t go till a day or two before I got to Girty’s Town, an’ maybe he didn’t go then. But he’s gone now.” Rogers stopped to take breath and Jack nodded. In telling the tale of the attack at Fort Defiance Alagwa had said nothing about Brito or his part in the fight, and Jack had followed her example. After all, the affair was a family one and he saw no need of taking the people at Fort Wayne into his confidence. Even now he merely accepted Rogers’s opinion and did not inform him that he knew very well indeed the time at which Brito had left the headwaters of the Auglaize. Rogers, indeed, gave him little chance to say anything. Vigorously he rattled on. “There’s a letter coming from Piqua for you,” he said. “I reckon it’s from your home folks. I saw it there and I’d a-brung it, but I wasn’t certain that I was coming here when I left. I guess it’ll get here tonight on a wagon that’s coming. I guess it’s from your sweetheart.” Jack’s face had lighted up at the old man’s mention of a letter, but it clouded slightly at his last words. “Not from a sweetheart, no,” he declared. “I have no sweetheart. I shall never marry!” “Sho! You don’t tell me!” Rogers’s eyes twinkled incredulously. “Well! You got time enough to change your mind. You ain’t like me. I got to hurry. I don’t want to deceive you none, so I’ll own up that I ain’t as young as I was once.” He glanced out of the corners of his eyes and saw Fantine coming from the hotel toward the party. Instantly he raised his voice and went on. “If I could find a nice woman, somebody that’s big enough to balance a little shaver like me, I reckon I’d fall plumb hard in love with her,” he declared. “You don’t know no such a woman round about here, do you now, Jack?” Jack did not answer, for Fantine had come up. “Bon jour, M. Rogers,” she cried. “You have been away long, n’est ce pas? What do you talk about, eh?” Rogers grinned at her. “Oh! We was talking about gettin’ married,” he declared brazenly. “Jack here was saying he was never goin’ to marry.”