“Thank Heaven for that, for we have had enough of this awful business to last a lifetime. May I ask, friend, the appearance things bear along the frontier? You are a scout, I take it, and are able to give us information.” “Things look dubious, I must say,” replied the backwoodsman, looking down to the ground and shaking his head. “Any fresh outrages of which we have not heard?” “Not that I knows on, being I don’t know what you’ve heard; but I can tell you the varmint, especially these thundering Shawnees, are at it all the time. They are at Boonesborough half the time trying to come some of their tricks over the colonel, and we boys as are ranging the woods up and down the ’Hio sees tall times—wal we do. It’s hard fur the settlements and wimmen folks, but fur us scouts and rangers it’s big fun.” “What is the probability of general war?” “It must come sooner or later—there’s no helping it.” “Why are you so certain, my friend?” “’Cause I can see things as they is. If Bowman had given them a regular lambasting when he tried it, you wouldn’t have seen the trouble you have—no, sir!” “I have no doubt of it. That unfortunate campaign has given the Indians a poorer opinion of our strength and powers and a much better one of their own.” “Just so—exactly. If them Shawnees could get all the other to jine in like, they would feel able to sweep us clean from the airth; and I ain’t certain but what they’d be able to do it afore we got help from the East. But there’s the rub, you see, some of these tribes hate each other as much they do us; and being as they all hate us, each one is trying to finish the job without the help of the other.” “I see no help, either, except in a war of extermination. It would be a dreadful thing to carry the struggle to the knife, but I see no other alternative. They have rejected all our offers of friendship, and are determined to exterminate us, and the safety of us and ours absolutely requires that the war should be carried into their own country, though for that matter they claim, I suppose, that it is already within their own country.” “That’s the doctrine I’ve been argyfying for a long time and I think they’ll soon see it’s got to be done. But it ’pears to me that George is gone a long time for that brother of mine. Hello! here they come. How d’ye do, Abe?” “How are you, Tom?” The brothers met, and the others feeling the indelicacy of remaining, withdrew and left them alone. A conversation, which it is not necessary we shall record, passed between them.