own country; though
consarning _that_ I'll not be so partickelar. No, no, Captain, thar's no
mistake in Nick of the Woods; and if you are so minded, we will go and
h'ar the whole news of him. But, I say, Tom," continued the Kentuckian,
as the three left the porch together, "who brought the news?"

"Captain Ralph,--Roaring Ralph Stackpole," replied Tom Bruce, with a
knowing and humorous look.

"What!" cried the father, in sudden alarm; "Look to the horses, Tom!"

"I will," said the youth, laughing: "it war no sooner known that Captain
Ralph war among us than it was resolved to have six Regulators in the
range all night! Thar's some of these new colts (not to speak of our own
creaturs), and especially that blooded brown beast of the captain's,
which the nigger calls Brown Briery, or some such name, would set a
better man than Roaring Ralph Stackpole's mouth watering."

"And who," said Roland, "is Roaring Ralph Stackpole? and what has he to
do with Brown Briarens?"

"A proper fellow as ever you saw," replied Tom, approvingly;--"killed
two Injuns once, single-handed, on Bear-Grass, and has stolen more horses
from them than ar' another man in Kentucky. A prime creatur'! but he has
his fault, poor fellow, and sometimes mistakes a Christian's horse for an
Injun's, thar's the truth of it!"

"And such scoundrels you make officers of?" demanded the soldier,
indignantly.

"Oh," said the elder Bruce, "thar's no reggelar commission in the case.
But whar thar's a knot of our poor folks out of horses, and inclined to
steal a lot from the Shawnees (which is all fa'r plundering, you see, for
thar's not a horse among them, the brutes, that they did not steal from
Kentucky), they send for Roaring Ralph and make him their captain; and a
capital one he is, too, being all fight from top to bottom; and as for
the stealing part, thar's no one can equal him. But, as Tom says, he
sometimes _does_ make mistakes, having stolen horses so often from the
Injuns, he can scarce keep his hands off a Christian's, and that makes us
wrathy."

By this time the speakers had reached the gate of the fort, and passed
among the cabins outside, where they found a throng of the villagers,
surrounding the captain of horse-thieves, and listening with great
edification to, and deriving no little amusement from, his account of the
last achievement of the Jibbenainosay. Of this, as it related no more
than the young Bruce had already repeated,--namely, that, wh