h us fair wages, and
to give every one a hundred acres of the Bastrop land. Each man is to
provide himself with a blanket, a good rifle and a supply of
ammunition."

"What do you want with rifles? Do you expect to have to fight?"

"Not necessarily; all pioneers need guns. Did not the forty men who
settled Marietta bring rifles and ammunition?"

"I swow you've got me, Mr. B. No man can keep house without a gun, I
admit that. I'd as soon go without my head. I've got a gun, all right,
and a blanket. What else?"

"That is all. Be ready on the first of December with your blanket and
rifle, and we'll provide for your other wants."

"Well, that looks fair. But let me give you a bit of advice before you
start. Don't you go at all. As sure as my name is Byle, you'll be
sorry for yourself and Maggy, as you call her, if you do go. You
mustn't git mad at me, Harman, for speaking out plain. I'm friendly to
you and your folks; don't like to see you put upon; and I consider it
my goshdurned duty to tell you that this here Colonel Beelzebub is
making a cussed fool of you. I'd have no hobnobbing with a hoop snake.
Don't trust ary shape of a sarpent in your apple-tree. You know your
eyes are not as long-ranged as some. This is God's truth with the bark
off. He don't talk to Adam in the Garden in our days, but I sh'd think
you'd hear what mortal men are saying. You're a readin' man--haven't
you come across what the press wrote about that scorpion in your
bozom?

'Oh, Aaron Burr, what have you done?
You've shot our General Hamilton!
You stood behind a bunch of thistles,
And murdered him with two horse-pistols!'

Excuse my interest in you; a full kittle will bile over. I've lots and
slithers of United States information that ain't to be found in your
green emerald Erin, no more than snakes is."

Blennerhassett was in doubt whether to consider himself insulted or
befriended. He had misgivings concerning Burr and the colony. Common
sense told him that Byle might be more than half right.

"Do you know anything of the far West?" he asked. "Report gives out
that it is a marvellous region."

Byle had a spice of mischief in his composition. He could not resist a
humorous impulse to gull a credulous foreigner.

"Maybe I can give you some curious facts not generally known. I'm a
sort of bookworm myself. I've nosed the Coon Skin Library. Did anybody
ever tell you of the Missouri salt mountain? a mountain of real salt
o