s sent
word that the soldiers were against Blue Lick too, and were going to
stop the station's pack-train. Maybe the stationers were afraid of the
soldiers."

To a torrent of questions as to how the news had first come, how the
menace lowered, what disposition for defense the stationers could make,
the little girl seemed bewildered. She only answered definitely and very
indifferently that they could easily get Ralph Emsden if they would go
now to Blue Lick, and take his hide,--that is, if the French and their
Choctaw Indians had not already possessed themselves of that valuable
integument,--as if this were their primal object.

"Why, God-a-mercy, child," cried the superintendent of the ranch, "this
news settles all scores; when it comes to a foreign foe the colonists
are brothers."

"And besides," admitted one of the most truculent of the cow-drivers,
"the cattle are all pretty well rounded in again; I doubt if more are
lost than the wolves would have pulled down anyhow."

"And the Blue Lick Stationers' horses can be herded easy enough,--they
are all on their old grass,--and be driven up to the settlement."

A courier had been sent off full tilt to the commandant at Fort Prince
George, and night though it was, a detail of mounted soldiers appeared
presently with orders to escort the ambassador and his linguister into
the presence of that officer.

For this intelligence was esteemed serious indeed. Although hostilities
had now practically ceased in America, the Seven Years' War being near
its end, and peace negotiations actually in progress, still the treaty
had not been concluded. So far on the frontier were such isolated
garrisons as this of Fort Prince George, so imperfect and infrequent
were their means of communicating with the outside world, that they were
necessarily in ignorance of much that took place elsewhere, and a
renewal of the conflict might have supervened long before their regular
advices from headquarters could reach them. Even a chance rumor might
bring them their first intimation of a matter of such great import to
them. Therefore the commandant attached much significance to this
account of an alarm at Blue Lick Station, because of a menace from the
nearest French at Fort Toulouse, often called in that day, by reason of
this propinquity, "the dangerous Alabama garrison."

For this reason, also, the hospitable hosts made no protest against the
removal of the guests to Fort Prince George, althou