"I'll make a trailer of one of the wagons, just as the freighters do in the Assiniboin country."
"Does Mrs. Benson know about this?"
"Yes; we Ve talked it all over. It's a genuine case of ' have to/ Captain."
"What will you do with Scotty?"
"We Ve considered him! He'll soon be on his feet again. Meanwhile, he'll have to stay on in his hammock."
"He's not good for anything there nor anywhere else!" said the Captain, testily. "He doesn't know beans about driving oxen, and I doubt if he can ever learn!"
"He's great on ' intervention ' and ' non-intervention,though," laughed Mrs. McAlpin. "He's even greater on the Monroe Doctrine."
"Yes!" exclaimed Jean, "and you ought to hear him rave over the nation's allegiance to Mason and Dixon's Line. It's on the troubles over the slavery question, which he says are looming all along the national horizon, that he comes out strong."
"He's taught me a lot about law and equity, courts and criminals, constitutions and codes," said Hal.
"You make light of the peril of our situation because you do not comprehend its gravity," exclaimed Captain ' Ranger. "We need our teamsters. Scotty is a capital theorist, but he'll never set a river afire."
"That's a feat you 've never accomplished yet, daddie," laughed Jean.
"I've come as near it as any living man; for I boiled the Illinois dry once!" replied the Captain, alluding to an experience of a former year of drouth, when a steam sawmill he was operating on the riverbank had to be closed down for a season for want of water.
"Don't worry. Captain," cried Sally O'Dowd. "The women and children won't forsake you."
