The Last Rider, Part IV by J.B. Hogan

ON HIS WAY FROM Indian Territory to Sedalia, Mose skirted most of the little communities in southwest Missouri, including Carthage near where he had grown up what seemed like centuries before.

He had just been a kid then, living with his mother and father on a subsistence farm several miles northeast of Carthage. It was on that farm that he had come of age. He had seen his father leave with the Confederate Army never to return, then watched his mother try to keep the farm going and, when the Union took the area, become the consort of a Yankee officer.

Shortly after the Yankee moved in, Mose ran away from home. He briefly joined a band of raiders loosely affiliated with William Clarke Quantrill before being conscripted into Jo Shelby’s Division in Stirling Price’s last-ditch attempt to secure Missouri for the South.

Memories of his service, both official and unofficial, played in his mind as he headed Buster north toward central Missouri. He loved the country there at the edge of the Ozarks, and the small towns and villages seemed to promise a quiet, settled life that he had not known since he was just shy of fourteen. At the sleepy little hamlet of Warrensburg, he turned east and traveled the road that led directly to Sedalia.

Just a mile or so beyond Warrensburg, the hair on the back of his neck began to stand up. It was that feeling of being followed or watched that he had learned during his days in the Quantrill band to never ignore. It was sometimes misleading, but you couldn’t take that chance—not if you wanted to stay alive anyway.

He spurred Buster off the road and into the trees and brush beyond. Rather than rush the animal loudly through the leaf-strewn, unknown terrain away from the trail, he slowed him to a walking gait, then stopped him altogether.

“Whoa.” He patted the horse gently on the side of the neck to quiet him down. “Good boy.”

For several moments he listened intently, quietly, turning Buster just a little to the left so he could hear back down the road better. At first, he thought he made out the sounds of several light hoof steps, but they stopped immediately.

He slid his loaded .36 Navy revolver from its holster and placed his right thumb on the hammer. The backup Griswold pistol, fully loaded as well, was still secured behind his belt. Suddenly, the nearby trees and brush came alive like invisible whizzing bees were whipping through the leaves and limbs. They were followed by the explosive report of pistols unseen but nearby.

Spurring Buster back into the tree line and then out onto the trail again, he drove the animal hard searching for a defensible position. Up ahead, just around a bend in the road, he found it. A small hill off to the left with several big boulders behind which he could make a stand.

He tied Buster loosely to a small tree so the animal could escape if need be and then got behind a boulder that hid him from open view. He slowly edged around the rock, but there was no need for that much caution. The pursuing riders, two of them, were thundering down the trail toward him. He dropped to one knee and fired the .36. The stray shot hit the lead rider’s horse directly in the chest, knocking the animal and its rider onto the dusty road.

The man rolled adroitly on the ground and leapt to his feet firing his pistol. The other rider reined in his mount hard and dismounted with a jump. The two of them, firing wildly all the while, ran into the boulder field on the same side of the road.

“Damn.” Mose saw the wounded horse struggle vainly to regain its feet. “What a lousy shot.”

Pulling the Griswold from his belt, he held both pistols barrel up and retreated to the off-trail side of the boulder. He had to make it to another boulder a few yards back and farther off the road to retake the high ground from his attackers. Jogging quickly, he made it to the second boulder just as more shots echoed in the quiet air and chips flew off the side of the rock by his shoulder. Buster tore loose from the tree and bolted past, finding his own safe place behind several large rocks well out into the boulder field.

“Who are you?” Mose called out after pausing a moment behind his new cover to recheck the pistols and make sure Buster was safely out of harm’s way.

“We’re coming to get you, Traven.”

“Meador.” He recognized the voice. “And Fuller, too.”

The two roughneck cowboys had trailed him from the Rocking H Ranch in northeast Indian Territory to pay him back for ruining their “fun” with the lost Cherokee girl. He wasn’t surprised they had come after him, but they had come quickly, quicker than he had imagined.

“You boys back off of this.” He called out to his pursuers. “You was in the wrong there.”

“I’ll show you the wrong.” Fuller yelled back.

The wild anger in the cowboy’s voice meant he would likely act rashly, make a mistake. Mose backed away from the boulder until he could see the terrain on either side. Sure enough, he spotted Fuller getting ready to make a bull’s rush at his position.

He stepped out from behind the boulder and quickly knelt down on one knee. Fuller came rushing toward him firing wildly. He aimed the Navy .36 and shot Fuller flat in the chest, knocking him backwards and down. With Fuller crying on the ground, Meador popped out from behind another rock and fired a round that dug up the dirt near Mose’s feet. He fired two quick rounds from the Griswold in his left hand. They missed the mark but still chased Meador back behind cover.

In the meantime, Fuller had risen to a sitting position and was aiming his pistol again. Mose raised the Navy and fired. The bullet ripped into Fuller’s right shoulder, knocking him backwards and sending his pistol skittering across the coarse soil and into a small stand of bushes.

Now concerned just with Meador, he hurried back around the big rock he’d hidden behind and then ran from one small boulder to another trying to get the drop on the remaining assailant. The tactic worked. When he peeked around the side of one of the rocks he’d reached, there was Meador—back to him.

“Drop it, Meador.” He walked out into the open. “Or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

Meador spun, pistol half-raised but saw the barrels of both the Griswold and the Navy aimed right at him. He looked like he might make a move, and even twitched a bit, causing Mose to fire the Griswold. The round knocked sandy dirt onto the top of Meador’s cowboy boots. He let his pistol swing loose in his hand and then, when Mose aimed the Navy right at his head, let it drop in the dirt.

“Step back away from that pistol. One move and I’ll send you to Kingdom Come.”

“Damn you. You got lucky.”

“You keep this up, and you’ll get yourself dead.”

“You killed Fuller, you bastard.”

“If he’s dead, he brought it on his ownself.”

“Now you gonna kill me.”

“Take it easy. You’ve done got yourself all wrought up to where you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know it, but you hadn’t no right to do to us what you did over that Indian girl.”

“And your answer to me stopping you from raping that gal who hadn’t done nothing but be an Indian was to come after me and bushwhack me. Boy, you got your ideas all messed up in your mind. You don’t know from right or wrong.”

“I know you shouldn’t had done that because of that girl.”

“I tell you what, I ain’t gonna discuss this no more with you. I’m telling you to get Fuller to a doctor if you can and one way or the other to light out of these parts. This is twice now you’ve tried to get me, and it stops here and now.”

“What you gonna do?”

“I tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna let you go. Save Fuller if you can, but neither one of you boys better ever come after me again. If you do, I’ll kill you both just as dead as a dead snake, and I promise you that on any Bible you got. You understand me?”

“I—”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

“Then get out of here and never come near me ever again. It’ll be the forfeit of your life if you do.”

Meador backed away. Mose collected the cowpoke’s pistol and kept his own trained squarely on the would-be bushwhacker. Meador rounded up his horse, and Mose followed him to where Fuller lay in the dirt. Meador picked up Fuller, who began to groan, and laid him out across the saddle of his own horse.

Mose never lowered his pistols until the two back shooters, Meador leading Fuller and his horse, were completely out of sight. When all seemed safe again, he turned to look for Buster and walked right into the flanks of the horse.

“Lord have mercy, Buster, you are one dependable animal.” Buster bobbed his head and snorted, a sure sign he was ready to get on the trail again.

Mose holstered the Navy .36 and stowed the Griswold and Fuller’s pistol among his gear. With a last look back in the direction the cowboys had gone, he climbed onto Buster and with a clicking sound the animal knew well headed him toward the trail and the last few miles to Sedalia.

THE STOCKMAN’S HOTEL AND Boarding House was down a short dirt road about three easy walking blocks from the new Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad Station in Sedalia. Stockman’s had once been a fine establishment back when the Texas cattle were being driven regularly to Sedalia, but during the Civil War it had fallen on hard times. Now, it was a little rundown, a little shabby, but not expensive—and that was what he wanted. He figured to hole up at Stockman’s and try to find work in the cattle pens near Katy Station, as locals called the new railroad depot. Rent and board at the hotel was three dollars a week, which he considered steep given his current financial situation, but if he could get a job, it would be all right.

After getting Buster settled in at a nearby stable, he stowed his own gear in his second-floor room and went down to the Stockman’s dining room to catch a little supper before it was all gone for the evening. He had to settle for what the other boarders hadn’t finished, but after being on the trail again, home cooked food tasted mighty good, even if it was practically table scraps.

“Where you coming in from, young feller?” A scrawny, scruffy little old man sitting across the table asked as Mose was finishing up his food with a cool glass of buttermilk. “If I ain’t being too forward.”

“The Territory, sir.” He set his glass down between drinks of the thick but refreshing liquid.

“Cattle puncher?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I wouldn’t ask your name.”

“Now, Abner.” A thick-bodied man down the table to their left interjected. “It ain’t neighborly to pry.”

“Shoot,” the old man, Abner, said, “wasn’t nothing but a simple question.”

“Moses Traven is my name. I was line-riding just across the Missouri border. Now, I’m hoping for work here in Sedalia.”

“John Neal.” The thick man introduced himself. “I’m a drummer. Sell pots and pans and any other thing that a household needs. Your interlocutor there is Mister Abner Barnett, what we like to call here in Missouri a ‘character.’”

“I can speak for myself you wind bag.” Abner snapped. Mose suppressed a smile at the old man’s cantankerousness.

“Now Ab, don’t get all riled with me. I’m just funning you.”

“I’ll fun you.”

“Mister Barnett fancies himself something of an outlaw.” Neal grinned. “And adopts a rather truculent attitude toward authority and those who wield it.”

“Saw grass.” Ab snorted. “You billowy… round… thing.” Mose and Neal couldn’t help but laugh which caused Ab to rail all the more.

“The two of you wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with my bunch. Why I rode with Hezekiah Johnson in the New Mexico Territory in the early ’40s. Scalped a thousand Indians and more. The Mexican government paid us three pesos a scalp. We was rich I tell you. I fought in the Mexican War and against the Kansas Red Legs. With Quantrill I was. Why, we’d shoot a man for less than what’s been said here at this table tonight.”

“I’m sorry, Mister Barnett.” Mose apologized. “I meant no disrespect to you, sir. It ain’t often of late that I’ve said this much. I ain’t very good at it.”

“Oh.” Ab softened. “It ain’t you, sonny, it’s these pudgy drummer types that gets my goat. I can see you’re a real cowboy. You’re polite.”

“Thank you, sir.”“

Well, gentlemen.” Neal rose from his chair. “I think I’d better take my leave before I anger Mister Barnett anymore tonight.” Ab looked away from Neal petulantly. “Good luck with your employment prospects.”

“Your employment prospects.” Ab muttered.

“Before you leave, sir.” Mose spoke to Neal. “Could you or Mister Barnett here tell me of a company hiring pen riders or some such cowpoking work?”

“I believe you’d be well advised to try Mister Phelps down at the new Katy Station.” Neal replied. “He’s got a cattle yard nearby. I suspect he might need hands there. Don’t you agree, Ab?”

“For once you said something that makes sense.”

“Well, gentlemen, I’ll excuse myself and wish you a good evening.”

“Good evening, sir, and thank you.”

“Nothing but a bloated, wind bag drummer.” Ab said when Neal left the room.

“Was he right about this Mister Phelps down at the Katy Station maybe having work?”

“Even a fool can be right sometimes.”

“I’ll try there tomorrow, then.”

“I’ll show you where it is if you want me to.”

“That would be real neighborly of you, Mister Barnett, mighty neighborly indeed.”

“Call me Ab. You seem like a decent enough young fellow.”

“Thank you, sir, Mister, er, Ab.” He reached across the table to shake hands. “My friends call me Mose.”

“Proud to meet you, son.” Ab showed a snaggletoothed smile. “We need some new blood around this place. Need it bad.”

The next morning Ab showed Mose the Phelps cattle yard and then headed back to Stockman’s while the cowboy lobbied for a job. Phelps’s greeting was short and to the point.

“Got experience with cattle?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How much?”

“Just finished a line job down in the Territory.”

“And?”

“And before that I was on a drive coming up from San Antonio.”

“What kind of cattle?”

“Mexican mostly, some Longhorns.”

“Ever work back pen?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, there ain’t nothing to it. I’ll give you a shot, son. Name’s Traven is it? Moses Traven?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Law ain’t after you.”

“No, sir.”

“Pay’s eight dollars a week, Sundays off.” Mose did some quick calculating in his mind.

“I can do it.”

“Good. Report here seven in the morning. We’ll get you started.”

“Thank you, sir, I’ll be here.”

OVER THE NEXT WEEKS, Mose settled into his new job and life at the Stockman’s Hotel. Sedalia seemed like a tranquil place to him considering its reputation when it had been a trail hub some years before. Now it seemed like any small town moving at a slower pace toward a calmer, quieter future.

His salary from Phelps was enough to easily cover his room and board and leave a little over. In a short while, he began to add to the little stash he had when he arrived in town from the Territory. At Stockman’s he watched the drummers and travelers come and go and became a surrogate son to Ab’s surrogate father.

The old man loved to tell his tales to anyone who would listen and rattled on and on about this or that activity that was questionably legal even in its time. He really did fancy himself an outlaw and made no effort to restrain himself in any company. Mose tried to steer the old man away from such open confessions of an ostensibly criminal past, but Ab took great pride in his exploits, and the stories rolled off his tongue without filter—especially when he’d had too much whiskey, which was pretty often.

One night in early fall, Mose was humoring Ab by watching him sip whiskey in the Old Missouri Trail saloon, a short walk from the Stockman’s, when the old man took off on one of his standard rants. He did his best to quiet Ab down. There were several strangers in the saloon and a couple of them looked suspiciously like lawmen, but the old reprobate would have none of it.

“I’m wanted all over. Everywhere.” Ab spoke so loud, no one in the saloon could possibly miss it. “Everywhere. The Territory, Arkansas, for sure over in Kansas. Filthy Redlegs.”

“Regular Border Ruffian, were you?” Mose checked the reaction of others in the room.

“You remember Bloody Bill, don’t you?” Ab’s voice boomed across the room.

“I don’t believe I know any Bloody Bill.” Mose lied, remembering the wild-eyed killer from one of his own runs as a teenager.

“I rode with Bloody Bill. And Quantrill and the James Boys. I was there at Lawrence when we kilt them Jayhawkers by the score.”

“Now, Ab.” Mose noticed a fellow stand up at a table across the room.

“Damned Yankee Redlegs.”

“Take ’er a little easy there, Ab.”

“Pinkertons come after me in the Territory. Thought I was in Belle Starr’s gang. I’m a genuine….”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” The lawman-type came up to their table. “Couldn’t help but hear you mention Lawrence.”

“What of it?” Ab slammed down a shot of whiskey.

“Nothing, just that I’m from Lawrence is all, and we don’t think it’s anything to be bragging about, shooting unarmed men and boys.”

“A dead Jayhawker is a good….”

“Pardon, my friend, sir.” Mose said to the man. “He tends to get a might excited after a few whiskeys. He don’t mean nothing by his stories.”

“Stories my eye.”

“Maybe he should leave the whiskey alone then. What happened at Lawrence was murder. Murder pure and simple. If he was part of it, he should be made to face the law.”

“Why, you whippersnapper.” Ab barked.

“Easy, Ab.” Mose held the old man back, then turned to the Kansan. “You’ll excuse us, sir. We need to get on back to the Stockman’s.”

“Just have him watch what he says.” The man watched as Mose pried Ab from his chair and aimed him in the direction of the saloon’s front door. “If the Pinkerton’s really were after him, maybe they’d still want to know where he is.”

“Bring ’em on.” Ab called back over his shoulder as Mose hustled him out of the saloon and out into the night air. “Bring ’em on.”

“Ab.” Mose guided the old man down the street away from the saloon. “You’ve got to be more careful about who you tell your stories to and where you tell ’em.”

“You believe my stories, don’t you?”

Mose aimed the old man toward the Stockman. He looked back to see if anybody was following them but saw no one. “Sure, I do, Ab.” He held the frail little man up. “Sure, I do.”

THROUGH THE FALL AND into winter, Mose worked steady at Phelps’s cattle yard. He culled the herd in the pens and loaded the healthiest for shipping to Kansas City, Omaha, St. Louis, Chicago, and other beef-hungry towns around the nation. Mister Phelps was pleased with his work habits and kicked the pay up to $9 a week early in December. His only complaint was that Mose was sometimes too discriminating in his culling habits.

“Son.” Phelps had explained more than once. “Unless their ribs is showing plenty, run ’em up into the cars. Don’t get too particular on me. This is a business, and we need to keep our profits up.”

He would always nod his agreement, shuffle his feet, and then go right back to picking only the best cattle to put on the trains. In time, Phelps began to look at it as a kind of game, and he would just laugh and have a less fastidious workman go ahead and drive the lesser cows into the waiting cars.

In mid-December, there was a scare with Ab. The old man took the ague and got way down. He was so bad, Mose requested time off to care for the old man. Phelps let his best and favorite pen man do it.

“Here, Ab.” Mose sat by the bed offering chicken soup to the old man. “Try some of this. It’ll bring you back to health.”

“I’d rather have whiskey.” Ab croaked, his old chest rattling.

“I’ll get you some whiskey after you take some of this soup. Now, come on.”

He managed to swallow some of the soup and, as promised, got a shot of whiskey. After a couple of days of special treatment, he began to get better.

“You’d make a mighty swell doctor, boy.” He told Mose one evening after the young cowboy had brought him food and his nightly shot of whiskey.

“You just get yourself well.”

“I been thinking, son.” Ab sat up in bed for the first time since he’d been sick. “Next spring, me and you ought to head for the Dakotas.”

“The Dakotas? What fer?”

“Gold.”

“I don’t know nothing about gold.”

“It’s all anybody talks about anymore—the drummers, the travelers, even the cowmen. They discovered gold in the Black Hills. Rich veins. People are making fortunes up there.”

“Well.”

“Won’t you think about it? We could go up there, maybe get rich. That would be good, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Ab, you need to get well first before we start going off gold prospecting in the Dakotas.”

“Will you at least think about it?”

“Sure. Now you just lay down again and let yourself get well. We’ll consider the Dakotas when the weather breaks. We got a long time before then.”

“All right.” He lay back down. “Long as you promise.”

“I promise.”

“No crossed fingers?”

“No crossed fingers.” Mose held up his right hand. “Honest.”

AB RECOVERED NICELY FROM the case of ague and made it through winter without another health incident. As for Mose, he kept working for Phelps and stowing away any extra money he could with an eye for whatever changes might be forthcoming. He had learned long ago that life was short and full of unexpected events. It was never a good idea to get too comfortable or too settled. Just when you did, something was bound to happen.

Sure enough, in early March, it did. A Pinkerton man showed up in Sedalia—asking questions about one Abner Barnett.

“Son.” Ab said, one evening shortly after they’d heard the word. “They’ve come to get me. They’re gonna put me in jail or worse.”

“Ah, now, Ab, he’s probably just poking around for some other reason.”

“No, no, that fat drummer, Neal, told me the Pinkerton asked about me by name.”

“Well, it’s probably nothing.”

“They’ve come after me. I’m sure of it. It’s my outlaw past. My riding with Quantrill. It’s because of Lawrence. And the Marais des Cygnes. Did I ever tell you about the Marais des Cygnes?”

“No, Ab, I don’t believe you did.”

“It was me and some of Quantrill’s band, we rode alongside the Marais des Cygnes River up by Nevada, went all the way over to Kansas. Killed two Jayhawkers what was squatting just at the border. That’s it. That’s why they after me.”

“Come on now, Ab, take it easy.”

“Listen to me.” Ab took hold of Mose’s shirt. “If anything happens to me….”

“Nothing….”

“Pay attention to me, son. If anything happens to me, I keep my money under a board I pried loose over there by that there bureau. You take it and go to the Dakotas. Make a fortune for yourself. Get away from this life and this cow punching.”

“Now, Ab.”

“Promise me, boy. If they get me. You take that money and you get. Promise?”

“All right.” He humored the old man. “In the meantime, you stay out of the way until I can find out what’s up with the Pinkerton.”

“You gonna go after the Pinkerton?”

“Not after him. Just find out why he’s here.”

“Be careful, son. They’re chiseling snakes them Pinkertons.”

“I’ll be careful. Don’t you worry.”

The next day at lunch time, he walked back into town and sought out the Pinkerton. He learned his name was Frank Rucker and that he could find him in Colson’s Hardware Store a couple of blocks into town from the Stockman’s Hotel.

“You Rucker, the Pinkerton man?” He wasted no time asking a tall, trim man in a dark suit lounging on a nail barrel just inside Colson’s. The place was almost empty except for a farm family picking up supplies at the far end of the store.

“What would that be to you?” The man gave him a quick once-over.

“I’m just asking.”

“And you be?”

“Traven. Mose Traven.”

“What is it that I can do for you?” The man slowly stood. He was tall, taller than Mose.

“Are you Rucker?”

“I might be if I knew what exactly it was you wanted.”

“If you be Rucker, I have heard you’re in town for a friend of mine.”

“My reasons for being in town are my own.”

“Not if they include Abner Barnett. Now, are you Rucker or ain’t you?”

“I am Frank Rucker. I’m from the Pinkerton office in Kansas City.”

“Well, then, Mister Rucker, I don’t know who would have put you onto Ab Barnett, but I wanted to advise you that he’s just a harmless little old man that maybe talks too much when he’s had a couple of whiskeys.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“He just tells stories, that’s all. Likes to go on about the old, wild days when he was young. Heck, the things he tells probably never even happened to him. He don’t mean nothing by them.”

“You say your friend lies?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying he might exaggerate a bit here and there.”

“To my way of thinking, that’s a liar.”

“Listen, mister, I’m just telling you that Ab Barnett ain’t nobody that Pinkerton needs to be fretting enough about to send someone out here to look up on him.”

“Friend, you would be well advised to stay out of law business. Leave that to the professionals.”

“Is that what you are, a professional lawman?” Mose’s face reddened. “I thought you was nothing but a Pinkerton.”

“I have local authority.”

“Be that as it may, Ab ain’t done nothing wrong. He’s just an old man spinning yarns.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Sounds like judge and jury all at once. Where did you hear this about Ab, anyway, some Redleg Lawrence drummer?”

“Let me make this clear to you, cowboy.” Rucker pulled back his coat jacket to reveal a holstered, thick handled .44 revolver. “Keep out of Pinkerton business—if you know what’s good for you.”

“That hogleg don’t impress me none, Pinkerton.” He never did like people threatening him, either direct or implied. “Let me make something clear to you. You harm one hair of that old man’s head, and you will answer for it.”

“Cowboy, I don’t let the likes of you scare me off my job. If the old man is an outlaw, he’ll answer for it like anyone else. And you, sir, would be wise to stay out of it.”

“I done said my peace, the next move is yours.”

“So be it.”

“So be it. So be it, indeed.” Without another word, he turned and walked away leaving Rucker by the nail barrel where he’d found him. Mister Colson, the hardware proprietor, and the farm family that had been shopping were all gawking at Rucker.

“Just a mild misunderstanding, folks.” He smiled thinly at them. “Nothing else to it. Go on about your business. Nothing to it.”

“YOU REALLY TOLD HIM off, eh?” Ab snickered the evening after the Pinkerton confrontation. He was on his third shot of whiskey and feeling his over-the-hill oats. “It was going round the whole town all afternoon. Guess he’ll keep his distance, won’t he?”

“I don’t think it’s nothing to be stirring up much.” Mose looked around the Old Missouri Trail saloon to see who might be listening to Ab’s joyful retelling of the confrontation he hadn’t even seen.

“I reckon that sidewinder won’t be bothering us no more, will he?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Boy, you really know how to handle yourself, don’t you?”

“I don’t know about that, either.”

“You were looking out for me. You were trying to protect me.”

“Finish up that whiskey. I gotta turn in soon. Got work in the morning.”

“Come springtime,”—Ab downed the rest of his drink—“we’ll head on up to the Dakotas. Do some gold mining. Me and you could get rich, boy. Live good then.”

“Let’s worry about that when spring comes.” He reached an arm out to help Ab up from his chair. “For the time being, you just lay low and let this Pinkerton thing blow over.”

“I ain’t afraid of no Pinkerton.” Ab stretched his scrawny little body up into an almost comically pugnacious stance.

“I know you ain’t, but just take it easy and stay away from him. No reason to look for trouble if they ain’t any there to begin with.”

“I ain’t afeard of him.”

“No, I would’ve never thought you were.”

“Not afeard, no sir. Not one bit.”