As I approached the little tavern I heard much laughing, talking, footfalls, hurrying, as men came or went on one errand or another.  A large party had evidently arrived on a conveyance earlier than my own.  I leaned against the front rail of the tavern gallery and waited for some stable-boy to come.  The postmaster carried away his mail sack, the loungers at the stoop gradually disappeared, and so presently I began to look about me.  I found my eyes resting upon a long figure at the farther end of the gallery, sitting in the shade of the steep hill which came down, almost sharp as a house roof, back of the tavern, and so cut off the evening sun.  It was apparently a woman, tall and thin, clad in a loose, stayless gown, her face hid in an extraordinarily long, green sun-bonnet.  Her arms were folded, and she was motionless.  But now and then there came a puff of smoke from within the caverns of the sun-bonnet, accompanied with the fragrant odor of natural leaf, whose presence brooked no debate by the human nose.  I looked at this stranger again and yet again, then slowly walked up and held out my hand.  No one in all the world who could counterfeit Mandy McGovern, even so far away, and under conditions seemingly impossible for her presence!

Mandy’s pipe well-nigh fell from her lips.  “Well, good God A’mighty!  If it ain’t you, son!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” I smiled.

“They told me you-all lived somewheres around here.”

“Aunt Mandy,” I interrupted.  “Tell me, what in the world are you doing here?”

“Why, me and the folks just come down to look around.  Her and her Pa was comin’, and I come, too.”

“Who came with you, Aunt Mandy?”

“Still askin’ fool questions like you didn’t know!  Why, you know who it was.  The Colonel’s ordered to jine his rigiment at Fort Henry.  Gal come along o’ him, o’ course.  I come along with the gal, o’ course.  My boy and my husband come along with me, o’ course.”

“Your son, Andrew Jackson?”

“Uh-huh.  He’s somewheres ‘round, I reckon.  I see him lickin’ a nigger a few minutes ago.  Say, that boy’s come out to be the fightenest feller I ever did see.  Him allowin’ he got that there Injun, day we had the fight down on the Platte, it just made a new man out’n him.  ’Fore long he whupped a teamster that got sassy with him.  Then he taken a rock and lammed the cook ‘cause he looked like he was laffin’ at him.  Not long atter that, he killed a Injun he ‘lowed was crawlin’ ’round our place—­done kilt him and taken his skulp ’fore I had time to explain to him that like enough that Injun was plum peaceful, and only comin’ in to get a loaf o’ bread.”

“Bread?  Aunt Mandy, where was all this?”

“Where d’ye suppose it was unlessen at our hotel?  My man and me seen there was a good openin’ there on the trail this side o’ the south fork, and we set up a hotel in a dugout.  Them emigrants would give you anything you aste for a piece o’ pie, or a real baked loaf o’ bread.  We may go back there some time.  We could make our pile in a couple o’ years.  I got over three hundred dollars right here in my pocket.”