“Do you mean,” said Henry, “that Alvarez has probably sent a letter to the Northern chiefs, promising that as Governor General of Louisiana he will help them with soldiers and cannon against us in Kentucky?”

“I think it likely, quite likely,” returned Oliver Pollock, nodding his head to give emphasis to his words.  “He had to give them something that would bind.  A conspirator must take a risk and in this case it seemed small.  The villages of those chiefs are beyond the Ohio, fifteen hundred miles at least from here.  The chance that such a letter would reappear in New Orleans was most remote, and Alvarez, might have expected to provide against that, too, by being Governor General within a few months.  I feel confident that there is such a letter and we must find it.”

“It’s a pretty problem,” said Paul.

“I admit it,” said Oliver Pollock, “but a new continent teaches one to achieve the impossible.  That is what are we to do; how, I do not yet know, but we must do it.”

“It’s important,” said Henry, “that it be done soon.”

“It certainly is,” said Mr. Pollock with great emphasis, “because I wish to start North soon with a great fleet of canoes and other boats loaded with rifles, powder, lead, blankets, medicines, and other absolutely necessary things for our suffering brethren in the east.  They are hard pressed there, and it takes a long time to pull up the Mississippi and the Ohio and then carry these things across four or five hundred miles of country to our army.”

“It’s shorely a wonderful thing,” said Shif’less Sol, “that you kin take boats up a big river hundreds an’ hundreds o’ miles into the heart o’ a continent, then bend off into another river runnin’ into it that takes you nearly over to the Atlantic.  An’ mebbe ef you took one o’ the rivers that runs in it on the other side you might follow it up ’till you got purty near to the western ocean.  It says to me plain ez print that we must hev this here Mississippi all the way to its mouth.  We can’t stay bottled up.”

“Sh-sh,” said Mr. Pollock, warningly.  “Leave that to the future.  It will adjust itself, and I think it will adjust itself in the way that we wish, but we cannot talk of it now, while Bernardo Galvez is our good friend and Spain inclines to our side.  Of course Louisiana may be passed back to France, but France is a better and more powerful friend than Spain can be.”

“Do you think you can get hold of Braxton Wyatt?” asked Henry of Mr. Pollock.

“I shall try,” replied the merchant.  “Our association has agents here, and in such times as these and in such a great emergency much may be excused.  If we can get hands upon him at a convenient moment and place we’ll see whether he has those maps about him.”

“He’ll surely have them,” said Henry.  “But he’ll stick close to Alvarez.”

“Yes, there lies the trouble,” said Mr. Pollock, “but we’ll do our best.”