The man with the broken leg had done some quick thinking. He had his own reasons for wishing to get down the river. With Jimmy to help and wait on him, he would be able to start much sooner than alone. And once among his friends, some convenient disposal of Jimmy would soon offer itself. He might even turn him over to his father. When the stranger said he knew James Claiborne, he spoke the entire and absolute truth.
“I’d like to see my father, if it’s true,” said Jimmy, slowly. “I’d go a good ways, and so would Uncle Amasa. I wish I could get word to him.”
“And leave me to shift for myself the time it would take ye to go and come?”
“I forgot,” said Jimmy, bent over the steaming hominy.
“The thing to do,” said the stranger, “is this: If Uncle Amasa don’t get out here before we’re ready to leave, write him a message on the wall that you’ve gone to find your pappy; then he’ll understand.”
A smile flitted over the man’s face, the first that had shone on it. It was the smile that a revengeful and unscrupulous man might wear as he wiped out an old and bitter score.
“I might do that,” said Jimmy, who had not seen the smile. “That’s a good idea. But most likely he’ll come.”
Uncle Amasa was busy at the shipyard, however, and as fear helped on the rapid setting of the broken leg, the stranger was able to hobble about on rude crutches within ten days.
Jimmy made a trip over to Marietta for him, and bought two horses, not without inward trepidation, for it was no light thing that he was venturing, even to find a father whom he had supposed dead.
“I’ve got my gun,” he reflected. “Nothing can happen. As long as he’s crippled he’s my captive, I’m not his.” But even as he said it he knew that he was really captive to the man’s helplessness and dependence on him.
His hand shook as he wrote in charcoal on the rough log of the mantelpiece,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brush College was having its long deferred holiday. The candy and raisins had come from Marietta, and all the young people of the settlement, as well as most of the older ones, had gathered to see the ark off, and celebrate its departure with unusual festivities.
Uncle Amasa was not there. He had gone to join Jimmy at their little cabin, a fortnight or so earlier, and had not yet returned. He was to bring Jimmy with him. Marion had consented to take him on the ark.