These men in their buckskins are daring and dangerous
and we must attend to them!"
The Spaniard clenched his hands in anger, and the blue light of his eyes
was singularly cruel.
"Galvez is a fool," he continued. "He is not allowing the English to trade
at New Orleans, but he is giving the American rebels full chance. He his
allowed one, Pollock, Oliver Pollock, to establish a base there. This
Pollock has formed a company of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston
merchants, and they are sending arms and ammunition in fleets of canoes up
the Mississippi and then up the Ohio to Fort Pitt, where they are unloaded
and then taken eastward by land for the use of the rebels. A fleet of
these canoes is to start about the time we arrive in New Orleans."
"We might meet it," suggested Braxton Wyatt, "and say that it attacked
us."
The Spaniard smiled.
"The idea is not bad," he said, "and it could be done. We could sink their
whole fleet of canoes with the pretty little cannon that we carry, and we
could prove that they began the attack. But I do not choose to run the
risk of compromising myself just yet. There is a more glorious enterprise
afoot. Hark you, Senor Wyatt."
Braxton Wyatt leaned forward and listened attentively.
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