Other things, though, weren’t going so well. Ta-Kumsaw and his Shaw-Nee Reds were driving off so many folks from down Carthage way that everybody had the jitters. It was fine for the Prophet to have his big town of thousands of Reds across the river, all talking about how they’d never again raise their hands in war for any reason. But there were a lot of Reds who felt the way Ta-Kumsaw did, that the White man ought to be forced to the shores of the Atlantic and floated back to Europe, with or without boats. There was war talk, and word was that Bill Harrison down in Carthage was only too happy to fan that particular flame, not to mention the French in Detroit, always urging the Reds to attack the American settlers in land the French claimed was part of Canada.

Folks in the town of Vigor Church talked about this all the time, but Taleswapper knew that Miller didn’t take it all that seriously. He thought of Reds as country clowns that wanted nothing more than to guzzle such whisky as they could find. Taleswapper had seen that attitude before, but only in New England. Yankees never seemed to realize that New England Reds with any gumption had long since moved to the state of Irrakwa. It would surely open Yankee eyes to see that the Irrakwa were working heavily with steam engines brought straight from England, and up in the Finger Lakes country a White named Eli Whitney was helping them make a factory that could turn out guns about twenty times faster than it had ever been done before. Someday those Yankees were going to wake up and find out that the Reds weren’t all likker-mad, and some White folks were going to have to scramble fast to catch up.

In the meantime, though, Miller didn’t take the war talk very seriously. “Everybody knows there’s Reds in the woods. Can’t stop them from skulking around, but I haven’t missed any chickens so it’s no problem yet.”

“More bacon?” asked Miller. He shoved the bacon board across the table toward Taleswapper.

“I’m not used to eating so much in the morning,” said Taleswapper. “Since I’ve been here I’ve had more food at every meal than I used to eat in a whole day.”

“Put some meat on your bones,” said Faith. She slapped down a couple of hot scones with honey smeared on them.

“I can’t eat another bite,” protested Taleswapper.

The scones slid right off Taleswapper’s plate. “Got em,” said Al Junior.

“Don’t reach across the table like that,” said Miller. “And you can’t eat both those scones.”