“Yes,” said Marion.
Cutler’s body was buried that evening on a wooded eminence of Cumberland Island, overlooking the Ohio and opposite the mouth of the Cumberland River. Many such solitary graves double-line the banks of these great water-ways—the unmarked resting places of victims of savage hate, or outlaw violence and robbery. Later, in the night, the ark passed Diamond Island, so long the home of the river pirates. It loomed beside them, safe, silent, wooded, wrapped in peace.
The next morning they were floating across the broad mouth of the Tennessee River, nearly half as wide as the Ohio itself, past the site of the pretty city of Paducah. At two that afternoon Cairo was sighted, with the broad channel of the Mississippi in plain view over the forest to the northwest.
Little enough like the populous and commercially important Cairo of to-day, was the Cairo of a century ago! Not a house was then to be discerned on the dreary mud-flats. The “town” consisted—this is not a joke—of a single long flatboat, moored by two infirm old cables to stumps ashore! Aboard this capacious “broadhorn,” however, there was a “tavern,” a “saloon,” a smithy and a general store; and, altogether, the queer craft harbored seventy or eighty persons, men and women. As was not unusual in those days, the saloon did the larger share of the business, and of the character of these early inhabitants of Cairo the arksmen were soon able to form an opinion.
For, contrary to their captain’s wishes, Merrick, Charlie Hoyt, Simon Corson, Kenton and MacAfee insisted on paying the floating “town” a visit, to indulge in a social glass and hear the news of the two rivers. The ark was, therefore, tied up for the night a few hundred yards above the “city,” which six of the older men visited in the skiff.
During the evening, however, an altercation occurred between the visitors and a crew of rough fellows at the saloon; and in the unseemly “mix-up” which followed, Simon Corson had his right eye badly injured—in a most unfair fight, it was claimed.
He came back to the ark, in that pitiful condition, a little past midnight. MacAfee, also, had been savagely kicked and beaten.
So incensed were Corson’s companions that it was with difficulty that Marion prevented them from turning on the town with their rifles, at dead of night. He did not forget the indignity, however, and “Cairo” had yet to hear from him on this score.
As for Corson, he was in his bunk for two weeks, and suffered a permanent disfigurement. It proved a costly social glass for him.
Casting off very early the next morning, the arksmen dropped down past Cairo, being jeered from the saloon door as they did so, and soon reached the confluence of the two mighty rivers.