“I'd have done it now,” he said, “only I don't want to blow up powder that don't belong to me. And here's the keg I had,” he said, throwing one into the powder house. “Now, you get! And if you ever say a word you 'll know what 'll happen to you. Get!”
We ran. We ran like scared deer, and all I wanted to do was to get as far away as I could. We ran a long way up the Slough and then Swatty stopped, and I stopped because he stopped, but Bony kept on running.
“Come on!” I said to Swatty. “What you stopping for?”
“Hide in there,” he said, pointing to some bushes. “I'll come back.”
He crouched Indian fashion and went toward the Slough and out of sight. It was quite awhile before he came back.
“Garsh, he's a liar!” he said when he came back. “That keg of powder he stole wasn't the one he put back. He's got that one in his skiff yet. It was another one he put back.”
“Swatty, you ain't goin' to tell on him, are you?” I asked.
“You bet I ain't!” he said. “I just wanted to know. You bet I ain't going to tell; if I did he'd stab us in a minute.”
Well, I guess we waited round an hour before we went home, and then we were mighty glad there was any of us left to go home, because we had all thought we were going to be blown into such little pieces nobody would ever find any of us again.
Now about the dynamiters: After I had marched in the prohibition parade because Mamie Little's father was a prohibition man—there was prohibition in Iowa, all over, and for a while Riverbank didn't have any saloons because it was against the law. So Slim Finnegan's father got a shanty boat and started a saloon on it across the river, where there wasn't prohibition; and Slim helped tend bar, and then other bumboats started, and pretty soon I guess folks got tired of that and the saloons started up again in Riverbank, so people could get drunk without having to hire a skiff and go across the river.