“How will you know him if you do meet him?” asked Duke, spilling a charge of powder on the floor in his haste.
“Why, he will look guilty, won’t he? Well, what’s the matter?”
This last question was addressed to Mark, who just then came up stairs in two jumps.
“Mother says there are moccasin-tracks all around that gin,” said he, so excited that he could scarcely speak plainly, “and that shows that it was set on fire by the Indians. It was done by some of those worthless half-breeds—probably by the same one with whom I had that fuss the other day.”
All our fellows thought that Mark’s idea of the matter was the correct one.
This half-breed—Pete, he called himself—and a half dozen others, who were as bad as he was, had held a grudge against father for more than a year, and we had been expecting something of this kind. More than that, our gin was not the only one that had been burned during the last six months.
The guilty parties, whoever they were, had always escaped detection, but as Pete and his crowd had had some trouble with nearly every one in the settlement, the planters had suddenly taken it into their heads that they were the ones who had been doing all the mischief, and were resolved that they should no longer go unpunished.
“Mother says that before noon there will be a hundred men in the cane-brakes,” panted Mark. “Hurry up, fellows, or we shall miss all the sport. We don’t want any breakfast, do we?”
“No!” we all shouted.
“I couldn’t eat a mouthful if I should try,” said Herbert, seizing his gloves and riding-whip. “Say, boys, wouldn’t it be a glorious thing for us if we could capture the incendiaries all by ourselves without any help from the planters?”