“Whatever it was,” Jule observed, “the people interested in keeping it secret took long chances when they left us in the dark room with only an old man to guard us. And imagine them never knowing that Mose and the dog were in the grounds!”
At mention of Mose Alex. burst into a roar of laughter.
“I never saw a human face that showed real fear until I saw Mose looking in at the broken window!” he said, directly. “I have seen men and women show fright, but never anything like that! He thought he had come on a collection of ghosts! I presume he thought we, Jule and I, were dead and buried in the cellar, and that our spirits had come forth to haunt the murderers! And he streaked it away like a flash of light!”
“There’s probably nothing worse than the manufacture of moonshine whisky going on in the old house,” Case contributed. “Or the loot from the warehouse may have been stored there,” he added. “The boys heard heavy articles being moved, though they may have been scared stiff and mistook the footsteps of a mouse for the heavy noises!”
“I hope you’ll get in just such a predicament some day!” growled Jule. “It wasn’t any fun, sitting there in the dark! And I expected that crazy old man to shoot us any moment! I believe he was crazy! He acted as if he was!”
“That’s right!” exclaimed Case. “Keep on talking, and I won’t have to wash a dish all the way to the Gulf. I love to hear you get funny.”
“That will do for you!” cried Jule, gleefully. “I see you washing the supper dishes right now!”
“I’d like to go back and investigate that old house,” Alex. observed. “It would be great fun! I believe it stood there when the cave-dwellers lived along the Chickasaw bluffs, and that was before De Soto discovered the river and was buried in its depths.”
“I thought La Salle discovered the Mississippi,” Case said, with a wink at Clay.
“He made a stab at navigating it from the Illinois river down,” Alex. answered, seeing that Case was prodding him in the desire of receiving information. “But he gave the wrong course to the stream. The real Mississippi turns at St. Louis and runs off toward the Rocky Mountains.”