The old negro was off like a shot. In ten minutes he was back with the report that he had learned from a farmer who was hastening toward the conflagration that the Slocum warehouses, not more than half a mile away, had been set on fire just before daylight and had smoldered for hours before bursting into flames.
“It strikes me,” Case suggested, “that the best thing we boys can do is to get out of this country right now. We’ve bumped into river pirates, and night-riders, and the next we know, we’ll be arrested by some fresh officers charged with being in cahoots with the incendiaries.”
“I’m not going to run away without that motor boat,” Alex muttered, his mouth full of fried fish.
“What’s the use?” asked Jule. “If we start out now, we’re likely to be followed, and if we remain here in camp we may escape observation. The night-riders know we’re here, of course, but they’ll be too busy getting under cover to pay any attention to us to-day.”
“That listens good to me!” Alex put in. “We’ll stay here till night and work our way through the cut-off by the light of burning warehouses. I wish I could say ‘by the light of burning saloon boats’, too.”
“Talk about your wild life at the head waters of the Amazon!” roared Clay, “this peaceful little old Ohio river beats anything we have encountered yet. We seem to get into the thick of it everywhere we go.”
The boys were not molested during the day.
Shortly after noon a negro who looked about as badly frightened as one could imagine, came down the river in an old canoe and stopped to talk with Zeke.
He stated that the night-riders had destroyed several warehouses the night before, and had also whipped several planters who had resisted.
“Ah nebber did done cotton to no night-riders!” the old darkey informed the boys as he repeated the story.