But in their assertion that the Midnight Raider would not leave the swamps for many a day unless forced out, both Deadshot and Ki Yi were mistaken!
Had the avengers been on guard at the bottoms just at dusk, they would have seen a lone horseman emerge from the tall grass, scan the surrounding plains searchingly and then set out at an easy lope toward the very spot where the scenes of the night before were being described for the twentieth time.
And had they been on watch at the sheds of the Star and Moon horse corral at midnight, they would have discovered that same horseman dismount in its shadow!
But, instead, the cowboys and their bosses were sleeping soundly.
After listening intently for several minutes, the skulking figure hastily gathered a bunch of dried grass, thrust a lighted match into the waving ends and then placed the flaming mass under an edge of the corral shed.
Twice he repeated the action, then rushed toward the home house and applied the torch in five places.
Pausing only long enough by the ranch house to make sure the fire had caught, the miscreant ran back to his horse, vaulted lightly onto its back, rode a short distance into the cover afforded by the shadows from the bunkhouse and then drew rein to gloat in his fiendish handiwork.
Inflammable as tinder because of their dryness, the boards blazed fiercely, and soon both the horse shed and the house were roaring cauldrons of seething flames.
As the conflagration gained headway, its crackling and onrush roused Bowser.
Springing to window, he caught sight of the leaping flames.