Norton was badly battered. More than one knife had nicked his flesh, and Duval's fists had given him a badly cut lip and a bruised and bleeding face, but he was hurt in no vital place. Now, as he lay bound, for the first time he began to take coherent stock of the river-pirates. Three of the boat-crew had been of the gang; the others, with Brookfield, were dead. Two of the traitors had also fallen and with them five more of the gang; three others lay sorely wounded. Besides these, eight sound men remained, with Grigg and Duval. Red Hugh had been stunned, and for some reason both he and Norton were not knifed as they lay. Instead, they were lifted and carried down into one of the four large skiffs at the stern of the horse-boat. With them were placed the three wounded men, and then the others fell to work under orders from Grigg, now recovered from Norton's blow. The four skiffs were drawn up alongside, and the best of the cargo was rapidly transferred from the larger boat. Helpless, Norton watched operations; now that the work had been carried through, the men had removed their masks. All appeared to be either woodsmen or settlers, men of the roughest and most brutal type on the border. From their snatches of talk he gathered that they had made a common settlement on the upper reaches of the Saline River. This was in a purely Indian country, where the last remnants of the once powerful Ohio tribes had gathered under protection of the still more powerful Shawnees. "We'll git them thar Miamis on the rampage," observed one of the pirates at work above him, with a coarse laugh. "Ought to have one more high ol' time afore we split up, eh?" "Got to use up that licker," growled another in assent. "What's the chief goin' to do with them two fellers?" The answer, fortunately, was lost on Norton. It was just as well for his own peace of mind that he gained no inkling of Duval's plan till later. With the best of Brookfield's rich cargo stowed away in the four skiffs, the eight sound men piled down into one of them; by grim irony that cargo which was to have served for a lure had now been taken by the intended victim, and Norton writhed in his bonds at the thought. The boat in which he lay, with Red Hugh and the wounded, was taken in tow with the other two; Grigg descended among the men and took charge, and last of all came Duval. Even before he came, Norton saw why he had lingered, and what was intended. As the four skiffs pulled out and drew away in a slow line, the horse-boat slowly drifted out into the stream, her lines severed. The moon had by this time gone down, but looking back, Norton saw a burst of flames from the boat. She drifted away with her load of dead, the fire rising high into a pyramid of flame and smoke above her ungainly shape.