Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 9).djvu/177

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THREE GENERATIONS OF RIVERMEN
171

him to believe, he was acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence. Other indictments, however, were found against him, but Mike preferred not to wait to hear them tried; so, at a given signal he and his men boarded their craft and again stood ready to weigh anchor. The dread of the long poles in the hands of Mike's men prevented the posse from urging any serious remonstrance against his departure. And off they started with poles 'tossed.' As they left the court house yard Mike waved his red bandanna, which he had fixed on one of the poles, and promising to 'call again' was borne back to his element and launched once more upon the waters."[1]

Our inability to believe such stories is only an additional proof that those days might as well be a cycle as a century behind us, so far as catching the genuine atmosphere of them is concerned. It was a rough day on shore, a day when, so the story goes, a Louis Phillippe could not treat an Ohio innkeeper with hauteur (after announcing that he would "be King of France") without being thrown into the

  1. Cassedy's History of Louisville, pp. 78–79.