Payne paused with a hand on the flywheel.
The dread in the captain's eyes was obviously genuine.
"Don't make us take you up there, mister," he repeated. "You wouldn't if you knew."
"Knew what?"
"We can't bring any one up there."
"You aren't bringing any one; you're being brought."
"It'll be hard luck for you, too, mister, if you run up there."
Higgins shouldered angrily forward.
"Keep that kind of pap talk behind your teeth. Trouble with you fellows is you've been used to handling suckers. You sort of get it that we're different, don't you?"
"I'm telling you," persisted the captain; "'twon't be any luck for you to run up there, and it'll be hell for us."
"Get up there and take that wheel!" roared Higgins. "Steer her right and true to the end of the strip and you won't get into any trouble. Try to ground her or any tricks, and you won't have to go 'up there' to catch hell."
"Hold on, Hig." Payne had sensed the desperation rising in the four men and he was averse to violence if it could be avoided. He was new in that country and he expected to settle there and develop his land. For a long time to come, until the contemplated railroad line came down from the north to his property, he knew the Chokohatchee River must be his means of communication with the outer world. The four men on the boat were natives of the section. He had not yet been able to fathom just what nature of men they were or what their business was, but he suspected the latter to be something illegal, and despite the poor showing they had made in the fight on the boat it was apparent that there was in them at least a tinge of the desperado. The swamps of Southern Florida, he knew, were favorite hiding places for scores of bad men. These men probably spent a good deal of time on the river which he must use, and therefore he had no wish to make them his deadly enemies.
"Don't take that wheel, cap!" said one of the men suddenly. "And keep your trap closed."
The scarred man turned and stared sullenly into the barrel of Higgins' revolver.
"Go ahead and shoot. That's the only way I'll go up there."
"Don't want to go alive, eh?"
"Ain't—allowed—to go—at all."
"Hold on, Hig," repeated Roger. "Don't be unreasonable."
"Unreasonable, hell! We're on our way, aren't we? Going to let 'em stop us?"
"We've got no quarrel with these men. We'll use a little reason."
"Go ahead, you're the boss." Higgins retired to the starboard rail, but he did not sheath Old Betsy.
"Can you tell me the reason you are afraid to go on?" asked Roger.
"Ain't afraid to go there. It's you that stops us."
"Why can't you take us there?"
"Got orders not to."
"From whom?"
A sullen silence followed the question.
"Anybody connected with the Land Company?"
"Save your wind," growled the scarred man. "We ain't telling."
Roger debated a moment and decided that he had indulged in enough irregularity and violence for one day.
"Now, talking as man to man, how much would it hurt you to take us up there?"
The captain's bleak face cracked in a slight smile of despair and hopelessness that left no need for words as an answer.
"Well, what is it?" blurted Higgins. "Can't you tell us what you're afraid of?"
"You look like a pretty stiff man, mister," said the scarred man after appraising Higgins, "but I'll bet if you was in our boots you wouldn't do different'n us."
"Can you beat it?" gasped Higgins. "They don't look like Sunday-school kids either."
Roger, running his eyes over the hard faces, smiled at the comparison.
"How far is it up to this terrible place from here, captain?"
"It's four miles from this point."
"By air line or river?"
"River."
"How's the walking?"
A look of relief in his hard eyes betrayed the hope that the question aroused in the captain.
"Fair—I won't say good, but fair. Right here she's swampy. A mile up the high banks start, and there's sort of a trail right into the place."
"All right. You'll run us up to the high banks. We'll get off and walk the rest of the way. You'll lay up at the banks for half an hour after we've started."
"What for?"
"I guess you're all right, but I play safe. I don't know anything about what you're afraid of up there, but I don't want you to get in ahead of us and accidentally break the news of our coming."
"Good!" cried Higgins admiringly. "And Old Betsy here, she'll throw a slug clean through that wheelhouse wall, captain, in case you should get impatient and try to run by."
The captain looked inquiringly at the scarred man, who nodded sullenly.
"All right."
"We'll be hitting back into the swamp," said the scarred one. "Come on, Pedro."
"No, you'll stay until we get to the high banks."
"What fer?"
"Davis did us a favor this morning, and I want to give him a chance for a fair start. If you would tell me his business——"
"Ain't telling anything."
"All right. Take the wheel, captain. We're off."
The Cormorant backed out of the thicket of mangrove branches which held her against the point, straightened out and started upstream.
"A little explanation and maybe we could be friends," suggested Payne.
"We're much obliged——" began the captain, and the scarred man interrupted with:
"But we ain't explainin'."
"Cheer up, boys!" laughed Higgins. "We're doing you a favor, you know."
"Know you are."
"So you might tip us off about why it's going to be hard luck for us to hit this place we're bound for."
There was no reply. The captain sullenly kept the boat's nose in the deep channel, but beyond this the gang was apparently no more responsive to words than the alligators which lay sunning themselves at the water's edge. The river now grew narrower, its waters grew clearer, changing from a yellow to a faint indigo.
"Getting into a limestone formation," called Higgins over his shoulder. "But I don't see anything that looks like land yet. This stuff ought to be sold by the gallon instead of the acre."
Soon, however, a change began to appear in the landscape. The mangroves gave way to banks of solid land. A few scattering pines, tall, straight, thin and branchless save for their crowns, reared their tops high above the tropical growths.
"There's land there," said Roger. "Where there are pines there's honest ground beneath, even if it's only sand. It's good to see them."
"You're right. I begin to feel at home again. That thick stuff is pretty, but give me some real trees."
The sand area, and with it the pines, gave way to a stretch of muck and saw grass, the saw grass to a jungle of elderberry trees so thick the light barely filtered in. Blackbirds by thousands, large and plump and glistening, swarmed about in the jungle; and on the thicker branches the loathsome buzzards sat waiting, waiting.
Payne carefully inspected the shore before leaving the boat when the landing was made at the high banks.
"Step ashore, Higgins, and see if there's a trail."
"Sort of a one-hog path, I guess. It looks all right."
"All right." Roger gathered their bags from the stinking hole forward and followed.
"Now," he said, turning to the men on the boat, "we don't want to leave you with any hard feelings. We'll pay for our ride. Will ten dollars be about right?"
He plucked two five-dollar bills off a roll and handed one each to the scarred man and the captain.
"Hey!" called the latter. "You won't say anything about being on this boat to anybody?"
"Not if it will be a favor not to. I'm not particularly proud of sneaking a ride."
"We won't say anything if you don't."
"I thought you wouldn't. Now you just lay up here for half an hour and don't try to pass us. Business is business and I'm playing safe. So long."
There was no reply. The crew on the boat watched silently as the pair marched out of sight.
"Nice boys, those fellows," said Higgins after a while. "I wonder where they cut throats for a living? Can you make 'em out?"
Roger shook his head.
"I've heard there were a lot of bad men hiding out down here, and, strange, but I never believed it. Apparently it's true; and it seems we've stepped right into the midst of them."
"They called Davis a 'snooper.'"
"Well, I'm not worrying about Davis. From what I saw of him he's quite able to take care of himself."
"I'll say he is. You too. You've come pretty near making pals of the fellows we were fighting a little while ago."
"That was business. I don't want a whole lot of enemies strung out along the river between me and civilization."
"Well, it looks as if the captain was honest about the trail at least," said Higgins, leaping over a pool of quivering mud. "It's fair, but not good."
A cotton-mouth water snake, short, thick as a man's arm and indescribably loathsome, wriggled on top of the mud as Roger prepared to leap.
"Whoa, boy!" cried Higgins, glancing back. "Stand still while I get a club." He broke off a thick branch from a custard apple tree.
"My God! what wood!" he exclaimed in disgust. "It's light as paper."
However, he managed to creep up behind the snake and slash off at a blow the foul, flat head that reared itself above the slime.
"And I suppose this swamp is full of those things."
"Probably. But my land isn't in the swamp, remember; it's beyond the head of the river."
"There's some real ground ahead; I can see the tops of some pines."
Half an hour later they entered a stretch of open country. A few spindly pines grew near the river. To the north and west, as far as the eye could reach, was a prairie, covered with a sparse growth of grass. Small circular islands of palmetto scrub dotted the monotonous scene and at rare intervals a clump of somber cypress told of the presence of water. In a nearby bunch of palmetto a pair of horns were visible; and a herd of wild cattle, incredibly thin and fleet, leaped with a snort into the open, stared an instant at the intruders and sprang out of sight with the speed of deer. A covey of small, brown quail broke close at hand and sailed away, skimming the top of the grass. Fox squirrels were to be seen through the hanging moss on the cypress trees. A great whooping crane waded into view and flapped away in clumsy fashion. A flock of teal duck, flying swift and true as an arrow, came winging their way to the river. At the water hole where the crane had been feeding the yellow eyes of a wildcat, cheated of its prey, shone for a flash and withdrew. By use of his field glasses Payne saw a mother turkey, low-crouched and stepping softly, leading her brood to shelter in the scrub. Farther away the glasses picked out the antlers and head of a small deer, peering above the brush.
Higgins had kicked a hole in the ground with professional interest.
"Sand! No good."
"Right. Come on."
The river frontage of the prairie was a scant mile. Its eastern boundary consisted of a growth of custard apple. The small spreading trees, fifteen feet at the topmost branches, were literally hidden beneath a covering of the delicate moon vine. The vine wreathed itself about the trunks and branches. It covered the tops, it stretched over open spaces like closely woven tapestry; draped itself over everything, its small green leaves and tiny pink-white flowers inextricably matted together with the tree growth and making of the whole a delicate bloom.
A broad riding path had been cut through the tangle along the river out to the open prairie. From the entrance a glimpse was had of a magic interior. The sunlight struck fiercely down through the interstices in the all-pervading moon vine, piercing the jungle shade with a myriad of hard points of light. The path wound in and out, its course easy to follow by the shaft of light in the gloom.
Inside, the atmosphere was that of a great conservatory. A dozen tropical growths mingled their odors into an indefinable whole; and the effect was akin to that of a subtle exotic drug, lulling the senses, filling the whole being with a languor, a relaxation, a pleasant enervation which it seemed well not to throw off. Outside on the prairie the sun burned harshly; within, the scented shadows shielded away the sun and wrapped round one a drugged warmth all its own. The path and the open spaces beneath the stubby trees permitted sufficient circulation of air so the effect was not stifling; but no winds swept through there; the perfumes lay heavily in the air, old and potent, and breathing a mystic, sensuous lure.
Payne bent forward, peering into the mystic recesses of the growth, susceptible to its magic thrall in spite of his hardheadedness. Higgins, the engineer, kicked deeply into the black dirt of the bridle path.
"Muck. Good enough. If your stuff's like this you're a rich man."
"Don't you notice anything else about this place?"
"What do you mean?" Higgins, less sensitive than his employer, required more time to feel the jungle's spell.
"It seems to me like the air is perfumed with poison somehow; and the poison is very easy to take."
"It's the lotus effect," said Higgins presently. "I know it. I got a taste of it down in Yucatan once. It makes you want to sit down against the roots of a tree and have a woman bring you drinks. It's bad medicine when you've got work to do. I feel it now. The old lotus effect.Poco tiempo! Man, we're nearer the tropics than the maps show."
"There's somebody coming."
It was a young negress crossing the path round a turn. Swaying indolently she went her way, with drooping eyes and listless steps, seeing no one, lost in the mysterious dreams which brought a sensuous smile to her heavy lips. She vanished down a footpath leading from the roadway to a cabin, which could be discerned a short distance in the trees. A bull-like male voice of her race greeted her with lazy laughter from the cabin, and with soft, sensuous laughter of elation and relief she replied. Then the woods were silent once more, save for the omnipresent twitter of the birds.
Tiny trails deviated from the bridle path at intervals, weaving their way out of sight into the drugged depths of the plantations. Flaming red cardinals flew to and fro before the intruders, and a small green parrakeet clung upside down to a moon vine and whistled as they went past.
Roger, who was in the lead, stopped abruptly. Down one of the bypaths a strutting peacock had caught his eyes. A glimpse of water showed beyond the gaudy tail of the bird, and a few steps toward it revealed a circular bathing pool in the heart of the thicket. Large mats of colored straw, thick rugs and cushions, all brilliantly hued, lay scattered about on the pink-tinted concrete edges of the pool. A wickerchaise longuestood beneath a striped canopy of silk under a shelter of moon vine; other lounging chairs were scattered about. The water of the pool flowed, fresh and clear, from the wine skin of a bronze bacchante, hideously squat and fat and green with age, which with drunken eyes in a back-thrown head leered mysteriously down upon the water. And the atmosphere of the place was akin to that of a heavily scented boudoir.
Higgins was examining the daintily colored concrete with professional interest.
"That's darn fine work. See how those mosaics and tiles are set in. That's Italian work; we don't finish stuff as well as that in this country. Yes, sir; some rich gazaboo has spent a barrel of money bringing Dago workmen down here to make him a little swimming hole in the jungle."
"It fits in with the whole scheme—the jungle, flowers, birds and scents, doesn't it?"
"A sultan could wish for nothing better."
"Come on."
Though the air was heavy out in the bridle path, it compared to the shut-in pool like a breath from out-of-doors. Payne led the way hurriedly. The path curved slightly in the direction of the river. The light of a large opening appeared ahead, and presently they came abruptly upon a clearing. A large low building, Moorish in architecture and tinted like the concrete of the pool, dominated the scene. Beyond glistened the blue water of the tiny lake which was the headwaters of the Chokohatchee River. At a canopied boat landing lay moored a gleaming white yacht—the Egret.
"This," said Payne, "is where the Paradise Gardens Colony should be by all maps and reports."
"But it isn't," said Higgins. "It's where some gazaboo with a pot of money and a taste for oriental effects camps out. I'm wondering if there is such a thing as that much advertised colony."
"I'm going to find out."
"Look out! There comes a ferocious animal to chew you up!"
A white poodle of tiny size with a bark like a piping bird came bobbing out of the house.
"Here, Nero!" called Higgins.
And then the dark slender woman who had been on the Egret stepped out from behind a palm.
"Flossy!" she said with a stamp of the foot, which twinkled the pendants in her ears. "She won't bite you."
"I was worrying," said Roger.
"Ramos!" called the woman. "There are some strange men here. Come,Flossy."
Payne found himself facing a tall dark man, with a hook nose, rings in his ears and a stringy mustache. The man placed himself full in the path leading to the little lake, and lazily, insolently studied the intruding pair.
"You wish to see some one?" he drawled.
"You, greaser!" blurted Higgins in anger. "Hanged if I've seen such a sassy half-breed since I left Mexico."
The man's lazy-lidded eyes narrowed to a slit. He came forward.
"Unless you are known you had better go elsewhere," he murmured.
"Really?" said Payne.
"Don't bother to be polite to him," growled Higgins. "Can't you see he's a greaser? Get out of the way,hombre; we want to talk to some one with brains."
Payne caught the engineer by the shoulder and held him back.
"We just want directions for getting up to the headwaters," he said.
"I still repeat: unless you are known, you had better go elsewhere."
"That's what we want to do. We're going up to the headwaters. This place happens to be on our way."
"You are not known here?"
"No."
"Then go back." The Mexican pointed toward the path whence they had come.
"Go back where you came from—and quickly."
"No," said Payne slowly, "that doesn't suit our program. We're going that way." He pointed across the clearing toward the blue water of the lake.
"Call your boss, greaser," snapped Higgins. "Let's talk to him." He raised his voice to a shrieking falsetto. "Help, help!"
Payne looked toward the boat landing instinctively.
The girl of the dawn on Gumbo Key was coming toward them, laughing; and the trees and the vine flowers and the sun all seemed to laugh with her.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said. "And the red-haired man, too!"
"Auburn!" protested Higgins, baring his fiery poll. "The best barbers of the West have told me it's auburn."
Ramos bowed deferentially.
"You know these men, miss?"
The girl and Payne looked at one another a long while. At last she turned resolutely to Ramos.
"Yes; I know them."
"My orders——"
"That's all right, Ramos, I know them."
"Perhaps you will tell me who they are?"
"Perhaps."
"Ah! Yes. Perhaps. Mrs. Livingstone called me. She did not know these men."
"I do. And I scarcely know you at all, Ramos. What are you; what is your job round here?"
"Caretaker, miss. Especially—when Mr. Garman is away."
"Annette!" It was the older woman again.
"Aunty," the girl whirling about resolutely, "I want to know a lot of things; why is there said to be a colony here when there is only Mr. Garman's winter home? Why is there all this mystery round here? Why does Ramos prowl round like a watchdog?"
"Come in the house, dear. Leave Ramos to deal with the strangers."
"Why don't you answer me, aunty?"
"You foolish child!"
"I'm not a child." The red was burning in the girl's creamy cheeks."I won't be treated as a child. I want to know."
"Please, Annette, do not discuss your affairs before strangers."
"Strangers! Why, aunty, it's you who are strange to me. I can't understand you. It's all strange. My father letting me come here alone before he comes—he's strange, too, lately."
"I suppose Mr. Garman is strange to you too?"
A flush spread over the girl's face and she appeared to shrink and wilt; and in the swift glance she cast at Payne there seemed an appeal for help.
Payne spoke swiftly.
"We are truly sorry to intrude. We blundered in here on our way to the head of the river. If we can get directions we will be on our way at once."
The girl looked from her aunt to Ramos and then to Payne, and her chin went up.
"Come," she said, and led the way to the boathouse on the lake shore."Oh, Willy Tiger!"
As mild and stoical a Seminole Indian as ever belied his surname responded to her call. He smiled at the sight of her, an appalling feat for a Seminole; and the smile confessed he was her abject slave.
"Willy, you will do a favor for me, won't you? I want you to take these two friends of mine up to the head of the river, wherever that is. My friends. For me, Willy."
The Seminole silently disappeared and returned paddling a long dugout into which he tossed his rifle and a bundle containing his camping outfit.
"My name's Roger Payne," said Roger, preparing to follow Higgins into the boat. "I am under obligations, Miss——"
She did not respond to his suggestive pause.
"I don't think I'll tell you my name—now," she said thoughtfully."Perhaps—after you've seen the land you purchased from SenatorFairclothe. Perhaps—not. Good-by."
Roger looked at Ramos, watching them from a distance, and replied:
"So long."
Higgins sat facing the silent Seminole, who swiftly paddled the long dugout out of the little lake before the house and into a sluggish creek running into it from the northeast. The Indian wore the mauve-tinted, gaudily embroidered dress shirt of his tribe, but as a concession to civilization he had donned a pair of overalls so much too large for him that the belt was high round his strapping chest.
"What name did she call you by, Willy?" asked the engineer.
"Me Willy Tiger."
"Tiger doesn't fit you, Willy."
Higgins dipped his hand overboard and sprinkled water on the Indian's head.
"I hereby christen you Willy High Pockets. And may they never be empty."
An awful contortion took place upon the Seminole's mahogany features.He was trying to grin.
"You give good Seminole why-o-me," he said, ceasing his paddling to rub his stomach. "Willy Tiger——"
"High Pockets!"
"Willy High Pock' sick. Why-o-me make strong."
"So that's how they miscall hooch down in this country," ruminated Higgins. "No, Willy; we don't pack any liquor. Shall I give him a piece of plug?"
"Suit yourself—if you've got any."
"Got any? Never go into an Indian country without it."
Higgins produced from his bag a slab of plug tobacco which made Willy's mouth water.
"Willy," said Payne suddenly, "who is Mr. Garman?"
"Donno."
"Put your tobacco away, Higgins."
"Garman big boss," said the Indian swiftly. "Esoka-bonus-che-tobacco. You give."
"Boss of what?"
Without taking his eyes from the plug Willy's right arm described an eloquent arc embracing the earth, the water, the sky, about them.
"Big boss—all country! Good tobacco. Strong——"
"Boss of the whole country, eh? What business is he in?"
"Donno."
"Where is he now?"
"Donno."
"What makes him boss of this country?"
"Donno."
"And there you are," laughed Higgins. "Willy looks different from a regular Indian; but they're all alike. He loosened up to get this piece of plug; now he 'dunno' anything."
"Donno," repeated Willy monotonously.
As the dugout scraped and stuck on the bottom the Indian doffed his overalls and displayed the full gorgeousness of the Seminole dress shirt. Payne wondered how in the souls of these swamp dwellers there had developed a taste for a hue as delicate as the pink of the flamingo. Bands of red, yellow, scarlet, mauve and black were embroidered upon the cloth, and upon the shoulders were scarlet tufts resembling epaulets. Willy stepped overboard, barefooted and nude save for his rolled up shirt, and began to shove. A three-foot water moccasin lay coiled on a mud bank in his path and the Indian's bare foot flung it aside as one might kick away a stick. Presently he paused, deep in liquid mud to his thighs, his feet working on something below.
"Alpate," he said. "'Gator."
A commotion followed in the mud; a dark knob appeared above water. There was a thrashing and upheaval and the Indian threw a half-grown alligator upon the bank and dispatched it with a blow from his camp ax.
A few rods farther on the canoe was over the shallows and floating easily in a flooded jungle of saw grass which stretched away as far as the eye could reach.
"What's this?" demanded Payne.
"Okomake river end."
"What?"
"Oko—lake. River end here. We there."
Payne drew out his maps and studied them.
"Where's Deer Hammock?"
"EchuHammock there." The Indian pointed to a cluster of palmettos that reared its tops above the saw grass to the north.
"Go there."
They shoved their way through the grass; and as he contemplated the drowned land all round Payne grew warm and then cold with anger. Mile after mile to the east, north and south the watery waste stretched. Here and there a hammock bearing a few trees stood out, like tiny islands in a vast sea. Save for this there was only the uninhabited desolation of the water and grass; and the brilliant sky above.
There was no word spoken as they pushed toward the hammock. Higgins had noted the change on Payne's countenance and saw it was no time for careless words. Payne drove his pole into the bottom and drew it out for inspection.
"Limestone bottom; a thin scum of muck on top of it; and water."
The saw grass grew thicker. Only a water trail worn by dugouts permitted them to go through. Higgins probed the bottom.
"About six inches of muck here," he reported, "and a foot of water on it."
The water grew shallow on both sides of the channel and the grass more dense. The Indian rose to his toes and peered above the grass tops as they neared the hammock.
"Echu!" he said presently, reaching for his rifle. "Deerojuson hammock."
Silently the dugout crept toward the high ground, the Indian parting the saw grass to peer ahead. They were fifty yards from it when Willy began to fire and at the third shot a tiny buck leaped up and crashed down in the palmetto scrub, where it had fancied itself concealed.
It was near the end of the day now and the phenomena of the tropical sunset served to add to the desolation of the scene. Tiny clouds rode in the sky, multicolored from the sun, for all the world as if painted upon the blue above. The west was livid with scarlet and orange flame, and on the hammock the tops of the trees were rosy in the sunset.
Higgins and Payne set to work to dress the deer while Willy proceeded to build a Seminole camp. On the highest ground of the hammock he dug a fire hole, and radiating from it like spokes from the hub of a wheel he dug three small ditches. With his ax he swiftly constructed three sleeping benches of branches, building them close to the central fire hole. Then he built his main fire of short logs in the fire hole. In each of the little ditches he threw long logs, their ends in the fire.
Payne and Higgins watched him, expertly appreciative of his novel woodcraft.
"It was a shame to take this country away from his kind," said Higgins."They know how to live in it—and like it."
Payne nodded. He was looking back over the watery waste through which they had come.
"You got your tract located?" asked Higgins.
Payne pointed out over the saw grass waving above the drowned land on the southern side of the hammock.
"That's it."
"We'll look her over in the morning."
Higgins lay stretched comfortably upon his sleeping bench, and between puffs of a campfire pipe, strove to be consoling. On another bench Willy High Pockets, having gorged himself beyond human capacity on boiled venison, lay staring at the camp fire, open-eyed but in a stupor of complete contentment. Payne occupied the third bench. He lay flat on his back, staring upward through the palmetto branches at the soft stars which were appearing in the magic purple velvet of the Southern night.
In the center, the large fire hole was filled with red, smoldering embers. Radiating from it flames licked along the logs in the three shallow ditches which trisected the camp site, and as the central fire burned down the ends of the long logs were pushed into it and new fuel supplied. The heat from the fires spread along the ground beneath the slightly raised sleeping benches, smothering or drying up such dampness as might otherwise rise from the earth after sunset. Distributed as the heat was, it formed a barrier which shut out miasmatic fogs from creeping over the high ground from the swamp. It was the Seminole system by which these Indians had survived in their unhealthy environment.
"She may not look so bad when we go over her carefully," added Higgins.
"Thanks," said Payne. "Optimism is good medicine to sleep on. I'm stung, of course. The Prairie Highlands Company sold this stuff to me as virgin prairie sod ready for the plow. I discounted that by fifty per cent, considering the low price. I knew enough about this land to know, in spite of lying maps, faked soil reports and photographs, that there would be some water here. I hired you because I was prepared for a drainage proposition. But I didn't think they were crooked and nervy enough to sell me a lake—that senator writing letters on his official stationery."
"Maybe you've got on the wrong tract?"
"You know better; you went over the maps yourself. No; they've got the crust to show this hammock in their photographs; I recognized it at once. They showed it with fat, black grassland stretching away on every side of it. They've got photographs of a town that should be located here, and of roads and ditches and farms. Their crop exhibit—crops from Prairie Highlands—is a wonder: Corn, sugar cane, potatoes, grass. Fifty per cent I discounted it; one hundred per cent would have been right."
"They got soil experts to write reports on it," growled Higgins. "Or at least, to sign them. Those are pretty big names on your papers, men with big reputations. How could they do it?"
"They haven't been in here," said Payne bitterly. "The thing is beginning to get a little clear. Nobody's been in here who wasn't wanted. It's simple to keep them out, with the river the only trail to come in by; so they've built up a fiction about the district, and nobody's been here to check up on it—until now."
"Wonder how they got those soil men to put their names on the reports?"
"Senator Fairclothe, I suppose. You can get men from Washington who can't be got any other way. What I'm wondering about is who's big enough to get him."
"What!"
"Did you ever know of a politician with a big name who was ever anything but a figurehead in a deal of this sort?"
"I guess you're right."
"It's the name and the reputation and the man's official standing that's valuable. Senator Fairclothe may be crooked—I don't say he is; but he isn't a fool politically, at least. No man gets a stranglehold on his state and an inside standing in Washington and keeps it year after year as he has done without being some shrewd as a politician. It's a one-hundred-to-one bet that he's never seen this lake that his company is selling as farms. He might be willing to do something as crooked as that, but he wouldn't be so foolish. Understand?
"It would be taking too big a risk. He'd be afraid that his political opponents would get next. If they did, they'd get some swindled buyer to start action against him, just before an election. My guess is that Fairclothe doesn't know a thing about what this tract is. He's been got by somebody, as the soil experts were got; and I'm wondering who it is that's big enough to get him. It must be somebody pretty big; but whoever it is, that's the gang or the man I'm going to talk business with."
"Make 'em cough up your money, eh? They'll probably do it—to keep your mouth shut."
"They can't keep my mouth shut now."
"Nor mine. It's too rotten, too—rotten."
"You're right, Hig. And I don't know whether I want to just take my money back and clear out—even if they'd offer it to me."
"Well"—Higgins' chuckle came forth sleepily—"it might be made something of at that.—Alligators? No. Fish? No. There's the water buffalo. That's never been tried down here. Hah! I see a fortune in it. 'Buy a wonderful Water Buffalo Ranch and Get Rich Quick. He Lives on Water. Have We Got Lots of it? Ask Us!'—How does that hit you for advertising matter?—Form a stock corporation; get a picture of a Philippine buffalo; and sell stock for all the money a sucker's got. Of course there aren't any water buffalos here; but neither is there any land; and that doesn't keep them from selling it just the same."
"There is land here—under the water."
"Yes. Pretty good, too—under the water."
"Water can be drained off."
"Sure. But—well, we'll look her over in the morning, Payne. Hey,Willy High Pockets! Touch up that fire a little."
But Willy High Pockets was snoring. Higgins rolled out, replenished the fire and soon followed the Indian's example.
Payne did not go to sleep for a long time. It was not the sensuously whispering night with its mistlike darkness and near-by stars that kept him awake. Nor was it the splash of an otter, of minks and the sounds of other animals of the darkness. The deep eyes of the girl of the morning were the lights that he saw as he lay staring up at the palmetto tops; and what sent his blood racing too swiftly for sleep was the memory of her flushed face and tossing hair as she had defied her aunt and Ramos in order to help two men whom she had seen for only a few minutes before.
Payne had roamed much and had never had any thought or feelings for a new country save as a scene for his activity, for achievement. He had never loved. As he lay on his rude couch under the open sky and realized how mistaken was his investment he wondered why he did not feel unduly depressed or disturbed. He had made a poor business deal, and good business sense dictated that he should try to get out of it with as little loss as possible and get into something new. The spirit of business adventure in him, which constantly urged him to seek new fields for his ventures, had led him to make mistakes ere this.
He had never wasted time upon his errors, either in deploring them or in deceiving himself that he could turn them to advantage, but had promptly put them behind him, credited something to experience, and started anew upon the road of achievement. This was what he should do now. Better to lose his investment than waste his time upon a doubtful if not hopeless proposition. But when he recalled the unanswered questions which the girl had directed at her aunt, he knew that in this instance he was not going to do anything of the sort. Having accepted this as a fact he closed his eyes to the soft, intimate stars above the palmettos and went to sleep.
In the morning, when the water and grass were still vivid with the reflection of the multi-colored dawn, Payne and Higgins were out in Willy High Pockets' canoe, cruising the thousand acres Payne had bought. The piece lay mainly to the southwest of Deer Hammock.
"That hammock is the northeast corner post of the Prairie Highlands Company's land," said Payne, studying his map. "I got the corner thousand in a square chunk. Do you see a pine wood, Higgins?"
"There's something down there, straight west of the hammock that might be it."
Payne swept a westward line with his glasses and nodded. "Looks like it. A pine island, I suppose. Now the southern line runs to a growth of cypress, two of immense size. I can pick them out too. We'll go down the south line first."
Halfway toward the cypress trees the dugout grounded hopelessly, and they left it and waded through six inches of water the remainder of the distance.
"They're honest about their marks at least," said Payne when they had reached the trees. "But they didn't say anything about the cypress being in an unholy swamp."
"Holy smoked fish, what a country!" muttered Higgins as he peered into the dark recesses of the densely wooded swamp. "What a place to hide out in if a fellow wanted to drop out of the world. Say, I guess this is the same swamp our friend Davis went paddling into yesterday. Well, she lies lower than your lake, notice that?"
"So it does. I thought I had the lowest land in the world, but this swamp's got mine beat."
"A ditch in the swamp running into the river might drain your piece some. Have to be some dig, but you could afford to do it on a thousand-acre proposition. It's something to figure on."
Payne made no reply but led the way to the dugout and headed across the water for the bunch of pines marking his northwestern corner.
"There isn't as much water on it as I thought," he said as the canoe stuck again as they approached the pines.
"No; it's only the middle that's really drowned. Wonder what the bottom's like."
Higgins thrust his paddle tentatively into the bottom. "Well, I'll be damned!" The blade of the paddle had slipped easily into the ground. Higgins pushed on the handle, pushed the paddle three feet into soil, withdrew it and held it up for inspection. "Muck! Three foot of black muck, and I wasn't near touching bottom!"
Together they began to probe, and everywhere with the same result. The muck underneath the water ran from three to five feet in depth, and was as black as peat.
The water grew shallower as they went westward and presently gave way to dry land covered with a growth of saw grass through which they literally had to push their way. The saw grass ended abruptly, and the last hundred yards to the pines they walked on high and dry land. The pines were on the eastern edge of the great prairie which they had glimpsed on their walk up the river.
As they paddled back to the hammock for the breakfast which they had left the Seminole to prepare Payne studied the land to the northward with keen interest. A heavier growth than saw grass covered this land. On closer inspection it proved to be a jungle of elderberry, the growth so dense that a man could barely squeeze through. The land here was higher and dry, and black muck of the same depth as on the drowned land to the south. Payne paddled back to Deer Hammock in silence. Just as they were about to land he drove his paddle into the bottom with a gesture of finality.
"Well, Higgins?"
"Yes, sir! That high ground to the north is a watershed and it all drains off onto your land. That's what drowns it."
"Right. And I drain into that river."
"Yep. You can drain your piece all right. But it'll cost like sin; and that high elderberry ground up there will always be shedding water onto it."
"So all I need is to get hold of that piece up there."
"Hah! So that's what you were thinking about? Who owns it?"
"Not this crooked Prairie Company. It's owned by the Southern Cypress Company. They own so much land they probably don't know what they've got over here. We'll get breakfast and hustle back to a wire some place. I'll think it over. I may buy that piece. Then we'll have something to do business with."
"Well, you'd better hurry or your breakfast will be gone," spoke a voice from the hammock. "Willy Tiger had it all ready when we arrived."
Payne stepped from the canoe and strode toward the two men who were seated at the camp fire. One of them rose and he recognized the dark face of Ramos. Then he saw Willy Tiger's crumpled body lying like a sack of grain across one of the sleeping benches.
Payne looked at the man who had spoken, who remained seated. He looked at him steadily for a long while. Then he said: "My name is Payne. I guess you're Mr. Garman."
"You're right."
The seated man was nibbling a piece of venison on a broiling stick and did not look up.
"I'm Garman."
He finished the venison, wiped his drooping, fawn-colored mustache with a silk handkerchief, displaying as he did so the two large diamonds upon his fingers; and through his heavy, yellow eyebrows he looked up lazily.
As he sat squatted there by the fire Garman's figure gave an impression of squatness and of grossness in proportions and flesh. The closely cropped head was of a size sufficient to dominate the huge body, and by the harsh salients of the jaws, the great forehead and the flat back head, gave evidence that but for its pink-fleshed rotundity the head might have appeared nearly square. The backs of the hands which drew the silk handkerchief delicately across the thick red lips beneath the drooping mustache were covered to the fingernails with a fell of thick yellow hair; only the fat white palms were bare, like the insides of a gorilla's paws.
"Payne, eh?" said Garman with a flash of white teeth showing through the mustache. "Pretty fair-sized boy. About my size when I was eighteen."
Higgins was turning Willy over on his back.
"My God! Look at him!" he cried, pointing to the Indian's swollen face with its protruding tongue and popeyes. "They've choked the poor devil to death! You cheap, dirty greaser!" he roared, turning upon his aversion, Ramos. "There was a good boy, that Indian; and if you've done him dirt I'll beat your greasy head off with your left leg!"
"Hold on, Hig!" Payne held his engineer back. "There's no sign of a hand on his throat."
"But look at his face! Can't you tell by that?"
Roger bent over the Indian and felt for a heartbeat.
"He's alive!"
"Is he?" laughed Garman. "That's important perhaps—to Willy."
"Get some water, Hig. That's the stuff; souse him. Ah! Didn't he breathe?"
"Tried to. Can't you pull his tongue down a little so he can git air?"
"Get some more water! He's breathing!"
"Hi, Willy!" cried Higgins, tilting the water against the distorted mouth. "Come to, old boy; come to!"
A few drops of the cooling stuff trickled into the Indian's throat, stirring the spark of life that was beginning to glow again in him. A tremor convulsed his chest as the lungs sucked spasmodically at the tiny stream of air entering the swollen throat. A gurgle, a deep sigh, and Willy's unconscious body was taking in the life-giving air in short gulps.
"By the great smoked fish, he'll make a live of it!" jubilated Higgins. "And the man who did it—don't care who he is—is one son of a she-skunk, net."
Garman, after his morsel of broiled venison, was lighting a large, brown cigar, moving the match round and round the tip to make sure it burned evenly. He drew in a long breath and, opening his mouth, allowed the fat smoke to ooze up through his mustache, into his wide-open nostrils, over his half-closed eyes.
"Willy Tiger is subject to fits—of a suffocating nature," he said. "He suffers from a too sensitive conscience. The fits come upon him when he has made a mistake and gets caught at it."
"He was choked!" said Payne bluntly. "He was suffocated in some damnable fashion that left no mark, and he would have been dead in another five minutes."
Garman nodded through another cloud of smoke.
"Five minutes! Sooner, perhaps. I thought he was dead. He is going to die in one of those fits some day, that's sure—if he lives to make more mistakes."
The Indian began to heave and pant as the force of reviving life wracked his body. Moans escaped from his lips, moans of agony, as if unconsciously he was protesting against the painful return to consciousness. And Garman smoked, artistically and with luxurious enjoyment, his attention concentrated upon his cigar, while Ramos watched the writhing Indian with a sneering smile to betray his enjoyment of the spectacle.
Presently Willy lay still, his breathing became easier and he opened his eyes. Higgins, the volatile, leaped back and swore at the indefinable horror in those eyes. Payne tightened his lips and laid an assuring hand on Willy's shoulder. A spasm of terror passed over the Indian's features as memory returned. He sprang to his feet, looking wildly round and saw Garman. Then he cowered, shrinking together as if striving to sink into the ground, to return to unconsciousness, terrified by some overwhelming, incomprehensible horror.
Garman continued his attention to his cigar. The heavy smoke lay in swaying clouds above his head. To judge by his expression Willy Tiger did not exist, save as an incident of the past. Through the curtain of smoke which oozed upward through his mustache at regular intervals, his eyes gleamed alert, interested, concentrated upon a problem compared to which Willy was only an infinitesimal insect.
Payne understood. Garman had dealt—possibly through Ramos—with Willy. Now his mind had turned to the problem of dealing with Payne and Higgins. His manner indicated complete confidence in his ability to settle the problem as he saw fit, betraying how completely he felt himself the master.
Payne controlled his own irritation at the other's attitude of superiority and sat down. Apparently unconscious of Garman's presence on the other side of the fire he sampled a strip of broiled venison, found it good and began to eat. Higgins presently followed his example. Save for the presence of Willy Tiger with the unspeakable horror in his eyes it might have been amicable hunting party at breakfast.
"I like that," said Garman finally. "Cool hand, Payne. You make yourself right to home."
"Why shouldn't I?" Roger waved his hand to the southward. "I own it."
"Yes; but you're in a hole just at present. How do you expect to get out of here?"
Payne finished his piece of venison and wiped his fingers.
"Garman," said he, "who are you? What are you? What are you butting in for?"
Garman's smoking paused for a moment and his fat, rosy countenance was suffused with a darker red.
"That was a bad break, Payne. I don't like it."
"I didn't think you would. I see you don't like the idea of my being here at all."
"That's right."
"In fact, you don't like the idea of anybody's coming up here and seeing this country, and you've taken quite elaborate precautions against anybody's doing so. I'll make a guess that there'll be trouble for somebody if you ever find out how we got in."
"Don't you trouble about that, Payne; you worry about how you're going to get out."
Payne paid no attention to this veiled threat, and continued:
"Also, I'll make a guess that you're one of the real big men in the Prairie Highlands Land Company, which sold me a lot of water for farm land."
Garman smiled.
"Well, it's this way, Mr. Garman; I've been stung and stung badly. That's all right; it's all in the game. I'm going to play the game out. There's pretty fair farm land under that water out there. I'm going to draw the water off."
Garman resumed his smoking. Suddenly he rose, an agile, powerful figure, graceful in spite of his huge bulk.
"It's a hard job you're tackling, Payne."
"But I'm tackling it."
"I see you are."
Garman turned to Willy and spoke swiftly in Seminole. Like a whipped schoolboy hurrying to obey an order, the Indian grasped his rifle, sprang into the dugout and in a flash was poling away from the hammocks as if his life depended upon it. Higgins sprang to the water's edge, but a word from Payne stopped him. When Willy's escape with the dugout was assured Ramos disappeared for a moment and returned leading two saddle horses which had been hidden in the brush of the hammock. Garman threw his huge body into the saddle with an easy spring and rode away toward the sand prairie.
"When you get tired of trying to find the way out," he called back, "come down to my camp and talk business."
"Why didn't you let me catch the Indian?" demanded Higgins when the riders were gone. "A man without a canoe here is almost as badly off as a man afoot in Death Valley."
"I realize that," agreed Roger. "But Garman had made up his mind that we weren't going to have that canoe."
"I had almost made up my mind we were going to have it."
"I saw that; that's why I stopped you."
"Well! After what happened on the river boat I didn't expect you to stop so easy."
"Those men on the boat were quite different from Garman. I knew they would take a bluff, or I'd never have let you pull your gun. If you had done the same here there would have been shooting or else you'd have had to put your gun away and back down. It's one thing to pull a gun on a bunch of river rats, and another on a man like Garman. I don't want any shooting round here."
"Neither do I."
"Then never make a gun move with Garman round. You can't beat a man like him with a gun."
"No, I'll say he's a real he-devil."
"I'm here on a business proposition. It's a question of brains, not guns, in a fight with Garman."
"And he's got a few of them too."
"Decidedly. Therefore, no rough work."
Higgins laughed skeptically.
"No rough work, eh? How about little Willy High Pockets? I've seen a few men here and there who've been manhandled, but I've never seen on with the fear of the devil driven into him as hard as Willy. What in the name of black hell could they have done to the poor buck?"
Payne shook his head.
"I give it up. Sorry, too, because I was responsible for his getting mixed up with us."
"Not entirely so."
Higgins refrained from mentioning the girl's connection with the matter, and Payne was grateful for his delicacy. Garman, of course, had learned that it was the girl of the Egret who had bidden Willy Tiger guide the two to their destination. How greatly this had angered Garman was apparent by the fashion in which he had visited punishment—whatever it had been—on the inoffensive Seminole. What was Garman to the girl?
"Poor Willy was the goat," said Higgins. "But go back a little: Garman seems to me to be the big boss of this district. Is that the way you figure it out?"
"Certainly."
"There's a whole lot of hard-boiled eggs round here, and they're scared fightless about some one, and he's it. A man doesn't get that sort of a grip without rough work, and he's not pleased with your proposition here; and I don't see him changing his method much in dealing with you."
"Perhaps not. It's going to be hard for him to find an excuse though. I'm here on a business proposition, as I say, and business is going to be supreme on the job, and rough work a mere incident—if at all."
"Fair enough. What's your first move?"
"To find a way out of this country without troubling friend Garman."
"Sure. The dugout was the first answer. You let that go without winking an eyelid. That means you'd already figured out a second answer. What is it?"
Payne spread out his maps and consulted them carefully.
"Garman felt he had us sewed up tight because the average man who gets down here isn't a woodsman."
"Except that fellow, Davis, I haven't seen one who looked like it since we got here," agreed Higgins.
"Yep." Payne was drawing out a new large-scale survey map. "I don't think one of the old-time timber cruisers up North would call it too big a job to get out of here. There's water almost all the way over to the east coast—the maps agree on that—so that's no good. To the south is that cypress swamp. West we've got that sand prairie. Must be some trap there. But another thing the maps all agree on is that the old trading post of Legrue, which is the end of the railroad's survey line, is about forty-five miles north of this hammock."
"Sure. And look at what's between 'em—on the map there."
"The Devil's Playground."
"That's one of the spots down here nobody's been through."
"Well, Hig, I suspect you and I are going to be the first to try to do it. I know the descriptions read tough: great crevices in limestone formation filled with impassable liquid mud. We'll try it, though; we've got to."
Without a word Higgins began to cut up more venison, and Payne rebuilt the fire. After a substantial meal they roasted and packed two small bundles of meat for carrying and were ready for the start. Payne carefully searched the country about with his glasses and, assured that no skulking watchers were in sight, they waded out from the hammock and plunged into the elderberry jungle to the north.
From the first they had literally to break their way forward. The elder trees grew from ten to twelve feet in height and so close together that to squeeze between them was impossible. Payne went ahead at first, walking sidewise, throwing his shoulder against the brittle stems and crashing a path through. Higgins soon stepped to the fore and did likewise. At the end of an hour, when they had covered a scant mile, they paused.
They were now in the heart of the elder growth, hidden from all the rest of the world and isolated from anything that might have promised relief. In the branches innumerable large, glossy blackbirds kept up a maddening chatter, and higher above, up in the hot sky, the omnipresent buzzards floated lazily, awaiting sight of possible carrion prey. Animals began to appear almost underfoot, coons and rabbits, disturbed for the first time in their fastness. Water holes appeared rarely, and the water in them was unfit for drinking. Despite the shade it was stiflingly hot.
Higgins began to pant. He was broader and stockier than Payne and less favorably built for wedging his weight through the growth. Neither spoke a word. At the pauses they consulted compasses, laid out the trail straight north and drove on. Payne's breath also soon was coming in sharp pants; and the leg muscles of both began to weaken with the treacherous going. Grimly they held to their pace, waiting the release of fresh reservoirs of energy, the coming of the athlete's "second wind," to relieve them.
When it came they had need for it, for the jungle growth now was thicker. Heavy creepers and vines had appeared among the elder bushes, their phenomenal growth often matted thickly together as high as a man's waist. Bushes which formerly had given way at the thrust of a shoulder now hung toughly, suspended by the inextricable grip of the vines. Along the ground the matted creepers caught and clung tenaciously to ankles. The carpet of them hid with fair leaves and blossoms treacherous water holes into which the travelers plunged at times foot deep. In one such a plunge Payne's boots sent squirming a nest of slimy water moccasins. A moment later he slipped and all but fell on the hard slippery back of a hidden turtle.
A gleam of light in the solid growth ahead promised an open space for a rest and breathing spell. With a silent agreement they plunged straight for it. As they wedged their way into sight a flock of black buzzards rose lazily from something upon the ground, their wings barely lifting their gorged bodies, their foul red heads reeking with the putrid feast they were so loath to leave.
Higgins voiced his disgust in one swift curse, but Payne bored silently on in a wide circuit round the stench.
A broken trail in the jungle soon told the story. The tracks of a single steer were discernible, pointing toward the opening, and there were no tracks returning. The animal, lost in the thicket had fought its way out till, in the open space, its strength gone, it had collapsed.
Payne stopped at the animal's tracks.
"That steer came in from the west. It couldn't have come very far through this jam, so probably that cattle prairie isn't very far out that way. We could go out there. I suppose some of Garman's men would see us if we did. I don't like to have him know where we're bound for."
Higgins was silent.
"Well?"
The engineer's reply was to crash into the thicket, breaking the way; and Payne followed without more words.
At noon they dropped on a bed of vines which fairly smothered the brush, and ate sparingly of the venison they had brought; cautiously they dipped water from a deep root hole and barely wet their lips.
"Have we made four miles?" asked Higgins.
"Just about—less than a mile an hour. Better start again before we begin to stiffen."
They went on, resigned to a continuance of the morning struggle, unable to see far enough ahead to distinguish the country beyond. One moment they were in the grasp of the jungle, the next they had broken through and stood panting and wide-eyed on the edge of a realized paradise of dreams. It was a tiny lake bordered by a small, grass-grown prairie dotted with small clean clumps of palmetto, pine and cypress. The water of the lakelet was clear blue, and the grass round it waved softly. The palmettos grew in small circles and with the pines and cypress seemed like islands in a gentle sea; and each island held in its center a spring of cold clear water seeping up through a limestone bottom. Long, swaying streamers of Spanish moss hung from the pines; up in the cypress were the mysterious air plants with the scarlet orchids naming in their hearts. And beyond the prairie was a grove of custard apple swathed in the gentle, blooming moon vine.
"It was black!" said Payne firmly, when they had drunk carefully from the lake.
"What was?"
"That land we just came through."
"Black is right. First-class stuff."
"Worth the fight to find it—if it isn't already sold. Land fit for a man to spend his time and money to put in shape. Come on!"
They crossed the enchanted prairie with scarcely a word for its beauty and plunged into the grove beyond. The custard-apple trees ran to fifteen feet in height and twelve inches in diameter, but between their trunks was plenty of room for passage.
The grove gave way and they were up to their waists in a growth of thick, rank saw grass, its half-inch wide blades with sharp, serrated edges cutting the bare skin of their hands like knives. Far away on the northern horizon, beyond an apparently unbroken sea of grass, rose the ragged forest of a great swamp, its outlines sinister even at that distance.
For the rest of the afternoon they fought their way toward the trees. It was growing dark when they had won through. The ground beyond was lower than the saw-grass land and seemed to be composed of oozy slime. The growth that covered it was tangled and twisted as if thrown together by a mad burst of storms. Dark, sinister and threatening the interior loomed before them; and without needing to consult their maps they spoke as one: "The Devil's Playground!"