THE WIND OF THE OKEECHOBEE
Southward along the beautiful Kissimmee river, where the fabled young
grandee of Spain kissed the plaintive Seminole maid, rumbled the great
green van and the camp of Keela. Southward, unremittingly protective,
followed the silent music-machine. For though the dear folly and humor
were things of the past, like Arcadia, a true knight may surely see
that his willful lady comes to no harm though he must worship from
afar. And at length they came to the final fringe of civilization
edging the Everglades where, despite repeated protests, Johnny must
stay behind with the cumbrous van.
And now the Southern woods were gloriously a-riot with blossoms; with
dogwood and magnolia, with wild tropical blossoms of orange and
scarlet; and the moon hung wild and beautiful above the Everglades.
"Little Spring Moon!" said Keela softly in Seminole.
Diane thought suddenly of a late moon above a marsh.
"He--he can not follow me into those terrible wilds ahead," she thought
with sudden bitterness. "I shall be free at last from his dreadful
spying."
At sunrise one morning they bade Johnny adieu and struck off boldly
with the Indian wagon into the melancholy world of the Everglades.
"It is better," said Keela gravely, "if you wear the Seminole clothes
you wore at Sherrill's. They are in the wagon. My people love not the
white man."
"But--" stammered Diane.
"They will think," explained Keela shyly, "that you are a beautiful
daughter of the sun from the wilderness of O-kee-fee-ne-kee. You are
brown and beautiful. Such, they tell, was my grandmother. It is a
legend of my mother's people, but I do not think," added Keela
majestically, "that the wild and beautiful tribe of mystery who were
sons and daughters of the Sun, are half so beautiful as you!"
To the dull baying of the alligators in the saw grass, and the
melancholy croak of the great blue herons, Keela's wagon penetrated the
weird and terrible wilds of the Everglades, winding by the gloomy
border of swamps where the deadly moccasin dwelt beneath the darkling
shadow of cypress, on by ponds thick with lilies and tall ghostly
grasses, over tangled underbrush, past water-dark jungles of dead trees
where the savage cascade of brush and vine and fallen branches had
woven a weird, wild lacery among the trees, through mud and saw grass,
past fertile islands and lagoons of rush and flag--a trackless
water-prairie of uninhabitable wilds which to Keela's keen and
beautiful eyes held the mysteriously blazed home-trail of the Seminole.
As Keela knew the trail, so surely from the rank, tropical vegetation
of the great Southern marshland she knew the art of wresting food.
Bitter wild oranges, pawpaws, oily palmetto cabbage, wild cassava,
starred gorgeously now with orange colored blossoms, and guavas; these,
with the wild turkeys and mallard ducks, turtles and squirrels and the
dark little Florida quail with which the wild abounded, gave them
varied choice.
Cheerfully fording miles of mud and water, his discomforts not a few,
came Philip, greatly disturbed by the incomprehensible whims of his
lady. By day he followed close upon the trail of the canvas wagon,
patterning his conquest of the aquatic wilderness about him after that
of Keela, hunting the wild duck and the turkey and discarding the
bitter orange with aggrieved disgust. And if Keela occasionally found
a brace of ducks by the camp fire or a bass in a nest of green
palmetto, she wisely said nothing, sensing the barrier between these
two and wondering greatly.
By night when the great morass lay in white and sinister tangle under
the wild spring moon, when the dark and dreadful swamps were rife with
horrible croaks and snaps, the whirring of the wings of waterfowl or
the noise of a disturbed puff adder, Philip stretched himself upon the
seat of the music-machine and slept through the twilight and the early
evening. When the camp ahead, glimmering brightly through the live
oaks, was silent, Philip awoke and watched and smoked, a solitary
sentinel in the terrible melancholy of the moonlit waste of ooze and
dead leaf and sinister crawling life.
So they came in time to the plains of Okeechobee and thence to the
wild, dark waters of the great inland sea--a wild, bleak sea, mirroring
cloud and the night-lamp of the Everglades. The wind wafting across on
night-tipped wings rippled the great water shield and brought its
message to the silent figure on the shore.
"So," sighed the wind of the Okeechobee, "he still follows!"
"Yes," said Diane, shuddering at the howl of a cat owl, "he has dared
even that!"
"Brave and resolute to plunge into the wilds with a music-machine!
Would he, think you, dare all this for the sake of--spying?"
"I--I do not know. I have wondered greatly. Still he has dared much
for it before."
"He asked you to remember--his love--"
"I--I dare not think of it. For every admission he made that night by
the marsh tallied with the terrible tale of Ronador. I had thought he
followed and watched by night for another reason."
"What reason?"
"I--do not know. A finer, holier reason--"
The wind fluttered and fell, and rose again with a plaintive sigh.
"You know, but you will not tell!"
"It--it may be so. He is false--he is false!" cried the voice of the
girl's sore heart; "a false sentry and a false protector. I can not
bear it. Philip! Philip! It was Themar's knife--and the bullet was
his--and all that seemed fine and noble was black and false!"
"You will not trust him as he begged!"
"I can not. For he will not tell me the reason for all these things!"
"You will wed Prince Ronador?"
"Yes. It is the one way out."
"Why?"
"He is a gallant lover and the victim of much that is vile and unfair."
"Yes--he has said so."
"He has suffered much through me."
"Yes."
"And he is honorable and devoted."
"It may be."
"He told me all, though he found it difficult."
"He was not bound by a pledge."
"No."
"Well, there is wisdom, the wisdom of the world, in your choice.
Flashing jewels, robes of state, maids of honor--"
"These things," spurned Diane with beautiful insolence, "I may buy with
gold."
"Ah!" crooned the wind, "but the vassalage of this elfin nation that
plays at empire, the romance and adventure of an imperial court! And
when the mad King dies and the Prince Regent, then Ronador will be
king--"
"I have thought of it all. I can not go back to the old shallow life
with Aunt Agatha. No! No! And I am very lonely. If in the days to
come wind and moon and the call of the wilderness stir my gypsy blood
to rebellion--if I am ever to forget--"
"What must you forget?"
"It was foolish to speak so. I do not know. Then when the call of the
wildwood comes I must have crowded days and fevered gayety to hush it.
And surely this will come to me in the court of Ronador."
The wild moon drifted behind a cloud, the sea darkened, something huge
and shadowy lumbered down to the water and splashed heavily away, the
cat owl hooted. A mist drooped trailing fingers over the water as the
wind died away.
A profoundly dreary setting for a dream of empire!