Produced by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
Black Caesar's Clan
by
Albert Payson Terhune
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, MOST GRATEFULLY
TO MY FRIEND
JOHN E. PICKETT
EDITOR OF
"THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN"
CONTENTS
I THE HIDDEN PATH
II THE MAN IN THE DARK
III THE MOCKING BIRD
IV THE STRANGER FROM NOWHERE
V TRAPS AND TRAPPER
VI IN THE DAY OF BATTLE
VII SECRETS
VIII THE SIEGE
IX THE FIGURE IN WHITE
X THE GHOST TREE
FOREWORD
A wiggling, brainless, slimy atom began it. He and trillions
of his kind. He was the Coral Worm ("Anthozoa," if you prefer).
He and his tribe lived and died on the sea-bottom, successive
generations piling higher on the skeletons and lifework--or
the life-loafing, for they were lazy atoms--of those that went
before. At last the coral reef crawled upward until in
uncharted waters it was tall enough to smash a wooden
ship-keel.
Then, above the surface of the waves it nosed its way, grayish
white, whalebacked. From a hundred miles distant floated a
cigar-shaped mangrove-bud, bobbing vertically, through the
ocean, until it chanced to touch the new-risen coral reef.
The mangrove, alone of all trees, will sprout and grow in salt
water. The mangrove's trunk, alone of all trunks, is
impervious to the corrosive action of the sea.
At once the bud set to work. It drove an anchor-root into the
reef, then other roots and still others. It shot up to the
height of a foot or two, and thence sent thick red-brown roots
straight downward into the coral again.
And so on, until it had formed a tangled root-fence for many
yards alongshore. After which, its work being done, the
mangrove proceeded to grow upward into a big and glossy-leaved
shade-tree, making buds for further fences.
Meanwhile, every particle of floating seaweed, every dead fish
or animal, all vegetation, etc., which chanced to wash into
that fence-tangle, stayed there. It is easier for matter, as
well as for man, to get entangled in mangrove roots than to
get out again.
The sun and the rain did their work on this decaying stuff.
Thus, soil was formed, atop the coral and in the hollows
scooped out of its surface by wind or tide.
Presently, a coconut, hurled from its stem in the Bahamas or
in Cuba, by a hurricane, set its palmleaf sail-sprout and was
gale-driven across the intervening seas, floating ashore on
the new-risen land. There it sprouted. Birds, winds, waves,
brought germs of other trees. The subtropical island was
complete.
Island, key, reef--reef, key, island--with the intervening
gaps of azure-emerald water, bridged, bit by bit, by the
coral,--to-day a sea-surface, to-morrow a gray-white reef,
next day a mangrove hedge, and the next an expanse of
spectacular verdure and glistening gray-white sand.
So Florida was born.
So, at least, its southern portion was born, and is still in
daily process of birth. And, according to Agassiz and many
another, the entire Peninsula may have arisen in this fashion,
from the green-blue sea.
Dredge and shovel are laboring hard to guide or check the
endless undersea coral growth before bay and channel and
lagoon shall all be dry land. The wormlike, lazy,
fast-multiplying Anthozoa is fighting passively but with
terrific power, to set at naught all man's might and wit.
In time, coral sand-spit and mangrove swamp were cleared for a
wonderland playground, of divine climate whither winter
tourists throng by the hundred thousand. In time, too, these
sand-spits and swamps and older formations of the sunny
peninsula furnished homes and sources of livelihood or of
wealth to many thousands more, people, these, to whom Florida
is a Career, not a Resort.
As in every land which has grown swiftly and along different
lines from the rest of the country, there still are mystery
and romance and thrills to be found lurking among the keys and
back of the mangrove-swamps and along the mystic reaches of
sunset shoreline.
With awkward and inexpert touch, my story seeks to set forth
some of these.
Understand, please, that this book is rank melodrama. It has
scant literary quality. It is not planned to edify. Its only
mission is to entertain you and,--if you belong to the
action-loving majority, to give you an occasional thrill.
Perhaps you will like it. Perhaps you will not. But I do not
think you will go to sleep over it. There are worse
recommendations than that for any book.
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE.
"Sunnybank,"
Pompton Lakes,
New Jersey.
BLACK CAESAR'S CLAN
CHAPTER I
THE HIDDEN PATH
Overhead sang the steady trade wind, tempering the golden
sunshine's heat. To eastward, under an incredibly blue sky,
stretched the more incredibly multi-hued waters of Biscayne
Bay, the snow-white wonder-city of Miami dreaming on its
shores.
Dividing the residence and business part of the city from the
giant hotels, Flagler Avenue split the mass of buildings, from
back-country to bay. To its westward side spread the shaded
expanse of Royal Palm Park, with its deep-shaded short lane of
Australian pines, its rustling palm trees, its white church
and its frond-flecked vistas of grass.
Here, scarce a quarter-century ago, a sandspit had broiled
beneath an untempered sun. Shadeless, grassless, it had been
an abomination of desolution and a rallying-place for
mosquitoes. Then had come the hand of man. First, the Royal
Palm Hotel had sprung into stately existence, out of
nothingness. Then other caravansaries. Palm and pine and
vivid lawn-grass had followed. The mosquitoes had fled far
back to the mangrove swamps. And a rarely beautiful White
City had sprung up.
It was Sunday morning. From the park's bandstand, William J.
Bryan was preaching to his open-air Sunday School class of
tourists, two thousand strong. Around the bandstand the
audience stood or sat in rapt interest.
The Australian-pine lane, to the rear, was lined with all
manner of automobiles, from limousine to battered flivver.
The cars' occupants listened as best they could--through
the whirr of sea-planes and the soft hum of Sabbath traffic
and the dry slither of a myriad grating palm-fronds in the
trade-wind's wake--to the preacher's words.
The space of shaded grass, between lane and hotel-grounds and
bandstand, was starred by white-clad children, and by men who
sprawled drowsily upon the springy turf, their straw hats
tilted above their eyes. The time was mid-February. The
thermometers on the Royal Palm veranda registered
seventy-three. No rain had fallen in weeks to mar the
weather's perfection.
"Scientists are spending $5,000,000 to send an expedition into
Africa in search of the 'missing-link'!" the orator was
thundering. "It would be better for them to spend all or part
of that money, in seeking closer connection with their
Heavenly Father, than with the Brutes!"
A buzz of approval swept the listeners. That same buzz came
irritatingly to the ears of a none-too-sprucely dressed young
man who lay, with eyes shut, under the shifting shade of a
giant palm, a hundred yards away. He had not caught the
phrase which inspired the applause--thanks to the confusion of
street sounds and the multiple dry rattle of the palm-fronds
and the whirring passage of a sea-plane which circled above
park and bay. But the buzz aroused him.
He had not been asleep. Prone on his back, hat pulled over
his upper face, he had been lying motionless there, for the
best part of an hour. Now, stretching, he got to his feet in
leisurely fashion, brushed perfunctorily at his rumpled
clothes, and turned his steps toward the double line of plumy
Australian pines which bordered the lane between hotel grounds
and avenue.
Only once did he hesitate in his slouching progress. That was
when he chanced to come alongside one of the cars, in the long
rank, drawn up in the shade. The machine's front seat was
occupied by a giant of a man, all in white silk, a man of
middle age, blonde and bearded, a man who, but for his modern
costume, might well have posed as a Norse Viking.
The splendid breadth of shoulder and depth of chest caught the
wanderer's glance and won his grudging approval. Thence, his
elaborately careless gaze shifted to the car's rear seat where
sat a girl. He noted she was small and dainty and tanned and
dressed in white sport-clothes. Also, that one of her arms
was passed around the shoulder of a big young gold-and-white
collie dog,--a dog that fidgeted uneasily and paid scant heed
to the restraining hand and caressing voice of his mistress.
As the shabby man paused momentarily to scan the car's three
occupants, the girl happened to look toward him. Her look was
brief and impersonal. Yet, for the merest instant, her eyes
met his. And their glances held each other with a momentary
intentness. Then the girl turned again toward the restless
dog, seeking to quiet him. And the man passed on.
Moving with aimless slowness--one is not long in Southern
Florida without acquiring a leisurely gait the lounger left
the park and strolled up Thirteenth Avenue, towards the bridge
which spans the Miami River and forms a link between the more
thickly settled part of the town and its southerly suburbs.
As he crossed the bridge, a car passed him, moving rapidly
eastward, and leaving a choky trail of dust. He had bare time
to see it was driven by the Norse giant, and that the girl had
moved to the front seat beside the driver. The collie
(fastened by a cord running through his collar from one side
of the tonneau to the other) lay fidgetingly on the rear seat.
For miles the man plodded on, under the wind-tempered
sunshine. Passing Brickell Avenue and then the last of the
city, he continued,--now on the road, now going
cross-country,--until he came out on a patch of broken beach,
with a background of jungle-like forest.
The sun had gone beyond the meridian mark during his ramble
southward, and the afternoon was hurrying by. For the way was
long, though he had tramped steadily.
As he reached the bit of sandy foreshore, he paused for the
first time since stopping to survey the car. An unpainted
rowboat was drawn up on the beach. Half way between it and
the tangle of woodland behind, was a man clad only in
undershirt and dirty duck trousers. He was yanking along by
the scruff of the neck a protesting and evidently angry
collie.
The man was big and rugged. Weather and sea had bronzed him
to the hue of an Arab. Apparently, he had sighted the dog,
and had run his boat ashore to capture the stray animal. He
handled his prize none too gently, and his management was
calling forth all the collie's resentment. But as the man had
had the wit to seize the dog by the scruff of the neck and to
keep himself out of the reach of the luckless creature's
vainly snapping jaws, these protests went for nothing.
Within thirty feet of the boat, the dog braced himself for a
new effort to tear free. The man, in anger, planted a
vigorous kick against the collie's furry side. As his foot
was bare, the kick lost much of its potential power to injure.
Yet it had the effect of rousing to sudden indignation the
dusty youth who had stopped on his tramp from Miami to watch
the scene.
"Whose dog is that?" he demanded, striding forward, from the
shade, and approaching the struggling pair.
"Who the blue blazes are you?" countered the barefoot man, his
eyes running contemptuously over the shabby and slight-built
figure.
"My name is Brice," said the other. "Gavin Brice. Not that
it matters. And now, perhaps you'll answer my question.
Whose dog is that?"
"Mine," returned the barefoot man, renewing his effort to drag
the collie toward the boat.
"If he's yours," said Brice, pleasantly, "stop hauling him
along and let him loose. He'll follow you, without all that
hustling. A good collie will always follow, his master,
anywhere."
"When I'm honin' for your jabber," retorted the other, "I'll
come a-askin' for it."
He drew back his foot once more, for a kick. But, with a lazy
competence, Brice moved forward and gave him a light push,
sidewise, on the shoulder. There was science and a rare
knowledge of leverage in the mild gesture. When a man is
kicking, he is on only one foot. And, the right sort of
oblique push will not only throw him off his balance, but in
such a direction that his second foot cannot come to earth in
position to help him restore that balance.
Under the skillfully gentle impact of Brice's shove, the man
let go of the snarling collie and hopped insanely for a second
or so, with arms outflung. Then he sat down ungracefully on
the sand.
Scarce had he touched ground when he was up.
But the moment had sufficed for the collie to go free.
Instead of running off, the dog moved over to Brice, thrust
his cool muzzle into the man's hand, and, with wagging tail,
looked up lovingly at him.
A collie has brains beyond most dogs. And this collie
recognized that the pleasant-voiced, indolent-looking stranger
had just rescued him from a captor who had been treating him
abominably. Wherefore, in gratitude and dawning adoration, he
came to pay his respects.
Brice patted the silken head so confidingly upraised to him.
He knew dogs. Especially, he knew collies. And he was hot
with indignation at the needlessly brutal treatment just
accorded this splendid beast.
But he had scant time for emotions of any kind. The beach
comber had regained his feet, and in the same motion had lost
his self-control. Head lowered, fists swinging, he came
charging down upon the stripling who had the audacity to upset
him.
Brice did not await his onset. Slipping lithely to one side
he avoided the bull-rush, all the time talking in the same
pleasantly modulated drawl.
"I saw this dog, earlier in the day," said he, "in a car, with
some people. They drove this way. The dog must have chewed
his cord and then jumped or fallen out, and strayed here. You
saw him, from the water, and tried to steal him. Next to a
vivisectionist, the filthiest man God ever made is the man who
kicks a dog. It's lucky--"
He got no further. Twice, during his short speech, he had
had to twist, with amazing speed, out of the way of
profanity-accompanied rushes. Now, pressed too close for
comfort, he halted, ducked a violent left swing, and ran from
under the flailing right arm of his assailant.
Then, darting back for fully twenty-five feet, he cried out,
gayly:
"I won't buy him from you. But I'll fight you for him, if you
like."
As he spoke, he drew from his pocket a battered and
old-fashioned gold watch. Laying it on the sand, he went on:
"How does this strike you as a sporting offer? Winner to take
both dog and watch? How about it?"
The other had halted in an incipient charge to take note of
the odd proposition. He blinked at the flash of the watch's
battered gold case in the sunshine. For the first time, he
seemed a trifle irresolute. This eel-like antagonist, with
such eccentric ideas as to sport, was something outside the
beach-comber's experience. Puzzled, he stood scowling.
"How about it?" queried Brice. "I hope you'll refuse. I'd
rather be kicked, any day, than have to fight. But--well, I
wouldn't rather see a good dog kicked. Still, if you're
content with what you've got, we'll call it a day. I'll take
the dog and be moving on."
The barefoot man's bewilderment was once more merging into
wrath, at the amused superiority in Brice's words and
demeanor. He glowered appraisingly at the intruder. He saw
Brice was a half-head shorter than himself and at least thirty
pounds lighter. Nor did Brice's figure betray any special
muscular development. Apparently, there could be but one
outcome to such a battle.
The man's fists clenched, afresh. His big muscles tightened.
Brice saw the menace and spoke again.
"It's only fair to warn you," said he, gently, "that I shall
thrash you worse than ever you've been thrashed before in all
your down-at-heel life. When I was a boy, I saw George Siler
beat up five men who tackled him. Siler wasn't a big man.
But he had made a life-study of leverage. And it served him
better than if he'd toted a machine gun. I studied under him.
And then, a bit, under a jui-jutsu man. You'll have less
chance against me than that poor collie had against you. I
only mention it as a friendly warning. Best let things rest
as they are. Come, puppy!" he chirped to the highly
interested dog. "Let's be on our way. Perhaps we can find
the people who lost you. That's what I've been wanting to do,
all day, you know," he added, in a lower voice, speaking
confidentially to the dog, and beginning to stroll off toward
the woods.
But the barefoot man would not have it so. Now, he
understood. This sissyfied chap, with the high and-mighty
airs, was bluffing. That was what he was doing. Bluffing!
Did he think for a minute he could get away with it, and with
the dog?
A swirl of red fury swept to the beach comber's brain.
Wordless, face distorted, he flung himself at the elusive
Brice.
So sudden was his spring that it threatened to take its victim
unaware. Brice's back was turned to the aggressor, and he was
already on his way toward the woods.
Yet, with but a fraction of an inch to spare, he turned to
face the oncoming human whirlwind. This time he did not dart
back from the rush. Perhaps he did not care to. Perhaps
there was not time.
Instead, with the speed of light, he stepped in, ducking the
hammer-fist and plying both hands with bewildering quickness
and skill, in a shower of half-arm blows at the beach comber's
heart and wind. His strength was wiry and carefully
developed, but it was no match for his foe's. Yet the hail of
body-punches was delivered with all the effect that science
and a perfect knowledge of anatomy could compass.
The beach comber grunted and writhed in sharp discomfort.
Then, he did the one thing possible, by way of reprisal.
Before Brice could dodge out of his close-quarters position,
the other clasped him tight in his bulgingly powerful arms,
gripping the lighter man to his chest in a hug which had the
gruesome force of a boa-constrictor's, and increasing the
pressure with all his weight and mighty strength.
There was no space for maneuvering or for wriggling free.
Clear from the ground Brice's feet were swung. The breath was
squeezed out of him. His elastic strength was cramped and
made useless. His lungs seemed bursting. The pressure on his
ribs was unbearable. Like many a better man he was paying the
price for a single instant of overconfidence.
One arm was caught against his side. The other was impeded
and robbed of all efficient hitting power, being pinioned
athwart his breast. And steadily the awful pressure was
increased. There was no apparent limit to the beach comber's
powers of constriction. The blood beat into Brice's eyes.
His tongue began to protrude from a swollen throat.
Then, all at once, he ceased to struggle, and lay limp and
moveless in the conqueror's grasp. Perceiving which, the
beach comber relaxed the pressure, to let his conquered enemy
slide, broken, to the ground.
This, to his blank amaze, Gavin Brice neglected to do. The
old ruse of apparent collapse had served its turn, for perhaps
the millionth time. The beach-comber was aware of a
lightning-quick tensing of the slumped muscles. Belatedly, he
knew what had happened, and he renewed his vise-grip. But he
was too late. Eel-like, Gavin had slithered out of the
imprisoning arms. And, as these arms came together once more,
in the bear-hug, Brice shot over a burning left-hander to the
beach-comber's unguarded jaw. Up flew the big arms in belated
parry, but not soon enough to block a deliberately-aimed right
swing, which Brice drove whizzing into the jaw's point.
The brace of blows rocked the giant, so that he reeled
drunkenly under their dynamic force. The average man must
have been floored and even knocked senseless by such
well-directed smashes to so vital a spot. But the
beach-comber merely staggered back, seeking instinctively to
guard his battered face, and to regain his balance.
In at the reeling foe tore Gavin Brice, showering him with
systematic punches to every vulnerable spot above the belt
line. It was merciless punishment, and it was delivered with
rare deftness.
Yet, the iron-bodied man on whom it was inflicted merely
grunted again and, under the avalanche of blows, managed to
regain his balance and plunge back to the assault. A born
fighter, he was now obsessed with but one idea, namely, to
destroy this smaller and faster opponent who was hurting him
so outrageously. As far as the beach comber was concerned: it
was a murder-battle now, with no question of mercy asked or
given.
The collie had been viewing this astounding scene in eager
interest. Never before, in his short life, had he seen two
humans fight. And, even now, he was not at all certain that
it was a fight and not some intensely thrilling game. Thus
had he watched two boys wrestle and box, in his own puppyhood.
And, for venturing to jump into that jolly fracas, he had been
scolded and sent back to his kennel.
Yet, there was something about this clash, between the giant
who had mistreated him and the softer-voiced man who had
rescued him, which spoke of mad excitement, and which stirred
the collie's own excitable temperament to the very depths.
Dancingly, he pattered around the fighters, tulip ears cocked,
deep-set eyes aglow, his fanfare of barks echoing far back
through the silent woods.
The beach comber, rallying from the dual jaw-bombardment,
bored back at his foe, taking the heaviest and most scientific
punishment, in a raging attempt to gather Brice once more into
the trap of his terrible arms. But Gavin kept just out of
reach, moving with an almost insolent carelessness, and ever
flashing some painful blow to face or to body as he retreated.
Then, as the other charged, Gavin sidestepped with perfect
ease, and, when the beach-comber wheeled clumsily to face him,
threw one foot forward and at the same time pushed the larger
man's shoulder violently with his open palm. It was a
repetition of the "leverage theory" Gavin had so recently been
expounding to his antagonist. It caught the lunging giant at
precisely the right non-balance angle, as he was turning about.
And, for the second time, the beach-comber sat down on the
trampled sand, with unexpected suddenness and force.
Gavin Brice laughed aloud, with boyish mischief, and stood
back, waiting for the cursing madman to scramble to his feet
again. But, as the beach comber leaped up--and before he
could get fairly balanced on his legs--another foot-and-palm
maneuver sent him sprawling.
This time the puffing and foaming and insanely-badgered man
did not try at once to rise. Instead, his hand whipped back
to his thigh.
"My clumsy friend," Brice was saying, pleasantly, "I'm afraid
you'll never win that watch. Shall we call it a day and quit?
Or--"
He broke off with an exclamation of genuine wrath. For, with
astonishing swiftness, the big hand had flown to the hip of
the ragged trousers, had plucked a short-bladed fishing knife
from its sheath, and had hurled it, dexterously, with the
strength of a catapult, straight at his smiling adversary's
throat.
The sub-tropic beach comber and the picaroon acquire nasty
tricks with knives, and have an uncanny skill at their use.
Brice twisted to one side, with a sharp suddenness that all
but threw his back out of joint. The knife whizzed through
the still air like a great hornet. The breath of its passage
fanned Gavin's averted face, as he wrenched his head out of
its path.
The collie had watched the supposed gambols of the two men
with keen, but impersonal, interest. But here at last was
something he could understand. Instinct teaches practically
every dog the sinister nature of a thrown object. The man on
the ground had hurled something at the man whom the collie
had begun to love. That meant warfare. To the canine mind
it could mean nothing else.
And, ruff a-bristle and teeth bared, the dog flew at the beach
comber. The latter had followed his throw by leaping to his
feet. But, as he rose, the collie was at him. For an
instant, the furry whirlwind was snarling murderously at his
throat, and the man was beating convulsively at this
unexpected new enemy.
Then, almost before the collie could slash to the bone one of
the hairy big hands that thrust him backward, Gavin Brice had
reached the spot in a single bound, had shoved the dog to one
side and was at the man.
"Clear out, puppy!" he shouted, imperatively. "This is my
meat! When people get to slinging knives, there's no more
sense in handling them with gloves!"
The debonaire laziness was gone from Brice's voice and manner.
His face was dead-white. His eyes were blazing. His mouth
was a mere gash in the grim face. Even as he spoke, he had
thrust the snarling collie away, and was at the beach-comber.
No longer was it a question of boxing or of half-jesting
horseplay. The use of the knife had put this fight on a new
plane. And, like a wild beast, Gavin Brice was attacking his
big foe. But, unlike a wild beast, he kept his head, as he
charged.
Disregarding the menace of the huge arms, he came to grips,
without striking a single blow. Around him the beach-comber
flung his constricting grasp. But this time the grip was
worthless.
For, Brice's left shoulder jutted out in such manner as to
keep the arms from getting their former hold around the body
itself, and Brice's right elbow held off the grip on the other
side. At the same time the top of Brice's head buried itself
under the beachcomber's chin, forcing the giant's jaw upward
and backward. Then, safe inside his opponent's guard, he
abandoned his effort to stave off the giant's hold, and passed
his own arms about the other's waist, his hands meeting under
the small of the larger man's back.
The beach comber tried now to use his freed arms to gain the
grip that had once been so effective. But his clasp could
close only over the slope of Brice's back and could find no
purchase.
While the man was groping for the right hold, Gavin threw all
his own power into a single move. Tightening his underhold,
and drawing in on the small of the giant's back, he raised
himself on his toes, and pressed the top of his head, with all
his might, against the bottom of the beach-comber's chin.
The trick was not new. But it was fearsomely effective. It
was, as Gavin had explained, all a question of leverage. The
giant's waist was drawn forward, His chin, simultaneously, was
shoved backward. Such a dual cross pressure was due, eventually,
to mean one of two things:--either the snapping of the spine or
else the breaking of the neck. Unless the grip could be broken,
there was no earthly help for its victim.
The beach comber, in agony of straining spine and throat,
thrashed wildly to free himself. He strove to batter the
tenacious little man to senselessness. But he could hit
nothing but the sloping back, or aim clumsily cramped hooks
for the top and sides of Gavin's protected head.
Meantime, the pressure was increasing, with a coldly scientific
precision. Human nature could not endure it. In his extremity,
the beach comber attempted the same ruse that had been so
successful for Brice. He slumped, in pseudo-helplessness. The
only result was to enable Gavin to tighten his hold, unopposed
by the tensing of the enemy's wall of muscles.
"I'm through!" bellowed the tortured giant, stranglingly, his
entire huge body one horror of agony. "'Nuff! I'm--"
He got no further. For, the unspeakable anguish mounted to
his brain. And he swooned.
Gavin Brice let the great body slide inert to the sand. He
stood, flushed and panting a little, looking down at the hulk
he had so nearly annihilated. Then, as the beach comber's
limbs began to twitch and his eyelids to quiver, Brice turned
away.
"Come along, puppy," he bade the wildly excited collie. "He
isn't dead. Another couple of seconds and his neck or his
back must have gone. I'm glad he fainted first. A killing
isn't a nice thing to remember on wakeful nights, the killing
of even a cur like that. Come on, before he wakes up. I'm
going somewhere. And it's a stroke of golden luck that I've
got you to take with me, by way of welcome."
He had picked up and pocketed his watch. Now, lifting the
knife, he glanced shudderingly at its ugly curved blade. Then
he tossed it far out into the water. After which, he chirped
again to the gladly following collie and made off down the
beach, toward a loop of mangrove swamp that swelled out into
the water a quarter-mile farther on.
The dog gamboled gayly about him, as they walked, and tried to
entice him into a romp. Prancing invitingly toward Brice, the
collie would then flee from him in simulated terror. Next,
crouching in front of him, the dog would snatch up a mouthful
of sand, growl, and make pattering gestures with his white
forefeet at Gavin's dusty shoes.
Failing to lure his new master into a frolic, the dog fell
sober and paced majestically alongside him, once or twice
earning an absent-minded pat on the head by thrusting his
muzzle into the cup of the walker's hand.
As they neared the loop of the swamp, the collie looked back,
and growled softly, under his breath. Gavin followed the
direction of the dog's gaze. He saw the beach comber sit up,
and then, with much pain and difficulty, get swayingly to his
feet.
"Don't worry, old chap," Gavin said to the growling collie.
"He's had all he can carry, for one day. He's not going to
follow us. By this time, he'll begin to realize, too, that
his face is battered pretty much to a pulp, and that some of
my body-smashes are flowering into bruises. I pity him when
he wakes up to-morrow. He'll be too stiff to move an inch,
without grunting. His pluck and his nerve are no match for
his strength .... Here we are!" he broke off, beginning to
skirt the hither edge of the swamp. "Unless all my dope is
wrong, it ought to be somewhere close to this."
He walked more slowly, his keen eyes busily probing the
impenetrable face of the swamp. He was practically at the
very end of the beach. In front, the mangroves ran out into
the water, and in an unbroken line they extended far back to
landward.
The shining dark leaves made a thick screen, shutting from
view the interior of the swamp. The reddish roots formed an
equally impenetrable fence, two feet high, all along the edge.
It would have been easier to walk through a hedge of bayonets
than to invade that barrier.
"Where mangroves grow, puppy," exhorted Brice, "there is
water. Salt water, at that. The water runs in far, here.
You can see that, by the depth of this mangrove forest. At
first glance, it looks like an impasse, doesn't it? And yet
it isn't. Because--"
He broke off, in his ruminative talk. The collie, bored
perhaps, by standing still so long, had at first turned
seaward. But, as a wavelet washed against his white forefeet,
he drew back, annoyed, and began aimlessly to skirt the swamp,
to landward. Before he had traveled twenty yards, he
vanished.
For a second or so, Gavin Brice stared stupidly at the
phenomenon of the jungle-like wall of mangroves that had
swallowed a seventy-pound dog. Then his brow cleared, and a
glint of eagerness came into his eye. Almost running, he
hurried to the spot where the dog had vanished. Then he
halted, and called softly:
"Come, puppy! Here!"
In immediate obedience to his call, the dog reappeared, at the
swamp's edge, wagging his plumy tail, glad to be summoned.
Before the collie could stir, Brice was at his side, taking
sharp note of the direction from which the dog had just
stepped out of the mangroves.
In front, the wall of leaves and branches still hung,
seemingly impenetrable. The chief difference between this
spot and any on either side, was that the mangrove boughs had
apparently been trained to hang so low that the roots were
invisible.
Tentatively, Brice drew aside an armful of branches, just
above the waiting dog. And, as though he had pulled back a
curtain, he found himself facing a well-defined path, cut
through the tangled thicket of root and trunk and bough--a
path that wound out of sight in the dark recesses of the
swamps.
Roots had been cleared away and patches of water filled with
them and with earth. Here and there a plank bridge spanned a
gap of deeper water. Altogether--so far as Brice could judge
in the fading light--the path was an excellent bit of rustic
engineering. And it was hidden as cunningly from casual eyes
as ever was a hermit thrush's nest.
Some one had been at much pains and at more expense, to lay
out and develop that secret trail. For it is no easy or cheap
task to build a sure path through such a swamp. From a
distance, forests of mangrove seemed to be massed on rising
ground, and to group themselves about the sides and the crests
of knolls. As a matter of fact, the presence of a mangrove
forest is a sign of the very lowest ground, ground covered for
the most part by salt tidewater. The lowest pine barren is
higher than the loftiest mangrove wilderness.
Gavin Brice's aspect of lassitude dropped from him like an
outworn garment. For hours--except during his brief encounter
with the beach comber--he had been steadily on the move, and
had covered a good bit of ground. Yet, any one, seeing him as
he traversed the miles from the Royal Palm Park at Miami,
would have supposed from his gait that he was on some aimless
ramble. Now, alert, quick-stepping, eager, he made his swift
way along the windings of the secret path.
Light as were his steps, they creaked lamentably at times on
the boards of a bridge-span. More than once, he heard
slitherings, in the water and marsh to either side, as some
serpent or other slimy swamp-dweller wriggled away, at his
passing. The collie trotted gravely along, just in front of
him, pausing once in a while, as if to make certain the man
was following.
The silence and gloom and sinister solemnity of the place had
had a dampening effect on the dog's gay spirits. The backward
glances at his self-chosen master were for reassuring himself,
rather than for
guidance. Surroundings have quicker and stronger effect on
collies than on almost any other kind of dog. And these
surroundings, very evidently, were not to the collie's taste.
Several times, when the path's width permitted, he dropped
back to Gavin's side, to receive a word of friendly
encouragement or a pat on the head.
Outside of the grove's shadows the sun was sinking. Not with
the glowing deliberation of sunsets in northern latitudes, but
with almost indecent haste. In the dense shade of the forest,
twilight had fallen. But the path still lay clear. And
Brice's footsteps quickened, as in a race with darkness.
Then, at a twist of the path, the way suddenly grew lighter.
And at another turn, twilight brightened into clearness. A
hundred feet ahead was a thin interlacing of moonflower vines,
compact enough, no doubt, to
prevent a view of the path to any one standing in the stronger
light beyond the grove, but making distinct to Brice a grassy
clearing beyond.
Upon this clearing, the brief bright afterglow was shining,
for the trim grass and shrubs of an upwardsloping lawn were
clearly visible. For some minutes the water and the swamp
underfoot had given place to firmer ground, and the character
of the trees themselves had changed. Evidently, the trail
had its ending at that screen of vineleaves draped between two
giant gumbo-limbo trees at the lawn's verge.
Thirty feet from the vines, Brice slackened his steps. His
lithe body was vibrant with cautious watchfulness. But, the
collie was not inclined to caution. He hailed with evident
relief the sight of open spaces and of light after the gloomy
trail's windings. And he broke into a canter.
Fearing to call aloud, Brice chirped and hissed softly at the
careering dog. The collie, at sound of the recall, hesitated,
then began to trot back toward Gavin. But, glancing wistfully
toward the light, as he started to obey the summons, his eye
encountered something which swept away all his dawning impulse
of obedience.
Athwart the bright end of the path, sprang a furry gray
creature, supple, fluffy, indescribably formless and immense
in that deceptive half-light.
Brice peered at the animal in astonishment, seeking to
classify it in his mind. But the collie needed no effort of
that sort. At first sight and scent, he knew well to what
tribe the furry gray newcomer belonged. And, with a
trumpet-bark of joyous challenge, he dashed at it.
The creature fluffed itself to double its former size. Then,
spitting and yowling, it ran up the nearer of the two
gumbo-limbo trees. The dog reached the foot of the tree a
fraction of a second too late to seize the fox-like tail of
his prey. And he circled wildly, barking at the top of his
lungs and making futile little running leaps up the shining
trunk of the tree.
As well hope for secrecy after the firing of a cannon as after
such a fanfare of barking! Gavin Brice ran forward to grasp
the rackety collie. As he did so, he was vaguely aware that a
slender and white-clad form was crossing the lawn, at a run,
toward the tree.
At the path-end, he and the figure came face to face. Though
the other's back was to the fading light, Gavin
knew her for the girl he had seen in the Australian pine lane,
at Miami, that day.
"Pardon me," he began, trying in vain to make himself audible
through the collie's frantic barking. "I found your dog, and
I have brought him back to you. We--"
The glib explanation died, in his amazement-contracting
throat. For, at his first word, the girl had checked her run
and had stood for an instant, gazing wideeyed at him. Then,
clapping one little hand to her side, she produced from
somewhere a flash of metal.
And Gavin Brice found himself blinking stupidly into the
muzzle of a small revolver, held, unwaveringly, not three feet
from his face. Behind the gun were a pair of steady gray eyes
and a face whose dainty outlines were just now set in a mask
of icy grimness.
"That isn't a bluff," ran his involuntary thoughts, as he read
the eyes behind the ridiculously tiny weapon. "She really
means to shoot!"