THE OLD FORT.
NOT long after leaving Indiantown the boys passed into a higher
country, where the road wound in and out among great towering live
oaks, under which the ground was thickly strewed with acorns.
Multitudes of gray squirrels frisked among the branches and made the
air noisy with their chattering.
"I'll bet this is a great game country," Charley remarked, as they
stopped to water their ponies at the edge of a clear-running brook.
"There ought to be bear and turkeys around where there are so many
acorns. Listen! if I am not mistaken, those are turkeys drumming now."
From a point a little to the left of the road came a hollow thumping
sound, repeated at frequent intervals. "It's turkeys," said Charley,
with conviction. "Come on, let's see if we can get a shot at them."
The two lads dismounted, and, tying their ponies to convenient trees,
took their guns and picked their way softly toward the sound. A hundred
feet brought them to where they could look out from the shelter of the
oaks into a little glade or clearing a couple of acres in extent. What
they saw caused them to pause and stare in admiration and amusement. In
the center of the glade was a bunch of some twenty turkeys. The sun,
shining down, lit up their plumage with a thousand colors, and made of
them a picture well worth remembering, but it was the antics that they
were going through that drew a smile from the two lads.
The leader of the flock, a huge gobbler with ruffled feathers and
drumming wings, was going through a sort of strutting, mincing dance,
every motion of his being closely followed by each of the flock, moving
with slow, stately dignity.
"Gee!" grinned Walter. "They are doing the 'turkey trot.' It costs five
dollars to see that dance in New York."
"The ministers say it's immoral," said Charley laughingly, "so let's
put a stop to it. Be sure to pick out one of the younger birds. We
never could cook that gobbler tender. I'll bet he is ten years old."
The lads fired almost together, and two of the smaller turkeys sank to
the ground, while the rest of the flock rose in flight, but only to
settle again within easy gun-shot.
"No use killing any more," Walter said, as the two lads emerged from
behind the oaks and picked up the dead birds.
"No," Charley agreed. "These will be all we can use. They would spoil
before we got back to camp. But say, I am tickled to see game so
plentiful. When we get the machine and camp out here, it will make a
big difference in our grub bills."
"Hold on a minute," said Walter, as his chum turned to retrace his
steps to the road. "Doesn't it strike you as queer--this bare space in
the heart of a great oak forest?"
"It is odd," admitted Charley. "I never thought of that until you
mentioned it. Let's look around a bit."
The boys, up to now, had barely noticed the clearing, all their
interest being centered on the turkeys. As they advanced into it they
were surprised to note that it was not a freak of nature, but had been
carefully cleared by hand. The indestructible live oak stumps still
bore evidence of the axe. Wonderingly, the lads made their way forward.
"Those are not live oak trees at the other end of the clearing,"
declared Charley, who was looking around with eager eyes. "Let's see
what they are."
A few minutes' walk brought them to the fringe of trees that had
drawn the lads' attention. Here they paused, with an exclamation of
astonishment.
"Gee!" Charley cried, "they are orange trees, and, from their size,
they must be hundreds of years old."
"And there's another clearing beyond this one," cried Walter, who had
entered the fringe of trees to pluck some of the golden fruit. "Come
on, let's have a look at it. The oranges can wait until we come back."
With all of boys' healthy love of mystery and discovery, the two lads
pushed eagerly through the fringe of orange trees and found themselves
in another but smaller clearing, in the center of which rose up high
posts, forming four sides of a square enclosure.
"A stockade!" exclaimed Charley excitedly. "Let's see what's inside. It
ought to be easy to break down one of those posts."
But their united efforts failed to crack any of the posts. They were
all of live oak, which successfully resists the wear of centuries.
"It's no use tiring ourselves out for nothing," Charley said, after
they had tried several of the posts without any success. "There must
be an opening somewhere, and we have only to follow up the posts
to find it." This they did, and, rounding the first corner of the
stockade, came upon an opening in the wall, where had evidently once
hung a strong gate. Pushing through the opening, they stood inside of
the stockade, and, pausing, gazed around with a feeling of awe. The
little enclosure was perhaps a half acre in extent. In the middle of
it stood a small fort, cunningly constructed of big blocks of coquina
rock. Around the little fort were grouped what had once been dwellings,
but of which nothing now remained but their upright live-oak posts. A
hole, in one side of the fort, which likely in some past age had been
closed by a massive door, showed the enclosure to the fortress. Passing
through the hole, the boys found themselves in a dim room, some forty
feet square. The only light was the few rays that filtered through the
loopholes, and the two lads had to pause to accustom their eyes to the
dim twilight.
"My, but look here!" cried Charley, as his vision cleared.
Walter backed nervously toward the door, as he, too, began to perceive
the grewsome objects grouped around them. Directly in front of them
stood a gigantic, man-like form. Gaping holes, where the eyes should
have been, stared upon them, and one long arm pointed directly at them.
"Whew, that gave me a shock at first!" exclaimed Charley, with a
nervous laugh of relief. "One does not expect to stumble upon dead men
in armor in the wilds of Florida. Look! there's another and another
and another," he continued, pointing to the other motionless figures
sprawled in all sorts of attitudes about the room. At the foot of a
cunningly constructed stone stairway, the suits of armor lay so close
together that the boys could hardly pick their way between them.
"The defenders evidently made a brave stand here at the foot of the
stairway," Charley observed. "Let's go up and see what's in the upper
chamber."
With but little relish for further investigation, Walter followed his
chum as he climbed up the stone stairs.
The scene in the upper chamber was but a repetition of that below,
only the floor was more thickly strewn with the suits of mail. Charley
lifted the rust-encrusted visor of one, but let it drop hastily as his
eyes encountered the grinning skeleton within.
"They were Spaniards who made this clearing and built this fort,"
he explained to his chum. "It may have been part of one of DeSoto's
expeditions, or they may have been one of the treasure-hunting parties
that were so numerous in the fifteenth century. Likely they became
disgusted with tramping through swamps, and, when they came to this
pleasant spot, they decided to stay for a time at least. So they,
probably, made captives of many of the Indians, and put them to work,
clearing, planting and building. But the Indians had their revenge in
the end."
"You can stay here as long as you want to, but I am going to get out
in the fresh air," said Walter, shuddering as he watched a hairy rat
creep out from one of the suits of armor. "I will wait for you just
outside the fort."
"All right," Charley agreed. "I'll be out in a few minutes."
Left to himself, the lad searched around in the corners for a few
minutes, trying to find something to carry away with him as a souvenir
of their strange discovery, but, finding nothing, he soon gave up the
hunt, and, gathering up his game bag and gun, he made his way back down
the stairs and out of the fort, glad to be in the sunshine and fresh
air once more.
Walter was not in sight, and, after calling him a couple of times,
Charley decided that he had probably grown tired of waiting, and had
returned to the orange trees to eat his fill, and for them the lad
hastened. But his chum was not there, and, with a vague feeling of
alarm, the lad hurried on to where they had left their ponies, but
Walter was not there. Now thoroughly alarmed, the lad fired off his gun
four times in rapid succession, then waited and listened, but there
came no answering report.
After a moment's consideration, Charley turned around and hastened back
to the ancient clearing. He made the round outside of the stockade, and
then, entering the gate, searched the inside thoroughly, but no sign
could he find of the missing one. Again he fired the distress signal
of four shots, but there was no reply.
The thoroughly frightened lad sat down on a block of stone, and strove
to master his nervous fears and gather together his scattered wits.
The whole thing was incomprehensible. Not fifteen minutes had elapsed
since he had parted with Walter in the upper chamber of the fort, and
now his chum was gone. He could not have gotten lost in the woods, for
the way back to the ponies could be followed by a child, with its plain
landmarks of orange trees and the other clearings. Besides, in that
short length of time, Walter could not have got beyond the sound of the
gun signal, to which he would certainly have replied.