XI

"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."