"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."