Chapter 17

OKEECHOBEE THE MYSTERIOUS

"Say that again, Perk!" demanded the startled pilot, as though that apparently innocent question had given him a severe jolt.

"Oswald Kearns--kinder queer name, I kinder guess now, an' I'm wonderin' if I ever heard it before--that's all, Jack."

The pilot was busy with his work in handling the ship and therefore debarred from turning his head to look at his companion but at least he could put the astonishment he felt into words.

"So--you think that's a queer name, do you? Well, I'm asking you again, where did you ever run across it--who ever spoke it in your hearing, Perk?"

"Why--er, guess it was on'y _you_, partner," came the hesitating reply.

"You don't say?" gasped Jack, tremendously excited, "please tell me when that happened because I don't remember doing such a thing, though I meant to carry out our partnership arrangement this very night when we had settled down and could have a nice quiet confab--go on, though, and say when I lifted the lid, and let you into this part of our big game, Perk."

"Huh! you talked in your sleep some, old hoss--first time ever I knew you to do sech a thing--said that name exactly three times, like it meant a heap in the bargain."

"You mean _tonight_ while I was picking up a few winks of sleep--is that a fact, Perk?"

"Sure thing, boss--course I knew somethin' must be pesterin' you like all get-out, so I made up my mind to ask you who that Oswald might be an' what we'd got to do with such a critter."

Then Jack laughed as the humorous side of his recent thrill had begun to grip him.

"Well, well, seems like I'll soon have to put a padlock on my lips after this when I hit the hay. It's a serious offence for a fellow in _our_ profession to give away his secrets like that! Never knew myself to be guilty of babbling that way before. Lucky you were the only one to hear me give the game away so recklessly. The joke is on me, partner."

"But say, Jack, whoever is this Kearns guy anyhow--I sure never heard his name before tonight an' I kinder got the idee in my head he must be some big-wig you ran up against when in Washington--somebody who had the orderin' around o' poor dicks like me'nd you."

"That's a far guess, brother," Jack told him, "for the fact of the matter is, this Oswald Kearns happens to be a certain party just now under suspicion as being the king-pin of these smugglers who're giving Uncle Sam a run for his money down along this gulf coast!"

Perk took it with a little break, as though the information fairly staggered him, but he was quickly back again at his fly-casting--seeking information at the fount in which he had so much faith.

"You sent me into a reg'lar tail spin that time, Jack, but after tellin' me so much, it'd be right cruel to keep me a'guessin' any longer."

"I don't mean to keep you in the dark after this, Perk," he was told in jerky, broken sentences, as though Jack found it difficult to talk and pay the proper attention to what he was doing, for the amphibian had again commenced a steep dive, seeking a much lower altitude. "There are too many things connected with the story to try and spin it now--just hold your horses till we settle down on that lake, and you'll get it--all I know, or suspect, anyhow. Just now I can only tell you that this Kearns is a most remarkable personage, a baffling mystery to the Department who's outsmarted the whole Service and played his game of hide-and-seek before their very eyes--nobody so far has been able to pick up a shred of positive evidence that would convict him.

"Gosh, amighty, we're flyin' high, buddy!" was what Perk exclaimed and immediately his wits went into a huddle. He must get busy and figure things out, just as football teams do when a change in signals becomes essential.

They had been passing over the land for some little time and still Jack kept heading almost directly into the northeast. He knew just where he expected to make his goal, due to a close application to his charts and maps of the Florida region.

Debarred from fishing for information while the flight was on, Perk was forced to seek consolation in making good use of his binoculars, sweeping the heavens for signs of other suspicious planes or endeavoring to make out the character of the terrain over which they were speeding.

Occasionally he managed to discover some tiny light and this gave him an opportunity to speculate as to its meaning--if isolated he concluded it must either be a campfire made by alligator hunters, or a street light in some small hamlet, such as he imagined might be found in this almost wild section of lower Florida where the Everglades with their eternal water kept settlers from picking out locations for starting truck patches or citrus groves--all of which would probably be vastly changed when the great reclamation plans for draining had been fully carried out.

He often felt certain he glimpsed water below and had enough knowledge of the country to understand what that would mean.

"Wonder jest how long he means to keep this up," Perk was saying to himself when the better part of an hour had passed since they left the open gulf behind, "huh! by this time we must a'gone more'n sixty miles an' say, in places the hull State ain't more'n a hundred across from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mex. Gulf. Whoopee! could it mean he's aimin' to strike that terrible, big lake--Okeechobee--that overflowed its banks not long ago when they had that nasty hurricane and drowned a wheen o' poor folks around Moore Haven? Gee whiz! it's got me a'guessin' but then Jack knows what he's tryin' to do, an' I'm goin' to leave it all up to him to settle."

Somehow this suggestion appealed to Perk as being quite in line with the magnitude of their tremendous task--it was only appropriate to have the scene of their coming operations the biggest freshwater lake by long odds in the entire State, barring none--it would have been what Perk might term as "small pertatoes, an' few in a hill," to have such a wizard of an operator as Oswald Kearns pick out an ordinary body of water, say of a mile in diameter, as his secret headquarters where he could continue to keep his whereabouts unknown to the Government revenue men.

Lake Okeechobee--well, that certainly offered some scope for any display of their own cleverness in finding the proofs they so yearned to possess in rounding up the "cantankerous varmint," as Perk was already calling Kearns in his Yankee vernacular.

It could not be much longer delayed, Perk assured his eager self--less than another hour of this sort of work would take them entirely across the peninsula, and cause the plane to fetch up somewhere along the Atlantic coast between Miami and Palm Beach. Much as Perk would like to set eyes upon those two opulent Southern winter resorts in the midst of their splendor, he felt that such a thing would hardly be proper under the conditions by which their visit would have to be governed--small chance for anything bordering on secrecy to be carried out in such a region of sport seeking and excitement day after day.

Ah! it must be coming closer now, he decided on noting how, far below the plane, he could make out what looked like a vast sea with little wavelets glimmering in the light of the moon--assuredly that must indeed be the lonely lake, long known as the home of mystery, Okeechobee, the mightiest stretch of fresh water in the whole country of the South.

Jack was passing up along the western shore line as though his plan of campaign called for a descent in some obscure quarter where they could find a hideout in which to park their aircraft while they pursued their urgent call ashore.

Not the faintest gleam of light anywhere proved that settlers were indeed few and far between and this fact would also explain just why Oswald Kearns, wishing for secrecy and isolation, had selected this region as best suited to his purpose.

Now Jack was dropping steadily, his silencer in full play--it was time for Perk to get busy and through the use of his marine night glasses keep his pilot posted regarding what lay below them.