Chapter 10

Alone, Mrs. Livingstone turned and faced Roger. Though she stood as hard and motionless as adamant, the jet pendants in her ears trembled and twinkled. And Payne, as he saw the hard lines about her mouth, lines of fear, struggle, determination, felt sorry for her.

"What did you say to Annette?"

"Not one word," replied Roger.

"What did she say to you?"

"That is a secret."

"Why did she leave you--as she did?"

"That is another secret--and she's the only one who knows it."

For a moment they faced one another silently, then suddenly the woman blazed out:

"How dare you interfere with my plans for her! Besides, let me inform you, it is too late. She is engaged to Mr. Garman."

"She is to marry Garman?" asked Roger slowly.

"Yes."

"Then if it's settled--how can I interfere?"

"You can't. I will not permit it. And if you could, what could you offer her? You've no money, no position, no influence. You're nobody. She is Annette Fairclothe. She is the last hope of the family. I have built our whole future upon her. There will be no interference with my plans."

"She has a father----"

"Pooh! That doddering ass! Do you think it is he who has enabled us to keep our position in Washington? And now he is going into his dotage, and the big men won't dare to use him much longer. I'm not blind, Mr. Payne; I can see as well as Garman. Let me speak seriously to you: Your presence here spells danger to Annette--serious danger."

"Why?"

"Because, rather than risk failure for my plans, I will not stop at anything in the world."

"Why in the world should you threaten me, Mrs. Livingstone?"

Mrs. Livingstone's lips parted in a terrible smile as she walked away.

"You? Why, I was not thinking of you at all."

Above the Egret a crippled white ibis, with a broken leg impeding its flight, was flying clumsily across the river. Close above it, with deadly intent, sailed a brown hawk. The hawk struck, but in spite of its handicap the ibis swerved in time to escape the deadly talons. Then pursued and pursuer disappeared in the jungle across the river.

At Gumbo Key the black, scowlike hull carrying the ditching machinery, moving slowly in tow of a gasoline tug, was seen making headway across the bay toward the mouth of the river. As the Egret curved gracefully round the Key and came alongside the tug to place Payne aboard, Annette came and stood by his side.

"You're not going back with us?" she asked.

"No. It's better that I shouldn't. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, I suppose it is." Her eyes looked out across the bay to the open sea beyond. "Oh! I wish I weren't going back there; I wish I would never see that place again."

"Do you mean that?"

"How can you doubt it!"

The Egret had completed her curve and with throttled engines was creeping smoothly up to the ditching scow's side.

"You don't have to go back," said Payne. "The ditching can wait. I'll have them moor the ditcher here. You can get aboard the tug and I'll have them take you to Key West, to Fort Myers, Tampa--any place you want to go. From there you can go anywhere, as far away as you wish to go."

"Really?" she cried, "Oh, but that poor little tug--the Egret would catch her in a mile."

"If you get on that tug I will see that you go wherever you wish to go."

"Once aboard the lugger and the girl is free!" she quoted. "No, no. You don't understand. It isn't so simple as that. If it was merely a question of getting away, do you think I would be afraid? It's more than that. It's all in myself, all here." She struck her bosom with a white clenched fist. "It is something in myself--it's something I've got to settle all by myself. You must not try to interfere. Win or lose, no one can help me--no one. That is why I must go back--though I am afraid."

The Egret had crept past the length of the ditcher, disdaining to approach its grimy hull with her immaculate sides. She was approaching the squat little tug. Suddenly the girl held out her hand.

"Good-by," she said.

"Good-by?" he stammered, "Surely it isn't good-by?"

The Egret's starboard ladder was gently chaffing the tug's fender.

"It isn't good-by!" he said.

"I am afraid it is." She watched him as he went over the side onto the tug's deck. The Egret, as if freed from a burden, shot sharply forward. Annette leaned far over the rail.

"Good-by," she murmured. "Good-by!"

XXVI

"Mr. Payne, I take it?"

Roger turned to face the speaker, a tall, hawk-nosed man whose sallow, leathery face was set in the lines of the hard worker.

"Yes, I'm Payne. Are you the captain?"

"I'm boss of the ditching outfit, Mr. Payne. White's my name. Was you planning we should lay up at Gumbo Key to-night?"

Roger looked across the bay at the last glimpse of the Egret's white hull as she sped into the mouth of the river. The setting sun glinted on paint and nickel and brasswork. It was fancy, perhaps, but he seemed to make out the figure of Annette still leaning over the starboard rail.

"Yes--I was," he said slowly. The Egret shifted her course slightly, and like the snuffing of a light disappeared round the first bend in the river.

"Well, I dunno," said White. "So far's I'm concerned the quicker I get my outfit up the river the better I'll like it."

"Do you know the river well?"

"Reckon I do."

"Can you run it by night?"

"Shore can--especially as it's going to be broad moonlight."

"All right," said Roger. "Let's go."

All through the night, without halting save for occasional engine trouble, the little gasoline tug dragged its unwieldly tow up the tree-lined reaches of the Chokohatchee River. The moonlight illumined the waterway as with a million softly shaded lights. The Spanish moss which hung from the live oak and cypress along the bank was transmuted into scintillating draperies of twinkling silver. Upon the flowing water the light lay like an immutable sheen, seemingly a part of the flowing current, an endless stream of molten silver. Fishes, snakes and nocturnal animals broke and rippled the sheen of the water's surface. A huge, sharp fin ripping the silver before the tug's bows told of a tarpon strayed far inland with the tide. An otter's head, round and hard, jutted up, looked round, dove again.

In the magic light and shading, the tubby lines of the little tug were softened and altered; its paint-cracked deck and wheelhouse silvered and mellowed. The twin wire cables stretching back to the tow became two glistening silver ropes. At their ends, cavernous gloomy and grimy despite the moonlight, wallowed the high bulky hull of the ditcher's scow.

To Roger Payne, standing beside White in the little wheelhouse, the mournful chuckle of the Southern nightingale, as it sounded time after time from the cavernous darkness of the jungle shore seemed to strike at him personally with a note of knowing mockery. The weirdness and the elusiveness of the scene seemed the inevitable ending of the strange day. On the rippling water the moonbeams twinkled like silvery fairy sprites at play; and in the junglelike woods on the shores yawned great caverns of darkness, their evil suggestiveness only heightened by the bars of light shooting down through the matted leaves.

Back on the scow a sleepless negro, lying face up to the moonlight, began to croon weirdly.

"What in the devil do you call that?" asked Roger.

White listened, his head to one side.

"Haiti nigger--French patois," was his reply. "There; catch the '_mom'selle_'? Haiti nigger singing."

He reached down and picked up a bolt.

"Haiti negro?" said Roger, puzzled. "How did he get in that gang?"

"Oh, they drift over once in a while." White was measuring the distance to the scow.

The bolt hummed through the air, struck the ditcher's shovels with a clang and splashed into the water.

"Missed!" growled White. "Shut up, you Sam. This ain't no voodoo outfit."

"Voodoo!" Roger laughed mirthlessly. "That would be the finishing touch."

"How come?" said White, puzzled.

"Do you happen to know Mr. Garman, White?"

"I was 'specting you to ask that, Mr. Payne," was the drawled reply. "I got this to say: I know Garman, but that's all. I dig ditches for my living. I dig 'em fast and I dig 'em good; and--and that's all I'm up here for, one way or 'nother."

"Right! and the faster you dig 'em, the better it will suit me."

"Me, too," was the earnest reply.

Roger looked at the man sharply.

"Why? Don't you like the job?"

"The job's all right. I've said I'd dig 'em, and I'll dig 'em fast. But the quicker I get done, and the quicker I get my outfit pointed downstream again, and the quicker I'm out of this river, the better suited I'll be. That's all I'm saying."

Roger laughed grimly.

"You talk like you'd had dealings with Garman before, White?"

"That's all I'm saying," repeated the man. Then suddenly: "What's that?"

A clear shaft of light pierced the moonmist ahead, lighting a broad space in the river from the next bend down to the tug. While they watched in fascination the light came nearer, flashing in their eyes, and behind it resounded the unmistakable hum of the Egret's engines. Compared to the crawling pace of the tug the yacht seemed to leap out of the night straight at them.

"Yo hoo!" yelled White. "Look out! Want to run us down?"

A full-throated laugh rang out from the Egret's bridge as her course was changed slightly and her engines throttled down. On the bridge beside the searchlight Roger saw Garman's huge figure looming.

"Ho, Payne!" came a hail. "Didn't see anything of the ---- we're after, did you?"

"Not to recognize by that description," replied Roger.

"A ---- by any other name would look the same," laughed Garman. He leaned over the rail, smoking furiously, his eyes alight with the savage joy of the chase. "Yes, and he'd stand just as much chance of getting out alive. I'll get him. He got away from Palm Island into the swamp. Punctured your friend Ramos in doing so." His laugh rolled over the water like the growl of a bear. "In fact, punctured him so successfully that we had to cover Mr. Ramos with three feet of dirt to cheat the buzzards.--White, is that you?"

"Yessir."

"Well, White, you do your best for Mr. Payne. He's in a hurry to get his ditches dug. Do your best for him for he's a particular friend of mine--and of some one else." He laughed again, shouted an order, and the Egret leaped past them and on down the river.

"Ghost boat, ghost boat!" The Haiti black, back on the scow, waking up from his sleep, had stared full in the eye of the Egret's searchlight, and now was staggering round, terror-stricken and dazed.

"Knock him down somebody," called White calmly.

"Ghost boat, ghost boat!"

"Where?"

"Down the--uh! Oh, _ma Dieu_!"

The Egret and her light had disappeared round a bend and the negro was pointing at the empty moonlit river. Hoots of laughter greeted him.

"Guess you got 'em, Sam. No other boat round here."

"_Ma Dieu_! Ah seen him. Yoh gen'men sho' they wasn't no boat?"

"You're raving. No boat at all."

"Oh--Oh----!"

"Shut up!" cried White. "Shut up!"

A moment's silence. Then, from a black corner on the ditcher came the negro's voice, moaning in cutting minor notes a primitive jungle croon of fear and terror. White laughed grimly, making no effort to quiet him. Roger stared up the river and made out a flicker of purple light shooting up from the eastern horizon into the misty heavens.

"Thank God!" he said in relief. "Daylight is coming."

He leaped ashore as the tug ran close to an out-jutting point of high land below Garman's, and cut straight across the prairie toward his camp. The sunburst of dawn was at its gaudiest when he came within sight of the tents and he caught the glint of sun on the bare matchets of the clearing gang as the men prepared for the day's work. Higgins was standing before his tent, smoking and chafing the men.

"Everything all right, Hig?" asked Roger with false calm.

"All right? Sure. Why wouldn't it be?" Higgins took the pipe from his lips and looked closer.

"Hi! What's up? What's happened to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you don't have to tell me, of course; but--but what in the name of smoked fish makes you look as if you'd been through the Devil's Playground again?"

Higgins breathed hard after Roger had completed the tale of Garman's man hunt.

"That's a damn lie about Ramos!" he said. "If he's dead Garman's gang killed him---Garman himself probably--afterwards."

"How do you know?"

"Willy High Pockets has been here."

"What!"

"Yep. I had him hid down in Blease's shack, but he beat it away."

"Then it was that poor Indian Garman was after!"

"Not quite. There was a white man, too. A guy that Willy met out in the swamp some place when he beat it that day after Garman had handled him. It was this white man that Garman was after. Willy was with him. Garman's bunch had 'em trapped on an island down in the swamp, but Willy happened to know an Injun way out and they slipped the noose. Willy came crawling in here last night. He's got a tear from a forty-four along his hip and the white man sent him to us to get it doctored up and keep him hidden. I slipped down to Blease's and fixed it up with them to hide him, but he slipped away to join that white man as soon as we had him sewed up.

"Where is the white man?"

"Still out in the swamp. He steered Willy till they saw the tents and then he beat it back."

"Who is he?"

"Don't know; Willy wasn't telling."

"What does Garman want to get him for?"

"Willy 'donno' that either. He 'donno' anything at all about this guy in the swamp. But he did tell a straight story about the sneak they made; and there wasn't a shot fired on either side, so Ramos wasn't shot then. I'll bank on Willy's word for that."

XXVII

White promptly made good his promise concerning the ditches. Within a week his dredger had eaten its way through sawgrass, water and muck from the headwaters of the Chokohatchee to Deer Key, digging a broad, main drainage canal through the middle of Payne's thousand acres of drowned land. Higgins' calculations proved themselves in practice, and the big ditch soon drew off the bulk of the surface water on the track. The work of cutting the small lateral canals progressed rapidly with the smaller ditching machine. White worked his men in two shifts, and kept his shovels at work day and night. He made no effort to conceal the reason for his haste.

"I took the job, and I'll see it through," said he, "but outside of collecting my money the best part of this job to me will be when I wind it up and get out."

"Still," retorted Higgins, to whom the statement was made, "you don't look exactly like a man troubled with cold feet."

But White would not permit himself to be drawn out.

"I'll be glad when I look back from my tug and see Gumbo Key behind me; that's all I'm saying."

As the work progressed and it became apparent that the muck lands could be sufficiently drained to be available for agricultural purposes, Roger grew puzzled. There had been so far no opposition or interference from Garman. Apparently he had been sincere in his declaration that he wished to see Roger successful in the development of the tract. Garman himself was not seen during the period that the ditcher was at work, but the conduct of his employees made it obvious that they had received orders to assist, not interfere with the draining project. One day the proud Egret stopped to tow a disabled supply boat up the river for White's crew. Another time two of Garman's men came out and took the place of a pair of ditch workers who were ill.

Why was Garman doing it? What was behind his apparent friendliness?

Roger gave up the puzzle. In fact, he had discovered that he was not so vitally interested in his land project as he had thought himself to be. He worked and saw that his men worked, and kept the job up to the program he had outlined. And he tossed at night on his camp cot, his mind tortured with other thoughts.

White completed his job, pocketed his check and chugged away down the river.

Two days after his departure Roger and Higgins were measuring the acreage cleared in the elder brush when one of the blacks said suddenly:

"Wha' dem man do ovah thah, Boss?"

Payne glanced out over the ditched sawgrass land whither the negro was pointing and saw three men carefully picking their way along the spoil banks beside the ditches.

Roger studied the group for a long time, then suddenly he dropped the measuring line and strode toward them.

"Right," growled Higgins, doing likewise. "Those fellows aren't just sightseeing by a darn sight."

Payne studied the men as he approached them. They were dressed in tourist apparel, but their hard faces belied their clothes. Each carried a cane, but the thick hands that held them would have appeared more at home gripping a blackjack or a revolver. The largest of the trio, a hard-faced man with thin lips, studiously placed himself across Roger's path.

"Well," he said, with the snarl of the city tough in his tones, "what can we do for you?"

Roger choked down the rage that lept for mastery in his breast and said calmly:

"You can explain your insolence to begin with."

"Don't come that--don't try to come that on us, kid! You ain't dealing with no crackers now. What do you want, huh?"

The hot blood flush passed from Roger; he felt himself growing comfortably cool; and within he laughed silently.

"No," he said softly, "I can see that you aren't crackers. What jail held you last?"

The stranger swore foully, a string of oaths that reeked with the stench of corner saloons. He pushed his hat far back upon his round head, looked Roger up and down contemptuously, and swore some more.

"Know who you're talking to?" he demanded. "Better get wise, you----"

Again he polluted the air with his foulness.

Roger waited until the stream of filth had ceased.

"Are you going to explain what you're doing here?" he asked.

"Am--I? Am I going to explain? Hell! Are you going to explain, you mean."

"Yes," said Roger, and leaped forward.

Even Higgins whooped in surprise at the swiftness of the spring. Before the stranger could move Roger was close to him. His right fist swung from far behind caught the man full on the solar plexus, literally lifted him off the spoil bank and knocked him into the water of the ditch.

The other two strangers, heavy-jowled toughs, had sprung to meet Payne. One Roger staggered with a left swing on the ear; the other grappled his legs. This man Higgins rewarded with a kick which would have shattered a thinner skull to bits. Then two separate fights raged up and down the spoil bank. Instantly Roger and Higgins realized that they had their hands full. Payne ran into a body punch which made him realize that his opponent was nearly his equal. Higgins was knocked down at once, bounding up like a rubber ball and cheering the man who struck him.

"That was a peach, that one!" he roared, and returned the compliment. The man rose, knocked Higgins down again and jumped on him.

"Rough and tumble it is!" cried Higgins, and grappled with bear-like arms.

Roger refused to go into a clinch, meeting his antagonist's rushes with straight lefts, and following with futile swings of his right. The tough was too skilled to be caught with a solid blow. Once Roger landed full on the jaw with what he expected to be a knockout and the blow glanced harmlessly, as the man rolled his head back with the trained pugilist's skill. Roger realized that it would be no short fight, and he thought of the man he had knocked into the canal. The fight had raged down the spoil bank, and he glanced around and saw the leader clawing his way up the bank. The pause nearly proved fatal. Roger's opponent leaped in and caught his head in chancery.

"Hand it to him!" screamed the tough to his partner in the ditch. "Shoot him in the back!"

With a mighty lunge Roger flung himself and his opponent to the ground as a pistol snapped viciously and a steel-jacketed bullet zipped over his head.

"Look out, Hig!" he shouted. "Stay under your man."

"Turn 'im over!" The leader who had crawled upon the spoil bank fired again and missed. "Can't yah turn him up so I can get a crack at 'im?"

Roger felt the tough beneath him exerting all his energy. Slowly, surely he felt himself being turned. Then out from the sawgrass came the roar of a rifle, and a heavy slug whined over the gunman's head.

Bang! Another shot. Then the voice of Blease, the squatter:

"Next shot, I'll hold a foot lower. Throw that gun in the ditch. Throw it, you----" Bang! "That's right--Now get 'em boys, get 'em!"

Bare feet came drumming down the dirt of the spoil bank. A huge Bahama black was in the lead of his fellows. He leaped like something wild, his machete flashing in the sun. The gunman cried out and tumbled to safety in the ditch. The black men came with a rush. The fight was over. Panting, grinning, their teeth and eyeballs gleaming, the negroes stood aside awaiting orders.

"I'll be darned," said Roger, puzzled. "Boys, how did you ever come here?"

"Dat white man"--a grinning negro pointed to where Blease had fired from the jungle--"he say he shoot us if we don' come."

Higgins had searched the two strangers and taken a revolver from each.

"All right, boys," said Roger. "You can get right back to work. The show's over."

From the opposite sides of the canal Roger and the leader of the trio glared at one another.

"Well," said Payne, "you tried to run a bluff and it didn't work. What's the idea?"

The man swore again and replied:

"What's the idear, huh? That's what I want to know. You'll get yours for this--coming on people's land and starting a roughhouse."

Roger stared stupidly across the canal at the speaker, incomprehension taking the place of anger. "Oh," he said at last, "it's all a mistake. You got on the wrong tract: this is my land."

"Like ---- it is!"

"What?"

"Don't try to come that on us; don't waste your breath. Think we're dummies? This is our land. We bought it last week. And I'm telling you to keep off of it from now on. Oh, I got the right description; a thousand acres west of a line from Deer Key there to the Cypress Swamp. Want to look at the deed? Give you our lawyer's address if you do."

"Who is your lawyer?"

"Big Tom Connors, Washington, D. C. And if it'll make you feel any better--why, he's a law partner of Senator Fairclothe."

"If you think you have really bought this land," said Roger slowly, "you have been cheated."

"Huh! Do we look like easy marks? Listen, boh: you're the fish that got hooked. You bought a bum title. Get that? Didn't know this little piece of dirt was in the courts, eh? Well, it was; and Big Tom got it, and we got it from him. Your title ain't worth the paper it's written on. Now, you're guilty of tresp----Hold on!"

Roger had thrown his self-control to the winds. He leaped into the canal and wallowed across.

"Get off, my land!" he growled. "Get off!"

The gunman was running for dear life down the spoil bank. On the opposite side his companions were in full flight. Payne did not follow. He stood and watched them, outraged to the marrow. "And keep off, too!" he shouted grimly. "Tell your lawyer, tell your sheriff, tell 'em all, keep off!"

XXVIII

"It's impossible!"

Roger was too stunned to grasp the true significance of the situation at once.

"The Senator's company wouldn't have sold me this land if there was a suit on it."

Then, little by little, the facts began to clarify in his mind. Connors, the lawyer, was Senator Fairclothe's law partner; Fairclothe had been anxious to see the tract drained.

"Oh, my God!" he groaned, "Are they that rotten!"

"But you had the title searched before you bought?" said Higgins.

"Of course. Right back to the first Spanish land grant, and there wasn't a flaw in it."