Chapter 2

"Then--are you going right back after seeing your land--like the others?"

"I plan to develop that land--if it is anything like what it was represented."

Her manner changed. She grew thoughtful.

"Whom did you buy your land from--if it isn't too impertinent?"

"From Senator Fairclothe's company."

"From Senator----! Why, that's----" she stopped.

"Tell me, please; how was that land represented?"

"Prairie land. Soil reports and surveys were furnished. I discounted them fifty per cent, and still thought it a good investment."

"Did the fact that--Senator Fairclothe recommended the land influence you?"

"Why, certainly. He's a United States Senator."

She turned swiftly toward the Egret, but not swiftly enough to hide the flush that rushed to her cheeks.

"I hope--I do hope you are not disappointed," she said.

Her laughter of a moment before, penetrating to the cabin of the Egret, had brought a tall, thin woman, the sun glinting on the diamond pendants in her ears, out from a stateroom forward.

"Ah, my dear Annette!"

"Aunty! You awake so early?"

"The climate has made me young. Come aboard, dear. We sail at once."

The girl hesitated. Her tone was indefinable as she asked: "Is--Mr. Garman----?"

"He's up at his place, and his boat is at our disposal. Come, dear; come inside. The mornings are damp in spite of their gorgeous beauty."

The girl looked back at Payne from the door of the stateroom. One glance. He tried in vain to fathom it. Then she disappeared.

A few minutes later the Egret's softly purring engines were edging her away from the pier, when:

"Cormorant, ahoy!" called a man from her engine room.

"Hey?" responded a gruff voice from a shack on shore.

"Got that extra drum of gasoline there?"

"Yep."

"Bring it up on the Cormorant when you come."

"Aw-right."

The Egret was well away from shore now. Her sharp white bow cleaved the blue water of the way with slow, irresistible power. Her speed increased. In a few minutes twin waves of blue were curling away from her cutwater as, smoothly and swiftly, she raced across the bay and out of sight round the first bend of the wide mouthed Chokohatchee River.

Roger Payne stood looking up the river long after the boat was out of sight. He was in a daze; but he was very glad that he, too, was going up the river.

IV

Aboard the broad-beamed Swastika life was beginning to stir. The odors of cooking food from her galley spread briskly upon the virgin morning air. Shoes clattered upon the deck; a chatter of voices developed. The score or more of land-seekers aboard were awake and preparing early for the great day upon which they should behold their promised land.

Up with the earliest of them, rosy, clean shaved, soberly and richly dressed and ministerial in dignity, was Granger, the agent, the expert leader of this confiding flock.

Fate had created Granger for a fisher of men; greed had sent him into the South Florida land business. His bland self-possession, his impressive physique, his confidence-winning voice and bearing constituted a profitable stock in trade. In the slang of his craft--shall we say "graft"?--he "played the church game strong." Under the sway of his hypnotic personality God-fearing, bank-fearing old couples brought forth hidden wealth to place in his dexterous hands; school-teachers wrecked their savings to invest with Granger. And Granger turned the receipts over to the great masters of his company, minus his large commission. Granger was only one tentacle of the company, one machine for extracting money from naïve, land-hungry citizens. The powerful, cunning men--or man--behind it had many machines.

Senator Lafayette Fairclothe was the most expensive of these machines. It had cost much money and political trading to get his name on the Company's literature, but it was worth more.

"The future in this country belongs to the producer; I recommend this investment to my fellow citizens. Lafayette Fairclothe, United States Senator."

It was worth millions. For this was in the heyday of the Florida land boom; and the Paradise Gardens Colony, a branch of the Prairie Highlands Association, was one of the organizations that made history in Florida--a history that stank to high heaven, and even to Washington, to accomplish which, experience has taught us, requires a stench of vast and penetrating proportions indeed.

Granger had gathered his flock from afar, none nearer than a thousand miles away from Florida's subtropics.

It was a varied throng which gathered in the Swastika's saloon for an early breakfast. They were earnest, serious, land seekers, not tourists. In the main they were goodly folks worn by a monotony of life; men who had worked and women who had saved through long, gray years, buoyed up by the hope of a comfortable haven in old age to compensate them for a lifetime on the treadmill. Some of them were farmers, some small-towners, two or three were from cities; and the spell of dreams, and of Granger, was upon them all. They were dazzled, dazed. On their native heaths, perhaps as shrewd as any, here they were pleased, hopeful children in a master's hands. Ponce de León's Fountain of Youth, a plot of land in perpetual sun, where crops grow without work or worry, big land profits, easy money, something for nothing--the lure is as innate and potent as the eternal lure of gold!

At breakfast the rumor began to spread somehow that something had happened, and the trip up the river to the colony would have to be delayed a few hours. Then it was rumored that the delay would be a day, two days; it was dangerous to go upstream; it was impossible. It was doubtful if the trip could be made for a long time.

Granger was very busy and concerned, flying about the boat, off it and on again; his brow wrinkled, his lips compressed with determination.

"Anything gone wrong, Mr. Granger?"

"Nothing to speak of, brother. I'll get it straightened out. Do not worry, brother."

"Ain't worryin' 'tall, long's you're in charge, Mr. Granger."

The women on board began to feel sorry for Mr. Granger, the way he was rushing and worrying about for them.

"Yes, Granger's all right. He'll do the best any one can by us."

More and more Granger rushed; more and more his countenance became marked with the lines of deep concern. He was heard the length of the boat in protest to some news imparted by the captain.

"But I tell you we must go up to-day, Captain Sayles. Do you think I will disappoint these good friends of mine? I have a reputation to sustain; I have never broken my word in my life; and I've promised to pilot these good friends to our Colony to-day."

"Can't be done, Mr. Granger. Dangerous. Don't want to wreck and drown your people, do you?" The captain raised his voice. "The government inspectors have closed the river for a week."

The news spread over the Swastika. But Granger was not one to give in even to such a diction. He rushed about some more. One of the women thought she saw him enter his stateroom for a moment of prayer. All of no avail. Even Granger had to submit; and in the end, with apparent reluctance, he assembled his flock in the saloon.

"Folks--neighbors--good friends all, I am sorry." Mr. Granger cast a glance about him which was like a benediction in spite of his doleful words. "We have come to our promised land too soon; we cannot go up the river and inspect our glorious properties for another week. The river is closed by government orders. The colossal improvements by which the Paradise Gardens Colony is transforming the wilderness into a veritable paradise for us all have interfered slightly with our program.

"Only a few miles up the river the Colony is constructing an enormous bridge to carry the rail which is pushing swiftly on its way toward the Colony and which, as we all know, will increase the value of our properties by such leaps and bounds that each and all of us shall reap a harvest of wealth. We who are in on the ground floor will sell at our own price when the rush comes; where we invested hundreds we will sell for thousands. The construction of this great bridge entails enormous engineering feats and for the present the river is blocked. Entirely blocked. Blocked so that not even a Seminole Indian could pole his picturesque dugout from here to the magnificently fertile lands of the Colony.

"We had no way of knowing this would happen. Nevertheless, the Colony will transfer its members free of charge back to Flora City; and one week from to-day we will resume our trip up the beautiful Chokohatchee to the Paradise Colony. Let us not grieve too much, good friends, over the slight delay. 'What doth it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his soul.' A week at beautiful, tropical Flora City! A week in which to feast our souls on the enchantment of Southern Florida! Friends, I think we may congratulate ourselves; and we start back in fifteen minutes."

"The grub's so damn bad at that Flora Hotel," snapped a weazened old man. "I'm poisoned yet by some of that beef I et. Tougher'n hell it was."

"_Mister_ Perkins, _sir_! I must ask you to refrain from the use of profanity. The spirit of the Colony, of its members----"

"Well, I should say so!" said Mrs. Perkins. "Swearin' and rarin' round after all Mr. Granger's done for us! I declare I'm 'shamed to take you along, Tom Perkins."

"Have you no soul or eyes for the higher things, Mr. Perkins?" inquired a large, black-clad lady reprovingly. "With all this beauty about us, and the inspirin' scenery, I should think----"

"Well, that's all right, Mrs. Caine, what you think," interrupted Mrs. Perkins sharply. "You do your thinking for your husband and I'll do the thinking for mine; and I guess if you do that you won't have to fill in your time meddling with others."

"Well! Well, I never----"

"Ladies!" murmured Granger. "Let us not allow this little inconvenience which we have experienced to disturb our equanimity."

"Let's have that agin," growled a fat gentleman. "You say we can't get up the river, hey? Well, what's the matter with driving up?"

"The magnificent oiled highway which is going to bring thousands of visitors to our Colony has not quite been built down to the mouth of the river here."

"All right. We'll walk up to where she begins. Ain't no cripples aboard, far's I can see."

"The one bad piece of land in the district unfortunately lies between the mouth of the river. It is a small swamp--only a small one--then the fair uplands of our Colony begin. But until the road is built across it the river is the only means of travel inland and that, as I sorrowfully tell you, is blocked. Come; let us forget our business, our future wealth, for the time being and revel in the subtropical joys at Flora City. The land will remain. Each day sees an increase in its value. Good friends, we're getting ready to sail. All aboard for beautiful Flora City."

"Slick enough!" chuckled Higgins, where he and Payne were standing in the background. "I'll say he does it well. Now let's step up there and tell him how many kinds of a liar he is."

"Hold on," muttered Roger. "I'm here to get some business done; I'm here to get up the river and see that land."

"Sure."

"This boat isn't going up, there's no question of that; calling him a liar wouldn't send the boat upstream."

"Not an inch."

"And it would warn them that we were onto the fact that boats can go up, and that we intend to go."

"Oh, you intend to go, do you? How, for instance?"

"That tub, the Cormorant, is going up. I don't know when, but that's where she's bound. I'm going on her."

Higgins made no reply.

"You don't want to tackle it, I see."

"No, you don't see anything of the sort," retorted Higgins. "I'm going with you all right; I've made up my mind to that. I was just trying to figure how we are going to work it. You're right; if we tell 'em we're staying here, the Cormorant won't go up. There's something slick going on round here so we've got to be slickers ourselves. We've got to sneak on 'em."

"Sneak? What for? I've got a right to go up and look at the land I've paid money on."

"Sure, so has that flock of suckers on the boat; but you don't see them going, do you?"

"I wonder if the whole crowd demanded to be taken up----?"

"Pooh! They're sheep and Granger's got them hypnotized. You say one word against the Colony and you'd be an outcast among 'em. No; we've got to let them go."

Roger agreed.

"And we've got to pretend to go along to Flora City," he added. "I don't like to sneak. It goes against my grain; but business is business. Come on, Higgins. Next trip in a week, Mr. Granger? Good enough. We're going to our stateroom and catch up some sleep. Wake us at peril of your life."

He led the way swiftly to the stateroom, grasped his bag and Higgins', locked the door and hurried aft out of sight of the people gathered forward.

"Come on," he whispered throwing a leg over the railing.

Higgins, peering after him, saw the young man untying the rowboat which was fastened to the dock beneath the Swastika's stern.

"You certainly see a lot of things and work fast, when you get a-going," whispered the engineer as he let himself down into the boat. "Now where to?"

"Just round that bunch of mangroves and out of sight of the Swastika's decks. Grab that oar and paddle. Easy--but work fast!"

A minute or two of swift anxious paddling and they had whisked the boat down the shore, round the mangrove promontory into the seclusion of a tiny bay. And then:

"Hell!" said Higgins.

V

A clean-cut, solidly built man in a suit of greasy overalls was standing on the shore of the bay, looking steadily up at the reddened sky. Payne followed the direction of the man's gaze. Up against the multi-hued red of the morning was a gently undulating streak of dazzlingly snowy white. Roger had often seen white of the purest sort in the untracked snows of northern forests, but never a white so pure, so soft, so warm as this. And then he saw by the undulations of the streak that it was a flock of long, graceful birds moving in single file from west to east. Shimmering in the brassy dawn sun, they rode like dream birds upon a vermilion sea, their slow movements so graceful, so rhythmic as seemingly to represent no effort, as if the birds merely floated along, their beauty and grace the ultimate expression of the spirit of the scene. They flew with their delicate necks bent back upon their bodies, as swans afloat upon still water, their long legs held motionless and straight behind; yet they moved rapidly, moved steadily and to a definite goal some place eastward up the river.

"Beautiful! A dream worth the trip alone!"

To Roger's amazement the man in overalls started at the words with something like alarm in his expression; but as his shrewd blue eyes took them in they showed relief.

"What are they?" asked Roger.

The man's expression took upon itself a mask of disinterest, almost sullenness.

"What you talking about?"

"Those birds up there?"

"Didn't see any birds. Looking to see if it would rain."

"Well, look now. What are they?"

The man refused to look.

"Donno. Donno anything about birds."

Payne looked at him closely and was puzzled. The man's obvious appearance of intelligence rendered such a reply unnatural.

The stranger returned the scrutiny, appraising the pair with a lazy air of indifference, which did not quite conceal his shrewdness.

"What you-all doing here? Fishing?"

"Hiding."

"Come on the Swastika?"

"Yes."

"She's sailing."

"Yes; that's why we're hiding. We're not going back on her." Roger's eyes had not left the man's. Each had appraised the other and given a favorable verdict. "We're going up the river. I've got some land I've got to look at up there."

"How d'you figure to go?"

"On the Cormorant; we know she's going up. We're going on her--by force, if necessary."

"I'm engineer on the Cormorant."

"Well, your clothes'll 'bout fit me. Maybe she's going to have a new engineer."

They laughed together.

"Buddy," said Higgins suddenly, "you don't belong down here, do you?"

The engineer did not reply.

"I see you don't. And we ain't crackers either."

"I see that. Where is your land?"

"At the head of the river. Prairie land."

"What? In Garman's---- Who did you do business with?"

"The Prairie Highlands outfit--Senator Fairclothe is its president. Do you run up there?"

"No. It's bad enough to get up to what they call the Colony; never been there myself," said the stranger, "but you're beyond that. We don't go there ourselves."

"How far up do you go?"

"To what's on the maps as the Colony. Get there at about noon."

"My land is Sections 16 and 17."

"That prairie tract is beyond the headwaters. Do you know this country--anything about the people, and so on?"

"All I know is that I've got some money invested in some land up the river and I'm going up to have a look at it."

The stranger had made up his mind. He looked round to make sure he was not observed or overheard.

"There's a little cabin on the foredeck of the Cormorant," he said. "It isn't used nowadays. Nobody on board. Move fast."

He wheeled and was gone.

Payne and Higgins slipped swiftly through the jungle to the farther side of the key where the Cormorant lay moored. A rush into the water and they were on the starboard side of the boat and hidden from the shore. In another moment they were over the low rail onto the deck and crawling into the lower cabin and forward beneath the wheelhouse.

"Whew!" Higgins sniffed at the strange odor that greeted them. "What is it--arsenic?"

"Shut the door. Good! Things are working fine."

"It's a darn funny way to go looking at land."

"But it's a way, and that's what we're after."

"Smells like a morgue in here."

"Ssh!"

With his eyes at a crack in the door Roger saw the crew coming aboard. The engineer was in the lead; behind him came the captain, a tall man of vicious appearance, and a half-naked mulatto deckhand.

"Hard eggs, those two; that engineer doesn't belong in their company."

"Nope; he doesn't belong here at all," whispered Higgins. "He tries to look the part and doesn't quite make it. Wonder what his game is?"

"There goes the Swastika."

A sharp whistle announced the departure of the larger boat. Presently there came floating over the water, over the key, the quaint, plaintive sound of untrained voices enthusiastically raised in song. Roger smiled grimly as he pressed his ear to the crack and caught the faint words:

"Shall we gather at the river? The beautiful, the beautiful river----"

Granger's voice was distinguished above the rest; he was on the job; he was leading his shorn flock back from the gates of Paradise to the tune of a hymn. At Flora City, Granger, being through with this flock, would quit it; and ere its members, obstructed time after time in their efforts to reach the Colony, would disperse, Granger, in a new field, would be laying his snares for fresh victims.

In a few minutes the hull of the Cormorant began to throb with the drive of her powerful engines. With no word of command she slid silently away from her mooring to the deep channel and began to drive her way upstream at a speed that caused Roger and Higgins to look at one another. The captain was in the wheelhouse above their heads, the mulatto lounged on the deck near the cabin door; so they did not even dare to whisper, but each knew the question the other would ask: Why such terrific speed in a dirty craft like the Cormorant?

Through his precarious peekhole Payne caught glimpses of the water and land that the Cormorant was leaving behind her. At first there was little to see save blue water, for the mouth of the Chokohatchee was more an estuary of the sea than a river. Far away on either side were the low-growing tangled growths of mangrove which represented the river's banks near the sea, and toward these banks, from both sides of the wake, water birds could be seen winging their way, frightened from their feeding ground by the Cormorant's rush. Great, clumsy pelicans rose painfully and flew with surprising speed, once they were in the air; small blue herons went shoreward in uncountable flocks, flying high into the morning sun. Close to the water, ducks of many kinds clove the air with business-like intent and speed.

The water itself seemed alive with an abundance of life. The black back of a porpoise showed above the surface; far away the sun glinted on the silver scales of a leaping tarpon. The red sides of a mangrove snapper were seen as it tried in vain to escape the jaws of a steel-gray barracuda, and a moment later half of the slim barracuda flew into the air as the jaws of a shark, catching it in full flight, snapped it in two.

The course of the Cormorant was shifted slightly, and by the muddy color of the water Payne knew they were entering the river proper. The stream here was perhaps two hundred yards across and over the stern, to port and starboard, the banks were plainly visible. The land was low, so low that it seemed but a little higher than the water level, but it bore an amazingly abundant growth. The river seemed to flow through a channel cut in the dense, solid vegetation. Great cypress trees towered up from the water, enormously thick at the roots and rapidly dwindling above. Between their rough trunks cypress scrub, sturdy cabbage palms, mangrove, custard apple and other varieties of tropical trees found space to grow; and between the trunks of the smaller trees was a tangle of palmetto, saw grass, jungle vine, Virginia creeper and the beautiful moon vine and its dainty flowers. Blue, yellow and red flowers peeped from the tangle. Air plants bearing in their hearts scarlet orchids clung to the trunks of hoary live oak, and the Spanish moss, fragile, listless, drooping, hung like delicate drapery over all.

The stream grew narrower and the turtles upon the shore became visible. A water turkey, though the boat was past, fell clumsily off its perch into the water and after frantic efforts flopped away. Alligators lay here and there along the banks; and a wild hog plowed about in the matted water-hyacinths, unconcernedly seeking food, not alarmed by the alligators or the boat or by the fierce brown Mexican buzzards--the killing variety--which contemplated him from the dead cypress branches above.

VI

For two hours the Cormorant drove upstream without missing a stroke of her engines. Then the speed was diminished. Through the crack in the door Payne caught glimpses which showed that the stream had narrowed suddenly and began to wind. In another hour the captain shouted back an order. The engineer's head popped up from the engine pit near the stern, his expression indicating that the order had taken him by surprise.

"What'd you say, cap? Stop at Mangrove Point?"

"Yep. Boss' orders."

The engineer disappeared in the pit and the boat began to slow down as its course was altered to bring it in shore. Presently leaves brushed against its side and the craft came to a dead stop.

The mangrove branches on the bank were pushed aside, revealing a creek, and a long Seminole dugout, bearing two rough-looking men, slipped like a snake out of the jungle and up to the Cormorant's bow. The two men vaulted easily over the low rail onto the deck.

"Where is he?" asked the hideously scarred leader. "The boss said we should take him to Palm Island and leave him tied."

"My way would be to knock 'im in the head an' sink him in an alligator hole," grumbled the captain. "He's hard as nails; he'll be hard to get tied."

"You're too lazy to live. Call 'im out; we want to be going."

The speaker and his companion took up a position on the port rail; the captain and the mulatto lounged to starboard.

"Oh, Davis," called the captain, drawing a revolver. "Give us a hand here, will you?"