Quick Action

"Why do you think there is any particular game afoot?" inquired the young man curiously.

"Oh, come! You know what you're buying. And that young lady knew, too. You've both bought a few acres of cypress swamp and you know it. What do you think is in it?"

"Snakes," said White coolly.

"Oh, I know," said Munsell. "You think there's marl and phosphoric rock."

"And isn't there?" asked White innocently.

"How should I know?" replied Munsell as innocently; the inference being that he knew perfectly well that there was nothing worth purchasing in the Causeway swamp.

But when White went away he was a trifle worried, and he wondered uneasily why anybody else at that particular time should happen to invest in swampy real estate along the Spanish Causeway.

He knew the Spanish Causeway. In youthful and prosperous days, when his parents were alive, they had once wintered at Verbena Inlet.

And on several occasions he had been taken on excursions to the so-called Spanish Causeway – a dike-shaped path, partly ruined, made of marl and shell, which traversed the endless swamps of Seminole County, and was supposed to have been built by De Soto and his Spaniards.

But whoever built it, Spaniard, Seminole, or the prehistoric people antedating both, there it still was, a ruined remnant of highway penetrating the otherwise impassable swamps.

For miles across the wilderness of cypress, palmetto, oak, and depthless mud it stretched – a crumbling but dry runway for deer, panther, bear, black wolf, and Seminole. And excursion parties from the great hotels at Verbena often picnicked at its intersection with the forest road, but ventured no farther along the dismal, forbidding, and snake-infested ridge which ran anywhere between six inches and six feet above the level of the evil-looking marsh flanking it on either side.

In the care-free days of school, of affluence, and of youth, White had been taken to gaze upon this alleged relic of Spanish glory. He now remembered it very clearly.

And that night, aboard the luxurious Verbena Special, he lay in his bunk and dreamed dreams awake, which almost overwhelmed him with their magnificence. But when he slept his dreams were uneasy, interspersed with vague visions of women who came in regiments through flowering jungles to drive him out of his own property. It was a horrid sort of nightmare, for they pelted him with iron-bound copies of Valdez, knocking him almost senseless into the mud. And it seemed to him that he might have perished there had not his little red-haired neighbour extended a slender, helping hand in the nick of time.

Dreaming of her he awoke, still shaking with the experience. And all that day he read in his book and pored over the map attached to it, until the locomotive whistled for St. Augustine, and he was obliged to disembark for the night.

However, next morning he was on his way to Verbena, the train flying through a steady whirlwind of driving sand. And everywhere in the sunshine stretched the flat-woods, magnificently green – endless miles of pine and oak and palmetto, set with brilliant glades of vast, flat fields of wild phlox over which butterflies hovered.

At Verbena Station he disembarked with his luggage, which consisted of a complete tropical camping outfit, tinned food, shot-gun, rifle, rods, spade, shovel, pick, crow. In his hand he carried an innocent looking satchel, gingerly. It contained dynamite in sticks, and the means to explode it safely.

To a hackman he said: "I'm not going to any hotel. What I want is a wagon, a team of mules, and a driver to take me and my outfit to Coakachee Creek on the Spanish Causeway. Can you fix it for me?"

The hackman said he could. And in half an hour he drove up in his mule wagon to the deserted station, where White sat all alone amid his mountainous paraphernalia.

When the wagon had been loaded, and they had been driving through the woods for nearly half an hour in silence, the driver's curiosity got the better of him, and he ventured to enquire of White why everybody was going to the Spanish Causeway.

Which question startled the young man very disagreeably until he learned that "everybody" merely meant himself and one other person taken thither by the same driver the day before.

Further, he learned that this person was a woman from the North, completely equipped for camping as was he. Which made him more uneasy than ever, for he of course identified her with Mr. Munsell's client, whose land, including half of Lot 210, adjoined his own. Who she might be and why she had come down here to Seminole County he could not imagine, because Munsell had intimated that she knew what she was buying.

No doubt she meant to play a similar game to Munsell's, and had come down to take a look at her villainous property before advertising possibilities of perpetual sunshine.

Yet, why had she brought a camping outfit? Ordinary land swindlers remained comfortably aloof from the worthless property they advertised. What was she intending to do there?

Instead of a swindler was she, perhaps, the swindlee? Had she bought the property in good faith? Didn't she know it was under water? Had she come down here with her pitiful camping equipment prepared to rough it and set out orange trees? Poor thing!

"Was she all alone?" he inquired of his cracker driver.

"Yaas, suh."

"Poor thing. Did she seem young and inexperienced?"

"Yaas, suh – 'scusin she all has right smart o' red ha'r."

"What?" exclaimed White excitedly. "You say she is young, and that she seemed inexperienced, except for her red hair!"

"Yaas, suh. She all has a right smart hank of red ha'r on her haid. I ain't never knowed nobody with red ha'r what ain't had a heap mo' 'sperience than the mostest."

"D-d-did you say that you drove her over to the Spanish Causeway yesterday?" stammered the dismayed young man.

"Yaas, suh."

Horrified thoughts filled his mind. For there could be scarcely any doubt that this intruder was his red-haired neighbour across the aisle at the library sale.

No doubt at all that he already crossed her trail at Munsell's agency. Also, she had bid in one of the only two copies of Valdez.

First he had seen her reading it with every symptom of profound interest. Then she had gone to the sale and bid in one of the copies. Then he had heard from Munsell about a woman who had bought land along the Causeway the day before he had made his own purchase.

And now once more he had struck her swift, direct trail, only to learn that she was still one day in advance of him!

In his mental panic he remembered that his title was secure. That thought comforted him for a few moments, until he began to wonder whether the land he had acquired was really sufficient to cover a certain section of perhaps half an acre along the Causeway.

According to his calculations he had given himself ample margin in every direction, for the spot he desired to control ought to lie somewhere about midway between Lot 200 and Lot 210.

Had he miscalculated? Had she miscalculated? Why had she purchased that strip from half of Lot 210 to Lot 220?

There could be only one answer: this clever and astoundingly enterprising young girl had read Valdez, had decided to take a chance, had proved her sporting spirit by backing her judgment, and had started straight as an arrow for the terrifying territory in question.

Hers had been first choice of Mr. Munsell's lots; she had deliberately chosen the numbers from half of 210 to 220. She was perfectly ignorant that he, White, had any serious intentions in Seminole County. Therefore, it had been her judgment, based on calculations from the Valdez map, that half of Lot 210 and the intervening territory including Lot 220, would be ample for her to control a certain spot – the very spot which he himself expected to control.

Either he or she had miscalculated. Which?

Dreadfully worried, he sat in silence beside his taciturn driver, gazing at the flanking forest through which the white road wound.

The only habitation they passed was fruit-drying ranch No. 7, in the wilderness – just this one sunny oasis in the solemn half-light of the woods.

White did not remember the road, although when a child he must have traversed it to the Causeway. Nor when he came in sight of the Causeway did he recognise it, where it ran through a glade of high, silvery grass set sparsely with tall palmettos.

But here it was, and the cracker turned his mules into it, swinging sharply to the left along Coakachee Creek and proceeding for about two miles, where a shell mound enabled him to turn his team.

A wagon could proceed no farther because the crumbling Causeway narrowed to a foot-path beyond. So here they unloaded; the cracker rested his mules for a while, then said a brief good-bye to White and shook the reins.

When he had driven out of sight, White started to drag his tent and tent-poles along the dike top toward his own property, which ought to lie just ahead – somewhere near the curve that the Causeway made a hundred yards beyond. For he had discovered a weather-beaten shingle nailed to a water-oak, where he had disembarked his luggage; and on it were the remains of the painted number 198.

Lugging tent and poles, he started along the Causeway, keeping a respectful eye out for snakes. So intent was he on avoiding the playful attentions of rattler or moccasin that it was only when he almost ran into it that he discovered another tent pitched directly in his path.

Of course he had expected to find her encamped there on the Causeway, but he was surprised, nevertheless, and his tent-poles fell, clattering.