Read Ebook: The Plunderer by Oyen Henry

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Ebook has 882 lines and 30463 words, and 18 pages

"To the limit."

"Good boy! I knew you wouldn't disappoint me. The girl would have been worth while, but adding you, Payne, you glimpsing a dream of a fool's paradise, will be glorious!"

"You talk like a damn fool," said Payne bluntly.

Garman nodded, and with the nod his strange mood passed and he was the business man again.

"All right. That's all of that for the present. Now, what are you up against? What are your biggest problems?"

"Thanks, but I am not placing myself entirely in your hands, Garman."

"That's right; play safe. But I'm talking business now. You're tackling a hard job here. What can I do to help?"

"There's only one thing I want you to do, Garman; that's to keep your hands off this job, and to keep your men from interfering with me and my men and the job, or anything connected with it."

"That's settled. Anything else?"

"That's all. It will save trouble for both of us if you'll do that."

Garman dismissed the matter as settled with a nod, and gathered up his reins.

"Doing anything next Sunday afternoon?"

Payne thought for a moment.

"Yes; next Sunday I'll be going down the river to Gumbo Key. The ditching outfit that I've hired is due to arrive at the Key on Saturday night. I promised to meet it and see it up the river. We'll start up river Monday morning. I'll be on that dredger all the way up, Garman.

"Don't waste your time. There'll be no interference. In fact, if she needs help you can borrow the old Cormorant for a tugboat."

"No, thanks. They do their own towing."

"All right. But there's no sense of your going down there and wasting your whole Sunday on Gumbo Key. I suppose you'd do that; prejudice against breaking the Sabbath and all that? I thought so; it goes with the illusions. But there's no need for it this time--and I've been specially ordered to invite you down to my little place for Sunday afternoon. If you knew who issued the order you'd come, I know. It will be sort of an affair to welcome you to our midst. Better come, Payne; besides somebody you want to meet properly, there'll be a certain man there you ought to meet. Sunday afternoon."

"Will Mrs. Livingstone be there?"

"At two Sunday afternoon?" said Roger.

"Right." Garman wheeled his horse and loped away without another word.

Payne was not greatly concerned one way or another with Garman's apparent change of heart toward his enterprise. He had no intention of asking or receiving favors. All he asked was that Garman keep his hands off.

The rest of the week saw the line fence completed and a good slice of the elderberry jungle cleared away and burned. Besides this, Higgins and Payne cruised the drowned land and ran the lines where the ditches were to be dug when the ditcher should arrive. Two main ditches, running in a V from the head of the Chokohatchee, Higgins' figures showed, would drain the surface water off the thousand acres of lake which had been sold to Payne as prairie land.

Garman apparently was as good as his word. Each morning Payne awoke expecting to find that his fence had been cut during the night, but so far the wire remained unmolested.

"That proves that Garman is boss of the whole country, cattlemen and all," said Payne one morning. "The cowman that I whipped intended to come back."

"If something had not interfered he'd have been back that night with a gang. He was so mad it must have taken something awfully strong to stop him, and that means it was Garman."

"Yes," agreed Higgins; "but I wouldn't exactly look on him as a bosom friend, if I were you."

"Pooh! I'm not fooled a bit by him. He's simply playing with me--or trying to do it. Well, we'll try to be right here, still doing business, when the game is over."

One morning a negro from the brushing crew came running up to Payne's tent in great excitement.

"Boss, boss! Trouble in the jungle oveh dah. White man driving colored boys away with rifle."

Payne followed the excited man and found that the machetes of the black gang, hacking a space in the heart of the jungle, had exposed an old clearing containing a tumble down shack. A tall, gnarled man with long hair and beard stood before the door of the shack, a Winchester held in his hands in businesslike fashion. Behind him hovered a young woman, who must have been refined and beautiful once, but who now was slatternly, and two children.

Payne called out, "Good morning, neighbor, what seems to be the difficulty?" and started toward the shack.

The man with the rifle did not reply. He merely raised the weapon till the sights were full against Roger's breast. The young man stopped.

"Don't shoot, Cal; please don't shoot!" whimpered the woman. "They're too many for you."

"Shut up!" growled the man. "Git in the house."

"Put down your gun," shouted Payne. "Tell me your trouble. My boys been bothering you?"

"You're a-botherin' me," retorted the cracker. "You cal'late to run me off my place here. Well, I ain't a-going."

Payne looked about the clearing and saw that here, hidden from all the world in the dense elder growth, the squatter had attempted and succeeded in making a primitive sort of home. Fish nets and traps, otter and coon skins, hung on the walls of the shack. In the clearing was a cultivated patch of the Seminole "contie" root, which could be ground into flour, and a scattering of domestic vegetables. On a few stunted trees were a few dried-up oranges; and on the branches of one of the larger trees was hung a swing fashioned from tough-fibered creepers. On one side of the rude shack a patch of moon vine was being trained along the wall.

"My name is Payne, neighbor," said Roger presently.

The squatter eyed him suspiciously for a long while. At last he dropped the rifle in the hollow of his arm, keeping a ready thumb on the hammer.

"Mine's Blease," he said at last.

Roger regarded the man thoughtfully for a long time. To his surprise he perceived that Blease was not at all of the unfavorable type he had expected to find squatting in such a place. The man's hair was long and ragged, his beard likewise, and he was poorly nourished and clad; but Roger had lived enough in the open to learn how deceptive are external appearances in showing the true character of a man. As he looked at Blease, meeting the other's hard eyes, he sensed the true worth of the man hiding beneath the guise of a shiftless squatter. As for the woman, it was obvious that she was Blease's superior.

"Tell me, Blease," said Payne suddenly, "How long have you been living on this land?"

"'Bout two years," replied the squatter after a long pause.

"You don't pretend you have a title to it?"

Again the pause, then: "No, sir, I don't."

"Have you got a mule?" broke out Roger suddenly.

"A mule? No. Why?"

"How do you expect to do any farming without a mule? Come over to my camp next week when I get some in and I'll try to fix you up." Blease stood looking at him, tugging at his ragged beard, shifting from one foot to the other, gazing hopelessly round for an answer to the miracle. Finally he cleared his throat.

"Some catch there."

"No."

"How do you mean that, Mr. Payne?"

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