"You're right."

The seated man was nibbling a piece of venison on a broiling stick and did not look up.

"I'm Garman."

He finished the venison, wiped his drooping, fawn-colored mustache with a silk handkerchief, displaying as he did so the two large diamonds upon his fingers; and through his heavy, yellow eyebrows he looked up lazily.

As he sat squatted there by the fire Garman's figure gave an impression of squatness and of grossness in proportions and flesh. The closely cropped head was of a size sufficient to dominate the huge body, and by the harsh salients of the jaws, the great forehead and the flat back head, gave evidence that but for its pink-fleshed rotundity the head might have appeared nearly square. The backs of the hands which drew the silk handkerchief delicately across the thick red lips beneath the drooping mustache were covered to the fingernails with a fell of thick yellow hair; only the fat white palms were bare, like the insides of a gorilla's paws.

"Payne, eh?" said Garman with a flash of white teeth showing through the mustache. "Pretty fair-sized boy. About my size when I was eighteen."

Higgins was turning Willy over on his back.

"My God! Look at him!" he cried, pointing to the Indian's swollen face with its protruding tongue and popeyes. "They've choked the poor devil to death! You cheap, dirty greaser!" he roared, turning upon his aversion, Ramos. "There was a good boy, that Indian; and if you've done him dirt I'll beat your greasy head off with your left leg!"

"Hold on, Hig!" Payne held his engineer back. "There's no sign of a hand on his throat."

"But look at his face! Can't you tell by that?"

Roger bent over the Indian and felt for a heartbeat.

"He's alive!"

"Is he?" laughed Garman. "That's important perhaps—to Willy."

"Get some water, Hig. That's the stuff; souse him. Ah! Didn't he breathe?"

"Tried to. Can't you pull his tongue down a little so he can git air?"

"Get some more water! He's breathing!"

"Hi, Willy!" cried Higgins, tilting the water against the distorted mouth. "Come to, old boy; come to!"

A few drops of the cooling stuff trickled into the Indian's throat, stirring the spark of life that was beginning to glow again in him. A tremor convulsed his chest as the lungs sucked spasmodically at the tiny stream of air entering the swollen throat. A gurgle, a deep sigh, and Willy's unconscious body was taking in the life-giving air in short gulps.

"By the great smoked fish, he'll make a live of it!" jubilated Higgins. "And the man who did it—don't care who he is—is one son of a she-skunk, net."

Garman, after his morsel of broiled venison, was lighting a large, brown cigar, moving the match round and round the tip to make sure it burned evenly. He drew in a long breath and, opening his mouth, allowed the fat smoke to ooze up through his mustache, into his wide-open nostrils, over his half-closed eyes.

"Willy Tiger is subject to fits—of a suffocating nature," he said. "He suffers from a too sensitive conscience. The fits come upon him when he has made a mistake and gets caught at it."

"He was choked!" said Payne bluntly. "He was suffocated in some damnable fashion that left no mark, and he would have been dead in another five minutes."

Garman nodded through another cloud of smoke.

"Five minutes! Sooner, perhaps. I thought he was dead. He is going to die in one of those fits some day, that's sure—if he lives to make more mistakes."

The Indian began to heave and pant as the force of reviving life wracked his body. Moans escaped from his lips, moans of agony, as if unconsciously he was protesting against the painful return to consciousness. And Garman smoked, artistically and with luxurious enjoyment, his attention concentrated upon his cigar, while Ramos watched the writhing Indian with a sneering smile to betray his enjoyment of the spectacle.

Presently Willy lay still, his breathing became easier and he opened his eyes. Higgins, the volatile, leaped back and swore at the indefinable horror in those eyes. Payne tightened his lips and laid an assuring hand on Willy's shoulder. A spasm of terror passed over the Indian's features as memory returned. He sprang to his feet, looking wildly round and saw Garman. Then he cowered, shrinking together as if striving to sink into the ground, to return to unconsciousness, terrified by some overwhelming, incomprehensible horror.

Garman continued his attention to his cigar. The heavy smoke lay in swaying clouds above his head. To judge by his expression Willy Tiger did not exist, save as an incident of the past. Through the curtain of smoke which oozed upward through his mustache at regular intervals, his eyes gleamed alert, interested, concentrated upon a problem compared to which Willy was only an infinitesimal insect.

Payne understood. Garman had dealt—possibly through Ramos—with Willy. Now his mind had turned to the problem of dealing with Payne and Higgins. His manner indicated complete confidence in his ability to settle the problem as he saw fit, betraying how completely he felt himself the master.

Payne controlled his own irritation at the other's attitude of superiority and sat down. Apparently unconscious of Garman's presence on the other side of the fire he sampled a strip of broiled venison, found it good and began to eat. Higgins presently followed his example. Save for the presence of Willy Tiger with the unspeakable horror in his eyes it might have been amicable hunting party at breakfast.

"I like that," said Garman finally. "Cool hand, Payne. You make yourself right to home."

"Why shouldn't I?" Roger waved his hand to the southward. "I own it."

"Yes; but you're in a hole just at present. How do you expect to get out of here?"

Payne finished his piece of venison and wiped his fingers.

"Garman," said he, "who are you? What are you? What are you butting in for?"

Garman's smoking paused for a moment and his fat, rosy countenance was suffused with a darker red.

"That was a bad break, Payne. I don't like it."

"I didn't think you would. I see you don't like the idea of my being here at all."

"That's right."

"In fact, you don't like the idea of anybody's coming up here and seeing this country, and you've taken quite elaborate precautions against anybody's doing so. I'll make a guess that there'll be trouble for somebody if you ever find out how we got in."

"Don't you trouble about that, Payne; you worry about how you're going to get out."

Payne paid no attention to this veiled threat, and continued:

"Also, I'll make a guess that you're one of the real big men in the Prairie Highlands Land Company, which sold me a lot of water for farm land."

Garman smiled.

"Well, it's this way, Mr. Garman; I've been stung and stung badly. That's all right; it's all in the game. I'm going to play the game out. There's pretty fair farm land under that water out there. I'm going to draw the water off."

Garman resumed his smoking. Suddenly he rose, an agile, powerful figure, graceful in spite of his huge bulk.

"It's a hard job you're tackling, Payne."

"But I'm tackling it."

"I see you are."

Garman turned to Willy and spoke swiftly in Seminole. Like a whipped schoolboy hurrying to obey an order, the Indian grasped his rifle, sprang into the dugout and in a flash was poling away from the hammocks as if his life depended upon it. Higgins sprang to the water's edge, but a word from Payne stopped him. When Willy's escape with the dugout was assured Ramos disappeared for a moment and returned leading two saddle horses which had been hidden in the brush of the hammock. Garman threw his huge body into the saddle with an easy spring and rode away toward the sand prairie.

"When you get tired of trying to find the way out," he called back, "come down to my camp and talk business."