  “While we rest,” Brownie said to Nicky, “take a good look around. There’s not so many white boys who get to see the Everglades. It’s a sight worth seeing, just at daybreak!” It was. Nicky stared about, and turned in surprise. “Why, I thought,” he said, amazed. “I thought the ’Glades were all swamps. They’re not, at all!” “Many a one has the wrong idea,” retorted Brownie affably. “In truth, the ’Glades are just flat bedrock, mostly, under a couple of feet of water, and with a very thin soil that the grass hangs onto. Down South’ard, you see, where the trees are, that’s Big Cypress. That’s all swamp, I admit, and bad to get into. This would be as bad if you got lost in it, and that wouldn’t be so hard, would it?” Mr. Neale agreed with him, while Nicky, standing upright on the forward thwart, forgot his wet feet in the beauty and strangeness of the scene before him. At the Eastern edge of the ’Glades, the sun was rising, casting its slanting, golden rays across a great expanse of grass, and more grass, and yet more grass. That grass was no such growth as is usually understood by the name. It was tall, some clumps of it reaching up as high as ten feet. There were several kinds, but most predominant was the terrible saw-grass. Its stiff uprightness, and its rasping, cutting edges would make of it, Nicky decided, a formidable barrier for anyone who tried to go through it. Brownie agreed with his voiced idea. “I went with another lieutenant across the ’Glades, back a couple of winters ago,” he said. “It took us months. It’s not so many miles, but, as you can easily see, the grass grows in big clumps, and it is so high that you can’t spy ahead and find the channels. There are channels, but they are a good deal like the ones you tell about in those Ten Thousand Islands. Some of them run into blind ends and shoal up; others are blocked by the saw grass—and if anybody wants the job of trying to hack a way through some of these clumps of saw grass, they aren’t named Brownie.” Nicky, and Mr. Neale, could readily see how difficult it would be to cut a way through: the edges of the blades could inflict such deep gashes in the hands that only by the most careful work could one cut at them, and then only in heavy gloves which would, in a short time, be cut through. Even boots, Brownie said, were not thick enough to withstand much work in passing through the grass. “In places,” he added, “we had to wade and push our canoes—we had two specially built canoes, and we made a survey while we crossed. The grass tears at leather and rubber boots and in almost no time it gets through. Look across! See, about half way, there is a long clump of grass—almost like land! Well, it’s just grass, and it is so long and so thick that it took us a couple of weeks, going South, to get down around it. In covering five miles straight across we made more than forty miles of travel. You see, we’d go fifty feet and run into a dead end, or into a bend that took us to grass; then we’d have to go back and search out another way. Back and forth, around and back, through and back, we went. I tell you, it was no lark!” They were rested, and with water enough to float their dory, they turned her prow toward the distant line of trees which marked the Big Cypress Swamp and sculled carefully, winding along the comparatively open way at the edge of the rim of the ’Glades. The Everglades are really a sort of inland sea, very shallow and thickly studded with clumps of the terrible, high grass. Around the table land of the shallow sea, which rises gradually toward its center line, something like a low crest of a long underwater hill, there is a rim of somewhat higher rock which keeps the water in. The water seems to be replenished by streams or springs coming up through fissures in the rock; its drainage is to the open sea and the bays inside the outer reefs, through rivers like the Shark and the Harney on the West side, and the Miami on the Eastern slope. Sculling carefully, and keeping a sharp lookout, the trio in the light-draught dory progressed steadily as the sun rose higher. It was still very early. “I doubt if the hi-jackers are awake yet,” said Brownie. “They probably feel that they are well hid.” “What’s that—ahead?” queried Nicky, standing, carefully balanced, in the stern. He sat down and helped Mr. Neale to steady their craft while Brownie rose at the bow and spied over the grass at one side. “I swan!” exclaimed Brownie under his breath, turning to his companions. “It’s—a boat.” He turned and stared, under his cupped hand. “I can make out—why! It’s the Senorita, printed on the bow.” “The Senorita!” exclaimed Nicky softly. “That’s the tender we had taken away by Mr. Coleson and Don Ortiga’s brother—the one they called Senor Ortiga.” “Then they must have rowed in at the Harney yesterday, and come around behind the Shark,” stated Mr. Neale. “I wonder what they intended to do?” “Oh, I’m not worrying about what they intended,” Brownie answered, “I’m anxious about what they’re doing now—what has happened to them. We ought to know. It might upset our plans.” “There’s nobody in the boat, or in sight,” Nicky whispered as they very slowly worked the dory closer. The empty tender lay with its nose to the rock and heavy fringe of underbrush, grass and small trees at the ’Glades’ rim. “I know what!” Brownie said, when they were quite dose. “That boat is moored to a root on the rim-line. It’s about opposite an old Indian trail, too. A trail leads down beside the Shark. You can’t hardly make out the mouth where the water escapes from the ’Glades, the trees and brush is so thick. But it’s there, and the Indians have a sort of portage, about opposite where the tender lays.” “We ought to do some scouting,” suggested Nicky. “Let me!” Mr. Neale objected. Brownie, also, said that he had better do it. “You’re too stout,” Nicky urged, “and Mr. Neale is not a woodsman. I’ve spent two summers in the woods, one up in Maine and one out in the Sierras. I can go quietly and come back without letting anyone know I’m around.” He pleaded so eagerly and the danger seemed so slight, if he kept his head, as he promised to do, that they finally agreed, and he was allowed to land on the damp, matted growth at the nose of the dory as she swung close to the tender. Nicky listened carefully to instructions from Brownie and warning from Mr. Neale. “And be especially watchful about snakes,” Brownie said. “There aren’t so many in the ’Glades, but in the heavy growth there are plenty. But if you keep your eyes open—and here!—take this pistol, in case of need!—you can generally avoid them. If you fire three times, quickly, we will come to help you. If you fire at a snake, we’ll come, too, of course, but the three shots is to show that it is help you need, of any kind.” The trail was almost blind, being little used, and Nicky was hard put to it to discover his way sometimes; but Brownie had told him where to look for Indian signs on the trees and lower tangle, and what sort of ground to avoid, and he made a fairly quiet and very slow progress. Almost so suddenly as to be a total surprise, he came to the end of the trail. Thick brush and heavy tangle of every sort of vine and creeper was just ahead; but through it his quick eyes discerned the glint of sun on rippled water, and the white reflection of a boat’s bow! There, moored close to shore, so that one could step from it to the heavy roots at the edge, lay the Libertad! Nicky stayed where he was and looked and strained his ears. He moved cautiously to one side and got a better view. He could see the forward deck, and there crouched the two Ortiga brothers, the one they called the Senor and the other, the Don. Their voices were low, but they came clearly to Nicky. “Let’s call a truce,” Senor Ortiga was saying. “You and I have fought and won, back and forth, times without number. Now there is enough gold in this boat to make us rich—and more back in the islands. Let’s bury the hatchet!” “It is buried, amigo,” his brother agreed. “Now I suggest that we also bury the treasure, out in the ’Glades, and disappear for a while.” “That would do but for one thing. We can’t trust our men. If they know where it is buried they will come back and steal it—or you——” “Yes,” snarled the other suddenly angry again. “Or I—or you! Bury the hatchet! Oh, yes!” “Our original plan—your plan—is best, after all,” said the other brother. “We will wait until the Seminoles come and pack the treasure in cases when it is divided—then it will be ‘each man for himself!’” “I will go back to the rimrock and see if there is any sign of the Indians,” said Senor Ortiga, rising. Nicky looked about quickly. He must get back and warn his companions so they could, all three, hide before the Senor arrived. And as Nicky turned, his blood turned to ice in his veins. Lying along a low bough, not ten feet from the ground, with its steady, unblinking, bright, beady eyes fixed on him, lay a moccasin, a large specimen of the ’Glades snake family! Instinctively, and with the impulsiveness that characterized his movement at many close corners in life, Nicky lifted the pistol and fired! As his finger pressed the trigger he realized that, in the old adage, “the fat was in the fire.” He had upset all their careful plans! |
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