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She said plainly that it was a cart wheel of fire and if it was a wheel it must certainly have been on something and what on earth would a wheel be on but a cart? Certainly one wouldn't buy a bale of cart wheels to make fires in the flat-woods.
I'm going to ride out to the flat-woods with you, for I'm simply dying for a new sensation. Dick's as stupid as an owl. He does nothing but hang around the Beach Club. And Philip Poynter's tennis mad. He looks hurt if you ask him to do anything else except perhaps to trail fatuously after you. It's the flat-woods for mine."
Coloring delicately, the metallic gray bosom of the lake presently foretold the sunrise with a primrose glow. When at length the glaring white light of the sun struck sparks from the dew upon the pine and palmetto, Diane was riding rapidly south in quest of the Florida flat-woods.
Diane bought generously, harnessed her saddle with clanking relics and regretfully mounted her horse. "Let me come again to-morrow!" she begged. "Uncah!" granted the girl in Seminole and her great black eyes were very friendly. Looking back as she rode through the flat-woods, Diane marveled afresh. It was a far cry indeed from the camp of a Seminole to the legends of Rome.
And where we were watching it came a far, dull sound which shook the ground, growing louder and nearer, increasing to a rushing, thundering gallop; and presently we heard our riflemen running through the flat-woods after the frightened herds of horses which were bred in Catharines-town for the British service, and which had now been discovered and frightened by our advance.
Far to the north-east, above a sentinel pine which marks the outskirts of the flat-woods, streaks like smoke drifted in the sky the wild-fowl leaving the lagoons. On the Lantana Road they drew bridle at a sign from her; then she wheeled her horse and sat silent in her saddle, staring into the western wilderness.
"What with your Esquimaux," she puffed tearfully, "and the immigrant who wasn't an immigrant and I must say this once, Carl, for all I promised to ask no further questions, that you never attempted to explain that performance to my satisfaction the young man with the eye, you know, and the immigrant with his feet on the lace spread to say nothing at all of Diane's losing herself in the flat-woods over a cart wheel of flame, I wonder I'm not crazy, I do indeed!
He promised and took his leave, elated at the chances of a new commission, hunting through the constantly arriving and departing throngs for Shiela. And presently he encountered his aunt. "You certainly do neglect me," she said with her engaging and care-free laugh. "Where have you been for a week?" "In the flat-woods. And, by the way, don't worry about any snakes. Virginia said you were anxious."
Some weeks later, and a little farther south, in the flat-woods behind New Smyrna, I saw other flowers, but never anything of that tropical exuberance at which the average Northern tourist expects to find himself staring. It seemed to be one of the most abundant of Florida spring flowers, but I could not learn that it went by any distinctive vernacular name.
Surely, men who would risk life in behalf of such a country deserved to win their cause. Monotonous as the flat-woods were, however, and malarious as they looked, arid wastes and stretches of stagnant water flying past the car window in perpetual alternation, I was impatient to get into them.
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