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Updated: June 28, 2025
Why, sonny, I doubt if they'll ever find you, or what's left, after I get through." Roger, calm again after his sudden effort, watched for an opening and shot his left like a bullet against the huge, gross mouth. Almost in the same second he side-stepped and brought his right in an arc to the mark above Garman's belt and leaped back out of danger.
What had he to do with Garman's affairs or the affairs of those with him? The vision of the girl called Annette, as he first saw her in the dawn on Gumbo Key, stood before his eyes, and he knew how false his attempts at disinterest. Life had caught him up in a net with other lives. He thought of Garman, and groaned behind set teeth.
Amazement smote him dumb for a moment, then came suspicion that this was only another of Garman's traps. He strove to follow the man's psychology to an explanation of this move. Was Garman merely playing with him again, arousing false hopes which would be diabolically crushed? That seemed the logical reason for the move. What would Garman's next move be?
From the toes of his light strong feet to the top of his head his body thrilled with the strong man's joy in his own strength; and only his iron will, which had consecrated his strength to the uttermost possible harming of Garman, prevented him from shouting exultantly. Instead he stepped in when the opportunity presented itself and swung his right with all his power to Garman's long, heavy jaw.
There is no man in Garman's employ, white, black or red, who hasn't got a price on his head somewhere. There are bandits from Cuba, crooks from large cities, negroes escaped from chain gangs, men of unspeakable crimes, the most vicious men of mixed blood ever gathered together since the old pirate days; and these are Garman's playfellows of his vacation time. He is absolutely their boss.
"Oh, put that thing up, you ass!" said Garman disgustedly. "And go back to Flora City and draw your time Payne, you're a big, bold buck. There's only one bigger in the country; and you and I are going to have a lot of fun before we're many days older." Payne did not pause to look back or reply. Garman's taunts had driven him close to the point of explosion.
The wretched situation in which he found himself in regard to the land he had paid for and drained was a muddle in his mind. Senator Fairclothe's brazen confession was a confusion. The one thing that was clear to his comprehension as a touch of white-hot steel is clear to its victim was Garman's assertion that Annette had changed and was becoming her father's daughter.
The blow would have felled any other man like a pole-axed ox, but Garman's head merely rolled back on its thick neck and that was all. A new gleam of craftiness in Garman's eyes warned Roger to extraordinary alertness, and when the other, pretending to seek a moment's rest, suddenly lashed out a kick for the groin, the young man threw himself away, escaping with a blow on the hip.
He drew his hands across his brow to dispel the memory of that look and to try to see Mrs. Blease as she had been before it came. A high type of business secretary. Blease had started to tell and had stopped. Secretary to Garman possibly. Blease had been Garman's caretaker. Payne recalled the swimming pool with its drug-like atmosphere. What had happened there?
In his state of semidelirium Roger began to doubt that he had won over Garman. The doubt became a certainty. Defeat, not victory, was his portion. Garman's was the victory, the victory of bitter knowledge over the vaporish ideals of youth. Roger stooped to drink from a clear pool at the river's brink and shrank back at the reflection he beheld in the water. A strange, lined face stared up at him.
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