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Your cousin has substituted H. B. I7. They will pass it to-morrow or the next day." A swift sickness ran through Farnum. "James gone back on us?" "That's what. He's double-crossed us." Rawson snapped the words out bitterly. "Why why surely not James." Jeff's mind groped for some possible explanation. "Says our bill was lost anyhow and it was a question of getting through Garman's bill or none."
He was on his own land, and he would not allow the guards to regain possession without a fight. He saw the white prow of the canoe shoot out past a tuft of saw-grass on the bend, and laid his eye to the sights. Another stroke of the paddles and the canoe was in full view, and Roger found his front sight bearing upon a button on the silken shirt which stretched taut across Garman's great chest.
"Well, you don't have to tell me, of course; but but what in the name of smoked fish makes you look as if you'd been through the Devil's Playground again?" Higgins breathed hard after Roger had completed the tale of Garman's man hunt. "That's a damn lie about Ramos!" he said. "If he's dead Garman's gang killed him -Garman himself probably afterwards." "How do you know?"
Ox teams are slow, Higgins, but they're darn sure." "You think Garman's cut us off then?" "Higgins, if you'd studied Garman half as hard as I have you'd know he wouldn't fail to do just that thing." At dark Blease came noiselessly to Roger's tent to substantiate this deduction.
One of the negroes, weary of hiding in the swamp, tried it and came staggering back to the camp with a bullet hole in his foot. Roger reasoned that Garman's cat-and-mouse tactics were calculated to break his nerve or to provoke a fight which could have only one result. Failing in this the trap had but to be maintained and the inevitable result would be surrender.
Hours later Roger found himself on the bank of the river far below Garman's house. He had wandered wildly, avoiding paths, dodging clearings, holding to dark, shaded jungle-land, like a hurt animal seeking to hide its wounds from the light of day.
By the fashion in which they handled their weapons, Roger saw they were hunters; and the grim way in which they kept watch proved that they had come expecting a fight; to shoot and be shot at; to kill and perhaps be killed. "That's Garman's work; no one else could get that crowd out of the swamp. How did it happen, Hig?" "It happened because I'm all bone from the neck up.
Out on the sand of the prairie the thud, thud, thud of Garman's galloping horse grew fainter and died away. A rift in the clouds revealed the moon for an instant. Roger whirled round, seeking to see the man who had called himself Harney. The clouds closed up again, the woods were black; and a Southern whippoorwill chuckled foolishly.
What are you; what is your job round here?" "Caretaker, miss. Especially when Mr. Garman is away." "Annette!" It was the older woman again. "Aunty," the girl whirling about resolutely, "I want to know a lot of things; why is there said to be a colony here when there is only Mr. Garman's winter home? Why is there all this mystery round here? Why does Ramos prowl round like a watchdog?"
Garman's gang gets a living, food, liquor and immunity out of the slaughter, an average probably of one dollar a bird. Garman gets the rest. And his boat Egret in his harvest time is nothing but a damn slaughter house, the hold packed with the skins of thousands of murdered birds." "But I thought the Government had taken steps to stop the slaughter. Aren't there guards about the rookeries?"
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