oods, and drawing, fired, and both
were found stretched dying under the palmettoes, one calling deliriously
the name of his boss. The unknown reaches of the Everglades lie just
below, and with a half-hour's start a man who knew the country would be
safe from pursuit, even if it were attempted; and, as one man cheerfully
confided to me, "A boat don't leave no trail, stranger."

That might makes right, and that they steal by wholesale, any
cattle-hunter will admit; and why they brand at all I cannot see, since
one boy tried to make it plain to me, as he shifted his body in drunken
abandon and grabbed my pencil and a sheet of wrapping paper: "See yer;
ye see that?" And he drew a circle O, and then another ring around it,
thus: (O). "That brand ain't no good. Well, then--" And again his
knotted and dirty fingers essayed the brand I O. He laboriously drew
upon it and made E-O which of course destroyed the former brand.

"Then here," he continued, as he drew 13, "all ye've got ter do is
this--313." I gasped in amazement, not at his cleverness as a
brand-destroyer, but at his honest abandon. With a horrible operatic
laugh, such as is painted in "The Cossack's Answer," he again
laboriously drew (+) (the circle cross), and then added some marks which
made it look like this: S(+)S. And again breaking into his devil's "ha,
ha!" said, "Make the damned thing whirl."

[Illustration: 39 IN WAIT FOR AN ENEMY]

I did not protest. He would have shot me for that. But I did wish he was
living in the northwest quarter of New Mexico, where Mr. Cooper and Dan
could throw their eyes over the trail of his pony. Of course each man
has adjusted himself to this lawless rustling, and only calculates that
he can steal as much as his opponent. It is rarely that their affairs
are brought to court, but when they are, the men come _en masse_ to the
room, armed with knives and rifles, so that any decision is bound to be
a compromise, or it will bring on a general engagement.

There is also a noticeable absence of negroes among them, as they still
retain some _ante bellum_ theories, and it is only very lately that they
have "reconstructed." Their general ignorance is "miraculous," and quite
mystifying to an outside man. Some whom I met did not even know where
the Texas was which furnishes them their ponies. The railroads of
Florida have had their ups and downs with them in a petty way on account
of the running over of their cattle by the trains; and t