's smoking paused for a moment and his fat, rosy countenance was
suffused with a darker red.

"That was a bad break, Payne. I don't like it."

"I didn't think you would. I see you don't like the idea of my being
here at all."

"That's right."

"In fact, you don't like the idea of anybody's coming up here and
seeing this country, and you've taken quite elaborate precautions
against anybody's doing so. I'll make a guess that there'll be trouble
for somebody if you ever find out how we got in."

"Don't you trouble about that, Payne; you worry about how you're going
to get out."

Payne paid no attention to this veiled threat, and continued:

"Also, I'll make a guess that you're one of the real big men in the
Prairie Highlands Land Company, which sold me a lot of water for farm
land."

Garman smiled.

"Well, it's this way, Mr. Garman; I've been stung and stung badly.
That's all right; it's all in the game. I'm going to play the game
out. There's pretty fair farm land under that water out there. I'm
going to draw the water off."

Garman resumed his smoking. Suddenly he rose, an agile, powerful
figure, graceful in spite of his huge bulk.

"It's a hard job you're tackling, Payne."

"But I'm tackling it."

"I see you are."

Garman turned to Willy and spoke swiftly in Seminole. Like a whipped
schoolboy hurrying to obey an order, the Indian grasped his rifle,
sprang into the dugout and in a flash was poling away from the hammocks
as if his life depended upon it. Higgins sprang to the water's edge,
but a word from Payne stopped him. When Willy's escape with the dugout
was assured Ramos disappeared for a moment and returned leading two
saddle horses which had been hidden in the brush of the hammock.
Garman threw his huge body into the saddle with an easy spring and rode
away toward the sand prairie.

"When you get tired of trying to find the way out," he called back,
"come down to my camp and talk business."

XIII

"Why didn't you let me catch the Indian?" demanded Higgins when the
riders were gone. "A man without a canoe here is almost as badly off
as a man afoot in Death Valley."

"I realize that," agreed Roger. "But Garman had made up his mind that
we weren't going to have that canoe."

"I had almost made up my mind we were going to have it."

"I saw that; that's why I stopped you."

"Well! After what happened on the river boat I didn't expect you to
stop so easy."

"Those men on