, was bestowing a boon on a land-hungry
nation of developing the fabulously rich prairie lands of the Western
Everglades, Florida. Long before the afternoon when Roger swung
boyishly off the train at Jordan, Isaiah Granger's fellow townsmen, led
by Major Trimble, had become insistent in their demands that he give
them first chance at that land right there in Jordan--a demand which
Granger had admitted to be entirely just.

It was Major Trimble, as an old family friend, who hinted to Roger
about the snap that Brother Granger was letting his fellow citizens in
on in Florida land. It was Senator Fairclothe's direct, sincere
replies to Roger's letters of inquiry that convinced him. There is
magic in the words "United States Senator." But after all, it was the
spirit of adventure, the love of outdoors, the instinct of the pioneer,
which prompted him to buy a 1000-acre block of "prairie highland," at
the headwaters of the Chokohatchee River. It was necessary to buy at
once, for Trimble was after that tract for himself. Having made the
purchase Payne sent a wire to the Far West asking one Higgins,
engineer, if he were open for a job. And then Roger Payne turned his
eager eyes toward sunny Southern Florida.

III

A flaring ray of purple sun came flashing over the sea to Gumbo Key, a
warning of the brazen subtropical dawn that was to come. It pierced a
vista in the jungle of coco palms on the narrow key, colored purple the
white side of the Paradise Gardens Colony excursion boat Swastika,
which lay at the tiny wharf on the key's western shore, and splashed
without warning into an open porthole well aft.

Roger Payne awoke with a start. It was his first experience with the
shock of a Southern Florida dawn. Dawns of many sorts he had seen--the
ghastly ashy, clanging dawns of cities, the gray, creeping dawns of
Northern winter, the bluish dawns of the Western mountains--but a dawn
which came flaring up from the sea like a clap of thunder was a novelty.

He lay for a moment, stretching his buoyant body on the shelflike
berth, his soles firmly against one wall, his head touching another,
and wondered how a man could sleep in that bunk who was over six feet
one. The Swastika had come from the railroad terminus at Flora City
during the night, laden with small land buyers bound up the
Chokohatchee River for the Paradise Gardens Colony, and had laid up at
Gumbo Key at the mouth of the river to wait for daylight. Pa