he Cormorant run you
down the river to Gumbo Key." He paused and with a flicker of a smile
added the words which he knew would evoke but one reply: "Of course if
you fear it's a trap----"

"At two Sunday afternoon?" said Roger.

"Right." Garman wheeled his horse and loped away without another word.

XXI

Payne was not greatly concerned one way or another with Garman's
apparent change of heart toward his enterprise. He had no intention of
asking or receiving favors. All he asked was that Garman keep his
hands off.

The rest of the week saw the line fence completed and a good slice of
the elderberry jungle cleared away and burned. Besides this, Higgins
and Payne cruised the drowned land and ran the lines where the ditches
were to be dug when the ditcher should arrive. Two main ditches,
running in a V from the head of the Chokohatchee, Higgins' figures
showed, would drain the surface water off the thousand acres of lake
which had been sold to Payne as prairie land.

In the soft mud the big ditching machine would eat its way forward at
the rate of half a mile a day--a week should suffice to put the main
ditches through. As soon as the surface water was off, Higgins planned
for a system of short lateral ditches running at intervals into the two
branches of the V. Thus every portion of the thousand-acre tract would
be subject to thorough drainage. Following the drainage of the surface
water the underground seepage would run off as a matter of course.

Garman apparently was as good as his word. Each morning Payne awoke
expecting to find that his fence had been cut during the night, but so
far the wire remained unmolested.

"That proves that Garman is boss of the whole country, cattlemen and
all," said Payne one morning. "The cowman that I whipped intended to
come back."

"If something had not interfered he'd have been back that night with a
gang. He was so mad it must have taken something awfully strong to
stop him, and that means it was Garman."

"Yes," agreed Higgins; "but I wouldn't exactly look on him as a bosom
friend, if I were you."

"Pooh! I'm not fooled a bit by him. He's simply playing with me--or
trying to do it. Well, we'll try to be right here, still doing
business, when the game is over."

One morning a negro from the brushing crew came running up to Payne's
tent in great excitement.

"Boss, boss! Trouble in the jungle oveh dah. White man driving
colored boys away with rif