"I confess that I do not."

"Well, get _this_, then. It's a cash deal. If the goods is up to sample
you hand me mine then an' there. I don't deliver no goods f.o.b. I shows
'em to you. After you have saw them it's up to you to round 'em up.
That's all, as they say when our great President pulls a gun. There ain't
goin' to be no shootin'; walk out quietly, ladies!"

After I had sat there for fully ten minutes staring at him I came to the
only logical conclusion possible to a scientific mind.

I said: "You are, admittedly, unlettered; you are confessedly a
chevalier of industry; personally you are exceedingly distasteful to me.
But it is useless to deny that you are the most extraordinary man I ever
saw.... How soon can you take me to these Coquina hills?"

"Gimme twenty-four hours to--fix things," he said gaily.

"Is that all?"

"It's plenty, I guess. An'--say!"

"What?"

"It's a stric'ly cash deal. Get me?"

"I shall have with me a certified check for ten thousand dollars. Also a
pair of automatics."

He laughed: "Huh!" he said, "I could loco your cabbage-palm soup if I was
_that_ kind! I'm on the level, Perfessor. If I wasn't I could get you in
about a hundred styles while you was blinkin' at what you was a-thinkin'
about. But I ain't no gun-man. You hadn't oughta pull that stuff on me.
I've give you your chanst; take it or leave it."

I pondered profoundly for another ten minutes. And at last my decision
was irrevocably reached.

"It's a bargain," I said firmly. "What is your name?"

"Sam Mink. Write it Samuel onto that there certyfied check--if you can
spare the extra seconds from your valooble time."

II

On Monday, the first day of March, 1915, about 10:30 a.m., we
came in sight of something which, until I had met Mink, I never had
dreamed existed in southern Florida--a high range of hills.

It had been an eventless journey from New York to Miami, from Miami to
Fort Coquina; but from there through an absolutely pathless wilderness as
far as I could make out, the journey had been exasperating.

Where we went I do not know even now: saw-grass and water, hammock and
shell mound, palm forests, swamps, wildernesses of water-oak and
live-oak, vast stretches of pine, lagoons, sloughs, branches, muddy
creeks, reedy reaches from which wild fowl rose in clouds where
alligators lurked or lumbered about after stranded fish, horrible
mangrove thickets full of moccasins and water-turkeys, heronry mor