The Firing Line Part 27

"You've _got_ to see. Besides, rattlers are on the edge of thickets, not inside. They've got to have an open s.p.a.ce to strike the small furry creatures which they live on. Moccasins affect mud--_look_ there!"

Both horses shyed; in front s.h.i.+ela's mount was behaving badly, but even while she was mastering him she tried at the same time to extract her shotgun from the leather boot. Stent rode up and drew it out for her; Hamil saw her break and load, swing in the saddle, and gaze straight into an evil-looking bog all set with ancient cypress knees and the undulating snaky roots of palmettos.

"A perfectly enormous one, dad!" she called back.

"Wait!" said Cardross; "I want Hamil to see." And to Hamil: "Ride forward; you ought to know what the ugly brutes look like!"

As he drew bridle at s.h.i.+ela's left the girl, still intent, pointed in silence; but he looked in vain for the snake, mistaking every palmetto root for a serpent, until she leaned forward and told him to sight along her extended arm. Then he saw a dull gray fold without any glitter to it, draped motionless over a palmetto root, and so like the root that he could scarcely believe it anything else.

"That?"

"Yes. It's as thick as a man's arm."

"Is it a moccasin?"

"It is; a cotton-mouth."

The guide drawled: "Ah reckon he's asleep, Miss Cahdhoss. Ah'll make him rare up 'f yew say so."

"Make him rear up," suggested Gray. "And stand clear, Hamil, because s.h.i.+ela must shoot quick if he slides for the water."

The men backed their nervously snorting horses, giving her room; Stent dismounted, picked up a pig-nut, and threw it accurately. Instantly the fat mud-coloured fold slipped over the root and a head appeared rising straight out of the coils up into the air--a flat and rather small head on a horribly swollen body, stump-tailed, disgusting. The head was looking at them, stretched high, fully a third of the creature in the air. Then, soundlessly, the wide-slitted mouth opened; and Hamil saw its silky white lining.

"Moccasins stand their ground," said the girl, raising her gun. The shot crashed out; the snake collapsed. For fully a minute they watched; not a fold even quivered.

"Struck by lightning," said Gray; "the buzzards will get him." And he drew a folding b.u.t.terfly net from his saddle boot, affixed ring and gauze bag, and cantered forward briskly in the wake of a great velvety black b.u.t.terfly which was sailing under the live-oaks above his head.

His father, wis.h.i.+ng to talk to Eudo Stent, rode ahead with the guide, leaving s.h.i.+ela and Hamil to follow.

The latter reined in and waited while the girl leisurely returned the fowling-piece to its holster. Then, together, they walked their horses forward, wading the "branch" which flowed clear as a trout stream out of the swamp on their right.

"It looks drinkable," he said.

"It is, for Crackers; but there's fever in it for you, Mr. Hamil....

Look at Gray! He's missed his b.u.t.terfly. But it's a rather common one--the black form of the tiger swallow-tail. Just see those zebra-striped b.u.t.terflies darting like lightning over the palmetto scrub! Gray and I could never catch them until one day we found a ragged one that couldn't fly and we placed it on a leaf; and every time one of those b.u.t.terflies came our way it paused in its flight for a second and hovered over the ragged one. And that's how Gray and I caught the swift Ajax b.u.t.terflies for his collection!... I've helped him considerably, if you please; I brought him the mysterious Echo moth from Ormond, and a wonderful little hornet moth from Jupiter Inlet."

She was rattling on almost feverishly, never looking at him, restless in her saddle, s.h.i.+fting bridle, adjusting stirrups, gun-case, knotting and reknotting her neckerchief, all with that desperate attempt at composure which betrays the courage that summons it.

"s.h.i.+ela, dear!"

"What!" she said, startled into flushed surprise.

"Look at me."

She turned in her saddle, the colour deepening and waning on her white skin from neck to temples; and sustained his gaze to the limit of endurance. Then again in her ears sounded the soft crash of her senses; he swung wide in his stirrups, looking recklessly into her eyes. A delicate sense of intoxication stilled all speech between them for a moment. Then, head bowed, eyes fixed on her bridle hand, the other hand, ungloved, lying hotly unresponsive in his, she rode slowly forward at his side. Face to face with all the mad unasked questions of destiny and fate and chance still before her--all the cold problems of truth and honour still to be discussed with that stirring, painful pulse in her heart which she had known as conscience--silently, head bent, she rode into the west with the man she must send away.

Far to the north-east, above a sentinel pine which marks the outskirts of the flat-woods, streaks like smoke drifted in the sky--the wild-fowl leaving the lagoons. On the Lantana Road they drew bridle at a sign from her; then she wheeled her horse and sat silent in her saddle, staring into the western wilderness.

The character of the country had changed while they had been advancing along this white sandy road edged with jungle; for now west and south the Florida wilderness stretched away, the strange "Flat-woods,"

deceptively open, almost park-like in their monotony where, as far as the eye could see, glade after glade, edged by the stately vivid green pines, opened invitingly into other glades through endlessly charming perspective. At every step one was prepared to come upon some handsome mansion centring this park--some bridge spanning the shallow crystal streams that ran out of jasmine thickets--some fine driveway curving through the open woods. But this was the wilderness, uninhabited, unplotted. No dwelling stood within its vistas; no road led out or in; no bridge curved over the silently moving waters. West and south-west into the unknown must he go who follows the lure of those peaceful, sunny glades where there are no hills, no valleys, nothing save trees and trees and trees again, and shallow streams with jungle edging them, and lonely lakes set with cypress, and sunny clearings, never made by human hands, where last year's gra.s.s, shoulder-high, silvers under the white sun of the South.

Half a hundred miles westward lay the great inland lake; south-west, the Everglades. The Hillsboro trail ran south-west between the upper and lower chain of lakes, over Little Fish Crossing, along the old Government trail, and over the Loxahatchi. Westward no trail lay save those blind signs of the Seminoles across the wastes of open timber and endless stretches of lagoon and saw-gra.s.s which is called the Everglades.

On the edge of the road where Hamil sat his horse was an old pump--the last indication of civilisation. He dismounted and tried it, filling his cup with clear sparkling water, neither hot nor cold, and walking through the sand offered it to s.h.i.+ela Cardross.

"Osceola's font," she nodded, returning from her abstraction; "thank you, I am thirsty." And she drained the cup at her leisure, pausing at moments to look into the west as though the wilderness had already laid its spell upon her.

Then she looked down at Hamil beside her, handing him the cup.

"_In-nah-cahpoor?_" she asked softly; and as he looked up puzzled and smiling: "I asked you, in Seminole, what is the price I have to pay for your cup of water?"

"A little love," he said quietly--"a very little, s.h.i.+ela."

"I see!--like this water, neither warm nor cold: _nac-ey-tai?_--what do you call it?--oh, yes, sisterly affection." She looked down at him with a forced smile. "_Uncah_" she said, "which in Seminole means 'yes' to your demand.... You don't mind if I relapse into the lake dialect occasionally--do you?--especially when I'm afraid to say it in English."

And, gaining confidence, she smiled at him, the faintest hint of tenderness in her eyes. "Neither warm nor cold--_Haiee-Kasapi_!--like this Indian well, Mr. Hamil; but, like it, very faithful--even when in the arid days to come you turn to drink from sweeter springs."

"s.h.i.+ela!"

"Oh, no--no!" she breathed, releasing her hands; "you interrupt me; I was thinking _ist-ahmah-mahhen_--which way we must go. Listen; we leave the road yonder where Gray's green b.u.t.terfly net is bobbing above the dead gra.s.s: _in-e-gitskah?_--can't you see it? And there are dad and Stent riding in line with that outpost pine--_ho-paiee_! Mount, my cavalier. And"--in a lower voice--"perhaps you also may hear that voice in the wilderness which cried once to the unwise."

As they rode girth-high through the gra.s.s the first enchanting glade opened before them, flanked by palmettos and pines. Gray was galloping about in the woods among swarms of yellow and brown b.u.t.terflies, swis.h.i.+ng his net like a polo mallet, and drawing bridle every now and then to examine some specimen and drop it into the cyanide jar which bulged from his pocket.

"I got a lot of those dog's-head fellows!" he called out to s.h.i.+ela as she came past with Hamil. "You remember that the white ants got at my other specimens before I could mount them."

"I remember," said s.h.i.+ela; "don't ride too hard in the sun, dear." But Gray saw something ahead and shook out his bridle, and soon left them in the rear once more, riding through endless glades of green where there was no sound except the creak of leather and the continuous popping of those small pods on the seeds of which quail feed.

"I thought there were no end of gorgeous flowers in the semi-tropics,"

he said, "but there's almost nothing here except green."

She laughed. "The concentration of bloom in Northern hothouses deceives people. The semi-tropics and the tropics are almost monotonously green except where cultivated gardens exist. There are no ma.s.ses of flowers anywhere; even the great brilliant blossoms make no show because they are widely scattered. You notice them when you happen to come across them in the woods, they are so brilliant and so rare."

"Are there no fruits--those delectable fruits one reads about?"

"There are bitter wild oranges, sour guavas, eatable beach-grapes and papaws. If you're fond of wild ca.s.sava and can prepare it so it won't poison you, you can make an eatable paste. If you like oily cabbage, the top of any palmetto will furnish it. But, my poor friend, there's little here to tempt one's appet.i.te or satisfy one's aesthetic hunger for flowers. Our Northern meadows are far more gorgeous from June to October; and our wild fruits are far more delicious than what one finds growing wild in the tropics."

"But bananas, cocoa-nuts, oranges--"

"All cultivated!"

"Persimmons, mulberries--"

"All cultivated when eatable. Everything palatable in this country is cultivated."

He laughed dejectedly, then, again insistent: "But there _are_ plenty of wild flowering trees!--magnolia, poinciana, china-berry--"

"All set out by mere man," she smiled--"except the magnolias and dog-wood. No, Mr. Hamil, the riotous tropical bloom one reads about is confined to people's gardens. When you come upon jasmine or an orchid in the woods you notice the colour at once in the green monotony. But think how many acres of blue and white and gold one pa.s.ses in the North with scarcely a glance! The South is beautiful too, in its way; but it is not that way. Yet I care for it even more, perhaps, than I do for the North--"

The calm, even tenor of the speech between them was rea.s.suring her, although it was solving no problems which, deep in her breast, she knew lay latent, ready to quicken at any instant.