over upon his
back and opened his eyes. Above his head long streamers of delicate
Spanish moss waved indolently from the branches of a cypress tree. It
was an old tree and dead, and the moss seemed nothing more cheerful
than a living shroud. A cardinal bird flickered its vivid body in and
out of the moss with a startling effect; and halfway up on the trunk of
the cypress a mocking touch in the somber scene, a blood-red orchid
brazenly flaunted its proud beauty. And then, far above the tallest
gray, sharp spire of the dead tree, high up in the warm blue heavens,
appeared a single speck of black.

It floated there in a circle with no apparent effort, a black speck
floating in a sea of sun-warmed blue. Its circle, in fact, was a
leisurely downward spiral, and soon it appeared as a great, black
buzzard, lazily drifting down from the heavens above. Down, down, down
it came, its wings motionless, its gradual descent the movement of a
creature gifted with infinite patience. Above the tree top it folded
back its outspread wings, set its claws and dropped. It settled upon
the sharp, gray spike at the top of the dead cypress and sat there,
motionless as a thing of wood--waiting, waiting, waiting.

Other specks appeared against the blue of the sky. These specks did
not move in a circle but came flapping grotesquely toward a central
point. The scout of the buzzard flock had made his reconnoissance and
by settling had signaled back his message. Nine other buzzards
followed him and took up their patient watch upon the highest branches
of the tall tree. Like black-shrouded, red-hooded ghouls they took
their watch--waiting, waiting, waiting. A tenth bird fell like a bolt
out of the sky and found itself a perch in a tree apart from the
others. It was a small brown Mexican buzzard, the daring hawklike
breed which does not wait till its prey is entirely dead.

Roger's movements had gradually awakened Higgins and the latter also
rolled on his back and followed Payne's upward stare at the waiting
buzzards.

"Pretty things, eh, Hig?"

"Sweet, I'd call 'em. Good waiters too. 'Take all the time you want,
boys,' they're saying! 'We'll be here when you are all through.' How
in the devil do they get next to things so quick?"

"Well, I suppose the signs of animal life in this neck of the woods
aren't very plentiful. The sight of us must have been quite a treat to
those birds."

"Sure. Look how confident they are. The