bluntly. "I believe you care a little----"

"Don't, don't, don't!" She turned a face toward him full of pleading.
"Do you want to torture me? Can't you see----?" Her voice failed her.
She struggled a moment and turned round; holding back tears and smiling
by sheer force of will, and held out her hand frankly.

"Good-by!"

"I love you," repeated Roger doggedly.

A low chuckle in the jungle startled them.

"Ah, youth, youth, youth!" Garman's huge face was peering at them from
behind a mask of flowering moon vine. "'I love you.' Ho ho! Poor
Payne!"

"You cad, Garman; you mucker!" cried Roger.

"Go!" Annette flung herself upon him, seeking to push him away, but he
stood like an oak.

"Eavesdropping! Fine work, Garman."

Garman roared with laughter.

"Do you really love me?" whispered Annette, suddenly, her lips closed
to Roger's.

"You know that now."

"No, not yet; but I will soon. If you love me, you'll do what I ask.
Go away. Please, please at once!"

"I can't leave you here, Annette, helpless among all this devilishness."

"I am not helpless. Not if I know you really love me. Can you
understand that--it will mean so much to me--it will be the one way you
can help me--the only way. Help me to save myself, dear, by showing me
I have your love. Go!"

He looked at her. Then he bowed his head and went.

XXIX

"They've jumped us!" Higgins' great neck was swollen with impotent
rage as he greeted Roger's return to camp.

"It's my fault, too. Take a good, swift kick at me. I fell down on
the job while you were away."

"What has happened?"

Higgins led the way to the edge of the elderberry jungle and pointed
out over the drained land. A dozen armed men, outlaws and fugitives of
the most vicious kind from Big Cypress Swamp, were scattered
systematically over the thousand-acre tract. Two men lay behind the
spoil banks at each of the main canal, their heads and rifle barrels
showing above the black-earth breastworks. The other men were placed
in pairs at strategic points. No one could set foot on the drained
land without being seen and subject to fire from two sides.

Through his glasses Payne studied the pair which guarded the end of the
main ditch near Deer Key. These were no city toughs who would try to
bully rather than fight, but lank-haired, sallow-faced killers from the
darkest part of Big Cypress Swamp; men who were desperate because of
the crimes they had left beh