ughed sharply.

"What's the matter?" demanded Higgins, "got a better idea?"

"Higgins, if you think Garman has left our back door open you don't
half appreciate what the man is. When were the ox teams due?"

"Whew!" Higgins whistled. "That's so; this is the day for 'em to show
up. They've been due since daylight."

"And they've never missed their weekly schedule so far. Ox teams are
slow, Higgins, but they're darn sure."

"You think Garman's cut us off then?"

"Higgins, if you'd studied Garman half as hard as I have you'd know he
wouldn't fail to do just that thing."

At dark Blease came noiselessly to Roger's tent to substantiate this
deduction.

He had followed craftily after the party which he and Higgins had
driven northward from the camp, and had found them encamped on Coon
Hammock, across the ox trail, a scant mile from the camp.

Roger lay on his cot that night calmly appraising his situation. To
the south of the camp Garman's henchmen were in possession of his land.
To the eastward lay the trackless waters of the Everglades through
which only the Seminoles cared to find a way; on the west--the only way
out was through Garman's grounds which meant there was no way at all.
Northward there was the ox trail, now closed, and the ghastly mud of
the Devil's Playground.

Garman's trap was quite complete. Roger wondered when Garman would see
fit to bring its jaws together.

But Garman had contemplated and prepared a sport more pleasing to him
than this. The trap did not spring; day after day passed, and the
situation remained the same. The men on the muck lands guarded against
trespass by day or night. The moon was losing its radiance of nights,
but sufficient light still prevailed to make an attempt to cross the
ditched track plain suicide. In the north the men on Coon Hammock
followed the same policy. No attack was made, but neither was there
opportunity for any one to pass unobserved or unharmed.

One of the negroes, weary of hiding in the swamp, tried it and came
staggering back to the camp with a bullet hole in his foot. Roger
reasoned that Garman's cat-and-mouse tactics were calculated to break
his nerve or to provoke a fight which could have only one result.
Failing in this the trap had but to be maintained and the inevitable
result would be surrender.

On the first night when a slight cloudiness, promised considerable
darkness Roger slipped out of his tent trained and primed for the
o