whisky.

"Queer thing," said Blease. "Reckon they must have left in a hurry or
they'd never have forgot their licker."

Higgins and Roger preceded cautiously over the tract, making sure that
no guards lay hidden in the ditches. The trails left by the departing
men were easily followed. They led, not to the river or toward
Garman's as might have been expected, but scattered and lost themselves
to the southward in the tangle morass of the cypress swamp. Here and
there articles had been left behind in what savored of a flight;
unopened canned goods, a deer carcass, a frying pan, a rifle and a pair
of shoes. Roger studied the tracks leading into the swamp and saw that
several of them had been made on the run. It was apparent from all
signs that the guards had fled, driven by fear of something.

"Blease," said Roger suddenly, "you scout up the ox trail and see if
they're gone from Coon Hammock, too; and, Higgins, you slip up towards
the Devil's Playground and see what you can see."

He went on down the main ditch toward its junction with the headwaters
of the Chokohatchee River, keeping a close watch for possible lurking
danger beyond his line. Near the mouth of the ditch he found a dugout
evidently left behind in the flight of the guards. In the dugout he
paddled the rest of the distance down the ditch, hidden from sight by
the spoil banks on the canal's sides.

It was broad daylight when suddenly he checked the canoe at the
entrance to the river. The plop of a pair of paddles propelling a
canoe upstream came from round a bend and Roger lay down flat on the
bottom of the dugout, his rifle resting upon the prow. The rifle
covered the spot where the canoe must come round the bend. He was on
his own land, and he would not allow the guards to regain possession
without a fight. He saw the white prow of the canoe shoot out past a
tuft of saw-grass on the bend, and laid his eye to the sights. Another
stroke of the paddles and the canoe was in full view, and Roger found
his front sight bearing upon a button on the silken shirt which
stretched taut across Garman's great chest.

A roar like the bellow of an angered bull welled from Garman's throat
as he recognized Payne, an inarticulate cry of rage, then a silence.
The current carried the canoe back a trifle and with an oath Garman
drove it forward with his paddle. In the stern was Senator Fairclothe,
dumb and helpless from fear.

Garman struck his paddle in th