"Now," he said, turning to the men on the boat, "we don't want to leave
you with any hard feelings. We'll pay for our ride. Will ten dollars
be about right?"

He plucked two five-dollar bills off a roll and handed one each to the
scarred man and the captain.

"Hey!" called the latter. "You won't say anything about being on this
boat to anybody?"

"Not if it will be a favor not to. I'm not particularly proud of
sneaking a ride."

"We won't say anything if you don't."

"I thought you wouldn't. Now you just lay up here for half an hour and
don't try to pass us. Business is business and I'm playing safe. So
long."

There was no reply. The crew on the boat watched silently as the pair
marched out of sight.

VIII

"Nice boys, those fellows," said Higgins after a while. "I wonder
where they cut throats for a living? Can you make 'em out?"

Roger shook his head.

"I've heard there were a lot of bad men hiding out down here, and,
strange, but I never believed it. Apparently it's true; and it seems
we've stepped right into the midst of them."

"They called Davis a 'snooper.'"

"Well, I'm not worrying about Davis. From what I saw of him he's quite
able to take care of himself."

"I'll say he is. You too. You've come pretty near making pals of the
fellows we were fighting a little while ago."

"That was business. I don't want a whole lot of enemies strung out
along the river between me and civilization."

"Well, it looks as if the captain was honest about the trail at least,"
said Higgins, leaping over a pool of quivering mud. "It's fair, but
not good."

A cotton-mouth water snake, short, thick as a man's arm and
indescribably loathsome, wriggled on top of the mud as Roger prepared
to leap.

"Whoa, boy!" cried Higgins, glancing back. "Stand still while I get a
club." He broke off a thick branch from a custard apple tree.

"My God! what wood!" he exclaimed in disgust. "It's light as paper."

However, he managed to creep up behind the snake and slash off at a
blow the foul, flat head that reared itself above the slime.

"And I suppose this swamp is full of those things."

"Probably. But my land isn't in the swamp, remember; it's beyond the
head of the river."

"There's some real ground ahead; I can see the tops of some pines."

Half an hour later they entered a stretch of open country. A few
spindly pines grew near the river. To the north and west, as far as
the eye could