Company reliable, progressive. Glad to have live development man take
hold. Their title clear. Will see to transfer at once. Wait at
Citrus Grove for surveyor who leaves at once. Garman unknown to them.
Will look him up."
Payne turned over on his side and went to sleep, the yellow bit of
paper clenched tightly in his fist.
XVII
A week later Payne stood alone on the little Flower Prairie searching
the flooded lands to the eastward and wondering why Higgins did not
come. The week had been a successful one. A surveyor and a
representative of the Cypress Company had arrived promptly, had smiled
skeptically at first when told of the trip through the Devil's
Playground, and when convinced had looked upon Payne and Higgins with
the admiration of experts for masters. Higgins had remained at Citrus
Grove to organize ox-team transport for the material and labor which
had been ordered, and Payne had started southward at once. A sure,
plodding ox team had carried him in a wide circuit through the flooded
lands east of Devil's Playground to Deer Hammock. Signs on the hammock
told that it had been visited several times during their absence.
Payne found tracks of a size which he judged must be Garman's.
The thousand acres which Payne had purchased from the Cypress Company
was found to run northward far enough to include the fairyland of
Flower Prairie.
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