Hamil stared at him coolly. He was on no such terms with Malcourt, drunk or sober. But everybody was Malcourt’s friend just then, and he went on recklessly:
“You’ve got to stay; hasn’t he, Dolly? — Oh, I forgot — Miss Wilming, Mr. Hamil, who’s doing the new park, you know. All kinds of genius buzzes in his head — roulette wheels buzz in mine. Hamil, you remember Miss Wilming in the ‘Motor Girl.’ She was one of the acetylenes. Come on; we’ll all light up later. Make him come, Dolly.”
Hamil turned to speak to her. She seemed to be, at a casual glance, the sort of young girl who usually has a mother somewhere within ear-shot. Upon inspection, however, her bright hair was a little too perfectly rippled, and her mouth a trifle fuller and redder than a normal circulation might account for. But there remained in the eyes something as yet unquenched. And looking at her, he felt a sense of impatience and regret that the delicate youth of her should be wasted in the flare and shadow of the lesser world — burning to a spectre here on the crumbling edge of things — here with Malcourt leering at her through the disordered brilliancy of that false dawn which heralds only night.
They spoke together, smilingly formal. He had quietly turned his back on Malcourt.
She hoped he would remain and join them; and her as yet unspoiled voice clashed with her tinted lips and hair.
He was sorry — politely so — thanking her with the natural and unconscious gentleness so agreeable to all women. And as in his manner there was not the slightest hint of that half-amused, half-cynical freedom characteristic of the worldly wise whom she was now accustoming herself to meet, she looked up at him with a faint flush of appreciation.
Malcourt all the while was pulling Hamil by the elbow and talking on at random almost boisterously, checking himself at intervals to exchange familiar greetings with new-comers passing the crowded corridor. His face was puffy and red; so were his lips; and there seemed to be a shiny quality to hair and skin prophetic of future coarsening toward a type, individuals of which swarmed like sleek flies around the gaming-tables beyond.
As Hamil glanced from the young girl to Malcourt, who was still noisily importuning him, a sudden contempt for the man arose within him. So unreasoningly abrupt was the sensation of absolute distrust and dislike that it cut his leave-taking to a curt word of refusal, and he turned on his heel.
“What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you coming with us?” asked Malcourt, reddening.
“No,” said Hamil. “Good-bye, Miss Wilming. Thank you for asking me.”
She held out her hand, uncertainly; he took it with a manner so gentle and considerate that she ventured, hesitatingly, something about seeing him again. To which he replied, pleasantly conventional, and started toward the door.
“See here, Hamil,” said Malcourt sharply, “is there any reason for your sudden and deliberate rudeness to me?”
“Is there any reason for your sudden and deliberate familiarity with me?” retorted Hamil in a low voice. “You’re drunk!”
Malcourt’s visage crimsoned: “O hell!” he said, “if your morals are as lofty as your mincing manners—”
Hamil stared him into silence, hesitated, then passed in front of him and out of the door.
Vicious with irritation, Malcourt laid his hand on the girl’s arm: “Take it from me, Dolly, that’s the sort of citizen who’ll sneak around to call on your sort Saturday evenings.”
She flushed painfully, but said nothing. “As for me,” added Malcourt, “I don’t think I’ve quite finished with this nice young man.”
But Dolly Wilming stood silent, head bent, slender fingers worrying her lips, which seemed inclined to quiver.
CHAPTER X
TERRA INCOGNITA
The camp-wagon and led horses left before daylight with two of the Cracker guides, Bulow and Carter; but it was an hour after sunrise when Cardross, senior, Gray, Shiela, Hamil, and the head guide, Eudo Stent, rode out of the patio into the dewy beauty of a February morning.
The lagoon was pink; so was the white town on its western shore; in the east, ocean and sky were one vast rosy-rayed glory. Few birds sang.
Through the intense stillness of early morning the little cavalcade made a startling clatter on the shell highway; but the rattle of hoofs was soon deadened in the sand of a broad country road curving south through dune and hammock along the lake shore.
Dew still dropped in great splashes from pine and palm; dew powdered the sparkle-berry bushes and lay like a tiny lake of quicksilver in the hollow of every broad palmetto frond; and all around them earth and grass and shrub exhaled the scented freshness of a dew-washed world.
On the still surface of the lake, tinted with palest rose and primrose, the wild ducks floated, darkly silhouetted against the water or, hoping for crumbs, paddled shoreward, inquiringly peering up at the riders with little eyes of brightest gold.
“Blue-bills,” said Cardross to Hamil; “nobody shoots them on the lake; they’re as tame as barnyard waterfowl. Yet, the instant these same ducks leave this lagoon where they know they’re protected they become as wild and wary and as difficult to get a shot at as any other wild-fowl.”
Shiela, riding ahead with Gray, tossed bits of bread into the water; and the little blue-bill ducks came swimming in scores, keeping up with the horses so fearlessly and persistently that the girl turned in her saddle and looked back at her father in delight.
“I’m certainly as gifted as the Pied Piper, dad! If they follow me to Ruffle Lake I won’t permit a shot to be fired.”
While she spoke she kept her eyes on her father. Except for a brief good morning at breakfast she had neither looked at nor spoken to Hamil, making no noticeable effort to avoid him, but succeeded in doing it nevertheless.
Like her father and brother and Hamil she was mounted on an unornamental but wiry Tallahassee horse; and she rode cross-saddle, wearing knee-coat and kilts of kahkee and brown leather puttees strapped from under the kneecap to the ankle. Like the others, too, she carried a small shotgun in a saddle boot, and in the web loops across her breast glimmered the metal rims of a dozen cartridges. A brilliant handkerchief knotted loosely around her bare white throat, and a broad Panama turned up in front and resolutely pulled down behind to defy sunstroke, completed a most bewilderingly charming picture, which moved even her father to admiring comment.
“Only,” he added, “look before you step over a log when you’re afoot. The fangs of a big diamond-back are three-quarters of an inch long, my dear, and they’ll go through leather as a needle goes through cambric.”
“Thanks, dad — and here endeth the usual lesson.”
Cardross said to Hamil: “One scarcely knows what to think about the snakes here. The records of the entire Union show few deaths in a year, and yet there’s no scarcity of rattlers, copperheads, and moccasins in this Republic of ours. I know a man, an ornithologist, who for twelve years has wandered about the Florida woods and never saw a rattler. And yet, the other night a Northern man, a cottager, lighted his cigar after dinner and stepped off his veranda on to a rattler.”
“Was he bitten?”
“Yes. He died in two hours.” Cardross shrugged and gathered up his bridle. “Personally I have no fear; leggings won’t help much; besides, a good-sized snake can strike one’s hand as it swings; but our cracker guides go everywhere in thin cotton trousers and the Seminoles are barelegged. One hears often enough of escapes, yet very rarely of anybody being bitten. One of my grove guards was struck by a moccasin last winter. He was an awfully sick nigger for a while, but he got over it.”
“That’s cheerful,” said Hamil, laughing.
“Oh, you might as well know. There are plenty of wiseacres who’ll tell you that nobody’s in danger at these East Coast resorts, and the hotel people will swear solemnly there isn’t a serpent in the State; but there are, Hamil, and plenty of them. I’ve seen rattlers strike without rattling; and moccasins are ugly brutes that won’t get out of the way for you and that give no warning w
hen they strike; and all quail hunters in the flat-woods know how their pointers and setters are killed, and every farmer knows that the best watchmen he can have is a flock of guinea-fowl or turkeys or a few hogs loose. The fact is that deadly snakes are not rare in many localities; the wonder is that scarcely a death is reported in a year. How many niggers die, I don’t know; but I know enough, when I’m in the woods or fields, to look every time before I put my foot upon the ground.”
“How can you see in the jungle?”
“You’ve got to see. Besides, rattlers are on the edge of thickets, not inside. They’ve got to have an open space to strike the small furry creatures which they live on. Moccasins affect mud — look there!”
Both horses shyed; in front Shiela’s mount was behaving badly, but even while she was mastering him she tried at the same time to extract her shotgun from the leather boot. Stent rode up and drew it out for her; Hamil saw her break and load, swing in the saddle, and gaze straight into an evil-looking bog all set with ancient cypress knees and the undulating snaky roots of palmettos.
“A perfectly enormous one, dad!” she called back.
“Wait!” said Cardross; “I want Hamil to see.” And to Hamil: “Ride forward; you ought to know what the ugly brutes look like!”
As he drew bridle at Shiela’s left the girl, still intent, pointed in silence; but he looked in vain for the snake, mistaking every palmetto root for a serpent, until she leaned forward and told him to sight along her extended arm. Then he saw a dull gray fold without any glitter to it, draped motionless over a palmetto root, and so like the root that he could scarcely believe it anything else.
“That?”
“Yes. It’s as thick as a man’s arm.”
“Is it a moccasin?”
“It is; a cotton-mouth.”
The guide drawled: “Ah reckon he’s asleep, Miss Cahdhoss. Ah’ll make him rare up ‘f yew say so.”
“Make him rear up,” suggested Gray. “And stand clear, Hamil, because Shiela must shoot quick if he slides for the water.”
The men backed their nervously snorting horses, giving her room; Stent dismounted, picked up a pig-nut, and threw it accurately. Instantly the fat mud-coloured fold slipped over the root and a head appeared rising straight out of the coils up into the air — a flat and rather small head on a horribly swollen body, stump-tailed, disgusting. The head was looking at them, stretched high, fully a third of the creature in the air. Then, soundlessly, the wide-slitted mouth opened; and Hamil saw its silky white lining.
“Moccasins stand their ground,” said the girl, raising her gun. The shot crashed out; the snake collapsed. For fully a minute they watched; not a fold even quivered.
“Struck by lightning,” said Gray; “the buzzards will get him.” And he drew a folding butterfly net from his saddle boot, affixed ring and gauze bag, and cantered forward briskly in the wake of a great velvety black butterfly which was sailing under the live-oaks above his head.
His father, wishing to talk to Eudo Stent, rode ahead with the guide, leaving Shiela and Hamil to follow.
The latter reined in and waited while the girl leisurely returned the fowling-piece to its holster. Then, together, they walked their horses forward, wading the “branch” which flowed clear as a trout stream out of the swamp on their right.
“It looks drinkable,” he said.
“It is, for Crackers; but there’s fever in it for you, Mr. Hamil.... Look at Gray! He’s missed his butterfly. But it’s a rather common one — the black form of the tiger swallow-tail. Just see those zebra-striped butterflies darting like lightning over the palmetto scrub! Gray and I could never catch them until one day we found a ragged one that couldn’t fly and we placed it on a leaf; and every time one of those butterflies came our way it paused in its flight for a second and hovered over the ragged one. And that’s how Gray and I caught the swift Ajax butterflies for his collection!... I’ve helped him considerably, if you please; I brought him the mysterious Echo moth from Ormond, and a wonderful little hornet moth from Jupiter Inlet.”
She was rattling on almost feverishly, never looking at him, restless in her saddle, shifting bridle, adjusting stirrups, gun-case, knotting and reknotting her neckerchief, all with that desperate attempt at composure which betrays the courage that summons it.
“Shiela, dear!”
“What!” she said, startled into flushed surprise.
“Look at me.”
She turned in her saddle, the colour deepening and waning on her white skin from neck to temples; and sustained his gaze to the limit of endurance. Then again in her ears sounded the soft crash of her senses; he swung wide in his stirrups, looking recklessly into her eyes. A delicate sense of intoxication stilled all speech between them for a moment. Then, head bowed, eyes fixed on her bridle hand, the other hand, ungloved, lying hotly unresponsive in his, she rode slowly forward at his side. Face to face with all the mad unasked questions of destiny and fate and chance still before her — all the cold problems of truth and honour still to be discussed with that stirring, painful pulse in her heart which she had known as conscience — silently, head bent, she rode into the west with the man she must send away.
Far to the north-east, above a sentinel pine which marks the outskirts of the flat-woods, streaks like smoke drifted in the sky — the wild-fowl leaving the lagoons. On the Lantana Road they drew bridle at a sign from her; then she wheeled her horse and sat silent in her saddle, staring into the western wilderness.
The character of the country had changed while they had been advancing along this white sandy road edged with jungle; for now west and south the Florida wilderness stretched away, the strange “Flat-woods,” deceptively open, almost park-like in their monotony where, as far as the eye could see, glade after glade, edged by the stately vivid green pines, opened invitingly into other glades through endlessly charming perspective. At every step one was prepared to come upon some handsome mansion centring this park — some bridge spanning the shallow crystal streams that ran out of jasmine thickets — some fine driveway curving through the open woods. But this was the wilderness, uninhabited, unplotted. No dwelling stood within its vistas; no road led out or in; no bridge curved over the silently moving waters. West and south-west into the unknown must he go who follows the lure of those peaceful, sunny glades where there are no hills, no valleys, nothing save trees and trees and trees again, and shallow streams with jungle edging them, and lonely lakes set with cypress, and sunny clearings, never made by human hands, where last year’s grass, shoulder-high, silvers under the white sun of the South.
Half a hundred miles westward lay the great inland lake; south-west, the Everglades. The Hillsboro trail ran south-west between the upper and lower chain of lakes, over Little Fish Crossing, along the old Government trail, and over the Loxahatchi. Westward no trail lay save those blind signs of the Seminoles across the wastes of open timber and endless stretches of lagoon and saw-grass which is called the Everglades.
On the edge of the road where Hamil sat his horse was an old pump — the last indication of civilisation. He dismounted and tried it, filling his cup with clear sparkling water, neither hot nor cold, and walking through the sand offered it to Shiela Cardross.
“Osceola’s font,” she nodded, returning from her abstraction; “thank you, I am thirsty.” And she drained the cup at her leisure, pausing at moments to look into the west as though the wilderness had already laid its spell upon her.
Then she looked down at Hamil beside her, handing him the cup.
“In-nah-cahpoor?” she asked softly; and as he looked up puzzled and smiling: “I asked you, in Seminole, what is the price I have to pay for your cup of water?”
“A little love,” he said quietly— “a very little, Shiela.”
“I see! — like this water, neither warm nor cold: nac-ey-tai? — what do you call it? — oh, yes, sisterly affection.” She looked down at him with a forced smile. “Uncah” she said, “which in Seminole means ‘yes’ to
your demand.... You don’t mind if I relapse into the lake dialect occasionally — do you? — especially when I’m afraid to say it in English.” And, gaining confidence, she smiled at him, the faintest hint of tenderness in her eyes. “Neither warm nor cold — Haiee-Kasapi! — like this Indian well, Mr. Hamil; but, like it, very faithful — even when in the arid days to come you turn to drink from sweeter springs.”
“Shiela!”
“Oh, no — no!” she breathed, releasing her hands; “you interrupt me; I was thinking ist-ahmah-mahhen — which way we must go. Listen; we leave the road yonder where Gray’s green butterfly net is bobbing above the dead grass: in-e-gitskah? — can’t you see it? And there are dad and Stent riding in line with that outpost pine — ho-paiee! Mount, my cavalier. And” — in a lower voice— “perhaps you also may hear that voice in the wilderness which cried once to the unwise.”
As they rode girth-high through the grass the first enchanting glade opened before them, flanked by palmettos and pines. Gray was galloping about in the woods among swarms of yellow and brown butterflies, swishing his net like a polo mallet, and drawing bridle every now and then to examine some specimen and drop it into the cyanide jar which bulged from his pocket.
“I got a lot of those dog’s-head fellows!” he called out to Shiela as she came past with Hamil. “You remember that the white ants got at my other specimens before I could mount them.”
“I remember,” said Shiela; “don’t ride too hard in the sun, dear.” But Gray saw something ahead and shook out his bridle, and soon left them in the rear once more, riding through endless glades of green where there was no sound except the creak of leather and the continuous popping of those small pods on the seeds of which quail feed.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 378